THE DUKES OF BEAUFORT. 



There is a disposition in many quarters nowadays to 

 ' smile at the claims of long descent,' for which no doubt 

 the late Lord Tennyson is to a considerable degree 

 responsible. And, with an aristocracy so largely com- 

 posed of parvenus, the fiction of ' Norman blood ' is 

 pretty well played out. But, though such sentiments as 

 'kind hearts are more than coronets' are not less true than 

 they are elevating, I confess to a weak-minded reverence 

 for the glories of ' birth and state,' when they really bear 

 the hall-mark of antiquity. For example, I can never 

 look at the Duke of Beaufort when, in all the dignity of 

 his Presidential office, he heads the meet of the Coach- 

 ing Club or the Four-in-Hand Club at the Magazine in 

 May, without a feeling of reverential awe, akin to that 

 with which I gaze upon a thirteenth century gateway or 

 the battered images in front of an old cathedral. 

 ' There,' I say to myself with bated breath, ' sits a lineal 

 descendant of the Plantagenets ! The blood that flows in 

 those aristocratic veins is the blood of the warrior-kings 

 who won Crecy and Agincourt. Straight back to John of 

 Gaunt, "time-honoured Lancaster," without a break, that 

 handsome gentleman handling the ribbons can trace his 

 pedigree ! ' The thought solemnises me ; I feel at such 



