Yates, E: Celebrities at Home (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Celebrities at Home

Exhibited that love of mastering detail which erratic geniuses designate plodding. Gifted with unwearied patience and industry, he has never left himself much to learn in any pursuit which has attracted him. As a soldier he was quite in his element, and carried his love of minutiae so far as to almost acquire the reputation of a martinet. His love of method and precision recommended him to office, and after serving as aide-de-camp first to the Duke of Telling ton and then to Lord Hardinge, he was while mem ber for West Sussex, appointed President of the poor-law Board in 1859, under the short-lived Government of the late Lord Derby. For several years after this event he made no particular mark in the world of politics, and on succeeding to the duke dom of Richmond and Gordon rapidly acquired the reputation of a nobleman who spent his life in admin istering his estate. It was said of him that he was among dukes'as Frederick the Great was among kings - a keen administrator, who attended to every thing himself. As Mr. Carlyle's hero reduced his Ministers to the rank of mere clerks, so did the sixth Duke of Richmond become his own chief agent, and employ mere sub-agents to carry his plans into effect. Even his most persistent detractors could not assert that he drove over-hard bargains with his farmers, and acknowledged that if he chose to live the life of a political country squire he imported into that not very interesting or exciting existence a sense m justice, a desire to act fairly and evenly with all rand.

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