Major Whyte Melville. 265 



had come in_, lie made it a rule never to lay out upon liis 

 own personal gratification the money he earned by his 

 pen. What he must have spent in his desire to benefit 

 others may be inferred from the fact that a three- 

 volume novel from him came to be worth fifteen 

 hundred pounds. His gifts were ever of the most 

 munificent description ; the motto he adopted being, 

 " Do the thing handsomely or let it alone." 



One of the earliest uses to which he put a lately-inhe- 

 rited fortune was to establish a '' Working-man^s Ckib 

 and Reading-Eoom ^^ at Northampton, which he started 

 with a present of five hundred pounds ; a sum he supple- 

 mented with further gifts. Known as the " Melville 

 Institute/' after some infantile struggles it is now in a 

 highly satisfactory condition, and is in every way worthy 

 of its generous founder and benefactor. Not being in a 

 position for some years after settling in Northampton- 

 shire to ride horses of any great value, so long as he had 

 quality all other requisites were a matter of secondary 

 importance to a sportsman who knew that the impecu- 

 nious had no right to be too particular. To him it 

 mattered not whether his mount was easy or difficult to 

 ride — whether it was good-looking or a bit three-cornered 

 in appearance. So long as it could gallop and jump he 

 ever went upon the old saw that "handsome is that 

 handsome does." To Mr. John Clarke, the well-known 

 fishmonger of Northampton — still to be seen in his 

 seventy-fifth year at every near Meet on the back of a 

 skybald cob — he was indebted for two or three excellent 

 animals of an inexpensive sort, one of them a small, ex- 

 citable, well-bred bay, being a hunter of unusual merit. 

 A black mare of less pretensions that remained in the 



