h disorder in Ireland. Himself not
only the kindest, but also the most just and judicially-minded of men,
he feared that a maudlin and misplaced sentimentalism would destroy the
more virile elements in the national character. "I should like," he
said, in words which must not, of course, be taken too literally, "a
little more fierceness and honest brutality in the national
temperament." His heart went out, in a manner which is only possible to
those who have watched them closely at work, to those Englishmen,
whether soldiers or civilians, who, but little known and even at times
depreciated by their own countrymen, are carrying the fame, the glory,
the justice and humanity of England to the four quarters of the globe.

The roving Englishman (he said) is the salt of English land....
Only those who go out of this civilised country, to see the rough
work on the frontiers and in the far lands, properly understand
what our men are like and can do.... They cannot manage a
steam-engine, but they can drive restive and ill-trained horses
over rough roads.

He felt--and as one who has humbly dabbled in literature at the close of
an active political life, I can fully sympathise with him--that "when
one has once taken a hand in the world's affairs, literature is like
rowing in a picturesque reach of the Thames after a bout in the open
sea." Yet, in the case of Lyall, literature was not a matter of mere
academic interest. "His incessant study was history." He thought, with
Lord Acton, that an historical student should be "a politician with his
face turned backwards." His mind was eminently objective. He was for
ever seeking to know the causes of things; and though far too observant
to push to extreme lengths analogies between the past and the present,
he nevertheless sought, notably in the history of Imperial Rome, for any
facts or commentaries gleaned from ancient times which might be of
service to the modern empire of which he was so justly proud, and in the
foundation of which the splendid service of which he was an illustrious
member had played so conspicuous a part. "I wonder," he wrote in 1901,
"how far the Roman Empire profited by high education."

Lyall was by nature a poet. Sir Mortimer Durand says, truly enough, that
his volume of verses, "if not great poetry, as some hold, was yet true
poetry." Poetic expressions, in fact, bubbled up in his mind almost
unconsciously in dealing with every inci