One cannot doubt that his own essential veracity and manliness stamped themselves on the minds of his audience; and, in truth, the great preponderance of intelligent opinion seems to have been, from the first, wholly in his favour. The ‘Times,’ the ‘Daily News,’ the ‘Daily Telegraph,’ and ‘Punch,’ were among his champions. Livingstone’s own family gratefully acknowledged his really immense services, and confirmed beyond question the genuineness of Livingstone’s letters brought home by Stanley, so confounding those who had charged him with forgery. Lord Granville, at the Foreign Office, handed him, on the Queen’s behalf, a note of congratulation, and a gold snuff-box set with diamonds; and, in a word, the world at large accepted him, then and thenceforward, as a true man and a hero. But Stanley suffered so keenly and so long, not only at the time, but afterwards, from the misrepresentation and calumny he encountered, that a word more should be given to the subject. The hostility had various sources. In America, the ‘New York Herald,’ always an aggressive, self-assertive, and successful newspaper, had plenty of journalistic foes. A former employee of Stanley’s, whose behaviour had caused serious trouble, and brought proper punishment on him, gained the ear of a prominent editor, who gave circulation to the grossest falsehoods. In later years, other subordinates, whom Stanley’s just and necessary discipline had offended, became his persistent calumniators. The wild scenes of his explorations, and the stimulus their wonders gave to the imagination, acted sometimes like a tropical swamp, whence springs fetid and poisonous vegetation. Stories of cruelty and horror seemed to germinate spontaneously. Stanley himself laid stress on the propensity in average human nature to noxious gossip, and the pandering to this taste by a part of the Press. It is to be remembered, too, that the circumstances of his early life heightened his sensitiveness to gossiping curiosity and crude misrepresentation. And, finally, he had in his nature much of the woman, the _Ewigweibliche_; he craved fame far less than love and confidence. Renown, as it came, he accepted, not with indifference,--he was too human for that,--but with tempered satisfaction. He met praise in the fine phrase Morley quotes from Gladstone, ‘as one meets a cooling breeze, enjoyed, but not detained.’ The pain which slander brought he turned to account, setting it as a lesson to himself not to misjudge others. His thoughts upon his own experience may be sufficiently shewn by an extract from one of his Note-books. * * * * * The vulgar, even hideous, nonsense, the number and variety of untruths published about me, from this time forth taught me, from pure sympathy, reflection, and conviction, to modify my judgment about others.