Palmerston’s whole life had been spent in the government of the country.  At twenty-two he had been a Minister; at twenty-five he had been offered the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, which, with that prudence which formed so unexpected a part of his character, he had declined to accept.  His first spell of office had lasted uninterruptedly for twenty-one years.  When Lord Grey came into power he received the Foreign Secretaryship, a post which he continued to occupy, with two intervals, for another twenty-one years.  Throughout this period his reputation with the public had steadily grown, and when, in 1846, he became Foreign Secretary for the third time, his position in the country was almost, if not quite, on an equality with that of the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell.  He was a tall, big man of sixty-two, with a jaunty air, a large face, dyed whiskers, and a long sardonic upper lip.  His private life was far from respectable, but he had greatly strengthened his position in society by marrying, late in life, Lady Cowper, the sister of Lord Melbourne, and one of the most influential of the Whig hostesses.  Powerful, experienced, and supremely self-confident, he naturally paid very little attention to Albert.  Why should he?  The Prince was interested in foreign affairs?  Very well, then; let the Prince pay attention to him—­to him, who had been a Cabinet Minister when Albert was in the cradle, who was the chosen leader of a great nation, and who had never failed in anything he had undertaken in the whole course of his life.  Not that he wanted the Prince’s attention—­far from it:  so far as he could see, Albert was merely a young foreigner, who suffered from having no vices, and whose only claim to distinction was that he had happened to marry the Queen of England.  This estimate, as he found out to his cost, was a mistaken one.  Albert was by no means insignificant, and, behind Albert, there was another figure by no means insignificant either—­there was Stockmar.

But Palmerston, busy with his plans, his ambitions, and the management of a great department, brushed all such considerations on one side; it was his favourite method of action.  He lived by instinct—­by a quick eye and a strong hand, a dexterous management of every crisis as it arose, a half-unconscious sense of the vital elements in a situation.  He was very bold; and nothing gave him more exhilaration than to steer the ship of state in a high wind, on a rough sea, with every stitch of canvas on her that she could carry.  But there is a point beyond which boldness becomes rashness—­a point perceptible only to intuition and not to reason; and beyond that point Palmerston never went.  When he saw that the cast demanded it, he could go slow—­very slow indeed in fact, his whole career, so full of vigorous adventure, was nevertheless a masterly example of the proverb, “tout vient a point a qui sait attendre.”  But when he decided to go quick, nobody went quicker.  One day, returning from Osborne, he found that he