d, Sir John's wife, was the elder daughter of the first Lord
Sheffield, the friend and biographer of Gibbon, and her strong
personality impressed every one who met her.

Catherine, wife of the Rector, was the daughter of the Rev. Oswald
Leycester, of Stoke Rectory, in Shropshire. Her father was one of the
Leycesters of Toft House, only a few miles from Alderley, and at Toft
most of Catherine's early years were spent. She was engaged to Edward
Stanley before she was seventeen, but did not marry him till nearly two
years later, in 1810.

During the interval she spent some time in London with Sir John and Lady
Maria Stanley, and in the literary society of the opening years of the
nineteenth century she was much sought after for her charm and
appreciativeness, and for what Sydney Smith called her "porcelain
understanding." The wits and lions of the Miss Berrys' parties vied with
each other in making much of her; Rogers and Scott delighted in her
conversation--in short, every one agreed, as her sister-in-law Maria
wrote, that "in Kitty Leycester Edward will indeed have a treasure."

After her marriage she kept up with her friends by active correspondence
and by annual visits to London. Still, "to the outside world she was
comparatively unknown; but there was a quiet wisdom, a rare
unselfishness, a calm discrimination, a firm decision which made her
judgment and her influence felt through the whole circle in which she
lived." Her power and charm, coupled with her husband's, made Alderley
Rectory an inspiring home to their children, several of whom inherited
talent to a remarkable degree.

Her sister Maria[1] writes from Hodnet, the home of the poet Heber: "I
want to know all you have been doing since the day that bore me away
from happy Alderley. Oh! the charm of a rectory inhabited by a Reginald
Heber or an Edward Stanley!"

That Rectory and its surroundings have been perfectly described in the
words of the author of "Memorials of a Quiet Life"[2]: "A low house,
with a verandah forming a wide balcony for the upper storey, where
bird-cages hung among the roses; its rooms and passages filled with
pictures, books, and old carved oak furniture. In a country where the
flat pasture lands of Cheshire rise suddenly to the rocky ridge of
Alderley Edge, with the Holy Well under an overhanging cliff; its
gnarled pine-trees, its storm-beaten beacon tower ready to give notice
of an invasion, and looking far over the green plain to t