The death of Apperley was preceded by the rise of another famous sporting writer, Robert Smith Surtees (1803-64), the second son of Anthony Surtees, of Hamsterley Hall, Durham. Robert was educated at Durham Grammar School, and afterwards articled to a solicitor. A partnership was bought for him in London, but this proved unsatisfactory, and the young man, turning his back upon the law, started upon his literary career as contributor to the old _Sporting Magazine_. In 1831, in connection with Rudolf Ackermann, the son and successor of Rowlandson's employer, he started the _New Sporting Magazine_, which he edited down to 1836, and in the pages of this periodical the celebrated Mr. Jorrocks, humorist, sportsman, and grocer, made his first bow to the public. These papers were collected under the title of _Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities_ in 1838, with illustrations by "Phiz"; but a later edition, that of 1843, contains fifteen coloured plates by Alken. In the same year Surtees succeeded to the family estate, but in spite of this change in his circumstances he did not lay aside his pen. Lockhart had once remarked to Apperley _à propos_ the creator of Jorrocks, "That fellow could write a good novel if he liked to try"; and the compliment, being promptly repeated to Surtees, resulted in the composition of _Handley Cross_ (1843), in which Mr. Jorrocks makes his appearance as a country squire and master of hounds. A later edition of the book was illustrated by a new sporting artist, John Leech. _Handley Cross_ was followed by _Hawbuck Grange_, _Ask Mamma_, and the ever-popular _Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour_, which contained numerous coloured plates and woodcuts by Leech. "The Yorkshireman," as Surtees was nicknamed, presumably because he was born in Durham, also contributed papers to _Bell's Life_, some of which, commemorative of the fine open winter of 1845-46, were afterwards published as _The Analysis of the Hunting Field_, with illustrations by Alken, who now disappears from our view, though he left two or three sons in the same "line of business," with whom he has sometimes been confused, while the popular name of Alken became a general patronymic for a whole school of sporting artists. Surtees, who died at Brighton in 1864, was a fine horseman and a keen observer of social types, though, so far from being the rollicking sportsman suggested by his books, he is described as a man of rather reserved and taciturn nature. The remarkable character of Mr. Jorrocks was evolved during long, lonely journeys, when the shrewd ex-grocer, or rather his imaginary conception, stood his creator in the stead of a travelling companion.