In giving this book to the public I have sought to fulfil an inherited obligation long overdue. It is now forty years since my grandfather died. He left his papers to his son, with instructions that by him and by no one else his Life was to be written. These instructions my father felt it a sacred duty to carry out as soon as his public work allowed. On his return from his official career in India, in I 88o, he set to work upon the papers which had been left to him, and began to write his father's biography. In I 88 3 he published in two volumes the first instalment of this work ; but before it was completed he was appointed British Ambassador at Paris,. where he died in I89I, leaving his task still unfinished.