who was present, understood the people, d-n them, but I Lord Hartington's temerity. The Queen and he, he writes in his 'Impressions,' "got on very well together. Though Lord Hartington, like Peel and the Duke of Wellington, had neither small talk nor manners)" -Lord Ribbesdale himself had them both by the gift of nature, "yet he seemed to me less shy with the Queen than with his neighbours. This may be accounted for, perhaps, by their both being absolutely natural, and their both being in no sort of doubt about their positions." That quality, in truth, was common to the Whigs: they had no sort of doubt about their positions. Their leaders in the House of Lords were The always sensitive about the privileges of their order. members of the great families might espouse the cause of the people when the politics of the moment demanded it, and always with a kind of patronage or even a hint of protest. But their order was impregnable. Lord Ribblesdale has an anecdote which well illustrates this attitude of the Whigs. "Mr Gladstone," he says, "used to tell and enjoy a story of an Admiral Wemyss, who stood for Fife at the time when better education for the people at large became a political question. Admiral Wemyss was told that he might strike something sympathetic in that line on the hustings. He agreed and promised to do so. This is what he said: 'I'm all for wouldn't educate them, blast them.' The Admiral, said Mr Gladstone, carried all before him, and headed the poll with flying colours." Indeed, this is the paradox of the Whigs. Though they were ready at a moment's notice to introduce and to push through destructive measures, in small matters they were resolutely opposed to change. It fell to the Whigs, to Lord John Russell above all, to break up in 1832 what Mr Gladstone once called a perfect constitution." Mr Gladstone himself, moreover, was never opposed for long to violent acts of iconoclasm. But when an ancient custom was threatened, he was up in arms at once. It was Lord Ribblesdale's good fortune to be Master of the Buckhounds in 1892. Seldom have a man and an office fitted one another so closely. The spectacle of the gorgeous uniforms, the noble horses, which none could ride better than he, the fine craft of the hounds, were very near to Lord Ribblesdale's heart. And he knew when he took the dignified office that it was already doomed. 'The Buckhounds," writes their Master, 66 were actually under sentence of dissolution, if not of death. The Party newspapers disapproved of them, so did Sir William Harcourt and most of our most trusty leaders." Lord Rosebery, writing to congratulate him on his appointment, addressed him as moriturus. Mr Gladstone alone of the leaders protested against any change. over, he was distracted or "Your foes are alive again," wrote Gladstone to Lord Ribblesdale, when a series of awkward questions had been asked about the Buckhounds; and the old gentleman could not help asking in a postscript: "How is Guy Fawkes ? " Now Guy Fawkes was but a celebrated deer of the time, whose name or aspect had caught and held Mr Gladstone's fancy. The last of the Whigs might have been also the last of the dandies had he lived in an age and atmosphere still congenial to dandyism. Lord Ribblesdale had in him the making of a Brummel. Lady Wilson says quite truthfully of him that he had "a strong feeling for form in all thingsin literature, in art, in dress, and manners." None of his contemporaries rivalled him in the art of decorative adornment. If he did not equal, at least he came near to, Brummel in the management of his cravat. But he lacked the concentration which should belong to the dandy of the first class. His discursiveness was too wide, his accomplishments too many, to permit a genuine rivalry with Brummel. More solaced by the thing called a heart, of which the hard men of the Regency would have been ashamed. He possessed a quick intelligence, which per mitted him to taste, as a connoisseur, the fineness of literature. His interest in the other arts was at once wise and sincere, so that it was inevitable his dandyism should be rather the hobby of a varied life than what it was to Brummel, his whole existence. It was the perfect concentration of Brummel that gave him his superiority. In the common pursuits of life he did not compete with his fellows. He knew himself supreme when he looked at his varnished boots, at his exquisite cravat, at his well-balanced head, which for him was not "a receptacle of intelligence, but a block to sustain the perfect hat." For his own happiness, Lord Ribblesdale had the best of it. If he never touched the height of Brummel's genius, he achieved a success in many fields, and lived out a varied and dignified life, which could never have been his, had he aimed at the solitary grandeur of the com plete dandy. INDEX TO VOL. CCXXII. CLOGHMOR, THE ROLLERS OF, 239. 431. Conservative Party strengthens its hold political philosophy or murder? 279. CRAWFORD, L. I.: THE SLIPPERS OF "DAUMONT, À LA," 840. DAVSON, CYRIL W.: THE ELUSIVE DE JOHNSTONE, THE CHEVALIER, 57. E. P. Y. GENERAL DYER-SOME RE- EAGLES, DELKATLA'S, 204. English language in danger, 281 et seq. ET DONA FERENTES, 260. Evolution, the banning of, in America, EZRA AND THE KING, 684. FESTIVAL TIME IN THE MALAYAN RUB- FIGHTING, KINGS WERE, 86. FLEET, KITE BALLOONS WITH THE, 43. 21 RUFUS: THE ROLLERS OF CLOGHMOR, THE ARROW THAT FLIETH, 313. 'Toryism and the Twentieth Century,' et seq. TRAIL, THE ELUSIVE, 9, 172, 403. TRENCH, C. G. CHENEVIX: "QUIA IN- Two RUBBERNECKS IN SAN FRANCISCO, UNCLE WILLIAM, 600. UNDER THE HAMMER AND SICKLE, 289. VIRGIN, THE SLIPPERS OF THE, 218. W. J. G. F.: Benighted on the MOOR War, what we sacrificed in the, 710- GEORGE, AND OTHER ADVENTURES II. CURACOA, 846. WHIBLEY, LEONARD: WILLIAM MASON, State trials, 571-the ill fate of Mary WIldridge, OswaLD: A TRANSFER of STRAITS AND ARCHES, THE, 105. TALES OF A PILOT SERVICE: I. At the PASSENGERS, 366. WILES, BUSRAWI OF MANY, 766. Wines of France, the, 426-the art and WINES, Burgundy and ITS, 668. WOOLLEY, C. LEONARD: BUSRAWI OF Printed in Great Britain by WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS LTD. |