How the ever present anxiety of those winters penetrated the smallest details of life! 'I went to Ballinasloe last Monday,' he writes, 'and bought thirty-one heifers. The cost was enormous, 15 pounds 15_s._, and they never can pay unless prices keep up. But they were as cheap as any in the fair. I went over to Lord Cloncurry's for the night. John Burke, of Johnny's regiment, was there. He told me a great deal about him. He said he did his work well. He says he saw him telling off his company, after the battle of Inkermann, as coolly as if he had been on parade.' Meanwhile Lord Naas was doing good work for his party during their six years in opposition. He had won the liking and confidence of the Irish Conservatives in the House; and Lord Derby, when he came into power in 1858, again offered Lord Naas the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland. A long list of measures in that and the following year bears witness to his activity. One who was officially connected with him in two of his principal Bills thus writes: 'What struck me in my communications with him on these matters was this. After the Bills had been settled by those conversant with the legal part of the subject, he would detect errors which had escaped us all. He {43} swooped down upon a flaw like a scholar on a false quantity, and would sometimes break up a whole set of clauses with his own hand, and re-write them himself, saying, "There, now; you may put it into legal language, but that is the sense of the thing I want." Again, when a draftsman would produce something very symmetrical and beautiful in theory, he would say: "That's all very fine, but the House of Commons won't look at it." At this time he began to feel almost a despair of accomplishing any real work for Ireland, owing to the factions within herself and in Parliament. I do not think he had more respect for the ultra-Orange party than he had for the Fenians. He believed they were alike hurtful to the country, and that the opposition to be expected from one, or it might chance from both, made it hopeless to attempt anything sound or moderate.