of Torres Vedras; and, in the spring of 1855, Lord John asked his young follower to join him on his abortive mission to Vienna. Lord Dufferin thus obtained his first introduction to diplomacy and diplomatists; but he apparently omitted to place on record any of the impressions which he derived from his mission. He returned home to occupy himself with the duties of his court office, which he had resumed under Lord Aberdeen, and with the affairs of his Irish estate, which he was never tired of improving. But attendance at court and alterations at Clandeboye could not satisfy his adventurous nature.

'Like Ulysses, Lord Dufferin could not rest from travel, and heard the call of the sea. So in June 1856 he set off "to sail beyond the sunset" into the Arctic north on his yacht the "Foam," with a bronze likeness of the Duchess of Argyll, by Marochetti, as her figurehead. The story of the voyage has been brilliantly told in his "Letters from High Latitudes," a book which shows him in the prime of his manhood captivating the Icelandic ladies by his lively courtesy, taking frolics and fatigues with equal zest, never flinching before the deep potations of the hospitable Norsemen or among the fogs and icebergs which barred his access to Spitzbergen.'

In the winter of 1858-9, in company with his motherand having substituted steam for sails-he took another voyage in quieter waters, visiting Egypt, Syria, and Greece. This leisurely expedition occupied the whole of 1859; and he only reached London in the beginning of 1860. The turning-point of his life had come; he was about to hear a more serious 'call' than that which had summoned him to the frozen waters of the North or the blue skies of the Mediterranean. A great duty was imposed on him, which forced him hurriedly to return to the Levant, where he had passed so much time in the preceding year.

The district of Syria lying between the mountain ranges of Lebanon, or Anti-Lebanon, and the coast, is mainly populated on the north by the Maronites, an ancient Christian sect, and on the south by the Druses, a race of Mahomedan schismatics. Each of these was placed under a local chieftain, subordinate to the Turkish Governor of Syria. Hereditary feuds had long existed between the two peoples, who hated one another as the Guelfs hated the Ghibellines, or the Montagues the Capulets. The Turkish

government unhappily encouraged dissensions which it was its business to allay; and in April 1860 the feud broke out in bloodshed and fire. The Druses attacked the Maronites; the Maronites retaliated on the Druses; the Turkish garrison, instead of repressing disorder, joined in the slaughter. In the course of May thirty-two villages were burned down; and Lord Dufferin himself found in Damascus upwards of 2000 houses utterly destroyed, and their inhabitants buried beneath their ruins.'

When news of these ghastly outrages reached western Europe they excited a thrill of horror. France has always regarded herself as the protector of the Roman Church in the Levant; and Napoleon III, much to his credit, at once proposed that the great Powers should send a joint commission to Syria, and that the commission should be followed by French troops, instructed to restore order. The proposal was received with some coldness by this country. The Emperor's Italian policy, and the proposed annexation of Savoy and Nice to France, were exciting distrust; and, though French and British soldiers were again acting together in the Far East, there was no longer any real cordiality between the two peoples and their rulers. Accounts, however, of further massacres compelled Lord Palmerston to assent to the Emperor's proposal; and Lord Dufferin was selected to represent this country on the joint commission.

If there was no real cordiality between France and England, there was some divergence between their views. The French, as the special patrons of the Maronites, were disposed to lay the entire blame of the massacre on the Druses; the English, on the contrary, as a great Mahomedan power, were inclined to regard both Druses and Maronites as equally guilty. While there was this divergence in their views, there was also a difference in their aims. France, despatching 8000 troops to Syria, desired that her own soldiers should win credit in restoring order. England, on the contrary, nervous of any fresh symptom of French aggression, was anxious to secure the withdrawal of the troops on the earliest opportunity. The French desired to place the whole district under a Maronite chief; the English, or Lord Dufferin, suggested that it should be turned into an in

dependent Viceroyalty on the Egyptian model. The compromise which was finally adopted was to place it

...

'under a Christian governor nominated by, and directly subordinate to, the Porte, .. unconnected with the tribes and a stranger to the province, to be appointed for three years, and to be removable only on formal proof of misconduct.'

It may be possible to argue that Lord Dufferin's own proposal would have afforded a more radical and more complete remedy for Syrian disorder than the compromise which the commissioners adopted. But the latter, at any rate, succeeded; and Lord Dufferin had the satisfaction of hearing, some years afterwards, from a correspondent at Damascus that the settlement was still a success. There is no province in Syria, none, I believe, in the Empire, so well governed as the Lebanon.'

In fact, in the melancholy history of the Ottoman Empire during the last fifty years, the shadow is relieved by the single ray of light thrown upon it in 1860 and 1861. For once the Concert of Europe had been made to work; and that it was made to work was largely due to Lord Dufferin's tact, ability, and good manners. He won the confidence, not only of the wretched people whom he had come to protect, but of his fellow-commissioners whom he had so often to oppose. As his mother wrote,

'His departure from Beyrout was a universal sorrow: rich and poor, merchants, sailors, and soldiers-everybody seemed to love and look up to him; and he was tenderly kissed on both cheeks by the French general, his principal political adversary.'

We have dwelt at some length on Sir Alfred Lyall's admirable account of the mission to the Lebanon,* because it was not merely the turning-point of Lord Dufferin's career, but in some respects was the most successful piece of work which he ever accomplished. But we must pass over more rapidly the succeeding seven or eight years of Lord Dufferin's life. During these years, indeed, he was introduced to official duties at home, having

* Sir Alfred has had the good sense to consult, and to master, the French view of the case; and, in consequence, he writes, throughout his chapter on the Syrian mission, with an impartiality and knowledge which unhappily are not always shared by other English writers on the subject.

accepted the under-secretaryship at the India Office. During these years he lost the mother who-so he wrote himself-'was one of the sweetest, most beautiful, most accomplished, wittiest, most loving, and lovable human beings that ever walked upon the earth.' During the same period he married the lady who still survives, and to whom he was able to say, in the last year of his life, You have been everything to me in my prosperous days, and they have been many; and now you are even more to me in my adversity.' But, with such exceptions, there is little to chronicle between his return from Syria and his appointment to Canada. His duties at the India Office, at the War Office-to which he was transferred in 1866– and at the Duchy of Lancaster-to which he was appointed in 1869-however largely such work may loom in the lives of other men, count for nothing in a career so full and varied as that of Lord Dufferin.

During this period, however, he was engaged in his chief political controversy. The recrudescence of rebellion in Ireland drew new attention to Irish questions. Mr Gladstone commenced his task of attacking the three branches of the famous upas tree; and men like Mr Mill and Mr Bright formulated rival schemes for dealing with Irish land. Lord Dufferin, in 1868, entered into the lists against Mr Mill; and perhaps the few surviving persons who have read their respective pamphlets will form the conclusion that he got the better of the contest. The part which he had taken in the controversy, and his position and experience as a great Irish landlord, naturally induced Mr Gladstone to consult him when he was preparing the Irish Land Act of 1870; and traces of Lord Dufferin's advice may be found in the measure itself, and still more clearly in the speech with which Mr Gladstone introduced it in the House of Commons. Yet Lord Dufferin was, in fact, radically opposed to the ideas which were inspiring Mr Gladstone, and which were, indeed, permeating political society at that time. For, while almost every reformer on both sides of the House thought it necessary to give the Irish tenant some greater interest in his holding, Lord Dufferin was in favour of gradually abolishing the interest which custom had given to the Ulster tenantry. The legislation which Mr Gladstone initiated in 1870, moreover, tended to create a dual ownership in land,

while Lord Dufferin's whole policy was based on vesting the landlord with complete control of his own property.

In so writing we have no desire to reflect on Lord Dufferin's conduct in the management of his estates. On the contrary, from the day on which he came of age— at a period when many large Irish proprietors were unhappily neglecting their duties and living away from their property-he was impressed with a sense of his responsibilities as a great landlord. His first act, on attaining his majority, was to grant his tenants (Sir A. Lyall says rather imprudently) an abatement of 2000l. a year of his rental for twenty-one years. He was able to say in 1870 that leases had been the ancient rule on his property, and that there was not a tenant at will on his estate. Further, with a lavish generosity worthy of the Sheridans, he spent, in twenty-five years, some 150,000%. on improvements; and more than half of this sum was devoted to the benefit of his tenants, whose rental, notwithstanding, was not increased by a single sixpence. His prodigal liberality in this respect partly contributed to the embarrassments of his closing years; for it was a desire to restore the noble fortune which he had seriously impaired that induced him to undertake duties in the City for which temperament and training equally disqualified him. But, if Lord Dufferin must be regarded as a model Irish landlord, he signally failed to appreciate the real difficulties of the Irish land question. His own excellences blinded him to the misconduct of some landed proprietors; and, though he was induced to support the Act of 1870, which for the first time invested the Ulster custom with the sanction of law, he defended it

'for the same reason that I would sentence the murderer of an illegitimate infant to be hanged. I do not approve of adultery; but the creature being there has the right to the protection of the law.'

It is not altogether surprising to learn that ministerial silence indicated disapproval of these sentiments, or that Lord Dufferin, conscious of the difference between himself and his colleagues, thought it right to offer to retire from the Government. It is perhaps not much more surprising that, in the few years which followed the Act of 1870, he sold two thirds of his Irish estates. He was, of course, strongly opposed to the Act of 1881.