tially the most recent product of the age
we live in. Manly enough in some things, he was fastidious in others to
the very verge of effeminacy; an aristocrat by birth and by predilection,
he made a parade of democratic opinions. He affected a sort of Crichtonism
in the variety of his gifts, and as linguist, musician, artist, poet, and
philosopher, loved to display the scores of things he might be, instead of
that mild, very ordinary young gentleman that he was. He had done a little
of almost everything: he had been in the Guards, in diplomacy, in the House
for a brief session, had made an African tour, written a pleasant little
book about the Nile, with the illustrations by his own hand. Still he was
greater in promise than performance. There was an opera of his partly
finished; a five-act comedy almost ready for the stage; a half-executed
group he had left in some studio in Rome, showed what he might have done
in sculpture. When his distinguished relative the Marquis of Danesbury
recalled him from his post as secretary of legation in Italy, to join him
at his Irish seat of government, the phrase in which he invited him to
return is not without its significance, and we give it as it occurred in
the context: 'I have no fancy for the post they have assigned me, nor is
it what I had hoped for. They say, however, I shall succeed here. _Nous
verrons_. Meanwhile, I remember your often remarking, "There is a great
game to be played in Ireland." Come over at once, then, and let me have a
talk with you over it. I shall manage the question of your leave by making
you private secretary for the moment. We shall have many difficulties, but
Ireland will be the worst of them. Do not delay, therefore, for I shall
only go over to be sworn in, etc., and return for the third reading of the
Church Bill, and I should like to see you in Dublin (and leave you there)
when I go.'

Except that they were both members of the viceregal household, and English
by birth, there was scarcely a tie between these very dissimilar natures;
but somehow the accidents of daily life, stronger than the traits of
disposition, threw them into intimacy, and they agreed it would be a good
thing 'to see something of Ireland'; and with this wise resolve they had
set out on that half-fishing excursion, which, having taken them over
the Westmeath lakes, now was directing them to the Shannon, but with an
infirmity of purpose to which lack of sport and disastrous weather we