Of such excursions as these I have the happiest memory. The exercise always seemed to stir the General's brain to especial activity. His rapid, vehement voice rang out in full sonority in the silence of the great rolling Down, and his thoughts seemed to move with more ease than usual in the high, cold air of autumn. His imagination worked with a vitality which almost persuaded his ignorant companion that he also was a strategical genius, so easy did the problems of military movement seem when outrolled by Wolseley's warm voice and punctuated by the sweep of his walking-stick. It was impossible not to feel that "this exceptional combination of mental gifts with untiring physical power and stern resolution" made our wonderful friend unique in his class and time. One was amazed to find one's self entrusted with the professional secrets of which one was really so unworthy a recipient. But it was characteristic of Wolseley that, with all his fire and abruptness, he was incapable of the smallest element of patronage. He lifted his friends, in a whirl of generous illusion, up to a level with himself, and insisted on their sharing his conceptions. No one ever possessed a more fascinating gift for persuading the person he talked with that the friend's powers and capacities were equal to his own. The impression could only be momentary, but it was extremely grateful while it lasted. Few things in private conversation are more winning than lack of discretion. I cannot pretend that Lord Wolseley was a cautious speaker, and I think his company would have been much less entertaining than it was if he had minced his words or hedged his opinions. He had spent twenty years or more of his life in a prodigious enterprise, no less than the entire remodelling of the British Army. He had seen with Napoleonic clearness what sweeping reforms were needed, and he had not felt the smallest hesitation in setting about their introduction. But he had originally been quite alone in this perilous enterprise. Hercules had come to the cattle-yard of Augeas and had found it clogged with the mire of generations. He set about turning the course of Alpheus and Peneus, rivers of Whitehall, and he sent their waters rushing through the stable. With his besom he began to scrub the refuse out of every corner. But the old-fashioned stablemen were not pleased to be disturbed, and Augeas, in consternation, refused to give Hercules his reward. Thereupon there arose loud and lasting clamours, in the midst of which the work, frustrated as far as mediocrity found possible, went forward steadily, but in a wind of exasperation. There was rage on both sides, recrimination, injury; and even the monarch of Elis was not disengaged from the struggle. If these things are an allegory, it is a very transparent one, and it need not be translated. It suffices to say that he would have little insight into human character who should express surprise at any vehemence of expression, with regard to those