GOVERNOR HARRISON 65
occupation, and while landowners, consequently, could safely demand potential rents, the lot of the peer who had inherited broad acres from ancestors remarkable for their land-hunger, was, so far as a fine income was concerned, a happy one. " Bu + we have had our day ; we have had our innings, and a long innings too ; and we must now adapt ourselves, as well as we can, to the new conditions of our existence." So said one of them to me the other day. But it is none the less sad to hear of an ancestral mansion being despoiled of its heirlooms ; and to see them hung for a few days on the walls of auction rooms, prior to being dispersed over the country, if not to the uttermost parts of the earth. In the case under notice, this drastic proceeding had to be resorted to in order to pay off encumbrances that had accumulated on Lord Townshend's estate, and thereby to " extinguish the terminable charges." So the Court of Chancery gave permission for the sale of two hundred out of the four hundred pictures at Raynham, on being assured that, in the opinion of an expert in such matters, the moiety would realise, with some furniture and plate, £20,000. Happily for the Marquis, the valuation proved too modest, as the pictures alone sold for £35,943, although many of them fetched insignificant prices. The whole of them were portraits, mostly family portraits, and fifty of them were whole-lengths. They included a few pic- tures by artists of eminence, like Lely, Kneller, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Hoppner, and Romney, but a large proportion were unauthenticated. There was one' small por- trait, 30 ins. by 25 ins., by Romney, of Georgiana, wife of Lord John Townshend, a lady who died so recently as 1851, for which the artist received no more than 40 guineas in 1792, and which realized 3,150 guineas ; and there was a small Gainsborough, which was discovered in a neglected garret at Raynham, that fetched 2,000 guineas. A few other pictures realized handsome prices, and assisted considerably in com- pensating the owner for the small amounts obtained for some of his largest paintings.
Among the latter was the portrait of the Marquis's ancestor, Mr. Edward Harrison, Governor of Madras. It was described
