It must not be supposed from all this that Mr Graham was either an idler or a dreamer. In his own way he picked up a large amount of knowledge. He was a good Latin and a very fair Greek scholar. In pure mathematics he never advanced far, but he was rapid in calculation, and possessed considerable skill in the arrangement of his own ideas. With all this, he was either indifferent about academical honours, or he disliked the order of studies which led to them. In private life he was somewhat reserved, and what ill-natured people might call stately. His style of dress was in the extreme of fashion; and being tall and well made, with a countenance singularly handsome, it is not to be wondered at if, among casual acquaintances, he was set down as a considerable coxcomb. Nobody, however, could lay to his charge that there was any lack of manliness about him. His vacations he usually spent in the north, where he threw himself keenly into field-sports, and was as forward with the fox-hounds as he was successful on the moor and by the river-side. At the same time, his desire to take an active part in the war of politics never grew cold. His father, a consistent supporter of Mr Pitt, had sat in Parliament as the Tory member for Ripon from 1802 to 1807. Mr Graham’s prejudices were all on the other side; a bias which they seem to have acquired partly through the deference in which he held the opinions of his relative, Lord Archibald Hamilton, partly because he met at his father’s table not always the most eloquent or well-instructed advocates of Toryism. Be the causes, however, what they might, he gave himself up to the Whigs, and in 1812 swore fealty to them, by being admitted, on the recommendation of Lord Morpeth, into Brookes’s Club. It was too soon for him as yet to aspire to a seat in the House of Commons; he determined, therefore, to devote a year or two to foreign travel; and as the only portion of the Continent then open to British subjects was the Spanish Peninsula, he set out with the intention of visiting one after another the principal seaports in Portugal and Spain.