io8 The Post and the Paddock. 



latterly weighed more than 23st., was of course out of 

 the question ; but when he was able to don his blue 

 coat with gilt buttons, and topboots, and buckskins, 

 after the fashion of the bucks of those days, he cared 

 very little what Milton or anyone else chose to ask 

 for a clever hack. It used to be a saying of the period 

 in Brighton, that, heavy as he was, '* he rode so well 

 that he never soiled his nankeens," but the exact 

 meaning oi the remark is too deep for us. He was 

 more fortunate than the late Mr. Thornhill, who was 

 as nearly as possible his weight, and gave up riding on 

 the Heath at Newmarket, " not because I can't p-et a 

 horse to carry me, but because 1 can't get a horse to 

 stand still tinder me ;''' as his hacks, Tiger and To- 

 bacco-Stopper, carried him to perfection. Of the 

 former, when he was at last told that his legs were so 

 unsafe, through age, that he was certain to come down 

 with him, he remarked — " No, no ! Tiger scorns to 

 fall down ; " while the latter was, strange to say, 

 the lightest horse below the knee in the whole of 

 his stud. 



Asparagus and Curricle did all that pluck and 

 muscle could do under his weight, when he hunted 

 with Mr. Villebois in Hampshire ; and the Prince's 

 Feathers are still preserved on the buttons of the 

 H.H. When he gave up Kempshot Park, the Duke 

 of Richmond's hounds were purchased and installed 

 in the Ascot kennels, and the yellow-pied Minos 

 was its most favoured occupant. Still r^<:^-horses and 

 the Hampton Court paddocks lay nearest to his heart. 

 Arabs used to be perpetually arriving there from 

 Eastern donors, and one Bassora sent him a mare and 

 sire of the CEil Nugdy breed, with a certificate that 

 the blood had been preserved stainless lor 300 years. 

 Jack Ratford used to declare, on his honour, that he 

 talked about nothing else in his sleep, and even his 

 physicians said that " it was all — horses — horses — with 

 him, by night and by day, to the very last." If he 



