ghted up by
the mingled lustre of intelligence and benevolence.

As it was with the faces of the men of this noble family, so was it also
with their minds. Nature had done much for them all. She had moulded
them all of that clay of which she is most sparing. To all she had given
strong reason and sharp wit, a quick relish for every physical and
intellectual enjoyment, constitutional intrepidity, and that frankness
by which constitutional intrepidity is generally accompanied, spirits
which nothing could depress, tempers easy, generous, and placable, and
that genial courtesy which has its seat in the heart, and of which
artificial politeness is only a faint and cold imitation. Such a
disposition is the richest inheritance that ever was entailed on any
family.

But training and situation greatly modified the fine qualities which
nature lavished with such profusion on three generations of the house of
Fox. The first Lord Holland was a needy political adventurer. He entered
public life at a time when the standard of integrity among statesmen was
low. He started as the adherent of a minister who had indeed many titles
to respect, who possessed eminent talents both for administration and
for debate, who understood the public interest well, and who meant
fairly by the country, but who had seen so much perfidy and meanness
that he had become skeptical as to the existence of probity. Weary of
the cant of patriotism, Walpole had learned to talk a cant of a
different kind. Disgusted by that sort of hypocrisy which is at least a
homage to virtue, he was too much in the habit of practising the less
respectable hypocrisy which ostentatiously displays, and sometimes even
simulates vice. To Walpole Fox attached himself, politically and
personally, with the ardor which belonged to his temperament. And it is
not to be denied that in the school of Walpole he contracted faults
which destroyed the value of his many great endowments. He raised
himself, indeed, to the first consideration in the House of Commons; he
became a consummate master of the art of debate; he attained honors and
immense wealth; but the public esteem and confidence were withheld from
him. His private friends, indeed, justly extolled his generosity and
good-nature. They maintained that in those parts of his conduct which
they could least defend there was nothing sordid, and that, if he was
misled, he was misled by amiable feelings, by a desire to serve his
friends, and