126 Saddle and Sirloin. 



till it was all transcribed into his private herd book. 

 This morning he handed Mr. Grey a letter. " There's 

 a letter',' he said, "from Carnegie ; he admires my 

 political course, and he writes from the Lothians to say 

 that I shall have the first refusal of his bull" Then 

 he so characteristically added — " I've written to thank 

 him for his political confidence, but I've told him that 

 there is a flaw in his bulls pedigree ; he traces him 

 back to Red Rose, but Red Rose never had a heifer calf!' 

 At Smithfield or the Royal he would work a whole 

 day in his shirt-sleeves, and at Shrewsbury, the very 

 year before his death, no one bore such an active part 

 in putting the stock into their proper stalls. " 0?ice 

 out of office" he was wont to say, " and they'll never 

 catch me in again." Nothing but the strongest sense 

 of duty bound him to the Exchequer. "I find a little 

 relief on a Saturday night : but on Monday morning 

 I just know how a man feels who'll throw himself over 

 London Bridge!'* 



* For more than forty years John Grey of Dilston was a very promi- 

 nent and a very honoured name in the North Country. He was born 

 not far from Flodden Field, and both by his farming success on the 

 Tweed and Tillside, as well as by his political energy on the hustings 

 by the side of Mr. Lambton and Lord Howick, in " times enough to 

 shake a man's soul " if he dared to be a Reformer, he soon took a place 

 in the van. He was just in the prime of life at 47, when he was made 

 Commissioner of the Greenwich Hospital Estates, and he built his 

 future home at Dilston, not far from the spot where the last Earl of 

 Radcliffe lies buried with his head under his arm, and his heart em- 

 balmed at his side. 



No man had enjoyed a finer training, and Earl Grey, Sir John Sin- 

 clair, and Clarkson were among those whom he could call friend. His 

 own deep and abiding sense of religion and regard for his widowed 

 mother moulded him early for the important part which he had to play 

 in life. He honoured John Culley for always asking him to rise early 

 from the Wooller market-table, and to be the companion of his home- 

 ward ride ; and his first public speech was for the Bible Society in the 

 church of that town. In process of time he met with Hannah Annett. 

 He resisted the feeling at first, till a gust of jealousy, on seeing her 

 helped into the saddle by a rival, impelled him in his own decisive way 

 to grasp her pony's bridle, and say some fevr words which both under- 

 stood. A few months later, and she was riding as his bride from 



