He was living then in Queen Anne's Gate, and I was pretty sure to find him in the morning, and often stayed to lunch with him and his wife. He was uniformly gay and pleasant and ready to give news. No one ever was more generous in sharing his political knowledge with his friends, and I could count on him to tell me the true and exact truth of what was going on in the directions that interested me, without regard to the rules of secrecy so many public men affect. Of his wit too he was copiously lavish, as only those are who have it in supreme abundance, giving of his very best to a single listener as freely as to a larger audience. This, I always think, is the test of genius in the department of brilliant talking, and no one ever shone there more conspicuously than he did. His worldly wisdom was wonderful. Nor was it confined to things at home, the House of Commons, and the intrigue of Downing Street. He was really the only English Radical, with Dilke, who had an accurate acquaintance with affairs abroad, and he had his Europe at his finger-ends. He would have made an admirable ambassador, where any difficult matters had to be carried through, and he ought certainly to have been given the Embassy he so much desired at Washington. It was always his ambition, even stronger I think than that of holding Cabinet Office, to go back to his old diplomatic profession and give serious proof of his capacity in a service {72} where, as a young man, he had played the fool. The Foreign Office would have found itself the stronger for his help. Our sympathy, which had begun about Egypt, was carried on, I am glad to remember, during the years of stress which followed, also to Ireland; and from first to last my experience of his political action has been that of a man courageously consistent in his love of liberty, his hatred of tyranny, and his contempt of the insincerities of public life. He was never taken in by the false arguments with which politicians conceal their treacheries, and he was never himself a betrayer. If my testimony can be of any service to his memory as an honest man, I freely give it.