Page:The Earl of Mayo.djvu/54

46 quite sure of suggesting something of which you had not thought before.'

'He understood thoroughly,' continues Lord Derby, 'how important an element of administrative success is the conciliation of those with whom you have to deal; but the exercise of that power was with him not a matter of calculation, but the result of nature. He did and said generous things, not because it was politic, not because it was to his political interest, but because it was his nature, and he could not help it. I do not think he had in the world a personal enemy; and so far as it is possible to speak of that which is passing in another man's mind, I should say he had never known what it was to harbour against any person a feeling of resentment. We who acted with him in Irish matters can bear witness to his firmness when firmness was necessary, to the soundness of his judgment in difficulties — and difficulties just then were not unfrequent — and, above all, to that coolness which was never more marked than in critical moments.'

'As the chief of a great office,' writes one well competent to speak, 'he had the finest qualities. Early in his habits, regular in his work, and unceasing in industry, he set a great example; and he knew, somehow or other, the secret of getting out of every one under him the maximum of work which each might be capable of. He had a faculty which I have never observed so fully developed in any one else, of detecting a single blunder in the papers before