s century were constantly reinforced
by accessions of fresh intellect. The circle was, indeed, an
aristocratic Family Party, but it paid a genuine homage to ability
and culture. Genius held the key, and there was a _carriere ouverte
aux talents_.

Into this privileged society Frederick Leveson-Gower was born on
the 3rd of May, 1819, and within its precincts he "kept the noiseless
tenour of his way" for nearly ninety years. Recalling in 1905 the
experiences of his boyhood, and among them a sharp illness at Eton,
he was able to add, "Never during my long life have I again been
seriously ill." To that extraordinary immunity from physical suffering
was probably due the imperturbable serenity which all men recognized
as his most characteristic trait, and which remained unruffled to
the end.

It is recorded of the fastidious Lady Montfort in _Endymion_ that,
visiting Paris in 1841, she could only with difficulty be induced
to call on the British Ambassador and Ambassadress. "I dined," she
said, "with those people once; but I confess that, when I thought
of those dear Granvilles, their _entrees_ stuck in my throat."
The "dear Granvilles" in question were the parents of the second
Lord Granville, whom we all remember as the most urbane of Foreign
Secretaries, and of Frederick Leveson-Gower. The first Lord Granville
was a younger son of the first Marquess of Stafford and brother of
the second Marquess, who was made Duke of Sutherland. He was born
in 1773, entered Parliament at twenty-two, and "found himself a
diplomatist as well as a politician before he was thirty years of
age." In 1804 he was appointed Ambassador to St. Petersburg, where
he remained till 1807. In 1813 he was created Viscount Granville,
and in 1824 became Ambassador to the Court of France. "To the
indignation of the Legitimist party in France, he made a special
journey from Paris to London in order to vote for the Reform Bill
of 1832, and, to their astonishment, returned alive to glory in
having done so." For this and similar acts of virtue he was raised
to an earldom in 1833; he retired from diplomacy in 1841, and died
in 1846.

Before he became an Ambassador, this Lord Granville had rented
a place called Wherstead, in Suffolk. It was there that Freddy
Leveson passed the first years of his life, but from 1824 onwards
the British Embassy at Paris was his home. Both those places had
made permanent dints in his memory. At Wherstead he remembered
the Duke of