THE SECOND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 11 



discovered. Naturally generous, equally fond of change, 

 excitement and anything — legitimate or illegitimate — which 

 would provide him with this the very essential to his being, 

 he discovered plenty of those aristocratic-pauper-leeches — 

 Major Pendennises, only worse. We learn something of this 

 from Dryden's satire — a sort of " tit-for-tat " : — 



" A man so various that he seemed to be 

 Not one but all mankind's epitome. 



Stiff in opinion always in the wrong ; 



Was everytliing by turns and nothing long. 



Beggar'd by fools whom still he found too late 

 He had his jest, and, they had his estate." 



Yet above all that is sordid, all that is pitiful — and there 

 is much — and beyond all that is disgusting, there are the 

 admirable qualities, and the fact that Buckingham had a 

 wholesome love of the country convinces me that there 

 were many qualities and excellences for which he never 

 receives credit. There is always something good about and 

 hope for a man or woman who has a love for the beauties 

 of nature. He was ever ready to spend the vacations from 

 his gay and giddy life at court, and to rush away from his 

 official duties to Helmsley Castle, and when, in 1670, he 

 retired from the world — and one might almost speak in 

 similar terms of such retirement to-day — it was to Helmsley 

 he came. 



