268 Life and Times of " The Druid? 



employment of countless Irish peasants on 

 his Curraghmore estate to put absentee land- 

 lords to shame than any man that Ireland 

 ever reared, died in the very prime of man- 

 hood, through a fall from his crack hunter 

 over a wall, which a child on a pony might 

 have negotiated with safety. This, too, was 

 the man who twenty years before his hapless 

 death would deliberately sacrifice all his 

 chances of winning a Steeple-chase for the 

 pleasure of leaping an extra gate. Together 

 with the mad Marquis, the fifth Earl of Jersey 

 has also passed away ; the handsomest young 

 man of his time, and formerly one of the gay 

 companions of George Guelph, Prince of 

 Wales, on the Steyne at Brighton, when the 

 Duke of Bedford, Charles Wyndham, Sir 

 John Shelley, Brummell, Churchill, and 

 'strange anomaly, the little Jew Travis,' 

 all followed in the train of Royalty ; and Sir 

 John Lade drove them in the green German 

 waggon with the six bays, to see Sancho and 

 Pavilion run their match at Lewes. Later 

 years found Lord Jersey the arbiter of fashion 

 and the mould of form, until wearying of 

 racing and of those hunting scenes where as 



