I have no desire to speak unfairly of the article in the “National Biography.” In many passages it lavishly praises some of the great qualities of the King, and yet the general impression conveyed is unfortunate. The reader of the future—and it is for the future far more than for the present that such an estimate has importance—will rise from the study of this biography with an altogether false appreciation of its subject. He will see in it the portrait of a man with many lovable characteristics, indeed, but with little conception of the high functions to which he was called; he will see a Prince self-indulgent, impatient of duty, with little political acumen even in those matters of foreign policy in which he took the highest interest; giving little concern to home affairs, “unremitting in his devotion to social pleasures”; showing “aloofness from the working of politics and a certain disinclination hastily to adopt his private plans to political emergencies.” I hope to show that it is in his more favourable comments that Sir Sidney Lee is right, though unfortunately in his hands the beam inclines too much on the wrong side. The King’s tact, his magically conciliatory charm, a power of fascination which can rarely have been equalled, his judgment of men, have been universally acknowledged. He carried into public affairs a sympathy and kindliness which bore rich fruit. He could feel with a Gambetta as he could feel with the proud chieftain of the Hapsburgs. To a Scottish manse, to a Norfolk parsonage, he could carry the sympathy of a friend, the true message of love. He could enter into the troubles of a humble cottager on his estate with as much interest as he could listen to the family difficulties of a Duke. Above all, he could forgive, and that is perhaps the rarest of human powers. Those who know could cite more than one instance of its exercise. Nor was all this confined to mere words. He would spend himself on behalf of a friend, he would labour to see righted some poor wretch who he thought was being treated unjustly. His courage was beyond proof. Such was the King as I knew him, and I am not alone in my estimate of him: Sir William Harcourt, a good judge and surely no sycophant, said of him that he was the greatest King of England since William the Conqueror. A burning Radical came away from his first interview with him, saying: “That is the greatest man that ever I had speech of.” That man knew him better later, but he never altered his opinion.