'I stood behind a loom myself, my boy, when I began life; and you must do with great means what I did with little ones.

I have made a gentleman of you, you must make a nobleman of yourself.' Those were almost the last words of the stern, thrifty, old Puritan craftsman, and his son never forgot them.

From a mill-owner he grew to coal- owner, shipowner, banker, railway director, money-lender to kings and princes; and last of all, as the summit of his own and his compeer's ambition, to land-owner.

He had half a dozen estates in as many different counties.

He had added house to house, and field to field; and at last bought Minchampstead Park and ten thousand acres, for two-thirds its real value, from that enthusiastic sportsman Lord Peu de Cervelle, whose family had come in with the Conqueror, and gone out with George IV.