us to come in the true patriarchal way, and to bring you no less than three children, Hester, Harriet, and Pitt, who are almost in a fever of expectation till the happy day comes." Half-way between Hayes and Stow, the patriarchal exodus was recognised by, and attracted the observation of, Edmund Burke. "Lord Chatham," he writes, on the 30th, "passed by my door on Friday morning in a jimwhiskee drawn by two horses, one before the other. He drove himself. His train was two coaches and six, with twenty servants, male and female. He was proceeding with his whole family, Lady Chatham, two sons, and two daughters, to Stow. He lay at Beaconsfield; was well and cheerful, and walked up and down stairs at the inn without help."

For a graphic sketch of Lord Temple in his later years, we are indebted to the pen of Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, who, in 1776, was his fellow guest at Gosfield Hall, in Essex, the seat of Robert, Earl Nugent, father of Lady Mary Grenville, afterward Marchioness of Marchioness of Buckingham. "When I visited Gosfield," he writes, "among the guests who attracted most attention, might justly be reckoned the late Lord Temple, then far advanced in life, and very infirm. In his person, he was tall and large, though not inclined to corpulency. A disorder, the seat of which lay in his ribs, bending him almost double, compelled him, in walking, to make use of a sort of crutch;

but his mind seemed exempt from any decay. His conversation was animated, brilliant, and full of entertainment. Notwithstanding the nickname of Squire Gawky,' which he had obtained in the satirical or party productions of those times, he had nevertheless the air and appearance of a man of high condition when he appeared with the insignia and decorations of the Garter, seated at table." There formerly existed, and probably still exists, at Stow, an outline sketch of Lord Temple by Lady Mary Grenville, confirmatory, it is said, of the accuracy of Sir Nathaniel's picture.

It was the fortune of Lord Temple to survive nearly every one of such of his more famous Eton schoolfellows or friends as have bequeathed a reputation to posterity. Fielding had preceded him to the grave in 1754; Sir Charles Hanbury Williams in 1759; his brother, George Grenville, in 1770; Lord Lyttelton in 1773; and Lord Chatham in 1778. Moreover, to his infinite and lasting sorrow, he had in the interim followed to the tomb a companion far more tenderly loved by him,

the wife of his bosom, the "little woman of the playful correspondence of his early manhood. Lady Temple died on the 7th of April, 1777. Lastly, to the detriment of the comfort of his declining years, the only child which she had ever borne him, a daughter, Elizabeth, had been snatched from him by death, before the completion of her fourth year.

Lord Temple, as he advanced in years, seems to have taken less and less interest in the political occurrences of his time. His chief occupations are said to have been the improvement and adornment of Stow; his chief consolation being the society of his nephews and nieces, of whom his favourite appears to have been the heir to his title and estates, the eldest son of his late brother George, afterward first Marquis of Buckingham.

Lord Temple's end was a violent one, having been occasioned by his being thrown from a ponycarriage in the Park Ridings at Stow, from which spot he was carried away with a hopelessly fractured skull. After having lingered for a few days in a state of unconsciousness, he expired on the 11th of September, 1779, having nearly completed his sixty-eighth year.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE GRENVILLE.

Of the many brilliant and ambitious youths with whom the subject of this memoir was a contemporary at Eton, there was probably not one to whose imagination it ever occurred that the apparently apathetic schoolfellow, who cared so little to join their sports and to share their mirth, would eventually mount over the heads of one and all by raising himself to be Prime Minister of England. Yet such was the high distinction which lay in reserve for George Grenville!

George Grenville, second son of Hester, Countess Temple, and younger brother of Richard, Earl Temple, was born on the 14th of October, 1712. From Eton he removed to Christ Church, Oxford, and from Christ Church to one of the Inns of Law, whence, in due time, he was called to the bar. By the desire, however, of his maternal uncle, Lord Cobham, he subsequently abandoned law for politics; was returned to Parliament, by his uncle's interest, for the town of Buckingham, and continued to represent that borough in the

The success

House of Commons till his death. which befell him in his new avocation justified Lord Cobham's interference in his nephew's affairs. In the month of January, 1742, an effective speech which he made in the House of Commons assisted to acquire him a parliamentary reputation. On the 25th of December, 1744, he was appointed a lord of the admiralty, and, on the 23d of June, 1747, a lord of the treasury. His next appointment, which took place on the 6th of April, 1754, was as treasurer of the navy, a situation which, with the exception of one or two short intervals, he was still continuing to hold when, in the month of October, 1761, the memorable schism in the Cabinet, on the question of the expediency of declaring war against Spain, led to the retirement of his kinsmen, Mr. Pitt and Lord Temple, into private life. Mr. Grenville, however, to whom peace was synonymous with economy, and to whom economy was the first of political virtues, not only saw no reason for imitating the family example, but, to the mortification of his haughty brother and brother-in-law, chose to attach himself to the rising fortunes of the peacemaker, Bute, in reward for which, on the 28th of May, 1762, concurrently with Bute's elevation to the premiership, he was appointed secretary of state, and, on the 6th of October following, first lord of the admiralty.

In the meantime, Mr. Grenville, in 1749, had married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Wynd