56 THE BLUE RIBBON OF THE TURF. 



either on Doncaster town moor or on Epsom Downs 

 (lid much for the turf, and expended both iheir money 

 and their brain-power in aiding the national pastime. 

 Among the early winners of the Derb}', the name 

 of Denis O'Kell}^ must not pass without remem- 

 brance in these pages ; his famous race-horse is 

 known in the history of the turf The well-known 

 prophecy, 'Eclipse first; the rest nowhere,' still lives 

 in the annals of racing. Colonel O'Kelly was in his 

 time renowned as a breeder of horse }, and was so for- 

 tunate as to win the Derby on two occasions, with 

 descendants of his great horse — in 1781 with Young 

 Eclipse, in 1784 with Serjeant. O'Kelly was a most 

 fortunate man; one of his untried two-3car-olds 

 brought him the then (1775) unheard-of price of 1,000 

 guineas. A word or tw^o in memory of ' Old Q ' (the 

 Duke of Queensberry) may fitly be inserted here. He 

 was a man of the turf more than 137 years since. At 

 the July Newmarket Meeting of 1748, when he was in 

 his twenty-third year, he rode two of his own horses, 

 and scored a victory on each of them. As Earl of 

 March he was esteemed to be the best gentleman 

 horse-rider of his time ; he never tired of match- 

 making, and rode in some of them almost as well as 

 Dick Goodison, his own jockey, who was famous at 

 Newmarket, and also on other race-courses. The 

 Duke of Queensberry was a social sinner of the deepest 

 dye, and has often been depicted in his character of 

 the ' wicked nobleman,' whose name was ' a terror to 

 all women.' It would not be a difficult task to fill 

 a volume of many pages with an account of his terrible 

 doinirs as a sj ambler and 'man of the world.' On the 



