r adverse, to his mind or not,
Plays in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won;
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Not thought of tender happiness betray;
Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast."

These lines always recurred to my memory when circumstances brought
me into contact with the second Lord Ripon, whose friendship I
enjoyed from my first entrance into public life.

I know few careers in the political life of modern England more
interesting or more admirable than his, and none more exactly consonant
with Wordsworth's eulogy:

"Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast."

The first Lord Ripon, who was born in 1782 and died in 1859, entered
public life as soon as he had done with Cambridge, filled pretty
nearly every office of honour and profit under the Crown (including,
for four troubled months, the Premiership), and served impartially
under moderate Whigs and crusted Tories, finding, perhaps, no very
material difference between their respective creeds. The experiences
of the hen that hatches the duckling are proverbially pathetic; and
great must have been the perplexity of this indeterminate statesman
when he discovered that his only son was a young man of the most robust
convictions, and that those convictions were frankly democratic. To
men possessed by birth of rank and wealth, one has sometimes heard
the question addressed, in the sheer simplicity of snobbery, "Why
are you a Liberal?" and to such a question Lord Goderich (for so
the second Lord Ripon was called till he succeeded to his father's
title) would probably have replied, "Because I can't help it." He
was an only child, educated at home, and therefore free to form
his own opinions at an age when most boys are subject to the
stereotyping forces of a Public School and a University. Almost
before his arrival at man's estate, he had clearly marked out his
line of political action, and to that line he adhered with undeviating
consistency.

He was supremely fortunate in an early and ideally happy marriage.
Tennyson might well have drawn the heroine of _The Talking Oak_
from Henrietta, Lady Ripon:

"Yet, since I first could cast a shade,
Did never creature pass,
So slightly, musically made,
So lig