He had never
seemed stirred by the popular odium, he never seemed to prize the
popular praise, which he received; it was not for praise that he had
worked, but for simple duty; and his experience of the fickleness of
public favour might make him something scornful of it. To the honours
which his Sovereign delighted to shower on him--honours perhaps never
before bestowed on a subject by a monarch--he _was_ sensitive. The
Queen to him was the noblest personification of the country whose
good had ever been, not only the first, but the only object of his
public action: and with this patriotic loyalty there mingled
something of a personal feeling, more akin to romance in its paternal
tenderness than seemed consistent with the granite-hewn strength and
sternness of his general character. A thorough soldier, with a
soldier's contempt for fine-spun diplomacy, he had been led into many
a blunder when acting as a chief of party and of State; but his
absolute single-minded honesty had more than redeemed such errors;
"integrity and uprightness had preserved him," and through him the
land and its rulers, amid difficulties where the finest statecraft
might have made shipwreck of all.
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