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 IN TIIK WAR AGAINST RUSSIA. 97 many a year under the cares brought upon tlieni chap. by his strenuous nature ; but up to the time I ' am speaking of, he had not been called upon to apply his energies in any very conspicuous way to the domestic affairs of England. Besides, he had been more seen in his own country than abroad, and for that very reason he was less known, because there was much upon the mere outside which tended to mask his real nature. His partly Celtic blood, and perhaps too, in early life, his boyish consciousness of power, had given him a certain elation of manner and bearing which kept him for a long time out of the good graces of the more fastidious part of the English world. The defect was toned down by age, for it lay upon the surface only, and in his inner nature there was nothing vulgar nor unduly pretending. Still, the defect made people slow — made them take forty years — to recognise the full measure of his intellectual strength. Moreover, the English had so imperfect a knowledge of the stress which he had long been putting upon foreign Governments, that the mere outward signs which he gave to his countrymen at home — his frank speech, his off- hand manner, his ready banter, his kind, joyous, beaming eyes — were enough to prevent them from accustoming themselves to look upon him as a man of stern purpose. Upon the whole, notwith- standing his European fame, it was easy for him at this time to escape grave attention in England. He was not a man who would come to a sub- ject with which he was dealing for the first time VOL. II. G