On Monday, a striking family gathering took place at Montague
House, Whitehall, the Duke of Buccleuch's London 'home. The occasion was the eighty-second birthday of the Dowager-Duchess of Abercorn, a daughter of the sixth Duke Bedford,—the Duke, if, we are not mistaken, whom Burke immortalised by his magnificent, if somewhat unfair, "Letter to a Noble Lord." All the Duchess's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, in all ,101 persons, ranging in age from sixty years to four months, assembled to offer their con- gratulations. Many of them had travelled from distant parts -of the Kingdom, and some even from America. The Duchess having taken her place in the balbroom, the various families .oi her descendants filed passed her, headed by her eldest daughter, the Dowager Lady Lichfield, with her thirteen children and thirteen grandchildren. Then came the thirteen -children and fifteen gra,ndchildrin of the late Lady Durham, .succeeded by the Duchess of Buccleuch with her seven children, and so on until the whole 101 had passed. It was a 'touching and picturesque ceremony, and the Duchess might well feel proud. Burke, in one of the most pathetic passages in the English language, told her father that he lived in "an inverted order." His only son had died before him. Her position was exactly the reverse. She could see down the avenues of time, and look forward to an unending vista of descendants. That parade at Montague House must have aeemed to her at least like a glimpse into the future.
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