Owing to their father’s position at Court, the little Lennox girls were well known to the old king, George II, and prime favourites with him. He was Lady Emily’s godfather, and the christening cup he gave her is still preserved at Carton. He was delighted, beyond measure, when one day, taking his constitutional on the broad walk at Kensington, he saw a charming little maid rush from her French _bonne_ and come bounding up to him with a saucy “_Comment vous portez vous Monsieur le Roi, vous avez une grande et belle maison ici, n’est ce pas?_” It was little Lady Sarah Lennox, and the king, having discovered her identity, invited her _bonne_ to carry her often to see his “_grande et belle maison_.” The children learned to speak French before they spoke English, and Lady Emily, in particular, showed herself all through life an enthusiastic admirer of French literature, and very accessible to the new ideas of which that literature made itself the vehicle. Horace Walpole tells us of the delight he experienced, on one occasion when he had invited her and her sister, Lady Caroline, with their husbands, Lord Kildare and Mr. Fox, to Strawberry Hill, and the weather turned out too wet to show his company the wonders of his castle and grounds, to find that Lady Kildare was “_a true Sévignist_.” “You know,” he remarks to his correspondent, Richard Bentley, “what pleasure I have in any increase in our sect” (_i.e._ the cult of Madame de Sévigné). “I thought she looked handsomer than ever, as she talked of _Notre Dame des Rochers_.”[19] Later on, we hear from Mrs. Delany of her admiration for Rousseau, and his theories of education; and we know from one of her daughters that her great interest in education made her a diligent reader of Madame de Genlis. She seems to have spent much time in her girlhood with her mother’s relations in Holland, and this fact, together with the French influences which presided over her education, gave her a European point of view, which was in striking contrast with the insularity of the majority of English-women of her class and generation. Doubtless, this cosmopolitanism of his mother’s was, also, not without its effect on Lord Edward. Footnote 19: A name given by Horace Walpole to Madame de Sévigné, of whose “Letters” he was a devoted enthusiast. He sometimes calls her “_Notre Dame de Livry_”—_Les Rochers_ and _Livry_ were the names of her country seats. In 1744, her elder sister, Lady Caroline, eloped with Mr. Henry Fox, to the great displeasure of the Richmonds. “The town,” writes Horace Walpole to his namesake in Florence (May 27th, 1744) “has been in a great bustle about a private match; but which by the ingenuity of the ministry, has been made politics. Mr. Fox fell in love with Lady Caroline Lennox, asked her, was refused, and stole her. His father was a footman;[20] her great grandfather, a king: _hinc illae lacrymae_.” Footnote 20: