owerful family, a wealthy territorial magnate,
and an Englishman with thoroughly national tastes for sport, his weighty
and disinterested character made him a statesman of the first rank in
his time, in spite of the absence of showy or brilliant qualities. He
had no self-seeking ambitions, and on three occasions preferred not to
become prime minister. Though his speeches were direct and forcible, he
was not an orator, nor "clever"; and he lacked all subtlety of
intellect; but he was conspicuous for solidity of mind and
straightforwardness of action, and for conscientious application as an
administrator, whether in his public or private life. The fact that he
once yawned in the middle of a speech of his own was commonly quoted as
characteristic; but he combined a great fund of common sense and
knowledge of the average opinion with a patriotic sense of duty towards
the state. Throughout his career he remained an old-fashioned Liberal,
or rather Whig, of a type which in his later years was becoming
gradually more and more rare.

There was no issue of his marriage, and he was succeeded as 9th duke by
his nephew VICTOR CHRISTIAN CAVENDISH (b. 1868), who had been Liberal
Unionist member for West Derbyshire since 1891, and was treasurer of the
household (1900 to 1903) and financial secretary to the treasury (1903
to 1905); in 1892 he married a daughter of the marquess of Lansdowne, by
whom he had two sons. (H. CH.)

[1] His own words to Mr Balfour at the time were: "I believe that
our present system of free imports is on the whole the most advantageous
to the country, though I do not contend that the principles on
which it rests possess any such authority or sanctity as to forbid any
departure from it, for sufficient reasons."

DEVONSHIRE (DEVON), a south-western county of England, bounded N.W. and
N. by the Bristol Channel, N.E. by Somerset and Dorset, S.E. and S. by
the English Channel, and W. by Cornwall. The area, 2604.9 sq. m., is
exceeded only by those of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire among the English
counties. Nearly the whole of the surface is uneven and hilly. The
county contains the highest land in England south of Derbyshire
(excepting points on the south Welsh border); and the scenery, much
varied, is in most parts striking and picturesque. The heather-clad
uplands of Exmoor, though chiefly within the borders of Somerset, extend
into North Devon, and are still the haunt of