HOLLAND HOUSE AND GARDENS 



in his case there were shining virtues to counterbalance the faults. 

 " To Charles James Fox," says Trevelyan, " belongs the credit 

 that he did much to reform all the corruption of political life at 

 that time, and with more temptations to evil than most, he did 

 resist the opportunities of place this in spite of his bringing 

 up." He was " the only English statesman who has left a reputa- 

 tion of the first order, acquired in lifelong opposition, who manfully 

 and cheerfully surrendered all that he had been taught to value, 

 for the sake of principles at which he had been diligently taught 

 to sneer." 



The birth of the nephew who, in infancy, became the third Lord 

 Holland, and to whom he was so much attached, destroyed any 

 hopes he might otherwise have entertained of succeeding to the 

 title and estates. He was not born at Holland House, and it so 

 chanced that he did not die there but he loved the spot where 

 so much of his boyhood had been spent with an abiding affection, 

 and Burke justly remarked of him : " Yes, he is like a cat he is 

 fond of the house, though the family be gone." Shortly before 

 he died, he went to Holland House and walked all over the gardens, 

 looking tenderly at each familiar spot, "as if he wished," says 

 Marie Lichstenstein, " to carry through the gates of death the 

 impression engraved on his soul during his childhood." And he 

 lingered long in the Green drive describing to Lord Holland and 

 General Fitzpatrick, the making of it, by his mother, Caroline, Lady 

 Holland. 



The years of the young Lord Holland's minority were strenuous 

 ones nearly as difficult and dangerous as those in which our 

 own lot is cast. For they witnessed the Reign of Terror in 

 France the rise and fall of Napoleon the revolt of the American 

 Colonies and their declaration of Independence ; and many other 

 events international and domestic of vast, if comparatively 

 secondary importance, and in many of which Holland House was 

 more or less concerned. 



It was in 1797, that the figure of Elizabeth, Lady Webster, 

 afterwards Lady Holland, first crosses its picturesque stage. At 

 once she seems to fill it. Nor are we allowed to lose sight of her, 

 for she stands in the cruel glare of the footlights when first she 

 enters, and afterwards, wherever she moves, she is followed by the 



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