Those who know the outlook over the Thames, from the windows of Pembroke Lodge at Richmond, will realize that he too, like Florence Nightingale, was born in a very beautiful spot. His father, the eleventh Earl of Pembroke, had married the daughter of Count Woronzow, the Russian Ambassador, and, in Sidney’s knowledgeable help afterwards at the War Office during the Crimean War, it is not without interest to remember this. His birth had not been expected so soon, and there were no baby clothes handy at Pembroke Lodge, where his mother was staying. It would seem that shops were not so well able to supply every need with a ready-made garment as they are in these days; so the first clothes that the baby boy wore were lent by the workhouse until his own were ready. In later days, when he cared for the needs of all who crossed his path, until his people feared—or pretended to fear—that he would give away all he had, his mother used to say that workhouse clothes were the first he had worn after his birth, and were also clearly those in which he would die. He had good reason to rejoice in his lineage, for he was descended from the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, after whom he was named. He too, like his great namesake, was all his life full of that high courtesy which comes of loving consideration for others rather than for self, and is never more charming than in those who, being in every sense “well-born,” have seen it in their fathers, and in their fathers before them, notwithstanding that in those others who, less fortunate, whether they be rich or poor, having come of an ill brood, are yet themselves well-bred, such courtesy is of the courts of heaven. The boy’s father had much individuality. Being the owner of some thirty villages, and lord-lieutenant of the county, he was naturally a great magnate in Wiltshire. He was very fond of dogs, and his favourites among them sat at his own table, each with its own chair and plate. Sidney was almost like an only son at home, for his elder brother, who was, of course, the heir to Lord Herbert’s patrimony, had married unhappily and lived abroad. The little boy seems to have been really rather like the little angels in Italian pictures, a child with golden curls and big brown eyes, with the look of love and sunshine gleaming out of them that he kept all his life, and there is a letter of his mother’s, describing a children’s fancy dress ball, at which she dressed him up as a little cupid, with wings and a wreath of roses, and was very proud of the result. He was either too little to mind, or if he hated it, as so many boys would, he bore with it to please his mother, who, we are told, made as much of an idol of him as did the rest of his family. And indeed it is most wonderful, from all accounts, that he was not completely spoiled. Here is his mother’s letter about it:—