next heir to the title and estates. His mother seems almost entirely to have neglected him. In the first year of her widowhood she married Sir Richard Lyttleton, and from that time forward took the least possible notice of her boy. He did not give much promise of surviving his consumptive brothers, and his mind was considered so incapable of improvement, that he was left in a great measure without either domestic guidance or intellectual discipline and culture. Horace Walpole writes to Mann in 1761: "You will be happy in Sir Richard Lyttleton and his Duchess; they are the best-humoured people in the world." But the good humour of this handsome couple was mostly displayed in the world of gay life, very little of it being reserved for home use. Possibly, however, it may have been even fortunate for the young Duke that he was left so much to himself, and to profit by the wholesome neglect of special nurses and tutors, who are not always the most judicious in their bringing up of delicate children.

At seventeen, the young Duke's guardians, the Duke of Bedford and Lord Trentham, finding him still alive and likely to live, determined to send him abroad on his travels-the wisest thing they could have done. They selected for his tutor the celebrated traveller, Robert Wood, author of the well-known work on Troy, Baalbec, and Palmyra; afterwards made Under-Secretary of State by the Earl of Chatham. Wood was an accomplished scholar, a persevering traveller, and withal a man of good business qualities. His habits of intelligent observation could not fail to be of service to his pupil, and it is not unnatural to suppose that the great artificial watercourses and canals which they saw in the course of their travels had some effect in afterwards determining the latter to undertake the important works of a similar character by which his name became so famous. During their residence in Italy the Duke and his tutor visited all the galleries, and Mr. Wood sat to Mengs for his portrait,

which still forms part of the Bridgewater collection. The Duke also purchased works of sculpture at Rome; but that he himself entertained no great enthusiasm for art is evident from the fact related by the late Earl of Ellesmere, that these works remained in their original packingcases until after his death.1

Returned to England, he seems to have led the usual life of a gay young nobleman of the time, with plenty of money at his command. In 1756, when he was only twenty years of age, he appears from the 'Racing Calendar' to have kept race-horses; and he occasionally rode them himself. Though in after life a very bulky man, he was so light as a youth, that on one occasion, Lord Ellesmere says a bet was jokingly offered that he would be blown off his horse. Dressed in a livery of blue silk and silver, with a jockey cap, he once rode a race against His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, on the long terrace at the back of the wood in Trentham Park, the seat of his relative, Earl Gower. During His Royal Highness's visit, the large old green-house, since taken down, was hastily run up for the playing of skittles; and prison-bars and other village games were instituted for the recreation of the guests. Those occupations of the Duke were varied by an occasional visit to his racingstud at Newmarket, where he had a house for some time, and by the usual round of London gaieties during the

season.

A young nobleman of tender age, moving freely in circles where were to be seen some of the finest specimens of female beauty in the world, could scarcely be expected to pass heart-whole; and hence the occurrence of the event in his London life which, singularly enough, is said to have driven him in a great measure from society, and induced him to devote himself to the con

struction of canals! We find various allusions in the letters of the time to the rumoured marriage of the young Duke of Bridgewater. One rumour pointed to the only daughter and heiress of Mr. Thomas Revell, formerly M.P. for Dover, as the object of his choice.' But it appears that the lady to whom he became the most strongly attached was one of the Gunnings-the comparatively portionless daughters of an Irish gentleman, who were then the reigning beauties at court. The object of the Duke's affection was Elizabeth, the youngest daughter, and perhaps the most beautiful of the three. She had been married to the fourth Duke of Hamilton, in Keith's Chapel, Mayfair, in 1752, “with a ring of the bed-curtain, half-an-hour after twelve at night,' "2 but the Duke dying shortly after, she was now a gay and beautiful widow, with many lovers in her train. In the same year in which she had been clandestinely married to the Duke of Hamilton, her eldest sister was married to the sixth Earl of Coventry.

The Duke of Bridgewater paid his court to the young widow, proposed, and was accepted. The arrangements for the marriage were in progress, when certain rumours reached his ear reflecting seriously upon the character of Lady Coventry, his intended bride's elder sister, who was certainly more fair than she was wise. Believing the reports, he required the Duchess to desist from further intimacy with her sister, a condition which her high spirit would not brook, and, the Duke remaining

1 Thomas and Maria Revell were both servants in the family of Mr. Nightingale, of Knibsworth. They afterwards married, and took a farm at Shingay, under my Lord Orford, who, taking a liking to their two eldest sons, Thomas and Russell, gave them an English education, and got them both places in the Victualling Office. The eldest, Thomas, was M.P. for Dover, and, dying in 1752

at Bath, was buried, as I think, at or near Leatherhead, Surrey, leaving an only daughter behind him, to whom he left about 120,000l. or 130,000l. It is thought she is to be married to the present Duke of Bridgewater, her cousin.-The Cole MSS.' (British Museum), vol. ix., 113.

2Walpole to Mann,' Feb. 27th,

1752.

firm, the match was broken off. From that time forward he is said never to have addressed another woman in the language of gallantry.' The Duchess of Hamilton, however, did not remain long a widow. In the course of a few months she was engaged to, and afterwards married, John Campbell, subsequently Duke of Argyll. Horace Walpole, writing of the affair to Marshal Conway, January 28th, 1759, says: "You and M. de Bareil do not exchange prisoners with half as much alacrity as Jack Campbell and the Duchess of Hamilton have exchanged hearts. . . It is the prettiest match in the world since yours, and everybody likes it but the Duke of Bridgewater and Lord Conway. What an extraordinary fate is attached to these two women! Who could have believed that a Gunning would unite the two great houses of Campbell and Hamilton? For my part, I expect to see my Lady Coventry Queen of Prussia. I would not venture to marry either of them these thirty years, for fear of being shuffled out of the world prematurely to make room for the rest of their adventures.'

The Duke of Bridgewater, like a wise man, seems to have taken refuge from his disappointment in active and useful occupation. Instead of retiring to his beautiful seat at Ashridge, we find him straightway proceeding to his estate at Worsley, on the borders of Chat Moss, in Lancashire, and conferring with John Gilbert, his land-steward, as to the practicability of cutting a canal by which the coals found upon his Worsley estate might be readily conveyed to market at Manchester.

Manchester and Liverpool at that time were improving towns, gradually rising in importance and increasing in population. The former place had long been noted for

Chalmers, in his Biographical Dictionary,' vol. xiii., 94, gives another account of the rumoured cause of the Duke's subsequent antipathy to women; but the above statement of

the late Earl of Ellesmere, confirmed as it is by certain passages in Walpole's Letters, is more likely to be the

correct one.