ish for that
'knowledge of Ireland' so popularly sought after in our day, and which
displays itself so profusely in platform speeches and letters to the Times.
Lockwood, not impossibly, would have said it was 'to do a bit of walking'
he had come. He had gained eight pounds by that indolent Phoenix-Park life
he was leading, and he had no fancy to go back to Leicestershire too heavy
for his cattle. He was not--few hunting men are--an ardent fisherman; and
as for the vexed question of Irish politics, he did not see why he was
to trouble his head to unravel the puzzles that were too much for Mr.
Gladstone; not to say, that he felt to meddle with these matters was like
interfering with another man's department. 'I don't suspect,' he would
say, 'I should fancy John Bright coming down to "stables" and dictating
to me how my Irish horses should be shod, or what was the best bit for
a "borer."' He saw, besides, that the game of politics was a game of
compromises: something was deemed admirable now that had been hitherto
almost execrable; and that which was utterly impossible to-day, if done
last year would have been a triumphant success, and consequently he
pronounced the whole thing an 'imposition and a humbug.' 'I can understand
a right and a wrong as well as any man,' he would say, 'but I know nothing
about things that are neither or both, according to who's in or who's out
of the Cabinet. Give me the command of twelve thousand men, let me divide
them into three flying columns, and if I don't keep Ireland quiet, draft
me into a West Indian regiment, that's all.' And as to the idea of issuing
special commissions, passing new Acts of Parliament, or suspending old
ones, to do what he or any other intelligent soldier could do without any
knavery or any corruption, 'John Bright might tell us,' but he couldn't.
And here it may be well to observe that it was a favourite form of speech
with him to refer to this illustrious public man in this familiar manner;
but always to show what a condition of muddle and confusion must ensue if
we followed the counsels that name emblematised; nor did he know a more
cutting sarcasm to reply to an adversary than when he had said, 'Oh, John
Bright would agree with you,' or, 'I don't think John Bright could go
further.'

Of a very different stamp was his companion. He was a young gentleman whom
we cannot more easily characterise than by calling him, in the cant of the
day, 'of the period.' He was essen