He had done a little of almost everything: he had been in the Guards, in diplomacy, in the House for a brief session, had made an African tour, written a pleasant little book about the Nile, with the illustrations by his own hand.

Still he was greater in promise than performance.

There was an opera of his partly finished; a five-act comedy almost ready for the stage; a half-executed group he had left in some studio in Rome, showed what he might have done in sculpture.

When his distinguished relative the Marquis of Danesbury recalled him from his post as secretary of legation in Italy, to join him at his Irish seat of government, the phrase in which he invited him to return is not without its significance, and we give it as it occurred in the context: 'I have no fancy for the post they have assigned me, nor is it what I had hoped for.

They say, however, I shall succeed here.