Peel's manners also underwent a change from the
openness and frankness which Lord Liverpool attributed
to him, to a shyness and awkward reserve which strangers
mistook for haughtiness and his enemies for excessive
craft. This change was probably due to his early experi-
ence in Ireland. He was not naturally of a sociable or
expansive temperament, and the example of the Duke of
Richmond, who made himself the boon companion of
Orangemen and of the leaders of the ascendency party,
probably acted as a warning to him. He devoted himself
to the business of his office and cultivated a reserve of
manner which never afterwards left him. His awkward
manners became, in fact, proverbial. In the privacy of
his family and in the society of a few intimates--he
never at any time mixed largely in general society--he
could be genial, sprightly, unaffected, and even indiscreet.
But in official intercourse, and in his public and parlia-
mentary appearances, he was self-conscious, ill at ease,
difficult of approach, impenetrable, and ungenial. " Peel
is a bad horse to go up to in the stable," said Melbourne
of him on a memorable occasion, when Lord John Russell
found it necessary to consult him about the re-election
of the Speaker, and met with a chilling repulse. "I
have no small talk, and Peel has no manners," said
Wellington in describing the difficulties which a Tory
Ministry was likely to meet with at the court of a
young Queen. He himself was wont to lament his
unfortunate manner. O'Connell, who hated him, not
altogether without reason, and never spared his enemies,

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