424 RACING CAREER OF SIR W. H. GREGORY. 



the style admirable. There are phrases and touches 

 in it which are quite sui generis, and which send 

 you on your way rejoicing. Among others, there 

 is one which you notice and which struck me 

 much : ' The instinct of self - preservation guides 

 the European Powers with the same certainty as 

 weather moves sheep on the hill.' Another re- 

 markable expression is, ' Buckingham was his 

 brother Grenville's hair-shirt.' 



" On the whole, despite the delightful style, 

 it ■ is one of the saddest books I ever read. It is 

 the struggle of the most noble-minded patriotic 

 Enoflishman that ever lived to establish a wise 

 fiscal policy, to abandon the old insane foreign 

 entanglements, to pacify Ireland by wise and 

 feasible measures, which would have rendered 

 her a glory to England and no longer a shame to 

 humanity. In all these aims he was arrested, 

 thwarted, and beaten back by the powers of evil. 

 You should not have concluded your critique 

 without quoting Rosebery's noble final sentence : 

 ' From the dead eio^hteenth century Pitt's fig-ure 

 still faces us with a majesty of loneliness and 

 courage. There may have been men abler and 

 greater than he — though it is not easy to cite 

 them. But in all history there is no more patriotic 

 spirit, none more intrepid, none more ^^ure.' 



' ' I am as ill as a man can well be. I went to 

 Bournemouth for ten days, but came back much 

 as I went. The doctors are quite ' au bout de 



