John Morley: “He had a sincere contempt for speeches in themselves, and was wont to set down most of them to vanity.”

True merit once resigned, No trick nor feint will serve as well.

People still believe that Russian diplomats are particularly crafty and clever, full of artifices and stratagems, but that is not the case.

A rendering less apt for this occasion finds favour with some scholars, that true virtue can never be restored to those who have once fallen away from it.

They might learn how the true gentleman speaks of one whom he cannot but admit to have devoted a long life to the search of truth, and allow to have sacrificed every personal prospect to the promulgation of that which appeared to him as…