As a chief we used to be told that he held his attachés in awe, but as a host he was delightful—his conversation various and full of charm, as, indeed, how could it fail to be, since he had seen and done so much? When his face was in repose the expression was rather stern, and men realized the great Eltchi who could dominate feeble sultans, terrify corrupt pashas, and defeat the machinations which were always rife in that hotbed of intrigue where so much of his life had been spent. I do not know whether his answer when he was asked if he had read Kinglake’s “History of the Crimean War” when it first appeared has ever been printed. “Yes,” he said, “I have read that romance of which it has pleased Mr. Kinglake to make me the hero.” In what anger would that august brow have been knitted had he been told that the two Powers which, almost at his dictation, fought in alliance to preserve Constantinople for the Turk, would one day be sending their fleets to the Dardanelles in order to turn that unspeakable reprobate out of doors, and perhaps hand over his inheritance to the great-grandson of his bitterest foe? Wonderful is the whirligig of time! I fancy that we should now read Sir Hamilton Seymour’s dispatches recording his conversation with the Emperor Nicholas about “the sick man” with very different feelings from those which they excited in 1853. The great Tsar’s diagnosis of the invalid’s condition was not far out, though the death agony had been long protracted. As the great Lord Salisbury put it, “We backed the wrong horse.” Sir Hamilton Seymour retired in 1858 and came home for good. His was a great name in the Diplomatic Service and he was in high favour with Queen Victoria, who asked him what had led him to send in a resignation which she greatly regretted. “Well, Madam,” was the witty answer, “your Majesty knows that I have kept the Royal Arms for many years abroad, and so I thought that it was time that I should come home and set up a family hotel of my own.” Genial, witty and charming, everybody liked Sir Hamilton Seymour, and certainly, if he was a loss to the service of which he had been one of the chief ornaments, London was a notable winner by the change. Those were the two great historic envoys to whom we neophytes looked up; with them we joined Lord Cowley, of whom I have already spoken, and who was still in harness. What a triumvirate! Lord Stratford, the masterful embodiment of the old Greek definition of a great gentleman, καλός κ’ ἀγαθός (beautiful and good); Sir Hamilton Seymour, the man who had calmly to face the wrath of the Lord of all the Russias—to most men as freezing as the blizzards of the Ladoga Lake; and Lord Cowley, wise and sagacious, holding the balance in Paris. At that time there were only two Embassies, Paris and Constantinople, but St. Petersburg, though still only a Legation, was quite of equal importance.