objects and results. attractive for Palmerston; and while Sir Henry Holland amused him, he was bored by Wheatstone. watched him," writes Sir Henry Taylor, "as he listened to a somewhat prolonged exposition by Professor Wheatstone of certain new devices he had been busied with for the application of telegraphy. The man of science was slow, the man of the world seemed attentive; the man of science was copious, the man of the world let nothing escape him; the man of science unfolded the anticipated results-another and another; the man of the world listened with all his ears, and I was saying to myself, 'His patience is exemplary, but will it last for ever?' when I heard the issue: God bless my soul, you don't say so! I must get you to tell that to the Lord Chancellor.' And the man of the world took the man of science to another part of the room, and bounded away like a horse let loose in a pasture. Where art was con

But science had to be made

cerned Lord Palmerston was somewhat of a barbarian. When he paid a visit to Berlin, he was pleased with the frescoes of Cornelius, but chiefly because of their size; and when it was hoped that the Treasury would buy the Soulages collection, Sir Henry Cole found him quite Idead to the beauties of Italian art. Once or twice, looking at the majolica, he said to me, 'What is the use of such rubbish to our manufacturers?""

66

It is unnecessary to dwell long upon Palmerston's personal character. His was a bright, sunny nature, buoyant and self-reliant; the jaunty gait was an outward sign of the inward disposition. Sir Henry Holland, who attended both Lord Palmerston and Lord Aberdeen, notices, in his interesting Recollections,

* Sir Henry Taylor's Autobiography, vol. ii. pp. 218-219.

the singular contrast of their natural temperaments. The inborn vivacity and optimism of the former pervaded his life, both public and private; rescuing him in a great degree from many of those anxieties which. press more or less upon every step of a Minister's career. He had a singular power of clear and prompt decision; and was spared that painful recurrence to foregone doubt which torments feebler minds. Lord Aberdeen habitually looked at objects and events through a more gloomy atmosphere. Palmerston, Sir Henry also tells us, had a wonderful power of mastering bodily pain, and would work almost without abatement under a fit of the gout which would have sent other men groaning to their couches. But though he had little consideration for his own infirmities, he was filled with tender solicitude for his friends when they were in sickness or distress. His correspondence with his brother are full of anxious inquiries and affectionate recollections; while a letter of advice to Lord Shaftesbury, who had fallen into pecuniary difficulties through the dishonesty of his steward, which is preserved in Mr. Hodder's life of that great philanthropist, proves Palmerston to have possessed a delicacy and refinement of sympathy with those to whom he was attached, for which the outside world would have been slow to give him credit.

His hearty, jovial conversation and deportment, "the Ha! Ha! style," as an observer in the House of Commons called it, which appears, according to Mr. Kinglake, to have been considered not quite correct by the denizens of the Whig Olympus, also made him extremely popular with servants and peasantry. A pleasant anecdote has been recorded of a visit paid by him in 1863 to an old woman named Peggie Forbes,

who had been a servant at Dugald Stewart's in 1801, and of her production of a box of tools, the property of young Maister Henry,' which she had preserved from her affection for him.

His faults, like his virtues, lay rather near the surface; but as the chief of them, flippancy and a certain measure of unscrupulousness, will frequently be exposed in the events of his public life, it is unnecessary to sermonize on them. And as secondhand descriptions of character are flat and unprofitable when the originals are obtainable, it will be enough to add, before quitting the topic, the evidence as to Lord Palmerston's many virtues given by his best friend Lord Shaftesbury, on the occasion of his death. "I lose," wrote Lord Shaftesbury, "a man who, I knew, esteemed and loved me far beyond every other man living. He showed it in every action of his heart, in every expression of his lips, in private and in public, as a man and as a minister. His society was infinitely agreeable to me; and I admired, every day more, his patriotism, his simplicity of purpose, his indefatigable spirit, his unfailing good humour, his kindness of heart, his prompt, tender, and active consideration for others in the midst of his heaviest toils and anxieties." He was a fine specimen of the English gentleman, and of the long list of his illustrious contemporaries had perhaps most in common with Lord Derby, whom he equalled in Parliamentary courage and excelled in tenacity, though he was inferior to him in oratory and classical culture.

Such was Lord Palmerston, the man, throughout his life, and such was Lord Palmerston the statesman, down to the year 1827, when the illness of the Premier dissolved the Liverpool ministry. He stood, as Lord

Dalling points out, almost alone, belonging to none of the particular sections into which the House of Commons. was divided; indeed, throughout his career he was a parliamentary Ishmaelite, and his intimate friends were. almost exclusively non-political. On most subjects, particularly on the question of Catholic Emancipation,* he was in sympathy with Canning, and afterwards accepted with pride the title of Canningite; but he had little personal connection with that statesman, and did not follow him out of office. His contempt for the Eldonite section of the party, "the stupid old Tory party, who bawl out the memory and praises of Mr. Pitt, while they are opposing all the measures and principles which he held most important," was infinite. The Chancellor was to him-in his correspondence-an "old woman," Liverpool a "spooney," Westmoreland an "ignoramus," Bathurst a "stumped-up old Tory." Some of them repaid him in kind. About eight months before the dissolution of 1826, he found that he was to be opposed at Cambridge, where he had been returned since 1811, by two of his own colleagues, Copley (afterwards Lord Lyndhurst), the Attorney-General, and Goulburn, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, both, of course, anti-Catholics. A most laborious canvas was thereby entailed, during which Palmerston had to contend with all the influence that Lord Eldon, Bathurst, and the Duke of York could bring to bear upon him. In the end he triumphed, for though Copley headed the poll, Palmerston beat Goulburn by 192. "This," he

The day is fast approaching," he wrote to his brother in 1826, "as it seems to me, when this matter will be settled as it must be." He had constantly voted for Catholic Emancipation from 1812 onwards and in 1813 made a clever speech on the subject, basing his support of the measure on grounds, not of right, but of political expediency.

writes in his autobiography, "was the first decided step towards a breach between me and the Tories, and they were the aggressors."

Several incidents of importance, more or less intimately connected with his business at the War Office, mark this period of Palmerston's life. In 1815 and 1818, he visited France and recorded his observations in journals, of which extracts have since been published. Written when the memories of great events were fresh in the minds of those with whom he came in contact, they arc full of interest, and the Secretary at War's own remarks are well worth perusal. His estimate of the relative merits of the allied armies is striking:—

Our men certainly do not look so smart and uniform in a body as the Prussians and Russians, but still they have a more soldier-like air; they look more like business and fighting. The foreign troops look like figures cut out of card, ours like a collection of living men; the former move like machines, ours without any irregularity or break, yet bear the appearance of individual vigour. Their men

seem to depend entirely on each other, ours look as if they moved independently, and yet with equal uniformity, as a mass. In short, one marks a character of individual energy about our people which one does not see in theirs.

A still more critical event occurred to Lord Palmerston in the spring of the year in which he paid his second visit to France. On the 8th of April, as he was ascending the stairs at the War Office, he was shot at by Lieutenant Davies, of the 62nd Regiment. Davies had written two letters to the Secretary at War, requesting an interview; but they were so evidently the work of a madman, that the request was refused. A slight wound on the back was the only result, and the man, who was defended on his trial at Lord Palmerston's expense, was consigned to Bedlam.

When, on the retirement of Lord Liverpool in 1827,