Dr Addington, who had been educated at Winchester school, and Trinity College, Oxford, having adopted medicine as his profession, commenced his practice at Reading, where he married the daughter of the Rev. Dr Niley, head-master of the grammar-school. The well-known trial of the wretched parricide, Miss Blandy, for poisoning, in which he was a principal witness, brought him into considerable notice; and probably on the strength of this notice, he removed to London, and took a house in Bedford Row, where the late Lord Sidmouth, his fourth child, but eldest son, was born. He next removed to Clifford Street, a more fashionable quarter, which brought him into intercourse with many persons of distinction. Among these were Louth, Bishop of London, the Duke of Montagu, Earl Rivers, and, first of the first, the great Earl of Chatham. With this distinguished man, Dr Addington seems to have been on terms of familiar friendship, as the following extracts show:--Chatham writes from Burton Pynsent, in 1771. "All your friends here, the flock of your care, are truly sensible of the kind attentions of the good shepherd. My last fit of the gout left me as it had visited me, very kindly. I am many hours every day in the field, and, as I live like a farmer abroad, I return home and eat like one. * * "Ale goes on admirably, and agrees perfectly. My reverence for it, too, is increased, having just read in the manners of our remotest Celtic ancestors much of its antiquity and invigorating qualities. The boys all long for ale, seeing papa drink it, but we do not try such an experiment. Such is the force of example, that I find I must watch myself in all I do, for fear of misleading. If your friend William saw me smoke, he would certainly call for a pipe." Lord Chatham died May 11th, 1788, which event was thus notified by Dr Addington to his son Henry. "You will be grieved to hear that Lord Chatham is no more. It pleased Providence to take him away this morning, as if it were in mercy that he might not be a spectator of the total ruin of a country which he was not permitted to save." The doctor was a croaker, as was the fashion of the time, with all who pretended to peculiar political sagacity. Of course the family physician of the ex-minister was in duty bound to echo the ex-minister's discontent. It is clear that, whatever professional gifts the doctor inherited from Apollo, he did not share the gift of prophecy. The doctor, after realising enough by his profession to purchase an estate in Devonshire, retired to Reading, where, in 1790, he died, having had, in the year before, the enviable gratification of seeing his son elected to the Speakership of the House of Commons. Henry Viscount Sidmouth was born in 1757, on the 30th of May. At the age of five years, he was placed under the care of the Rev. William Gilpin, author of the Essays on the Picturesque, who for many years kept a school at Cheam, in Surrey.