Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 162.djvu/836

 his patient, and asking, not in the first instance for practical direction as to what to do, but what it was they really saw, and asking it again and again after the repeated rejection of imperfect answers. Lord Ampthill had that speculative tem- perament, so needful to a great diplo- matist, which has no conceit in its own finesse, no delight in reading between the lines for the sake of reading between the lines, of a conversation or a despatch ; for he would rather not have read between the lines at all than read between them a mistaken clue to what they really meant. You often meet in history with wily diplo- matists who are a great deal too wily for success. They impute motives just to show their own finesse. There was noth- ing of this in Lord Ampthill. He had no pride and no delight in his own finesse. He watched and watched, not to show his own subtlety, but to see what those with whom he was negotiating really meant, and he was not in a hurry to invent for them motives and views of which the most Machiavellian of statesmen might have been proud. He was vigilant but not fanciful, not fertile of far-fetched hy- potheses, in construing the character of those with whom he had to deal. There was nothing in him of that over-love of strategy or strategem which has spoiled far more diplomatists than it has served. He did not, of course, take for granted that nothing more was meant than was actually said ; he did not take for granted that the motive for what was actually said was the superficial one ; he did not show anything of the innocence of a man unused to the ways of the world, — all that would have been simplicity, and simplicity quite foreign to his duty. But he was not one of those diplomatists, too astute by far, who put the obvious and ordinary mean- ing out of the question, simply because it is the obvious and ordinary meaning; he did not aim at being able to compliment himself on his own acuteness, but simply at understanding as much as he could both of what was said and of what was not said; of what it was intended he should understand, and also of what it was intended to conceal from him, if it could be concealed. Never was there a diplomatist who carried plainer and stronger sense to the interpretation of what it was not always very easy to inter- pret, though it would have been utterly misunderstood if he had been intent on dismissing the obvious meaning as the least. significant part of the whole. And Lord Ampthill was naturally reti- cent, not from the smallest indirectness of nature, but rather from that speculative habit of mind which enjoys knowledge, but does not enjoy the display of it. There are those who do not enjoy any kind of knowledge unless they can imme- diately impart it to some one else, and they are often among the best and the most amiable of mankind. But that is not the temper of a true diplomatist, and it was not the temper of Lord Ampthill. He loved the knowledge of men, in the past and in the present. He loved to study their differences of manners and customs. He might have said with Ulysses : — For always roaming with a hungry heart, Much have I seen and known, cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honored of them all. But, also like Ul^'sses, he had no craving to tell all that he had seen and known, — and if he told any of it, would tell it with judicious omissions. There was not a trace of vanity in him, one of the great solvents of reticence, and there was not therefore the smallest boastfulness or os- tentation. He wished to know the world truly, but he did not wish to show how true his knowledge was, except so far as his duty required him to use that knowl- edge. The loss of such a man in the very fulness of his powers is a very heavy one to England. And we fear that Lord AmpthilTs was the sort of character which the changing circumstances of the day favor less and less. To be reticent in many languages as he was, and yet to be able to say what he would with elegance and precision in all of them, nay, to know what to say if only it were wise to say anything, and yet not to say anything, is not a common characteristic in this age of eager communicativeness and didactic pedantry. Even Prince Bismarck and the German court will not regret Lord Amp- thill as England will have reason to regret him for many a year to come. His char- acter is not the kind of fruit which is borne by many family stocks, even amongst our great families. It was only a peculiar graft even on the Russells which could have produced Lord Ampthill.