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Rh thinks of him as a politician, of his want of success and happiness in politics, and affirms that he was a disappointed man. Milnes was at different times a candidate for public employment. As he spoke French and was a familiar friend of the House of Orleans and its chief adherents, he would have liked to be First Secretary at Paris. He was even more persuaded of his claim to represent the Foreign Office in the House of Commons, and there is no doubt that he was wounded when the place was given to a man who must be described as his personal enemy. Ten years later he got up Irish questions, expecting to be sent to Ireland, but Palmerston only offered him a junior lordship. Afterwards he thought that a blunder was committed when he was not made an Alabama Commissioner. Although he had neither the craving for office which comes from pride and greed, nor the legitimate ambition to carry measures and impress opinions, he thought it stupid of Peel to imagine that a poet is unfitted for politics. When Palmerston had few personal adherents Milnes was one of them, but by October i860 his liking for him "has very much gone off." He consoled himself for his American disappointment by administering much private advice to those who did not send him, and his Liberal feelings became tinged with Imperialism. On the day when Lord Derby, by taking his seat below the gangway, proclaimed his resignation, and there was the smell of gunpowder in the air, he could scarcely contain his exuberant delight. He was firmer in resisting the latter developments of Liberalism than his letters show, and his nightmare took the shape of Mr. Gladstone pursuing him in a hansom. His dread of Socialism and his contempt for the Greeks are recorded here ; but there was also a growing coolness towards the Poles which German sympathies may explain, but which was unexpected in a member of the Polish Committee. For a man whose views were influenced by foreign thought, he was a steady politician, and the wish to be an under-secretary was a modest aspiration in a life so rich and varied that, by common consent, two large volumes can hardly do justice to it.