on to Grosvenor House, but after a considerable
interval, comes Stafford House. This is a more pretentious building than
the other; built by the Duke of York and bought by the Duke of
Sutherland, with a hall and staircase designed by Barry, perfect in
proportion, and so harmonious in colouring that its purple and yellow
_scagliola_ might deceive the very elect into the belief that it is
marble. There, as at Grosvenor House, were wealth and splendour and the
highest rank; a hospitable host and a handsome hostess; but the peculiar
feeling of welcome, which distinguished Grosvenor House, was lacking,
and the aspect of the whole place, on an evening of entertainment, was
rather that of a mob than of a party.

Northumberland House at Charing Cross, the abode of the historic
Percys, had disappeared before I came to London, yielding place to
Northumberland Avenue; but there were plenty of "Houses" left. Near
where the Percys had flourished, the Duke of Buccleuch, a magnifico of
the patriarchal type, kept court at Montagu House, and Londoners have
not yet forgotten that, when the Thames Embankment was proposed, he
suggested that the new thoroughfare should be deflected, so that it
might not interfere with the ducal garden running down to the river. In
the famous Picture-Gallery of Bridgewater House, Lord Beaconsfield
harangued his disconsolate supporters after the disastrous election of
1880, and predicted that Conservative revival which he did not live to
see. Close by at Spencer House, a beautiful specimen of the decorative
work of the Brothers Adam, the Liberal Party used to gather round the
host, who looked like a Van Dyke. Another of their resorts was
Devonshire House, which Horace Walpole pronounced "good and plain as the
Duke of Devonshire who built it." There the 7th Duke, who was a
mathematician and a scholar, but no lover of society, used to hide
behind the door in sheer terror of his guests, while his son, Lord
Hartington, afterwards 8th Duke, gazed with ill-concealed aversion on
his political supporters. Lansdowne House was, as it still is, a Palace
of Art, with all the dignity and amenity of a country house, planted in
the very heart of London. During the last quarter of a century the
creation of Liberal Unionism has made it the headquarters of a political
party; but, at the time of which I write, it was only a place of select
and beautiful entertaining.

Apsley House, the abode of "The Son of Waterloo," could not