between the Lawrentian and "Forward" schools of frontier policy, the
Curzon-Kitchener episode, and the adaptation of Western reforms to meet
the growing requirements to which education has given birth--his views,
although perhaps rather in my opinion unduly pessimistic and
desponding, were generally identical with my own.

Albeit he was an earnest reformer, he was a warm advocate of strong and
capable government, and, in writing to our common friend, Lord Morley,
in 1882, he anathematised what he considered the weakness shown by the
Gladstone Government in dealing with disorder in Ireland. Himself not
only the kindest, but also the most just and judicially-minded of men,
he feared that a maudlin and misplaced sentimentalism would destroy the
more virile elements in the national character. "I should like," he
said, in words which must not, of course, be taken too literally, "a
little more fierceness and honest brutality in the national
temperament." His heart went out, in a manner which is only possible to
those who have watched them closely at work, to those Englishmen,
whether soldiers or civilians, who, but little known and even at times
depreciated by their own countrymen, are carrying the fame, the glory,
the justice and humanity of England to the four quarters of the globe.

The roving Englishman (he said) is the salt of English land....
Only those who go out of this civilised country, to see the rough
work on the frontiers and in the far lands, properly understand
what our men are like and can do.... They cannot manage a
steam-engine, but they can drive restive and ill-trained horses
over rough roads.

He felt--and as one who has humbly dabbled in literature at the close of
an active political life, I can fully sympathise with him--that "when