LORD RONALD GOWER'S REMINISCENCES.*

Vtirt have derived much more pleasure than we at first expected to receive from the " reminiscences " of a comparatively young man, naturally restrained from much personal remark by the fact that the majority of the persons whom he has met still live.

Lord Ronald's advantages, however, have been unusually great, from his being a member of one of the highest and most respected of our aristocratic families, closely connected with so many others of the same rank, and with the entrée of all those houses where the most distinguished persons in all the walks of life were often to be seen. He is, at the same time, endowed with considerable literary and still more artistic taste, and has moved about the world with that greater freedom which is often more fully enjoyed by.younger sons than by their fathers or eldest brothers, and his msthetic tendencies have often led him into scenes of a more Bohemian character than those of his natural surroundings. He seems to have kept a sort of diary from a very early age, and to have noted in it with great honesty and simplicity his impressions of all that he saw.

There are in these volumes pleasant descriptions of many of the great houses of this country, with their magnificent art collections, beginning with Stafford House, Cliveden, Trentham, and that most unique and charming of baronial residences, Dunrobin Castle; and later, there is much good reading in an account of a very enjoyable tour through England in his own trap, in the year 1872, in the course of which he visited Hatfield, full of Eliza- bethan recollections, Woburn Abbey, Castle Ashby (Lord Northampton's), Great Brington, where lie the ancestors of George Washington; Holdenby House, so closely connected with the times of Charles I., Warwick and Stratford; Charlecote, the supposed scene of Shakespeare's deer-stealing ; Hardwicke, &c., and so on to York. The historical facts connected with all these places are shortly and agreeably alluded to, though their pictures and statues, of conrse, attracted the author's special attention. We should, however, have liked a little more Art criticism than we find here, as well as in other parts of these volumes. The remarks on the architecture of some of the houses are more satisfactory, and sometimes deservedly severe.

Lord Ronald went to the Continent with Dr. W. H. Rnssell during the Franco-German war, of which-he contrived, through a good deal of roughing, to see some portion ; and in 1878 he went to Australia by the Pacific route, crossing the American continent, and returning by Hong Kong. This was a trip the motive of which was most creditable to his heart and to his -energy. An intimate friend had been subjected to some un- deserved calumny, and taking it much to heart, had disappeared from his native land, being supposed to have gone to Australia; and Lord Ronald, full of generous devotion to his friend, made this journey for the purpose of urging his return, a journey in which he saw much that is worth seeing, but in the main object of which he unhappily failed :—

" I was ready to sacrifice a great deal for Mm, and I sacrificed much, but I do not regret the feeling that prompted my voyage to Australia, although few, I imagine, ever understood it, and therefore there is little danger of many acting as I did. ' Friendship,' as Lord Beaconsfield has written, is the gift of the Cods.' .I knew my friend was unjustly and cruelly treated, and I would not turn from him in the hour of trouble ; on the contrary; I then only knew how deep was my friendship for him."

This book is naturally full of glimpses of the author's own numerous relatives, and of many of his ancestors. His remarks on some of the latter are not altogether com- plimentary, but in regard to persons who have lived in the memory of the present generation, there is not one word unduly catering to the passion for vulgar gossip, or calculated to wound the feelings of any one. His admiration for his mother, the late Duchess, amounts almost to idolatry ; and certainly, if idolatry of a fellow-mortal is excusable in any case, it is so in the son of such a parent. The following words about his maternal uncle, the seventh Lord Carlisle (better known as Lord-Morpeth), are true, and to the point ;—

" My uncle Carlisle was born and bred a Whig. He filled many appointments in the Liberal administrations of the day, those in connection with Ireland with a success and popularity that are not yet forgotten. But he was something more than a mere politician ; he possessed wide and deep sympathies, and, though not a genius, had high talents. The poetic fire which only smouldered in his grandfather's breast burned vigorously in his. He had a power be- yond any one I have known of attracting and attaching people. 'There was about him a bonhomie, a sympathy, and a kindliness that • Mg Reminiscences. By Lord Ronald Gower, F.S.A., a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery. London : Regan Paul, Trence, and Co. 1E83. were quite irresistible, that made you forget his homely face, and that won your heart."

Among the descriptions of great entertainments and pageants which Lord Ronald has seen, and which are told with a pleasant enjoyment, mainly aesthetic, of all that is stately, and without the smallest taint of self-exaltation, we have not space to linger.

Perhaps that on which he dwells with most enthusiasm is the reception of Garibaldi at Stafford House, in 1864, when all London went mad about the Italian patriot, and the eager mob packed every avenue to Stafford House, so as to render Gari- baldi's entrance to it almost impossible :—

"Garibaldi at last found repose within the great ball of Stafford Rouse; but from without, long after the hero of the people was out

of their sight, the shouting of the crowds could be heard Needless to say what be looked like then, as ill-health and rheum- atism had bowed the strong frame and thinned the lion-like head. He was very lame, from the Aspromonte wound. He wore a sort of large pork-pie hat, and grey overcoat lined with red cloth, his famous, but not his only, as ill.natured people said of the article of apparel, red flannel shirt, with a loose black tie round his neck."

The next day he was the guest of the Dowager Duchess, at Chiswick, where he met, amongst others, Mr. Gladstone.

"Garibaldi, on being presented to Gladstone, said, as he grasped his hand, Pr6curseur.'"

The next time Lord Ronald saw Garibaldi, he was lying wounded and ill, sick at heart and in body, in a little dark room in an inn in the Tyrol. He afterwards visited him in his island home at Caprera, busy in the cultivation of his orange trees, completely lame, but "in great talk."

As might be expected from the known friendship between Mr. Gladstone and the author's mother, Lord Ronald has seen a good deal of the present Prime Minister, both in society and at Hawarden. He also met frequently Lord Beaconsfield, and visited him at Hughenden. "Dizzy," as he generally calls him, seems to have entertained a strong affection for his young friend ; indeed, his expressions of regard, both in conversation and in writing, are somewhat fulsome. The following anecdote is amusing. The author was on a visit to Hughenden, in 1880 :—

" He said that during all last Session, even when at Hughenden, he was never free from worry from his former colleagues and Ministers ; Every train brought some ex-Cabinet Minister to Hughenden, Lord Cairns, or Mr. W. II.—or is it H. W. Smith ? I never know which it is—or Mr. Secretary Cross, whom I always forget to call "Sir Richard."' I think Lord Beaconsfield is utterly and entirely sick and worried to death by political life, and would gladly give up the burden of being leader of his party ; but,' as he says, ruefully, they will not let me give it up.' His mixture of humour, drollery, and pathos, when talking of these things, was quite indescribable."

Was there not a considerable taint of affectation, and' a shadow of snobbishness, in this apparently offhand statement about the Christian names of two of his respectable and most useful colleagues ? We do not fancy that Lord Beaconsfield ever forgot Lord Ronald's name.

"As we stood in the porch, amidst marble vases and busts, ferns, and flowers, the post arrived, and with it the Times, which contained Mr. Gladstone's letter thanking the public for their sympathy with him during his illness. Did you ever hear any- thing like that? It reminds one of the Pope blessing the world from the balcony of St. Peter's,' said my host We had been looking at some prints, one of which represented Whitehall, and I asked him if he had any doubt as to the side of the Banqueting-house on which Charles I. was executed. He answered me something to the following effect: 'Sometime ago, a Tory squire had brought his two sous to see him, and to receive words of advice as to their future conduct in political and social existence. Eagerly the- fond parent waited to hear what his leader would deliver on so im- portant a subject. "Never," said Lord Beaconsfield, in his most solemn tones, "never in society ask who wrote Janius's Letters, or on any account inquire on which side of the Banqueting-house Charles I. was beheaded, or, if you do, you will be voted a bore, and that is, well,—something dreadful." ' "

Our author, who takes a very amiable view of most things, seems to have taken this rebuke goocinaturedly. Speaking of the Fenian rising in Ireland, Lord Beaconsfield said :—

"'Only three men, succeeded in stopping it; those three were Mayo, Hardy, and I. Of the history of how that movement was stopped, partly, it seems, by paying well some informers in Ireland, no one will ever know ; for Mayo is dead, Lord Cranbrook never writes about anything, and I have not kept a single note or even memorandum of that most strange and cui ions time.' How Dizzy must have enjoyed all the mystery and almost halo of romance that shrouded that mysterious history of what was very nearly being as serious a rising in Ireland as '98 !"

All the little glimpses we have of Lord Beaconsfield show that curious mixture of practical sagacity and of a grandiose attitude of mind which formed the basis of his unique character. On a latcr occasion (November 8th, 1880), Lord Ronald saw him for the last time. He sat talking over recollections of forty years back. "Dreams! ! dreams ! dreams !' he murmured, gazing at the fire, and smoking a cigarette."

We must now take leave of these very readable volumes. If they contain no evidence of remarkable power, they will at least convey much pleasure to a large number of persons. To the very young, they will afford glimpses of persons and events most of which happened just before their time ; and to an older generation, they will recall many things which, in the hurry of contemporaneous history, soon pass into comparative oblivion. 'They will be read by many for these reasons, and by more on account of the social position of their author. The latter will find them very "human," as Carlyle, with amuking nalvet4, says of the talk of the late Prince Consort. Containing, as they do, about as little egotism as it is possible for a diary to contain, they certainly convey an impression of the modesty, as well as the warm-heartedness of the author. 'These qualities disarm criticism, otherwise we should have been disposed to remark more severely on the style, which, though in many parts very good, is in others slipshod. It is to be hoped that if Lord Ronald is writing a life of Marie Antoinette, for whose memory he has an enthusiastic re- gard, he will devote a little more attention to English. Some carelessness of style may be excusable in reminiscences, which would not be so in the biography of an historical personage.