xlv-iii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCU. 



with astonishment by the large section of society which had made up its mind to believe that 

 every thing was for the best ; but the action of the Government of the day and the investigations 

 of Parliamentary Committees proved that our system was unsuited to the time and to the 

 strain of European warfare, and that the best men in the country were aroused to the necessity 

 of lar'^e reforms. The evidence which liOrd Arthiu- gave before one of these Committees will 

 be found at the end of this sketch ; and it will be observed that he then indicated changes in 

 some matters which have since been adopted in military or regimental organization. To his father 

 many of his ideas must have seemed almost revolutionary ; and his admiration of our allies 

 must have excited in the veteran's mind something of the same feeUng which was expressed by 

 Sir De Lacy Evans, when some one spoke to him of certain matters in which the French 

 seemed to be worthy of imitation :— " Confound the French ! Any one who has seen their backs 

 as often as I have done in the Peninsula would be very sorry to take a lesson from them in 



any thing, Sir ! " 



In less than a year after his return he married Helene Kielmansegge, daughter of Count von 

 Kielmansegge, the Hanoverian Minister to the Court of St. James's, a lady of great beauty and 

 admirable accomplishments ; and her loss, after fourteen years of perfect happiness, was a blow 

 the effects of which on Arthur Hay, undemonstrative and stoical as he appeared to be ia all the 

 actions of his life, were deep and ineradicable, as those observed who knew him best. 



With the Crimean Expedition the active life of Lord Arthur in the army came to a close ; 

 but his interest in the profession of arms lasted to the end of his life ; and in every political or 

 departmental question affecting the service he loved so well, he evinced a disposition which, in 

 tpite of his strong conservatism, tended to the introduction of change — that is, to the acceptance 

 of new instead of an adherence to old principles. But he held stiffly to traditions of our army ; and, 

 with all his readiness to recognize the value of the factors which were introduced into military 

 calculations by improvements in artillery and arms and means of transport, he maintained his 

 faith in the immutability of first principles as regarded strategy, and, in common with the modern 

 school of fighting people, assigned the highest importance to tactics and internal organization. 

 The taste which d'Aubigny remarked in his pupil for natural history was developed as Lord Arthur 

 advanced in years ; and now having ample leisure he applied himself especially to ornithology, which 

 is, indeed, the most attractive of all branches of the great tree of knowledge, on which there hangs 

 60 much forbidden fruit. A Guardsman very often takes an interest in pheasants and partridges, 

 though he is rarely given to the study of birds outside the covert or the stubble. Arthur Hay read 

 and watched and examined till he became something more than an amateur, and at last was 

 admitted by the men of the science to be one of them— a diligent student, a close observer, an 

 ardent admirer, and at last a passed master in bird lore. 



