uties at the Education Office, and the result was
that he had to give up his place. Things began to look serious, when
fortunately Lord Aberdeen, a great friend of his father, found him
some diplomatic employment; and that once found, Morier was in his
element. He was often almost reckless; but while several of his
friends came altogether to grief, he managed always to fall on his
feet and keep afloat while others went down. As an undergraduate he
came to me to read Greek with me, and I confess that with such mistakes
in his Greek papers as [Greek: oi pathoi] instead of [Greek: ta pathe],
I trembled for his examinations. However, he did well in the schools,
knowing how to hide his weak points and how to make the best of his
strong ones. I travelled with him in Germany, and when the
Schleswig-Holstein question arose, he wrote a pamphlet which certainly
might have cost him his diplomatic career. He asked me to allow it to
be understood that the pamphlet, which did full justice to the claims
of Holstein and of Germany, had been written by me. I received many
compliments, which I tried to parry as well as I could. Fortunately
Lord John Russell stood by Morier, and his prophecies did certainly
turn out true. "Don't let the Germans awake from their slumbers and
find a work ready made for them on which they all agree." But the
signatories of the treaty of London did the very thing against which
Morier had raised his warning voice, as the friend of Germany as it
was, though perhaps not of the Germany that was to be. Schleswig-Holstein
_meer-umschlungen_ became the match, (the Schwefel-hoelzchen), that was
to light the fire of German unity, a unity which for a time may not
have been exactly what England could have wished for, but which in the
future will become, we hope, the safety of Europe and the support of
England.

Morier's later advance in his diplomatic career was certainly most
successful. He possessed the very important art of gaining the
confidence of the crowned heads and ministers he had to deal with.
Bismarck, it is true, could not bear him, and tried several times to
trip him up. Even while Morier was at Berlin, as a Secretary of
Legation, Bismarck asked for his removal, but Lord Granville simply
declined to remove a young diplomatist who gave him information on all
parties in Germany, and to do so had to mix with people whom Bismarck
did not approve of. Besides, Morier was always a _persona grata_ with
the Crown