Northumberland House at Charing Cross, the abode of the historic Percys, had disappeared before I came to London, yielding place to Northumberland Avenue; but there were plenty of "Houses" left. Near where the Percys had flourished, the Duke of Buccleuch, a magnifico of the patriarchal type, kept court at Montagu House, and Londoners have not yet forgotten that, when the Thames Embankment was proposed, he suggested that the new thoroughfare should be deflected, so that it might not interfere with the ducal garden running down to the river. In the famous Picture-Gallery of Bridgewater House, Lord Beaconsfield harangued his disconsolate supporters after the disastrous election of 1880, and predicted that Conservative revival which he did not live to see. Close by at Spencer House, a beautiful specimen of the decorative work of the Brothers Adam, the Liberal Party used to gather round the host, who looked like a Van Dyke. Another of their resorts was Devonshire House, which Horace Walpole pronounced "good and plain as the Duke of Devonshire who built it." There the 7th Duke, who was a mathematician and a scholar, but no lover of society, used to hide behind the door in sheer terror of his guests, while his son, Lord Hartington, afterwards 8th Duke, gazed with ill-concealed aversion on his political supporters. Lansdowne House was, as it still is, a Palace of Art, with all the dignity and amenity of a country house, planted in the very heart of London. During the last quarter of a century the creation of Liberal Unionism has made it the headquarters of a political party; but, at the time of which I write, it was only a place of select and beautiful entertaining. Apsley House, the abode of "The Son of Waterloo," could not, in my time, be reckoned a social centre, but was chiefly interesting as a museum of Wellington relics. Norfolk House was, as it is, the headquarters of Roman Catholic society, and there, in 1880, was seen the unique sight of Matthew Arnold doing obeisance to Cardinal Newman at an evening party.[25] Dorchester House, architecturally considered, is beyond doubt the grandest thing in London; in those days occupied by the accomplished Mr. Holford, who built it, and now let to the American Ambassador. Chesterfield House, with its arcaded staircase of marble and bronze from the dismantled palace of the Dukes of Chandos at Edgeware, was built by the fourth Lord Chesterfield, as he tells us, "among the fields;" and contains the library in which he wrote his famous letters to his son. Holland House, so long the acknowledged sanctuary of the Whig party, still stands amid its terraces and gardens, though its hayfields have, I fear, fallen into the builders' hands. Macaulay's Essay, if nothing else, will always preserve it from oblivion.