othing about
Ireland! Now, it might be carelessly imagined that here was one of those
essentials very easily supplied. Any man frequenting club-life or dining
out in town could have safely pledged himself to tell off a score or two
of eligible Viceroys, so far as this qualification went. The Minister,
however, wanted more than mere ignorance: he wanted that sort of
indifference on which a character for impartiality could so easily be
constructed. Not alone a man unacquainted with Ireland, but actually
incapable of being influenced by an Irish motive or affected by an Irish
view of anything.

Good-luck would have it that he met such a man at dinner. He was an
ambassador at Constantinople, on leave from his post, and so utterly dead
to Irish topics as to be uncertain whether O'Donovan Rossa was a Fenian
or a Queen's Counsel, and whether he whom he had read of as the 'Lion of
Judah' was the king of beasts or the Archbishop of Tuam!

The Minister was pleased with his new acquaintance, and talked much to him,
and long. He talked well, and not the less well that his listener was a
fresh audience, who heard everything for the first time, and with all the
interest that attaches to a new topic. Lord Danesbury was, indeed, that
'sheet of white paper' the head of the Cabinet had long been searching for,
and he hastened to inscribe him with the characters he wished.

'You must go to Ireland for me, my lord,' said the Minister. 'I have met
no one as yet so rightly imbued with the necessities of the situation. You
must be our Viceroy.'

Now, though a very high post and with great surroundings, Lord Danesbury
had no desire to exchange his position as an ambassador, even to become a
Lord-Lieutenant. Like most men who have passed their lives abroad, he grew
to like the ways and habits of the Continent. He liked the easy indulgences
in many things, he liked the cosmopolitanism that surrounds existence, and
even in its littleness is not devoid of a certain breadth; and best of all
he liked the vast interests at stake, the large questions at issue, the
fortunes of states, the fate of dynasties! To come down from the great
game, as played by kings and kaisers, to the small traffic of a local
government wrangling over a road-bill, or disputing over a harbour, seemed
too horrible to confront, and he eagerly begged the Minister to allow him
to return to his post, and not risk a hard-earned reputation on a new and
untried career.

'It is p