Sir George Trevelyan in his Life of Macaulay, “there never was a period when a man, conscious of power, impatient of public wrongs, and still young enough to love a fight for its own sake, could have entered Parliament with a fairer prospect of leading a life worth living and doing work that would requite the pains, than at the commencement of the year 1830.”  Her father was not only the most genial and kindest of fathers, but he was to her something of a hero too.  His political career had not begun during these days at Minto; still he was in the counsel of the leaders of the day—­Lord Grey, Lord John Russell, Lords Melbourne and Althorp—­great names indeed to her.  And the new Cabinet was soon to appoint him Minister at Berlin.

The country was under the personal rule of the Duke of Wellington, who had sorted out from his Cabinet any who were tainted with sympathy for reform; but, as the election of July which resulted in his resignation showed, the country, however one-sided its representation might have been in the House of Commons, had been long in a state of political ferment.  This state of affairs, the gradual breaking up of the Tory party dating from the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Bill, the brewing social troubles, and the prospect of power crossing to the party which was determined on meeting them with reform, made politics everywhere the most absorbing of themes.

In a country house like Minto, which was in close communication with the statesmen of the time, discussions were of course frequent and keen.  The guests were often important politicians; and long before Lady Fanny saw her future husband, she frequently heard his name as one whom those she admired looked up to as a leader.  In a girl by nature very susceptible to the appeal of great causes, whose active brain made her delight in the arguments of her elders, these surroundings were likely to foster a passionate interest in public affairs; while other influences round her were tending to increase in her a natural sense of the delicacy and preciousness of personal relations.  In the course of telling her story occasions may come for remarking again on what was one of the chief graces of her character; but in a book of this kind the sooner the reader becomes acquainted with the subject of it, the more he is likely to see in what follows.  So let it be said of her at once that in all relations in which affection was complicated on one side by gratitude, or on her side by superiority in education or social position, she was perfect.  She could be employer and benefactress without letting such circumstances deflect in the slightest degree the stream of confidence and affection between her and another.  She had the faculty of removing a sense of obligation and of forgetting it herself.  Such a faculty is only found in its perfection where the mind is sensitive in perceiving the delicacy of the relations between people; and it must be added that like most people who possess that sensitiveness, she missed it acutely in those who markedly did not.