n sufficient to tax the energies of most men, and it
was, I believe, universally acknowledged that it was admirably
administered. In the everyday affairs of practical life he had no
indecision, and he judged swiftly with the clearest of judgments.
Nothing about him was more remarkable than the apparent ease and the
absence of all hurry and confusion with which he could deal with many
different forms of work. His study in its perfect neatness was more
like a lady's boudoir than the workshop of a very busy man. _Ohne
Hast, ohne Rast_, might have been his motto. He had much belief in the
future of English land, and was not, I think, at all exempt from the
great English landlord's foible of adding field to field. In the long
period of agricultural depression it was easy for a rich man to do so.
'In my experience,' he used to say, 'in nine cases out of ten it is
Naboth who comes to Ahab and begs him to buy his vineyard.' Certainly
no one had reason to complain, for there were few better or more
popular landlords than Lord Derby. In many long walks with him through
his property I was always struck with the evident pleasure with which
he was welcomed by his people, the fulness of knowledge and the
kindness of interest with which he inquired into the circumstances of
every tenant. It is characteristic of him that only two days before
his death he was giving instructions for building a hospital for the
sick poor of Knowsley. I have known few men in whom the desire to make
everyone about them happy was so strongly and so clearly marked. He
was fond of looking minutely into the circumstances of men of
different classes, and comparing their wants with their means, often
with somewhat whimsical results. There was a tradesman who made
regularly 5_l._ a week; who was accustomed every week to devote 2_l._
to his household expenses, to lay by 2_l._, and to employ the
remainder in getting drunk. He was, Lord Derby thought, the only man
he had ever known who satisfied all his wants with 40 per cent. of his
income, who always laid by 40 per cent., and who expended 20 per cent.
on his pleasures.

Outside his property Lord Derby had strong county interests. With
perhaps the exception of Birmingham there is no part of England where
a distinctive local patriotism is so intensely developed as in
Lancashire, and Lord Derby in tastes and character was pre-eminently a
Lancashire man, very proud of the greatness, and deeply concerned in
the intere