Milnes never seemed willing to rest; Milnes
Gaskell never seemed willing to move. In his youth one of a very
famous group -- Arthur Hallam, Tennyson, Manning, Gladstone,
Francis Doyle -- and regarded as one of the most promising; an
adorer of George Canning; in Parliament since coming of age;
married into the powerful connection of the Wynns of Wynstay;
rich according to Yorkshire standards; intimate with his
political leaders; he was one of the numerous Englishmen who
refuse office rather than make the effort of carrying it, and
want power only to make it a source of indolence. He was a
voracious reader and an admirable critic; he had forty years of
parliamentary tradition on his memory; he liked to talk and to
listen; he liked his dinner and, in spite of George Canning, his
dry champagne; he liked wit and anecdote; but he belonged to the
generation of 1830, a generation which could not survive the
telegraph and railway, and which even Yorkshire could hardly
produce again. To an American he was a character even more
unusual and more fascinating than his distant cousin Lord
Houghton.
Mr. Milnes Gaskell was kind to the young American whom his son
brought to the house, and Mrs. Milnes Gaskell was kinder, for she
thought the American perhaps a less dangerous friend than some
Englishman might be, for her son, and she was probably right.
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