THE DEMEANOUR OF ENGLAND. 28i* that last office, his duties were not of such kind chap, as to give him much latitude for the exercise of '._ his judgment ; " but they brought him into fre- quent communication upon matters of army business with the great Duke of Wellington, and also with Lord Fitzroy Somerset. Owing partly perhaps to a habit of meditating upon the attributes of his father, Fox Maule was mighty in curses, not simply and gently accen- tuating thought with a ' damn,' like the shrewd, reflective Lord Melbourne, but arming himself with maledictions in an aggressive spirit, as though he would somehow wreak his vengeance upon many a hecatomb for the usage he had received iu his youth. Kough - tongued and rough-mannered in the midst of courteoiis peo- ple, he was formidably equipped for attack ; but his resources in the way of defence were even more efficacious, for nature had so thickly en- cased him as to make his mental skin quite impervious to the delicate needle-points with which a highly -bred gentlefolk is accustomed to correct its offenders. With all his roughness and violence, it would seem he had no base malignity, and was more, after all, the rhinoc- eros than the tiger of Palmerston's Cabinet. He was not without friends, of whom some still remember him kindly ; and they like attrib- uting to him those sterling, manful qualities which would harmonise with his acknowledged defects ; so that after, for instance, admitting hia
- As to the nature of the office presided over by the Sec-
retary at War, see ante, chap. iii. VOL. vn. T
