AMNH LIBRARY 



100043864 



XVlll PREFACE. 



and all about him. In 1894 the marriage of his elder 

 surviving son, John, the present Lord Lilford, gave him 

 great pleasure, which was increased in due time by the 

 birth of a grandson. During the spring of 1896 he 

 had several repeated attacks of his old malady, though 

 none of uncommon severity; but on the 17th of June, 

 in that year, an unexpected collapse closed the useful 

 and blameless life of which this is a very imperfect 

 sketch. 



Though so long suffering from a painful hereditary 

 disease, he had the compensation of a genial hereditary 

 disposition. On the one side he was endowed with 

 social charms like those which won for his mother's 

 great-uncle, Charles James Fox, the love of so many 

 friends ; while on the other side to him clearly de- 

 scended the characteristic, expressed by the pen of 

 Matthew Prior, and still to be read on the monument 

 of his paternal ancestor (the first Sir Thomas Powys 

 of Lilford) in the transept of Thorpe Achurch, of being 

 " possessed by a natural happiness." 



Cambridge, A. N. 



Christmas 1897. 



