and Lord Alvanley and Samuel Rogers; who have felt Sydney Smith’s irresistible fun, and known the overwhelming fullness of Lord Macaulay.  It is not unreasonable even in that later generation which can still recall the frank but high-bred gaiety of the great Lord Derby, the rollicking good-humour and animal spirits of Bishop Wilberforce, the saturnine epigrams of Lord Beaconsfield, the versatility and choice diction of Lord Houghton, the many-sided yet concentrated malice which supplied the stock in trade of Abraham Hayward.  More recent losses have been heavier still.  Just ten years ago[15] died Mr. Matthew Arnold, who combined in singular harmony the various elements which go to make good conversation—­urbanity, liveliness, quick sympathy, keen interest in the world’s works and ways, the happiest choice of words, and a natural and never-failing humour, as genial as it was pungent.  It was his characteristic glory that he knew how to be a man of the world without being frivolous, and a man of letters without being pedantic.

Eight years ago[16] I was asked to discuss the Art of Conversation in one of the monthly reviews, and I could then illustrate it by such living instances as Lord Granville, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Coleridge, Lord Bowen, Mr. Browning, and Mr. Lowell.  Each of those distinguished men had a conversational gift which was peculiarly his own.  Each talked like himself, and like no one else; each made his distinct and individual contribution to the social agreeableness of London.  If in now endeavouring to recall their characteristic gifts I use words which I have used before, my excuse must be that the contemporary record of a personal impression cannot with advantage be retouched after the lapse of years.

Lord Granville’s most notable quality was a humorous urbanity.  As a story-teller he was unsurpassed.  He had been everywhere and had known every one.  He was quick to seize a point, and extraordinarily apt in anecdote and illustration.  His fine taste appreciated whatever was best in life, in conversation, in literature, even when (as in his selection of the preface to the Sanctus as his favourite piece of English prose) it was gathered from fields in which he had not habitually roamed.  A man whose career had been so full of vivid and varied interests must often have felt acutely bored by the trivial round of social conversation.  But if he could not rise—­who can?—­to the apostolic virtue of suffering bores gladly, at any rate he endured their onslaughts as unflinchingly as he stood the gout.  A smiling countenance and an unfailing courtesy concealed the torment which was none the less keen because it was unexpressed.  He could always feel, or at least could show, a gracious interest in what interested his company, and he possessed in supreme perfection the happy knack of putting those to whom he spoke in good conceit with themselves.