minute than by the oral advice of a much more important personage, the Permanent Head of the office. It would be beyond my present scope to discuss the composition and powers of the permanent Civil Service, whose chiefs have been, at least since the days of Bagehot, recognized as the real rulers of this country. For absolute knowledge of their business, for self-denying devotion to duty, for ability, patience, courtesy, and readiness to help the fleeting Political Official, the permanent chiefs of the Civil Service are worthy of the highest praise. That they are conservative[36] to the core is only to say that they are human. On being appointed to permanent office the extremist theorists, like the bees in the famous epigram, "cease to hum" their revolutionary airs, and settle down into the profound conviction that things are well as they are. All the more remarkable is the entire equanimity with which the Permanent Official accepts the unpalatable decision of a chief who is strong enough to override him, and the absolute loyalty with which he will carry out a policy which he cordially disapproves. Much of a Minister's comfort and success depends upon his Private Secretary. Some Ministers import for this function a young gentleman of fashion whom they know at home--a picturesque butterfly who flits gaily through the dusty air of the office, making, by the splendour of his raiment, sunshine in its shady places, and daintily passing on the work to unrecognized and unrewarded clerks. But the better practice is to appoint as Private Secretary one of the permanent staff of the office. He supplies his chief with official information, hunts up necessary references, writes his letters, and interviews his bores. When the late Lord Ampthill was a junior clerk in the Foreign Office, Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary, introduced an innovation whereby, instead of being solemnly summoned by a verbal message, the clerks were expected to answer his bell. Some haughty spirits rebelled against being treated like footmen, and tried to organize resistance; but Odo Russell, as he then was, refused to join the rebellious movement, saying that whatever method apprized him most quickly of Lord Palmerston's wishes was the method which he preferred. The aggrieved clerks regarded him as a traitor to his order--but he died an ambassador. Trollope described the wounded feelings of a young clerk whose chief sent him to fetch his slippers; and in our own day a Private Secretary, who had patiently taken tickets for the play for his chief's daughters, drew the line when he was told to take the chief's razors to be ground. But such assertions of independence are extremely rare, and as a rule the Private Secretary is the most cheerful and the most alert of ministering spirits.