some crisis makes it stand forth before the world at
large. Pitt, Wolfe, and George II all recognized his
solid virtues. At thirty he was still some way down the
list of lieutenants in the Grenadiers, while Wolfe, two
years his junior in age, had been four years in command
of a battalion with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Yet
he had long been 'my friend Carleton' to Wolfe, he was
soon to become one of 'Pitt's Young Men,' and he was
enough of a 'coming man' to incur the king's displeasure.
He had criticized the Hanoverians; and the king never
forgave him. The third George 'gloried in the name of
Englishman.' But the first two were Hanoverian all through.
And for an English guardsman to disparage the Hanoverian
army was considered next door to _lese-majeste_.

Lady Dorchester burnt all her husband's private papers
after his death in 1808; so we have lost some of the most
intimate records concerning him. But 'grave Carleton'
appears so frequently in the letters of his friend Wolfe
that we can see his character as a young man in almost
any aspect short of self-revelation. The first reference
has nothing to do with affairs of state. In 1747 Wolfe,
aged twenty, writing to Miss Lacey, an English girl in
Brussels, and signing himself 'most sincerely your friend
and admirer,' says: 'I was doing the greatest injustice
to the dear girls to admit the least doubt of their
constancy. Perhaps with respect to ourselves there may
be cause of complaint. Carleton, I'm afraid, is a recent
example of it.' From this we may infer that Carleton was
less 'grave' as a young man than Wolfe found him later