Nothing could exceed the manliness of his bearing in the unequal conflict in which every session he found himself engaged, unless it is to be looked for in the inexhaustible amiability that characterized his relations with the most implacable of his foes. It is, however, evident that as his health began to fail from the long course of exhausting labours which his office imposed upon him, he became more sensitive to such provocations, and though he carefully concealed it from outward view, an increasing irritability affected his whole nervous system. The melancholy result, though unfortunately too easily explained, excited reports as ingenious as malevolent, to account for its suddenness, but like the injustice to his memory he has received from rivals or successors, who sought to raise a reputation by advocating an adverse policy, they had but a brief existence. As a statesman, as a gentleman, as a man, the Marquis of Londonderry was the Bayard of political chivalry, _sans peur et sans reproche_, and it reflects no slight disgrace on this monument-rearing age, that neither in the land of his nativity nor in that of his adoption has any memorial been raised worthy of his fame. The characters of few public men have been so unfairly treated; his political opponents, numbering among them many writers of great ability and influence, have allowed their judgments to be warped by party animosity, and have descended to misrepresentation to an extent truly pitiable. Thus his countrymen have received impressions of his policy and administrative capacity during his long and arduous career, totally at variance with the truth.[88] One writer of eminence has, however, recently stepped forward to uphold his fame with emphatic earnestness, and we make no apology for inserting here his estimate of this distinguished and much-maligned statesman: [88] His best advocate will be found in "The Castlereagh Despatches," in twelve volumes, edited by his brother, the late Marquis.