THE GENEROUS GRANBY 



excellent Dr. Ewer, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff, and 

 was introduced into the House of Commons as member for 

 Grantham. 



But both Granby and his brother, Lord Robert Manners- 

 Sutton, had a love for an active life. The House of Commons 

 was an excellent club, but it had not the life and interest that 

 have since marked the reformed Parliaments. If indeed you 

 did not belong to the inner ring, you were little more than a 

 walking vote. Pitt governed the country and governed it 

 well, while the House looked on and acquiesced, or on 

 occasion cavilled. So Lord Granby turned his attention to 

 raising a regiment of Leicestershire Blues, of which he became 

 Colonel, and he retained his rank when his men exchanged 

 the sword for the ploughshare, as seems soon to have been 

 the case. In the meantime the future cavalry leader was 

 learning to ride hard and to charge the fences as he after- 

 wards did the French. With his father's hounds, too, he 

 acquired that fine eye for a country which marked him later 

 as a General and which enabled him to see the strong and 

 weak points of a position, and to snatch all chances that the 

 formation of the ground or the negligence of the enemy might 

 afford him. War and hunting have often been compared, 

 and they are at all events alike in this, that success in both 

 is obtained by the seizing of a succession of quickly-passing 

 opportunities, which if once neglected never recur. To hesi- 

 tate is to lose the chance of winning a battle or of riding a 

 run ; and though the loss in the one case is infinitely greater, 

 the mental action is the same in both. 



But riding over the Belvoir country, drilling the Leicester- 

 shire Blues, and voting with his party in the House of Com- 

 mons, was not enough to fill Lord Granby's life. He was too 

 somewhat impatient of the position of the eldest son of a 

 great house, who, though he is so important a person, is yet 

 nobody during his father's lifetime, unless, like a Granby, an 

 Althorp or a Hartington, he makes a career for himself out- 

 side the limits of the family estates. Moreover, Granby was 

 a soldier at heart, and was pursued by that craving to " see 

 service " which causes the Horse Guards to be besieged by 



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