mons as Mr. Ward. He gave great promise of ability in early life, possessed powerful talents, varied accomplishments, generous sentiments, and active sympathies with the wronged and the unfortunate. He visited Naples, and He was no less loved by those who resided there for several weeks in 1823. knew him, than marveled at by all who came in contact with him, for his singularity of character, absence of mind, and abstraction in society. In the spring of 1827, in Mr. Canning's newly-formed administration, Viscount Dudley filled the office of Minister for Foreign Affairs. On Mr. Canning's death, in August, 1827, in Lord Goderich's administration, he held the same office as he did in the Canning ministry. In January, 1828, at the onset in the formation of the Wellington administration, Lord Dudley was continued in his post; but on the resignation of Mr. Huskisson, he retired from the ministry along with Lord Palmerston and Mr. C. Grant. Sir W. Gell wrote to Lady Blessington in July, 1834, that he had received a letter of introduction from some friend in England, which was duly presented to him by the recommended party. The letter of introduction ran thus: "DEAR GELL, I send you my friend, Mr. and the most disputatious brute you ever knew. you know of the same character to meet him." ; you will find him the greatest bore, Pray ask him to dinner, and get any one This production is so exceedingly like some of the epistles and sundry of the audibly-thinking escapades of the late Lord Dudley and Ward in conversation, that I am induced to cite the following anecdote from Moore's Memoirs : “Dec. 9. Lord Dudley, it is well-known, has a trick of rehearsing over to himself, in an under tone, the good things he is about to débiter to the company, so that the person who sits next to him has generally the advantage of his wit before any of the rest of the party. The other day, having a number of the foreign ministers and their wives to dine with him, he was debating with himself whether he ought not to follow the Continental fashion of leaving the room with the ladies after dinner. Having settled the matter, he muttered forth, in his usual soliloquizing tone, 'I think we must go out all together.' 'Good God! you don't say so!' exclaimed Lady, who was sitting next him, and who is well known to be the most anxious and sensitive of the Lady Whigs with respect to the continuance of the present ministry in power. Going out all together' might well alarm her. A man not very remarkable for agreeableness once proposed to walk from the House of Commons to the Travelers' Club with Lord Dudley, who, discussing the proposal mentally (as he thought) with himself, said audibly, 'I don't think it will bore me very much to let him walk with me that distance.' On another occasion, when he gave somebody a seat in his carriage from some country-house, he was overheard by his companion, after a fit of thought and silence, saying to himself, 'Now, shall I ask this man to dine with me when we arrive in town?' It is said that the fellow-traveler, not pretending to hear him, muttered out in the same sort of tone, Now, if Lord Dudley should ask me to dinner, shall I accept his invitation?'" Lord Dudley's eccentricities were of the most singular kind, and were productive of strange and ridiculous occurrences. While holding the office of Minister for Foreign Affairs, an amusing instance occurred of his absence of mind, even in his official capacity. Some misunderstanding had taken place between the Russian and the French governments. The object of the English ministry being to mediate between these powers, Lord Dudley had to forward private dispatches to both governments of great importance, which rendered it necessary to keep each government ignorant of the communication made to the other power. Lord Dudley, in one of his customary fits of absence of mind, inclosed the letter for the Russian minister in the envelope addressed to the French, and vice versa. When the mistake was discovered, Lord Dudley was greatly agitated. But his anxiety was speedily terminated by a communication from the English embassador at Paris stating that his excellency the French minister had returned the letter for the Russian minister, which had been sent to him, saying, "Je suis trop fin, pour être pris par tel artifice de Milord Dudley." His lordship's eccentricities increased very much from the period of his retirement from the ministry in 1827; nevertheless, one of his ablest speeches was made in 1831, against Lord Grey's government, in resistance of what he deemed the republican tendency of the Reform Bill. His mental infirmities, after that period, rapidly augmented. His friends had the pain of seeing this able and accomplished man snatched from his exalted position and from society in the prime of life, bereft of reason, and eventually reduced to imbecility by a succession of paralytic attacks. Death happily terminated this most awful of all human sufferings and humiliations in March, 1833, when he died, in his fifty-second year. LORD AUCKLAND. This amiable nobleman, who filled the high post of Governor General of India, under the Melbourne administration, for many years, was a warm and faithful friend of Lady Blessington, and her sister, Lady Canterbury. After his return from India, he resided at Eden Lodge, Kensington Gore, the grounds of which were only separated from those of Lady Blessington by a hedge, across which his lordship and Lady B often conversed. Lady Blessington has left a record of one of those conversations in her Diary of December 24th, 1845: "Lord A- —, speaking of the efforts to form a new ministry, said he was not sorry they had not succeeded; they should have been too weak for any useful purpose. They might have endeavored to carry one great measure, and should probably have failed in their attempt to carry even that. Peel might have intended to support them, but his followers would not have been followers of him when out of power, though they might be so when he was prime minister. Peel has a better chance, therefore, of carrying a measure on the Corn Laws than they had, and he only hoped that Peel's measure would not fall very far short of what they should have proposed. "Of the manner in which Lord John's attempt to form a government failed, he would say nothing. It was not good for public opinion and public discussion, and it was not agreeable to personal feeling, and he wished that the impressions which it had left might pass away." The favorite pursuit of Lord Auckland was the culture of flowers, and the great perfection to which he brought them was a source of no small pride and satisfaction to his lordship. Lord Auckland was born in 1784, and died in 1849, at the seat of Lord Cowper. In 1830 he filled the office of President of the Board of Trade; in 1835 he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of India, was recalled in 1841, and made First Lord of the Admiralty in 1846. One who knew him well has left this attestation of his worth: "A more kind, a more true, and a more just man never lived than Lord Auckland." LORD HOLLAND. The present lord, when Mr. Henry Fox, was intimately acquainted with Lady Blessington in Italy in 1824: frequent mention is made of him in her diaries. In August of that year she speaks of him as having been an inmate of their abode-a most agreeable, entertaining, and lively companion, humorous and piquant in conversation, turning peculiarities of persons at all bordering on the class of ridicules to an amusing account, and rivaling D'Orsay even in his own particular province of drawing out people who can be made ridiculous, and laughed at, without being conscious of the use made of their society.* In one of Lady Blessington's works, Henry Fox is spoken of as "such a forced plant as might be expected from the hot-bed culture of Holland House, where wit and talent are deemed of such importance that more solid qualities are sometimes, if not sacrificed to their growth, at least overlooked in the search for them. Accustomed from infancy to see all around him contributing to the amusement of the circle they compose by a brilliant persiflage, a witty version of the on dits of the day, epigrammatical sallies, which, though pungent, never violate les bienséances de société, and remarks on the literature of the day full of point and tact, it can not be wondered at that he has become * How far hosts and hostesses can reconcile the bantering privileges they accord to friends who are reputed droll and witty, the sanction given by them to the practice of making any particular guest ridiculous, and drawing out any peculiarities of his that may render him absurd in the face of a company, while pretending to pay attention to him, and to bring the merits of his conversation or opinions into notice-can reconcile, I say, this practice with the obligations and the duties of hospitality, is a question that may be answere in a few words. The conferring of such a privilege-the giving of such a sanction-is a vulgar and a gross violation of the rights of hospitality, and an unpardonable breach of faith with people who, having been invited to partake of it, are entitled to its protection. what he is a most agreeable companion. As, however, he possesses no inconsiderable portion of the sweet temper and gayety of spirits of his father, he may yet attain the more worthy distinction of becoming an estimable It is very probable that the preceding remarks were made at a later period than some others of Lady Blessington in reference to the same distinguished person. The intimate acquaintance and friendship that had subsisted between the Blessingtons and Mr. Fox in Naples had been interrupted. An estrangement had taken place, which existed for some years, and was followed by some explanations that were creditable to the feelings of both parties. About the same period that Lady Blessington refers to in her notice of Mr. Fox, Moore, also having met him in Italy, makes the following mention of him in his Journal: "I have also seen Henry Fox, Lord Holland's son, whom I had not looked upon since I left him, a pretty, mild boy, without a neckcloth, in a jacket, and in delicate health, seven long years agone." . . . . "I think he has the softest and most amiable expression of countenance I ever saw, and manners correspondent."+ Lord Holland was born in 1802. He married, in 1830, Lady Mary Augusta Coventry, only daughter of the Earl of Coventry. He entered the diplomatic service in 1831, was some time attaché at St. Petersburg, was minister plenipotentiary at Florence from May, 1838, to June, 1846, and succeeded to the title, as fourth baron, October 28th, 1840, on the death of his father in his sixty-seventh year.‡ Lord Holland lived much abroad for some years previously to his father's death, principally at Florence. His lordship's abilities, and agreeableness of manners and conversation, seem destined to conciliate the opinions and re * The Idler in Italy, Par. ed., p. 354. † Moore's e of Byron, p. 576. Lord Holland was born in 1773; his father was the elder brother of Charles James Fox. In March, 1793, he set out on a Continental tour, visited Spain, passed into Italy, and resided for some time in Florence with Lord Wycombe. While in Italy he formed an intimacy with the wife of Sir Godfrey Webster, of Battle Abbey, county Sussex, in consequence of which the latter brought an action against him, and obtained damages to the amount of £6000. She was the daughter and heir of Sir Richard Vassall, Esq., of Jamaica, and was first married, June 27th, 1786, to Sir Godfrey Webster, county Sussex, Bart. By that marriage she had issue two sons, the late Sir Godfrey V. Webster, Bart., formerly M. P. for Sussex, who died in 1836, and Colonel Henry Webster; and one daughter, Harriet, married in 1816 to Captain the Honorable Sir Fleetwood Pellew, R.N. and C.B. Lady Webster's marriage was dissolved by act of Parliament in June, 1797, and her ladyship was remarried the following month to the late Henry Richard, third Lord Holland, who died October 22d, 1840, and had four children by that marriage, of whom two died at an early age. Her ladyship had issue before her second marriage, Charles Richard Fox, colonel in the army and aid-de-camp to the queen, who married, in 1824, Lady Mary Fitzclarence, daughter of King William IV. and Mrs. Jordan. The dowager Lady Holland died on the 16th of November, 1846, in her seventy-sixth year. 1 Gentleman's Magazine for 1846, p. 91. gards of his father's former friends and associates. But to render Holland House as heretofore, a place of intellectual and social agremens of the most varied kind to keep up its ancient celebrity as a rendezvous of the most distinguished personages of the day, the resort of “the high-thoughted spirits of the time," of all renommées in letters or in arts, of exalted positions in political life, is a consummation hardly to be expected. The accomplishments and qualities of heart and mind which were united in the late Lord Holland are not so transmissible as titles and estates, and without them Holland House never could have been what it was, or be again what it had been. They are characterized well and truly, in a few words, by an able writer in "The Examiner," which appeared at the time of the death of the late lord. The charm of his conversation had a power of fascination in it; his mind was full of anecdotes, which were always happily introduced and exquisitely narrated. "Lord Holland was a benignant and accomplished man; the last and best of the Whigs of the old school. He was something more and better than a Whig of any school. He was ever true to the cause of civil and religious liberty—a friend of merit wherever it could be found— a lover of literature, of an understanding thoroughly masculine, yet his taste was of a delicacy approaching to a fault. His opinions were maintained earnestly and energetically, but with a rare and beautiful candor-a wit without a particle of ill nature, he was of a joyous and a genial nature. He possessed the sunshine of the breast, and no one could approach him without feeling it." LORD ROSSLYN. Sir James St. Clair Erskine, Bart., created Earl of Rosslyn in 1801, succeeded to the title and estates of his uncle, Lord Loughborough, in 1802, as second earl. His lordship was a general officer, colonel of the 9th regiment of Dragoons. He married, in 1790, the eldest daughter of the Honorable Edward Bouverie. He was a Councilor of State to the king in Scotland, and Lord Lieutenant of Fifeshire, and died in January, 1836, in his seventy-fifth year. Lord Rosslyn, on entering into politics, linked himself with the Tory party, and for some time, on all great questions and important occasions, he acted as whipper-in to his party. In 1829, we see by his letters what an active part he took in that capacity on the Catholic Question. His amiable qualities in private life endeared him to all who knew him, and caused him to be one of the most esteemed friends of Lady Blessington. MARQUIS OF NORMANBY. Constantine Henry Phipps, son of Henry, first Earl of Mulgrave, was born in 1797. He was educated at Harrow, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He married a daughter of Lord Ravensworth in 1818, and entered Parliament for the borough of Scarborough. His first speech in Parliament was on the Catholic Question, in which he strongly and ably advocated that object. His |