t in England, and he took a keen interest in it. A
love of sumptuous, large-paper editions was indeed one of the very few
luxuries in which from mere personal taste he greatly indulged. Like
all men of literary tastes he had his limitations. German was a closed
book to him. Theology and metaphysics were conspicuous by their
absence. He was certainly not drawn to the mystical, the
unintelligible, or the morbid, either in imaginative or speculative
literature, and although he was a great lover and great buyer of
water-colour pictures, I do not think he had much real sense or
knowledge of art. But he had read very extensively and with great
profit and discrimination in many widely different fields, and his
memory was unusually retentive. He was an excellent literary critic,
and if clear thought and accurate knowledge were what he most valued,
it would be a complete mistake to suppose that he was insensible to
the poetic and imaginative side of literature. He could repeat long
passages from 'Childe Harold,' and I can well remember the delight
which he took in the picturesque narrative of Mr. Froude, and in the
fiery verses of Sir Alfred Lyall.

He was one of the kindest and most gracious of hosts, and his genuine
unforced good nature and good humour drew to him many whose tastes and
sympathies were widely different from his own. Nature certainly never
intended him for a sportsman, but he preserved game extensively and
until the last years of his life usually went out with his guests. 'I
rather like shooting,' he once said to me, 'it prevents the necessity
of general conversation.' Among kindred spirits, however, his own
conversation was eminently attractive. His wide knowledge both of
books and men, his vast range of political anecdote, his experience of
so many statesmen and offices and departments of life, made it
singularly instructive. He was a very shrewd, and at the same time a
very kind, judge of character; and he had a power, which is certainly
not common, of fully appreciating merits that are allied with great
and manifest defects. He had much quaint, dry humour, and a great
happiness of expression; and one always felt that his opinions were
genuinely thought out--that they were voices and not echoes. His
private conversation had the quality that I have noticed in his
public speeches, of grasping at once the essential elements of a
question and disencumbering it from accessories and details. It is one
of the quali