d to with attention.
The statesmen who governed England--Lord Grey, Sir Robert Peel, Lord
Palmerston, Lord Melbourne--had learnt to put a high value upon his
probity and his intelligence. "He is one of the cleverest fellows I
ever saw," said Lord Melbourne, "the most discreet man, the most
well-judging, and most cool man." And Lord Palmerston cited Baron
Stockmar as the only absolutely disinterested man he had come across in
life, At last he was able to retire to Coburg, and to enjoy for a few
years the society of the wife and children whom his labours in the
service of his master had hitherto only allowed him to visit at long
intervals for a month or two at a time. But in 1836 he had been again
entrusted with an important negotiation, which he had brought to
a successful conclusion in the marriage of Prince Ferdinand of
Saxe-Coburg, a nephew of King Leopold's, with Queen Maria II of
Portugal. The House of Coburg was beginning to spread over Europe; and
the establishment of the Baron at Buckingham Palace in 1837 was to be
the prelude of another and a more momentous advance.

King Leopold and his counsellor provide in their careers an example
of the curious diversity of human ambitions. The desires of man are
wonderfully various; but no less various are the means by which those
desires may reach satisfaction: and so the work of the world gets done.
The correct mind of Leopold craved for the whole apparatus of royalty.
Mere power would have held no attractions for him; he must be an actual
king--the crowned head of a people. It was not enough to do; it was
essential also to be recognised; anything else would not be fitting.
The greatness that he dreamt of was surrounded by every appropriate
circumstance. To be a Majesty, to be a cousin of Sovereigns, to marry a
Bourbon for diplomatic ends, to correspond with the Queen of England,
to be very stiff and very punctual, to found a dynasty, to bore
ambassadresses into fits, to live, on the highest pinnacle, an exemplary
life devoted to the public service--such were his objects, and such,
in fact, were his achievements. The "Marquis Peu-a-peu," as George IV
called him, had what he wanted. But this would never have been the case
if it had not happened that the ambition of Stockmar took a form exactly
complementary to his own. The sovereignty that the Baron sought for
was by no means obvious. The satisfaction of his essential being lay
in obscurity, in invisibility--in passing, un