Under these circumstances, he begged to renew his own suit; he had never ceased to love her, and to marry her would be the crowning happiness of his life. Cadet; and he did it so unhappily by attaching a According to the reasoning of the ordinary mind, it would have been logical for her to accept this proposal; but the ways of woman's heart are as inscrutable as those of Providence, and she declined it, saying that she saw through his base intrigues. What she did do was a shock and a scandal to her friends and acquaintances-she became simply Mrs. Got, and retired forever from the fashionable world as completely as if she had entered the cloistered REMINISCENCES OF FIFTY YEARS. WHETHER or not the public appetite for per- pels have been more or less prominent in the public sonal reminiscences, memoirs, anecdotes, and gossip, is essentially a transient one is, perhaps, an open question, but there can be no doubt that at the present time there is danger of its being surfeited. Every one who has attained to prominence in any department of life seems to feel it incumbent upon him to tell us what he knows and thinks of his contemporaries, and also what he knows and thinks of himself; and as it is given to few men to be a Pepys, an Evelyn, a Walpole, or a Greville, it is not surprising that the mass of such productions are neither so entertaining nor so edifying as to meet the intellectual requirements of even the " snappers-up of unconsidered trifles." In point of fact, symptoms are not wanting of a tendency on the part of these memoirs to degenerate into mere tea-table scandal and gossip, and one might venture often upon the wide waste of current literature without securing such a prize as the Earl of Albemarle's “Fifty Years of my Life." A sheaf of its good things we propose to glean for our readers, but as the interest of the book lies as much in its autobiographical features as in its reminiscences of persons and events, it will be necessary to bind them together with a slender thread of narrative. The first important event in the life of the earl is recorded thus on a fly-leaf of the family Bible: "George Thomas Keppel, born ye 13 June, 1799, christened by the Rev. Croft, July ye 7, 1799, in the parish of Marylebone." He was the third son and fifth child of William Charles Keppel, fourth Earl of Albemarle, who held several important offices of state under George IV. and William IV., and whose genealogy carries us back to a certain Van Keppel, who was in the early part of the twelfth century one of the seven equestrian chiefs or dynasties of the county of Zutphen, in the ancient kingdom of Saxony. The first earl came over to England in the suite of William of Orange, and in each generation from that time to the present the Kep 1 Fifty Years of my Life. By George Thomas, Earl of Albemarle. London: Macmillan & Co. New York: Henry Holt & Co. From advance-sheets. VOL. 1.-3 service of the nation. One of them served with credit under the Duke of Marlborough, and another was the famous Admiral Keppel, who planned the relief of Gibraltar when it was beleaguered by the French and Spanish, and who was elected to Parliament from Windsor against the personal canvass of George III. The dowager Lady de Clifford, who for a long time held the post of governess to the Princess Charlotte of Wales, was the present earl's maternal grandmother, and figures largely in his earlier reminiscences. This lady lived in London, near the house of Mrs. Fitzherbert, the wife, as far as the laws of the Church could make her so, of George, Prince of Wales; and when young Keppel was about six years old, he used to divide his attentions pretty evenly between the two houses, the attraction of the latter being a little lady of his own age who was under the guardianship of Mrs. Fitz| herbert: "By my little_hostess, I had the honor of being presented to the Prince of Wales, afterward George IV. His appearance and manners were both of a nature to produce a lively impression on the mind of a child-a merry, good-humored man, tall, though somewhat portly in stature, in the prime of life, with laughing eyes, pouting lips, and nose which, very slightly turned up, gave a peculiar poignancy to the expression of his face. He wore a well-powdered wig, adorned with a profusion of curls, which in my innocence I believed to be his own hair, as I did a very large pig-tail appended thereto. His clothes and buttoned up to the chin. His nether garments fitted him like a glove; his coat was single-breasted were leather pantaloons and Hessian boots. Round his throat was a huge white neckcloth of many folds, out of which his chin seemed always struggling to emerge. No sooner was his royal highness seated jump up on one of his knees, to which she seemed in his arm-chair than my young companion would to claim a prescriptive right. Straightway would arise an animated talk between 'Pruiny' and 'Munrie,' as they respectively called each other. As my father was in high favor with the prince at this time, I was occasionally admitted to the spare knee, and to a share in the conversation, if conversation it could be called, in which all were talkers and none listeners." REESE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY CALIFORNIA Keppel's father was a leading member of the Whig party, and in 1806, our chronicler being then in his eighth year, he went with his two little sons to pass the Easter holidays with Charles James Fox, the great Whig statesman, at St. Anne's Hill, Chertsey. The following reminiscences of Fox refer to that visit, and are highly interesting: "It was at the time of our visit that the symptoms of dropsy, the disease of which Fox died a few months later, began to show themselves. His legs were so swollen that he could not walk; he used to wheel himself about in what was called a 'Merlin chair;' indeed, out of this chair I never remember to have seen him. "A party of Holkham shooters were one day driven home by a heavy rain. Fox did not arrive till some time after the rest; he had fallen in with one of Mr. Coke's laboring-men, who had come for shelter under the same tree. The statesman became so interested in the society of the ploughman, who gave him an account of the system of turnip-husbandry' just come into vogue, that he had great difficulty in tearing himself away. "At my father's table one evening the conversation turned upon the relative merits of different kinds of wine. Port, claret, burgundy, were criticised in turn, but Fox, who considered alcohol the test of excellence, said, 'Which is the best sort of wine I leave you to judge; all I know is that no sort of wine is bad.'” "In many respects his personal appearance at this time differed but little from that assigned to When about nine years of age, young Keppel him in the many prints and pictures still extant of was taken from the private tutors who had hitherto him. There were still the well-formed nose and had his education in charge, and sent to Westminster mouth, and the same manly, open, benevolent countenance. But his face had lost that swarthy appear-mode of life at that famous seminary, and none of public school. He draws a lively picture of the ance which in the caricatures of the day had obtained for him the name of Niger:' it was very pale. His eyes, though watery, twinkled with fun and good-humor. The 'thick black beard of true British stuff' had become like that of Hamlet's father, 'a sable silvered.' He wore a single-breasted coat of a light-gray color, with plated buttons as large as half-crowns; a thick linsey-woolsey waistcoat, sage-colored breeches, dark worsted stockings, and gouty shoes coming over the ankles. "Fox was not visible of a morning. He either transacted the business of his office, or was occupied in it, or reading Greek plays, or French fairy tales, of which last species of literature I have heard my father say he was particularly fond. "At one o'clock was the children's dinner. We used to assemble in the dining-room; Fox was wheeled in at the same moment for his daily basin of soup. That meal dispatched, he was for the rest of the day the exclusive property of us children, and we all adjourned to the garden for our game at trapball. All was now noise and merriment. Our host, the youngest among us, laughed, chaffed, and chatted, the whole time. As he could not walk, he of course had the innings, we the bowling and fagging out; with what glee would he send the ball into the bushes in order to add to his score, and how shamelessly would he wrangle with us whenever we fairly bowled him out! "Fox had been a very keen sportsman-too keen to be a successful one. In his eagerness he would not unfrequently put the shot into the gun before the powder. Bob Jeffs, the Elden gamekeeper (an heirloom of the admiral's), was fond of telling me how he once marked down a woodcock, and went to the hall with intelligence. It was breakfast-time. Up started Fox from the untasted meal, and gun in hand followed the keeper. A hat thrown into the bush flushed the game, the bird escaped scot-free, but Jeff's hat was blown to pieces. "One hot September morning Fox set out from Holkham, fully anticipating a good day's sport at Egmere, Mr. Coke's best partridge-beat. As was usual with sportsmen in those days, he started at daylight. Just as the family were sitting down to breakfast, Fox was seen staggering home. Not ill, I hope, Charles?' inquired his host. 'No,' was the reply, only a little tipsy.' Being thirsty, he had asked the tenant of Egmere for a bowl of milk, and was too easily persuaded to add thereto a certain, or rather an uncertain, quantity of rum. a consequence, he passed the rest of the day in bed, instead of in the turnip-field. As his sketches is more striking than the account which he gives of that brutal system of "fagging" which seems so strange an anomaly to every one except Englishmen themselves. The following is a sample of a day's work during this his period of servitude : "I rose as the day broke, hurried on my clothes, brushed those of my master, cleaned several pairs of his shoes, went to the pump in Great Dean's Yard for hard water for his teeth, and to the cistern at Mother Grant's for soft water for his hands and face, passed the rest of the time till eight in my own hasty ablutions, or in conning over my morning school-lesson. "Nine to ten.-Out for my breakfast, or rather for my master's breakfast. I had to bring up his tea-things, to make his toast, etc. My own meal was a very hasty affair. "Ten to twelve.-In school. "Twelve to one.-In the usher's correcting-room preparing for afternoon lessons. "One to two.-Dinner in the hall-a sort of rollcall-absence a punishable offense, the food execrable. Two to five.-Evening school. Five to six.-Buying bread, butter, milk, and eggs, for the great man's tea, and preparing that meal. "Six to the following morning.-Locked up at Mother Grant's till bedtime; fagging of a miscellaneous character. "I had borne this description of drudgery for about a fortnight, when, without weighing the consequences-remember, reader, I was not nine years old-I determined to strike work. Instead, therefore, of preparing tea as usual, I slipped behind one of the maids into the coal-cellar, and there lay perdu for a couple of hours. I was at length dragged out of my hiding-place and delivered over to the fury of my tealess master. He made me stand at attention, with my little fingers on the seam of my trousers, like a soldier at drill. He then felled me to the ground by a swinging buckhorse on my right check. I rose up stupefied, and was made to resume my former position, and received a second floorer. I know not how often I underwent this ordeal, but I remember going to bed with a racking headache, and being unable to put in an appearance next morning at school." 1" Buckhorse," in Westminster language, a blow on the cheek with the open hand. The most entertaining reminiscences of this period of his career are those relating to the youthful Princess Charlotte of Wales, of whom, as we have already said, his grandmother was governess. He first made her acquaintance shortly after entering school, in 1808: "It was on a Saturday, a Westminster half-holiday. From this time forth for the next three years many of my Saturdays and Sundays were passed in her company. She had just completed her twelfth year. Her complexion was rather pale. She had blue eyes, and that peculiarly blond hair which was characteristic rather of her German than of her English descent. Her features were regular, her face, which was oval, had not that fullness which later took off somewhat from her good looks. Her form was slender, but of great symmetry; her hands and feet were beautifully shaped. When excited she stuttered painfully. Her manners were free from the slightest affectation; they rather erred in the opposite extreme. She was an excellent actress whenever there was anything to call forth her imitative power. One of her fancies was to ape the manners of a man. On these occasions she would double her fists, and assume an attitude of defense that would have done credit to a professed pugilist. What I disliked in her, when in this mood, was her fondness for exercising her hands upon me in their clinched form. She was excessively violent in her disposition, but easily appeased, very warm-hearted, and never so happy as when doing a kindness. Unlike her grandmothers, the Duchess of Brunswick and the Queen of England, she was generous to excess. There was scarcely a member of my family upon whom she did not bestow gifts. From Princess Charlotte I received my first watch; from her, too, my first pony, an ugly but thoroughly good little animal, which, from its habits of forging' in the trot I named Humphrey Clinker.' Poor old Humphrey! He did good service to the younger members of the family after I reached man's estate. In speaking of the openhandedness of the princess, I must not omit to mention sundry tips,' which I hardly think I should have accepted had I understood how near-our relative stations considered-her poverty was akin to my own." On Saturdays young Keppel was generally the guest of the princess. The Sundays she used to spend either at his grandmother's villa at Paddington, or at his father's house in Brompton. To quote again : "Once outside her own gates, the princess was like a bird escaped from a cage, or rather like Sir Boyle Roche's bird-'in two places at once.' Into whatsoever house she entered she would fly from top to bottom, one moment in the garret, and almost in the same moment in the kitchen. Lady de Clifford had a cook of the name of Durham, quite an artiste in her way. The Prince of Wales, who occasionally honored Lady de Clifford with his company at dinner, used to flatter grandmamma by asking her how she could afford to keep'a man-cook. One day, however, at the hour of luncheon things went ill; the dowager's bell rang violently. The mutton-chop was so ill-dressed, and so well-peppered, as to be uneatable. On inquiry it was discovered that the good old lady's royal charge had acted as cook, and her favorite grandson as scullery-maid. I have a living witness to this mutton-chop scene in the person of my kinsman, Dr. Thomas Garnier, Dean of Winchester, who assures me, through my sister, Lady Caroline Garnier, that I said, 'A pretty queen you'll make!' I do not remember this flippant speech, but the frank, hearty manner of the princess made it difficult for her young associates to preserve the decorum due to her station. On the occasion of another of these visits to Earl's Court, the two playmates were participants in a still more serious escapade. The princess had come this time in her own carriage, and the scarlet liveries attracted to the entrance-gate a crowd of people, anxious to get a glimpse of the heiress-presumptive to the throne: "Soon after her arrival at Earl's Court I happened to pass outside the gates. I was asked by the bystanders, 'Where is the princess? I told her how desirous the people were to have a sight of her. They shall soon have that pleasure,' was the reply. Slipping out of the garden-gate into the road, she ran in among the crowd from the rear, and appeared more anxious than any one to have a peep at the princess. I would fain have stopped her, but she was in boisterous spirits, and would have her own way; she proceeded to the stable-entrance, saddled and bridled my father's hack herself, and, armed with the groom's heavy riding-whip, led the animal through She now told me to mount. I, nothing loath, obeyed. the subterranean passage to the garden gravel-walk. But before I could grasp the reins, or get my feet through the stirrup-leathers, she gave the horse a tremendous cut with the whip on the hind-quarters. rather on his neck, holding on by the mane, and Off set the animal at full gallop, I on his back, or roaring lustily. The noise only quickened his pace. drawing-room windows, when the brute threw his I clung on till I came to the plot in front of the heels in the air, and sent me flying over his head. At the same moment the princess emerged from the rose-bushes, panting for breath. She had hoped, by making a short cut, to intercept the horse and its the whole family on to the lawn. Of course, the rider before they came into view. My cries brought princess got a tremendous scolding from Lady de Clifford. enough. Unluckily for her, up came my father, in That she was used to, and took coolly whose good graces she was desirous to stand high. By looks rather than words he expressed his disapprobation. In a short time quiet was restored, and my people returned to the house. But no sooner riding-whip was once more put into requisition, and were the princess and I alone again than the heavy she treated my father's son exactly as she had just been treating my father's horse." Warwick House, the residence of the princess, was so short a distance from Westminster School that in the summer months young Keppel frequently, as he says, made it "a skip out of bounds:" "I fear there was too much of cupboard love' in these visits, for I was blessed with an excellent appetite, and Mother Grant's food was execrable.. The princess, aware of this, used to bring me sandwiches of her own making. I once took it into my head that I must needs have a sharer in the good fare. So I took with me my chief crony, Robert Tyrwhitt, a gentleman still living, whose name in more recent times has been frequently before the public as chief-magistrate of Bow Street. As I was a privileged person at Warwick House, I passed with my companion unquestioned by the porter's lodge, and through a small door which opened from the court-yard into the garden. The princess greeted us with a hearty welcome. In the garden was a swing into which Princess Charlotte stepped, and I set it in motion. Unfortunately, it came in contact with Bob Tyrwhitt's mouth and knocked him over. He forthwith set up a hideous howl. Out_came sub-governess, page, dressers, and footman. Before they reached us, the princess had descended from the swing, had assumed an air of offended dignity, and was found lecturing me on the extreme impropriety of my conduct in bringing a boy into her garden without her privity and consent. The marvel is, how she or I could keep our countenance." It was his irrepressible propensity for such and similar escapades that finally put an end both to his association with the princess and to his school-days at Westminster. Being detected in a particularly flagrant breach of rules, the head-master of the school, instead of resorting to the familiar expedient of the rod, wrote to the Earl of Albemarle, dissuading him from thinking any further of a learned profession for his son, and recommending him to choose one in which physical rather than mental exertion would be a requisite. The earl acted upon this advice, and ere he was yet sixteen our chronicler had "put away childish things" and become ensign in the Fourteenth Regiment of Foot. Almost immediately upon his appointment he was ordered to Flanders, to join the army which the allies were mustering to confront the Emperor Napoleon, who had just then thrown Europe into consternation by the return from Elba. He participated in the whole of the "Hundred Days' Campaign," was in the thickest of the fight at Waterloo, formed part of the advance-guard of Wellington's army in the subsequent march on Paris, and witnessed all the circumstances of the reinstatement of Louis XVIII. His sketch of these momentous events is graphic and animated, but there is nothing at once fresh enough and brief enough for quotation except, perhaps, the following "incident" of the Wa terloo battle: "As we were performing this movement (advancing to fill a gap in the line caused by the drawing off of the Guards for the defense of Hougoumont) a bugler of the Fifty-first, who had been out with skirmishers, and had mistaken our square for his own, exclaimed, 'Here I am again, safe enough.' The words were scarcely out of his mouth when a round shot took off his head and spattered the whole battalion with his brains, the colors and the ensigns in charge of them coming in for an extra share. One of them, Charles Fraser, a fine gentleman in speech and manner, raised a laugh by drawling out, How extremely disgusting!' A second shot carried off six of the men's bayonets, a third broke the breastbone of a lance-sergeant (Robinson), whose piteous cries were anything but encouraging to his youthful comrades. The soldier's belief that every bullet has his billet' was strengthened by another shot striking Ensign Cooper, the shortest man in the regiment, and in the very centre of the square. These casualties were the affair of a second. We were now ordered to lie down. Our square, hardly large enough to hold us when standing upright, was too small for us in a recumbent position. Our men lay packed together like herrings in a barrel. Not finding a vacant spot, I seated myself on a drum. Behind me was the colonel's charger, which, with his head pressed against mine, was mumbling my epaulet; while I patted his cheek. Suddenly my drum capsized, and I was thrown prostrate, with the feel ing of a blow on the right cheek. I put my hand to my head, thinking half my face was shot away. but the skin was not even abraded. A piece of shell had struck the horse on the nose exactly between my hand and my head, and killed him instantly. The blow I received was from the embossed crown on the horse's bit." On the final cessation of hostilities, Ensign Keppel returned with his regiment to England, and shortly afterward the battalion to which he belonged was ordered to the Ionian Islands. Previous to em barkation, he was granted a few weeks' leave of absence, during which he saw for the last time his old playmate, the Princess Charlotte : with the approaching marriage of the Princess Char"The public was at this time wholly engrossed lotte. A short time before the wedding, her royal highness went in state to the Chapel Royal. On that same morning I went to the peers' seat in the chapel, and could not resist looking furtively up at the royal pew. It was five years since I had seen the lapse of time had wrought in her. princess. I wished to observe what changes that In form she was considerably altered, but a glance showed me that in other respects she was the same princess whose playmate I had the honor of being in my under-school days. She knew me immediately, and from under the shade of her hands, which were joined together telegraphic signals of recognition in her own peculiar over her face as she knelt, she made me sundry manner. The moment the service was over I rushed to the corner of St. James's Street to see her pass. She kissed her hand to me as she drove by, and continued doing so till her carriage turned into Warher, I could see her hand waving from the window. wick Street. Up to the moment that I lost sight of I saw her for the last time. When, after an absence of eighteen months, I returned to England, the flags of the ships in the Channel were hung half-mast high, and the whole nation was mourning for her, whom it had fondly looked upon as its future queen." of training that would have enabled him to appreciThe young ensign had hardly received the kind ate the peculiar charms of the "Isles of Greece," and the record of his Mediterranean service presents nothing of special interest. On his return, he was appointed to an ensigncy in the Twenty-second Regiment of Foot, the headquarters of which were then located at the Mauritius, and thither he repaired. In returning to England with his regiment in 1819, he touched at St. Helena, where Napoleon was then nearing the close of his bitter exile, and he gives no flattering sketch of Sir Hudson Lowe, Napoleon's keeper. Early in 1820 he was appointed Honorable Equerry to his royal highness the Duke of Sussex, and during the next few months his life was that of a gentleman about town. In August of this year occurred the trial of Queen Caroline, and Keppel's connection with the duke procured him "admission behind the throne, and occasionally to a seat among the queen's law-advisers," so that he was both an eye and ear witness of all the Unfortuprincipal events in that celebrated cause. nately, his account of it is too long to quote, but here is his description of the first appearance of the queen : "Denman, as solicitor-general of the queen, was Dorien Marchese di Spineto. In all the examinaaddressing the House, on the morning of August tions Brougham would insist upon addressing him as 18th, against the principle of the Pains and Penal-Marquis,' implying that he held him to be equal in ties Bill, when a confused sound of drums, trumpets, social position with peers bearing a like title." and human voices, announced the approach of the The subsequent years of our chronicler's career queen. Beams a foot square had been thrown across the street between St. Margaret's Church and the need not be sketched in detail. In 1821 he was orCourt of King's Bench; but this barrier her majes-dered to India, and became aide-de-camp to Lord ty's admirers dashed through with as much ease as if they had been formed of reeds, and accompanied her majesty to the entrance of the House. She was received at the threshold by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, Usher of the Black Rod. The queen had known him while she was living under her husband's roof. 'Well, Sir Thomas,' she is reported to have said, 'what is your master trying me for? Is it for intermarrying with a man whose first wife I knew to be alive?' "The peers rose as the queen entered, and remained standing until she took her seat in a crimson and gilt chair, immediately in front of her counsel. Her appearance was anything but prepossessing. She wore a black dress with a high ruff, an unbecoming gypsy hat with a huge bow in the front, the whole surmounted with a plume of ostrich-feathers. Nature had given her light hair, blue eyes, a fair complexion, and a good-humored expression of countenance; but these characteristics were marred by painted eyebrows, and by a black wig with a profusion of curls, which overshadowed her cheeks, and gave a bold, defiant air to her features." The following extract is from a letter (dated August 21st) by the then Earl of Albemarle, who, as a peer, was one of the queen's judges: "When the first witness was called in, the queen stood up close to him. She threw her veil completely back, held her body very backward, and placed both her arms at her sides. In this posture she stared furiously at him for some seconds; there was a dead silence, and she screamed out, 'Theodore !' in the most frantic manner, and rushed violently out of the House. It appeared to me a paroxysm of madThe witness was then examined, and there is left a strong case against her. I think she is insane, for her manner to-day chilled my blood. She appeared no more to-day, nor can we guess what she ness. will do to-morrow." This anecdote of Brougham is from Keppel's own account: "While Brougham was cross-examining this same Theodore Majocchi, he was interrupted by some peer making a remark: Looking in the direction whence the sound proceeded, he fixed a withering glance on Lord Exmouth, who had been previously examining witnesses against the queen with all the zeal of a counsel for the prosecution. The expression of Brougham's face at this moment is indescribable; his eyes flashed with real or pretended fury, while his nose, to which Nature had given such an extraordinary motive-power, seemed by its contortions to sympathize with the resentment of its owner. The noble and gallant admiral claimed the protection of the House from the insulting gaze of the learned counsel; but he got no redress, and cross-examination was resumed amid a suppressed titter at the expense of the captor of Algiers. Throughout the trial it was the evident object of Brougham to express by word, look, and gesture, the contempt he felt for the tribunal which was sitting in judgment upon his client. He even made the interpreter a medium for conveying the feeling. This man was a teacher of Italian-by name Nicolas Hastings, the Governor-General, with whom he was for two years in intimate association, but of whom he has preserved but few reminiscences. In 1824 he returned to England by an overland journey across Arabia, and through Persia and Russia, an account of which he afterward published, under the title of "Overland Journey from India." In 1825 he became a captain; in 1827 a major, unattached; in 1829 he set out for Turkey, and visited the Turkish and Russian armies then confronting each other | along the range of the Balkan; in 1831, published his "Journey across the Balkan;" was elected to Parliament in 1832; and in 1851, on the death of his elder brother, succeeded to the family title as sixth Earl of Albemarle. Few biographical details other than these are given in the later portions of the narrative, and we shall but follow the author's own example in henceforth bestowing less attention upon himself, and more upon his reminiscences of other people. During a portion of 1825 Captain Keppel held an appointment on the personal staff of the Marquis of Wellesley, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and this position brought him into frequent contact with persons who had been acquainted both with "the Wellesley of Mysore and the Wellesley of Assaye." The following reminiscences, gathered then, of the early years of the Duke of Wellington, are curious: "The elder brother, as is well known, after carrying away all the honors of school and university, entered Parliament at an early age, and soon established a character for himself as an orator and statesman. The abilities of Arthur, the younger brother, were of much slower development. The late Earl of Leitrim, who was with him at a small private school in the town of Portarlington, used to speak of him to me as a singularly dull, backward boy. Gleig, late chaplain-general, in his interesting life of the great captain, says that his mother, believing him to be the dunce of the family, not only treated him with indifference, but in some degree neglected his education. At Eton his intellect was rated at a very low standard; his idleness in school-hours not being redeemed, in the eyes of his fellows, by any proficiency in the play-ground. He was a 'dab' at no game; could neither handle a bat nor an oar. As soon as he passed into the remove, it was determined to place him in the 'fool's profession,' as the army in those days was irreverently called. At the military college at Angiers he seemed to have a little more aptitude for studying the art of war than he had shown for the 'Humanities,' but he was still a shy, awkward lad. It is a matter of notoriety that he was refused a collectorship of customs on the ground of his incompetency for the duties; and I have reason to believe that a letter is now extant from Lord Mornington (afterward Lord Wellesley) to Lord Camden, declining a commission for his brother Arthur, in the army, on the same grounds. When he became aide-de-camp to Lord Westmoreland, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, his acquaint |