Allowing for the exaggeration of a schoolboy, the letter throws an interesting light on the standard of education aimed at by those who, despite the imputation to the contrary, had no pretension to belong to the recognised blue-stocking coteries of their day. And the father of that busy, happy circle, in the seriousness of his own life and aims, presented the same contrast to many of his contemporaries which was reflected in his family. Fourteen years senior to his wife, and at this date in his fifty-seventh year, Walter Stanhope had been M.P. respectively for his different constituencies since 1775. A keen politician, he was punctilious in his attendance at the House. Nevertheless, as shown in a former volume, although a man of ability and of intense earnestness of purpose, his devotion to his political labours never wholly counteracted a certain lethargy of temperament which, throughout his life, limited achievement. Thus, although in his youth undoubtedly gifted with a lively fancy, or with what his generation termed sensibility, this very trait seems at variance with the sum of his later career. True, that under stress of emotion he could rise to heights of impassioned oratory which provoked by its very evidence of latent power; but the tenor of his existence was scarcely in accordance with these brief flashes of genius, and the fulfilment of his prime belied its promise. The record of his life remains one which commands respect rather than admiration. Level-headed, sober in judgment and conduct, even while possessed of a wit which was rare and a discernment at times profound, his days flowed on in an undeviating adherence to duty which makes little appeal to the imagination. As a churchman, as a parent, as a landowner, as a politician he fulfilled each avocation with credit. As a man of the world he could toy with but remain unmastered by the foibles of his age. While a Fox and a Pitt rose to heights and sank to depths which Stanhope never touched; while a Wilberforce was imbued with religious fervour as with a permeating flame, Stanhope, to his contemporaries, presented something of an anomaly. As in his early years he had been a Macaroni who eschewed the exaggerations of his sect, so throughout life he could gamble without being a gamester, could drink without being a toper, be a politician without party acumen, and a man of profoundly religious feelings devoid of fanaticism. But since he who himself is swayed by the intensity of his convictions is he who in turn sways his fellows, possibly the very restraint which saved Stanhope from folly debarred him from fame. [13]