378 
LORD HOUGHTON. 
fore do not let anybody be persuaded tbat it is a disadvantage to 
young people to show a special interest in the observation of the 
world about them. The study itself is acquiring far more remarkable 
interest than it could have done in its earlier commencement. The 
foundations of it have been taught in some of our best schools, and 
the direction of it was given to youths in many of our most important 
centres as a valuable source of information. We must all feel that 
this is a right and a natural thing, because there is no study which 
could be suggested to the minds of young people in which they would 
be better able to connect the material world in which they are 
immediately living with the processes of their own intelligence.' 
Lord Houghton married, in 1851, the Hon. Arabella Hungerford 
Crewe, sister of the present Lord Crewe. In his wife he found a most 
admirable and sjanpathctic helpmeet, and for many years she assisted 
him with her gracious tact and her unfailing smypathy in the dis- 
charge of those social duties in which he took so warm an interest. 
Lady Houghton was herself a woman of no ordinary intelligence. She 
possessed considerable talents as an artist, and proofs of her ability 
as a portrait painter are to be seen upon the walls of Fryston Hall. 
hi those breakfast parties which Lord Houghton was in the habit of 
giving during the London season ; parties at which all that was dis- 
tinguished in politics, in science, in literature, and in art, might be 
found represented ; Lady Houghton played a conspicuous and most 
admirable part, whilst under her care the hospitalities of Fryston 
attained a fame that might almost be described as world-wide. She 
died in the spring of 1874, after a very brief illness, leaving behind 
her a son, the Hon. Robert Milnes, and two daughters, now the Hon. 
Lady Fitzgerald and tlie Hon. Mrs. Henniker. Her death was a 
blow from which Lord Houghton never entirely recovered. He sought 
to find relief in travel, and visited America in company with his son. 
His journey was full of interest, and he returned to this country more 
firmly devoted to the American alliance than he had been even during 
the passionate struggle of the Civil War, And here, it should be 
said, that at that critical time the cause of the North had no warmer 
or truer friend than Lord Houghton. During the course of his travels 
in the United States he had greatly extended his circle of acquaint- 
