As a statesman and a diplomatist his character belongs to the annals of his country; but I can speak of him as I knew him at home, where he reigned supreme in the hearts of his wife and children, his friends, his guests, and his household. As a host he was perhaps the most genial I ever knew. In conversation I have never found any one to surpass him in brilliancy and playfulness of wit, and all without effort, without self-consciousness, and withal skilled in the profound art of nonsense. Neither did he reserve his bright sallies or his more serious views for the learned and superior, or for such men as the erudite Sir George Cornwall Lewis,[77] his brother-in-law, or his own brother, Charles Villiers,[78] although they met him on more equal grounds than the majority of his companions. Lord Clarendon, in fact, did not demand to be tried by his social peers, for in the society of the women who surrounded him—his own wife, his own daughters, and nieces, and, I may add, of myself—he shone as brightly, and took as great a delight in captivating his listeners as he could possibly have done had his audience been one of the largest and most distinguished, as it certainly was the most loving, in the world. How sociable (to use a common but expressive epithet), how snug were those domestic evenings, when one of his daughters, making herself the mouthpiece of the little circle, entreated him to read aloud to us! and how appreciative were the listeners who clustered round him as he read some scenes of Molière or some pages by Macaulay! And what a laugh he had!—what a ringing, silvery laugh, which we all, the actresses of the Grove Theatre, considered our highest guerdon, to whosesoever share it fell on the night of a dramatic performance. Footnote 77: Sir George Cornwall Lewis married Lady Theresa Lister, daughter of third Earl of Clarendon, and widow of Thomas Henry Lister, Esq. Footnote 78: The Right Hon. Charles Pelham Villiers; born 1802; died 1898; represented Wolverhampton from 1825 till his death. His sister, Lady Theresa Lewis, resembled Lord Clarendon in many points; in intellectual gifts, in character and disposition, they were as nearly allied as in blood, and no two human beings surely ever understood each other better. Lady Theresa had been very beautiful in her youth, and in more advanced years still retained a charming smile and an expression in her blue eyes which in her earlier days might have been called “playful mischief.” By nature she had the most joyous spirits, a perfectly sunny temperament such, as was once remarked to me, “God generally gave to those for whom great sorrows were in store:” and assuredly such a fate was hers in the premature death of the husband and brother she adored. I remember that dear friend once saying to me, “happiness is so natural to me, I cannot live without it, and if grief comes, either I shall kill it or it will kill me.” Alas! that brave spirit was in the end forced to yield.