I have always maintained that Whiggery, rightly understood, is not a political creed, but a social caste. The Whig, like the poet, is born, not made. It is as difficult to become a Whig as to become a Jew. Macaulay was probably the only man who, being born outside the privileged enclosure, ever penetrated to its heart and assimilated its spirit. It is true that the Whigs, as a body, have held certain opinions and pursued certain tactics, which were analysed in chapters xix. and xxi. of the unexpurgated _Book of Snobs_. But those opinions and those tactics have been accidents of Whiggery. Its substance has been relationship. When Lord John Russell formed his first Administration, his opponents alleged that it was mainly composed of his cousins, and the lively oracles of Sir Bernard Burke confirmed the allegation. A. J. Beresford-Hope, in one of his novels, made excellent fun of what he called the "Sacred Circle of the Great-Grandmotherhood." He showed--what, indeed, the Whigs themselves knew uncommonly well--that from John, Earl Gower, who died in 1754, descend all the Gowers, Levesons, Howards, Cavendishes, Grosvenors, Harcourts, and Russells, who walk on the face of the earth. Truly a noble and a highly favoured progeny. "They _are_ our superiors," said Thackeray; "and that's the fact. I am not a Whig myself (perhaps it is as unnecessary to say so as to say that I'm not King Pippin in a golden coach, or King Hudson, or Miss Burdett-Coutts)--I'm not a Whig; but oh, how I should like to be one!" It argues no political bias to maintain that, in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, Toryism offered to its neophytes no educational opportunities equal to those which a young Whig enjoyed at Chatsworth and Bowood and Woburn and Holland House. Here the best traditions of the previous century were constantly reinforced by accessions of fresh intellect. The circle was, indeed, an aristocratic Family Party, but it paid a genuine homage to ability and culture. Genius held the key, and there was a _carrière ouverte aux talents_. Into this privileged society Frederick Leveson-Gower was born on the 3rd of May, 1819, and within its precincts he "kept the noiseless tenour of his way" for nearly ninety years. Recalling in 1905 the experiences of his boyhood, and among them a sharp illness at Eton, he was able to add, "Never during my long life have I again been seriously ill." To that extraordinary immunity from physical suffering was probably due the imperturbable serenity which all men recognized as his most characteristic trait, and which remained unruffled to the end.