Some of Mr. Gladstone’s speeches all over the country were of the nature to create difficulties for his party—or, at least, for its leaders—Lord Hartington was chafing under the irritation, and his correspondence with Lord Granville showed how irksome it was to him to retain a leadership in the Commons under conditions which were, to say the least, hampering and galling. Nothing but the rarest and most disinterested public spirit would have been equal to the self-sacrifice that was demanded of him. With what zest he must, when occasion served, have drunk in the crisp air of Newmarket Heath, far from the madding crowd of St. Stephen’s and from those cares of office without power which are the curse of the “cold shades of Opposition”—darkened in his case by the incubus of danger from within. No one who was even on the fringe of politics at that time could help feeling the greatest respect for Lord Hartington, but that respect must be immeasurably enhanced by the publication of the letters in Lord Fitzmaurice’s book. By nature a sportsman, a fine rider to hounds, a good shot, keenly interested in racing, delighting in a rubber of whist till bridge seduced his affections from the more venerable game,—had he chosen to lead a life of leisure, his position by birth and by the power of wealth would have enabled him to have spent his days happily, if unprofitably, in congenial occupations. He found, however, very early in life that better things were expected of him. He still indulged in sport, but only as a pastime. He soon showed that he could force himself into great industry, conquering the dullest details of official life. In nothing was his quality better shown than in the way in which he mastered the intricacies of foreign politics, in which one would hardly have expected so bull-dog an Englishman to be a proficient, and yet in which, as his letters show, he took the broadest, soundest and most comprehensive view. In such questions, indeed, reading between the lines we can see that what he deemed to be for England’s good was entirely uninfluenced by party considerations. He was above all a patriot.