In 1850 Morier accepted a clerkship in the Education Office at L120 a
year. The work was not to his taste, but at least it was public service,
and he saw no hope of employment in the Foreign Office. He found some
distractions in London society. He kept up relations with his old
friends, and he took a leading part in establishing the Cosmopolitan
Club, which later met in Watts's studio, but began its existence in
Morier's own rooms. He enjoyed greatly a meeting with Tennyson and
Browning, and wrote with enthusiasm of the former to his father, as 'one
who gave men an insight into the real Hero-world, as one from whom he
could catch reflected something of the Divine'. But Morier's spirits
were mercurial, and between moments of elation he was apt to fall into
fits of melancholy, when he could find no outlet for his energies.
Waiting for his true profession tried him sorely, and he was even
resigning himself to the prospect of a visit to Australia as a
professional journalist, when fortune at last smiled upon him.
Palmerston retired from the Foreign Office, and when Clarendon succeeded
him, Morier's name was placed on the list of candidates for an
attacheship. At Easter 1853 he started for another visit to the
Continent, full of hope and more than ever determined to qualify himself
for the profession which he loved.

He was rewarded for his zeal a few weeks later, when he paid a visit to
Vienna, won the favour of the Ambassador, Lord Westmorland, and was
commended to the Foreign Office. At the age of twenty-seven he was
appointed to serve Her Majesty as unpaid attache, having already
acquired a knowledge of European politics which many men of sixty would
have envied. In figure he was tall, with a tendency already manifested
to put on flesh, good-looking, genial and sympathetic in manner, a _bon
vivant_, passionately fond of dancing and society, an excellent talker
or listener as the occasion demanded. His intelligence was quick, his
powers of handling details and of grasping broad principles were alike
remarkable. He wrote with ease, clearness, and precision; he knew what
hard work meant and revelled in it. Unfortunately he was subject already
to rheumatic gout, which was to make him acquainted with many
watering-places, and was to handicap him gravely in later life. But at
present nothing could check his ardour in his profession, and during his
five years at Vienna he took every chance of studying foreign lands and
of mak