Of course I do not mean to say that Buchanan did all this consciously and systematically; that he deliberately prepared abroad, and then came and deliberately performed at home. Few men, especially men of Buchanan’s type, shape their lives on such lines of exact and exhaustive purpose. I leave out of account the unhappily large class who foolishly, and even wickedly, throw away their lives, and have hardly ever tried or desired to make a better of it. I confine myself to those who do get something out of life for themselves or society, or both. But I doubt if any, beyond a small minority even of this class, begin life with a distinct aim at reaching what they end life by becoming. There is, of course, the famous case of Whittington, who set himself in cold blood to become Lord Mayor of London. But for one Whittington there have been centuries of Lord Mayors who never dreamt of the Mansion House when they started business in the City. The glory and the turtle came upon them, virtually unsolicited; and even Whittington would probably not have addressed himself as he did to his high achievement, had it not been for the unique campanula of inspiration caught by his ear alone. Probably Napoleon early laid his plans for attaining the mastership of France, possibly of Europe; but did Cæsar begin life with a determination to conquer Rome and become its dictator, or Cromwell with a sketch-plan for cutting off his king’s head, cashiering his country’s parliament, and making himself Lord Protector and military despot? Millionaires are seldom so of set design. They begin, most probably, by aiming at a competent fortune, but having got that length, the acquired delight in pulling the strings of an extensive and possibly adventurous undertaking, and not mere miserly greed, has kept them at a task which they find they can perform, until the millions roll in as a justification of their ideas and processes. In politics and the professions men probably set out with a general aim at the best position and the most money they can make for themselves; but very few, I should imagine, of those who have reached the greatest eminence or prosperity possible to them said in their youth, ‘I mean to be Prime Minister, or Lord Chancellor, or Archbishop of Canterbury, or President of the Royal College of Physicians, or of the Royal Academy.’ Buchanan seems to have belonged to a type of character which does not include either of the classes of persons just considered. Neither cupidity nor ambition nor any of the ordinary self-aggrandising motives seems to have had much, if any, place in his character. Apostrophising Buchanan in his Funeral Elegy, Joseph Scaliger says:-- ‘Contemptis opibus, spretis popularibus auris, Ventosæque fugax ambitionis, obis.’ ‘Despising wealth, spurning the mob’s applause, and shunning vain ambition, thou passest away.’