Political "Drums" had a flavour which was all their own. If they were given in any of the Great Houses of London, where the stateliness and beauty of the old world still survived, such guests as Lord Beaconsfield's creations, Mr. Horrocks, M.P., and Trodgitts, the unsuccessful candidate, would look a little subdued. But in the ordinary house, with a back and front drawing-room and a buffet in the dining-room, those good men were quite at home, and the air was thick with political shop--whether we should loose Pedlington or save Shuffleborough with a struggle--whether A would get office and how disgusted B would be if he did. Here and there a more thrilling note was sounded. At a Liberal party in the spring of 1881 an ex-Whip of the Liberal party said to a Liberal lady, as he was giving her a cup of tea: "Have you heard how ill old Dizzy is?" "Oh, yes!" replied the lady, with a rapturous wink, "I know--dying!" Such are the amenities of political strife. A much more agreeable form of hospitality was the Garden-Party. When I came to live in London, the old-fashioned phrase--a "Breakfast"--so familiar in memoirs and novels, had almost passed out of use. On the 22nd of June, 1868, Queen Victoria signalized her partial return to social life by commanding her lieges to a "Breakfast" in the gardens of Buckingham Palace; and the newspapers made merry over the notion of Breakfast which began at four and ended at seven. The old title gradually died out, and by 1876 people had begun to talk about "Garden-Parties." By whichever names they were called, they were, and are, delightful festivals. Sometimes they carried one as far as Hatfield, my unapproached favourite among all the "Stately homes of England"; but generally they were nearer London--at Syon, with the Thames floating gravely past its lawns--Osterley, where the decorative skill of the Brothers Adam is superimposed on Sir Thomas Gresham's Elizabethan brickwork--Holland House, rife with memories of Fox and Macaulay--Lowther Lodge, with its patch of unspoiled country in the heart of Western London. Closely akin to these Garden-Parties were other forms of outdoor entertainment--tea at Hurlingham or Ranelagh; and river-parties where ardent youth might contrive to capsize the adored one, and propose as he rescued her, dripping, from the Thames.