efly due to ignorance, and can easily be cured by a
patient study of history. In the nineteenth century, in particular,
English diplomacy can point to a noble roll of ambassadors, who worked
for European peace as well as for the triumph of liberal causes, and
none has a higher claim to such praise than Sir Robert Morier, the
subject of this sketch.

[Note 42: The Latin form in which this epigram was originally
couched--_mentiendi causa_--does away with all ambiguity.]

The traditions of his family marked out his path in life. We can trace
their origin to connexions in the Consular service at Smyrna, where
Isaac Morier met and married Clara van Lennep in the latter half of the
eighteenth century. Swiss grandfather and Dutch grandmother became
naturalized subjects of the British Crown and brought up four sons to
win distinction in its service. Of these the third, David, married a
daughter of Robert Burnet Jones--a descendant of the famous Bishop
Burnet, and himself a servant of the Crown--and held important
diplomatic appointments for over thirty years at Paris and Berne. So it
was that his only son Robert David Burnet Morier was born in France,
spent much of his childhood in Switzerland, and acquired early in life
a remarkable facility in speaking foreign languages. To his schooling
in England he seems to have owed little of positive value. His father
and uncles had been sent to Harrow; but perhaps it was as well that the
son did not, in this, follow in his father's footsteps. However much he
neglected his studies with two easy-going tutors, he preserved his
freshness and originality and ran no danger of being drilled into a
type. If he had as a boy undue self-confidence, no one was better fitted
to correct it than his mother, a woman of wide sympathies and strong
intellectual force. The letters which passed between them display, on
his part, mature powers of expression at an early age, and show the
generous, affectionate nature of both; and till her death in 1855 she
remained his chief confidante and counsellor. In trying to matriculate
at Balliol College he met with a momentary check, due to the casual
nature of his education; but, after retrieving this, he rapidly made
good his deficiency in Greek and Latin, and ended by taking a creditable
degree. His time at Oxford, apart from reading, was well spent. He made
special friends with two of the younger dons: Temple, afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury, and Jowett, the