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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