He had been a soldier for a time, like his father, holding a commission in the 42nd Highlanders and afterwards in the 98th, of which Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde, was Colonel, and which was to take part in the first China war in 1841. On the way out round the Cape, being already an expert in European languages, he set to work to learn Chinese. It was a colossal task which few men would have attempted; indeed, remembering the very scanty books which then existed, I can hardly conceive how he took the first plunge. During the war he was of the greatest use and so, when peace came, he was appointed interpreter to the garrison at Hong Kong. The part which he played in all subsequent events in China till the end of the war in 1860 is well known, though it was not sufficiently recognized until long afterwards. He was always building nests for other birds to lay in. Take, for instance, the case of the Maritime Customs of China. Out of ten thousand well-informed men there is perhaps not one who does not believe that the Imperial Customs Service of China was formed and organized by Sir Robert Hart. Yet that is not the case. The service was started and organized in 1854, when Hart was an unknown quantity and just leaving Belfast as a boy of nineteen, by an international committee, English, French and American, Wade being the English representative, and the working man of the three; so much so that the other two, feeling that they were not necessary, retired, leaving the Englishman to finish the job, and carrying into practice Lord John Russell’s dictum that the best committee is a committee of three, of whom two are silent.