MEN OF THE DAY. No. 120.

ADMIRAL THE RIGHT HON. LORD CLARENCE PAGET. K.C.B.

SENT into the Navy before he had completed his twelfth year, Lord Clarence had the good fortune to escape the literary lumber with which schools ashore furnish the minds of boys, and to be brought at once into the upper school of the real world which makes men. The youngster was taken in hand by Lord Lyons and Admiral Spencer, and having the good fortune to be always in smart ships, he soon became a good officer, while he developed his natural talents by making himself at home in several living languages. He did duty as a middy at Navarino; he served through the various stages of the profession in every quarter of the globe; and at the outbreak of the Russian war he was sent in command of the *Princess Royal* in the Baltic and the Black Sea, where he proved himself a smart captain and an able man of war. Like all men conscious of power he had nevertheless not proposed to himself to be content with success in the narrow bounds of a profession. He had devoted himself much to the arts, and not a little to politics; at seven-and-thirty he had been elected as Member of Parliament for Sandwich, for which he had sat during five years; and when the war ended, he again sought and obtained the suffrages of the same electors, being now invested with a recognition of his seafaring services in the shape of a C.Bship. In the House of Commons he was received as a distinguished officer; but he soon showed that he was also a very capable tactician in politics. With a frank sailor-like air, and an open simplicity of speech almost ostentatiously devoid of all rhetorical trick, he always found means to present and to keep the attention of the House fixed upon the strong points of any case he had at heart, and to disregard out of existence its weaker sides. He had, moreover, already had experience of business as Secretary to the Master-General of the Ordnance, and he was felt to be a man too well worth having in a Government to be neglected. In 1859, therefore, he was made a Privy Councillor and Secretary to the Admiralty, and the way in which he dealt with unpalatable estimates and with all the other difficulties of a difficult department, won for him the admiration not only of his own Liberal chiefs but also of his Conservative opponents. Nevertheless he sighed to be at sea again, and in 1866 he was gratified by being appointed Admiral Commanding-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, as which, with my lady, he held high state, and from which he returned a K.C.B.

Lord Clarence has always been a favourite wherever he has been found; for his information is very extensive on all subjects; his opinions, firmly set though they are, he never presents as being above discussion; his power of graphic statement and of pertinent reasoning is exceptionally sufficient; his manner is most sympathetic and winning, entirely devoid of that accent of patronage towards lesser lights than himself, which so often accompanies eminent position; and his temper is so good as scarcely to be capable of ruffling; though he has been known upon occasion to resent very fiercely, rather for the sake of others than because he felt it himself, a slight bearing the aspect of an insult. With his officers and men he has always been popular, being very anxious for their comfort, easy about leave, and ever ready to do anything in order to make things pleasant. He delights in music; he has moulded and set up as a sea-mark on his Anglesey estate a colossal statue of Nelson, which has won much commendation; and as sailor, politician, and sculptor, he has challenged and has won a three-fold reputation of which he has reason to be prouder than he has ever shown himself.