Lord Salisbury was the last of Queen Victoria’s Prime Ministers, and she has left it on record that she thought him the ablest of them all. Lady Salisbury was Georgiana, daughter of Lord Alderson, Baron of the Exchequer. Lord Alderson was a man of great intellect, whose career, though honourable and useful, never quite fulfilled the expectations of his friends. At Cambridge University he was Senior Wrangler, Smith’s prizeman, and Senior Chancellor’s medallist, which is almost a unique record. The Aldersons belonged to what was called “the Norwich set,” a group of families living near that city who made it into an intellectual centre. It is curious to learn, in connection with the history of some of his descendants, that in his early days Lord Alderson was a Unitarian, and was descended from Mrs. Opie, the well-known Quaker. He himself, however, became a member of the Church of England, and the family were well known as advanced Tractarians. [Illustration: _Hollyer_ LADY SALISBURY _After the portrait by Sir W. B. Richmond_] Every year the Alderson family (which consisted of ten children besides Georgiana) used to spend their summer holidays at Lowestoft, where were other friends with young families, conspicuously the Palgraves. Of the Palgraves the best known was Francis, afterwards the editor of the _Golden Treasury_. There is in existence a little green-covered book called _Lays of Lowestoft_, which consists of parodies of mediæval ballads and heroic couplets something like the _Ingoldsby Legends_, though it is perhaps unfair to call into comparison these high-spirited, but naturally immature, productions with that brilliant collection of satirical verse. The jokes and allusions are rather obscure to the outsider, but the whole volume gives an impression of zest and great enjoyment. Georgiana opens the volume with a lively account of a cricket match, and there are descriptions of picnics and excursions of all sorts, to which the family drove in a donkey-cart, with tea, umbrellas, and “Tennyson’s poems our hearts to affect.” On another occasion they are all depicted as lying on the heather singing glees and part-songs (the Aldersons were very musical) while the sun went down. Two verses are sufficiently characteristic: “Now sparkling hock and sparkling wit Are vying with each other, And one bright flash of repartee Is followed by another. And grave ecclesiastics too, With lawyers shrewd and cunning, Contend with squires and ladies fair In the gay art of punning.” The whole book is full of the atmosphere of the irresponsible years between childhood and maturity. One feels it must all have been great fun. Georgiana “came out,” like other girls, when she grew up, and is generally believed to have enjoyed that also. Indeed, she might have taken as one of her secondary mottoes in life the old couplet: “Pastime and good company I love and shall until I die,”