table and in her drawing-rooms were to be seen the most eminent men of Great Britain, as well as the most distinguished visitors to London from other parts of the world.

For more than forty years the most princely hospitality was dispensed by Lord and Lady Holland, and the memoirs, correspondence and recollections of the period preserve the record of it with a fulness and completeness that is unparalleled. It seems as if every person who was ever entertained at Holland House felt it his bounden duty to tell about it, and the result is that we have the most charming story of private life that was ever written. Lord Holland was a

perfect host, being possessed of an imperturbable temper, unflagging vivacity and spirit, extensive information, sprightly wit, an inexhaustible fund of anecdote and universal toleration and urbanity. Educated in politics and statesmanship by his uncle, Charles James Fox, he achieved distinction in the House of Lords, but was not an orator, though a most excellent debater. For many years he was the bulwark of the Whig party in the House of Lords, that party being for a long time in a hopeless minority. He died in 1840, and the following lines in his handwriting were found on his dressing-table after his death:

Nephew of Fox and friend of Gray,
Enough my meed of fame

If those who deigned to observe me say
I injured neither name.

Lady Holland was of a far different character in many respects, imperious in her manners and eccentric in her actions. But Moore says of her in his journal: “She is a warm and active friend, and I should think her capable of high-mindedness on occasions." Indeed, nobody could be more kind-hearted or sympathetic to friends in trouble or those who were suffering from affliction and wrong. In another place Moore relates that he gave her Byron's " Memoirs" to read in the manuscript, and said that he feared that Byron had mentioned her in an unfair manner somewhere, to which she replied: "Such things give me no uneasiness; I know perfectly my station in the world, and I know all that can be said of me. As long as the few friends that I really am sure of speak kindly of me, all that the rest of the world can say is a matter of complete indifference to me."

Lady Holland was indeed a most remarkable woman, and the anecdotes told of her are innumerable. Imperious as her temper was, she possessed in the most eminent degree the faculty

of drawing out her guests and making them display themselves to the best advantage. She was often abrupt and offensive in her tone to the habitues of her house, and sometimes even to those who were less familiar with her manner. George Ticknor when abroad was frequently at Holland House, and on one occasion he proved more than a match for my lady. Speaking of New England to him, she said that she had understood that the colony had in the beginning been a convict settlement. He replied that he was not aware of the fact, but that in the King's Chapel, Boston, there was a monument to one of the Vassalls, some of whom had been among the early settlers of Massachusetts. This answer discomfited her not a little, but she afterward asked him to send her a drawing of the monument, which he did upon his return home. aulay relates how one morning Lady Holland came to breakfast at Rogers' "in so bad a humor that we were all forced to rally and make common cause against her. There was not a person at table to whom she was not rude, and none of us were inclined to submit. Rogers sneered; Sydney made merciless sport of her; Tom Moore looked excessively impertinent; Bobus put her down with simple, straightforward rudeness, and I

Mac

treated her with what I meant to be the coldest civility."

This heroic discipline seems to have done the lady some good, for she was most effusive in her kindness to Macaulay afterward, though she never lost her abruptness nor her disposition to keep a tight rein on her guests. To Lord Portchester she said: "I am sorry to hear you are going to publish a poem. Can't you suppress it." Most admirable advice, to be sure, but not consoling to one posing as a poetic genius. In fact, Tom Moore once said that " poets inclined to a plethora of vanity would find a dose of Lady Holland now and then very good for their complaint." Moore himself took the dose not infrequently. She asked him how he could write those vulgar verses about Leigh Hunt, and she criticised "Lalla Rookh" for the reasons it was Eastern and published in quarto. Even to Rogers, one of the greatest of Holland House favorites, she said: "Your poetry is bad enough; so pray be sparing of your prose.'

Macaulay, as every one knows, was inclined too often to monopolize the conversation, particularly in the period when he first entered London society. Lady Holland did not permit this at her table and very often checked him in the torrent of his speech. On one occasion she sent her page to

him and asked him to stop talking, as she wanted to listen to Lord Aberdeen. Greville, in his memoirs, relates a most amusing incident of this kind. One evening at Holland House various topics came along, and Macaulay knew more about them than any one else present. Lady Holland did not know that Sir Thomas More had once been Speaker of the House of Commons, so Macaulay told her all about the celebrated interview between Cardinal Wolsey and More, when the latter held the Speaker's chair. The subject being changed, she wanted to know why Sir Thomas Munro, the Governor-General of India, was so distinguished, and Macaulay related all that he had ever said, done, written or thought, till Lady Holland got bored with Sir Thomas and told Macaulay she had enough of him and would have no more. Then the company got upon the fathers of the Church, and Macaulay repeated a sermon of Chrysostom's in praise of the bishop of Antioch, till Lady Holland put an extinguisher upon the subject by asking in a tone of derision: " "Pray, Macaulay, what was the origin of the doll? When were dolls first mentioned in history?" But Macaulay was quite equal to the occasion and told how the Roman children had their dolls, which they offered up to Venus as they grew older.