VI.

HARRIET LADY ASHBURTON.

WHEN the successful Orator, Actor, Journalist, and Pamphleteer, must be content, in the main, with the fame and the work of their own short day, from the inability of any record or biography to reproduce their impression on mankind, how are the social celebrities of any time to live even here beyond the shifting-scene, in which they have played their part? And yet the world (more grateful perhaps for having been pleased than for having been instructed) is not unwilling to invest them with a personal interest and sympathy that the important figures of the part rarely obtain, and to give even to insignificant facts and pointless gossip connected with their place in life the airs and attitudes of 'History.' The fairest claimants to this distinction are, no doubt, women like Mrs. Elizabeth Montague or Miss Berry, whose lives have lapped over generations of mankind, and who accumulate by the mere lapse of time a multitude of small associations with

intellectual and political celebrities around their names. But I am here desirous to continue the recollection of a lady, whose sphere of action was limited, both in extent and in duration; and whose peculiar characteristics rather impeded than promoted her position in an order of society where any strong individuality is both rare and unwelcome.

It is hard to conjecture what would have been the destiny of so complex a character in the ordinary struggle for existence: whether its nobler qualities would have made their way above the wilfulness and self-assertion that isolated and encumbered it? whether the wonderful humour that relieved by its insight, and elevated by its imagination, the natural rudeness of her temperament and despotism of her disposition, might not have degenerated into cynicism and hatred ? Enough that here for once the accidents of birth and wealth resulted in giving liberty of thought and action to an ingenuous spirit, and at the same time placed it under the controul, not of manners alone, but of the sense of high state and large responsibility. She was an instance in which aristocracy gave of its best and showed at its best; although she may have owed little to the qualities she inherited from an irascible race, and to an unaffectionate education.

She often alluded

to the hard repression of her childhood, and its effects. 'I was constantly punished for my impertinence, and you see the result. I think I have made up for it since.'

For many years before the husband of Lady Harriet Baring succeeded to his father's title and estates, Bath House and The Grange had been centres of a most agreeable and diversified society. The first Lord Ashburton combined great knowledge, experience, and discrimination, with a rare benignity of character and simplicity of manner. During his long career in the House of Commons the general moderation and breadth of his opinions had had the usual result of failing to command an Assembly that prefers any resolute error to judicious ambiguity; but, at the same time, these qualities had secured to him the personal esteem of the leading men of both parties. Thus his house was long a neutral ground for political intercourse, the prevalent tone being Tory, but of that aspect of Toryism which was fast lapsing into the Conservative Liberalism of Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen. The vast monetary negotiations in which Lord Ashburton had been engaged in various parts of the world-from the time when, almost as a boy, he transacted the sale of Louisiana to the United

States, to the conclusion of the long Continental War, brought to his table every remarkable foreign personage who visited this country, and with the most distinguished of whom-King Leopold, for instance he had close personal relations. The House of Baring, by marriage and community of interests, was as much American as British, and offered its hospitality to every eminent citizen of the United States. The cordial reception of artists was the natural concomitant of the taste and wealth that illuminated the walls with the rarest and most delightful examples of ancient and modern Art, now, with few exceptions, lost to his family and the world for ever, by one of those lamentable accidents which no individual care, and no mechanical appliance, seem adequate to prevent or to remedy. Nor was the literary element wanting, though it generally found access through some channel of political or personal intimacy. In such company—in which a young woman even of high social or intellectual claims might well have passed unobserved-Lady Harriet at once took a high and independent position, while towards her husband's family and connections she assumed a demeanour of superiority that at the time gave just offence, and which later efforts and regrets never

wholly obliterated. defect of conduct rather to a wilful repugnance towards any associations that seemed fixed upon her by circumstances or obligation, and not of her own free choice-a feeling which manifested itself just as decidedly towards her own relatives—rather than to any pride of birth, or even haughtiness of disposition. I remember her saying, 'The worst of being very ill is that one is left to the care of one's relations, and one has no remedy at law, whatever they may be.' On the other hand, we may well recollect the scathing irony with which she treated excessive genealogical pretensions, especially among her own connections; while she never concealed her sense of the peculiar national importance and commercial dignity of the 'Barings.' 'They are everywhere,' she said, 'they get everything. The only check upon them is that they are all members of the Church of England; otherwise there is no saying what they would do.'

I am inclined to attribute this

It was the natural effect of this independence of any domestic circle, or even of any society of which she was not herself the centre and the chief, which induced Lady Harriet Baring to collect around her a small body of friends, of which her own singular talent was the inspiring spirit. Thus