GREEN LAND FAR AWAY 17

equally indifferent to the adulation and the abuse of the multi-
tude: his steady heart valued only the respect of his fellow
aristocrats, the preservation of the national heritage which he had
fought for, and the understanding and society of lively and beauti-
ful women. He liked only the best. For the second-rate and
the unformed he had nothing but disdain. Even the hard-
bitten, hard-used men who had fought under his command on
the battlefields of Spain and Flanders he sometimes spoke of as
the scum of the earth.

Over himself and all he did he exercised an iron mastery, long
rendered second nature by proud tradition and unceasing practice.
He devoted that mastery without reserve to the service of his
country* He'had one political principle: that the King's govern-
ment must at all costs be carried on. He had one unfailing rule:
that the work of the day must be done in the day. Despite the
radical Brougham's ill-tempered remark that Westminster
Abbey was yawning for him, the lingering final act of his long
life was one of unbroken glory. When he appeared at the Hullah
choral concert at Exeter Hall in 1842, the choir stopped singing
and the whole audience rose, cheering and waving handkerchiefs
to salute "the great old man . . . now the idol of the people. It
was grand and affecting," wrote an onlooker, "and seemed to
move everybody but himself."

Such men were cold in their Olympian calm and detachment;
passionate like all their countrymen in their robust vitality and
the intensity of their personal feelings. Aristocratic statesmen
reproaching one another on the floor of the House did not at
times restrain their tears: and a burst of momentary indignation
could create life-long and unappeasable enmities. In 1828,
Wellington, then Prime Minister, fought a dud because a fellow
peer in the heat of political controversy had charged him with
Popery. Lord George Bentinck was reported to have lost £27,000
in a single race: Jack Mytton—climax of English aristocratic
eccentricity—went out for a bet stark naked on a winter's
night to shoot duck and drank a bottle of port before breakfast.
The breed was as vigorous in its loves as in its hates and wagers:
another Prime Minister was cited as co-respondent in the
Divorce Courts when approaching the age of sixty. A great
lady in her eighties, asked by her son-in-law when 'a woman
ceased to fed passion, replied, "You must ask a woman older than
I am." Intellects were as tough as passions; strength, natural