With regard to Lord Aberdeen, it is abundantly clear that his first marriage had a lasting effect on his heart and mind. He fell passionately in love when only twenty-one years of age with Lady Catherine Hamilton, eldest daughter of the first Marquis of Abercorn. She was a beautiful girl, and worshipped him as much as he worshipped her. They were married on 28th July 1805. Their domestic life was so happy that Lord Aberdeen cared little for public affairs. He considered his wife to be “the most perfect creature ever formed by the power and wisdom of God.” Three daughters were born in 1807, 1808, and 1809. A son, born in 1810, died soon after his birth. From that time Lady Aberdeen’s health, never robust, drooped, and she died on 29th February 1812. Her husband, who survived her for nearly fifty years, married secondly, in 1815, Harriet Douglas, the widow of Viscount Hamilton. Lord Abercorn seeing his granddaughters on the one hand, the children of his daughter, deprived of their mother, and on the other his grandsons, the children of his son, deprived of their father, thought it would be an admirable arrangement to marry the widower to the widow. Although Lord Aberdeen never forgot his first wife, he had a strong affection for his second, and his letters to her are full of loving tenderness. Unhappily his daughters all died young, and Lady Aberdeen herself on 26th August 1833. Lord Aberdeen’s political career can scarcely be said to have begun in real earnest until 1834, but the gentle melancholy that was so marked a characteristic of his temperament may well be traced to his early experiences of love and marriage. Lord Rosebery married in 1878 Hannah de Rothschild, only child of Baron Meyer de Rothschild and his wife Juliana Cohen. She was an accomplished woman, loving art and music. She assisted her father in collecting objects of art for Mentmore, the house he began to build in 1857, and there she had unique opportunities for intercourse with the best minds in English and continental society. She learned to judge things in the large spirit usually associated with the masculine mind alone. She had always taken a great interest in politics, and at once set herself to assist and second her husband in his political interests. She instituted at Lansdowne House a salon for the Liberal party, which became the focus of social liberalism and an important element in the organisation of the party. Lansdowne House was also a general centre of hospitality, for Lady Rosebery believed in bringing together in social intercourse men of widely divergent views, so that the edges of their differences, so to speak, might gradually be rubbed smooth. Her activities were not solely political. She was keen for the improvement of female industrial conditions, and took part in various public philanthropic enterprises to that end. Her private charities were at once generous and discriminating.