Palace continued-Domesticities of George the Second and Queen Caroline-Lord Hervey's Memoirs-Ques- tion between Him and Pope-The King listening in Palace contiuued-A Court Drama-Supposed Death of Lord Hervey-Talk at the Queen's Breakfast-Table- Kensington Palace ignored by George III., George IV., and William IV.-The Dukes of Kent and Sussex there-Queen Victoria Born and Bred there-Prome- nades in the Gardens till the Time of the Regency, with Glances at the Promenaders-The Band of Music in Summer-Time-The Flower-Garden, the Fountain, the Trees, Birds, Serpentine, and Basin-The Gardens THE OLD COURT SUBURB. CHAPTER I. HOLLAND HOUSE CONTINUED-FAMILY OF THE FOXES SIR STEPHEN FOX-HENRY FOX, FIRST LORD HOLLAND -FOX AND PITT HIS LORDSHIP'S JOVIAL CAREER AND MELANCHOLY DECLINE-HIS KINGSGATE VILLA-CURIOUS STORY OF LADY CAROLINE LENOX'S DETERMINATION TO MARRY HIM-THF ROSE IN THE FOX'S MOUTH-LADY SARAH LENOX, THE "LASS OF RICHMOND HILL"- LADY SUSAN FOX OR STRANGEWAYS, AND PERILS OF PRIVATE THEATRICALS-HER MARRIAGE WITH AN ACTOR. HOLLAND HOUSE, after Addison's death, remained in possession of the Warwick family and of their heir, Lord Kensington, who came of the family of Edwardes, till it was purchased of his lordship by Henry Fox, who subsequently became a lord himself, and took his title from the mansion. This was about a hundred years ago, in the beginning of the reign of George the Third. Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland of the new race, was the younger son of that marvellous old gentleman, Sir Stephen Fox, who, after having had a numerous offspring by one wife, married another at the age of seventy-six, and had three more children, two of whom founded the noble families of Holland and Ilchester. It was reported that he had been a singing-boy in a cathedral. Walpole says he was a footman; and the late Lord Holland, who was a man of too noble a nature to affect ignorance of such traditions, candidly owns that he was a man of "very humble origin." Noble families must begin with somebody; and with whom could the new one have better begun than with this stout and large-hearted gentleman, who after doing real service to the courts in which he rose, and founding institutions for the benefit of his native place, closed a life full of health, activity, and success, in the eighty-ninth year of his age? Henry Fox was as full of vitality as his father, and he carried the stock higher; but, though very knowing, he was not so wise, and did not end so happily. With him began the first parliamentary emulation between a Fox and a Pitt, which so curiously descended to their sons. Many persons now living remember the second rivalry. The first was so like it, that Walpole, in one of his happy comprehensive dashes, describes the House of Commons, for a certain period, as consisting of "a dialogue between Pitt and Fox." The oratory, in the high sense of the word, was on the Pitt side; but Fox, though an unequal speaker, partly fluent and partly hesitating, had acuteness, argument, and a natural manner; and it was a rare honour, even for the short time in which he did so, to divide the honours of emulation with the man who has been since styled the great Earl of Chatham." Fox had begun life as a partizan of Sir Robert Walpole; and in the course of his career, held lucrative offices under Government-that of Paymaster of the Forces, for one-in which he enriched himself to a degree which incurred a great deal of suspicion. He was latterly denounced, in a city address, as the "defaulter of unaccounted millions." Public accounts, in those times, were strangely neglected; and the family have said, that his were in no worse condition than those of |