PREFACE. 



Being honoured by a request, from a quarter which 

 made compliance a duty as irresistible as it was 

 gratifying, that I should write a Preface to this work, 

 I feel I cannot do better than give some account of its 

 originator, who was for nearly forty-five years — though 

 with occasional breaks — one of my most constant, and, 

 I may add, most valued correspondents. Born in 

 Stanhope Street, Mayfair, on the 18th of March, 1833, 

 Thomas Littleton Powys was the eldest son of 

 Thomas Atherton Powys, third Lord Lilford, and Mary 

 Elizabeth, only surviving daughter of Henry Richard 

 Fox, third Lord Holland, and Elizabeth Vassall his 

 wife — a couple sufficiently well known to all readers of 

 social or political history. On his father's side I need 

 not trace his ancient ancestry further back than to Sir 

 Thomas Powys, who in 1686 was Solicitor-General to 

 James II., and in 1713 under Anne a Judge of the 

 Queen's Bench, an office from which he was removed 

 on the accession of the House of Hanover. He then 

 retired to Lilford in Northamptonshire, an estate which, 

 with its fine Hall (one of the best examples of Jacobean 



