'I met Sir Charles Napier in the United Service Club. He took me aside and told me that Sir James Graham had consulted him as to whom he would select as 3rd Divisional Admiral for the Baltic Fleet. He answered Sir James Graham by saying that he would have asked for Lord Hardwicke as Captain of the Fleet as he preferred him, but he thought he would have no chance of having him. But now he was again to select an Admiral, he should ask for Lord Hardwicke as he should prefer him to anyone. Sir James Graham said, "Very well, I will appoint him, but in this peculiar case, I must apply to the Cabinet." The result was the refusal of the Cabinet to appoint me, in consequence of their fearing to excite emotion in the officers of the Active List; but that although at the beginning there was this ground of refusal, yet by and by it might be done. Sir Charles Napier added, "I shall want one more Admiral and I shall again apply for you." 'H.' * * * * * The controversy with Sir James Graham perhaps affords a sufficient explanation of the failure of Sir Charles's repeated efforts in behalf of Lord Hardwicke, though there is no doubt the Government had an answer in the Admiralty regulation which had placed him upon the retired list. 'Lord Hardwicke's application for employment was brought before the Cabinet,' writes Lady Hardwicke, 'but the Admiralty declaring that an order in Council to make this exception would bring the whole retired list upon their shoulders, his request was politely declined, with the feeling that the late enactment had fallen cruelly upon his professional career.' 'Few but myself,' concludes Lady Hardwicke, 'who have seen the anguish of disappointment caused by such a termination of the cherished ambition of a whole life, can at all appreciate the severity of this blow. This statement of facts engraven on the tablet of my heart I have drawn up with a view of placing in the hands of my dear children the means of vindicating their beloved father's memory in case upon any future occasion they should be called upon to do so. Let them remember that "the Lord nourisheth with discipline" and accept the trials and disappointments of life with the same spirit of resignation which their beloved father always exhibited, to my great and endless consolation.' To me, his daughter, it has seemed that the occasion of which my mother speaks, for the vindication of my father's memory, has arrived with the publication of this memoir of his life, and I have therefore set out the facts as she wrote them down.