constituencies since 1775. A keen politician, he was punctilious in his
attendance at the House.

Nevertheless, as shown in a former volume, although a man of ability and
of intense earnestness of purpose, his devotion to his political labours
never wholly counteracted a certain lethargy of temperament which,
throughout his life, limited achievement. Thus, although in his youth
undoubtedly gifted with a lively fancy, or with what his generation termed
sensibility, this very trait seems at variance with the sum of his later
career. True, that under stress of emotion he could rise to heights of
impassioned oratory which provoked by its very evidence of latent power;
but the tenor of his existence was scarcely in accordance with these brief
flashes of genius, and the fulfilment of his prime belied its promise. The
record of his life remains one which commands respect rather than
admiration. Level-headed, sober in judgment and conduct, even while
possessed of a wit which was rare and a discernment at times profound, his
days flowed on in an undeviating adherence to duty which makes little
appeal to the imagination. As a churchman, as a parent, as a landowner, as
a politician he fulfilled each avocation with credit. As a man of the
world he could toy with but remain unmastered by the foibles of his age.
While a Fox and a Pitt rose to heights and sank to depths which Stanhope
never touched; while a Wilberforce was imbued with religious fervour as
with a permeating flame, Stanhope, to his contemporaries, presented
something of an anomaly. As in his early years he had been a Macaroni who
eschewed the exaggerations of his sect, so throughout life he could gamble
without being a gamester, could drink without being a toper, be a
politician without party acumen, and a man of profoundly religious
feelings devoid of fanaticism. But since he who himself is swayed by the
intensity of his convictions is he who in turn sways his fellows, possibly
the very restraint which saved Stanhope from folly debarred him from fame.