Among the younger members of the Diplomatic Service two were _facile principes_. Julian Fane, brilliant, handsome, accomplished, a poet and musician who died young, and Robert Lytton, by whose poetry Sir Thomas Wade—one of the best critics I ever knew—set great store, who had not yet reached the high offices in which, as Viceroy of India and Ambassador, he afterwards gained so great distinction. Those two we neophytes worshipped as demigods—worshipped them with the adoration of lower boys for the captain of the boats and the captain of the eleven. Is there any higher measure of admiration? Morier, who afterwards became famous as Ambassador in Russia, was junior to these. He was a very able man. Perhaps his greatest claim to a niche in the Temple of Fame lay in the jealousy of Bismarck, who recognized in him a dangerous foe, a power to be reckoned with. Talking recently (1915) with a very eminent foreign ambassador, we discussed these names and others—Lord Lyons and my old chief, Lord Napier, among them. “Yes,” he said, “in your Diplomatic Service you have had a series of very remarkable men.” He was right. To listen to such men was the best of schooling; and of these who shall say which was the greatest? CHAPTER XXX 1871 DAMASCUS AND RICHARD BURTON It was on a lovely morning in the early spring of 1871 that I stood on a spur of the Antilebanon, the famous “Dome of Victory,” and looked down upon the plains of Damascus. I must have been close to the very spot where Mahomet—then a poor camel-driver—gazing upon the too-enchanting scene, resolutely turned his back upon it, saying: “There is but one paradise, and that is in heaven—there may be no second upon earth.” In these days, when men are agnostics in legend as well as in religion, it is the fashion to assert that he never uttered such words. Why? Is it not more likely that he, the man gifted with the seer’s burning imagination, the prophet that was to hold the hearts, and order the faith, of countless millions for centuries upon centuries, should have spoken thus, than that some mean biographer should have coined so lofty and spiritual a thought? Why attempt the impossible? Why try to prove a negative in order to destroy a lovely legend?