Villiers was now twenty-one years old; his accomplishments may shortly be summed up: he was an excellent fencer, an incomparable dancer, he understood the arrangement of costume and the art of dressing well, but those valuable acquirements lay dormant in one who possessed no wardrobe, for he went to France poor, and his family had not been enriched during his absence. Villiers was, in addition to these graces, a perfectly well-bred man. Lord Clarendon describes him to have been “a fair-spoken gentleman, of a sweet and accostable nature.” At present, his constitution, which afterwards gave way beneath the pressure of business, or in consequence of the excitements of his dazzling career, was in full vigour. Such was the youth who now returned to gratify his mother’s ambitious hopes, by that career to which the efforts of the young aristocracy of England were then chiefly directed. It may be here remarked as singular, that Villiers was trained to no specific profession; he had not been initiated into those elements of learning necessary to qualify him for the church or the bar; he had not served in the army; but was, in fact, literally brought up to follow his fortunes at the Court of James the First. It appears to those in modern times a bold speculation, but the character of the monarch upon whose peculiarities it was based accounts for the scheme, apparently so chimerical, of qualifying a son for nothing better than to depend merely upon the chances of an hour, for, had opportunity been wanting, the graces and accomplishments of George Villiers might have been for ever concealed, or disregarded. But it is not improbable that Lady Villiers, especially after her second marriage, had certain dependence upon the exertions of personal friends, through whose agency she trusted to advance her son’s interests at Court. From them, too, she probably learned that the disgrace of Somerset was at hand. When Villiers returned to England, he found no better prospect before him than to pass some time at Goadby, under the “wing and counsel of his mother.”[38] In this retreat, he had leisure to study the temper of the times, and to view from afar the characteristics of that sphere for which he was destined. Footnote 38: Sir Henry Wotton.—“Reliquiæ Wottonianæ,” p. 208.