LORD GRANYILLE

[LONDON, APRIL, 1891]

One more of the admirable figures belonging to the
past generation and not to this is gone, Lord Granville,
and of him, too, it has to be said that he leaves no
successor. Time was, at least in England, when genera-
tion succeeded to generation and the new was not
unlike the old. There was a spiritual heirship which
never failed. The line of descent was not interrupted.
The Amurath of to-day was the lineal offspring and
true copy of the Amurath who went before him. There
was no break, no real interruption, nothing like the
arrival of a new breed, or the development of a differ-
ent species. But who and where are the men of to-day
who stand to those of yesterday in the same relation
which those of yesterday bore to those of the day be-
fore? They do not exist. The new-comers are excel-
lent in their way ; they have considerable qualities ;
they will get on in the world and leave great names,
perhaps ; but they none the less belong to a class apart.
They may even, if you insist upon it, be better ; never
the same. I go over again the familiar list of real
celebrities, men of real distinction of the last fifty or
sixty years, whether here in England or in America
— Kinglake, Hayward, Houghton, Browning, Charles
Sumner, Emerson, and many more— and I ask again,



LORD GRANVILLE



who is there like them ? They were the product of a
time which has passed away.
