"Of the vulnerable parts of his character his enemies may have many things to tell. What had been observed by all who came into closer contact with him, could not escape my own observation. I mean his too great prudence, caution, and at times, extreme reserve, in important as well as in unimportant matters, which he showed, not only towards more distant, but even towards his nearer acquaintances. If he was but too often sparing of words, and timidly cautious in oral transactions, he was naturally still more so in his written communications. The fear never left him that he might have to hear an opinion once expressed, or a, judgment once uttered by him, repeated by the wrong man, and in the wrong place, and misapplied. His friends were sometimes in despair over this peculiarity. To his opponents it supplied an apparent ground for suspicion and incrimination. It seemed but too likely that there was a doubtful motive for such reserve, or that it was intended to cover narrowness and weakness of thought and feeling, or want of enterprise and courage. To me also this peculiarity deemed often injurious to himself and to the matter in hand; and I could not help being sometimes put out by it, and wishing from the bottom of my heart that he could have got rid of it. But when one came to weigh the acts of the man against his manner, the disagreeable impression soon gave way. I quickly convinced myself, that this, to me, so objectionable a trait was but an innate peculiarity; and that in a sphere of activity where thoughtless unreserve and _laisser aller_ showed themselves in every possible form, Peel was not likely to find any incentive, or to form a resolution to overcome, in this point, his natural disposition. "I have been told, or I have read it somewhere, that Peel was the most successful type of political mediocrity. In accepting this estimate of my departed friend as perfectly true, I ask Heaven to relieve all Ministers, within and without Europe, of their superiority, and to endow them with Peel's mediocrity: and I ask this for the welfare of all nations, and in the firm conviction that ninety-nine hundredths of the higher political affairs can be properly and successfully conducted by such Ministers only as possess Peel's mediocrity: though I am willing to admit that the remaining hundredth may, through the power and boldness of a true genius, be brought to a particularly happy, or, it may be, to a particularly unhappy, issue." Of the late Lord Derby, on the other hand, Stockmar speaks with the greatest contempt, calling him "a frivolous aristocrat who delighted in making mischief. "It does not appear whether the two men ever came into collision with each other, but if they did, Lord Derby was likely enough to leave a sting.