ton he was called Miss Crawley; and there, I am sorry to say, his
younger brother Rawdon used to lick him violently. But though his
parts were not brilliant, he made up for his lack of talent by
meritorious industry, and was never known, during eight years at
school, to be subject to that punishment which it is generally thought
none but a cherub can escape.

At college his career was of course highly creditable. And here he
prepared himself for public life, into which he was to be introduced by
the patronage of his grandfather, Lord Binkie, by studying the ancient
and modern orators with great assiduity, and by speaking unceasingly at
the debating societies. But though he had a fine flux of words, and
delivered his little voice with great pomposity and pleasure to
himself, and never advanced any sentiment or opinion which was not
perfectly trite and stale, and supported by a Latin quotation; yet he
failed somehow, in spite of a mediocrity which ought to have insured
any man a success. He did not even get the prize poem, which all his
friends said he was sure of.

After leaving college he became Private Secretary to Lord Binkie, and
was then appointed Attache to the Legation at Pumpernickel, which post
he filled with perfect honour, and brought home despatches, consisting
of Strasburg pie, to the Foreign Minister of the day. After remaining
ten years Attache (several years after the lamented Lord Binkie's
demise), and finding the advancement slow, he at length gave up the
diplomatic service in some disgust, and began to turn country gentleman.

He wrote a pamphlet on Malt on returning to England (for he was an
ambitious man, and always liked to be before the public), and took a
strong part in the Negro Emancipation question. Then he became a
friend of Mr. Wilberforce's, whose politics he admired, and had that
famous correspondence with the Reverend Silas Hornblower, on the
Ashantee Mission. He was in London, if not for the Parliament session,
at least in May, for the religious meetings. In the country he was a
magistrate, and an active visitor and speaker among those destitute of
religious instruction. He was said to be paying his addresses to Lady
Jane Sheepshanks, Lord Southdown's third daughter, and whose sister,
Lady Emily, wrote those sweet tracts, "The Sailor's True Binnacle," and
"The Applewoman of Finchley Common."

Miss Sharp's accounts of his employment at Queen's Crawley were not
caricatures. He