IN MEMORIAM: CONSTANCE, MARCHIONESS OF LOTHIAN.
[To THE EDITOR OF THZ " SPECTATOR.1 SIR,—Of late the lights have gone out fast. One after another our great ones have passed away, leaving us in a darkened land. To-day we mourn the loss of one whose soul shone with a bright particular light; of whom Mr. Gladstone once said that when he came to consider our great and good lady. hood of England, she stood first. There is a certain royalty of nature which can no more be accounted for than the poet's gift or than the stars in the sky; and this sovereign touch was in all that Constance, Lady Lothian, looked, or felt, or thought, or did. Perfect grace informed by a noble soul ; a heart ready always to bear the burdens of others ; a spirit "beautiful and swift " : only a Dante can place his saints in their rightful circles. And she was what Emerson. would have delighted to call an earth angel ; delightfully, beautifully human, with a quick sense of humour, a heart full of. pity, and hands full of help. "Bile avait toutes lee intelligences de la tete et du cur." Royally endowed, her heart did not cripple her head; neither did the head cheat and chill the heart. She had a great outlook on life, looking ever to the cause and issue of things. Her mind, high-strung and sensi- tive as any harp, was always open, always acquisitive, with a rare faculty, amounting almost to a second sense, for sifting the false from the true, and the parts of truth from each other. It was one of her pet tenets that it is always possible to learn; that the moment never arrives when it is admissible to give up the hope of mental enrichment. She was open-minded par excellence ; but while one part of her mind would rejoice in some new idea presented to it, there was always au fond a reserve of judgment and reflection. She had the judicial faculty ; but with regard to character she relied on intuition, which seldom led her astray. Indeed, she had that intense and subtle sympathy, arising from heart and head alike, which might in old days be. known as the "discerning of spirits," but which we call knowledge of character, still allowing it to be of the gifts extraordinary. There is no doubt she could have been first in politics, in literature, in art ; but her kingdom was in her people's hearts. In Norfolk, in the old-world home where she spent the greater part of her thirty-one long years of widowhood, she gave herself, not to the comparatively easy life of Lady Bountiful, but to the task of understanding and entering into the lives around her. She had the practical and also the poet's sympathy for all; and a special gift of what has been well called "sublime common-sense" in affairs of the world. After all, one great secret of her inspiration was that she was always, and in every place, and under whatever circumstances, absolutely herself. She was too large a nature for any mould. This originality and sincerity affords a stimulus like a mountain breeze, but how- often is it to be found ? In the Spectator of October 19th there is an article on "The Magic of Rank." As "the old order changeth " there will be little enough of that magic left. To be a society leader is one thing. To be a grande dame of the finest school is another.- But quite different and apart from both is that spiritual - essence which in men means chivalrous 'achievement and in women means high-souled influence. With such true knights and ladies, as they pass from among us, vanishes the illumination of English life and thought.—I am, Sir, &e.,
M. W.
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