“But we have always understood that your Grace thought Lord Combermere a fool.”

“So he is a fool, and a d——­d fool; but he can take Rangoon.”

At the time of Queen Caroline’s trial the mob of London sided with the Queen, and the Duke’s strong adhesion to the King made him extremely unpopular.  Riding up Grosvenor Place one day towards Apsley House, he was beset by a gang of workmen who were mending the road.  They formed a cordon, shouldered their pickaxes, and swore they would not let the Duke pass till he said “God save the Queen.”  “Well, gentlemen, since you will have it so—­’God save the Queen,’ and may all your wives be like her!”

Mrs. Arbuthnot (wife of the Duke’s private secretary, familiarly called “Gosh”) was fond of parading her intimacy with the Duke before miscellaneous company.  One day, in a large party, she said to him,—­

“Duke, I know you won’t mind my asking you, but is it true that you were surprised at Waterloo?”

“By G——! not half as much surprised as I am now, mum.”

When the Queen came to the throne her first public act was to go in state to St. James’s Palace to be proclaimed.  She naturally wished to be accompanied in her State coach only by the Duchess of Kent and one of the Ladies of the Household; but Lord Albemarle, who was Master of the Horse, insisted that he had a right to travel with her Majesty in the coach, as he had done with William IV.  The point was submitted to the Duke of Wellington, as a kind of universal referee in matters of precedence and usage.  His judgment was delightfully unflattering to the outraged magnate—­“The Queen can make you go inside the coach or outside the coach, or run behind like a tinker’s dog.”

And surely the whole literary profession, of which the present writer is a feeble unit, must cherish a sentiment of grateful respect for the memory of a man who, in refusing the dedication of a song, informed Mrs. Norton that he had been obliged to make a rule of refusing dedications, “because, in his situation as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, he had been much exposed to authors.”

III.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

If the Christian Socialists ever frame a Kalendar of Worthies (after the manner of Auguste Comte), it is to be hoped that they will mark among the most sacred of their anniversaries the day—­April 28, 1801—­which gave birth to Anthony Ashley, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury.  His life of eighty-four years was consecrated, from boyhood till death, to the social service of humanity; and, for my own part, I must always regard the privilege of his friendship as among the highest honours of my life.  Let me try to recall some of the outward and inward characteristics of this truly illustrious man.

Lord Shaftesbury was tall and spare—­almost gaunt—­in figure, but powerfully framed, and capable of great exertion.  His features were handsome and strongly marked—­an aquiline nose and very prominent chin.  His complexion was as pale as marble, and contrasted effectively with a thick crop of jet-black hair which extreme old age scarcely tinged with silver.