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INTRODUCTION a statesman's wife in the Victorian age was sufficiently removed from the excitement of the arena to be able to bring calm and reasoned judgment to bear on the issues involved.

The wives of Lord Melbourne, Lord Aberdeen, and Lord Rosebery died before their husbands actually attained the Premiership; therefore they can scarcely be logically called wives of Prime Ministers. But it has been thought well to include a memoir of Lady Caroline Lamb, because the facts of her picturesque and agitated career are not accessible in any one complete account, and because it throws a good deal of light on the social and domestic aspects of political life in the early nineteenth century.

With regard to Lord Aberdeen, it is abundantly clear that his first marriage had a lasting effect on his heart and mind. He fell passionately in love when only twenty-one years of age with Lady Catherine Hamilton, eldest xv