Besides these two first ministers of the Crown, politics have been represented by a number of other well-known names, from which I can but pick out those of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, who was here for half a dozen years; the Earl of Harrowby, at whose house--formerly No. 39, but now 44--the Cato Street conspirators hoped to make a holocaust of the entire Government; Lord Canning, in 1841, and another member of the same gifted family, Lord Stratford de Redclyffe, who died here in 1880, and whose effigy may be seen beside that of Lord Canning in the Abbey. Thomas Raikes, who was called by the wits “Phœbus Apollo,” because he rose in the east and set in the west--an allusion to his dual connection with the City and Mayfair--was one of Grosvenor Square’s past inhabitants of interest. Raikes is now remembered by his diary, a valuable record of his times, and his correspondence and friendship with Wellington, but his brother Robert, the initiator of Sunday Schools, carved out a name, _aere perennius_, for himself, and by its reflected light Thomas is also partially illuminated. That curious compound of genius and eccentricity, William Beckford, who wrote “Vathek” in three days and nights without intermission, and, what is more, wrote it in French, also lived here, at No. 22. Here was housed a portion of that extraordinary collection of pictures, books, furniture, and bric-a-brac which came, through the marriage of Miss Beckford with the Duke of Hamilton, into the possession of the latter; and the dispersal of which, in the eighties, was the sensation of the season, and crowded Christie’s and Sotheby’s with a wondering and envying throng. Beckford used to be visited here by Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, two of the very few people he would ever admit to view the wonders of Fonthill, his Wiltshire seat, from the doors of which fairy palace he once repulsed George IV. himself. _Apropos_ there is a story of a man forcing his way into Fonthill by some subterfuge, and being entertained _en grand seigneur_ by the owner. When, however, the hour for retiring came, Beckford led him to the front door, and wished him good-night, adding that he had better _be careful of the bloodhounds_. The wretched man then realised that he was alone in a vast Park with no companions but his host’s formidable guardians, and he is said to have passed the night in the first tree he could climb.