In 1822, however, when he had just completed his seventeenth year, this intention was abandoned, and he entered as a clerk in the examiner's office of the India House, "with the understanding that he should be employed from the beginning in preparing drafts of despatches, and be thus trained up as a successor to those who then filled the highest departments of the office."
At the time of his first view of the Adriatic (February 1797) he noted the importance of the port of Ancona for intercourse with the Sultan's dominions; and at that city fortune placed in his hands Russian despatches relative to the designs of the Tsar Paul on Malta.
On the evacuation of Boston by the royal troops, therefore, in 1776, he was selected by Governor Wentworth to carry despatches to England.
In 1861 he became captain, and in the Abyssinian expedition of 1867-68 was a brigade major, being again mentioned in despatches and given a brevet majority.
The events of the Peninsular War, especially as narrated in the Wellington Despatches, are replete with instruction not only for the soldier, but also for the civil administrator.