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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Victorian Worthies, by George Henry Blore
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Victorian Worthies
+       Sixteen Biographies
+
+
+Author: George Henry Blore
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 26, 2006  [eBook #20196]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTORIAN WORTHIES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Chuck Greif, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/c/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 20196-h.htm or 20196-h.zip:
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+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      The reader will encounter the use of [=a] as an attempt to
+      preserve the author's use of a lower case "a" with macron
+      and [=i] as lower case "i" with macron.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VICTORIAN WORTHIES
+
+Sixteen Biographies
+
+by
+
+G. H. BLORE
+
+Assistant Master at Winchester College
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+'We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on
+Great Men, their manner of appearance in our world's
+business, how they shaped themselves in the world's
+history, what ideas men formed of them, what work they
+did;--on Heroes, namely, and on their reception and
+performance.'--CARLYLE.
+
+
+
+Humphrey Milford
+Oxford University Press
+London Edinburgh Glasgow New York Toronto
+Melbourne Cape Town Bombay Calcutta
+1920
+Printed in England
+at the Oxford University Press
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+INTRODUCTION: THE VICTORIAN ERA
+1. THOMAS CARLYLE. Prophet
+2. SIR ROBERT PEEL. Statesman
+3. SIR CHARLES NAPIER. Soldier
+4. THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY. Philanthropist
+5. LORD LAWRENCE. Administrator
+6. JOHN BRIGHT. Tribune
+7. CHARLES DICKENS. Novelist and Social Reformer
+8. LORD TENNYSON. Poet
+9. CHARLES KINGSLEY. Parish Priest
+10. GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS. Artist
+11. BISHOP PATTESON. Missionary
+12. SIR ROBERT MORIER. Diplomatist
+13. LORD LISTER. Surgeon
+14. WILLIAM MORRIS. Craftsman
+15. JOHN RICHARD GREEN. Historian
+16. CECIL RHODES. Colonist
+INDEX
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Some excuse seems to be needed for venturing at this time to publish
+biographical sketches of the men of the Victorian era. Several have been
+written by men, like Lord Morley and Lord Bryce, having first-hand
+knowledge of their subjects, others by the best critics of the next
+generation, such as Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Clutton-Brock. With their
+critical ability I am not able to compete; but they often postulate a
+knowledge of facts which the average reader has forgotten or has never
+known. Having written these sketches primarily for boys at school I am
+not ashamed to state well-known facts, nor have I wished to avoid the
+obvious.
+
+Nor do these sketches aim at obtaining a sensation by the shattering of
+idols. I have been content to accept the verdicts passed by their
+contemporaries on these great servants of the public, verdicts which, in
+general, seem likely to stand the test of time. Boys will come soon
+enough on books where criticism has fuller play, and revise the
+judgements of the past. Such a revision is salutary, when it is not
+unfair or bitter in tone.
+
+At a time when the subject called 'civics' is being more widely
+introduced into schools, it seems useful to present the facts of
+individual lives, instances chosen from different professions, as a
+supplement to the study of principles and institutions. There is a
+spirit of public service which is best interpreted through concrete
+examples. If teachers will, from their own knowledge, fill in these
+outlines and give life to these portraits, the younger generation may
+find it not uninteresting to 'praise famous men and our fathers that
+begat us'.
+
+It seems hardly necessary in a book of this kind to give an imposing
+list of authorities consulted. In some cases I should find it difficult
+to trace the essay or memoir from which a statement is drawn; but in the
+main I have depended on the standard Lives of the various men portrayed,
+from Froude's _Carlyle_ and Forster's _Dickens_ to Mackail's _Morris_
+and Michell's _Rhodes_. And, needless to say, I have found the
+_Dictionary of National Biography_ most valuable. If boys were not
+frightened from the shelves by its bulk, it would render my work
+superfluous; but, though I often recommend it to them, I find few signs
+that they consult it as often as they should. It may seem that no due
+proportion has been observed in the length of the different sketches;
+but it must be remembered that, while short Lives of Napier and Lawrence
+have been written by well-known authors, it is more difficult for a boy
+to satisfy his curiosity about Lister, Patteson, or Green; and of Morier
+no complete life has yet been published.
+
+I am indebted to Mr. Emery Walker for assistance in the selection of the
+portraits.
+
+Three of my friends have been kind enough to read parts of the book and
+to give me advice: the Rev. A. T. P. Williams and Mr. C. E. Robinson, my
+colleagues here, and Mr. Nowell Smith, Head Master of Sherborne. I owe
+much also to the good judgement of Mr. Milford's reader. If I venture to
+thank them for their help, they are in no way responsible for my
+mistakes. Writing in the intervals of school-mastering I have no doubt
+been guilty of many, and I shall be grateful if any reader will take the
+trouble to inform me of those which he detects.
+
+G.H.B.
+
+WINCHESTER,
+
+_April 1920._
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF PORTRAITS
+
+
+Thomas Carlyle
+  From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Sir Robert Peel
+  From the painting by J. LINNELL in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Sir Charles Napier
+  From the drawing by EDWIN WILLIAMS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Lord Shaftesbury
+  From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Lord Lawrence
+  From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+John Bright
+  From the painting by W. W. OULESS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Charles Dickens
+  From the painting by DANIEL MACLISE in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Alfred, Lord Tennyson
+  From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Charles Kingsley
+  From a drawing by W. S. HUNT in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+George Frederick Watts
+  From a painting by himself in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+John Coleridge Patteson
+  From a drawing by WILLIAM RICHMOND.
+  (_By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._)
+
+Sir Robert Morier
+  From a drawing by WILLIAM RICHMOND.
+  (_By kind permission of Mr. Edward Arnold._)
+
+Lord Lister
+  From a photograph by MESSRS. BARRAUD.
+
+William Morris
+  From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+John Richard Green
+  From a drawing by FREDERICK SANDYS.
+  (_By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._)
+
+Cecil Rhodes
+  From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+THE VICTORIAN ERA
+
+
+We like to fancy, when critics are not at our elbow, that each Age in
+our history has a character and a physiognomy of its own. The sixteenth
+century speaks to us of change and adventure in every form, of ships and
+statecraft, of discovery and desecration, of masterful sovereigns and
+unscrupulous ministers. We evoke the memory of Henry VIII and Elizabeth,
+of Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, of Drake and Raleigh, while the gentler
+virtues of Thomas More and Philip Sidney seem but rare flowers by the
+wayside.
+
+The glory of the seventeenth century shines out amid the clash of arms,
+in battles fought for noble principles, in the lives and deaths of
+Falkland and Hampden, of Blake, Montrose, and Cromwell. If its nobility
+is dimmed as we pass from the world of Shakespeare and Milton to that of
+Dryden and Defoe, yet there is sufficient unity in its central theme to
+justify the enthusiasm of those who praise it as the heroic age of
+English history.
+
+Less justice, perhaps, is done when we characterize the eighteenth
+century as that of elegance and wit; when, heedless of the great names
+of Chatham, Wolfe, and Clive, we fill the forefront of our picture with
+clubs and coffee-houses, with the graces of Chesterfield and Horace
+Walpole, the beauties of Gainsborough and Romney, or the masterpieces of
+Sheraton and Adam. But each generalization, as we make it, seems more
+imperfect and unfair; and partly because Carlyle abused it so
+unmercifully, this century has in the last fifty years received ample
+justice from many of our ablest writers.
+
+Difficult indeed then it must seem to give adequate expression to the
+life of a century like the nineteenth, so swift, so restless, so
+many-sided, so full of familiar personages, and of conflicts which have
+hardly yet receded to a distance where the historian can judge them
+aright. The rich luxuriance of movements and of individual characters
+chokes our path; it is a labyrinth in which one may well lose one's way
+and fail to see the wood for the trees.
+
+The scientist would be protesting (all this time) that this is a very
+superficial aspect of the matter. He would recast our framework for us
+and teach us to follow out the course of our history through the
+development of mathematics, physics, and biology, to pass from Newton to
+Harvey, and from Watt to Darwin, and in the relation of these sciences
+to one another to find the clue to man's steady progress.
+
+The tale thus told is indeed wonderful to read and worthy of the
+telling; but, to appreciate it fully, it needs a wider and deeper
+knowledge than many possess. And it tends to leave out one side of our
+human nature. There are many whose sympathies will always be drawn
+rather to the influence of man upon man than to the extension of man's
+power over nature, to the development of character rather than of
+knowledge. To-day literature must approach science, her all-powerful
+sister, with humility, and crave indulgence for those who still wish to
+follow in the track where Plutarch led the way, to read of human
+infirmity as well as of human power, not to scorn anecdotes or even
+comparisons which illustrate the qualities by which service can be
+rendered to the State.
+
+To return to the nineteenth century, some would find a guiding thread in
+the progress of the Utilitarian School, which based its teaching on the
+idea of pursuing the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the
+school which produced philosophers like Bentham and J. S. Mill, and
+politicians like Cobden and Morley. It was congenial to the English
+mind to follow a line which seemed to lead with certainty to practical
+results; and the industrial revolutions caused men at this time to look,
+perhaps too much, to the material conditions of well-being. Along with
+the discoveries that revolutionized industry, the eighteenth century had
+bequeathed something more precious than material wealth. John Wesley,
+the strongest personal influence of its latter half, had stirred the
+spirit of conscious philanthropy and the desire to apply Christian
+principles to the service of all mankind. Howard, Wilberforce, and
+others directed this spirit into definite channels, and many of their
+followers tinged with a warm religious glow the principles which, even
+in agnostics like Mill, lent consistent nobility to a life of service.
+The efforts which these men made, alone or banded into societies, to
+enlarge the liberties of Englishmen and to distribute more fairly the
+good things of life among them, were productive of much benefit to the
+age.
+
+Under such leadership indeed as that of Bentham and Wilberforce, the
+Victorian Age might have been expected to follow a steady course of
+beneficence which would have drawn all the nobler spirits of the new
+generation into its main current. Clear, logical, and persuasive, the
+Utilitarians seemed likely to command success in Parliament, in the
+pulpit, and in the press. But the criterion of happiness, however widely
+diffused (and that it had not gone far in 1837 Disraeli's _Sybil_ will
+attest), was not enough to satisfy the ardent idealism that blazed in
+the breasts of men stirred by revolutions and the new birth of Christian
+zeal. In contrast to the ordered pursuit of reform, the spirit of which
+the Utilitarians hoped to embody in societies and Acts of Parliament,
+were the rebellious impulses of men filled with a prophetic spirit,
+walking in obedience to an inward voice, eager to cry aloud their
+message to a generation wrapped in prosperity and self-contentment. They
+formed no single school and followed no single line. In a few cases we
+may observe the relation of master and pupil, as between Carlyle and
+Ruskin; in more we can see a small band of friends like the
+Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the leaders of the Oxford Movement, or the
+scientific circle of Darwin and Hooker, working in fellowship for a
+common end. But individuality is their note. They sprang often from
+surroundings most alien to their genius; they wandered far from the
+courses which their birth seemed to prescribe; the spirit caught them
+and they went forth to the fray.
+
+The time in which they grew up was calculated to mould characters of
+strength. Self-control and self-denial had been needed in the protracted
+wars with France. Self-reliance had been learnt in the hard school of
+adversity. Imagination was quickened by the heroism of the struggle
+which had ended in the final victory of our arms. And to the generations
+born in the early days of the nineteenth century lay open fields wider
+than were offered to human activity in any other age of the world's
+history. Now at last the full fruits of sixteenth-century discovery were
+to be reaped. It was possible for Gordon, by the personal ascendancy
+which he owed to his single-minded faith, to create legends and to work
+miracles in Asia and in Africa; for Richard Burton to gain an intimate
+knowledge of Islam in its holiest shrines; for Livingstone, Hannington,
+and other martyrs to the Faith to breathe their last in the tropics; for
+Franklin, dying, as Scott died nearly seventy years later, in the cause
+of Science, to hallow the polar regions for the Anglo-Saxon race.
+Darkest Africa was to remain impenetrable yet awhile. Only towards the
+end of the century, when Stanley's work was finished, could Rhodes and
+Kitchener conspire to clasp hands across its deserts and its swamps: but
+on the other side of the globe a new island-empire had been already
+created by the energy of Wakefield, and developed by the wisdom of
+Parkes and Grey. In distant lands, on stricken fields less famous but no
+less perilous, Wellington's men were applying the lessons which they had
+learnt in the Peninsula. On distant seas Nelson's ships were carrying
+explorers equipped for the more peaceful task of scientific observation.
+In this century the highest mountains, the deepest seas, the widest
+stretches of desert were to reveal their secrets to the adventurers who
+held the whole world for their playground or field of conquest.
+
+And not only in the great expansion of empire abroad but in the growth
+of knowledge at home and the application of it to civil life, there was
+a field to employ all the vigour of a race capable of rising to its
+opportunities. There is no need to remind this generation of such names
+as Stephenson and Herschel, Darwin and Huxley, Faraday and Kelvin; they
+are in no danger of being forgotten to-day. The men of letters take
+relatively a less conspicuous place in the evolution of the Age; but the
+force which they put into their writings, the wealth of their material,
+the variety of their lives, and the contrasts of their work, endow the
+annals of the nineteenth century with an absorbing interest. While
+Tennyson for the most part stayed in his English homes, singing the
+beauties of his native land, Browning was a sojourner in Italian palaces
+and villas, studying men of many races and many times, exploring the
+subtleties of the human heart. The pen of Dickens portrayed all classes
+of society except, perhaps, that which Thackeray made his peculiar
+field. The historians, too, furnish singular contrasts: the vehement
+pugnacity of Freeman is a foil to the serene studiousness of Acton; the
+erratic career of Froude to the concentration of Stubbs. The influence
+exercised on their contemporaries by recluses such as Newman or Darwin
+may be compared with the more worldly activities of Huxley and Samuel
+Wilberforce. Often we see equally diverse elements in following the
+course of a single life. In Matthew Arnold we wonder at the poet of
+'The Strayed Reveller' coexisting with the zealous inspector of schools;
+in William Morris we find it hard to reconcile the creative craftsman
+with the fervent apostle of social discontent. Perhaps the most notable
+case of this diversity is the long pilgrimage of Gladstone which led him
+from the camp of the 'stern, unbending Tories' to the leadership of
+Radicals and Home Rulers. There is an interest in tracing through these
+metamorphoses the essential unity of a man's character. On the other
+hand, one cannot but admire the steadfastness with which Darwin and
+Lister, Tennyson and Watts, pursued the even tenor of their way.
+
+Again we may notice the strange irony of fortune which drew Carlyle from
+his native moorlands to spend fifty years in a London suburb, while his
+disciple Ruskin, born and bred in London, and finding fit audience in
+the universities of the South, closed his long life in seclusion amid
+the Cumbrian fells. So two statesmen, who were at one time very closely
+allied, present a similarly striking contrast in the manner of their
+lives. Till the age of forty Joseph Chamberlain limited himself to
+municipal work in Birmingham, and yet he rose in later life to imperial
+views wider than any statesman's of his day. Charles Dilke, on the other
+hand, could be an expert on 'Greater Britain' at thirty and yet devote
+his old age to elaborating the details of Local Government and framing
+programmes of social reform for the working classes of our towns.
+Accidents these may be, but they lend to Victorian biography the charm
+of a fanciful arabesque or mosaic of varied pattern and hue.
+
+Eccentrics, too, there were in fact among the literary men of the day,
+even as there are in the fiction of Dickens, of Peacock, of George
+Meredith. There was Borrow, who, as an old man, was tramping solitarily
+in the fields of Norfolk, as earlier he wandered alone in wild Wales or
+wilder Spain. There was FitzGerald, who remained all his life constant
+to one corner of East Anglia, and who yet, by the precious thread of his
+correspondence, maintained contact with the great world of Victorian
+letters to which he belonged.
+
+Some wandered as far afield as Asia or the South Seas; some buried
+themselves in the secluded courts of Oxford and Cambridge and became
+mythical figures in academic lore. Not many were to be found within hail
+of London or Edinburgh in these forceful days. Brougham, the most
+omniscient of reviewers, with the most ill-balanced of minds, belongs
+more properly to the preceding age, though he lived to 1868; and it is
+from this age that the novelists probably drew their eccentric types.
+But between eccentricity and vigorous originality who shall draw the
+dividing line?
+
+Men like these it is hard to label and to classify. Their individuality
+is so patent that any general statement is at once open to attack. The
+most that we can do is to indicate one or two points in which the true
+Victorians had a certain resemblance to one another, and were unlike
+their successors of our own day. They were more evidently in earnest,
+less conscious of themselves, more indifferent to ridicule, more
+absorbed in their work. To many of them full work and the cares of
+office seemed a necessity of life. It was a typical Victorian who, after
+sixteen years of public service, writing a family letter, says, 'I feel
+that the interest of business and the excitement of responsibility are
+indispensable to me, and I believe that I am never happier than when I
+have more to think of and to do than I can manage in a given period'.
+Idleness and insouciance had few temptations for them, cynicism was
+abhorrent to them. Even Thackeray was perpetually 'caught out' when he
+assumed the cynic's pose. Charlotte Brontë, most loyal of his admirers
+and critics, speaks of the 'deep feelings for his kind' which he
+cherished in his large heart, and again of the 'sentiment, jealously
+hidden but genuine, which extracts the venom from that formidable
+Thackeray'. Large-hearted and generous to one another, they were ready
+to face adventure, eager to fight for an ideal, however impracticable it
+seemed. This was as true of Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, and all
+the _genus irritabile vatum_, as of the politicians and the men of
+action. They made many mistakes; they were combative, often difficult to
+deal with. Some of them were deficient in judgement, others in the
+saving gift of humour; but they were rarely petty or ungenerous, or
+failed from faint-heartedness or indecision. Vehemence and impatience
+can do harm to the best causes, and the lives of men like the Napiers
+and the Lawrences, like Thomas Arnold and Charles Kingsley, like John
+Bright and Robert Lowe, are marred by conflicts which might have been
+avoided by more studied gentleness or more philosophic calm. But the
+time seemed short in which they could redress the evils which offended
+them. They saw around them a world which seemed to be lapped in comfort
+or swathed in the dead wrappings of the past, and would not listen to
+reasoned appeals; and it would be futile to deny that, by lifting their
+voices to a pitch which offends fastidious critics, Carlyle and Ruskin
+did sometimes obtain a hearing and kindle a passion which Matthew Arnold
+could never stir by his scholarly exhortations to 'sweetness and light'.
+
+But it would be a mistake to infer from such clamour and contention that
+the Victorians did not enjoy their fair share of happiness in this
+world. The opposite would be nearer the truth: happiness was given to
+them in good, even in overflowing measure. Any one familiar with
+Trevelyan's biography of Macaulay will remember with what fullness and
+intensity he enjoyed his life; and the same fact is noted by Dr. Mozley
+in his Essay on that most representative Victorian, Thomas Arnold. The
+lives of Delane, the famous editor of _The Times_, of the statesman
+Palmerston, of the painter Millais, and of many other men in many
+professions, might be quoted to support this view. In some cases this
+was due to their strong family affections, in others to their genius for
+friendship. A good conscience, a good temper, a good digestion, are all
+factors of importance. But perhaps the best insurance against moodiness
+and melancholy was that strenuous activity which made them forget
+themselves, that energetic will-power which was the driving force in so
+many movements of the day.
+
+How many of the changes of last century were due to general tendencies,
+how far the single will of this man or that has seriously affected its
+history, it is impossible to estimate. To many it seems that the rôle of
+the individual is played out. The spirit of the coming era is that of
+organized fellowship and associated effort. The State is to prescribe
+for all, and the units are, somehow, to be marshalled into their places
+by a higher collective will. Under the shadow of socialism the more
+ambitious may be tempted to quit the field of public service at home and
+to look to enterprises abroad--to resign poor England to a mechanical
+bureaucracy, a soulless uniformity where one man is as good as another.
+But it is difficult to believe that society can dispense with leaders,
+or afford to forget the lessons which may be learnt from the study of
+such noble lives. The Victorians had a robuster faith. Their faith and
+their achievements may help to banish such doubts to-day. As one of the
+few survivors of that Victorian era has lately said: 'Only those whose
+minds are numbed by the suspicion that all times are tolerably alike,
+and men and women much of a muchness, will deny that it was a generation
+of intrepid efforts forward.' Some fell in mid-combat: some survived to
+witness the eventual victory of their cause. For all might be claimed
+the funeral honours which Browning claimed for his Grammarian. They
+aimed high; they 'threw themselves on God': the mountain-tops are their
+appropriate resting-place.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS CARLYLE
+
+1795-1881
+
+1795. Born at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, December 4.
+1809. Enters Edinburgh University.
+1814-18. Schoolmaster at Annan and Kirkcaldy. Friendship with Edward
+      Irving.
+1819-21. Reading law and literature at Edinburgh and Mainhill.
+1821. First meeting with Jane Welsh at Haddington.
+1822-3. Tutorship in Buller family.
+1824-5. German literature, Goethe, _Life of Schiller_.
+1826. October 17, marriage; residence at Comely Bank, Edinburgh.
+1827. Jeffrey's friendship; articles for _Edinburgh Review_.
+1828-34. Craigenputtock, with intervals in London and Edinburgh;
+      poverty; solitude; profound study; _Sartor Resartus_ written;
+      reading for _French  Revolution_.
+1834. Cheyne Row, Chelsea, permanent home.
+1834. Begins to read for, 1841 to write, _Cromwell_.
+1834-6. _French Revolution_ written; finished January 12, 1837.
+1837-40. Four courses of lectures in London. (German literature, _Heroes_.)
+1844. Changes plan of, 1845 finishes writing, _Cromwell_.
+1846-51. Studies Ireland and modern questions; _Latter-Day Pamphlets_, 1849.
+1851. Choice of Frederick the Great of Prussia for next subject.
+1857. Two vols. printed; 1865, rest finished and published.
+1865. Lord Rector of Edinburgh University.
+1866. Death of Mrs. Carlyle, April 21.
+1867-9. Prepares Memorials of his wife; friendship with Froude.
+1870. Loses the use of his right hand.
+1874. Refuses offer of Baronetcy or G.C.B.
+1881. Death at Chelsea, February 5; burial at Ecclefechan.
+
+THOMAS CARLYLE
+
+PROPHET
+
+
+North-west of Carlisle (from which town the Carlyle family in all
+probability first took their name), a little way along the border, the
+river Annan comes down its green valley from the lowland hills to lose
+itself in the wide sands of the Solway Firth. At the foot of these hills
+is the village of Ecclefechan, some eight miles inland. Here in the wide
+irregular street, down the side of which flows a little beck, stands the
+grey cottage, built by the stonemason James Carlyle, where he lived with
+his second wife, Margaret Aitken; and here on December 4, 1795, the
+eldest of nine children, their son Thomas was born. There is little to
+redeem the place from insignificance; the houses are mostly mean, the
+position of the village is tame and commonplace. But if a visitor will
+mount the hills that lie to the north, turn southward and look over the
+wide expanse of land and water to the Cumbrian mountains, then, should
+he be fortunate enough to see the landscape in stormy and unsettled
+weather, he may realize why the land was so dear to its most famous son
+that he could return to it from year to year throughout his life and
+could there at all times soothe his most unquiet moods. Through all his
+years in London he remained a lowland Scot and was most at home in
+Annandale. With this district his fame is still bound up, as that of
+Walter Scott with the Tweed, or that of Wordsworth with the Lakes.
+
+In this humble household Thomas Carlyle first learnt what is meant by
+work, by truthfulness, and by reverence, lessons which he never forgot.
+He learnt to revere authority, to revere worth, and to revere something
+yet higher and more mysterious--the Unseen. In _Sartor Resartus_ he
+describes how his hero was impressed by his parents' observance of
+religious duties. 'The highest whom I knew on earth I here saw bowed
+down with awe unspeakable before a Higher in Heaven; such things
+especially in infancy, reach inwards to the very core of your being.'
+His father was a man of unusual force of character and gifted with a
+wonderful power of speech, flashing out in picturesque metaphor, in
+biting satire, in humorous comment upon life. He had, too, the Scotch
+genius for valuing education; and it was he who decided that Tom, whose
+character he had observed, should have every chance that schooling could
+give him. His mother was a most affectionate, single-hearted, and
+religious woman; labouring for her family, content with her lot, her
+trust for her son unfailing, her only fear for him lest in his new
+learning he might fall away from the old Biblical faith which she held
+so firmly herself.
+
+Reading with his father or mother, lending a hand at housework when
+needed, nourishing himself on the simple oatmeal and milk which
+throughout life remained his favourite food, submitting himself
+instinctively to the stern discipline of the home, he passed, happily on
+the whole, through his childhood and soon outstripped his comrades in
+the village school. His success there led to his going in his tenth year
+to the grammar school at Annan; and before he reached his fourteenth
+year he trudged off on foot to Edinburgh to begin his studies at the
+university.
+
+Instead of young men caught up by express trains and deposited, by the
+aid of cabmen and porters, in a few hours in the sheltered courts of
+Oxford and Cambridge, we must imagine a party of boys, of fourteen or
+fifteen years old, trudging on foot twenty miles a day for five days
+across bleak country, sleeping at rough inns, and on their arrival
+searching for an attic in some bleak tenement in a noisy street. Here
+they were to live almost entirely on the baskets of home produce sent
+through the carriers at intervals by their thrifty parents. It was and
+is a Spartan discipline, and it turns out men who have shown their grit
+and independence in all lands where the British flag is flown.
+
+The earliest successes which Carlyle won, both at Annan and at
+Edinburgh, were in mathematics. His classical studies received little
+help from his professors, and his literary gifts were developed mostly
+by his own reading, and stimulated from time to time by talks with
+fellow students. Perhaps it was for his ultimate good that he was not
+brought under influences which might have guided him into more
+methodical courses and tamed his rugged originality. The universities
+cannot often be proved to have fostered kindly their poets and original
+men of letters; at least we may say that Edinburgh was a more kindly
+Alma Mater to Carlyle than Oxford and Cambridge proved to Shelley and
+Byron. His native genius, and the qualities which he inherited from his
+parents, were not starved in alien soil, but put out vigorous growth.
+From such letters to his friends as have survived, we can see what a
+power Carlyle had already developed of forcibly expressing his ideas and
+establishing an influence over others.
+
+He left the university at the age of nineteen, and the next twelve years
+of his life were of a most unsettled character. He made nearly as many
+false starts in life as Goldsmith or Coleridge, though he redeemed them
+nobly by his persistence in after years. In 1814 his family still
+regarded the ministry as his vocation, and Carlyle was himself quite
+undecided about it. To promote this idea the profession of schoolmaster
+was taken up for the time. He continued in it for more than six years,
+first at Annan and then at Kirkcaldy; but he was soon finding it
+uncongenial and rebelling against it. A few years later he tried reading
+law with no greater contentment; and in order to support himself he was
+reduced to teaching private pupils. The chief friend of this period was
+Edward Irving, the gifted preacher who afterwards, in London, came to
+tragic shipwreck. He was a native of Annan, five years older than
+Carlyle, and he had spent some time in preaching and preparing for the
+ministry. He was one of the few people who profoundly influenced
+Carlyle's life. At Kirkcaldy he was his constant companion, shared his
+tastes, lent him books, and kindled his powers of insight and judgement
+in many a country walk. Carlyle has left us records of this time in his
+_Reminiscences_, how he read the twelve volumes of Irving's _Gibbon_ in
+twelve days, how he tramped through the Trossachs on foot, how in summer
+twilights he paced the long stretches of sand at Irving's side.
+
+It was Irving who in 1822 commended him to the Buller family, with whom
+he continued as tutor for two years. Charles Buller, the eldest son, was
+a boy of rare gifts and promise, worthy of such a teacher; and but for
+his untimely death in 1848 he might have won a foremost place in
+politics. The family proved valuable friends to Carlyle in after-life,
+besides enabling him at this time to live in comfort, with leisure for
+his own studies and some spare money to help his family. But for this
+aid, his brother Alexander would have fared ill with the farming, and
+John could never have afforded the training for the medical profession.
+
+Again, it was Irving who first took him to Haddington in 1821 and
+introduced him to Jane Baillie Welsh, his future wife. Irving's
+sincerity and sympathy, his earnest enthusiasm joined with the power of
+genuine laughter (always to Carlyle a mark of a true rich nature), made
+him through all these years a thoroughly congenial companion. He really
+understood Carlyle as few outside his family did, and he never grew
+impatient at Carlyle's difficulty in settling to a profession. 'Your
+mind,' he wrote, 'unfortunately for its present peace, has taken in so
+wide a range of study as to be almost incapable of professional
+trammels; and it has nourished so uncommon and so unyielding a
+character, as first unfits you for, and then disgusts you with, any
+accommodations which for so cultivated and so fertile a mind would
+easily procure favour and patronage.' Well might Carlyle in later days
+find a hero in tough old Samuel Johnson, whose sufferings were due to
+similar causes. The other source which kept the fire in him aglow
+through these difficult years was the confidence and affection of his
+whole family, and the welcome which he always found at home.
+Disappointed though they were at his failure, as yet, to settle to a
+profession and to earn a steady income, for all that 'Tom' was to be a
+great man; and when he could find time to spend some months at Mainhill,
+or later at Scotsbrig,[1] a room could always be found for him, hours of
+peace and solitude could be enjoyed, the most wholesome food, and the
+most cordial affection, were there rendered as loyal ungrudging tribute.
+But new ties were soon to be knit and a new chapter to be opened in his
+life.
+
+[Note 1: Farms near Ecclefechan to which his parents moved in 1814
+and 1826.]
+
+John Welsh of Haddington, who died before Carlyle met his future wife,
+was a surgeon and a man of remarkable gifts; and his daughter could
+trace her descent to such famous Scotsmen as Wallace and John Knox. Her
+own mental powers were great, and her vivacity and charming manners
+caused her to shine in society wherever she was. She had an unquestioned
+supremacy among the ladies of Haddington and many had been the suitors
+for her hand. When Irving had given her lessons there, love had sprung
+up between tutor and pupil, but this budding romance ended tragically in
+1822. Before meeting her he had been engaged to another lady; and when a
+new appointment gave him a sure income, he was held to his bond and was
+forced to crush down his passion and to take farewell of Miss Welsh. At
+what date Carlyle conceived the hope of making her his wife it is
+difficult to say. Her beauty and wit seem to have done their work
+quickly in his case; but she was not one to give her affections readily,
+for all the intellectual sympathy which united them. In 1823 she was
+contemplating marriage, but had made no promise; in 1824 she had
+accepted the idea of marrying him, but in 1825 she still scouted the
+conditions in which he proposed to live. His position was precarious,
+his projects visionary, and his immediate desire was to settle on a
+lonely farm, where he could devote himself to study, if she would do the
+household drudgery. Because his mother whom he loved and honoured was
+content to lead this life, he seemed to think that his wife could do the
+same; but her nature and her rearing were not those of the Carlyles and
+their Annandale neighbours. It involved a complete renunciation of the
+comforts of life and the social position which she enjoyed; and much
+though she admired his talents and enjoyed his company, she was not in
+that passion of love which could lift her to such heights of
+self-sacrifice.
+
+By this time we can begin to discern in his letters the outline of his
+character--his passionate absorption in study, his moodiness, his fits
+of despondency, his intense irritability; his incapacity to master his
+own tongue and temper. In happy moments he shows great tenderness of
+feeling for those whom he loves or pities; but this alternates with
+inconsiderate clamour and loud complaints deafening the ears of all
+about him, provoked often by slight and even imaginary grievances. It is
+the artistic nature run riot, and that in one who preached silence and
+stoicism as the chief virtues--an inconsistency which has amused and
+disgusted generations of readers. It was impossible for him to do his
+work with the regular method, the equable temper, of a Southey or a
+Scott. In dealing with history he must image the past to himself most
+vividly before he could expound his subject; and that effort and strain
+cost him sleepless nights and days of concentrated thought. Nor was he
+an easier companion when his work was finished and he could take his
+ease. Then life seemed empty and profitless; and in its emptiness his
+voice echoed all the louder. The ill was within him, and outward
+circumstances were powerless to affect his nature.
+
+At this time he was chiefly occupied in reading German literature and
+spreading the knowledge of it among his countrymen. After Coleridge he
+was the first of our literary men to appreciate the poets and mystics of
+Germany, and he did more even than Coleridge to make Englishmen familiar
+with them. He acquired at this time a knowledge of French and Italian
+literature too; but the philosophy of Kant and the writings of Goethe
+and Schiller roused him to greater enthusiasm. From Kant he learnt that
+the guiding principle of conduct was not happiness, but the 'categorical
+imperative' of duty; from Goethe he drew such hopefulness as gleams
+occasionally through his despondent utterances on the progress of the
+human race. He translated Goethe's novel, _Wilhelm Meister_, in 1823,
+and followed it up with the _Life of Schiller_. There was no
+considerable sale for either of these books till his lectures in London
+and his established fame roused a demand for all he had written. In
+these days he was practising for the profession of a man of letters, and
+was largely influenced by personal ambition and the desire to earn an
+income which would make him independent; he was not yet fired with a
+mission, or kindled to white heat.
+
+His long courtship was rewarded in October 1826. When the marriage took
+place the bride was twenty-five years old and the bridegroom thirty. Men
+of letters have not the reputation of making ideal husbands, and the
+qualities to which this is due were possessed by Carlyle in exaggerated
+measure. It was a perilous enterprise for any one to live with him, most
+of all for such a woman, delicately bred, nervous, and highly strung.
+She was aware of this, and was prepared for a large measure of
+self-denial; but she could not have foreseen how severe she would find
+the trial. The morbid sensitiveness of Carlyle to his own pains and
+troubles, so often imaginary, joined with his inconsiderate blindness to
+his wife's real sufferings, led to many heart-burnings. If she
+contributed to them, in some degree, by her wilfulness, jealous temper,
+and sharpness of tongue, ill-health and solitude may well excuse her.
+
+His own confessions, made after her death, are coloured by sorrow and
+deep affection: no doubt he paints his own conduct in hues darker than
+the truth demands. Shallow critics have sneered at the picture of the
+philosopher whose life was so much at variance with his creed, and too
+much has, perhaps, been written about the subject. If reference must be
+made to such a well-worn tale, it is best to let Carlyle's own account
+stand as he wished it to stand. His moral worth has been vindicated in a
+hundred ways, not least by his humility and honesty about himself, and
+can bear the test of time.
+
+For the first two years of married life Carlyle's scheme of living on a
+farm was kept at bay by his wife, and their home was at Edinburgh.
+Carlyle refers to this as the happiest period of his life, though he did
+not refrain from loud laments upon occasions. The good genius of the
+household was Jeffrey, the famous editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, who
+was distantly related to Mrs. Carlyle. He made friends with the
+newly-married pair, opened a path for them into the society of the
+capital, and enabled Carlyle to spread the knowledge of German authors
+in the _Review_ and to make his bow before a wider public. The prospects
+of the little household seemed brighter, but, by generously making over
+all her money to her mother, his wife had crippled its resources; and
+Carlyle was of so difficult a humour that neither Jeffrey nor any one
+else could guide his steps for long. Living was precarious; society made
+demands even on a modest household, and in 1828 he at length had his way
+and persuaded his wife to remove to Craigenputtock. It was in the
+loneliness of the moors that Carlyle was to come to his full stature and
+to develop his astonishing genius.
+
+Craigenputtock was a farm belonging to his wife's family, lying seventy
+feet above the sea, sixteen miles from Dumfries, among desolate moors
+and bogs, and fully six miles from the nearest village. 'The house is
+gaunt and hungry-looking. It stands with the scanty fields attached as
+an island in a sea of morass. The landscape is unredeemed either by
+grace or grandeur, mere undulating hills of grass and heather with peat
+bogs in the hollows between them.' So Froude describes the home where
+the Carlyles were to spend six years, the wife in domestic labours, in
+solitude, in growing ill-health, the husband in omnivorous reading, in
+digesting the knowledge that he gathered, in transmuting it and marking
+it with the peculiar stamp of his genius. There was no true
+companionship over the work. As the moorland gave the fresh air and
+stillness required, so the wife might nourish the physical frame with
+wholesome digestible food and save him from external cares; the rest
+must be done by lonely communing with himself. He needed no Fleet Street
+taverns or literary salons to encourage him. Goethe, with whom he
+exchanged letters and compliments at times, said with rare insight that
+he 'had in himself an originating principle of conviction, out of which
+he could develop the force that lay in him unassisted by other men'.
+
+Few were the interruptions from without. His fame was not yet
+established. In any case pilgrims would have to undertake a very rough
+journey, and the fashion of such pilgrimages had hardly begun. But in
+1833 from distant America came one disciple, afterwards to be known as
+the famous author Ralph Waldo Emerson; and he has left us in his
+_English Traits_ a vivid record of his impression of two or three famous
+men of letters whom he saw. He describes Carlyle as 'tall and gaunt,
+with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary
+powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent
+with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming
+humour, which floated everything he looked upon'.[2]
+
+[Note 2: Emerson, _English Traits_, 'World's Classics' edition, p.
+8.]
+
+Much of his time was given to reading about the French Revolution, which
+was to be the subject of his greatest literary triumph. But the
+characteristic work of this period is _Sartor Resartus_ ('The tailor
+patched anew'), in which Carlyle, under a thin German disguise, reveals
+himself to the world, with his views on the customs and ways of society
+and his contempt for all the pretensions and absurdities which they
+involved. In many places it is extravagant and fantastic, as when 'the
+most remarkable incident in modern history' proves to be George Fox the
+Quaker making a suit of leather to render himself independent of
+tailors; in others it rises to the highest pitch of poetry, as in the
+sympathetic lament over the hardships of manual labour. 'Venerable to me
+is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a
+cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet.
+Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with
+its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. O,
+but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity
+as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so
+bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert
+our Conscript on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so
+marred.' It is through such passages that Carlyle has won his way to the
+hearts of many who care little for history, or for German literature.
+
+The book evidently contains much that is autobiographical, and helps us
+to understand Carlyle's childhood and youth; but it is so mixed up with
+fantasy and humour that it is difficult to separate fiction from fact.
+Its chief aim seems to be the overthrow of cant, the ridiculing of
+empty conventions, and the preaching of sincerity and independence. But
+not yet was Carlyle's generation prepared to listen to such sermons.
+Jeffrey was bewildered by the tone and offended at the style; publisher
+after publisher refused it; and when at length it was launched upon the
+world piecemeal in _Fraser's Magazine_, the reading public either
+ignored it or abused it in the roundest terms. During all this time
+Carlyle was anxiously looking for some surer means of livelihood, and
+had not yet decided that literature was to be his profession. He had
+hopes at different times of professorships in Edinburgh and St. Andrews,
+and of the editorship of various reviews; but these all came to nothing.
+For some posts he was not suited; for others his application could find
+no support. He even thought of going to America, where Emerson and other
+admirers would have welcomed him. But the disappointments in Scotland
+decided him to make one more effort in London before accepting defeat,
+and in 1834 he found a house at Chelsea and prepared to quit his
+hermitage among the moors.
+
+Cheyne Row, Chelsea, was to be his new home, a quiet street running
+northward from the riverside in a quarter of London not then invaded by
+industrialism. The house, No. 24, with its little garden, has been made
+into a Carlyle museum, and may still be seen on the east side of the
+street facing a few survivors of the sturdy old pollarded lime-trees
+standing there 'like giants in Tawtie wigs'. His bust, by Boehm, is in
+the garden on the Embankment not a hundred yards away. With this
+district are connected other names famous in literature and art, but its
+presiding genius is the 'Sage of Chelsea', who spent the last
+forty-seven years of his life in it; and there, in a double-walled room,
+in spite of trivial disturbances from without, in spite of far more
+serious fits of dejection and discontent within, he composed his three
+greatest historical books. At the outset his prospects were not bright,
+and at the end of 1834 he confessed 'it is now twenty-three months
+since I earned a penny by the craft of literature'. There was need of
+much faith; and it was fortunate for him that he had at his side one who
+believed in his genius and who was well qualified to judge. He must have
+been thinking of this when he wrote of Mahomet in _Heroes_ and of the
+prophet's gratitude to his first wife Kadijah: 'She believed in me when
+none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one friend and she
+was that!' In the same place he quoted the German writer Novalis: 'It is
+certain my conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will
+believe in it.'
+
+So fortified, he worked through the days of poverty and gloom, with
+groans and outbursts of fury, kindling to white heat as he imaged to
+himself the men and events of the French Revolution, and throwing them
+on to paper in lurid pictures of flame. One terrible misadventure
+chilled his spirit in 1835, when the manuscript of the first volume was
+lent to J. S. Mill, and was accidentally burnt; but, after a short fit
+of despair, he set manfully to work to repair the loss, and the new
+version was finished in January, 1837. This book marked an epoch in the
+writing of history. Hitherto few had realized what potent force there
+was in the original documents lying stored in libraries and record
+offices. They were 'live shells' buried in the dust of a neglected
+magazine; and in the hands of Carlyle they came to life again and worked
+havoc among the traditional judgements of history. This book was also
+the turning point in his career. Dickens, Thackeray, and others hailed
+it with enthusiasm; gradually it made its way with the public at large;
+and as in the following years Carlyle, prompted by some friends, gave
+successful courses of lectures,[3] his position among men of letters
+became assured, and he had no more need to worry over money. Living in
+London he became known to a wider circle, and his marvellous powers of
+conversation brought visitors and invitations in larger measure than he
+desired. The new friends whom he valued most were Mr. and Lady Harriet
+Baring,[4] and he was often their guest in London, in Surrey, in
+Scotland, and later at The Grange in Hampshire. But he remained faithful
+to his older and more humble friends, while he also made himself
+accessible to young men of letters who seemed anxious to learn, and who
+did not offend one or other of his many prejudices. Such were Sterling,
+Ruskin, Tennyson, and James Anthony Froude.
+
+[Note 3: The most famous course, on Hero-Worship, was delivered in
+May, 1840.]
+
+[Note 4: Afterwards Lord and Lady Ashburton.]
+
+Despite these successes Carlyle's letters at this time are full of the
+usual discontents. London life and society stimulated him for the time,
+but he paid dearly for it. Late dinners and prolonged bouts of talk, in
+which he put forth all his powers, were followed by dyspepsia and
+lassitude next day; and the neighbours, who kept dogs or cocks which
+were accused of disturbing his slumbers, were the mark for many plaints
+and lamentations. He could not in any circumstances be entirely happy.
+Work was so exciting with the imagination on fire, that it kept him
+awake at night; idleness was still more fatal in its effects. And so,
+after a few years of relative calm, in 1839 we find his active brain
+struggling to create a true picture of Oliver Cromwell and to expound
+the meaning of the Great Civil War.
+
+It was to be no easy task. For nearly five years he was to wrestle with
+the subject, trying in vain to give it adequate shape and form, and then
+to scrap the labours of years and to start again on a new plan; but in
+the end he was to win another signal victory. While the _French
+Revolution_ may be the higher artistic triumph, _Cromwell_ is more
+important for one who wishes to understand the life-work of Carlyle and
+all for which he stood. The emptiness of political theories and
+institutions, the enduring value of character, are lessons which no one
+has preached more forcibly. In his opinion the success of the English
+revolution, the blow to tyranny and misgovernment in Church and State,
+was not due to eloquent members of the Long Parliament, but to plain
+God-fearing men, who, if they quoted scripture, did so not from
+hypocrisy but because it was the language in which they habitually
+thought. Nor could they build up a new England till they had found a
+leader. It was the ages which had faith to recognize their worthiest man
+and to accept his guidance which had achieved great things in the world,
+not those which prated of democracy and progress. To make his
+countrymen, in this age of fluent political talk, see the true moral
+quality of the men of the seventeenth century--this it was which
+occupied seven years of Carlyle's life and filled his thoughts. It was
+indeed a labour of Hercules. Much of the material was lost beyond
+repair, much buried in voluminous folios and State papers, much obscured
+by the cant and prejudice of eighteenth-century authors. To recall the
+past, Carlyle needed such help as geography would give him, and he spent
+many days in visiting Dunbar, Worcester, and other sites. To Naseby he
+went in 1842, in company with Dr. Arnold, and 'plucked two gowans and a
+cowslip from the burial heaps of the slain'. A more important task was
+to recover authentic utterances of Cromwell and his fellow workers, and
+to put these in the place of the second-hand judgements of political
+partisans; and this involved laborious researches in libraries. Above
+all, he had to interpret these records in a new spirit, exercising true
+insight and sympathy, to put life into the dry bones and to present his
+readers with the living image of a man. He combined in unique fashion
+the laborious research of a student with the moral fervour of a prophet.
+
+Despite the strain of these labours Carlyle showed few signs of his
+fifty years. The family were of tough stock; and the years which he had
+spent in moorland air had increased the capital of health on which he
+could draw. The flight of time was chiefly marked by his growing
+antipathy to the political movements of the day, and by a growing
+despondency about the future. People might buy his books; but he looked
+in vain for evidence that they paid heed to the lessons which he
+preached. The year of revolutions, 1848, followed by the setting up of
+the French Empire and the collapse of the Roman Republic, produced
+nothing but disappointment, and he became louder and more bitter in his
+judgements on democracy. 1849 saw the birth of the _Latter-Day
+Pamphlets_ in which he outraged Mill and the Radicals by his scornful
+words about Negro Emancipation, and by the savage delight with which he
+shattered their idols. He loved to expose what seemed to him the
+sophistries involved in the conventional praise of liberty. Of old the
+mediaeval serf or the negro slave had some one who was responsible for
+him, some one interested in his physical well-being. The new conditions
+too often meant nothing but liberty to starve, liberty to be idle,
+liberty to slip back into the worst indulgences, while those who might
+have governed stood by regardless and lent no help. Such from an extreme
+point of view appeared the policy of _laisser-faire_; and he was neither
+moderate nor impartial in stating his case. 'An idle white gentleman is
+not pleasant to me;... but what say you to an idle black gentleman, with
+his rum bottle in his hand,... no breeches on his body, pumpkin at
+discretion, and the fruitfullest region of the earth going back to
+jungle round him?' In a similar vein he dealt with stump oratory, prison
+reform, and other subjects, tilting in reckless fashion at the shields
+of the reforming Radicals of the day; nor was he less outspoken when he
+met in person the champions of these views. A letter to his wife in 1847
+tells of a visit to the Brights at Rochdale; how 'John and I discorded
+in our views not a little', and how 'I shook peaceable Brightdom as with
+a passing earthquake'. From books he could learn: to human teachers he
+proved refractory. Had he been more willing to listen to others, his
+judgements on contemporary events might have been more valuable. All his
+life he was, as George Meredith says, 'Titanic rather than Olympian, a
+heaver of rocks, not a shaper'; and this fever of denunciation grew with
+advancing years. But with these spurts of volcanic energy alternate
+moods of the deepest depression. His journal for 1850 says, 'This seems
+really the Nadir of my fortunes; and in hope, desire, or outlook, so far
+as common mortals reckon such, I never was more bankrupt. Lonely, shut
+up within my contemptible and yet _not_ deliberately ignoble self,
+perhaps there never was, in modern literary or other history, a more
+solitary soul, _capable_ of any friendship or honest relation to
+others.' By this time he was feeling the need of another task, and in
+1851 he chose Frederick the Great of Prussia for the subject of his next
+book.
+
+To this generation apology seems to be needed for an English author who
+lavishes so much admiration on Prussian men and institutions. But
+Carlyle, whose chief heroes had been men of intense religious
+convictions, like Luther, Knox, and Cromwell, could find no hero after
+his heart in English history subsequent to the Civil War. Eloquent Pitts
+and Burkes, jobbing Walpoles and Pelhams, were to him types of
+politicians who had brought England to her present plight. German
+literature had always kept its influence over him and had directed his
+attention to German history; Frederick, without religion as he was,
+seemed at any rate sincere, recognized facts, and showed practical
+capacity for ruling (essential elements in the Carlylean hero), and the
+subject would be new to his readers. The labour involved was stupendous;
+it was to fill his life and the lives of his helpers for thirteen
+years. Of these helpers the chief credit is due to Joseph Neuberg, who
+piloted him over German railways, libraries, and battle-fields in the
+search for picturesque detail, and to Henry Larkin, who toiled in London
+to trace references in scores of authors, and who finally crowned the
+work by laborious indexing, which made Carlyle's labyrinth accessible to
+his readers. There were masses of material hidden away and unsifted;
+and, as in the case of Cromwell, only a man of original genius could
+penetrate this inert mass with shafts of light and make the past live
+again. The task grew as he continued his researches. He groped his way
+back to the beginning of the Hohenzollerns, and sketched the portraits
+of the old Electors in a style unequalled for vividness and humour. He
+drew a full-length portrait of Frederick William, most famous of
+drill-sergeants, and he studied the campaigns of his son with a
+thoroughness which has been a model to soldiers and civilians ever
+since. We have the record of two tours which he made in Germany to view
+the scene of operations;[5] and it is amazing how exact a picture he
+could bring away from a short visit to each separate battle-field. His
+diligence, accuracy, and wide grasp of the subject satisfied the
+severest judges; and the book won him a success as complete and enduring
+in Germany as in England and America.
+
+[Note 5: Froude, _Carlyle, Life in London_, vol. ii, pp. 100 and
+217.]
+
+When this was finished, Carlyle was on the verge of seventy and his work
+was done; though the evening of his life was long, his strength was
+exhausted. His wife lived just long enough to see the seal set upon his
+fame, and to hear of his election to be Lord Rector of Edinburgh
+University. But in April 1866, while he was in Scotland for his
+installation, which she was too weak to attend, he heard the news of her
+sudden death from heart failure in London; and after this he was a
+broken man. By reading her journal he learnt, too late, how much his
+own inconsiderate temper had added to her trials, and his remorse was
+bitter and lasting. He shut himself off from all his friends except
+Froude, who was to be his literary executor, and gave himself to
+collecting and annotating the memorials which she had left. Each letter
+is followed by some words of tender recollection or some cry of
+self-reproach. He has erected to her the most singular of literary
+monuments, morbid perhaps, but inspired by a feeling which was in his
+case natural and sincere.
+
+About 1870 he began to lose the use of his right hand and he found it
+impossible to compose by dictation. Of the last years of his life there
+is little to narrate. The offer of a baronetcy or the G.C.B. from Mr.
+Disraeli in 1874 pleased him for the moment, but he resolutely refused
+external honours. He took daily walks with Froude, daily drives when he
+became too weak to go on foot. Towards the end the Bible and Shakespeare
+were his most habitual reading. He had long ceased to be a member of any
+church, but his belief in God and in God's working in history was the
+very foundation of his being, and the lessons of the Bible were to him
+inexhaustible and ever new. Death came to him peacefully in February,
+1881; and as he had expressed a definite wish, he was buried at
+Ecclefechan, though a public funeral in the Abbey was offered and its
+acceptance would have met with the approval of his countrymen.
+
+The very wealth of records makes it difficult to judge his character
+fairly. Few men have so laid bare the thoughts and feelings of their
+hearts. It is easy to blame the unmanly laments which he utters over his
+health, his solitude, and his sufferings, real or imaginary; few
+imaginative writers have the every-day virtues. His egotism, too, is
+difficult to defend. If, as he himself admits, he invariably took an
+undue share of talk, often in fact monopolizing it, wherever he was, we
+must remember that the brilliance of his gifts was admitted by all;
+less pardonable is his habit of disparaging other men, and especially
+other men of letters. His pen-pictures of Mill, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
+and others, are wonderfully vivid but too often sour in flavour; his
+sketch of Charles Lamb is an outrage on that generous and kindly soul.
+Too often he was unconscious of the pain given by such random words.
+When he was brought to book, he was honourable enough to recant. Fearing
+on one occasion to have offended even the serene loyalty of Emerson, he
+cries out protestingly, 'Has not the man Emerson, from old years, been a
+Human Friend to me? Can I ever forget, or think otherwise than lovingly
+of the man Emerson?'
+
+But whatever offence Carlyle committed with his ungovernable tongue or
+pen, he had rare virtues in conduct. His generosity was as unassuming as
+it was persistent; and it began at home. Long before he was free from
+anxieties about money for himself, he was helping two of his brothers to
+make a career, one in agriculture, and the other in medicine. In his
+latter days he regularly gave away large sums in such a way that no one
+knew the source from which they came. His letters show a deep tenderness
+of affection for his mother, his wife, and others of the family; and the
+humble Annandale home was always in his thoughts. His charity embraced
+even those whose claim on him was but indirect. When his wife was dead,
+he could remember to celebrate her birthday by sending a present to her
+old nurse. He was scrupulous in money-dealing and frugal in all matters
+of personal comfort; in his innermost thoughts he was always
+pure-hearted and sincere; for nothing on earth would he traffic in his
+independence or in adherence to the truth.
+
+His style has not largely influenced other historians; and this is as
+well, since imitations of it easily fall into mere obscurity and
+extravagance. But his historical method has been of great value, the
+patient study of original authorities, the copious references quoted,
+the careful indexing, all being proof how anxious he was that the
+subject should be presented clearly and veraciously, rather than that
+the books should shine as literary performances. How far the principles
+which he valued and taught have spread it is difficult to say. Party
+politicians still appeal to the sacred name of liberty without inquiring
+what true liberty means; publicists still speak as if the material gains
+of modern life, cheap food and machine-made products, meant nothing but
+advance in the history of the human race; but there are others who look
+to the spiritual factors and wish to enlarge the bounds of political
+economy.
+
+The writings of Carlyle, and of Ruskin, on whom fell the prophet's
+mantle, certainly made their influence felt in later books devoted to
+that once 'dismal' science. Few can be quite indifferent to the man or
+to his message. Those who demand moderation, clearness, and Attic
+simplicity, will be repelled by his extravagances or by his mysticism.
+Others will be attracted by his glowing imagination and by his fiery
+eloquence, and will reserve for him a foremost place in their
+affections. These will echo the words which Emerson was heard to say on
+his death-bed, when his eyes fell on a portrait of the familiar rugged
+features, '_That_ is the man, my man'.
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT PEEL
+
+From the painting by J. Linnell in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+
+
+
+SIR ROBERT PEEL
+
+1788-1850
+
+1788. Born near Bury, Lancashire, July 5.
+1801-4. Harrow School.
+1805. Christ Church, Oxford.
+1809. M.P. for Cashel, Ireland.
+1811. Under-Secretary for the Colonies.
+1812-18. Chief Secretary for Ireland.
+1817. M.P. for Oxford University.
+1819. President of Bullion Committee.
+1820. Marriage to Julia, daughter of General Sir John Floyd.
+1822-7. Home Secretary in Lord Liverpool's Government.
+1827. Canning's short ministry and death.
+1828-30. Home Secretary and leader in Commons under the Duke of Wellington.
+1829. Catholic Emancipation carried.
+1832. Lord Grey's Reform Bill carried.
+1834-5. Prime Minister; Tamworth manifesto.
+1839. 'Bedchamber Plot': Peel fails to form ministry.
+1841-6. Prime Minister a second time.
+1844. Peel's Bank Act.
+1846. Corn Laws repealed. Peel, defeated on Irish Coercion Bill, resigns.
+1850. Accident, June 29, and death, July 2.
+
+SIR ROBERT PEEL
+
+STATESMAN
+
+
+In the years that lay between the Treaty of Utrecht and the close of the
+Napoleonic wars British politics were largely dominated by Walpole and
+the two Pitts: their great figures only stand out in stronger relief
+because their place was filled for a time by such weak ministers as
+Newcastle and Bute, as Grafton and North. In the nineteenth century
+there were many gifted statesmen who held the position of first
+minister of the Crown. Disraeli and Palmerston by shrewdness and force
+of character, Canning and Derby by brilliant oratorical gifts, Russell
+and Aberdeen by earnest devotion to public service, were all commanding
+figures in their day, whose claims to the chieftainship of a party and
+of a government were generally admitted. Gladstone, the most versatile
+genius of them all, had abilities second to none; but his place in
+history will for long be a subject of acute controversy. He stands too
+close to our own time to be fairly judged. Of the others no one had the
+same combination of gifts as Sir Robert Peel, no one had in the same
+measure that particular knowledge, judgement, and ability which
+characterize the _statesman_. His career was the most fruitful, his work
+the most enduring: he has left his mark in English history to a degree
+which no one of his rivals can equal.
+
+The Peel family can be traced back to the misty days of Danish inroads.
+Its original home in England is disputed between Yorkshire and
+Lancashire; but as early as the days of Elizabeth the branch from which
+our statesman was descended is certainly to be found at Blackburn, and
+its members lived for generations as sturdy yeomen of that district. The
+first of them known to strike out an independent line was his
+grandfather, Robert Peel, who with his brother-in-law, Mr. Haworth,
+started the first firm for calico-printing in Lancashire about the year
+1760, ceasing the practice of sending the material to be printed in
+France. This grandfather was a type of the men who were making the new
+England, leading the way in the creation of industries that were to
+transform the North and Midlands. The business prospered and he moved
+from Blackburn to Burton-on-Trent, where he built three new mills. His
+third son, named Robert, was also gifted with resource. Beginning as a
+member of the family firm, he soon came to be its chief director, and
+added another branch at Tamworth, where later he built the house of
+Drayton Manor, the family seat in the nineteenth century. He was a Tory
+and a staunch follower of the younger Pitt, who rewarded his services
+with a baronetcy in 1800. He too was a typical man of his age and class,
+an age of material progress and expansion, a class full of
+self-confidence and animated by a spirit of stubborn resistance to
+so-called un-English ideas. His eldest son, the third Robert and the
+second baronet, is our subject. It is impossible to grasp the springs of
+his conduct unless we know what traditions he inherited from his
+forbears.
+
+Peel's education was begun at home with a specific purpose. Though his
+father had every reason to be satisfied with his own success, for his
+son he cherished a yet higher ambition and one which he did not conceal.
+He said openly that he intended him to be Prime Minister of his country.
+The knowledge of this provoked many jests among the boy's friends and
+caused him no slight embarrassment. It conspired with the shyness and
+reserve, which were innate in him, to win him from the outset a
+reputation for pride and aloofness. If he had not been forced to mix
+with those of his own age, and if he had not resolutely set himself to
+overcome this feeling, he might have grown into a student and a recluse.
+Both at school and college he did 'attend to his book': at Harrow he
+roused the greatest hopes. His brilliant schoolfellow, Lord Byron, while
+claiming to excel him in general information and history, admits that
+Peel was greatly his superior as a scholar. The working of their minds,
+now and afterwards, was curiously different. Bagehot[6] illustrates the
+contrast by a striking metaphor: Byron's mind, he says, worked by
+momentary eruptions of volcanic force from within and then relapsed into
+inactivity. Peel on the other hand steadily accumulated knowledge and
+opinions, his mind receiving impressions from outward experience like
+the alluvial soil deposited by a river in its course. But this is to
+anticipate. At Oxford Peel was the first man to win a 'Double First'
+(i.e. a first class both in classics and mathematics), in which
+distinction Gladstone alone, among our Prime Ministers, equalled him.
+But he also found time during the term to indulge in cricket, in rowing,
+and in riding, while in the vacation he developed a more marked taste
+for shooting, and thus freed himself from the charge of being a mere
+bookworm. He was good-looking, rather a dandy in his dress, stiff in his
+manner, regular in his habits, conforming to the Oxford standards of
+excellence and as yet showing few signs of independence of character.
+
+[Note 6: Walter Bagehot, _Biographical Studies_, p. 17 (Longmans,
+1907).]
+
+Peel went into Parliament early, after the fashion of the day. He was
+twenty-one when, in 1809, a seat was offered him at Cashel in Ireland.
+The system of 'rotten boroughs' had many faults--our text-books of
+history do not spare it--but it may claim to have offered an easy way
+into Parliament for some men of brilliant talents. Peel's family
+connexions and his own training marked out the path for him. It was
+difficult for the young Oxford prizeman not to follow Lord Chancellor
+Eldon, that stout survival of the high old Tories: it was impossible for
+his father's son not to sit behind the successors of Pitt. We shall see
+how far his own reasoning powers and clear vision led him from this
+path; but the early influences were never quite effaced. His first
+patron was Lord Liverpool, to whom he became private secretary in the
+following year. This nobleman, described by Disraeli in a famous passage
+as an 'arch-mediocrity' was Prime Minister for fifteen years. He owed
+his long tenure of office largely to the tolerance with which he allowed
+his abler lieutenants to usurp his power: perhaps he owed it still more
+to the victories which Wellington was then winning abroad and which
+secured the confidence of the country; but at least he seems to have
+been a good judge of men. In 1811 he promoted Peel to be
+Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and in 1812 to be Chief Secretary for
+Ireland. His abilities must have made a great impression to win him such
+promotion: he must have had plenty of self-confidence to undertake such
+duties, for he was only twenty-four years old. We are accustomed to-day
+to under-secretaries of forty or forty-five; but we must remember that
+the younger Pitt led the House of Commons at twenty-four and was Prime
+Minister at twenty-five.
+
+At Dublin Castle Peel was not expected to deal with the great political
+questions which convulsed Parliament at different periods of the
+century. He had to administer the law. It was routine work of a tedious
+and difficult kind; it involved the close study of facts--not in order
+to make a showy speech or to win a case for the moment, but in order to
+frame practical measures which would stand the test of time. Peel
+eschewed the usual recreations of Dublin society, and flung himself into
+his work whole-heartedly. In Roman history we see how Caesar was trained
+in the details of administration as quaestor, aedile, praetor, consul,
+while Pompeius passed in a lordly progress from one high command to
+another; how Caesar voluntarily exiled himself from Rome for ten years
+to conquer and develop Gaul, while Cicero bewailed himself over a few
+months' absence from the Forum. Of these three famous men only one
+proved himself able to guide the ship of state in stormy waters. Analogy
+must not be too closely pressed; but we see that, while Canning for all
+his ability established no durable influence, and his oratory burnt
+itself out after a brief blaze, while Wellington's fame paled year after
+year from his inability to control the course of civil strife, Peel's
+light burnt brighter every decade, as he rose from office to office and
+faced one difficult situation after another with coolness and success.
+He stayed at his post in Dublin for six years: he worked at the details
+of his office--education, agriculture, and police--and brought in many
+practical reforms. His beneficial activity is still better seen in the
+years 1821 to 1827 when he was Home Secretary. To-day he is chiefly
+remembered as the eponymous hero of our police; but in many other ways
+his tenure of the latter office is a landmark in departmental work. It
+may be that he originated little himself: that Romilly was the pioneer
+in the humanizing of law, that Horner taught him the doctrines of sound
+finance, that Huskisson led the way in freeing trade from the shackles
+with which it had been bound. But Peel in all these cases lent generous
+support and made their cause his own. He had a cool head and a warm
+heart, a knowledge of Parliament and an influence in Parliament already
+unrivalled. He saw what could be done, and how it could be done, and so
+he was able to push through successfully the reforms which his
+colleagues initiated. The value of his work in this sphere has never
+been seriously contested.
+
+The point on which Peel's enemies fastened in judging his career was the
+number of times that he changed his convictions, abandoned his party,
+and carried through a measure which he himself had formerly opposed. To
+understand his claim to be called a great statesman it is particularly
+necessary to study these changes.
+
+The first instance was the Reform of the Currency. Early in the French
+wars the London banks had been in difficulties. The Government was
+forced to borrow large sums from the Bank of England in order to give
+subsidies to our allies, and was unable to pay its debts. The Bank could
+not at the same time meet the demands of the Government and the claims
+of its private customers. Since a panic might at any moment cause an
+unprecedented run on its reserves, Pitt suspended cash payments till six
+months after the conclusion of peace. The Bank was thus allowed to
+circulate notes without being obliged to pay full cash value for them
+immediately on demand, and the purchasing power of these notes tended to
+vary far more than that of a metal currency. Also foreigners refused to
+accept a pound note in the place of a pound sterling; foreign payments
+had to be made in specie, and the gold was rapidly drained abroad. When
+the war was over, Horner and other economists began to draw attention to
+the bad effect of this on foreign trade and to the varying price of
+commodities at home, due to the want of a fixed currency. As Pitt had
+allowed the system of inconvertible paper, the Tories generally
+applauded and were ready to perpetuate it. The elder Sir Robert Peel had
+been always a firm supporter of these views and his son began by
+accepting them. He continued to acquiesce in them till his attention was
+definitely turned to the subject. In 1819 he was asked to be a member of
+a committee of very eminent men, including Canning and Mackintosh, which
+was to investigate the question, and he was elected chairman of it. But,
+though his verdict was taken for granted by his party, his mind was so
+constituted that he could not shut it against evidence. He listened to
+arguments, and judged them fairly; and, being by nature unable to palter
+with the truth, once he was convinced of it, he threw in all his weight
+with the reformers and reported in favour of a return to cash payments.
+History has vindicated his judgement, and he himself crowned his
+financial work by the famous Bank Act of 1844, passed when he was Prime
+Minister.
+
+The second question on which Peel's conduct surprised his colleagues was
+that of Catholic Emancipation. Since 1793 Roman Catholic electors had
+the parliamentary vote; but, since no Roman Catholic could sit in
+Parliament, they had hitherto been content to cast their votes for the
+more tolerant of the Protestant candidates. Pitt had failed to induce
+George III to grant the Catholics civil equality, and George IV, despite
+his liberal professions, took up the same attitude as his father on
+succeeding to the throne. But the majority of the Whigs, and some even
+of the Tories, such as Castlereagh and Canning, were prepared to make
+concessions; and since 1820 the Irish agitation led by O'Connell had
+been gaining in strength. Peel had several reasons for being on the
+other side. His early training by his father, his friendship with Eldon
+and Wellington, his attachment to the Established Church, all had
+influence upon him. He saw clearly that Disestablishment would follow
+closely in Ireland on the granting of the Catholic demands; and since
+1817, when he became Member for Oxford University, he felt bound to
+resist this. In taking this line he was no better and no worse than any
+other Tory member of the day; and in later times many politicians have
+allowed their traditions and prejudices to blind them to the existence
+of an Irish problem.
+
+For all that, Peel ought earlier to have recognized the facts, to have
+looked ahead and formed a policy. As Chief Secretary for Ireland he had
+unrivalled opportunities for studying the whole question; but he did not
+let it penetrate beneath the surface of his mind. He had continued to
+bring up the same arguments on the few occasions when he spoke at
+Westminster, and had buried himself in administrative work. He seems to
+have hoped that he could evade it. If the Whigs got a majority and
+introduced an Emancipation Bill, he would have satisfied his
+constituents by formally opposing the measure and would not have gone
+beyond this. As he saw it gradually coming, he satisfied his own
+conscience by retiring from Lord Liverpool's Government and by refusing
+to join Canning, when he became Prime Minister in 1827. As a private
+member he would only be responsible for his own vote, and would not feel
+that he was settling the question for others. But Canning died after
+holding office only a month, and a Government was formed by Wellington
+in which Peel returned to office as Home Secretary and became leader of
+the House of Commons. Now he had to pay the penalty for his lack of
+foresight, and to deal with the tide of feeling which had been rising
+for some years on both sides of the Irish Channel. At least he could see
+facts which were before his eyes.
+
+In 1828, before he had been twelve months in office, his decision was
+aided by a definite event. A by-election had to be fought in Clare, Mr.
+Fitzgerald seeking re-election on joining the Government. Against him
+came forward no less a person than Daniel O'Connell himself, the most
+eloquent and most popular of the Catholic leaders; and, although under
+the existing laws his candidature was void, he received an overwhelming
+majority. The bewilderment of the Tories was ludicrous. Fitzgerald
+himself wrote, 'The proceedings of yesterday were those of madmen; but
+the country is mad.' Peel took a careful view of the situation and
+decided on his course. He certainly laid himself open to the charge of
+giving way before a breach of the law, and the charge was pressed by the
+angry Tories. But his judgement was clearly based on a complete survey
+of all the facts. A single event was the candle which lit up the scene,
+but by the light of it he surveyed the whole room. He still held to his
+view about the dangers of Disestablishment ahead, but he maintained that
+a crisis had arisen involving graver dangers at the moment, and that the
+statesman must choose the lesser of two evils. There is no doubt that
+the situation was critical. The Duke of Wellington and Lord Anglesey (a
+Waterloo veteran, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) both had fears of
+mutiny in the army; and civil war was to be expected, if O'Connell was
+not admitted to the House of Commons. Peel's personal consistency was
+one matter; the public welfare was another and a weightier. His first
+idea was to retire from office and to lend unofficial support to a
+measure which he could not advocate in principle. But the only hope of
+breaking down the old Tory opposition lay in the influence of the Tory
+ministers; no Whig Government could prevail in the temper of that time;
+and Wellington appealed in the strongest terms to Peel to remain in
+office and to lead the House. Peel yielded from motives of public policy
+and made himself responsible for a measure of Catholic Emancipation,
+which he had been pledged to resist.
+
+It was a surrender--an undisguised surrender--and Peel did not, as on
+the Bullion Committee, profess to have changed his mind. But it was an
+honest surrender carried out in the light of day; and, before Parliament
+met, Peel announced his decision to resign his seat at Oxford and to
+give his constituents the chance of expressing their opinion of his
+conduct. The verdict was not long in doubt: the University, which in
+1865 rejected another of its brilliant sons, gave a majority of one
+hundred and forty-six against him, and his political connexion with
+Oxford was severed. The verdict of posterity has been more liberal. The
+chief fault laid to Peel's charge is that he should for so many years
+have ignored all signs of the danger which was approaching, and not have
+made up his mind in time. He could see the crisis clearly, when it came,
+and could put the national interest above everything else: he could not
+look far enough ahead.
+
+It was a similar want of foresight that led to the fall of the Tory
+Government in 1830. The Reform movement, so long delayed by the great
+wars, had been gathering force again. Events in France, where Charles X
+was driven from the throne and Louis Philippe proclaimed as
+Citizen-king, gave it additional impetus. The famous lawyer Brougham was
+thundering against the Government in Parliament, while throughout the
+country the platforms from which Radical orators declaimed were
+surrounded by eager throngs. The history of the movement cannot be told
+here. Its chief actors were the Whigs, who on Wellington's resignation
+formed a Government under Earl Grey at the end of 1830. Peel was
+fighting a losing fight and he did not show his usual judgement or cool
+temper. He opposed the Reform Bill to the last: he was haranguing
+violently against it when Black Rod arrived to summon the Commons to the
+presence of the King. William IV came down in person, at the instance of
+the Whig ministers, to dissolve Parliament and so to stay all
+proceedings by which, in the as yet unreformed Parliament, the Bill
+might have been defeated. In the General Election of 1831 the Whigs
+carried all before them, and in July, when Lord Grey carried the second
+reading, he could command a majority of 136. Even then it took three
+months of stubborn fighting to vanquish the Tory opposition in the House
+of Commons. When the Peers rejected the Bill, the question was raised
+whether a Tory Government could be formed; but Peel, however he might
+dislike the Bill, could recognize facts, and his refusal to co-operate
+in defying public opinion was decisive. Lord Grey returned to office
+fortified by the King's promise to make any number of new peers, if
+required; and the influence of Wellington was effective in dissuading
+the Upper House from further futile resistance. Again Peel had shown his
+good sense in accepting the situation. So far as he was concerned, there
+was no talk of repeal. He explicitly said that he regarded the question
+as 'finally and irrevocably disposed of', and he set to work to adapt
+his policy to the new situation.
+
+It might well seem a desperate one for the Tories. Here were three
+hundred new members, most of whom had just received their seats from the
+Whigs against the direct opposition of their rivals. Gratitude and
+self-interest impelled them to support the Whig party; and its leaders,
+who had for nearly fifty years been out in the cold shade of opposition,
+might count on a long spell of power, especially as the Canningites,
+stronger in talents than in numbers, joined them at this juncture.
+Brougham had gone to the House of Lords, but three future Prime
+Ministers--Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), Lord John Russell, and
+Palmerston--were in the House of Commons serving under Lord Althorp,
+who, though gifted with no oratorical talent, by his good sense and
+still more by his high character, commanded general respect. On the
+other side there was only one figure of the first rank, and that was
+Peel. Till 1832 he had not grown to his full stature: the Reformed
+Parliament gave him his chance and drew forth all his powers. It
+represented a new force in politics. No longer were the members sent to
+Westminster by a few great land-holders, by the small market towns, and
+by the agricultural labourers. The great industrial districts,
+Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the Midlands, were there in the persons of
+well-to-do citizens, experienced in business and serious in temper; and
+Peel, who was himself sprung from a notable family of this kind, was
+eminently the man to lead these classes and to win their confidence. It
+was also a gain to him to stand alone. His judgement was ripened, his
+confidence firm; and he could dominate his party, while the able and
+ambitious leaders on the other side too often clashed with one another.
+Above all, in the years 1832 to 1834, he showed that he had patience.
+Instead of snatching at occasions to ally himself with O'Connell, who
+was in opposition to every Government, and to embarrass the Whigs in a
+factious party-spirit, he showed a marked respect for principle. He
+supported or opposed the Whig bills purely on their merits, and
+gradually trained his party to be ready for the inevitable reaction when
+it should come.
+
+By 1834 the tendencies to disruption in the victorious party were
+clearly showing themselves. First Stanley, on grounds of policy, and
+then Lord Grey, for personal reasons never quite cleared up, resigned
+office. Soon after, Lord Althorp left the House of Commons on
+succeeding to his father's earldom, and a little later Melbourne, the
+new Premier, was unexpectedly dismissed by the King. At the time Peel,
+expecting no immediate crisis, was abroad, in Rome; and we have
+interesting details of his slow journey home to meet the urgent call of
+Wellington, who was carrying on the administration provisionally. The
+changes of the last few years were shown by the fact that the Tories
+felt bound to choose their Premier from the Lower House. It was
+Wellington who recommended Peel for the place which, under the old
+conditions, he might have been expected to take himself. On his return,
+Peel accepted the task of forming a ministry, and, conscious of the
+numerical weakness of his own party, he made overtures to some of the
+Whigs. But Stanley and Graham[7] refused to join him, and he had to fall
+back on the Tories of Wellington's last Government. Before going to the
+country he laid down his principles in the famous Tamworth Manifesto.[8]
+This manifesto is important for its acceptance of the changes
+permanently made by the Reform Bill, and for the clear exposition of his
+attitude towards the important Church questions which were imminent. It
+is an excellent document for any one to study who wishes to understand
+the evolution of the old Tories into the modern Conservative party.
+
+[Note 7: Sir James Graham, afterwards Home Secretary under Peel in
+1841.]
+
+[Note 8: Since his father's death, in 1830, Peel had been member for
+Tamworth.]
+
+Peel's first administration was not destined to last long. The Liberal
+wave was not spent, and the Tories had little to hope for, at this
+moment, from a General Election. As so often happened afterwards, when
+the two English parties were evenly balanced, the Irish votes turned the
+scale. Peel had been forced into this position by the King: his own
+judgement would have led him to wait some years. He fought dexterously
+for four months, helped in some measure by Stanley, who had left the
+Whigs when they threatened the Established Church in Ireland; but it was
+this question which in the end upset him. Lord John Russell, in alliance
+with O'Connell, proposed the disendowment of that Church and defeated
+Peel by thirty-three votes. It was a question of principle, though it
+was raised in a factious way, and subsequent history showed that the
+mover, after his tactical victory of the moment, could not effect any
+practical solution. Peel was driven to resign. But in this short period,
+so far from losing credit, he had won the confidence of his party and
+the respect of his opponents; he had put some useful measures on the
+Statute Book; and he had shown the country that a new spirit, practical
+and enlightened, was growing up in the Tory party, and that there was a
+minister capable of utilizing it for the general good.
+
+In the Greville papers and other literature of the time we get many
+references to the predominant place which he held in the esteem of the
+House of Commons. An entry in Greville's journal for February 1834 shows
+Peel's unique power. 'No matter how unruly the House, how impatient or
+fatigued, the moment he rises, all is silence, and he is sure of being
+heard with profound attention and respect.' Lady Lyttelton,[9] who met
+him later at Windsor, shows us another aspect. His readiness and
+presence of mind come out in the most trivial matters. When Queen
+Victoria suddenly, one evening, issued her command that all who could
+dance were to dance, the more elderly guests were much embarrassed. Such
+an order was not to Peel's taste. 'He was, in fact, to a close observer,
+evidently both shy and cross'; but he was 'much the best figure of all,
+so mincing with his legs and feet, his countenance full of the funniest
+attempt to look unconcerned and "matter of course".' Another time when
+games were improvised in the royal circle, Lady Lyttelton was 'much
+struck with the quickness and watchful cautious characteristic sagacity
+which Sir Robert showed in learning and playing a new round game'. And
+to the ladies-in-waiting he commended himself by his quiet courtesy.
+'Sir Robert Peel', we read, 'was in his most conversable mood and so
+very agreeable. I never enjoyed an evening more.'
+
+[Note 9: _Correspondence of Sarah, Lady Lyttelton_, by Maud Wyndham
+(Murray, 1912).]
+
+Perhaps the best description to show how personally he impressed his
+contemporaries at this time is given by Lord Dalling and Bulwer in his
+memoir. Sir Robert Peel, he tells us, was 'tall and powerfully built,
+his body somewhat bulky for his limbs, his head small and well-formed,
+his features regular. His countenance was not what would be generally
+called expressive, but it was capable of taking the expression he wished
+to give it, humour, sarcasm, persuasion, and command, being its
+alternate characteristics. The character of the man was seen more... in
+the whole person than in the face. He did not stoop, but he bent rather
+forwards; his mode of walking was peculiar, and rather like that of a
+cat, but of a cat that was well acquainted with the ground it was moving
+over; the step showed no doubt or apprehension, it could hardly be
+called stealthy, but it glided on firmly and cautiously, without haste,
+or swagger, or unevenness.... The oftener you heard him speak, the more
+his speaking gained upon you.... He never seemed occupied with himself.
+His effort was evidently directed to convince you, not that he was
+_eloquent_, but that he was _right_.... He seemed rather to aim at
+gaining the doubtful, than mortifying or crushing the hostile.' These
+qualities appealed especially to the practical men of business whom the
+Reform Bill had brought into politics. They were suited to the temper of
+the day, and his speaking won the favour of the best judges in the
+House of Commons. Though he disappointed ardent crusaders like Lord
+Shaftesbury by his apparent coldness and calculating caution, he
+impressed his fellow members as pre-eminently honest and as anxious to
+advance in the most effective manner those causes which his judgement
+approved. He was not the man to lead a forlorn hope, but rather the
+sagacious commander who directed his troops through a practicable
+breach.
+
+He was to be in opposition for another six years; but during these years
+the Whigs were in constant difficulties, and, as Greville notes, it was
+often obvious that Peel was leading the House from the front Opposition
+bench. Had he imitated Russell's conduct in 1834 and devoted his chief
+energies to overthrowing the Whigs, he could have found many an
+occasion. Sedition in Canada and Jamaica, rivalry with France in the
+Levant and with Russia in the Farther East, financial troubles and
+deficits, the spread of Chartist doctrine, all combined to embarrass a
+Government which had no single will and no concentrated resolution. The
+accession of Queen Victoria, in 1837, made no change for the moment. But
+Wellington's famous remark that the Tories would have no chance with a
+Queen because Peel had no manners and he had no small talk, is only
+quoted now because of the falsity of the prediction; both politicians
+soon came to form a better estimate of her judgement and public spirit.
+It was some years before this could be fairly tested. The Tories, while
+improving their position, failed to gain an absolute majority in the
+elections, and Peel's want of tact in insisting on the Queen changing
+all the ladies of her household delayed his triumph from 1839 to 1841.
+Meanwhile he spent his energies in training his party and organizing
+their resources. He studied measures and he studied men, and he
+gradually gathered round him a body of loyal followers who believed in
+their chief and were ready to help him in administrative reform when
+the time should come. Among his most devoted adherents was Mr.
+Gladstone, at this time more famous as a churchman than as a financier;
+and even Mr. Disraeli, for all his eccentricities, accepted Peel's
+leadership without question. Few could then foresee the very different
+careers that lay before his two brilliant lieutenants.
+
+By 1841 the power of the Whigs was spent. A vote of want of confidence
+was carried by Peel, the King dissolved Parliament, and the Tories came
+back with a majority of ninety in the new House of Commons. Now begins
+the most famous part of Peel's career, that associated with the Repeal
+of the Corn Laws, the third of his so-called 'betrayals' of his party.
+No action of his has been so variously criticized, none caused such
+bitterness in political circles. There is no space here to discuss the
+value of Protection or the wisdom of the Anti-Corn-Law League, still
+less the merits or demerits of a fixed duty as opposed to a
+'sliding-scale'. We are concerned with Peel's conduct and must try to
+answer the questions--What were Peel's earlier views on the subject?
+What caused him to change these views? Was this change effected
+honestly, or was he guilty of abandoning his party in order to retain
+office himself?
+
+The Corn Laws, introduced in 1670, re-enacted in 1815, forbade any one
+to import corn into England till the price of home-grown corn had
+reached eighty shillings a quarter. It is easy to attack a system based
+on rigid figures applied to conditions varying widely in every century;
+but the idea was that the English farmer should be given a decisive
+advantage over his foreign rivals, and only when the price rose to a
+prohibitive point might the interest of the consumer be allowed to
+outweigh that of the producer. The revival of the old law in 1815 met
+with strong opposition. England had greatly changed; the agricultural
+area had not been widely increased, but there were many more millions of
+mouths to feed, thanks to the growth of population in the industrial
+districts. But while in 1815 the House of Commons represented almost
+exclusively the land-owning and corn-growing classes, between 1815 and
+1840 opposition to their policy had lately been growing and had been
+organized, outside Parliament, by the famous league of which Richard
+Cobden was the leading spirit. Peel, though he had been brought up by
+his father a strong Protectionist and Tory, had been largely influenced
+by Huskisson, the most remarkable President of the Board of Trade that
+this country has ever seen, and had shown on many occasions that he
+grasped the principle of Free Trade as well as any statesman of the day.
+The Whigs had left the finances of the country in a very bad state, and
+Peel had to take sweeping measures to restore credit. From 1842 to 1845
+he brought in Budgets of a Free Trade character, designed to encourage
+commerce by remitting taxation, especially on raw material; and he made
+up the loss thus incurred by the Treasury, by imposing an income-tax. To
+this policy there were two exceptions, the Corn Laws and the Sugar
+Duties. On the latter he felt that England, since she had abolished
+slave-owning, had a duty to her colonies to see that they did not suffer
+by the competition of sugar produced by slave labour elsewhere. On the
+former he held that England ought, so far as possible, to produce its
+own food and to be self-sufficing; and as a practical man he recognized
+that it was too much to expect of the agricultural interest, so strongly
+represented in both Houses of Parliament, to pronounce what seemed to be
+its death-warrant. But through these years he came more and more to see
+that the interest of a class must give way to the interest of the
+nation; and his clear intellect was from time to time shaken by the
+arguments of the Anti-Corn-Law League and its orators. In 1845 he was
+probably expecting that he would tide over this Parliament, thanks to
+his Budgets and to good harvests, and that at a general election he
+would be able to declare for a change of fiscal policy without going
+back on his pledges to the party. Meanwhile his general attitude had
+been noted by shrewd observers. Cobden himself in a speech delivered at
+Birmingham said, 'There can be no doubt that Sir Robert Peel is at heart
+as good a Free Trader as I am. He has told us so in the House of Commons
+again and again.'
+
+Among the causes which influenced Peel at the moment two are specially
+noteworthy as reminding us of the way in which his opinion was changed
+over Catholic Emancipation. Severe critics say that, to retain office,
+he surrendered to the agitation of Cobden, as he had surrendered to that
+of O'Connell. Undoubtedly the increasing size and success of Cobden's
+meetings, which were on a scale unknown before in political agitation,
+did cause Peel to consider fully what he had only half considered
+before: it did help to force open a door in his mind, and to break down
+a water-tight compartment. But Peel's mind, once opened, saw far more
+than an agitation and a transfer of votes: it looked at the merits of
+the question and surveyed the interest of the whole country. He had seen
+that the fall of a Protestant Church was less serious than the loss of
+Ireland: he now saw that a shock to the agricultural interest was less
+serious than general starvation in the country. And as with the Clare
+election, so with the Irish potato famine in 1845: a definite event
+arrested his attention and clamoured for instant decision. Peel was as
+humane a man as has ever presided over the destinies of this country,
+and the picture of Ireland's sufferings was brought forcibly before his
+imagination by the reports presented to him and by his own knowledge of
+the country. His personal consistency could not be put in the balance
+against national distress.
+
+That the manner in which he made the change did give great offence to
+his followers, there is no room to doubt. Peel was naturally reserved in
+manner and in his Cabinet he occupied a position of such unquestioned
+superiority that he had no need of advice to make up his mind, and was
+apt to keep matters in his own hand. Whether he was preparing to consult
+his colleagues or not, the Irish potato famine forced his hand before he
+had done so. When in November 1845 he made suddenly in the Cabinet a
+definite proposal to suspend the duties on corn, only three members
+supported him. Year after year Peel had opposed the motion brought in by
+Mr. Villiers[10] for repeal: only those who had been studying the
+situation as closely as Peel and with as clear a vision--and they were
+few--could understand this sudden declaration of a change of policy.
+After holding four Cabinet councils in one week, winning over some
+waverers, but still failing to get a unanimous vote, he expressed a wish
+to resign. But the Whigs, owing to personal disagreements, could not
+form a ministry and Queen Victoria asked Peel to retain office: it was
+evident that he alone could carry through the measure which he believed
+to be so urgent, and he steeled himself to face the breach with his own
+party. As Lord John Russell had already pledged the Whigs to repeal, the
+issue was no longer in doubt; but Peel was not to win the victory
+without heavy cost. Disraeli, who had been offended at not being given a
+place in the ministry in 1841, came forward, rallied the agricultural
+interest, and attacked his leader in a series of bitter speeches,
+opening old sores, and charging him with having for the second time
+broken his pledges and betrayed his party. The Protectionists could not
+defeat the Government. In the Commons the Whig votes ensured a
+majority: in the Lords the influence of Wellington triumphed over the
+resistance of the more obstinate landowners. The Bill passed its third
+reading by ninety-eight votes.
+
+[Note 10: The Right Hon. C. P. Villiers, M.P. for Wolverhampton,
+began to advocate repeal in 1837, four years before Cobden entered
+Parliament.]
+
+But Peel knew how uncertain was his position in view of the hostility
+aroused. At this very time the Irish question was acute, as a Coercion
+Bill was under consideration, and this gave his enemies their chance.
+The Protectionist Tories made an unprincipled alliance for the moment
+with the Irish members; and on the very day when the Repeal of the Corn
+Laws passed the House of Lords, the ministry was defeated in the
+Commons. The moment of his fall, when Disraeli and the Protectionists
+were loudest in their exultation, was the moment of his triumph. It is
+the climax of his career. In the long debate on Repeal he had refused to
+notice personal attacks: he now rose superior to all personal rancour.
+In defeat he bore himself with dignity, and in his last speech as
+minister he praised Cobden in very generous terms, giving him the chief
+credit for the benefits which the Bill conferred upon his
+fellow-countrymen. This speech gave offence to his late colleagues,
+Aberdeen, Sidney Herbert, and Gladstone, and was interpreted as being
+designed to mark clearly Peel's breach with the Conservative party. The
+whole episode is illustrated in an interesting way in the _Life of
+Gladstone_. Lord Morley[11] reports a long conversation between the two
+friends and colleagues, where Peel declares his intention to act in
+future as a private member and to abstain from party politics.
+Gladstone, while fully allowing that Peel had earned the right to retire
+after such labours ('you have been Prime Minister in a sense in which no
+other man has been since Mr. Pitt's time'), pointed out how impossible
+it would be for him to carry out his intentions. His personal
+ascendancy in Parliament was too great: men must look to him as a
+leader. But Peel evidently was at the end of his strength, and had been
+suffering acutely from pains in the head, due to an old shooting
+accident but intensified by recent hard work. For the moment repose was
+essential.
+
+[Note 11: Morley's _Life of Gladstone_, vol. i, pp. 297-300 (cf.
+Gladstone's own retirement in 1874).]
+
+It was Gladstone, Peel's disciple and true successor, who seven years
+later paid the following tribute to his memory: 'It is easy', he said,
+'to enumerate many characteristics of the greatness of Sir Robert Peel.
+It is easy to speak of his ability, of his sagacity, of his
+indefatigable industry. But there was something yet more admirable...
+and that was his sense of public virtue;... when he had to choose
+between personal ease and enjoyment, or again, on the other hand,
+between political power and distinction, and what he knew to be the
+welfare of the nation, his choice was made at once. When his choice was
+made, no man ever saw him hesitate, no man ever saw him hold back from
+that which was necessary to give it effect.' Though his own political
+views changed, Gladstone always paid tribute to the moral influence
+which Peel had exercised in political life, purifying its practices and
+ennobling its traditions.
+
+For the last four years of his life he was in opposition, but he held a
+place of dignity and independence which few fallen ministers have ever
+enjoyed. He was the trusted friend and adviser of Queen Victoria and the
+Prince Consort; he was often consulted in grave matters by the chiefs of
+the Government; his speeches both in the House and in the country
+carried greater weight than those of any minister. Despite the
+bitterness of the Protectionists he seemed still to have a great future
+before him, and in any national emergency the country would unfailingly
+have called him to the helm. But on July 29, 1850, when he was just
+reaching the age of sixty-two, he had a fall from his horse which
+caused very grave injuries, and he only survived three days.
+
+The interest of Peel's life is almost absorbed by public questions. He
+was not picturesque like Disraeli; he did not, like Gladstone, live long
+enough to be in his lifetime a mythical figure; the public did not
+cherish anecdotes about his sayings or doings, nor did he lend himself
+to the art of the caricaturist. He was an English gentleman to the
+backbone, in his tastes, in his conduct, in his nature. His married life
+was entirely happy, he had a few devoted friends, he avoided general
+society; he had a genuine fondness for shooting and country life, he was
+a judicious patron of art, and his collection of Dutch pictures form
+to-day a very precious part of our National Gallery. Just because of his
+aloofness, his gravity, the concentration of his energies, he is the
+best example that we can study if we want to know how an English
+statesman should train himself to do work of lasting value and how he
+should bear himself in the hour of trial. Within little more than half a
+century three famous politicians, Peel, Gladstone, and Chamberlain, have
+split their parties in two by an abrupt change of policy, and their
+conduct has been bitterly criticized by those to whom the traditions of
+party are dear. It is the glory of British politics that these
+traditions remained honourable so long, and no one of these statesmen
+broke with them lightly or without regret. For all that, let us be
+thankful that from time to time statesmen do arise who are capable of
+responding to a still higher call, of following their own individual
+consciences and of looking only to what, so far as they can judge, is
+the highest interest of the nation.
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES JAMES NAPIER
+
+1782-1853
+
+1782. Born in London, August 10.
+1794. Commission in 33rd Regiment.
+1800. At Shorncliffe with Sir John Moore.
+1809. Wounded and prisoner at Coruńa.
+1810-11. Peninsula War: Busaco, Fuentes d'Onoro, &c. Lieut.-Colonel, 1811.
+1812-13. Bermuda and American War.
+1815-17. Military College at Farnham.
+1820. Corfu.
+1822-30. Cephalonia.
+1835. Living quietly in France and England.
+1837. Major-General.
+1838. K.C.B.
+1839. Command in North of England. Chartist agitation.
+1841. Command in India at Poona.
+1842-7. War and organization in Sind.
+1849-50. Commander-in-Chief in India.
+1853. Died at Oaklands, near Portsmouth, August 29.
+
+SIR CHARLES NAPIER, G.C.B.
+
+SOLDIER
+
+
+The famous Napier brothers, Charles, George, and William, came of no
+mean parentage. Their father, Colonel the Hon. George Napier, of a
+distinguished Scotch family, was remarkable alike for physical strength
+and mental ability. In the fervour of his admiration his son Charles
+relates how he could 'take a pewter quart and squeeze it flat in his
+hand like a bit of paper'. In height 6 feet 3 inches, in person very
+handsome, he won the admiration of others besides his sons. He had
+served in the American war, but his later years were passed in
+organizing work, and he showed conspicuous honesty and ability in
+dealing with Irish military accounts. One of his reforms was the
+abolition of all fees in his office, by which he reduced his own salary
+from Ł20,000 to Ł600 per annum, emulating the more famous act of the
+elder Pitt as Paymaster-general half a century before. Their mother,
+Lady Sarah Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond, had been a reigning
+toast in 1760. She had even been courted by George III, and might have
+been handed down to history as the mother of princes. In her old age she
+was more proud to be the mother of heroes; and her letters still exist,
+written in the period of the great wars, to show how a British mother
+could combine the Spartan ideal with the tenderest personal affection.
+
+[Illustration: SIR CHARLES NAPIER
+
+From the drawing by Edwin Williams in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+Their father's appointment involved residence in Ireland from 1785
+onwards, and the boys passed their early years at Celbridge in the
+neighbourhood of Dublin. Here they were far from the usual amusements
+and society of the time, but they were fortunate in their home circle
+and in the character of their servants, and they learnt to cherish the
+ancient legends of Ireland and to pick up everything that could feed
+their innate love of adventure and romance. Close to their doors lived
+an old woman named Molly Dunne, who claimed to be one hundred and
+thirty-five years of age, and who was ready to fill the children's ears
+with tales of past tragedies whenever they came to see her. Sir William
+Napier tells us how she was 'tall, gaunt, and with high sharp
+lineaments, her eyes fixed in their huge orbs, and her tongue
+discoursing of bloody times: she was wondrous for the young and fearful
+for the aged'.
+
+Instead of class feeling and narrow interests the boys developed early a
+great sympathy for the poor, and a capacity for judging people
+independently of rank. Charles Napier himself, born in Whitehall, was
+three years old when they moved to Ireland. He was a sickly child, the
+one short member of a tall family, but equal to any of them in courage
+and resolution. His heroism in endurance of pain was put to a severe
+test when he broke his leg at the age of seventeen. It was twice badly
+set. He was threatened first by the entire loss of it, next with the
+prospect of a crooked leg, but he bore cheerfully the most excruciating
+torture in having it straightened by a series of painful experiments,
+and in no long time he recovered his activity. In the army he showed his
+strength of will by rigid abstinence from drinking and gambling, no easy
+feat in those days; and he learned by his father's example to control
+all extravagance and to live contentedly on a small allowance. His
+earliest enthusiasm among books was for Plutarch's _Lives_, the
+favourite reading of so many great commanders. He had many outdoor
+tastes: riding, fishing, and shooting, and he was soon familiar with the
+country-side. There was no need of classes or prizes to stimulate his
+reading, no need of organized games to provide an outlet for his
+energies or to fill his leisure time.
+
+The confidence that his father had in the training of his sons is best
+shown by the early age at which he put them in responsible positions.
+Charles actually received a commission in the 33rd Regiment at the age
+of twelve, but he did not see service till he was seventeen. Meanwhile
+the young ensign continued his schooling from his father's house at
+Celbridge, to which he and his brother returned every evening, sometimes
+in the most unconventional manner. Celbridge, like other Irish villages,
+had its pigs. The Irish pig is longer in the leg and more active than
+his English cousin, and the Napier boys would be seen careering along at
+a headlong pace on these strange mounts, with a cheering company of
+village boys behind them. They were Protestants among older Roman
+Catholic comrades, but they soon became the leaders in the school, and
+Charles, despite his youth and small stature, was chosen to command a
+school volunteer corps at the age of fourteen. At seventeen he joined
+his regiment at Limerick, and for six or seven years he led the life of
+a soldier in various garrison towns of southern England, fretting at
+inaction, learning what he could, and welcoming any chance of increased
+work and danger. At this time his enthusiasm for soldiering was very
+variable. In a letter written in 1803 he makes fun of the routine of his
+profession, as he was set to practise it, and ends up, 'Such is the
+difference between a hero of the present time and the idea of one formed
+from reading Plutarch! Yet people wonder I don't like the army!'
+
+But this was a passing mood. When stirring events were taking place, no
+one was more full of ardour, and when he came under such a general as
+Sir John Moore he expressed himself in a very different tone. In 1805
+Moore was commanding at Hythe, and Charles Napier's letters are aglow
+with enthusiasm for the great qualities which he showed as an
+administrator and army reformer. Like Wolseley seventy or eighty years
+later, Moore had the gift of finding the best among his subalterns and
+training them in his own excellences. After his own father there was no
+one who had so much influence as Moore in the making of Charles Napier.
+In 1808 he sailed for the Peninsula with the rank of major, commanding
+the 50th Regiment in the colonel's absence; he took an active part in
+Moore's famous retreat at Coruńa, and in the battle was taken prisoner
+after conduct of the greatest gallantry in leading his regiment under
+fire. Two months later he was released and again went to the front. In
+1810 and 1811 he and his brothers George and William were fighting under
+Wellington, and were all so frequently wounded that the family fortunes
+became a subject of common talk. On more than one occasion Wellington
+himself wrote to Lady Sarah to inform her of the gallantry and
+misfortunes of her sons. At Busaco Charles had his jaw broken and was
+forced to retire into hospital at Lisbon. In his haste to rejoin the
+army, which he did when only half convalescent, he accomplished the feat
+of riding ninety miles on one horse in a single day; and in the course
+of his ride met two of his brothers being carried down, wounded, to the
+base. But in 1811 promotion withdrew Charles Napier from the Peninsula.
+A short command in Guernsey was followed by another in Bermuda, which
+involved him in the American war. He had little taste for warfare with
+men of the same race as himself, and was heartily glad to exchange back
+to the 50th in 1813, and to return to England. He started out as a
+volunteer to share in the campaign of Waterloo, but all was over before
+he could join the army in Flanders, and this part of his soldiering
+career ended quietly. He had received far more wounds than honours, and
+might well have been discouraged in the pursuit of his profession.
+
+But here we can put to the test how far Napier's expressions of distaste
+for the service affected his conduct. He chafed at the inactivity of
+peace; but instead of abandoning the army for some more profitable
+career, he used his enforced leisure to prepare for further service and
+to extend his knowledge of political and military history. He spent the
+greater part of three years at the Military College, then established at
+Farnham, varying his professional studies with sallies into the domain
+of politics, and as a result he developed marked Radical views which he
+held through life. His note-books show a splendid grasp of principles
+and a close attention to facts; they range from the enforcing of the
+death penalty for marauding to the details of cavalry-kit. His Spartan
+regime became famous in later years; even now he prescribed a strict
+rule, 'a cloak, a pair of shoes, two flannel shirts, and a piece of
+soap--these, wrapped up in an oil-skin, must go in the right holster,
+and a pistol in the left.' He took no opinions at second hand, but
+studied the best authorities and thought for himself; he was as thorough
+in self-education as the famous Confederate general 'Stonewall' Jackson,
+who every evening sat for an hour, facing a blank wall and reviewing in
+his mind the subjects which he had read during the day.
+
+No opportunity for reaping the fruit of these studies and exercising his
+great gifts was given him till May 1819. Then he was appointed to the
+post of inspecting-officer in the Ionian Islands;[12] and in 1822 he was
+appointed Military Resident in Cephalonia, the largest of these islands,
+a pile of rugged limestone hills, scantily supplied with water, and
+ruined by years of neglect and the oppression of Turkish pashas. So
+began what was certainly the happiest, and perhaps the most fruitful,
+period in Charles Napier's life. It was not strictly military work, but,
+without the authority which his military rank gave him and without the
+despotic methods of martial law, little could have been achieved in the
+disordered state of the country. The whole episode is a good example of
+how a well-trained soldier of original mind can, when left to himself,
+impress his character on a semi-civilized people, and may be compared
+with the work of Sir Harry Smith in South Africa, or Sir Henry Lawrence
+in the Punjab. The practical reforms which he initiated in law, in
+commerce, in agriculture, are too numerous to mention. 'Expect no
+letters from me', he writes to his mother, 'save about roads. No going
+home for me: it would be wrong to leave a place where so much good is
+being done.... My market-place is roofed. My pedestal is a tremendous
+job, but two months more will finish that also. My roads will not be
+finished by me.' And again, 'I take no rest myself and give nobody else
+any.' To his superiors he showed himself somewhat impracticable in
+temper, and he was certainly exacting to his subordinates, though
+generous in his praise of those who helped him. He was compassionate to
+the poor and vigorous in his dealings with the privileged classes; and
+he gave the islanders an entirely new conception of justice. When he
+quitted the island after six years of office he left behind him two new
+market-places, one and a half miles of pier, one hundred miles of road
+largely blasted out of solid rock, spacious streets, a girls' school,
+and many other improvements; and he put into the natives a spirit of
+endeavour which outlived his term of office. One sign of the latter was
+that, after his departure, some peasants yearly transmitted to him the
+profits of a small piece of land which he had left uncared for, without
+disclosing the names of those whose labours had earned it.
+
+[Note 12: Ceded to Great Britain in 1815 and given by her in 1864 to
+Greece.]
+
+During this period, in visits to Corinth and the Morea, he worked out
+strategic plans for keeping the Turks out of Greece. He also made
+friends with Lord Byron, who came out in 1823 to help the Greek patriots
+and to meet his death in the swamps of Missolonghi. Byron conceived the
+greatest admiration for Napier's talents and believed him to be capable
+of liberating Greece, if he were given a free hand. But this was not to
+be. Reasons of State and petty rivalries barred the way to the
+appointment of a British general, though it might have set the name of
+Napier in history beside those of Bolivar and Garibaldi; for he would
+have identified himself heart and soul with such a cause, and, in the
+opinion of many good judges, would have triumphed over the difficulties
+of the situation.
+
+From 1830 to 1839 there is little to narrate. The gifts which might have
+been devoted to commanding a regiment, to training young officers, or to
+ruling a distant province, were too lightly rated by the Government, and
+he spent his time quietly in England and France educating his two
+daughters,[13] interesting himself in politics, and continuing to learn.
+It was the political crisis in England which called him back to active
+life. The readjustment of the labour market to meet the use of
+machinery, and the occurrence of a series of bad harvests had caused
+widespread discontent, and the Chartist movement was at its height in
+1839. Labourers and factory owners were alarmed; the Government was
+besieged with petitions for military protection at a hundred points, and
+all the elements of a dangerous explosion were gathered together. At
+this critical time Charles Napier was offered the command of the troops
+in the northern district, and amply did he vindicate the choice. By the
+most careful preparation beforehand, by the most consummate coolness in
+the moment of danger, he rode the storm. He saw the danger of billeting
+small detachments of troops in isolated positions; he concentrated them
+at the important points. He interviewed alarmed magistrates, and he
+attended, in person and unarmed, a large gathering of Chartists. To all
+he spoke calmly but resolutely. He made it clear to the rich that he
+would not order a shot to be fired while peaceful measures were
+possible; he made it equally clear to the Chartists that he would
+suppress disorder, if it arose, promptly and mercilessly. With only four
+thousand troops under his command to control all the industrial
+districts of the north, Newcastle and Manchester, Sheffield and
+Nottingham, he did his work effectually without a shot being fired. 'Ars
+est celare artem': and just because of his success, few observers
+realized from how great a danger the community had been preserved.
+
+[Note 13: His first wife, whom he married in 1827, died in 1832. He
+married again in 1835.]
+
+Thus he had proved his versatile talents in regimental service in the
+Peninsula, in the reclamation of an eastern island from barbarism, and
+in the control of disorder at home. It was not till he had reached the
+age of sixty that he was to prove these gifts in the highest sphere, in
+the handling of an army in the field and in the direction of a campaign.
+But the offer of a command in India roused his indomitable spirit, the
+more so as trouble was threatening on the north-west frontier. An
+ill-judged interference in Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n had in 1841 caused the
+massacre near K[=a]bul of one British force: other contingents were
+besieged in Jal[=a]l[=a]b[=a]d and Ghazni, and were in danger of a
+similar fate, and the prestige of British arms was at its lowest in the
+valley of the Indus. Lord Ellenborough, the new Viceroy, turned to
+Charles Napier for advice, and in April 1842 he was given the command in
+Upper and Lower Sind, the districts comprising the lower Indus valley.
+It was his first experience of India and his first command in war. He
+was sixty years old and he had not faced an enemy's army in the field
+since the age of twenty-five. As he said, 'I go to command in Sind with
+no orders, no instructions, no precise line of policy given! How many
+men are in Sind? How many soldiers to command? No one knows!... They
+tell me I must form and model the staff of the army altogether! Feeling
+myself but an apprentice in Indian matters, I yet look in vain for a
+master.' But the years of study and preparation had not been in vain,
+and responsibility never failed to call out his best qualities. It was
+not many months before British officers and soldiers, Baluch chiefs and
+Sindian peasants owned him as a master--such a master of the arts of war
+and peace as had not been seen on the Indus since the days of Alexander
+the Great.
+
+First, like a true pupil of Sir John Moore, he set to work thoroughly to
+drill his army. He experimented in person with British muskets and
+Mar[=a]th[=a] matchlocks, and reassured his soldiers on the superiority
+of the former. He experimented with rockets to test their efficiency;
+and, with his usual luck in the matter of wounds, he had the calf of
+his leg badly torn by one that burst. He would put his hand to any
+labour and his life to any risk, if so he might stir the activity of
+others and promote the cause. He convinced himself, by studying the
+question at first hand, that the Baluch Am[=i]rs, who ruled the country,
+were not only aliens but oppressors of the native peasantry, not only
+ill-disposed to British policy, but actively plotting with the
+hill-tribes beyond the Indus, and at the right moment he struck.
+
+The danger of the situation lay in the great extent of the country, in
+the difficulty of marching in such heat amid the sand, and in the
+possibility of the Am[=i]rs escaping from his grasp and taking refuge in
+fortresses in the heart of the desert, believed to be inaccessible. His
+first notable exploit was a march northwards one hundred miles into the
+desert to capture Im[=a]mghar; his last, crowning a memorable sixteen
+days, was a similar descent upon Omarkot, which lay one hundred miles
+eastward beyond M[=i]rpur. These raids involved the organization of a
+camel corps, the carrying of water across the desert, and the greatest
+hardships for the troops, all of which Charles Napier shared
+uncomplainingly in person. Under his leadership British regiments and
+Bombay sepoys alike did wonders. Who could complain for himself when he
+saw the spare frame of the old general, his health undermined by fever
+and watches, his hooked nose and flashing eye turned this way and that,
+riding daily at their head, prepared to stint himself of all but the
+barest necessaries and to share every peril? He had begun the campaign
+in January; the crowning success was won on April 6. Between these dates
+he fought two pitched battles at Mi[=a]ni and Dabo, and completely broke
+the power of the Am[=i]rs.
+
+Mi[=a]ni (February 17, 1843) was the most glorious day in his life. With
+2,400 troops, of whom barely 500 were Europeans, he attacked an army
+variously estimated between 20,000 and 40,000. Drawn up in a position,
+which they had themselves chosen, on the raised bank of a dry river bed,
+the Baluch[=i] seemed to have every advantage on their side. But the
+British troops, advancing in echelon from the right, led by the 22nd
+Regiment, and developing an effective musketry fire, fought their way up
+to the outer slope of the steep bank and held it for three hours. Here
+the 22nd, with the two regiments of Bombay sepoys on their left,
+trusting chiefly to the bayonet, but firing occasional volleys, resisted
+the onslaught of Baluch[=i] swordsmen in overwhelming numbers. During
+nearly all this time the two lines were less than twenty yards apart,
+and Napier was conspicuous on horseback riding coolly along the front of
+the British line. The matchlocks, with which many of the Baluch[=i] were
+armed, seem to have been ineffective; their national weapon was the
+sword. The tribesmen were grand fighters but badly led. They attacked in
+detachments with no concerted action. For all that, the British line
+frequently staggered under the weight of their courageous rushes, and
+irregular firing went on across the narrow gap. Napier says, 'I expected
+death as much from our own men as from the enemy, and I was much singed
+by our fire--my whiskers twice or thrice so, and my face peppered by
+fellows who, in their fear, fired over all heads but mine, and nearly
+scattered my brains'. Not even Scarlett at Balaclava had a more
+miraculous escape. This exposure of his own person to risk was not due
+to mere recklessness. In his days at the Royal Military College he had
+carefully considered the occasions when a commander must expose himself
+to get the best out of his men; and from Coruńa to Dabo he acted
+consistently on his principles. Early in the battle he had cleverly
+disposed his troops so as to neutralize in some measure the vast
+numerical superiority of the enemy; his few guns were well placed and
+well served. At a critical moment he ordered a charge of cavalry which
+broke the right of their position and threatened their camp; but the
+issue had to be decided by hard fighting, and all depended on the morale
+which was to carry the troops through such a punishing day.
+
+The second battle was fought a month later at Dabo, near
+Hyder[=a]b[=a]d. The most redoubtable of the Am[=i]rs, Sher Muhammad,
+known as 'the Lion of M[=i]rpur', had been gathering a force of his own
+and was only a few miles distant from Mi[=a]ni when that battle was
+fought. Napier could have attacked him at once; but, to avoid bloodshed,
+he was ready to negotiate. 'The Lion' only used the respite to collect
+more troops, and was soon defying the British with a force of 25,000
+men, full of ardour despite their recent defeat. Indeed Napier
+encouraged their confidence by spreading rumours of the terror
+prevailing in his own camp. He did not wish to exhaust his men
+needlessly by long marches in tropical heat; so he played a waiting
+game, gathering reinforcements and trusting that the enemy would soon
+give him a chance of fighting. This chance came on March 24, and with a
+force of 5,000 men and 19 guns Napier took another three hours to win
+his second battle and to drive Sher Muhammad from his position with the
+loss of 5,000 killed. The British losses were relatively trifling,
+amounting to 270, of whom 147 belonged to the sorely tried 22nd
+Regiment. They were all full of confidence and fought splendidly under
+the general's eye. 'The Lion' himself escaped northwards, and two months
+of hard marching and clever strategy were needed to prevent him stirring
+up trouble among the tribesmen. The climate took toll of the British
+troops and even the general was for a time prostrated by sunstroke; but
+the operations were successful and the last nucleus of an army was
+broken up by Colonel Jacob on June 15. Sher Muhammad ended his days
+ignominiously at Lahore, then the capital of the Sikhs, having outlived
+his fame and sunk into idleness and debauchery.
+
+Thus in June 1843 the general could write in his diary: 'We have taught
+the Baluch that neither his sun nor his desert nor his jungles nor his
+nullahs can stop us. He will never face us more.' But Charles Napier's
+own work was far from being finished. He had to bind together the
+different elements in the province, to reconcile chieftain and peasant
+Baluch, Hindu, and Sindian, to living together in amity and submitting
+to British rule; and he had to set up a framework of military and
+civilian officers to carry on the work. He held firmly the principle
+that military rule must be temporary. For the moment it was more
+effective; but it was his business to prepare the new province for
+regular civil government as soon as was feasible. He showed his
+ingenuity in the personal interviews which he had with the chieftains;
+and the ascendancy which he won by his character was marked. Perhaps his
+qualities were such as could be more easily appreciated by orientals
+than by his own countrymen, for he was impetuous, self-reliant, and
+autocratic in no common degree. He was only one of a number of great
+Englishmen of this century whose direct personal contact with Eastern
+princes was worth scores of diplomatic letters and paper constitutions.
+Such men were Henry Lawrence, John Nicholson, and Charles Gordon; in
+them the power of Great Britain was incarnate in such a form as to
+strike the imagination and leave an ineffaceable impression. Many of the
+Am[=i]rs wished to swear allegiance to a governor present in the flesh
+rather than to the distant queen beyond the sea, so strongly were they
+impressed by Napier's personal character.
+
+He did not forget his own countrymen, least of all that valued friend
+'Thomas Atkins' and his comrade the sepoy. By the erection of spacious
+barracks he made the soldier's life more pleasant and his health more
+secure; and in a hundred other ways he showed his care and affection for
+them. In return few British generals have been so loved by the rank and
+file. He also gave much thought to material progress, to strengthening
+the fortress of Hyder[=a]b[=a]d, to developing the harbour at
+Kar[=a]chi, and, above all, to enriching the peasants by irrigation
+schemes. It was the story of Cephalonia on a bigger scale; but Napier
+was now twenty years older, overwhelmed with work, and he could give
+less attention to details. He did his best to find subordinates after
+his own heart, men who would 'scorn delights and live laborious days'.
+'Does he wear varnished boots?' was a typical question that he put to a
+friend in Bombay, when a new engineer was commended to him. His own
+rewards were meagre. The Grand Cross of the Bath and the colonelcy of
+his favourite regiment, the 22nd, were all the recognition given for a
+campaign whose difficulties were minimized at home because he had
+mastered them so triumphantly.
+
+Two other achievements belong to the period of his government of Sind.
+The campaign against the tribes of the Kachhi Hills, to the north-west
+of his province, rendered necessary by continued marauding, shows all
+his old mastery of organization. Any one who has glanced into Indian
+history knows the danger of these raids and the bitter experience which
+our Indian army has gained in them. In less than two months
+(January-March 1845) Napier had led five thousand men safely over
+burning deserts and through most difficult mountain country, had by
+careful strategy driven the marauders into a corner, forcing them to
+surrender with trifling loss, and had made an impression on the hill
+chieftains which lasted for many a year. This work, though slighted by
+the directors of the Company, received enthusiastic praise from such
+good judges of war as Lord Hardinge and the Duke of Wellington. The
+second emergency arose when the first Sikh war broke out in the Punjab.
+Napier felt so confident in the loyalty of his newly-pacified province
+that within six weeks he drew together an army of 15,000 men, and took
+post at Rohri, ready to co-operate against the Sikhs from the south,
+while Lord Hardinge advanced from the east. Before he could arrive, the
+decisive battle had been fought, and all he was asked to do was to
+assist in a council of war at Lahore. The mistakes made in the campaign
+had been numerous. No one saw them more clearly than Napier, and no one
+foretold more accurately the troubles which were to follow. For all
+that, he wrote in generous admiration of Lord Hardinge the Viceroy and
+Lord Gough the Commander-in-Chief at a time when criticism and personal
+bitterness were prevalent in many quarters.
+
+After this he returned to Sind with health shattered and a longing for
+rest. He continued to work with vigour, but his mind was set on
+resignation; and the bad relations which had for years existed between
+him and the directors embittered his last months. No doubt he was
+impatient and self-willed, inclined to take short cuts through the
+system of dual control[14] and to justify them by his own single-hearted
+zeal for the good of the country. But the directors had eyes for all the
+slight irregularities, which are inevitable in the work of an original
+man, and failed entirely to estimate the priceless services that he
+rendered to British rule. In July 1847 he resigned and returned to
+Europe; but even now the end was not come. 'The tragedy must be re-acted
+a year or two hence,' he had written in March 1846, seeing clearly that
+the Sikhs had not been reconciled to British rule. In February 1849 the
+directors were forced by the national voice to send him out to take
+supreme military command and to retrieve the disasters with which the
+second Sikh war began. They were very reluctant to do so, and Napier
+himself had little wish for further exertions in so thankless a service.
+But the Duke of Wellington himself appealed to him, the nation spoke
+through all its organs, and he could not put his own wishes in the scale
+against the demands of public service.
+
+[Note 14: The dual control of British India by the Crown and the
+East India Company lasted from 1778 to 1858.]
+
+He made all speed and reached Calcutta early in May, but he found no
+enemy to fight. The issue had been decided by Lord Gough and the hard
+fighting of Chili[=a]nw[=a]la. He had been cheated by fortune, as in
+1815, and he never knew the joy of battle again. He was accustomed to
+settle everything as a dictator; he found it difficult to act as part of
+an administrative machine. He was unfamiliar with the routine of Indian
+official life, and he was now growing old; he was impatient of forms,
+impetuous in his likes and dislikes, outspoken in praise and
+condemnation. His relations with the masterful Viceroy, Lord Dalhousie,
+were soon clouded; and though he delighted in the friendship of Colin
+Campbell and many other able soldiers, he was too old to adapt himself
+to new men and new measures. In 1850 the rumblings of the storm, which
+was to break seven years later, could already be heard, and Napier had
+much anxiety over the mutinous spirit rising in the sepoy regiments. He
+did his best to go to the bottom of the trouble and to establish
+confidence and friendly relations between British and natives, but he
+had not time enough to achieve permanent results, and he was often
+fettered by the regulations of the political service. His predictions
+were as striking now as in the first Sikh war; but he was not content to
+predict and to sit idle. He was unwearied in working for the reform of
+barracks, though his plans were often spoiled by the careless execution
+of others. He was urgent for a better tone among regimental officers
+and for more consideration on their part towards their soldiers. If more
+men in high position had similarly exerted themselves, the mutiny would
+have been less widespread and less fatal. His resignation was due to a
+dispute with Lord Dalhousie about the sepoys' pay. Napier acted _ultra
+vires_ in suspending on his own responsibility an order of the
+Government, because he believed the situation to be critical, while the
+Viceroy refused to regard this as justified. His departure, in December
+1850, was the signal for an outburst of feeling among officers,
+soldiers, and all who knew him. His return by way of Sind was a
+triumphal progress.
+
+He had two years to live when he set foot again in England, and most of
+this was spent at Oaklands near Portsmouth. His health had been ruined
+in the public service; but he continued to take a keen interest in
+passing events and to write on military subjects to Colin Campbell and
+other friends. At the same time he devoted much of his time to his
+neighbours and his farm. In 1852 he attended as pall-bearer at the Duke
+of Wellington's funeral; his own was not far distant. His brother, Sir
+William, describes the last scene thus: 'On the morning of August 29th
+1853, at 5 o'clock, he expired like a soldier on a naked camp bedstead,
+the windows of the room open and the fresh air of Heaven blowing on his
+manly face--as the last breath escaped, Montagu McMurdo (his
+son-in-law), with a sudden inspiration, snatched the old colours of the
+22nd Regiment, the colour that had been borne at Mi[=a]ni and
+Hyder[=a]b[=a]d, and waved them over the dying hero. Thus Charles Napier
+passed from the world.'
+
+He was a man who roused enthusiastic devotion and provoked strong
+resentment. Like Gordon, he was a man who could rule others, but could
+not be ruled; and his official career left many heart-burnings behind.
+His equally passionate brother, Sir William, who wrote his life, took
+up the feud as a legacy and pursued it in print for many years. It is
+regrettable that such men cannot work without friction; but in all
+things it was devotion to the public service, and not personal ambition,
+that carried Charles Napier to such extremes. From his youth he had
+trained himself to such a pitch of self-denial and ascetic rigour that
+he could not make allowance for the frailties of the average man. His
+keen eye and swift brain made him too impatient of the shortcomings of
+conscientious officials. He was ready to work fifteen hours a day when
+the need came; he was able to pierce into the heart of a matter while
+others would be puzzling round the fringes of it. Rarely in his long and
+laborious career did an emergency arise capable of bringing out all his
+gifts; and his greatest exploits were performed on scenes unfamiliar to
+the mass of his fellow countrymen. But a few opinions can be given to
+show that he was rated at his full value by the foremost men of the day.
+
+Perhaps the most striking testimony comes from one who never saw him; it
+was written three years after his death, when his brother's biography
+appeared. It was Carlyle, the biographer of Cromwell and Frederick the
+Great, the most famous man of letters of the day, who wrote in 1856:
+'The fine and noble qualities of the man are very recognizable to me;
+his piercing, subtle intellect turned all to the practical, giving him
+just insight into men and into things; his inexhaustible, adroit
+contrivances; his fiery valour; sharp promptitude to seize the good
+moment that will not return. A lynx-eyed, fiery man, with the spirit of
+an old knight in him; more of a hero than any modern I have seen for a
+long time.' A second tribute comes from one who had known him as an
+officer and was a supreme judge of military genius. Wellington was not
+given to extravagant words, but on many occasions he expressed himself
+in the warmest terms about Napier's talents and services. In 1844,
+speaking of the Sind campaign in the House of Lords, he said: 'My Lords,
+I must say that, after giving the fullest consideration to these
+operations, I have never known any instance of an officer who has shown
+in a higher degree that he possesses all the qualities and
+qualifications necessary to enable him to conduct great operations.' In
+the House of Commons at the same time Sir Robert Peel--the ablest
+administrative statesman of that generation, who had read for himself
+some of Napier's masterly dispatches--said: 'No one ever doubted Sir
+Charles Napier's military powers; but in his other character he does
+surprise me--he is possessed of extraordinary talent for civil
+administration.' Again, he speaks of him as 'one of three brothers who
+have engrafted on the stem of an ancient and honourable lineage that
+personal nobility which is derived from unblemished private character,
+from the highest sense of personal honour, and from repeated proofs of
+valour in the field, which have made their name conspicuous in the
+records of their country'.
+
+Indifferent as Charles Napier was to ordinary praise or blame, he would
+have appreciated the words of such men, especially when they associated
+him with his brothers; but perhaps he would have been more pleased to
+know how many thousands of his humble fellow countrymen walked to his
+informal funeral at Portsmouth, and to know that the majority of those
+who subscribed to his statue in Trafalgar Square were private soldiers
+in the army that he had served and loved.
+
+[Illustration: LORD SHAFTESBURY
+
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+
+
+
+ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER
+
+SEVENTH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY
+
+1801-85
+
+
+1801. Born in Grosvenor Square, London, April 28.
+1811. His father succeeds to the earldom. He himself becomes Lord Ashley.
+1813-17. Harrow.
+1819-22. Christ Church, Oxford.
+1826. M.P. for Woodstock.
+1828. Commissioner of India Board of Control.
+1829. Chairman of Commission for Lunatic Asylums.
+1830. Marries Emily, daughter of fifth Earl Cowper.
+1832. Takes up the cause of the Ten Hours Bill or Factory Act.
+1833. M.P. for Dorset.
+1836. Founds Church Pastoral Aid Society.
+1839. Founds Indigent Blind Visiting Society.
+1840. Takes up cause of Boy Chimney-sweepers.
+1842. Mines and Collieries Bill carried.
+1843. Joins the Ragged School movement.
+1847. Ten Hours Bill finally carried.
+1847. M.P. for Bath.
+1848. Public Health Act. Chairman of Board of Health.
+1851. President of British and Foreign Bible Society.
+1851. Succeeds to the earldom.
+1855. Lord Palmerston twice offers him a seat in the Cabinet.
+1872. Death of Lady Shaftesbury.
+1884. Receives the Freedom of the City of London.
+1885. Dies at Folkestone, October 1.
+
+LORD SHAFTESBURY
+
+PHILANTHROPIST
+
+
+The word 'Philanthropist' has suffered the same fate as many other words
+in our language. It has become hackneyed and corrupted; it has taken a
+professional taint; it has almost become a byword. We are apt to think
+of the philanthropist as an excitable, contentious creature, at the
+mercy of every fad, an ultra-radical in politics, craving for notoriety,
+filled with self-confidence, and meddling with other people's business.
+Anthony Ashley Cooper, the greatest philanthropist of the nineteenth
+century, was of a different type. By temper he was strongly
+conservative. He always loved best to be among his own family; he was
+fond of his home, fond of the old associations of his house. To come out
+into public life, to take his place in Parliament or on the platform, to
+be mixed up in the wrangling of politics was naturally distasteful to
+him. It continually needed a strong effort for him to overcome this
+distaste and to act up to his sense of duty. It is only when we remember
+this that we can do justice to his lifelong activity, and to the high
+principles which bore him up through so many efforts and so many
+disappointments. For himself he would submit to injustice and be still:
+for his fellow countrymen and for his religion he would renew the battle
+to the last day of his life.
+
+His childhood was not happy. His parents had little sympathy with
+children, his father being absorbed in the cares of public life, his
+mother given up to society pleasures. He had three sisters older than
+himself, but no brother or companion, and he was left largely to
+himself. At the age of seven he went to a preparatory school, where he
+was made miserable by the many abuses which flourished there; and it was
+not till he went to Harrow at the age of twelve that he began to enjoy
+life. He had few of the indulgences which we associate with the early
+days of those who are born heirs to high position. But, thus thrown back
+on himself, the boy nurtured strong attachments, for the old housekeeper
+who first showed him tenderness at home, for the school where he had
+learnt to be happy, and for the Dorset home, which was to be throughout
+his life the pole-star of his affections. The village of Wimborne St.
+Giles lies some eight miles north of Wimborne, in Dorset, on the edge of
+Cranborne Forest, one of the most beautiful and unspoiled regions in the
+south of England, which 'as late as 1818 contained twelve thousand deer
+and as many as six lodges, each of which had its walk and its ranger'.
+Here he wandered freely in his holidays for many years, giving as yet
+little promise of an exceptional career; here you may find in outlying
+cottages those who still treasure his memory and keep his biography
+among the few books that adorn their shelves.
+
+From Harrow, Lord Ashley went at the age of sixteen to read for two
+years with a clergyman in Derbyshire; in 1819 he went to Christ Church,
+Oxford, and three years later succeeded in taking a first class in
+classics. He had good abilities and a great power of concentration.
+These were to bear fruit one day in the gathering of statistics, in the
+marshalling of evidence, and in the presentation of a case which needed
+the most lucid and most laborious advocacy.
+
+He came down from Oxford in 1822, but did not go into Parliament till
+1826, and for the intervening years there is little to chronicle. In
+those days it was usual enough for a young nobleman to take up politics
+when he was barely of age, but Lord Ashley needed some other motive than
+the custom of the day. It is characteristic of his whole life that he
+responded to a call when there was a need, but was never in a hurry to
+put himself forward or to aim at high position. We have a few of his own
+notes from this time which show the extent of his reading, and still
+more, the depth of his reflections. As with Milton, who spent over five
+years at Cambridge and then five more in study and retirement at Horton,
+the long years of self-education were profitable and left their mark on
+his life. His first strong religious impulse he himself dates back to
+his school-days at Harrow, when (as is now recorded in a mural tablet
+on the spot) in walking up the street one day he was shocked by the
+indignities of a pauper funeral. The drunken bearers, staggering up the
+hill and swearing over the coffin, so appalled him that the sight
+remained branded on his memory and he determined to devote his life to
+the service of the poor. But one such shock would have achieved little,
+if the decision had not been strengthened by years of thought and
+resolution. His tendency to self-criticism is seen in the entry in his
+diary for April, 1826 (his twenty-fifth birthday). He blames himself for
+indulging in dreams and for having performed so little; but he himself
+admits that the visions were all of a noble character, and we know what
+abundant fruit they produced in the sixty years of active effort which
+were to follow. The man who a year later could write sincerely in his
+diary, 'Immortality has ceased to be a longing with me. I desire to be
+useful in my generation,' had been little harmed by a few years of
+dreaming dreams, and had little need to be afraid of having made a false
+start in life.
+
+When he entered the House of Commons as member for Woodstock in 1826,
+Lord Ashley had strong Conservative instincts, a fervid belief in the
+British constitution, and an unbounded admiration for the Duke of
+Wellington, whose Peninsula victories had fired his enthusiasm at
+Harrow. It was to his wing of the Conservative party that Ashley
+attached himself; and it was the duke who, succeeding to the premiership
+on the premature death of Canning, gave him his first office, a post on
+the India Board of Control. The East India Company with its board of
+directors (abolished in 1858) still ruled India, but was since 1778
+subject in many ways to the control of the British Parliament, and the
+board to which Lord Ashley now belonged exercised some of the functions
+since committed to the Secretary of State for India. He set himself
+conscientiously to study the interests of India, but over the work of
+his department he had little chance of winning distinction. In fact his
+first prominent speech was on the Reform of Lunatic Asylums, not an easy
+subject for a new member to handle. He was diffident in manner and
+almost inaudible. Without the kindly encouragement of friends he might
+have despaired of future success; but his sincerity in the cause was
+worth more than many a brilliant speech. The Bill was carried, a new
+board was constituted, and of this Lord Ashley became chairman in 1829,
+and continued to hold the office till his death fifty-six years later.
+This was the first of the burdens that he took upon himself without
+thought of reward, and so is worthy of special mention, though it never
+won the fame of his factory legislation. But it shows the character of
+the man, how ready he was to step into a post which meant work without
+remuneration, drudgery without fame, prejudice and opposition from all
+whose interests were concerned in maintaining the abuses of the past.
+
+It was this spirit which led him in 1836 to take up the Church Pastoral
+Aid Society,[15] in 1839 to found the Indigent Blind Visiting Society,
+in 1840 to champion the cause of chimney-sweeps, and in all these cases
+to continue his support for fifty years or more. We are accustomed
+to-day to 'presidents' and 'patrons' and a whole broadsheet of
+complimentary titles, to which noblemen give their names and often give
+little else. Lord Ashley understood such an office differently. He was
+regular in attendance at meetings, generous in giving money, unflinching
+in his advocacy of the cause. We shall see this more fully in dealing
+with the two most famous crusades associated with his name.
+
+[Note 15: To help church work by adding to the number of clergy.]
+
+Though these growing labours began early to occupy his time, we find the
+record of his life diversified by other claims and other interests. In
+1830 he married Emily, daughter of Lord Cowper, who bore him several
+children, and who shared all his interests with the fullest sympathy;
+and henceforth his greatest joys and his deepest sorrows were always
+associated with his family life. At home his first hobby was astronomy.
+At the age of twenty-eight he was ardently devoted to it and would spend
+all his leisure on it for weeks together, till graver duties absorbed
+his time. But he was no recluse, and all through his life he found
+pleasure in the society of his friends and in paying them visits in
+their homes. Many of his early visits were paid to the Iron Duke at
+Strathfieldsaye; in later life no one entertained him more often than
+Lord Palmerston, with whom he was connected by marriage. He was the
+friend and often the guest of Queen Victoria, and in his twenty-eighth
+year he is even found as a guest at the festive board of George IV.
+'Such a round of laughing and pleasure I never enjoyed: if there be a
+hospitable gentleman on earth it is His Majesty.' And at all times he
+was ready to mix freely and on terms of social equality with all who
+shared his sympathies, dukes and dustmen, Cabinet ministers and
+costermongers.
+
+In the holiday season he delighted to travel. In his journals he sets
+down the impressions which he felt among the pictures and churches of
+Italy, and in the mountains of Germany and Switzerland; he loves to
+record the friendliness of the greetings which he met among the
+peasantry of various lands. When he talked to them no one could fail to
+see that he was genuinely interested in them, that he wanted to know
+their joys and their sorrows, and to enrich his own knowledge by
+anything that the humblest could tell him. Still more did he delight in
+Scotland, where he had many friends. He was of the generation
+immediately under the spell of the 'Wizard of the North', and the whole
+country was seen through a veil of romantic and historical association.
+There he went nearly every year, to Edinburgh, to Roslin, to Inveraray,
+to the Trossachs, and to a hundred other places--and if his heart was
+stirred with the glories of the past, his eye was quick to 'catch the
+manners living as they rise'. As he commented caustically at Rome on
+'the church lighted up and decorated like a ball-room--the bishop with a
+stout train of canons, listening to the music precisely like an opera',
+so at Newbattle he criticizes the coldness of the kirk, 'all is silent
+save the minister, who discharges the whole ceremony and labours under
+the weight of his own tautologies'. His bringing up had been in the
+Anglican church; he was devoted to her liturgy, her congregational
+worship, her moderation and simplicity combined with reverence and
+warmth. Although these travels were but interludes in his busy life,
+they show that it was not for want of other tastes and interests of his
+own that his life was dedicated to laborious service. He was very human
+himself, and there were few aspects of humanity which did not attract
+him.
+
+With his father relations were very difficult. As his interest in social
+questions grew, his attention was naturally turned on the poor nearest
+to his own doors, the agricultural labourers of Dorset. Even in those
+days of low wages Dorset was a notorious example quoted on many a
+Radical platform: the wages of the farm labourers were frequently as low
+as seven shillings a week, and the conditions in which they had often to
+bring up a large family of children were deplorable. If Lord Ashley had
+not himself felt the shame of their poverty, their bad housing and their
+other hardships, there were plenty of opponents ready to force them on
+his notice in revenge for his having exposed their own sores. He was
+made responsible for abuses which he could not remedy. While his father,
+a resolute Tory of the old type, still lived, the son was unable to
+stir. He sedulously tried to avoid all bitterness; but he could not,
+when publicly challenged, avoid stating his own views about fair wages
+and fair conditions of living, and his father took offence. For years it
+was impossible for the son to come under his father's roof. When the old
+earl died in 1851, his son lost no time in proving his sincerity as a
+reformer; but meanwhile he had to go into the fray against the
+manufacturers with his arms tied behind his back and submit to taunts
+which he little deserved. That he could carry on this struggle for so
+many years, without embittering the issues, and without open exposure of
+the family quarrel, shows the strength of character which he had gained
+by years of religious discipline and self-control.
+
+Politics proper played but a small part in his career. The politicians
+found early that he was not of the 'available' type--that he would not
+lend himself to party policy or compromise on any matter which seemed to
+him of national interest. Such political posts as were offered to him
+were largely held out as a bait to silence him, and to prevent his
+bringing forward embarrassing measures which might split the party.
+Ashley himself found how much easier it was for him to follow a single
+course when he was an independent member. Reluctantly in 1834 he
+accepted a post at the Board of Admiralty and worked earnestly in his
+department; but this ministry only lasted for one year, and he never
+held office again, though he was often pressed to do so. He was attached
+to Wellington; but for Peel, now become the Tory leader, he had little
+love. The two men were very dissimilar in character; and though at times
+Ashley had friendly communications with Peel, yet in his diary Ashley
+often complains bitterly of his want of enthusiasm, of what he regarded
+as Peel's opportunism and subservience to party policy. The one had an
+instinct for what was practical and knew exactly how far he could
+combine interests to carry a measure; the other was all on fire for the
+cause and ready to push it forward against all obstacles, at all costs.
+Ashley, it is true, had to work through Parliament to attain his chief
+ends, and many a bitter moment he had to endure in striving towards the
+goal. But if he was not an adroit or successful politician, he
+gradually, as the struggle went on, by earnestness and force of
+character, made for himself in the House a place apart, a place of rare
+dignity and influence; and with the force of public opinion behind him
+he was able to triumph over ministers and parties.
+
+It was in 1832 that he first had his attention drawn to the conditions
+of labour in factories. He never claimed to be the pioneer of the
+movement, but he was early in the field. The inventions of the latter
+part of the eighteenth century had transformed the north of England. The
+demand for labour had given rise to appalling abuses, especially in the
+matter of child labour. From London workhouses and elsewhere children
+were poured into the labour market, and by the 'Apprentice System' were
+bound to serve their masters for long periods and for long hours
+together. A pretence of voluntary contract was kept up, but fraud and
+deception were rife in the system and its results were tragic. Mrs.
+Browning's famous poem, 'The Cry of the Children,' gives a more vivid
+picture of the children's sufferings than many pages of prose. At the
+same time we have plenty of first-hand evidence from the great towns of
+the misery which went along with the wonderful development of national
+wealth. Speaking in 1873 Lord Shaftesbury said, 'Well can I recollect in
+the earlier periods of the Factory movement waiting at the factory gates
+to see the children come out, and a set of dejected cadaverous creatures
+they were. In Bradford especially the proofs of long and cruel toil were
+most remarkable. The cripples and distorted forms might be numbered by
+hundreds perhaps by thousands. A friend of mine collected together a
+vast number for me; the sight was most piteous, the deformities
+incredible.' And an eye-witness in Bolton reports in 1792: 'Anything
+like the squalid misery, the slow, mouldering, putrefying death by which
+the weak and feeble are perishing here, it never befell my eyes to
+behold, nor my imagination to conceive.' Some measures of relief were
+carried by the elder Sir Robert Peel, himself a cotton-spinner; but
+public opinion was slow to move and was not roused till 1830, when Mr.
+Sadler,[16] member for Newark, led the first fight for a 'Ten Hours
+Bill'. When Sadler was unseated in 1832, Lord Ashley offered his help,
+and so embarked on the greatest of his works performed in the public
+service. He had the support of a few of the noblest men in England,
+including Robert Southey and Charles Dickens; but he had against him the
+vast body of well-to-do people in the country, and inside Parliament
+many of the most progressive and influential politicians. The factory
+owners were inspired at once by interest and conviction; the political
+economy of the day taught them that all restrictions on labour were
+harmful to the progress of industry and to the prosperity of the
+country, while the figures in their ledgers taught them what was the
+most economical method of running their own mills.
+
+[Note 16: See articles in _D.N.B._ on Michael Thomas Sadler
+(1780-1835) and on Richard Oastler (1789-1861).]
+
+Already it was clear that Lord Ashley was no mere sentimentalist out for
+a momentary sensation. At all times he gave the credit for starting the
+work to Sadler and his associates; and from the outset he urged his
+followers to fix on a limited measure first, to concentrate attention on
+the work of children and young persons, and to avoid general questions
+involving conflicts between capital and labour. Also he took endless
+pains to acquaint himself at first hand with the facts. 'In factories,'
+he said afterwards, 'I examined the mills, the machinery, the homes, and
+saw the workers and their work in all its details. In collieries I went
+down into the pits. In London I went into lodging-houses and thieves'
+haunts, and every filthy place. It gave me a power I could not otherwise
+have had.' And this was years before 'slumming' became fashionable and
+figured in the pages of _Punch_; it was no distraction caught up for a
+week or a month, but a labour of fifty years! We have an account of him
+as he appeared at this period of his life: 'above the medium height,
+about 5 feet 6 inches, with a slender and extremely graceful figure...
+curling dark hair in thick masses, fine brow, features delicately cut,
+the nose perhaps a trifle too prominent,... light blue eyes deeply set
+with projecting eyelids, his mouth small and compressed.' His whole face
+and appearance seems to have had a sculpturesque effect and to have
+suggested the calm and composure of marble. But under this marble
+exterior there was burning a flame of sympathy for the poor, a fire of
+indignation against the system which oppressed them.
+
+In 1833 some progress was made. Lord Althorp, the Whig leader in the
+Commons, under pressure from Lord Ashley, carried a bill dealing indeed
+with some of the worst abuses in factories, but applying only to some of
+the great textile industries. That it still left much to be done can be
+seen from studying the details of the measure. Children under eleven
+years of age were not to work more than nine hours a day, and young
+persons under nineteen not more than twelve hours a day. Adults might
+still work all day and half the night if the temptation of misery at
+home and extra wages to be earned was too strong for them. It seems
+difficult now to believe that this was a great step forward, yet for the
+moment Ashley found that he could do no more and must accept what the
+politicians gave him. In 1840, however, he started a fresh campaign on
+behalf of children not employed in these factories, who were not
+included in the Act of 1833, and who, not being concentrated in the
+great centres of industry, escaped the attention of the general public.
+He obtained a Royal Commission to investigate mines and other works, and
+to report upon their condition. The Blue Book was published in 1842 and
+created a sensation unparalleled of its kind. Men read with horror the
+stories of the mines, of children employed underground for twelve or
+fourteen hours a day, crouching in low passages, monotonously opening
+and shutting the trap-doors as the trollies passed to and fro. Alone
+each child sat in pitchy darkness, unable to stir for more than a few
+paces, unable to sleep for fear of punishment with the strap in case of
+neglect, and often surrounded with vermin. Women were employed crawling
+on hands and knees along these passages, stripped to the waist, stooping
+under the low roofs, and even so chafing and wounding their backs, as
+they hauled the coal along the underground rails, or carrying in baskets
+on their backs, up steps and ladders, loads which varied in weight from
+a half to one and a half hundredweights. The physical health, the mental
+education, and the moral character of these poor creatures suffered
+equally under such a system; and well might those responsible for the
+existence of such abuses fear to let the Report be published. But copies
+of it first reached members of Parliament, then the public at large
+learnt the burden of the tale, and Lord Ashley might now hope for enough
+support from outside to break down the opposition in the House of
+Commons and the delays of parliamentary procedure.
+
+'The Mines and Collieries Bill' was brought in before the impression
+could fade, and on June 7, 1842, Ashley made one of the greatest of his
+speeches and drove home powerfully the effect of the Report. His mastery
+of facts was clear enough to satisfy the most dispassionate politician;
+his sincerity disarmed Richard Cobden, the champion of the Lancashire
+manufacturers and brought about a reconciliation between them; his
+eloquence stirred the hearts of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort,
+and drew from the latter words of glowing admiration and promises of
+support. In August the bill finally passed the House of Lords, and a
+second great blow had been struck. Practices which were poisoning at the
+source the lives of the younger generation were forbidden by law; above
+all, it was expressly laid down that, after a few years, no woman or
+girl should be employed in mines at all. The influence which such a law
+had on the family life in the mining districts was incalculable; the
+women were rescued from servitude in the mines and restored to their
+natural place at home.
+
+There was still much to do. In 1844 the factory question was again
+brought to the front by the demands of the working classes, and again
+Ashley was ready to champion their cause, and to propose that the
+working day should now be limited to eight hours for children, and to
+ten hours for grown men. In Parliament there was long and weary fighting
+over the details. The Tory Government did not wish to oppose the bill
+directly. Neither party had really faced the question or made up its
+mind. Expediency rather than justice was in the minds of the official
+politicians.
+
+Such a straightforward champion as Lord Ashley was a source of
+embarrassment to these gentlemen, to be met by evasion rather than
+direct opposition. The radical John Bright, a strong opponent of State
+interference and equally straightforward in his methods, made a personal
+attack on Lord Ashley. He referred to the Dorset labourers, as if Ashley
+was indifferent to abuses nearer home, and left no one in doubt of his
+opinions. At the same time, Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, did
+all in his power to defeat Ashley's bill by bringing forward alternative
+proposals, which he knew would be unacceptable to the workers. In face
+of such opposition most men would have given way. Ashley, who had been a
+consistent Tory all his life, was bitterly aggrieved at the treatment
+which his bill met with from his official leaders. He persevered in his
+efforts, relying on support from outside; but in Parliament the
+Government triumphed to the extent of defeating the Ten Hours Bill in
+March 1844 and again in April 1846. Still, the small majority (ten) by
+which this last division was decided showed in which direction the
+current was flowing, and when a few months later the Tories were ousted
+from office, the Whigs took up the bill officially, and in June 1847
+Lord Ashley, though himself out of Parliament for the moment, had the
+satisfaction of seeing the bill become the law of the land.
+
+There was great rejoicing in the manufacturing districts, and Lord
+Ashley was the hero of the day. The working classes had no direct
+representative in Parliament in those days: without his constant efforts
+neither party would have given a fair hearing to their cause. He had
+argued with politicians without giving away principles; he had stirred
+the industrial districts without rousing class hatred; he had been
+defeated time after time without giving up the struggle. Much has been
+added since then to the laws restricting the conditions of labour till,
+in the often quoted words of Lord Morley, the biographer of Cobden, we
+have 'a complete, minute, and voluminous code for the protection of
+labour... an immense host of inspectors, certifying surgeons and other
+authorities whose business it is to "speed and post o'er land and ocean"
+in restless guardianship of every kind of labour'. But these were the
+heroic days of the struggle for factory legislation, and also of the
+struggle for cheap food for the people. Reviewing these great events
+many years later the Duke of Argyll said, 'During that period two great
+discoveries have been made in the science of Government: the one is the
+immense advantage of abolishing restrictions on trade, the other is the
+absolute necessity of imposing restrictions on labour'. While Sir Robert
+Peel might with some justice contest with Cobden the honour of
+establishing the first principle, few will challenge Lord Ashley's right
+to the honour of securing the second.
+
+Of the many religious and political causes which he undertook during and
+after this time, of the Zionist movement to repatriate the Jews, of the
+establishing of a Protestant bishopric at Jerusalem, of his attacks on
+the war with Sind and the opium trade with China, of his championship of
+the Nestorian Christians against the Turk, of his leadership of the
+great Bible Society, there is not space to speak. The mere list gives an
+idea of the width of his interests and the warmth of his sympathy.
+
+Some of these questions were highly contentious; and Lord Ashley, who
+was a fervent Evangelical, was less than fair to churchmen of other
+schools. To Dr. Pusey himself he could write a kindly and courteous
+letter; but on the platform, or in correspondence with friends, he could
+denounce 'Puseyites' in the roundest terms. One cannot expect that a man
+of his character will avoid all mistakes. It was a time when feeling ran
+high on religious questions, and he was a declared partisan; but at
+least we may say that the public good, judged from the highest point,
+was his objective; there was no room for self-seeking in his heart. Nor
+did this wide extension of his activity mean neglect of his earlier
+crusades. On the contrary, he continued to work for the good of the
+classes to whom his Factory Bills had been so beneficial. Not content
+with prohibiting what was harmful, he went on to positive measures of
+good; restriction of hours was followed by sanitation, and this again by
+education, and by this he was led to what was perhaps the second most
+famous work of his life.
+
+In 1843 his attention had already been drawn to the question of
+educating the neglected children, and he was making acquaintance at
+first hand with the work of the Ragged Schools, at that time few in
+number and poorly supported. He visited repeatedly the Field Lane
+School, in a district near Holborn notoriously frequented by the
+criminal classes, and soon the cause, at which he was to work
+unsparingly for forty years, began to move forward. He went among the
+poor with no thought of condescension. Simple as he was by nature, he
+possessed in perfection the art of speaking to children, and he was soon
+full of practical schemes for helping them. Sanitary reform was not
+neglected in his zeal for religion, and emigration was to be promoted as
+well as better housing at home; for, till the material conditions of
+life were improved, he knew that it was idle to hope for much moral
+reform. 'Plain living and high thinking' is an excellent ideal for those
+whose circumstances put them out of reach of anxiety over daily bread;
+it is a difficult gospel to preach to those who are living in
+destitution and misery.
+
+The character of his work soon won confidence even in the most unlikely
+quarters. In June 1848 he received a round-robin signed by forty of the
+most notorious thieves in London, asking him to come and meet them in
+person at a place appointed; and on his going there he found a mob of
+nearly four hundred men, all living by dishonesty and crime, who
+listened readily and even eagerly to his brotherly words.
+
+Several of them came forward in turn and made candid avowal of their
+respective difficulties and vices, and of the conditions of their lives.
+He found that they were tired of their own way of life, and were ready
+to make a fresh start; and in the course of the next few months he was
+able, thanks to the generosity of a rich friend, to arrange for the
+majority of them to emigrate to another country or to find new openings
+away from their old haunts.
+
+But, apart from such special occasions, the work of the schools went
+steadily forward. In seven years, more than a hundred such schools were
+opened, and Lord Shaftesbury was unfailing in his attendance whenever he
+could help forward the cause. His advice to the managers to 'keep the
+schools in the mire and the gutter' sounds curious; but he was afraid
+that, as they throve, boys of more prosperous classes would come in and
+drive out those for whom they were specially founded. 'So long', he
+said, 'as the mire and gutter exist, so long as this class exists, you
+must keep the school adapted to their wants, their feelings, their
+tastes and their level.' And any of us familiar with the novels of
+Charles Dickens and Walter Besant will know that such boys still existed
+unprovided for in large numbers in 1850 and for many years after.
+
+Thus the years went by. He succeeded to the earldom on his father's
+death in 1851. His heart was wrung by the early deaths of two of his
+children and by the loss of his wife in 1872. In his home he had his
+full share of the joys and sorrows of life, but his interest in his work
+never failed. If new tasks were taken up, it was not at the expense of
+the old; the fresh demand on his unwearied energies was met with the
+same spirit. At an advanced age he opened a new and attractive chapter
+in his life by his friendly meetings with the London costermongers. He
+gave prizes for the best-kept donkey, he attended the judging in person,
+he received in return a present of a donkey which was long cherished at
+Wimborne St. Giles. It is impossible to deal fully with his life in each
+decade; one page from his journal for 1882 shows what he could still do
+at the age of eighty-one, and will be the best proof of his persistence
+in well-doing. He began the day with a visit to Greenhithe to inspect
+the training ships for poor boys, at midday he came back to Grosvenor
+Square to attend a committee meeting of the Bible Society at his home,
+he then went to a public banquet in honour of his godson, and he
+finished with a concert at Buckingham Palace, thus keeping up his
+friendly relations with all classes in the realm. To the very last, in
+his eighty-fifth year, he continued to attend a few meetings and to
+visit the scenes of his former labours; and on October 1, 1885, full of
+years and full of honours, he died quietly at Folkestone, where he had
+gone for the sake of his health.
+
+In this sketch attention has been drawn to his labours rather than to
+his honours. He might have had plenty of the latter if he had wished. He
+received the Freedom of the City of London and of other great towns.
+Twice he was offered the Garter, and he only accepted the second offer
+on Lord Palmerston's urgent request that he should treat it as a tribute
+to the importance of social work. Three times he was offered a seat in
+the Cabinet, but he refused each time, because official position would
+fetter his special work. He kept aloof from party politics, and was only
+roused when great principles were at stake. Few of the leading
+politicians satisfied him. Peel seemed too cautious, Gladstone too
+subtle, Disraeli too insincere. It was the simplicity and kindliness of
+his relative Palmerston that won his heart, rather than confidence in
+his policy at home or abroad. The House of Commons suited him better
+than the colder atmosphere of the House of Lords; but in neither did he
+rise to speak without diffidence and fear. It is a great testimony to
+the force of his conviction that he won as many successes in Parliament
+as he did. But the means through which he effected his chief work were
+committees, platform meetings, and above all personal visits to scenes
+of distress.
+
+The nation would gladly have given him the last tribute of burial in
+Westminster Abbey, but he had expressed a clear wish to be laid among
+his own people at Wimborne St. Giles, and the funeral was as simple as
+he had wished it to be. His name in London is rather incongruously
+associated with a fountain in Piccadilly Circus, and with a street full
+of theatres, made by the clearing of the slums where he had worked: the
+intention was good, the result is unfortunate. More truly than in any
+sculpture or buildings his memorial is to be found in the altered lives
+of thousands of his fellow citizens, in the happy looks of the children,
+and in the pleasant homes and healthy workshops which have transformed
+the face of industrial England.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN LAWRENCE
+
+1811-79
+
+1811. Born at Richmond, Yorkshire, March 4.
+1823. School at Londonderry.
+1827. Haileybury I.C.S. College.
+1829. Goes out to India as a member of Civil Service.
+1831. Delhi.
+1834. P[=a]n[=i]pat.
+1836. Et[=a]wa.
+1840-2. Furlough and marriage to Harriette Hamilton.
+1844. Collector and Magistrate of Delhi and P[=a]n[=i]pat.
+1845. First Sikh War.
+1846. Governor of J[=a]landhar Do[=a]b.
+1848. Second Sikh War.
+1849. Lord Dalhousie annexes Punjab. Henry and John Lawrence members
+      of Punjab Board.
+1852-3. New Constitution. John Lawrence, Chief Commissioner of Punjab.
+1856. Oudh annexed. Henry Lawrence first Governor.
+1857. Indian Mutiny. Death of Henry Lawrence at Lucknow (July). Punjab
+      secured. Delhi retaken (September).
+1858-9. Baronetcy; G.C.B. Return to England.
+1864. Governor-General of India. Irrigation. Famine relief.
+1869. Return to England. Peerage.
+1870. Chairman of London School Board.
+1876. Failure of eyesight.
+1879. Death in London, June 27.
+
+JOHN LAWRENCE
+
+INDIAN ADMINISTRATOR
+
+
+The north of Ireland and its Scoto-Irish stock has given birth to some
+of the toughest human material that our British Isles have produced. Of
+this stock was John Wesley, who at the age of eighty-five attributed his
+good health to rising every day at four and preaching every day at
+five. Of this was Arthur Wellesley, who never knew defeat and 'never
+lost a British gun'. Of this was Alexander Lawrence, sole survivor among
+the officers of the storming party at Seringapatam, who lived to rear
+seven stout sons, five of whom went out to service in India, two at
+least to win imperishable fame. His wife, a Miss Knox, came also from
+across the sea; and, if the evidence fails to prove Mr. Bosworth Smith's
+statement that she was akin to the great Reformer, she herself was a
+woman of strong character and great administrative talent. When we
+remember John Lawrence's parentage, we need not be surprised at the
+character which he bore, nor at the evidence of it to be seen in the
+grand rugged features portrayed by Watts in the picture in the National
+Portrait Gallery.
+
+[Illustration: LORD LAWRENCE
+
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+Of these parents John Laird Mair Lawrence was the fourth surviving son,
+one boy, the eldest, having died in infancy. He owed the accident of his
+birth in an English town to his father's regiment being quartered at the
+time in Yorkshire, his first schooling at Bristol to his father's
+residence at Clifton; but when he was twelve years old, he followed his
+elder brothers to Londonderry, where his maternal uncle, the Rev. James
+Knox, was Headmaster of the Free Grammar School, situated within the
+walls of that famous Protestant fortress. It was a rough school, of
+which the Lawrence brothers cherished few kindly recollections. It is
+difficult to ascertain what they learnt there: perhaps the grim
+survivals of the past, town-walls, bastions, and guns, made the deepest
+impression upon them. John's chief friend at school was Robert
+Montgomery, whom, many years later, he welcomed as a sympathetic
+fellow-worker in India; and the two boys continued their education
+together at Wraxall in Wiltshire, to which they were transferred in
+1825. Here John spent two years, working at his books by fits and
+starts, and finding an outlet for his energy in climbing, kite-flying,
+and other unconventional amusements, and then his turn came to profit by
+the goodwill of a family friend, who was an influential man and a
+director of the East India Company. To this man, John Huddlestone by
+name, his brothers Alexander and George owed their commissions in the
+Indian cavalry, while Henry had elected for the artillery. John hoped
+for a similar favour, but was offered, in its place, a post in the
+Indian Civil Service. This was a cruel disappointment to him as he had
+set his heart on the army. In fact he was only reconciled to the
+prospect by the influence of his eldest sister Letitia, who held a
+unique place as the family counsellor now and throughout her life.
+
+When he sailed first for India at the age of eighteen, John Lawrence had
+done little to give promise of future distinction. He had strong
+attachments to his mother and sister; outside the family circle he was
+not eager to make new friends. In his work and in his escapades he
+showed an independent spirit, and seemed to care little what others
+thought of him; even at Haileybury, at that time a training-school for
+the service of the East India Company, he was most irregular in his
+studies, though he carried off several prizes; and he seems to have
+impressed his fellows rather as an uncouth person who preferred mooning
+about the college, or rambling alone through the country-side, to
+spending his days in the pursuits which they esteemed.
+
+When the time came for John Lawrence to take up his work, his brother
+Henry, his senior by five years, was also going out to India to rejoin
+his company of artillery, and the brothers sailed together. John had to
+spend ten weary months in Calcutta learning languages, and was very
+unhappy there. Ill-health was one cause; another was his distaste for
+strangers' society and his longing for home; it was only the definite
+prospect of work which rescued him from despondency. He applied for a
+post at Delhi; and, as soon as this was granted, he was all eagerness to
+leave Calcutta. But he had used the time well in one respect: he had
+acquired the power of speaking Persian with ease and fluency, and this
+stood him in good stead in his dealings with the princes and the
+peasants of the northern races, whose history he was to influence in the
+coming years.
+
+Delhi has been to many Englishmen besides John Lawrence a city of
+absorbing interest. It had even then a long history behind it, and its
+history, as we in the twentieth century know, is by no means finished
+yet. It stands on the Jumna, the greatest tributary of the Ganges, at a
+point where the roads from the north-west reach the vast fertile basin
+of these rivers, full in the path of an invader. Many races had swept
+down on it from the mountain passes before the English soldiery appeared
+from the south-east; its mosques, its palaces, its gates, recall the
+memory of many princes and conquerors. At the time of Lawrence's arrival
+it was still the home of the heir of Akbar and Aurangzeb, the last of
+the great Mughals. The dynasty had been left in 1804, after the wars of
+Lord Wellesley, shorn of its power, but not robbed of its dignity or
+riches. As a result it had degenerated into an abuse of the first order,
+since all the scoundrels of the district infested the palace and preyed
+upon its owner, who had no work to occupy him, no call of duty to rouse
+him from sloth and sensuality. The town was filled with a turbulent
+population of many different tribes, and the work of the European
+officials was exacting and difficult. But at the same time it gave
+unique opportunities for an able man to learn the complexity of the
+Indian problem; and the knowledge which John Lawrence acquired there
+proved of incalculable value to him when he was called to higher posts.
+
+At Delhi he was working as an assistant to the Resident, one of a staff
+of four or five, with no independent authority. But in 1834 he was given
+temporary charge of the district of P[=a]n[=i]pat, fifty miles to the
+north, and it is here that we begin to get some measure of the man and
+his abilities. The place was the scene of more than one famous battle in
+the past; armies of Mughals and Persians and Mar[=a]th[=i]s had swept
+across its plains. Its present inhabitants were J[=a]ts, a race widely
+extended through the eastern Punjab and the western part of the province
+of Agra. Originally invaders from the north, they espoused the religions
+of those around them, some Brahman, some Muhammadan, some Sikh, and
+settled down as thrifty industrious peasants; though inclined to
+peaceful pursuits, they still preserved some strength of character and
+were the kind of people among whom Lawrence might hope to enjoy his
+work. The duties of the magistrate are generally divided into judicial
+and financial. But, as an old Indian official more exhaustively stated
+it: 'Everything which is done by the executive government is done by the
+Collector in one or another of his capacities--publican, auctioneer,
+sheriff, road-maker, timber-dealer, recruiting sergeant, slayer of wild
+beasts, bookseller, cattle-breeder, postmaster, vaccinator, discounter
+of bills, and registrar.' It is difficult to see how one can bring all
+these departments under two headings; it is still more difficult to see
+how such diverse demands can possibly be met by a single official,
+especially by one little over twenty years of age coming from a distant
+country. No stay-at-home fitting himself snugly into a niche in the
+well-manned offices of Whitehall can expect to see his powers develop so
+rapidly or so rapidly collapse (whichever be his fate) as these solitary
+outposts of our empire, bearing, Atlas-like, a whole world on their
+shoulders.
+
+With John Lawrence, fortunately, there was no question of collapse till
+many years of overwork broke down his physical strength. He grappled
+with the task like a giant, passing long days in his office or in the
+saddle, looking into everything for himself, laying up stores of
+knowledge about land tenure and agriculture, training his judgement to
+deal with the still more difficult problem of the workings of the
+Oriental mind. He had no friends or colleagues of his own at hand; and
+when the day's work was done he would spend his evenings holding an
+informal durbar outside his tent, chatting with all and sundry of the
+natives who happened to be there. The peoples of India are familiar with
+pomp and outward show such as we do not see in the more prosaic west;
+but they also know a man when they see one. And this young man with the
+strongly-marked features, curt speech, and masterful manner, sitting
+there alone in shirt-sleeves and old trousers as he listened to their
+tales, was an embodiment of the British rule which they learnt to
+respect--if not to love--for the solid benefits which it conferred upon
+them. He had an element of hardness in him; by many he was thought to be
+unduly harsh at different periods of his life; but he spared no trouble
+to learn the truth, he was inflexibly just in his decisions, and his
+reputation spread rapidly throughout the district. In cases of genuine
+need he could be extremely kind and generous; but he did not lavish
+these qualities on the first comer, nor did he wear his heart upon his
+sleeve. His informal ways and unconventional dress were a bugbear to
+some critics; his old waywardness and love of adventure was still alive
+in him, and he thoroughly enjoyed the more irregular sides of his work.
+Mr. Bosworth Smith has preserved some capital stories of the crimes with
+which he had to deal, and how the young collector took an active part in
+arresting the criminals--stories which some years later the future
+Viceroy dictated to his wife.
+
+But, after two years thus spent in constant activity and ever-growing
+mastery of his work, he had to come down in rank; the post was filled by
+a permanent official, and John Lawrence returned to the Delhi staff as
+an assistant.
+
+He soon received other 'acting appointments' in the neighbourhood of
+Delhi, one of which at Et[=a]wa gave him valuable experience in dealing
+with the difficult revenue question. The Government was in the habit of
+collecting the land tax from the 'ryot' or peasant through a class of
+middle-men called 'talukd[=a]rs',[17] who had existed under the native
+princes for a long time. Borrowing perhaps from western ideas, the
+English had regarded the latter as landowners and the peasants as mere
+tenants; this had often caused grave injustice to the latter, and the
+officials now desired to revise the settlement in order to put all
+classes on a fair footing. In this department Robert Bird was supreme,
+and under his direction John Lawrence and others set themselves to
+measure out areas, to record the nature of the various soils, and to
+assess rents at a moderate rate. Still this was dull work compared to
+the planning of practical improvements and the conviction of dangerous
+criminals; and as, towards the end of 1839, Lawrence was struck down by
+a bad attack of fever, he was not sorry to be ordered home on long leave
+and to revisit his native land. He had been strenuously at work for ten
+years on end and he had well earned a holiday.
+
+[Note 17: 'Talukd[=a]r' in the north-west, 'zam[=i]nd[=a]r' in
+Bengal.]
+
+His father was now dead, and his favourite sister married, but of his
+mother he was for many years the chief support, contributing liberally
+of his own funds and giving his time and judgement to managing what the
+brothers put together for that purpose. In 1840 he was travelling both
+in Scotland and Ireland; and it was near Londonderry that he met his
+future wife, daughter of the Rev. Richard Hamilton, who, besides being
+rector of his parish, was an active justice of the peace. He met her
+again in the following summer, and they were married on August 26, 1841.
+Their life together was a tale of unbroken happiness, which was only
+ended by his death. A long tour on the Continent was followed by a
+severe illness, which threatened to forbid all prospect of work in
+India. However, by the end of that summer he had recovered his health
+enough to contemplate returning, and in October, 1842, he set sail to
+spend another sixteen years in labouring in India.
+
+In 1843 he resumed work at Delhi, holding temporary posts till the end
+of 1844, when he became in his own right Collector and Magistrate of
+Delhi and P[=a]n[=i]pat. This time his position, besides involving much
+familiar work, threw him in the way of events of wider interest. Lord
+Hardinge, the Governor-General, on his way to the first Sikh war, came
+to Delhi, and was much impressed with Lawrence's ability; and when he
+annexed the Do[=a]b[18] of J[=a]landhar and wanted a governor for it, he
+could find no one more suitable than the young magistrate, who had so
+swiftly collected 4,000 carts and sent them up laden with supplies on
+the eve of the battle of Sobraon.
+
+[Note 18: 'Do[=a]b' = land between two rivers.]
+
+This was a great step in advance and carried John Lawrence ahead of many
+of his seniors; but it was promotion that was fully justified by events.
+He was not wanting in self-confidence, and the tone of some of his
+letters to the Secretary at head-quarters might seem boastful, had not
+his whole career shown that he could more than make good his promise.
+'So far as I am concerned as supervisor,' he says, 'I could easily
+manage double the extent of country'; and then, comparing his district
+with another, he continues: 'I only ask you to wait six months, and then
+contrast the civil management of the two charges.' As a fact, during the
+three years that he held this post, he was often acting as deputy for
+his brother Henry at Lahore, during his illness or absence, and this
+alone clears him of the charge of idle boasting. J[=a]landhar was
+comparatively a simple job for him, whatever it might be for others; he
+was able to apply his knowledge of assessment and taxation gained at
+Et[=a]wa, and need only satisfy himself. At Lahore, on the other hand,
+he had to consider the very strong views held by his brother about the
+respect due to the vested rights of the chiefs; and he studiously set
+himself to deal with matters in the way in which his brother would have
+done. The Sirdars or Sikh chieftains had inherited traditions of corrupt
+and oppressive rule; but the chivalrous Henry Lawrence always looked at
+the noble side of native character; and, as by his personal gifts he was
+able to inspire devotion, so he could draw out what was good in those
+who came under his influence. The cooler and more practical John looked
+at both sides, at the traditions, good and evil, which came to them from
+their forefathers, and he considered carefully how these chiefs would
+act when not under his immediate influence. Above all, he looked to the
+prosperity and happiness of the millions of peasants out of sight, who
+toiled laboriously to get a living from the land.
+
+The second Sikh war, which broke out in 1848, can only be treated here
+so far as it affected the fortunes of the Lawrences. Lord Gough's
+strategical blunders, redeemed by splendid courage, give it great
+military interest; but it was the new Viceroy, Lord Dalhousie, who
+decided the fate of the Punjab. He was a very able, hard-working Scotch
+nobleman, who devoted himself to his work in India for eight years with
+such self-sacrifice that he returned home in 1856 already doomed to an
+early death. But he was masterful and self-confident to a degree; and
+against his imperious will the impulsive forces of Charles Napier and
+Henry Lawrence broke like waves on a granite coast. He was not blind to
+their exceptional gifts, but to him the wide knowledge, coolness, and
+judgement of John Lawrence made a greater appeal; and when, after the
+victory of Chili[=a]nw[=a]la and the submission of the Sikh army in
+1849, he annexed the Punjab, he decided to rule it by a Board and not by
+a single governor, and to direct the diverse talents of the brothers to
+a common end. He could not dispense with Henry's influence among the
+Sikh chieftains, and John's knowledge of civil government was of equal
+value.
+
+Each would to a certain extent have his department, but a vast number of
+questions would have to be decided jointly by the Board, of which the
+third member, from 1850, was their old schoolfellow and friend Robert
+Montgomery. The friction which resulted was often intolerable. Without
+the least personal animosity, the brothers were forced into frequent
+conflicts of opinion; each was convinced of the justice of his attitude
+and most unwilling to sacrifice the interests of those in whom he was
+especially interested. After three years of the strain, Lord Dalhousie
+decided that it was time to put the country under a single ruler. For
+the honour of being first Chief Commissioner of the Punjab he chose the
+younger brother; and Sir Henry was given the post of Agent in
+R[=a]jput[=a]na, from which he was promoted in 1857 to be the first
+Governor of Oudh.
+
+It was a tragic parting. The ablest men in the Punjab, like John
+Nicholson and Herbert Edwardes, regarded Sir Henry as a father, and many
+felt that it would be impossible to continue their work without him. No
+Englishman in India made such an impression by personal influence on
+both Europeans and Asiatics. As a well-known English statesman said:
+'His character was far above his career, distinguished as that career
+was.' But there is little doubt, now, that for the development of the
+new province Lord Dalhousie made the right choice. And there is no
+higher proof of the magnanimity of John Lawrence than the way in which
+he won the respect, and retained the services, of the most ardent
+supporters of his brother. His dealings with Nicholson alone would fill
+a chapter; few lessons are more instructive than the way in which he
+controlled the waywardness of this heroic but self-willed officer, while
+giving full scope to his singular abilities.
+
+The tale of John Lawrence's government of the Punjab is in some measure
+a repetition of his work at P[=a]n[=i]pat and Delhi. It had the same
+variety, it was carried out with the same thoroughness; but on this vast
+field it was impossible for him to see everything for himself. While
+directing the policy, he had to work largely through others and to leave
+many important decisions to his subordinates. The quality of the Punjab
+officials--of men who owed their inspiration to Henry Lawrence, or to
+John, or to both of them--was proved in many fields of government during
+the next thirty years. Soldiers on the frontier passes, judges and
+revenue officers on the plains, all worked with a will and contributed
+of their best. The Punjab is from many points of view the most
+interesting province in India. Its motley population, chiefly
+Musalm[=a]ns, but including Sikhs and other Hindus; its extremes of heat
+and cold, of rich alluvial soil and barren deserts; its vast
+water-supplies, largely running to waste; its great frontier ramparts
+with the historic passes--each of these gave rise to its own special
+problems. It is impossible to deal with so complex a subject here; all
+that we can do is to indicate a few sides of the work by which John
+Lawrence had so developed the provinces within the short period of eight
+years that it was able to bear the strain of the Mutiny, and to prove a
+source of strength and not of weakness. He put the right men in the
+right places and supported them with all his power. He broke up the old
+Sikh army, and reorganized the forces in such a way as to weaken tribal
+feeling and make it less easy for them to combine against us. He so
+administered justice that the natives came to know that an English
+official's word was as good as his bond. And, with the aid of Robert
+Napier and others, he so helped forward irrigation as to redeem the
+waste places and develop the latent wealth of the country. In all these
+years he had little recognition or reward. His chief, Lord Dalhousie,
+valued his work and induced the Government to make him K.C.B. in 1856;
+but to the general public at home he was still unknown.
+
+In 1857 the crisis came. The greased cartridges were an immediate cause;
+there were others in the background. The sepoy regiments were too
+largely recruited from one race, the Poorbeas of the North-west
+Province, and they were too numerous in proportion to the Europeans;
+vanity, greed, superstition, fear, all influenced their minds.
+Fortunately, they produced no leader of ability; and, where the British
+officials were prompt and firm, the sparks of rebellion were swiftly
+stamped out; Montgomery at Lahore, Edwardes at Pesh[=a]war, and many
+others, did their part nobly and disarmed whole regiments without
+bloodshed. But at Meerut and Cawnpore there was hesitation; rebellion
+raised its head, encouragement was given to a hundred local discontents,
+little rills flowed together from all directions, and finally two great
+streams of rebellion surged round Delhi and Lucknow. The latter, where
+Henry Lawrence met a hero's death in July, does not here concern us; but
+the reduction of Delhi was chiefly the work of John Lawrence, and its
+effect on the history of the Mutiny was profound.
+
+He might well have been afraid for the Punjab, won by conquest from the
+most military race in India only eight years before, lying on the
+borders of our old enemy Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n, garrisoned by 11,000
+Europeans and about 50,000 native troops. It might seem a sufficient
+achievement to preserve his province to British rule, with rebellion
+raging all around and making inroads far within its borders. But as soon
+as he had secured the vital points in his own province (Mult[=a]n,
+Pesh[=a]war, Lahore), John Lawrence devoted himself to a single task, to
+recover Delhi, directing against it every man and gun, and all the
+stores that the Punjab could spare. Many of his subordinates, brave men
+though they were, were alarmed to see the Punjab so denuded and exposed
+to risks; but we now see the strength of character and determination of
+the man who swayed the fortunes of the north. He knew the importance of
+Delhi, of its geographical position and its imperial traditions; and he
+felt sure that no more vital blow could be struck at the Mutiny than to
+win back the city. The effort might seem hopeless; the military
+commanders might hesitate; the small force encamped on the historic
+ridge to the west of the town might seem to be besieged rather than
+besiegers. But continuous waves of energy from the Punjab reinforced
+them. One day it was 'the Guides', marching 580 miles in twenty-two
+days, or some other European regiment hastening from some hotbed of
+fanaticism where it could ill be spared; another day it was a train of
+siege artillery, skilfully piloted across rivers and past ambushes;
+lastly, it was the famous moving column led by John Nicholson in person
+which restored the fortunes of the day. Through June, July, August, and
+half of September, the operations dragged wearily on; but thanks to the
+exertions of Baird Smith and Alexander Taylor, the chief engineers, an
+assault was at last judged to be feasible. After days of street
+fighting, the British secured control of the whole city on September
+20th, and Nicholson, who was fatally wounded in the assault, lived long
+enough to hear the tale of victory. Without aid from England this great
+triumph had been won by the resources of the Punjab; and great was the
+moral effect of the news, as it spread through the bazaars.
+
+This success did not exhaust Lawrence's energy. For months after, he
+continued to help Sir Colin Campbell in his operations against Lucknow,
+and to correspond with the Viceroy, Lord Canning, and others about the
+needs of the time. More perhaps than any one else, he laboured to check
+savage reprisals and needless brutality, and thereby incurred much odium
+with the more reckless and ignorant officers, who, coming out after the
+most critical hour, talked loudly about punishment and revenge. He was
+as cool in victory as he had been firm in the hour of disaster, and
+never ceased to look ahead to rebuilding the shaken edifice on sounder
+foundations when the danger should be past. It was only in the autumn of
+1858, when the ship of State was again in smooth water, that he began to
+think of a holiday for himself. He had worked continuously for sixteen
+years; his health was not so strong as of old, and he could not safely
+continue at his post. He received a Baronetcy and the Grand Cross of the
+Bath from the Crown, while the Company recognized his great services by
+conferring on him a pension of Ł2,000 a year.
+
+From these heroic scenes it is difficult to pass to the humdrum life in
+England, the receptions at Windsor, the parties in London, and the
+discussions on the Indian Council. He himself (though not indifferent to
+honourable recognition of his work) found far more pleasure in the quiet
+days passed in the home circle, the games of croquet on his lawn, and
+the occasional travels in Scotland and Ireland. Four years of repose
+were none too long, for other demands were soon to be made upon him.
+When Lord Elgin died suddenly in 1863, John Lawrence received the offer
+of the highest post under the Crown, and, before the end of the year, he
+was sailing for Calcutta as Governor-General of India.
+
+In some ways he was able to fill the place without great effort. He had
+never been a respecter of persons; he had been quite indifferent
+whether his decisions were approved by those about him, and had always
+learnt to walk alone with a single eye to the public good. Also, he had
+such vast store of knowledge of the land and its inhabitants as no
+Viceroy before him for many decades. But the ceremonial fatigued him;
+and the tradition of working 'in Council', as the Viceroy must, was
+embarrassing to one who could always form a decision alone and had
+learnt to trust his own judgement.
+
+Many of Lawrence's best friends and most trusted colleagues had left
+India, and he had, seated at his Council board, others who did not share
+his views, and who opposed the measures that he advocated. Especially
+was this true of the distinguished soldier Sir Hugh Rose; and Lawrence
+had to endure the same strain as in 1850, in the days of the Punjab
+board. But he was able to do great service to the country in many ways,
+and especially to the agricultural classes by pushing forward large
+schemes of irrigation. Finance was one of his strong points, and any
+expenditure which would be reproductive was sure of his support owing to
+his care for the peasants and his love of a sound budget. The period of
+his Viceroyalty was what is generally called uneventful--that is, it was
+chiefly given up to such schemes as promoted peace and prosperity, and
+did not witness any extension of our dominions. Even when Robert
+Napier's[19] expedition went to Abyssinia, few people in England
+realized that it was organized in India and paid for by India; and the
+credit for its success was given elsewhere.
+
+[Note 19: Created Lord Napier of Magdala after storming King
+Theodore's fortress in 1868.]
+
+But it is necessary to refer to one great subject of controversy, which
+was prominent all through Lawrence's career and with which his name is
+associated. This is the 'Frontier Policy' and the treatment of
+Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n, on which two distinct schools of thought emerged.
+One school, ever jealous of the Russian advance, maintained that our
+Indian Government should establish agencies in Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n with or
+without the consent of the Am[=i]r; that it should interfere, if need
+be, to secure the throne for a prince who was attached to us; that
+British troops should be stationed beyond the Indus, where they could
+make their influence felt beyond our borders. The other maintained that
+our best policy was to keep within our natural boundaries, and in this
+respect the Indus with its fringe of desert was second only to the high
+mountain chains; that we should recognize the wild love of independence
+which the Afgh[=a]ns felt, that we should undertake no obligations
+towards the Am[=i]r except to observe the boundaries between him and us.
+If the Russians threatened our territories through Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n,
+the natives would help us from hatred of the invaders; but if we began
+to establish agents and troops in their towns, we should ourselves
+become to them the hated enemy.
+
+One school said that the Afgh[=a]ns respected strength and would support
+us, if we seemed capable of a vigorous policy. The other replied that
+they resented foreign intrusion and would oppose Great Britain or
+Russia, if either attempted it. One said that we ought to have a
+resident in K[=a]bul and Kandah[=a]r, the other said that it was a pity
+that we had ever occupied Pesh[=a]war, in its exposed valley at the foot
+of the Khyber Pass, and that Attock, where the Indus was bridged, was
+the ideal frontier post.
+
+No one doubted that Lawrence would be found on the side of the less
+showy and less costly policy; and he kept unswervingly true to his
+ideal. The verdict of history must not be claimed too confidently in a
+land which has seen so many races come and go. At least it may be said
+that the men who advocated advance were unable to make it good. Few
+chapters in our history are more tragic than the Afgh[=a]n Wars of
+1838-42 and 1878-80, though the last was redeemed by General Roberts's
+great achievements. Our present policy is in accord with this verdict.
+There is to-day no British agency at K[=a]bul or Kandah[=a]r; and the
+loyalty of the Am[=i]rs, during some forty years of faithful adherence
+on our part to this policy, have been sufficiently firm to justify
+Lawrence's opposition to the Forward Policy. To-day it seems easy to
+vindicate his wisdom; but in 1878, when the Conservative Government
+kindled the war fever and allowed Lord Lytton to initiate a new
+adventure, it was not easy to stem the tide, and Lawrence came in for
+much abuse and unpopularity in maintaining the other view.
+
+But long before this happened he had returned to England. His term of
+office was over early in 1869, and his work in India was finished. His
+last years at home were quiet, but not inactive. In 1870 he was invited
+to become the first chairman of the new School Board for London, and he
+held this office three years. Board work was always uncongenial to him,
+and the subject was, of course, unfamiliar; but he gave his best efforts
+to the cause and did other voluntary work in London. This came to an end
+in 1876, when his eyesight failed, and for nearly two years he had much
+suffering and was in danger of total blindness for a time. A second
+operation saved him from this, and in 1878 he put forth his strength in
+writing and speaking vigorously, but without success, against Lord
+Lytton's Afgh[=a]n War. In June, 1879, he was stricken with sudden
+illness, and died a week later in his seventieth year. It was hardly to
+be expected that one who had spent himself so freely, amid such stirring
+events, should live beyond the Psalmist's span of life.
+
+He had started at the bottom of the official ladder; by his own efforts
+he had won his way to the top; and his career will always be a notable
+example to those young Englishmen who cross the sea to serve the Empire
+in our great Dependency with its 300 million inhabitants. How the
+relations between India and Great Britain will develop--how long the
+connexion will last may be debated by politicians and authors; it is in
+careers like that of John Lawrence (and there were many such in the
+nineteenth century) that the noblest fruit of the connexion may be
+seen.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN BRIGHT
+
+1811-89
+
+
+1811. Born at Greenbank, Rochdale, November 16.
+1827. Leaves school. Enters his father's mill.
+1839. Marries Elizabeth Priestman (died 1841).
+1841. Joins Cobden in constitutional agitation for Repeal of Corn Laws.
+1843. Enters Parliament as Member for Durham.
+1846. Corn Laws repealed.
+1847. Marries Margaret Leatham (died 1878).
+1847. Member for Manchester.
+1854-5. Opposes Crimean War.
+1856-7. Long illness.
+1857. Unseated for Manchester. Member for Birmingham.
+1861. Supports the North in American Civil War.
+1868. President of Board of Trade in Gladstone's first Government.
+1870. Second long illness.
+1880. Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster in Gladstone's second Government.
+1882. Resigns office over bombardment of Alexandria.
+1886. Opposes Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill.
+1889. Dies at Rochdale, March 29.
+
+JOHN BRIGHT
+
+TRIBUNE
+
+
+The word 'tribune' comes to us from the early days of the Roman
+Republic; and even in Rome the tribunate was unlike all other
+magistracies. The holder had no outward signs of office, no satellites
+to execute his commands, no definite department to administer like the
+consul or the praetor. It was his first function to protest on behalf of
+the poorer citizens against the violent exercise of authority, and, on
+certain occasions, to thwart the action of other magistrates. He was to
+be the champion of the weak and helpless against the privileged orders;
+and his power depended on his courage, his eloquence, and the
+prestige of his office. England has no office of the sort in her
+constitutional armoury; but the word 'tribune' expresses, better than
+any other title, the position occupied in our political life by many of
+the men who have been the conspicuous champions of liberty, and few
+would contest the claim of John Bright to a foremost place among them.
+He, too, stood forth to vindicate the rights of the _plebs_; he, too,
+resisted the will of governments; and in no common measure did he give
+evidence, through forty years of public life, of the possession of the
+highest eloquence and the highest courage.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN BRIGHT
+
+From the painting by W. W. Ouless in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+His early life gave little promise of a great career. He was born in
+1811, the son of Jacob Bright, of Rochdale, who had risen by his own
+efforts to the ownership of a small cotton-mill in Lancashire, a man of
+simple benevolence and genuine piety, and a member of the Society of
+Friends--a society more familiar to us under the name of Quakers, though
+this name is not employed by them in speaking of themselves.
+
+The boy left home early, and between the ages of eight and fifteen he
+was successively a pupil at five Quaker schools in the north of England.
+Here he enjoyed little comfort, and none of the aristocratic seclusion
+in which most statesmen have been reared at Eton and Harrow. He rubbed
+shoulders with boys of various degrees of rank and wealth, and learnt to
+be simple, true, and serious-minded; but he was in no way remarkable at
+this age. We hear little of his recreations, and still less of his
+reading; the school which pleased him most and did him most good was the
+one which he attended last, lying among the moors on the borders of
+Lancashire and Yorkshire. In the river Hodder he learnt to swim; still
+more he learnt to fish, and it was fishing which remained his favourite
+outdoor pastime throughout his life.
+
+When school-days were over--at the age of fifteen--there was no question
+of the University: a rigorous life awaited him and he began at once to
+work in his father's business. The mill stood close beside his father's
+house at Greenbank near Rochdale, some ten miles northward from
+Manchester, and had been built in 1809 by Jacob Bright, out of a capital
+lent to him by two members of the Society of Friends. Here he received
+bales of new cotton by canal or from carriers, span it in his mill, and
+gave out the warp and weft thus manufactured to handloom weavers, whom
+he paid by the piece to weave it in the weaving chamber at the top of
+their own houses. He then sold the fully manufactured article in
+Manchester or elsewhere. In such surroundings, many a clever boy has
+developed into a hard-headed prosperous business man; material interests
+have cased in his soul, and he has been content to limit his thoughts to
+buying and selling, to the affairs of his factory and his town, and he
+has heard no call to other fields of work. But John Bright's education
+in books and in life was only just beginning, and though it may be
+regrettable that he missed the leisured freedom of university life, we
+must own that he really made good the loss by his own effort (and that
+without neglecting the work of the mill), and thereby did much to
+strengthen the independence of his character.
+
+In the mill he was the earliest riser, and often spent hours before
+breakfast at his books. History and poetry were his favourite reading,
+and periodicals dealing with social and political questions; his taste
+was severe and had the happiest effect in chastening his oratorical
+style. To him, as to the earnest Puritans of the seventeenth century,
+the Bible and Milton were a peculiar joy; no other stories were so
+moving, no other music so thrilling to the ear. In his family there was
+no want of good talk. His mother, who died in 1830, was a woman of great
+gifts, who helped largely in developing the minds of her children.
+After her death John continued to live with his sisters, who were clever
+and original in mind, becoming the leader in the home circle, where
+views were freely exchanged on the questions of the day.
+
+The Society of Friends was adverse to political discussion, as
+interfering with the religious life. But the Brights could not be kept
+from such a field of interest; and during these years theirs, like many
+other quiet homes, was stirred by the excitement roused by the fortunes
+of the Reform Bill.
+
+The mill, too, did much to educate him. In the Rochdale factory there
+was no marked separation as at Manchester between rich and poor. Master
+and men lived side by side, knew one another's family history and
+fortunes, and fraternized over their joys and sorrows. Even in those
+days of backward education 'Old Jacob' made himself responsible for the
+schooling of his workmen's children; his son, too, made personal friends
+among those working under him and kept them throughout his life. Outside
+the mill Rochdale offered opportunities which he readily took. In 1833
+he became one of the founders and first president of a debating society,
+and he began early to address Bible meetings and to lecture on
+temperance in his native town, moved by no conscious idea of learning to
+speak in public, but by the simple desire to be useful in good work. In
+such holidays as he took he was eager to travel abroad and to learn more
+of the outside world, and before he started at the age of twenty-four on
+his longest travels (a nine months' journey to Palestine and the eastern
+Mediterranean) he had, by individual effort, fitted himself to hold his
+own with the best students of the universities in width of outlook and
+capacity for mastering a subject. Like them, he had his limitations and
+his prejudices; but however we may admire wide toleration in itself,
+depth and intensity of feeling are often of more value to a man in
+enabling him to influence his fellows.
+
+The year of Queen Victoria's accession may be counted a landmark in the
+life of this great Victorian. Then for the first time he met Richard
+Cobden, who was destined to extend his labours and to share his glory;
+and in the following year he began to co-operate actively in the Free
+Trade cause, attending meetings in the Rochdale district and gradually
+developing his power of speaking. It was about this time that he came to
+know his first wife, Elizabeth Priestman, of the Society of Friends, in
+Newcastle-on-Tyne, a woman of refined nature and rare gifts, whom he was
+to marry in 1839 and to lose in 1841. Then it was that he built the
+house 'One Ash', facing the same common as the house in which he was
+born. Here he lived many years, and here he died in the fullness of
+time, a Lancashire man, content to dwell among his own people, in his
+native town, and to forgo the grandeur of a country house. It was from
+here that he was called in the decisive hour of his life to take part in
+a national work with which his name will ever be associated. At the
+moment when Bright was prostrated with grief at his wife's death Cobden
+appeared on the scene and made his historic appeal. He urged his friend
+to put aside his private grief, to remember the miseries of so many
+other homes, miseries due directly to the Corn Laws, to put his shoulder
+to the wheel, and never to rest till they were repealed.
+
+Cobden had been less happy than Bright in his schooling. His father's
+misfortune led to his spending five years at a Yorkshire school of the
+worst type, and seven more as clerk in the warehouse of an unsympathetic
+uncle. Like Bright, he had early to take the lead in his own family;
+also, like Bright, he had to educate himself; but he had a far harder
+struggle, and the enterprise which he showed in commerce in early
+manhood would have left him the possessor of a vast fortune, had he not
+preferred to devote his energies to public causes. The two men were by
+nature well suited to complement one another. If Cobden was the more
+ingenious in explaining an argument, Bright was more forcible in
+asserting a principle. If Cobden could, above all other men, convince
+the intellects of his hearers, Bright could, as few other speakers,
+kindle their spirits for a fray. His figure on a platform was striking.
+His manly expressive face, with broad brow, straight nose, and square
+chin, was essentially English in type. Though in the course of his
+political career he discarded the distinctive Quaker dress, he never
+discarded the Quaker simplicity. His costume was plain, his style of
+speaking severe, his bearing dignified and restrained. Only when his
+indignation was kindled at injustice was he swept far away from the
+calmness of Quaker tradition.
+
+The Corn Laws were a sequel to the Napoleonic wars and to the insecurity
+of foreign trade which these caused. While war lasted it had inflated
+prices, and brought to English growers of corn a period of extraordinary
+prosperity. When peace came, to escape from a sudden fall in prices, the
+landed proprietors, who formed a majority of the House of Commons, had
+fixed by Act of Parliament the conditions under which corn might be
+imported from abroad. This measure was to perpetuate by law, in time of
+peace, the artificial conditions from which the people had unavoidably
+suffered by the accident of war. The legislators paid no heed to the
+growth of population, which was enormous, or to the distress of the
+working classes, who needed time to adjust themselves to the rapid
+changes in industry. Even the middle classes suffered, and the poor
+could only meet such trouble by 'clemming' or self-starvation. A noble
+duke, speaking in all good faith, advised them to 'try a pinch of curry
+powder in hot water', as making the pangs of hunger less intolerable.
+He met with little thanks for his advice from the sufferers, who
+demanded a radical cure. Parliament as a whole showed few signs of
+wishing to probe the question more deeply, and shut its eyes to the
+evidence of distress, whether shown in peaceful petitions or in
+disorderly riots. Many of the members were personally humane men and
+good landlords; but there were no powerful newspapers to enlighten them,
+and they knew little of the state of the manufacturing districts.
+
+The cause had now found its appropriate champions. We in this day are
+familiar with appeals to the great mass of the people: we know the story
+of Midlothian campaigns and Belfast reviews; we hear the distant thunder
+from Liverpool, Manchester, or Birmingham, when the great men of
+Parliament go down from London to thrill vast audiences in the
+provincial towns. But the agitation of the Anti-Corn-Law League was a
+new thing. It was initiated by men unknown outside the Manchester
+district; few of the thousands to whom it was directed possessed the
+vote; and yet it wrought one of the greatest changes of the nineteenth
+century, a change of which the influence is perhaps not yet spent. In
+this campaign, Cobden and Bright were, without doubt, the leading
+spirits.
+
+The movement filled five years of Bright's life. His hopes and fears
+might alternate--at one moment he was stirred to exultation over
+success, at another to regrets at the break-up of his home life, at
+another to bitter complaints and hatred of the landed interest--but his
+exertions never relaxed. As he was so often absent, the business at
+Rochdale had to be entrusted to his brother. Whenever he could be there,
+Bright was at his home with his little motherless daughter; but his
+efforts on the platform were more and more appreciated each year, and
+the campaign made heavy demands upon him.
+
+At the opening of the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, on the site of the
+'Peterloo' riots, he won a signal triumph. The vast audience was
+enthusiastic: several of them also were discriminating in their praise.
+One lady said that the chief charm of Mr. Bright was in the simplicity
+of his manner, the total absence of anything like showing off; another
+that she should never attend another meeting if he were announced to
+speak, as she could not bear the excitement. Simplicity and profound
+emotion were the secrets of his influence. The London Opera House saw
+similar scenes once a month, from 1843 till the end of the struggle.
+Villages and towns, and all classes of society, were instructed in the
+principles of the League and induced to help forward the cause. Not only
+did the wealthy factory owner, conscious as he was of the loss which the
+high price of food inflicted on the manufacturing interest, contribute
+his thousands; the factory hand too contributed his mite to further the
+welfare of his class. Even farmers were led to take a new view of the
+needs of agriculture, and the country labourer was made to see that his
+advantage lay in the success of the League. It was a farm-hand who put
+the matter in a nutshell at one of the meetings: 'I be protected,' he
+said, 'and I be starving.'
+
+In 1843 Bright joined his leader in Parliament as member for Durham
+city, though his Quaker relatives disapproved of the idea that one of
+their society should so far enter the world and take part in its
+conflicts. In the House of Commons he met with scant popularity but with
+general respect. He was no mob orator of the conventional type. The
+simplicity and good taste of his speeches satisfied the best judges. He
+expressed sentiments hateful to his hearers in such a way that they
+might dislike the speech, but could not despise the speaker. Even when
+he boldly attacked the Game Laws in an assembly of landowners, the House
+listened to him respectfully, and the spokesman of the Government
+thanked him for the tone and temper of his speech, admitting that he had
+made out a strong case. But it was in the country and on the platform
+that the chief efforts of Cobden and Bright were made, and their chief
+successes won.
+
+In 1845 they had an unexpected but most influential ally. Nature herself
+took a hand in the game. From 1842 to 1844 the bad effects of the Corn
+Laws were mitigated by good harvests and by the wise measures of Peel in
+freeing trade from various restrictions. But in 1845 first the corn, and
+then the potato crop, failed calamitously. Peel's conscience had been
+uneasy for years: he had been studying economics, and his conclusions
+did not square with the orthodox Tory creed. So when the Whig leader,
+Lord John Russell, ventured to express himself openly for Free Trade in
+his famous Edinburgh letter of November 28, Peel at last saw some chance
+of converting his party. It has already been told in this book how at
+length he succeeded in his aims, how he broke up his party but saved the
+country, and how in the hour of mingled triumph and defeat he generously
+gave to Cobden the chief credit for success. Whigs and Tories might
+taunt one another with desertion of principles, or might claim that
+their respective leaders collaborated at the end; certainly the question
+would never have been put before the Cabinet or the House of Commons as
+a Government measure but for the untiring efforts of the two Tribunes.
+History can show few greater triumphs of Government by moral suasion and
+the art of speech. Throughout, violence had been eschewed, even though
+men were starving, and appeals had been made solely to the justice and
+expediency of their case. Nothing illustrates better the sincerity and
+disinterestedness of John Bright than his conduct in these last decisive
+months. The tide was flowing with him; the opposition was reduced to a
+shadow. He might have enjoyed the luxury of applause from Radicals,
+Whigs, and the more advanced Tories, and won easy victories over a
+hostile minority. But the cause was now in the safe hands of Peel, whose
+honesty they respected and whose generalship they trusted; so Cobden and
+Bright were content to stand aside and watch. Instead of carping at his
+tardy conversion, Bright wrote in generous praise of Peel's speech: 'I
+never listened', he said, 'to any human being speaking in public with so
+much delight.' His heart was in the cause and not in his own
+advancement. When he did rise to speak, it was to vindicate Peel's
+honour and his statesmanship.
+
+A few months later this honourable alliance came to an abrupt end.
+Bright was forced, by the same incorruptible sense of right and by the
+absence of all respect of persons, to oppose Peel in the crisis of his
+fate. The Government brought in an Irish Coercion Bill, which was
+naturally opposed by the Whigs. The Protectionist Tories saw their
+chance of taking revenge on Peel for repealing the Corn Laws and made
+common cause with their enemies; and from very different motives, Bright
+went into the same lobby. His conscience forbade him to support any
+coercive measure. No Prime Minister could please him as much as Peel;
+but no surrender, no mere evasion of responsibilities was possible in
+the case of a measure of which he disapproved. So firm was the bed-rock
+of principle on which Bright's political conduct was based; and it was
+to this uncompromising sincerity above all that he owed the triumphs of
+his oratory.
+
+His method as an orator is full of interest.[20] In his youth he had
+begun by writing out and learning his speeches in full; but, before he
+quitted Rochdale for a wider theatre, he had discarded this rather
+mechanical method, and trusted more freely to his growing powers. He
+still made careful preparation for his speeches. He tells us how he
+often composed them in bed, as Carlyle's 'rugged Brindley' wrestled in
+bed with the difficulties of his canal-schemes, the silence and the dim
+light favouring the birth of ideas. He prepared words as well as ideas;
+but he only committed to memory enough to be a guide to him in marking
+the order and development of his thoughts, and filled up the original
+outline according to the inspiration of the moment. A few sentences,
+where the balance of words was carefully studied; a few figures of
+speech, where his imagination had taken flight into the realm of poetry;
+a few notable illustrations from history or contemporary politics, with
+details of names and figures,--these would be found among the notes
+which he wrote on detached slips of paper and dropped successively into
+his hat as each milestone was attained. As compared with his illustrious
+rival Gladstone, he was very sparing of gesture, depending partly on
+facial expression, still more on the modulations of his voice, to give
+life to the words which he uttered. His reading had formed his diction,
+his constant speaking had taught him readiness, and his study of great
+questions at close quarters and his meditation on them supplied him with
+the facts and the conclusions which he wished to put forward; but the
+fire which kindled this material to white heat was the passion for great
+principles which glowed in his heart. He himself in 1868, in returning
+thanks for the gift of the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh, quoted with
+obvious sincerity a sentence from his favourite Milton: 'True eloquence
+I find to be none but the serious and hearty love of Truth.'
+
+[Note 20: See G. M. Trevelyan, _Life of John Bright_, pp. 384-5.]
+
+Bright's public life was in the main a tale of devotion to two great
+causes, the Repeal of the Corn Laws, consummated in 1846, and the
+extension of the Franchise, which was not realized till twenty years
+later. But he found time to examine other questions and to utter shrewd
+opinions on the government of India and of Ireland, and to influence
+English sentiment on the Crimean War and the War of Secession in the
+United States. In advance of his time, he wished to develop
+cotton-growing in India and so to prevent the great industry of his own
+district being dependent on America alone. He attacked the existing
+board of directors and preferred immediate control by the Crown; and,
+while wishing to preserve the Viceroy's supremacy over the whole, he
+spoke in favour of admitting Indians to a larger share in the government
+of the various provinces. Many of the best judges of to-day are now
+working towards the same end, but at the time he met with little
+support. It is interesting to find that both on India and on Ireland
+similar views were put forward by men so different as John Bright and
+Benjamin Disraeli. Mr. Trevelyan has preserved the memory of several
+episodes in which they were connected with one another and of attempts
+which Disraeli made to win Bright's support and co-operation. Bright
+could cultivate friendships with politicians of very different schools
+without being induced to deviate by a hair's breadth from the cause
+which his principles dictated, and he could treat his friends, at times,
+with refreshing frankness. When Disraeli warmly admired one of his
+greatest speeches and expressed the wish that he himself could emulate
+it, the outspoken Quaker replied: 'Well, you might have made it, if you
+had been honest.'
+
+It was the young Disraeli who, as early as 1846, had attributed the
+Irish troubles to 'a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and
+an alien church'. It was Bright who never hesitated, when opportunity
+arose, to work for the Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland and for
+the security of Irish tenants in their holdings. A succession of
+measures, carried by Liberals and Conservatives from Gladstone to
+George Wyndham, have made us familiar with the idea of land purchase in
+Ireland; but Bright had been there as early as 1849 and had learnt for
+himself. Though at the end of his life he was a stubborn opponent of
+Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, he had long ago won the gratitude of Ireland
+as no other Englishman of his day, and his name has been preserved there
+in affectionate remembrance.
+
+In 1854, the year of the Crimean War, Bright reached the zenith of his
+oratorical power, and at the same time touched the nadir of his
+popularity. Public opinion was setting strongly against Russia. In
+stemming the tide of war the so-called 'Manchester school' had a
+difficult task, and was severely criticized. The idea of the 'balance of
+power' made little appeal to Bright; and as a Quaker he was reluctant to
+see England interfering in a quarrel which did not seem to concern her.
+The satirists indeed scoffed unfairly at the doctrine of 'Peace at any
+price'; for Bright was content to put aside the principle and to argue
+the case on pure political expediency. But his attacks on the wars of
+the last century were too often couched in an offensive tone with
+personal references to the peerages won in them, and he spoke at times
+too bitterly of the diplomatic profession and especially of our
+ambassador at Constantinople. Nothing shows so clearly the danger of the
+imperfect education which was forced on Bright by necessity, and which
+he had done so much to remedy, as his attitude to foreign and imperial
+politics. In his home he had too readily imbibed the crude notion that
+our Empire existed to provide careers for the needy cadets of
+aristocratic families, and that our foreign policy was inspired by
+self-seeking officials who cared little for moral principles or for the
+lives of their fellow countrymen. A few months spent with Lord Canning
+at Calcutta, or with the Lawrences at Lahore, frequent intercourse with
+men of the calibre of Lord Lyons or Lord Cromer, would have enlightened
+him on the subject and prevented him from uttering the unwarranted
+imputations which he did. Yet in his great parliamentary speeches of
+1854 he rose high above all pettiness and made a deep impression on a
+hostile house. Damaging though his speech of December 22 was to the
+Government, no minister attempted to reply. Palmerston, Russell, and
+Gladstone, with all their power, were unequal to the task. Disraeli told
+Bright that a few more such speeches 'would break up the Government';
+and Delane, the famous editor of _The Times_, wrote that 'Cobden and
+Bright would be our ministers but for their principle of peace at any
+price'.
+
+But Bright was not thinking of office or of breaking up Governments: he
+was thinking of the practical end in view. His next great speech was on
+February 23, 1855, when a faint hope of peace appeared. It was most
+conciliatory in tone, and was a solemn appeal to Palmerston to use his
+influence in ending the war. This was known as 'the Angel of Death'
+speech, from a famous passage which occurs in it. At the end he was
+'overloaded with compliments', but the minister, who was hampered by
+Russian intrigues with Napoleon, seemed deaf to all appeals, and Bright
+again returned to the attack. Till the last days of the war, he
+continued to raise his voice on behalf of peace; but his exertions had
+told on his strength, and for the greater part of two years he had to
+abandon public life and devote himself to recovering his health.
+
+Six years later he was to prove that 'peace at any price' was no fair
+description of his attitude. The Southern States of America seceded on
+the question of State rights and the institution of slavery, and the
+Federal Government declared war on them as rebels. This time it was not
+a war for the balance of power, but one fought to vindicate a moral
+principle, and Bright was strongly in favour of fighting it to a
+finish. For different reasons most of our countrymen favoured the South,
+but he appealed for British sympathy for the other side, on the ground
+that no true Briton could abet slavery. He was the most prominent
+supporter of the North, for long the only prominent one, but he
+gradually made converts and did much to wipe away the reproach which
+attached to the name of Englishmen in America, when the North triumphed
+in the end. The war ended in 1865 with the surrender of General Lee at
+Appomattox, and Bright wrote in his journal, 'This great triumph of the
+Republic is the event of our age'.
+
+But long before 1865 the question of Reform and of the extension of the
+franchise had been revived. Gladstone might speak in favour of the
+principle in 1864; Russell might introduce a Reform Bill in 1866; a year
+later Disraeli might 'dish the Whigs'; and Whig and Tory might wrangle
+over the question who were the friends of the 'working man', but Bright
+had made his position clear to his friends in 1846. He began a popular
+movement in 1849 and for the next fifteen years of his life it was the
+object dearest to his heart. He was not afraid to walk alone. When his
+old fellow worker, Cobden, refused his aid, on the ground that he was
+not convinced of the need for extending the franchise, Bright himself
+assumed the lead and bore the brunt of the battle. Till 1865 his main
+obstacle was Palmerston, who since he took the helm in the worst days of
+the Crimean War and conducted the ship of State into harbour, occupied
+an impregnable position. Palmerston was dear to 'the man in the street',
+shared his prejudices and understood his humours; and nothing could make
+him into a serious Democrat or reformer. Even after Palmerston's death,
+Bright's chief opponent was to be found in the Whig ranks, in Robert
+Lowe, who was a master of parliamentary eloquence and who managed, in
+1866, to wreck Lord John Russell's Reform Bill in the House. But Bright
+had his revenge in the country. Such meetings as ensued in the great
+provincial towns had not been seen for twenty years: the middle class
+and the artisans were fused as in the great Repeal struggle of 1846. At
+Glasgow as many as 150,000 men paraded outside the town, and no hall
+could contain the thousands who wished to hear the great Tribune. He
+claimed that eighty-four per cent. of his countrymen were still excluded
+from the vote, and he bluntly asserted that the existing House of
+Commons did not represent 'the intelligence and the justice of the
+nation, but the prejudices, the privileges, and the selfishness, of a
+class'.
+
+But however blind many of this class might still be to the signs of the
+times, they found an astute leader in Disraeli, who had few principles
+and could trim his sails to any wind. The Tory Reform Bill, which he put
+forward in February 1867, came out a very different Bill in July, after
+discussion in the Cabinet, which led to the resignation of three
+ministers, and after debates in the House of Commons, where it was
+roughly handled. The principle of household suffrage was conceded, and
+another million voters were added to the electorate. Disraeli had made a
+greater change of front than any which he could attribute to Peel, and
+that without conviction, for reasons of party expediency. The real
+triumph belonged to Bright. 'The Bill adopted', he writes, 'is the
+precise franchise I recommended in 1858.' He had not only roused the
+country by his platform speeches, he had carefully watched the Bill in
+all its stages through the House, and gradually transformed it till it
+satisfied the aspirations of the people. He had been content to work
+with Disraeli so long as he could further the cause of Reform; and he
+only quarrelled with that statesman finally when, in 1878, he revived
+the anti-Russian policy of Palmerston.
+
+During this strenuous time his domestic life was happy and tranquil.
+After the death of his first wife he had remained a widower for six
+years, and in 1847 he had married Margaret Leatham, who bore him seven
+children and shared his joys and sorrows in no ordinary measure for
+thirty years. Whenever politics took him away from his Rochdale home, he
+wrote constantly to her, and his letters throw most valuable light on
+his inmost feelings. She died in 1878, and after this his life was
+pitched in a different key. The outer world might suppose that high
+political office was crowning his career, but his enthusiasm and his
+power were ebbing and his physical health failed him more than once. He
+was as affectionate to his children, as friendly to his neighbours, as
+true to his principles; but the old fire was gone.
+
+The outward events of his life from 1867 to 1889 must be passed over
+lightly. Against his own wishes he was persuaded by Gladstone to join
+the Cabinet in 1868 and again in 1880. His name was a tower of strength
+to the Government with the newly-enfranchised electors, but he himself
+had little taste for the routine of office. At Birmingham, for which he
+had sat since 1857, he compared himself to the Shunammite woman who
+refused the offer of advancement at court, and replied to the prophet,
+'I dwell among mine own people'. But events were too strong for him: he
+was drawn first to Westminster to share in the government of the
+country, and then to Osborne to visit the Queen. Both the Queen and he
+were nervous at the prospect, but the interview passed off happily.[21]
+Family affections and sorrows were a bond between them, and he talked to
+her with his usual frankness and simplicity. Even the difficult question
+of costume was settled by a compromise, and the usual gold-braided
+livery was replaced by a sober suit of black. Ministerial work in
+London might have proved irksome to him; but his colleagues in the
+Cabinet were indulgent, and no excessive demands were made upon his
+strength. It was recognized that Bright was no longer in the fighting
+line. In 1870 he was incapacitated by a second long illness, and he had
+little share in the measures carried through Parliament for Irish land
+purchase and national education.
+
+[Note 21: See Fitzmaurice, _Life of Lord Granville_, vol. i, p.
+540.]
+
+His official career was finally closed in 1882, when the bombardment of
+Alexandria seemed to open a new and aggressive chapter in our Eastern
+policy. Bright was true to his old principles and resigned office.
+
+He severed himself still more from the official Liberals in 1886, when
+he refused to follow Gladstone into the Home Rule camp. He disliked the
+methods of Parnell, the obstruction in Parliament, and the campaign of
+lawlessness in Ireland. His own victories had not been won so, and he
+had a great respect for the traditions of the House. He also believed
+that the Home Rule Bill would vitally weaken the unity of the realm. But
+no personal bitterness entered into his relations with his old
+colleagues: he did not attack Gladstone, as he had attacked Palmerston
+in 1855. From his death-bed he sent a cordial message to his old chief,
+and received an answer full of high courtesy and affection.
+
+His illness lasted several months. From the autumn of 1888 he lay at One
+Ash, weak but not suffering acutely; and on March 27, 1889, he quietly
+passed away. His old friend Cobden had preceded him more than twenty
+years, having died in 1865, and had been buried at his birthplace in
+Sussex, where he had made himself a peaceful home in later life. Bright
+proved himself equally faithful to the home of his earliest years. He
+was laid to rest in the small burying-ground in front of the Friends'
+meeting-house where he had worshipped as a child. In his long career he
+had served noble causes, and scaled the heights of fame, and the crowds
+at his funeral testified to the love which his neighbours bore him. He
+had never willingly been absent for long from his native town. His life,
+compared with that of Disraeli or Gladstone, seems almost bleak in its
+simplicity, varied as it was by so few excursions into other fields. But
+two strong passions enriched it with warmth and glow, his family
+affections and his zeal for the common good. These filled his heart, and
+he was content that it should be so.
+
+    Type of the wise who soar but never roam,
+    True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home.
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS
+
+From the painting by Daniel Maclise in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES DICKENS
+
+1812-1870
+
+1812. Born at Landport, Portsmouth, February 7.
+1816. Parents move to Chatham; 1821, to London.
+1822. Father bankrupt and in prison. Charles in blacking warehouse.
+1827. Charles enters lawyer's office.
+1831. Reporters' Gallery in Parliament.
+1836. Marries Catherine Hogarth. Publishes _Sketches by Boz_.
+1837. _Pickwick Papers._ 1838. _Nicholas Nickleby._
+1842. First American journey. 1843. _Martin Chuzzlewit._
+1844-5. Eleven months' residence in Italy, chiefly at Genoa.
+1846. Editor of _Daily News_ for a few weeks.
+1846-7. Six months at Lausanne; three months at Paris. _Dombey and Son._
+1849-50. _David Copperfield._
+1850. Editor of weekly periodical, _Household Words_.
+1851-2. Manager of theatrical performances. 1852. _Bleak House._
+1853. Italian tour: Rome, Naples, and Venice.
+1856. Purchase of Gadshill House, near Rochester.
+1858. Beginning of public readings.
+1859. _Tale of Two Cities_ appears in _All the Year Round_.
+1860. Gadshill becomes his home instead of London.
+1867. Second American journey. Public readings in America.
+1869. April, collapse at Chester. Readings stopped.
+1870. Dies at Gadshill, June 9.
+
+CHARLES DICKENS
+
+NOVELIST AND SOCIAL REFORMER
+
+
+In these days when critics so often repeat the cry of 'art for art's
+sake' and denounce Ruskin for bringing moral canons into his judgements
+of pictures or buildings, it is dangerous to couple these two titles
+together, and to label Dickens as anything but a novelist pure and
+simple. And indeed, all would admit that the creator of Sam Weller and
+Sarah Gamp will live when the crusade against 'Bumbledom' and its
+abuses is forgotten and the need for such a crusade seems incredible.
+But when so many recent critics have done justice to his gifts as a
+creative artist, this aspect of his work runs no danger of being
+forgotten. Moreover, when we are considering Dickens as a Victorian
+worthy and as a representative man of his age, it is desirable to bring
+out those qualities which he shared with so many of his great
+contemporaries. Above all, we must remember that Dickens himself would
+be the last man to be ashamed of having written 'with a purpose', or to
+think that the fact should be concealed as a blemish in his art. There
+was nothing in which he felt more genuine pride than in the thought that
+his talents thus employed had brought public opinion to realize the need
+for many practical reforms in our social condition. If these old abuses
+have mostly passed away, we may be thankful indeed; but we cannot feel
+sure that in the future fresh abuses will not arise with which the
+example of Dickens may inspire others to wage war. His was a strenuous
+life; he never spared himself nor stinted his efforts in any cause for
+which he was fighting; and if he did not win complete victory in his
+lifetime, he created the spirit in which victory was to be won.
+
+Charles Dickens was born in 1812, the second child of a large family,
+his father being at the time a Navy clerk employed at Portsmouth. Of his
+birthplace in Commercial Road Portsmouth is justifiably proud; but we
+must think of him rather as a Kentishman and a Londoner, since he never
+lived in Hampshire after his fourth year. The earliest years which left
+a distinct impress on his mind were those passed at Chatham, to which
+his father moved in 1816. This town and its neighbouring cathedral city
+of Rochester, with their narrow old streets, their riverside and
+dockyard, took firm hold of his memory and imagination. To-day no places
+speak more intimately of him to the readers of his books. Here he passed
+five years of happy childhood till his father's work took the family to
+London and his father's improvidence plunged them into misfortune.
+
+For those who know Wilkins Micawber it is needless to describe the
+failings of Mr. Dickens; for others we may be content to say that he was
+kindhearted, sanguine and improvident, quite incapable of the steady
+industry needed to support a growing family. When his debts overwhelmed
+him and he was carried off to the Marshalsea prison, Charles was only
+ten years old, but already he took the lead in the house. On him fell
+the duty of pacifying creditors at the door, and of making visits to the
+pawn-broker to meet the daily needs of the household. His initiation
+into life was a hard one and it began cruelly soon. If he was active and
+enterprising beyond his years, with his nervous high-strung temperament
+he was capable of suffering acutely; and this capacity was now to be
+sorely tried. For a year or more of his life this proud sensitive child
+had to spend long hours in the cellars of a warehouse, with rough
+uneducated companions, occupied in pasting labels on pots of
+boot-blacking. This situation was all that the influence of his family
+could procure for him; and into this he was thrust at the age of ten
+with no ray of hope, no expectation of release. His shiftless parents
+seemed to acquiesce in this drudgery as an opening for their cleverest
+son; and instead of their helping and comforting him in his sorrow, it
+was he who gave his Sundays to visiting them in prison and to offering
+them such consolation as he could. The iron burnt deep into his soul.
+Long after, in fact till the day when the district was rebuilt and
+changed out of knowledge, he owned that he could not bear to revisit the
+scene; so painful were his recollections, so vivid his sense of
+degradation. Twenty-five years later he narrated the facts to his friend
+and biographer John Forster in a private conversation; and he only
+recurred to the subject once more when under the disguise of a novel he
+told the story of the childhood of David Copperfield. By shifting the
+horror from the realm of fact to that of fiction, perhaps he lifted the
+weight of it from the secret recesses of his heart.
+
+When his father's debts were relieved, the child regained his freedom
+from servitude, but even then his schooling was desultory and
+ineffective. Well might the elder Dickens, in a burst of candour, say to
+a stranger who asked him about his son's education, 'Why indeed, sir,
+ha! ha! he may be said to have educated himself.'
+
+At the age of fifteen Charles embarked again on his career as a
+wage-earner. At first he was taken into a lawyer's office, where he
+filled a position somewhat between that of office-boy and clerk, and two
+years later he was qualifying himself by the study of shorthand for the
+profession of a parliamentary reporter, which his father was then
+following. He entered 'the Gallery' in 1831, first representing the
+_True Sun_ and later the well-known _Morning Chronicle_; and at
+intervals he enlarged his experiences by journeys into the provinces to
+report political meetings. Thus it was that he familiarized himself with
+the mail coaches, the wayside hostelries, and the rich variety of types
+that were to be found there; with London in most of its phases he was
+already at home. So, when in 1834 he made his first attempts at writing
+in periodical literature, although he was only twenty-two years old, he
+had a wealth of first-hand experiences quite outside the range of the
+man who is just finishing his leisurely passage through a public school
+and university: of schools and offices, of parliaments and prisons, of
+the street and of the high road, he had been a diligent and observant
+critic; for many years he had practised the maxim of Pope: 'The proper
+study of mankind is Man.'
+
+Friends sprang up wherever he went. His open face, his sparkling eye,
+his humorous tongue, his ready sympathy, were a passport to the
+goodwill of those whom he met; few could resist the appeal. Many readers
+will be familiar with the early portrait by Maclise; but his friends
+tell us how little that did justice to the lively play of feature, 'the
+spirited air and carriage' which were indescribable. On the top of a
+mail coach, on a fresh morning, they must have won the favour of his
+fellow travellers more easily than Alfred Jingle won the hearts of the
+Pickwickians. And beneath the radiant cheerfulness of his manner, the
+quick flash of observation and of speech, there was in him an element of
+hard persistence and determination which would carry him far. If the
+years of poverty and neglect had failed to chill his hopes and break his
+spirit, there was no fear that he would tire in the pursuit of his
+ambition when fortune began to smile upon him. He had touched life on
+many sides. He had kept his warmth of sympathy, his buoyancy, his
+capacity for rising superior to ill-fortune; and the years of adversity
+had only deepened his feeling for all that were oppressed. He had much
+to learn about the craft of letters; but he already had the first
+essential of an author--he had something to say.
+
+The year 1836 is a definite landmark in the life of Dickens. In this
+year he married; in this year he gave up the practice of parliamentary
+reporting, published the _Sketches by Boz_, and began the writing of
+_The Pickwick Papers_. This immortal work achieved wide popularity at
+once. Criticism cannot hope to do justice to the greatness of Sam
+Weller, to the humours of Dingley Dell and Eatanswill, to the adventures
+of the hero in back gardens or in prison, on coaches or in wheelbarrows.
+Every one must read them in the original for himself. In this book
+Dickens reached at once the height of his success in making his fellow
+countrymen laugh with him at their own foibles. If in the art of
+constructing a story, in the depiction of character, in deepening the
+interest by the alternation of happiness and misfortune, he was to go
+far beyond his initial triumph,--still with many Dickensians, who love
+him chiefly for his liveliness of observation and broad humour, Pickwick
+remains the prime favourite.
+
+The effect of this success on the fortunes of the author was immediate
+and lasting. Henceforth he could live in a comfortable house and look
+forward to a family life in which his children should be free from all
+risk of repeating his own experience. He could afford himself the
+pleasures and the society which he needed, and he became the centre of a
+circle of friends who appreciated his talents and encouraged him in his
+career. His relations with his publishers, though not without incident,
+were generally of the most cordial kind. If Dickens had the
+self-confidence to estimate his own powers highly, and the shrewd
+instinct to know when he was getting less than his fair share in a
+bargain, yet in a difference of opinion he was capable of seeing the
+other side, and he was loyal in the observance of all agreements.
+
+The five years which followed were so crowded with various activities
+that it is difficult to date the events exactly, especially when he was
+producing novels in monthly or weekly numbers. Generally he had more
+than one story on the stocks. Thus in 1837, before _Pickwick_ was
+finished, _Oliver Twist_ was begun, and it was not itself complete
+before the earlier numbers of _Nicholas Nickleby_ were appearing. In the
+same way _The Old Curiosity Shop_ and _Barnaby Rudge_, which may be
+dated 1840 and 1841, overlapped one another in the planning of the
+stories, if not in the execution of the weekly parts. There is no period
+of Dickens's life which enables us better to observe his intense mental
+activity, and at the same time the variety of his creations. Here we
+have the luxuriant humour of Mrs. Nickleby and the Crummles family side
+by side with the tragedy of Bill Sikes and the pathos of Little Nell.
+Here also we can see the gradual development of constructive power in
+the handling of the story. But for our purpose it is more significant to
+notice that we here find Dickens's pen enlisted in the service of the
+noblest cause for which he fought, the redemption from misery and
+slavery of the children of his native land. Lord Shaftesbury's life has
+told us what their sufferings were and how the machinery of Government
+was slowly forced to do its part; and Dickens would be the last to
+detract from the fame of that great philanthropist, whose efforts on
+many occasions he supported and praised. But there were wide circles
+which no philanthropist could reach, hearts which no arguments or
+statistics could rouse; men and women who attended no meetings and read
+no pamphlets but who eagerly devoured anything that was written by the
+author of _The Pickwick Papers_. To them Smike and Little Nell made a
+personal and irresistible appeal; they could not remain insensible to
+the cruelty of Dotheboys Hall and to the depravity of Fagin's school;
+and if these books did not themselves recruit active workers to improve
+the conditions of child life, at least society became permeated with a
+temper which was favourable to the efforts of the reformers.
+
+As far back as the days of his childhood at Rochester Dickens had been
+indignant at what he had casually heard of the Yorkshire schools; and
+his year of drudgery in London had made him realize, in other cases
+beside his own, the degradation that followed from the neglect of
+children. On undertaking to handle this subject in _Nicholas Nickleby_,
+he journeyed to Yorkshire to gather evidence at first hand for his
+picture of Dotheboys Hall. And for many years afterwards he continued to
+correspond with active workers on the subject of Ragged Schools and on
+the means of uplifting children out of the conditions which were so
+fruitful a source of crime. He discovered for himself how easily
+miscreants like Fagin could find recruits in the slums of London, and
+how impossible it was to bring up aright boys who were bred in these
+neglected homes. Even where efforts had been begun, the machinery was
+quite inadequate, the teachers few, the schoolrooms cheerless and
+ill-equipped. Mr. Crotch[22] has preserved a letter of 1843 in which
+Dickens makes the practical offer of providing funds for a washing-place
+in one school where the children seemed to be suffering from inattention
+to the elementary needs. His heart warmed towards individual cases and
+he faced them in practical fashion; he was not one of those reformers
+who utter benevolent sentiments on the platform and go no further.
+
+[Note 22: _Charles Dickens, Social Reformer_, by W. W. Crotch
+(Chapman & Hall, 1913), p. 53.]
+
+Critics have had much to say about Dickens's treatment of child
+characters in his novels; the words 'sentimental' and 'mawkish' have
+been hurled at scenes like the death of Paul Dombey and Little Nell and
+at the more lurid episodes in _Oliver Twist_. But Dickens was a pioneer
+in his treatment of children in fiction; and if he did smite resounding
+blows which jar upon critical ears, at least he opened a rich vein of
+literature where many have followed him. He wrote not for the critics
+but for the great popular audience whom he had created, comprising all
+ages and classes, and world-wide in extent. The best answer to such
+criticism is to be found in the poem which Bret Harte dedicated to his
+memory in 1870, which beautifully describes how the pathos of his
+child-heroine could move the hearts of rough working men far away in the
+Sierras of the West. Nor did this same character of Little Nell fail to
+win special praise from literary critics so fastidious as Landor and
+Francis Jeffrey.
+
+In 1842 he embarked on his first voyage to America. Till then he had
+travelled little outside his native land, and this expedition was
+definitely intended to bear fruit. Before starting he made a bargain
+with his publishers to produce a book on his return. The _American
+Notes_ thus published, dealing largely with institutions and with the
+notable 'sights' of the country, have not retained a prominent place
+among his works; with _Martin Chuzzlewit_ and its picture of American
+manners it is different. This stands alone among his writings in having
+left a permanent heritage of ill-will. Reasons in abundance can be found
+for the bitterness caused. He portrayed the conceit, the self-interest,
+the disregard for the feelings of others which the less-educated
+American showed to foreigners in a visible and often offensive guise;
+and the portraits were so life-like that no arrow fails to hit the mark.
+The American people were young; they had made great strides in material
+prosperity, they had not been taught to submit to the lash by satirists
+like Swift or more kindly mentors like Addison. Their own Oliver Wendell
+Holmes had not yet begun to chastise them with gentle irony. So they
+were aghast at Dickens's audacity, and indignant at what seemed an
+outrage on their hospitality, and few stopped to ask what elements of
+truth were to be found in the offending book. No doubt it was one-sided
+and unfair; Dickens, like most tourists, had been confronted by the
+louder and more aggressive members of the community and had not time to
+judge the whole. In large measure he recanted in subsequent writings;
+and on his second visit the more generous Americans showed how little
+rancour they bore. But the portraits of Jefferson Brick and Elijah
+Pogram will live; with Pecksniff, 'Sairey' Gamp, and other immortals
+they bear the hall-mark of Dickens's creative genius.
+
+To America he did not go again for twenty-five years; but, as he grew
+older, he seemed to feel increasing need for change and variety in his
+mode of life. In 1844 he went for nearly twelve months to Italy, making
+his head-quarters at Genoa; and in 1846 he repeated the experiment at
+Lausanne on the lake of Geneva. Later, between 1853 and 1856, he spent a
+large part of three summers in a villa near Boulogne. Though he desired
+the change for reasons connected with his work, and though in each case
+he formed friendly connexions with his neighbours, it cannot be said
+that his books show the influence of either country. His genius was
+British to the core and he remained an Englishman wherever he went. He
+complained when abroad that he missed the stimulus of London, where the
+lighted streets, through which he walked at night, caused his
+imagination to work with intensified force. But even in Genoa he proved
+capable of writing _The Chimes_, which is as markedly English in temper
+as anything which he wrote.
+
+The same spirit of restlessness comes out in his ventures into other
+fields of activity at home. At one time he assumed the editorship of a
+London newspaper; but a few weeks showed that he was incapable of
+editorial drudgery and he resigned. His taste for acting played a larger
+part in his life; and in 1851 and other years he put an enormous amount
+of energy into organizing public theatrical performances with his
+friends in London. He always loved the theatre. Macready was one of his
+innermost circle, and he had other friends on the stage. Indeed there
+were moments in his life when it seemed that the genius of the novelist
+might be lost to the world, which would have found but a sorry
+equivalent in one more actor of talent on the stage, however brilliant
+that talent was. But the main current of his life went on in London with
+diligent application to the book or books in hand; or at Broadstairs,
+where Dickens made holiday in true English fashion with his children by
+the sea.
+
+In the years following the American voyage the chief landmarks were the
+production of _Dombey and Son_ (begun in 1846) and _David Copperfield_
+(begun in 1849). From many points of view they may be regarded as his
+masterpieces, where his art is best seen in depicting character and
+constructing a story, though the infectious gaiety of the earlier novels
+may at times be missed. Dickens's insight into human nature had ripened,
+and he had learnt to group his lesser figures and episodes more
+skilfully round the central plot. And _David Copperfield_ has the
+peculiar interest which attaches to those works where we seem to read
+the story of the author's own life. Evidently we have memories here of
+his childhood, of his school-days and his apprenticeship to work, and of
+the first gleams of success which met him in life. It is generally
+assumed that the book throws light on his own family relations; but it
+would be rash to argue confidently about this, as the inventive impulse
+was so strong in him. At least we may say that it is the book most
+necessary for a student who wishes to understand Dickens himself and his
+outlook on the world.
+
+Also _David Copperfield_ may be regarded as the central point and the
+culmination of Dickens's career as a novelist. Before it, and again
+after it, he had a spell of about fifteen years' steady work at novel
+writing, and no one would question that the first spell was productive
+of the better work. _Bleak House_, _Hard Times_, _Little Dorrit_, _Our
+Mutual Friend_ all show evidence of greater effort and are less happy in
+their effect. No man could live the life that Dickens had lived for
+fifteen years and not show some signs of exhaustion; the wonder is that
+his creative power continued at all. He was capable of brilliant
+successes yet. _The Tale of Two Cities_ is among the most thrilling of
+his stories, while _Edwin Drood_ and parts of _Great Expectations_ show
+as fine imagination and character drawing as anything which he wrote
+before 1850; but there is no injustice in drawing a broad distinction
+between the two parts of his career.
+
+His home during the most fertile period of his activity was in
+Devonshire Terrace, near Regent's Park, a house with a garden of
+considerable size. Here he was within reach of his best friends, who
+were drawn from all the liberal professions represented in London. First
+among them stands John Forster, lawyer, journalist, and author, his
+adviser and subsequently his biographer, the friend of Robert Browning,
+a man with a genius for friendship, unselfish, loyal, discreet and wise
+in counsel. Next came the artists Maclise and Clarkson Stanfield, the
+actor Macready, Talfourd, lawyer and poet, Douglas Jerrold and Mark
+Lemon, the two famous contributors to _Punch_, and some fellow
+novelists, of whom Harrison Ainsworth was conspicuous in the earlier
+group and Wilkie Collins in later years. Less frequent visitors were
+Carlyle, Thackeray, and Bulwer Lytton, but they too were proud to
+welcome Dickens among their friends. With some of these he would walk,
+ride, or dine, go to the theatre or travel in the provinces and in
+foreign countries. His biographer loves to recall the Dickens Dinners,
+organized to celebrate the issue of a new book, when songs and speeches
+were added to good cheer and when 'we all in the greatest good-humour
+glorified each other'. Dickens always retained the English taste for a
+good dinner and was frankly fond of applause, and there was no element
+of exclusive priggishness about the cordial admiration which these
+friends felt for one another and their peculiar enthusiasm for Dickens
+and his books. Around him the enthusiasm gathered, and few men have
+better deserved it.
+
+When he was writing he needed quiet and worked with complete
+concentration; and when he had earned some leisure he loved to spend it
+in violent physical exercise. He would suddenly call on Forster to come
+out for a long ride on horseback to occupy the middle of the day; and
+his diligent friend, unable to resist the lure of such company, would
+throw his own work to the winds and come. Till near the end of his life
+Dickens clung to these habits, thinking nothing of a walk of from twenty
+to thirty miles; and there seems reason to believe that by constant
+over-exertion he sapped his strength and shortened his life. But
+lameness in one foot, the result of an illness early in 1865,
+handicapped him severely at times; and in the same year he sustained a
+rude shock in a railway accident where his nerves were upset by what he
+witnessed in helping the injured. He ought to have acquired the wisdom
+of the middle-aged man, and to have taken things more easily, but with
+him it was impossible to be doing nothing; physical and mental activity
+succeeded one another and often went together with a high state of
+nervous tension.
+
+This love of excitement sometimes took forms which modern taste would
+call excessive and unwholesome. His attendance at the public execution
+of the Mannings in 1849, his going so often to the Morgue in Paris, his
+visit to America to 'the exact site where Professor Webster did that
+amazing murder', may seem legitimate for one who had to study crime
+among the other departments of life; but at times he revels in gruesome
+details in a way which jars on our feeling, and betrays too theatrical a
+love of sensation. However, no one could say that Dickens is generally
+morbid, in view of the sound and hearty appreciation which he had for
+all that is wholesome and genial in life.
+
+In many ways the latter part of his life shows a less even tenor, a less
+steady development. Though he was so domestic in his tastes and devoted
+to his children, his relations with his wife became more and more
+difficult owing to incompatibility of temperament; and from 1858 they
+found it desirable to live apart. This no doubt added to his
+restlessness and the craving for excitement, which showed itself in the
+ardour with which he took up the idea of public readings. These readings
+are only less famous than his writings, so prodigious was their success.
+His great dramatic gifts, enlisted in the service of his own creations,
+made an irresistible appeal to the public, and till the day of his
+collapse, ten years later, their popularity showed no sign of waning.
+The amount of money which he earned thereby was amazing; the American
+tour alone gave him a net profit of Ł20,000; and he expected to make as
+much more in two seasons in England. But he paid dearly for these
+triumphs, being often in trouble with his voice, suffering from fits of
+sleeplessness, aggravating the pain in his foot, and affecting his
+heart. In spite, then, of the success of the readings, his faithful
+friends like Forster would gladly have seen him abandon a practice which
+could add little to his future fame, while it threatened to shorten his
+life. But, however arduous the task which he set himself, when the
+moment came Dickens could brace himself to meet the demands and satisfy
+the high expectations of his audience. His nerves seemed to harden, his
+voice to gain strength; his spirit flashed out undimmed, and he won
+triumph after triumph, in quiet cathedral cities, in great industrial
+towns, in the more fatiguing climate of America and before the huge
+audiences of Philadelphia and New York. He began his programme with a
+few chosen pieces from _Pickwick_ and the Christmas Books, and with
+selected characters like Paul Dombey and Mrs. Gamp; he added Dotheboys
+Hall and the story of David Copperfield in brief; in his last series,
+against the advice of Forster, he worked up the more sensational
+passages from _Oliver Twist_. His object, he says, was 'to leave behind
+me the recollection of something very passionate and dramatic, done with
+simple means, if the act would justify the theme'. It was because the
+art of reading was unduly strained that Forster protested, and his
+judgement is confirmed by Dickens's boast (perhaps humorously
+exaggerated) that 'at Clifton we had a contagion of fainting, and yet
+the place was not hot--a dozen to twenty ladies taken out stiff and
+rigid at various times'. The physical effects of this fresh strain soon
+appeared. After a month his doctor ordered him to cease reading; and,
+though he resumed it after a few days' rest, in April 1869 he had a
+worse attack of giddiness and was obliged to abandon it permanently. The
+history of these readings illustrates the character of Dickens perhaps
+better than any other episode in his later life.
+
+But the same restless energy is visible even in his life at Gadshill,
+which was his home from 1860 to 1870. The house lies on the London road
+a few miles west of Rochester, and can easily be seen to-day, almost
+unaltered, by the passer-by. It had caught his fancy in his childhood
+before the age of ten when he was walking with his father, and his
+father had promised that, if he would only work hard enough, he might
+one day live in it. The associations of the place with the Falstaff
+scenes in _Henry IV_ had also endeared it to him; and so, when in 1855
+he heard that it was for sale, he jumped at the opportunity. For some
+years after purchasing it he let it to tenants, but from 1860 he made it
+his permanent abode. It has no architectural features to charm the eye;
+with its many changes and additions made for comfort, its bow-windows
+and the plantations in the garden, it is a typical Victorian home. Here
+Dickens could live at ease, surrounded by his children, his dogs, his
+books, his souvenirs of his friends, and the Kentish scenery which he
+loved. To the north lay the flat marshlands of the lower Thames, to the
+south and west lay rolling hills crowned with woodlands, with hop
+gardens on the lower slopes; to the east lay the valley of the Medway
+with the quaint old streets of Rochester and the bustling dockyard of
+Chatham. All that makes the familiar beauty and richness of English
+landscape was here, above all the charm of associations. So many names
+preserved memories of his books. To Rochester the Pickwickians had
+driven on their first search for knowledge; to Cobham Mr. Winkle had
+fled, and at the 'Leather Bottle' his friends had found him; in the
+marshlands Joe Gargery and Pip had watched for the escaped convict; in
+the old gateway by the cathedral Jasper had entertained Edwin Drood on
+the eve of his disappearance; along that very high-road over which
+Dickens's windows looked the child David Copperfield had tramped in his
+journey from London to Dover.
+
+Meanwhile, though his creative vein may have been less fertile than of
+old, his efforts for the good of his fellow men were no less continuous
+and sincere. His first books had aimed at killing by ridicule certain
+social institutions which had sunk into abuses. The pictures of
+parliamentary elections, of schools, of workhouses, had not only created
+a hearty laugh, but they had disposed the public to listen to the
+reformers and to realize the need for reform. As he grew older he went
+deeper into the evil, and he also blended his reforming purpose better
+with his story. The characters of Mr. Dombey and the Chuzzlewits are not
+mere incidents in the tale, nor are they monstrosities which call forth
+immediate astonishment and horror. But in each case the ingrained
+selfishness which spreads misery through a family is the very mainspring
+of the story; and the dramatic power by which Dickens makes it reveal
+itself in action has something Shakespearian in it. Here there is still
+a balance between the different elements, the human interest and the
+moral lesson, and as works of art they are on a higher plane than _Hard
+Times_, where the purpose is too clearly shown. Still if we wish to
+understand this side of Dickens's work, it is just such a book as _Hard
+Times_ that we must study.
+
+It deals with the relation of classes to one another in an industrial
+district, and especially with the faults of the class that rose to power
+with the development of manufacturing. Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby,
+the well-meaning pedant and the offensive parvenu, preach the same
+gospel. Political economy, as they understand it, is to rule life, and
+this dismal science is not concerned with human well-being and
+happiness, but only with the profit and loss on commercial undertakings.
+Hard facts then are to be the staple of education; memory and accurate
+calculation are to be cultivated; the imagination is to be driven out.
+In depicting the manner of this education Dickens rather overshoots the
+mark. The visit of Mr. Gradgrind to Mr. M'Choakumchild's school (when
+the sharp-witted Bitzer defines the horse according to the scientific
+handbook, while poor Cissy, who has only an affection for horses,
+indulges in fancies and collapses in disgrace) is too evident a
+caricature. But the effects of this kind of teaching are painted with a
+powerful hand, and we see the faculty for joy blighted almost in the
+cradle. And the lesson is enforced not only by the working man and his
+family but by Gradgrind's own daughter, who pitilessly convicts her
+father of having stifled every generous impulse in her and of having
+sacrificed her on the altar of fancied self-interest.
+
+Side by side with the dismal Mr. Gradgrind is the poor master of the
+strolling circus, Mr. Sleary, with his truer philosophy of life. He can
+see the real need that men have for amusement and for brightness in
+their lives; and, though he lives under the shadow of bankruptcy, he can
+hold his head up and preach the gospel of happiness. This was a cause
+which never failed to win the enthusiastic advocacy of Dickens. He
+fought, as men still have to fight to-day, against those Pharisees who
+prescribe for the working classes how they should spend their weekly day
+of freedom; he supported the opening on Sunday of parks, museums, and
+galleries; whole-heartedly he loved the theatre and the circus, and he
+wished as many as possible to share those delights. In defiance of 'Mrs.
+Grundy' he ventured to maintain that the words 'music-hall' and
+'public-house', rightly understood, should be held in honour. It is one
+thing to hate drunkenness and indecency; it is quite another to assume
+that these must be found in the poor man's place of recreation, and this
+roused him to anger. To him 'public-house' meant a place of fellowship,
+and 'music-hall' a place of song and mirth; and if some critics complain
+of an excess of material good-cheer in his picture of life, Dickens is
+certainly here in sympathy with the bulk of his fellow-countrymen.
+
+Another cause in which Dickens was always ready to lead a crusade was
+the amendment of the Poor Law. This will remind us of the early days of
+Oliver Twist, of such a friendless outcast as Jo in _Bleak House_, of
+the struggle of Betty Higden in _Our Mutual Friend_ and her
+determination never to be given up to 'the Parish'. But, even more than
+the famous novels, the casual writings of Dickens in his own magazines
+and elsewhere throw light on his activities in this cause and on the
+researches which he made into the working of the system. Mr. Crotch
+describes visits which he paid to the workhouses in Wapping and
+Whitechapel, quoting his comments on the 'Foul Ward' in one, on the old
+men's ward in the other, and on the torpor of despair which settled down
+on these poor wrecks of humanity. Could such a system, he asked himself,
+be wise which robbed men not of liberty alone but of all hope for the
+future, which left them no single point of interest except the
+statistics of their fellows who had gone before them and who had been
+finally liberated by death? A still more striking passage, just because
+Dickens here shows unusual restraint and moderation in his language,
+tells us of the five women whom he saw sleeping all night outside the
+workhouse through no fault of any official, but simply because there was
+no room for them inside and because society had nothing to offer, no
+form of 'relief' which could touch these unfortunates. Many will be
+familiar with passages in Ruskin, where he denounces similar tragedies
+due to our inhuman disregard of what is happening at our doors.
+
+Though the most valuable part of his work was the effective appeal to
+the hearts of his brother men, Dickens had the practical wisdom to
+suggest definite remedies in some cases. He saw that the districts in
+the East End of London, even with a heavy poor rate, failed to supply
+adequate relief for their waifs and strays, while the wealthy
+inhabitants of the West End, having few paupers, paid on their riches a
+rate that was negligible, and he boldly suggested the equalization of
+rates. All London should jointly share the burden of maintaining those
+for whose welfare they were responsible and should pay shares
+proportioned to their wealth. This wise reform was not carried into
+effect till some thirty or forty years later; but the principle is now
+generally accepted. Though in this case, as in his famous attack on the
+Court of Chancery in _Bleak House_, Dickens failed in obtaining any
+immediate effect, it is unquestionable that he influenced the minds of
+thousands and changed the temper in which they looked at the problem of
+the poor. In this nothing that he wrote was more powerful than the
+series of Christmas Books, in which his imagination, with the power of a
+Rembrandt, threw on to a smaller canvas the lights and shades of London
+life, the grim background of mean streets, and the cheerful virtues
+which throw a glamour over their humble homes. His advocacy of these
+social causes came to be known far and wide and contributed a second
+element to the popularity won by his novels; long before his death
+Dickens stood on a pinnacle alone, loved by the vast reading public
+among those who toil in our towns and villages, and wherever English is
+read and understood. He was not only their entertainer, but their friend
+and brother; he had been through his days of sorrow and suffering and he
+had kept that vast fund of cheerfulness which overflowed into his books
+and gladdened the lives of so many thousands. When he died in 1870 after
+a year of intermittent illness, following on his breakdown over the
+public readings, there was naturally a widespread desire that he should
+be buried in Westminster Abbey, as a great Englishman and a true
+representative of his age. During life he had expressed his desire for a
+private funeral, unheralded in the press, and he had thought of two or
+three quiet churches in the neighbourhood of Rochester and Gadshill.
+These particular graveyards were found to be already closed, and the
+family consented to a compromise by which their father should be buried
+in the Abbey at an early hour when no strangers would be aware of it.
+After his body was laid to rest, the people were admitted to pay their
+homage; the universality and the sincerity of their feelings was shown
+in a wonderful way. Among men of letters he had reigned in the hearts of
+the people, as Queen Victoria reigned among our sovereigns. In the
+annals of her reign his name will outlive those of soldiers, of
+prelates, and of politicians.
+
+The causes for which he fought have not all been won yet. Officialdom
+still dawdles over the work of the State, hearts are still broken by the
+law's delays, the path of crime still lies too easily open to the young.
+Vast progress has been made; a humane spirit is to be found in the
+working of our Government, and a truer knowledge of social problems is
+spreading among all classes. But the world cannot afford to relegate
+Charles Dickens to oblivion, and shows no desire to do so; his books are
+and will be a wellspring of cheerfulness, of faith in human nature, and
+of true Christian charity from which all will do well to drink.
+
+
+
+
+ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+1809-92
+
+1809. Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, August 6.
+1816-20. At school at Louth.
+1820-7. Educated at home.
+1827. _Poems by Two Brothers_, Charles and Alfred.
+1828-31. Trinity College, Cambridge.
+1830-2. Early volumes of poetry published.
+1833. Death of Arthur Hallam at Vienna.
+1837. High Beech, Essex.
+1840. Tunbridge Wells.
+1842. Collected poems, including 'Morte d'Arthur' and 'English Idyls'.
+1846. Cheltenham.
+1847. _The Princess_.
+1850. _In Memoriam_, printed and given to friends before March; published
+      June. Marriage, June. Poet Laureate, November.
+1852. 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.'
+1853. Becomes tenant--1856, owner--of Farringford, Isle of Wight.
+1855. _Maud_.
+1859. First four 'Idylls of the King' published.
+1864. _Enoch Arden_.
+1869. Second home at Aldworth, near Haslemere.
+1875-84. _Plays_ (1875 'Queen Mary', 1876 'Harold', 1884 'Becket').
+1880. _Ballads and other Poems_ ('The Revenge', &c.).
+1884. Created a Peer of the realm.
+1892. October 6, death at Aldworth. October 12, funeral at
+      Westminster Abbey.
+
+TENNYSON
+
+POET
+
+
+The Victorians, as a whole, were a generation of fighters. They battled
+against Nature's forces, subduing floods and mountain barriers,
+pestilence and the worst extremes of heat and cold; they also went forth
+into the market-place and battled with their fellow men for laws, for
+tariffs, for empire. Their triumphs, like those of the Romans, are
+mostly to be seen in the practical sphere. But there were others of that
+day who chose the contemplative life of the recluse, and who yet, by
+high imaginings, contributed in no less degree to enrich the fame of
+their age; and among these the first name is that of Alfred Tennyson,
+the most representative of Victorian poets.
+
+[Illustration: ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
+
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+His early environment may be said to have marked him out for such a
+life. He was born in one of the remotest districts of a rural county.
+The village of Somersby lies in a hollow among the Lincolnshire wolds,
+twenty miles east of Lincoln, midway between the small towns of Spilsby,
+Horncastle, and Louth. There are no railways to disturb its peace; no
+high roads or broad rivers to bring trade to its doors. The 'cold
+rivulet' that rises just above the village flows down some twenty miles
+to lose itself in the sea near Skegness; in the valley the alders sigh
+and the aspens quiver, while around are rolling hills covered by long
+fields of corn broken by occasional spinneys. It is not a country to
+draw tourists for its own sake; but Tennyson knew, as few other poets
+know, the charm that human association lends to the simplest English
+landscape, and he cherished the memory of these scenes long after he had
+gone to live among the richer beauties of the south. From the garners of
+memory he drew the familiar features of this homely land showing that he
+had forgotten
+
+    No grey old grange, or lonely fold,
+        Or low morass and whispering reed,
+        Or simple stile from mead to mead,
+    Or sheepwalk up the winding wold.[23]
+
+[Note 23: _In Memoriam_, c.]
+
+There are days when the wolds seem dreary and monotonous; but if change
+is wanted, a long walk or an easy drive will take us from Somersby, as
+it often took the Tennyson brothers, to the coast at Mablethorpe, where
+the long rollers of the North Sea beat upon the sandhills that guard
+the flat stretches of the marshland. Here the poet as a child used to
+lie upon the beach, his imagination conjuring up Homeric pictures of the
+Grecian fleet besieging Troy; and if, on his last visit before leaving
+Lincolnshire, he found the spell broken, he could still describe vividly
+what he saw with the less fanciful vision of manhood.
+
+    Grey sandbanks, and pale sunsets, dreary wind,
+      Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea![24]
+
+[Note 24: Lines written in 1837 and published in the _Manchester
+Athenćum Album_, 1850.]
+
+These wide expanses of sea, sand, and sky figure many times in his
+poetry and furnish a background for the more tragic scenes in the
+_Idylls of the King_.
+
+Nor does the vicarage spoil the harmony of the scene, an old-fashioned
+low rambling house, to which a loftier hall adjoining, with its Gothic
+windows, lends a touch of distinction. The garden with one towering
+sycamore and the wych-elms, that threw long shadows on the lawn, opened
+on to the parson's field, where on summer mornings could be heard the
+sweep of the scythe in the dewy grass. Here Tennyson's father had been
+rector for some years when his fourth child Alfred was born in August
+1809, the year which also saw the birth of Darwin and Gladstone. The
+family was a large one; there were eight sons and four daughters, the
+last of whom was still alive in 1916. Alfred's education was as
+irregular as a poet's could need to be, consisting of a few years'
+attendance at Louth Grammar School, where he suffered from the rod and
+other abuses of the past, and of a larger number spent in studying
+literature at home under his father's guidance. These left him a liberal
+amount of leisure which he devoted to reading at large and roaming the
+country-side. His father was a man of mental cultivation far beyond the
+average, well fitted to expand the mind of a boy of literary tastes and
+to lead him on at a pace suited to his abilities. He had suffered from
+disappointments which had thrown a shadow over his life, having been
+disinherited capriciously by his father, who was a wealthy man and a
+member of Parliament. The inheritance passed to the second brother, who
+took the name of Tennyson d'Eyncourt; and though the Rector resented the
+injustice of the act, he did not allow it to embitter the relations
+between his own children and their cousins. His character was of the
+stern, dominating order, and both his parishioners and his children
+stood in awe of him; but the gentle nature of their mother made amends.
+She is described by Edward FitzGerald, the poet's friend, as 'one of the
+most innocent and tender-hearted ladies I ever met, devoted to husband
+and children'. In her youth she had been a noted beauty, and in her old
+age was not too unworldly to remember that she had received twenty-five
+proposals of marriage. It was from her that the family derived their
+beauty of feature, while in their strength of intellect they resembled
+rather their father. One of Alfred's earliest literary passions was a
+love of Byron, and he remembered in after life how as a child he had
+carved on a rock the woful tidings that his hero was dead. In this
+period he was already writing poetry himself, though he did not publish
+his first volume till after he had gone up to Cambridge.
+
+From this home life, filled with leisurely reading, rambling, and
+dreaming, he was sent in 1828 to join his brother Frederick at Trinity
+College, Cambridge, and he came into residence in February of that year.
+Cambridge has been called the poets' University. Here in early days came
+Spenser and Milton, Dryden and Gray; and--in the generation preceding
+Tennyson--Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron had followed in their steps.
+However little we can trace directly the development of the poetic gift
+to local influence, at least we can say that Tennyson gained greatly by
+the time he spent within its walls. He came up an unknown man without
+family connexions to help him, and without the hall-mark of any famous
+school upon him. Shy and retiring by nature as he was, he might easily
+have failed to win his way to notice. But there was something in his
+appearance, in his manner, and in the personality that lay behind, which
+never failed to impress observers, and gradually he attached to himself
+the most brilliant undergraduates of his time and became a leader among
+them. Thackeray and FitzGerald were in residence; but it was not till
+later that he came to know them well, and we hear more of Spedding (the
+editor of Bacon), of Alford and Merivale (deans of Canterbury and Ely),
+of Trench (Archbishop of Dublin), of Lushington, who married one of his
+sisters, and of Arthur Hallam, who was engaged to another sister at the
+time of his early death. Hallam came from Eton, where his greatest
+friend had been W. E. Gladstone, and he had not been long at Cambridge
+before he was led by kindred tastes and kindred nature into close
+friendship with Tennyson. In the judgement of all who knew him, a career
+of the highest usefulness and distinction was assured to him. His
+intellectual force and his high aspirations would have shone in the
+public service; and at least they won him thus early the affection of
+the noblest among his compeers, and a fame that is almost unique in
+English literature.
+
+Much has been written about the society which these young men formed and
+which they called 'the Apostles'. The name has been thought to suggest a
+certain complacency and mutual admiration. But enough letters and
+personal recollections of their talk have been preserved to show how
+simple and unaffected the members were in their intercourse with one
+another. They had their enthusiasms, but they had also their jests.
+Their humour was not perhaps the boisterous fun of William Morris and
+Rossetti, but it was lively and buoyant enough to banish all suspicion
+of priggishness. Just because their enthusiasm was for the best in
+literature and art, Tennyson was quickly at home among them. Already he
+had learnt at home to love Shakespeare and Milton, Coleridge and Keats,
+and no effort was required, in this circle of friends, to keep his
+reading upon this high level. _Lycidas_ was always a special favourite
+of Tennyson's, and appreciation of it seemed to him a sure 'touchstone
+of poetic taste'. In conversation he did not tend to declaim or
+monopolize the talk. He was noted rather for short sayings and for
+criticisms tersely expressed. He had his moods, contemplative, genial or
+gay; but all his utterances were marked by independence of thought, and
+his silence could be richer than the speech of other men. But for
+display he had no liking. In fact, so reluctant was he to face an
+audience of strangers, that when in 1829 it was his duty to recite his
+prize poem in the senate-house, he obtained leave for Merivale to read
+it on his behalf. On the other hand, he was ready enough to impart to
+his real friends the poems that he wrote from time to time, and he would
+pass pleasant hours with them reciting old ballads and reading aloud the
+plays of Shakespeare. His sonorous voice, his imagination, and his
+feeling for all the niceties of rhythm made his reading unusually
+impressive, as we know from the testimony of many who heard him.
+
+The course of his education is, in fact, more truly to be found in this
+free companionship than in the lecture room or the examination hall. His
+opinion of the teaching which he received from the Dons was formed and
+expressed in a sonnet of 1830, though he refrained from publishing it
+for half a century. He addresses them as 'you that do profess to teach
+and teach us nothing, feeding not the heart'--and complains of their
+indifference to the movements of their own age and to the needs of their
+pupils. For, despite the ferment which was spreading in the realms of
+theology, of politics, and of natural science, the Dons still taught
+their classics in the dry pedantic manner of the past, and refused to
+face the problems of the nineteenth century. For Tennyson, whose mind
+was already capacious and deep, these problems had a constant
+attraction, and he had to fall back upon solitary musings and on talks
+with Hallam and other friends. Partly perhaps because he missed the more
+rigorous training of the schools, we have to wait another ten years
+before we see marks of his deeper thinking in his work. He was but
+groping and feeling his way. In the 'Poems, chiefly Lyrical' which he
+produced in 1830, rich images abound, play of fancy and beauty of
+expression; but there are few signs of the power of thought which he was
+to show in later volumes.
+
+After three years thus spent, by no means unfruitfully, though it was
+only by his prize poem of 'Timbuctoo' that he won public honours, he was
+called away from Cambridge by family troubles and returned to Somersby
+in February 1831. His father had broken down in health, and a month
+later he died, suddenly and peacefully, in his arm-chair. After the
+rector's death an arrangement was made that the family should continue
+to inhabit the Rectory; and Tennyson, who was now his mother's chief
+help and stay, settled down to a studious life at home, varied by
+occasional visits to London. The habit of seclusion was already forming.
+He was much given to solitary walking and to spending his evening in an
+attic reading by himself. But this was not due to moroseness or
+selfishness, as we can see from his intercourse with family and friends.
+He would willingly give hours to reading aloud to his mother, or sit
+listening happily while his sisters played music. From this time indeed
+he seems to have taken his father's place in the home; and with Hallam
+and other friends he continued on the same affectionate terms. He had
+not Dickens's buoyant temper and love of company, nor did he indulge in
+the splenetic outbursts of Carlyle. He could, when it was needed, find
+time to fulfil the humblest duties and then return with contentment to
+his solitude. But his thoughts seemed naturally to lift him above the
+level of others, and he was most truly himself when he was alone. Apart
+from his eyesight, which began to trouble him at this time, he was
+enjoying good health, which he maintained by a steady regime of physical
+exercise. His strength and his good looks were alike remarkable.[25] As
+his friend Brookfield laughingly said, 'It was not fair that he should
+be Hercules as well as Apollo'.
+
+Another volume of verse appeared in 1832; and its appearance seems to
+have been due rather to the urgent persuasion of his friends than to his
+own eagerness to appear in print. Though J. S. Mill and a few other
+critics wrote with good judgement and praised the book, it met with a
+cold reception in most places, and the _Quarterly Review_, regardless of
+its blunder over Keats, spoke of it in most contemptuous terms. All can
+recognize to-day how unfair this was to the merits of a volume which
+contained the 'Lotos-Eaters', 'Oenone', and the 'Lady of Shalott'; but
+the effect of the harsh verdict on the poet, always sensitive about the
+reception of his work, was unfortunate to a degree. For a time it seemed
+likely to chill his ardour and stifle his poetic gifts at the very age
+when they ought to be bearing fruit. He writes of himself at this time
+as 'moping like an owl in an ivy bush, or as that one sparrow which the
+Hebrew mentioneth as sitting on the house-top'; and, despite his
+friendship with Hallam, which was closer than ever since the latter's
+engagement to his sister Emily, he had thoughts of settling abroad in
+France or Italy, since he found, or fancied that he found, in England
+too unsympathetic an atmosphere.
+
+[Note 25: The portrait of 1838 by Samuel Laurence, of which the
+original is at Aldworth, speaks for itself.]
+
+Such a decision would have been disastrous. Residence abroad might suit
+the robust, many-sided genius of Robert Browning with his gift for
+interpreting the thoughts of other nations and other times; it would
+have been fatal to Tennyson, whose affections were rooted in his native
+soil, and who had a special call to speak to Englishmen of English
+scenes and English life.
+
+The following year brought him a still severer shock in the loss of his
+beloved friend, Arthur Hallam, who was taken ill at Vienna and died
+there a few days later, to the deep sorrow of all who knew him. Many
+besides Tennyson have borne witness to his character and gifts; thanks
+to their tribute, and above all to the verses of _In Memoriam_, though
+his life was all too short to realize the promise of his youth, his name
+will be preserved. The gradual growth of Tennyson's elegy can be
+discerned from the letters of his friends, to whom from time to time he
+read some of the stanzas which he had completed. Even in the first
+winter after Hallam's death, he wrote a few lines in the manuscript book
+which he kept by him for the purpose during the next fifteen years, and
+which he was within an ace of losing in 1850, just when the poem was
+completed and ready for publication. As a statesman turns from his
+private sorrow to devote himself to a public cause, so the poet's
+instinct was to find comfort in the practice of his art. Under the
+stress of feelings aroused by this event and under the influence of a
+wider reading, his mind was maturing. We hear of a steady discipline of
+mental work, of hours given methodically to Italian and German, to
+theology and history, to chemistry, botany, and other branches of
+science. Above all, he pondered now, as he did later so constantly, on
+the mystery of death and life after death. Outwardly this seems the most
+uneventful period of his career; but, in their effect on his mind and
+work, these years were very far from being wasted. When next, in 1842,
+he emerges from seclusion to offer his verses to the public, he had
+enlarged the range of his subjects and deepened his powers of thought.
+We see less richness in the images, less freedom in the play of fancy,
+but there is a firmer grip of character, a surer handling of the
+problems affecting the life of man. Underground was flowing the hidden
+stream of _In Memoriam_, unknown save to the few; only in part were the
+fruits of this period to be seen in the two volumes containing 'English
+Idyls' and other new poems, along with a selection of earlier lyrics now
+revised and reprinted.
+
+The distinctive quality of the book is given by the word Idyl, which was
+to be so closely connected with Tennyson's fame. Here he is working in a
+small compass, but he breaks fresh ground in describing scenes of
+English village life, and shows that he has used his gifts of
+observation to good purpose. Better than the slight sketches of
+character, of girls and their lovers, of farmers and their children, are
+the landscapes in which they are set; and many will remember the
+charming passages in which he describes the morning songs of birds in a
+garden, or the twinkling of evening lights in the still waters of a
+harbour. More original and more full of lyrical fervour was 'Locksley
+Hall', where he expresses many thoughts that were stirring the younger
+spirits of his day. Perhaps the most perfect workmanship, in a volume
+where much calls for admiration, is to be found in 'Ulysses', which the
+poet's friend Monckton Milnes gave to Sir Robert Peel to read, in order
+to convince him that Tennyson's work merited official recognition. His
+treatment of the hero is as far from the classical spirit as anything
+which William Morris wrote. He preserves little of the directness or
+fierce temper of the early epic. Rather does his Ulysses think and speak
+like some bold adventurer of the Renaissance, with the combination of
+ardent curiosity and reflective thought which was the mark of that age.
+Even so Tennyson himself, as he passed from youth to middle life, and
+from that to old age, was ever trying to achieve one more 'work of noble
+note', and yearning
+
+    To follow knowledge like a sinking star
+    Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
+
+But between this and the production of his next volume comes the most
+unhappy period in the poet's career, when his friends for a time
+despaired of his future and even of his life. At the marriage of his
+brother Charles in 1836, Tennyson had fallen in love with the bride's
+sister, Emily Sellwood; and in the course of the next three or four
+years they became informally engaged to one another. But his prospects
+of earning enough money to support a wife seemed so remote that in 1840
+her family insisted on breaking off the engagement, and the lovers
+ceased to write to one another. Even the volumes of 1842, while winning
+high favour with cultivated readers, and stirring enthusiasm at the
+Universities, failed to attract the larger public and to make a success
+in the market. So when he sustained a further blow in the loss of his
+small fortune owing to an unwise investment, his health gave way and he
+fell into a dark mood of hypochondria. His star seemed to be sinking,
+just as he was winning his way to fame. Thanks to medical attention,
+aided by his own natural strength and the affections of his friends, he
+was already rallying in 1845, when Peel conferred on him the timely
+honour of a pension; and he was able not only to continue working at _In
+Memoriam_, but also to produce in 1847 _The Princess_, which gives clear
+evidence of renewed cheerfulness and vigour. Dealing as it does, half
+humorously, with the question of woman's education and her claim to a
+higher place in the scheme of life, it illustrates the interest which
+Tennyson, despite his seclusion, felt in social questions of the day.
+From this point of view it may be linked with _Locksley Hall_ and
+_Maud_; but in _The Princess_ the treatment is half humorous and the
+setting is more artificial. Tennyson's lyrical power is seen at its best
+in the magical songs which occur in the course of the story or
+interposed between the different scenes. They have deservedly won a
+place in all anthologies. His facility in the handling of blank verse is
+also remarkable. Lovers of Milton may regret the massive grandeur of an
+earlier style; but, as in every art, so in poetry, we pay for advance in
+technical accomplishment, in suppleness and melodious phrasing, by the
+loss of other qualities which are difficult to recapture.
+
+Meanwhile _In Memoriam_ was approaching completion; and this the most
+central and characteristic of his poems illustrates, more truly than a
+narrative of outward events, the phases through which Tennyson had been
+passing. Desultory though the method of its production be, and loose
+'the texture of its fabric', there is a certain sequence of thought
+running through the cantos. We see how from the first poignancy of
+grief, when he can only brood passively over his friend's death, he was
+led to questioning the basis of his faith, shaken as it was by the
+claims of physical science--how from those doubts of his own, he was led
+to think of the universal trouble of the world--how at length by
+throwing himself into the hopes and aspiration of humanity he attained
+to victory and was able to put away his personal grief, believing that
+his friend's soul was still working with him in the universe for the
+good of all. At intervals, during the three years mirrored in the poem,
+we get definite notes of time. We see how the poet is affected each year
+as the winter and the spring come round, and how the succeeding
+anniversaries of Hallam's death stir the old pain in varying degree. But
+we must not suppose that each section was composed at the time
+represented in this scheme. Seventeen years went to the perfecting of
+the work; it is impossible to tell when each canto was first outlined
+and how often it was re-written; and we must be content with general
+notions of its development. The poet's memory was fully charged. As he
+could recall so vividly the Lincolnshire landscape when he was living in
+the south, so he could portray the emotions of the past though he had
+entered on a new period of life fraught with a different spirit.
+
+Thus many elements go to make up the whole, and readers of _In Memoriam_
+can choose what suits their mood. To some, who wish to compare the
+problems of different ages, chief interest will attach to that section
+where the active mind wakes up to the conflict between science and
+faith. It was a difficult age for poets and believers. The preceding
+generation had for a time been swept far from their bearings by the
+tornado of the French Revolution. Some of them found an early grave
+while still upholding the flag; others had won back to harbour when
+their youth was past and ended their days in calm--if not
+stagnant--waters. But the advance of scientific discoveries and the
+scientific spirit sapped the defences of faith in more methodical
+fashion, and Tennyson's mind was only too open to all the evidence of
+natural law and the stern lessons of the struggle for life. To
+understand the influence of Tennyson on his age it is necessary to
+inquire how he reconciled religion with science; but this is too large a
+subject for a biographical sketch, and valuable studies have been
+written which deal with it more or less fully, by Stopford Brooke[26]
+and many others.
+
+[Note 26: _Tennyson_, by Stopford Brooke (Isbister, 1894).]
+
+To Queen Victoria, and to others who had been stricken in their home
+affections, the human interest outweighed all others; the sorrow of
+those who gave little thought to systems of philosophy or religion was
+instinctively comforted by the note of faith in a future life and by
+the haunting melodies in which it found expression.
+
+Many were content to return again and again to those passages where the
+beauty of nature is depicted in stanzas of wonderful felicity. No such
+gift of observation had yet ministered to their delight. Readers of Mrs.
+Gaskell will be reminded of the old farmer in _Cranford_ revelling in
+the new knowledge which he has gained of the colour of ash-buds in
+March. So too we are taught to look afresh at larch woods in spring and
+beech woods in autumn, at the cedar in the garden and the yew tree in
+the churchyard. We are vividly conscious of the summer's breeze which
+tumbles the pears in the orchard, and the winter's storm when the
+leafless ribs of the wood clang and gride. As the perfect stanza lingers
+in our memory, our eyes are opened and we are taught to observe the
+marvels of nature for ourselves. Here, more than anywhere else, is he
+the true successor of Wordsworth, the Wordsworth of the daisy, the
+daffodil, and the lesser celandine, though following a method of his
+own--at once a disciple and a master.
+
+But other influences than those of nature were coming into his life. In
+1837 the Tennyson family had been compelled to leave Somersby; and the
+poet, recluse though he was, showed that he could rouse himself to meet
+a practical emergency with good sense. He took charge of all
+arrangements and transplanted his mother successively to new homes in
+Essex and Kent. This brought him nearer to London and enlarged
+considerably his circle of friends. The list of men of letters who
+welcomed him there is a long one, from Samuel Rogers to the Rossettis,
+and includes poets, novelists, historians, scholars, and scientists. The
+most interesting, to him and to us, was Carlyle, then living at Chelsea,
+who had published his _French Revolution_ in 1837, and had thereby
+become notable among literary men. Carlyle's judgements on the poet and
+his poems have often been quoted. At first he was more than contemptuous
+over the latter, and exhorted Tennyson to leave verse and rhyme and
+apply himself to prose. But familiar converse, in which both men spoke
+their opinions without reserve, soon enlightened 'the sage', and he
+delighted in his new friend. Long after, in 1879, he confessed that
+'Alfred always from the beginning took a grip at the right side of every
+question'. He could not fail to appreciate the man when he saw him in
+the flesh, and it is he who has left us the most striking picture of
+Tennyson's appearance in middle life. In 1842 he wrote to Emerson:
+'Alfred is one of the few... figures who are and remain beautiful to
+me;--a true human soul... one of the finest-looking men in the world. A
+great shock of rough dusty-dark hair, bright-laughing hazel eyes,
+massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate, of sallow-brown
+complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose,
+free-and-easy;--smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical
+metallic,--fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie
+between; speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in
+these late decades, such company over a pipe!' Not only were pipes
+smoked at home, but walks were taken in the London streets at night,
+with much free converse, in which art both were masters, but of which
+Carlyle, no doubt, had the larger share. Tennyson was a master of the
+art of silence, which Carlyle could praise but never practice; but when
+he spoke his remarks rarely failed to strike the bell.
+
+Another comrade worthy of special notice was FitzGerald, famous to-day
+as the translator of Omar Khayyam, and also as the man whom two great
+authors, Tennyson and Thackeray, named as their most cherished friend.
+He was living a hermit's life in Suffolk, dividing his day between his
+yacht, his garden, and his books; and writing, when he was in the
+humour, those gossipy letters which have placed him as a classic with
+Cowper and Lamb. From time to time he would come to London for a visit
+to a picture gallery or an evening with his friends; and for many years
+he never failed to write once a year for news of the poet, whose books
+he might criticize capriciously, but whose image was always fresh in his
+affectionate heart. Of his old Cambridge circle Tennyson honoured, above
+all others, 'his domeship' James Spedding, of the massive rounded head,
+of the rare judgement in literature, of the unselfish and faithful
+discharge of all the duties which he could take upon himself. Great as
+was his edition of Bacon, he was by the common consent of his friends
+far greater than anything which he achieved, and his memory is most
+worthily preserved in the letters of Tennyson, and of others who knew
+him. In London he was present at gatherings where Landor and Leigh Hunt
+represented the elder generation of poets; but he was more familiar with
+his contemporaries Henry Taylor and Aubrey de Vere. It is the latter who
+gives us an interesting account of two meetings between Wordsworth and
+his successor in the Laureateship.[27] The occasions when Tennyson and
+Browning met one another and read their poetry aloud were also cherished
+in the memory of those friends who were fortunate enough to be
+present.[28] Differing as they did in temperament and in tastes, they
+were rivals in generosity to one another and indeed to all their
+brethren who wielded the pen of the writer. To meet such choice spirits
+Tennyson would leave for a while his precious solitude and his books.
+London could not be his home, but it became a place of pleasant meetings
+and of friendships in which he found inspiration and help.
+
+[Note 27: _Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir_, by his son, vol. i, p.
+209 (Macmillan & Co.).]
+
+[Note 28: _Robert Browning_, by Edward Dowden, p. 173 (J. M. Dent &
+Co.).]
+
+Thus it was that Tennyson spent the quiet years of meditation and study
+before he achieved his full renown. This was no such sensational event
+as Byron's meteoric appearance in 1812; but one year, 1850, is a clear
+landmark in his career. This was the date of the publication of _In
+Memoriam_ and of his appointment, on the death of Wordsworth, to the
+office of Poet Laureate. This year saw the end of his struggle with
+ill-fortune and the end of his long courtship. In June he was married,
+at Shiplake on the Thames, to Emily Sellwood. Henceforth his happiness
+was assured and he knew no more the restlessness and melancholy which
+had clouded his enjoyment of life. His course was clear, and for forty
+years his position was hardly questioned in all lands where the English
+tongue was spoken. Noble companies of worshippers might worthily swear
+allegiance to Thackeray and Browning; but by the voice of the people
+Dickens and Tennyson were enthroned supreme.
+
+To deal with all the volumes of poetry that Tennyson published between
+1850 and his death would be impossible within the limits of these pages.
+In some cases he reverted to themes which he had treated before and he
+preserved for many years the same skill in craftsmanship. But in _Maud_,
+in _The Idylls of the King_, and in the historical dramas,
+unquestionably, he broke new ground.
+
+Partly on account of the scheme of the poem, partly for the views
+expressed on questions of the day, _Maud_ provoked more hostile
+criticism than anything which he wrote; yet it seems to have been the
+poet's favourite work. The story of its composition is curious. It was
+suggested by a short lyric which Tennyson had printed privately in 1837
+beginning with the words 'Oh, that 'twere possible after long grief'.
+His friend, Sir John Simeon, urged him to write a poem which would lead
+up to and explain it; and the poet, adopting the idea, used _Maud_ as a
+vehicle for much which he was feeling in the disillusionment of middle
+life. The form of a monodrama was unfamiliar to the public and has
+difficulties of its own. Tennyson has combined action, proceeding
+somewhat spasmodically, with a skilful study of character, showing us
+the exaggerated sensibility of a nature which under the successive
+influence of misanthropy, hope, love, and tragic disappointment, may
+easily pass beyond the border-land of insanity. In the scene where love
+is triumphant, Tennyson touches the highest point of lyrical passion;
+but there are jarring notes introduced in the satirical descriptions of
+Maud's brother and of the rival who aspires to her hand. And in the
+later cantos where, after the fatal quarrel, the hero is driven to moody
+thoughts and dark presages of woe, there are passages which seem to be
+charged with the doctrine that England was being corrupted by long peace
+and needed the purifying discipline of war. For this the poet was taken
+to task by his critics; and, though it is unfair in dramatic work to
+attribute to an author the words of his characters, Tennyson found it
+difficult to clear himself of suspicion, the more so that the Crimean
+War inspired at this time some of his most popular martial ballads and
+songs.
+
+_The Idylls of the King_ had a different fate and achieved instant
+popularity. The first four were published in 1859 and within a few
+months 10,000 copies were sold. Tennyson's original design, formed early
+in life, had been to build a single epic on the Arthurian theme, which
+seemed to him to give scope, like Virgil's _Aeneid_, for patriotic
+treatment. 'The greatest of all poetical subjects' he called it, and it
+haunted his mind perpetually. But if Virgil found such a task difficult
+nineteen hundred years before, it was doubly difficult for Tennyson to
+satisfy his generation, with scientific historians raking the ash heaps
+of the past, and pedants demanding local colour. In shaping his poem to
+meet the requirements of history he was in danger of losing that breadth
+of treatment which is essential for epic poetry. He fell back on the
+device of selecting episodes, each a complete picture in itself, and
+grouping them round a single hero. The story is placed in the twilight
+between the Roman withdrawal and the conquests of the Saxons, when the
+lamp of history was glimmering most faintly. In these troublous times a
+king is miraculously sent to be a bulwark to the people against the
+inroads of their foes. He founds an order of Knighthood bound by vows to
+fight for all just and noble causes, and upholds for a time victoriously
+the standard of chivalry within his realm, till through the entrance of
+sin and treachery the spell is broken and the heathen overrun the land.
+After his last battle, in the far west of our island, the king passes
+away to the supernatural world from which he came. This last episode had
+been handled many years before, and the 'Morte d'Arthur', which had
+appeared in the volume of 1842, was incorporated into the 'Passing of
+Arthur' to close the series of Idylls.
+
+With what admixture of allegory this story was set out it is hard to
+say--Tennyson himself could not in later years be induced to define his
+purpose--but it seems certain that many of the characters are intended
+to symbolize higher and lower qualities. According to some
+interpretations King Arthur stands for the power of conscience and Queen
+Guinevere for the heart. Galahad represents purity, Bors rough honesty,
+Percivale humility, and Merlin the power of the intellect, which is too
+easily beguiled by treachery. So the whole story is moralized by the
+entrance, through Guinevere and Lancelot, of sin; by the gradual fading,
+through the lightness of one or the treachery of another, of the
+brightness of chivalry; and by the final ruin which shatters the fair
+ideal.
+
+But there is no need to darken counsel by questions about history or
+allegory, if we wish, first and last, to enjoy poetry, for its own sake.
+Here, as in Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, forth go noble knights with
+gentle maidens through the enchanted scenes of fairyland; for their
+order and its vows they are ready to dare all. Lawlessness is tamed and
+cruelty is punished, and no perilous quest presents itself but there is
+a champion ready to follow it to the end. And if severe critics tell us
+that they find no true gift of story-telling here, let us go for a
+verdict to the young. They may not be good judges of style, or safe
+interpreters of shades of thought, but they know when a story carries
+them away; and the _Idylls of the King_, like the Waverley Novels, have
+captured the heart of many a lover of literature who has not yet learnt
+to question his instinct or to weigh his treasures in the scales of
+criticism. And older readers may find themselves kindled to enthusiasm
+by reflective passages rich in high aspiration, or charmed by
+descriptions of nature as beautiful as anything which Tennyson wrote.
+
+In the historical plays, which occupied a large part of his attention
+between 1874 and 1879, Tennyson undertook a yet harder task. He chose
+periods when national issues of high importance were at stake, such as
+the conflict between the Church and the Crown, between the domination of
+the priest and the claim of the individual to freedom of belief. He put
+aside all exuberance of fancy and diction as unsuited to tragedy; he
+handled his theme with dignity and at times with force, and attained a
+literary success to which Browning and other good judges bore testimony.
+Of Becket in particular he made a sympathetic figure, which, in the
+skilful hands of Henry Irving, won considerable favour upon the stage.
+But the times were out of joint for the poetic drama, and he had not the
+rich imagination of Shakespeare, nor the power to create living men and
+women who compel our hearts to pity, to horror, or to delight. For the
+absence of this no studious reading of history, no fine sentiment, no
+noble cadences, can make amends, and it seems doubtful whether future
+ages will regard the plays as anything but a literary curiosity.
+
+On the other hand, nothing which he wrote has touched the human heart
+more genuinely than the poems of peasant life, some of them written in
+the broadest Lincolnshire dialect, which Tennyson produced during the
+years in which he was engaged on the Idylls and the plays. 'The
+Grandmother', 'The Northern Cobbler', and the two poems on the
+Lincolnshire farmers of following generations, were as popular as
+anything which the Victorian Age produced, and seem likely to keep their
+pre-eminence. The two latter illustrate, by their origin, Tennyson's
+power of seizing on a single impression, and building on it a work of
+creative genius. It was enough for him to hear the anecdote of the dying
+farmer's words, 'God A'mighty little knows what he's about in taking me!
+And Squire will be mad'; and he conceived the character of the man, and
+his absorption in the farm where he had lived and worked and around
+which he grouped his conceptions of religion and duty. The later type of
+farmer was evoked similarly by a quotation in the dialect of his county:
+'When I canters my herse along the ramper, I 'ears "proputty, proputty,
+proputty"'; and again Tennyson achieved a triumph of characterization.
+It is here perhaps that he comes nearest to the achievements of his
+great rival Browning in the field of dramatic lyrics.
+
+Apart from the writing and publication of his poems, we cannot divide
+Tennyson's later life into definite sections. By 1850 his habits had
+been formed, his friendships established, his fame assured; such
+landmarks as are furnished by the birth of his children, by his
+journeyings abroad, by the homes in which he settled, point to no
+essential change in the current of his life. Of the perfect happiness
+which marriage brought to him, of the charm and dignity which enabled
+Mrs. Tennyson to hold her place worthily at his side, many witnesses
+have spoken. Two sons were born to him, one of whom died in 1886, while
+the other, named after his lost friend, lived to write the Memoir which
+will always be the chief authority for our knowledge of the man. His
+homes soon became household words--so great was the spell which Tennyson
+cast over the hearts of his readers. Farringford, at the western end of
+the Isle of Wight, was first tenanted by him in 1853, and was bought in
+1856. Here the poet enjoyed perfect quiet, a genial climate and the
+proximity of the sea, for which his love never failed. It was a very
+different coast to the bleak sandhills and wide flats of Mablethorpe.
+Above Freshwater the noble line of the Downs rises and falls as it runs
+westward to the Needles, where it plunges abruptly into the sea; and
+here on the springy turf, a tall romantic figure in wide-brimmed hat and
+flowing cloak, the poet would often walk. But Farringford, lying low in
+the shelter of the hills, proved too hot in summer; Freshwater was
+discovered by tourists too often inquisitive about the great; and so,
+after ten or twelve years, he was searching for another home, some
+remoter fastness set on higher ground. This he discovered on the borders
+of Surrey and Sussex near Haslemere, where Black Down rises to a height
+of 900 feet above the sea and commands a wide prospect over the blue
+expanse of the weald. Here he found copses and commons haunted by the
+song of birds, here he raised plantations close at hand to shelter him
+from the rude northern winds, and here he built the stately house of
+Aldworth where, some thirty years later, he was to die.
+
+To both houses came frequent guests. For, shy as he was of paying
+visits, he loved to see in his own house men and women who could talk to
+him as equals--nor was he always averse to those of reverent temper, so
+they were careful not to jar on his fastidious tastes. In some ways it
+was a pity that he did not come to closer quarters with the rougher
+forces that were fermenting in the industrial districts. It might have
+helped him to a better understanding of the classes that were pushing to
+the front, who were to influence so profoundly the England of the
+morrow. But the strain of kindly sympathy in Tennyson's nature can be
+seen at its best in his intercourse with cottagers, sailors, and other
+humble folk who lived near his doors. The stories which his son tells us
+show how the poet was able to obtain an insight into their minds and to
+write poems like 'The Grandmother' with artistic truth. And no visitor
+received a heartier welcome at Farringford than Garibaldi, who was at
+once peasant and sailor, and who remained so none the less when he had
+become a hero of European fame. To Englishmen of nearly every cultured
+profession Tennyson's hospitality was freely extended--we need only
+instance Professor Tyndall, Dean Bradley, James Anthony Froude, Aubrey
+de Vere, G. F. Watts, Henry Irving, Hubert Parry, Lord Dufferin, and
+that most constant of friends, Benjamin Jowett, pre-eminent among the
+Oxford celebrities of the day. Among his immediate neighbours he
+conceived a peculiar affection for Sir John Simeon, whose death in 1870
+called forth the stanzas 'In the Garden at Swainston'; and no one was
+more at home at Farringford than Julia Cameron, famous among early
+photographers, who has left us some of the best likenesses of the poet
+in middle and later life.
+
+Tennyson was not familiar with foreign countries to the same degree as
+Browning, nor was he ever a great traveller. When he went abroad he
+needed the help of some loyal friend, like Francis Palgrave or Frederick
+Locker, to safeguard him against pitfalls, and to shield him from
+annoyance. When he was too old to stand the fatigue of railway
+journeys, he was willing to be taken for a cruise on a friend's yacht;
+and thus he visited many parts of Scotland and the harbours of
+Scandinavia. Amid new surroundings he was not always easy to please; bad
+food or smelly streets would call forth loud protests and upset him for
+a day; but his friends found it worth their while to risk some anxiety
+in order to enjoy his keen observation and the originality of his talk.
+Wherever he went he took with him his stored wisdom on Homer, Dante, and
+the 'Di maiores' of literature; and when Gladstone, too, happened to be
+one of the party on board ship, the talk must have been well worth
+hearing. As in his youth, so now, Tennyson's mind moved most naturally
+on a lofty plane and he was most at home with the great poets of the
+past; and with the exception of a few poems like 'All along the valley',
+where the torrents at Cauteretz reminded him of an early visit with
+Hallam to the Pyrenees, we can trace little evidence in his poetry of
+the journeys which he made. But we can see from his letters that he was
+kindled by the beauty of Italian cities and their treasures. In every
+picture-gallery which he visited he showed his preference for Titian and
+the rich colour of the Venetian painters. He refused to be bound by the
+conventional English taste for Alpine scenery, and broke out into abuse
+of the discoloured water in the Grindelwald glacier--'a filthy thing,
+and looking as if a thousand London seasons had passed over it'. In all
+places, among all people, he said what he thought and felt, with
+independence and conviction.
+
+One incident connecting him with Italy is worthy of mention as showing
+that the poet, who 'from out the northern island' came at times to visit
+them, was known and esteemed by the people of Italy. When the Mantuans
+celebrated in 1885 the nineteenth centenary of the death of Virgil, the
+classic poet to whom Tennyson owed most, they asked him to write an
+ode, and nobly he rose to the occasion, attaining a felicity of phrase
+which is hardly excelled in the choicest lines of Virgil himself. But it
+is as the laureate of his own country that he is of primary interest,
+and it is time to inquire how he fulfilled the functions of his office,
+and how he rendered that office of value to the State.
+
+When he was first appointed, Queen Victoria had let him know that he was
+to be excused from the obligation of writing complimentary verse to
+celebrate the doings of the court. Of his own accord he composed
+occasional odes for the marriages of her sons, and showed some of his
+practised skill in dignifying such themes; but it is not here that he
+found his work as laureate. He achieved greater success in the poems
+which he wrote to honour the exploits of our army and navy, in the past
+or the present. In his ballad of 'The Revenge', in his Balaclava poems,
+in the 'Siege of Lucknow', he struck a heroic note which found a ready
+echo in the hearts of soldiers and sailors and those who love the
+services. Above all, in the great ode on the death of the Duke of
+Wellington he has stirred all the chords of national feeling as no other
+laureate before him, and has enriched our literature with a jewel which
+is beyond price.
+
+The Arthurian epic failed to achieve its national aim, and the
+historical dramas, though inspired by great principles which have helped
+to shape our history, never touched those large circles to which as
+laureate he should appeal. Some might judge that his function was best
+fulfilled in the lyrics to be found scattered throughout his work which
+praise the slow, ordered progress of English liberties. Passages from
+_Maud_ or _In Memoriam_ will occur to many readers, still more the three
+lyrics generally printed together at the end of the 1842 poems,
+beginning with the well-known tines, 'Of old sat Freedom on the
+heights', 'Love thou thy land', and 'You ask me why though ill at ease'.
+Here we listen to the voice of English Liberalism uttered in very
+different tones from those of Byron and Shelley, expressing the mind of
+one who recoiled from French Revolutions and had little sympathy with
+their aims of universal equality. In this he represented very truly that
+Victorian movement which was guided by Cobden and Mill, by Peel and
+Gladstone, which conferred such practical benefits upon the England of
+their day; but it is hardly the temper that we expect of an ardent poet,
+at any rate in the days of his youth. The burning passion of Carlyle,
+Ruskin, or William Morris, however tempered by other feelings, called
+forth a heartier response in the breast of the toiling multitudes.
+
+It may be that the claim of Tennyson to popular sovereignty will, in the
+end, rest chiefly on the pleasure which he gave to many thousands of his
+fellow-countrymen, a pleasure to be renewed and found again in English
+scenes, and in thoughts which coloured grey lives and warmed cold
+hearts, which shed the ray of faith on those who could accept no creeds
+and who yet yearned for some hope of an after-life to cheer their
+declining days. That he gave this pleasure is certain--to men and women
+of all classes from Samuel Bamford,[29] the Durham weaver, who saved his
+pence to buy the precious volumes of the 'thirties, to Queen Victoria on
+her throne, who in the reading of _In Memoriam_ found one of her chief
+consolations in the hour of widowhood.
+
+[Note 29: See _Memoir_, by Hallam, Lord Tennyson, vol. i, p. 283
+(Macmillan).]
+
+It was given to Tennyson to live a long life, and to know more joy than
+sorrow--to be gladdened by the homage of two hemispheres, to lament the
+loss of his old friends who went before him (Spedding in 1881,
+FitzGerald in 1883, Robert Browning in 1889), to write his most famous
+lyric 'Crossing the Bar' at the age of 80, and to be soothed and
+strengthened to the end by the presence of his wife. For some weeks in
+the autumn of 1892 he lay in growing weakness at Aldworth taking
+farewell of the sights and sounds that he had loved so long. To him now
+it had come to hear with dying ears 'the earliest pipe of half-awakened
+birds' and to see with dying eyes 'the casement slowly grow a glimmering
+square'. Early on October 5 he had an access of energy, and called to
+have the blinds drawn up--'I want', he said, 'to see the sky and the
+light'. The next day he died, and a week later a country wagon bore the
+coffin to Haslemere. Thence it passed to Westminster, where his dust was
+to be laid beside that of Browning, among the great men who had gone
+before. In what mood he faced death we can learn from his own words:
+
+  Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the limit of thy human state,
+  Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is great,
+  Nor the myriad world, His shadow, nor the silent Opener of the Gate![30]
+
+[Note 30: 'God and the Universe,' from _Death of Oenone_, &c.
+Macmillan, (1892.)]
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES KINGSLEY
+
+From a drawing by W. S. Hunt in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES KINGSLEY
+
+1819-75
+
+1819. Born at Holne on Dartmoor, June 12.
+1830-6. Father rector of Clovelly.
+1832. Grammar School at Helston, Cornwall.
+1836. Father rector of St. Luke's, Chelsea. C. K. to King's College,
+      London.
+1838-42. Magdalene College, Cambridge.
+1842. Ordained at Farnham. Curate of Eversley.
+1844. Marriage to Fanny Grenfell. Friendship with F. D. Maurice.
+1844. Rector of Eversley.
+1848. Chartist riots. 'Parson Lot' pamphlets.
+1850. _Alton Locke_ published.
+1855. _Westward Ho!_ published.
+1857. _Two Years Ago_ published.
+1859. Chaplain to the Queen.
+1860. Professor of Modern History at Cambridge.
+1864. Tour in the south of France.
+1869. Canon of Chester.
+1870. Tour to the West Indies.
+1873. Canon of Westminster.
+1874. Tour to California.
+1875. Death at Eversley, January 23.
+
+CHARLES KINGSLEY
+
+PARISH PRIEST
+
+
+If Charles Kingsley had been born in Scandinavia a thousand years
+earlier, one more valiant Viking would have sailed westward from the
+deep fiords of his native home to risk his fortunes in a new world, one
+who by his courage, his foresight, and his leadership of men was well
+fitted to be captain of his bark. The lover of the open-air life, the
+searcher after knowledge, the fighter that he was, he would have been in
+his element, foremost in the fray, most eager in the quest. But it was
+given to him to live in quieter times, to graft on the old Norse stock
+the graces of modern culture and the virtues of a Christian; and in a
+peaceful parish of rural England he found full scope for his gifts.
+There he taught his own and succeeding generations how full and
+beneficent the life of a parish priest can be. Our villages and towns
+produced many notable types of rector in the nineteenth century, Keble,
+Hawker, Hook, Robertson, Dolling, and scores of others; but none touched
+life at more points, none became so truly national a figure as Charles
+Kingsley in his Eversley home.
+
+His father was of an old squire family; like his son he was a clergyman,
+a naturalist, and a sportsman. His mother, a Miss Lucas, came from
+Barbados; and while she wrote poetry with feeling and skill, she had
+also a practical gift of management. His father's calling involved
+several changes of residence. Those which had most influence on his son
+were his removal in 1824 to Barnack, on the edge of the fens, still
+untamed and full of wild life, and in 1830 to Clovelly in North Devon.
+More than thirty years later, when asked to fill up the usual questions
+in a lady's album, he wrote that his favourite scenery was 'wide flats
+and open sea'. He was precocious as a child and perpetrated poems and
+sermons at the age of four; but very early he developed a habit of
+observation and a healthy interest in things outside himself. Such a
+nature could not be indifferent to the beauty of Clovelly, to the coming
+and going of its fishermen, and to the romance and danger of their
+lives. The steep village-street nestling among the woods, the little
+harbour sheltered by the sandstone cliffs, the wide view over the blue
+water, won his lifelong affection.
+
+His parents talked of sending him to Eton or Rugby, but in the end they
+decided to put him with Derwent Coleridge, the poet's son, at the
+Grammar School of Helston. Here he had the scenery which he loved, and
+masters who developed his strong bent towards natural science; and here
+he laid the foundations of his knowledge of botany, which remained all
+his life his favourite recreation. He was an eager reader, but not a
+close student of books; fond of outdoor life, but not skilled in
+athletic games; capable of much effort and much endurance, but rather
+irregular in his spurts of energy. A more methodical training might have
+saved him some mistakes, but it might also have taken the edge off that
+fresh enthusiasm which made intercourse with him at all times seem like
+a breath of moorland air. Here he developed an independence of mind and
+a fearlessness of opinion which is rarely to be found in the atmosphere
+of a big public school.
+
+At the age of seventeen, when his father was appointed to St. Luke's,
+Chelsea, he left Helston and spent two years attending lectures at
+King's College, London, and preparing for Cambridge. These were by no
+means among his happier years. He disliked London and he rebelled
+against the dullness of life in a vicarage overrun with district
+visitors and mothers' meetings. His father, a strong evangelical,
+objected to various forms of public amusement, and Charles, though loyal
+and affectionate to his parents, fretted to find no outlet for his
+energies. He made a few friends and devoured many books, but his chief
+delight was to get away from town to old west-country haunts. Nor was
+his life at Cambridge entirely happy. His excitability was great: his
+self-control was not yet developed. Rowing did not exhaust his physical
+energy, which broke out from time to time in midnight fishing raids and
+walks from Cambridge to London. He wasted so much of his time that he
+nearly imperilled his chance of taking a good degree, and might perhaps
+count himself lucky when, thanks to a heroic effort at the eleventh
+hour, his excellent abilities won him a first class in classics. At
+this time he was terribly shaken by religious doubts. But in one of his
+vacations in 1839 he met Fanny Grenfell, his future wife, and soon he
+was on such a footing that he could open to her his inmost thoughts. It
+was she who helped him in his wavering decision to take Holy Orders;
+and, when he went down in 1842, he set himself to read seriously and
+thoroughly for Ordination. Early in 1844 he was admitted to deacon's
+orders at Farnham.
+
+His first office marked out his path through life. With a short interval
+between his holding the curacy and the rectory of Eversley,[31] he had
+his home for thirty-three years at this Hampshire village so intimately
+connected with his name. Eversley lies on the borders of Berkshire and
+Hampshire, in the diocese of Winchester, near the famous house of
+Bramshill, on the edge of the sandy fir-covered waste which stretches
+across Surrey. To understand the charm of its rough commons and
+self-sown woods one must read Kingsley's _Prose Idylls_, especially the
+sketch called 'My Winter Garden'. There he served for a year as curate,
+living in bachelor quarters on the green, learning to love the place and
+its people: there, when Sir John Cope offered him the living in 1844, he
+returned a married man to live in the Rectory House beside the church,
+which may still be seen little altered to-day. A breakdown from
+overwork, an illness of his wife's, a higher appointment in the Church,
+might be the cause of his passing a few weeks or even months away; but
+year in, year out, he gave of his very best to Eversley for thirty-three
+years, and to it he returned from his journeys with all the more ardour
+to resume his work among his own people. The church was dilapidated, the
+Rectory was badly drained, the parish had been neglected by an absentee
+rector. For long periods together Kingsley was too poor to afford a
+curate: when he had one, the luxury was paid for by extra labour in
+taking private pupils. He had disappointments and anxieties, but his
+courage never faltered. He concentrated his energies on steady progress
+in things material and moral, and whatever his hand found to do, he did
+it with his might.
+
+[Note 31: For a few weeks in 1844 he was curate of Pimperne in
+Dorset.]
+
+The church and its services called for instant attention. The Holy
+Communion had been celebrated only three times a year; the other
+services were few and irregular; on Sundays the church was empty and the
+alehouse was full. The building was badly kept, the churchyard let out
+for grazing, the whole place destitute of reverence. What the service
+came to be under the new Rector we can read on the testimony of many
+visitors. The intensity of his devotion at all times, the inspiration
+which the great festivals of the Church particularly roused in him,
+changed all this rapidly. He did all he could to draw his parishioners
+to church; but he had no rigid Puritanical views about the Sabbath. A
+Staff-College officer, who frequently visited him on Sundays, tells us
+of 'the genial, happy, unreserved intercourse of those Sunday afternoons
+spent at the Rectory, and how the villagers were free to play their
+cricket--"Paason he do'ant objec'--not 'e--as loik as not, 'e'll come
+and look on".' All his life he supported the movement for opening
+museums to the public on Sundays, and this at a time when few of the
+clergy were bold enough to speak on his side. The Church was not his
+only organ for teaching. He started schools and informal classes. In
+winter he would sometimes give up his leisure to such work every evening
+of the week. The Rectory, for all its books and bottles, its
+fishing-rods and curious specimens, was not a mere refuge for his own
+work and his own hobbies, but a centre of light and warmth where all his
+parishioners might come and find a welcome. He was one of the first to
+start 'Penny Readings' in his parish, to lighten the monotony of winter
+evenings with music, poetry, stories, and lectures; and though his
+parish was so wide and scattered, he tried to rally support for a
+village reading-room, and kept it alive for some years.
+
+His afternoons were regularly given to parish visiting, except when
+there were other definite calls upon his time. He soon came to know
+every man, woman, and child in his parish. His sympathies were so wide
+that he could make himself at home with every one, with none more so
+than the gipsies and poachers, who shared his intimate knowledge of the
+neighbouring heaths and of the practices, lawful and unlawful, by which
+they could be made to supply food. He would listen to their stories,
+sympathize with their troubles and speak frankly in return. There was no
+condescension. One of his pupils speaks of 'the simple, delicate, deep
+respect for the poor', which could be seen in his manner and his talk
+among the cottagers. He could be severe enough when severity was needed,
+as when he compelled a cruel farmer to kill 'a miserable horse which was
+rotting alive in front of his house'; and he could deal no less
+drastically with hypocrisy. When a professional beggar fell on his knees
+at the Rectory gate and pretended to pray, he was at once ejected by the
+Rector with every mark of indignation and contumely. But the weak and
+suffering always made a special appeal to him. Though it was easy to vex
+and exasperate him, he could always put away his own troubles in
+presence of his own children or of any who needed his help. He had that
+intense power of sympathy which enabled him to understand and reach the
+heart.
+
+From a letter to his greatest friend, Tom Hughes, written in 1851, we
+get a glimpse of a day in his life--'a sorter kinder sample day'. He was
+up at five to see a dying man and stayed with him till eight. He then
+went out for air and exercise, fished all the morning and killed eight
+fish. He went back to his invalid at three. Later he spent three hours
+attending a meeting convoked by his Archdeacon about Sunday schools, and
+at 10.30 he was back in his study writing to his friends.
+
+But though he himself calls this a 'sample day', it does no justice to
+one form of his activities. Most days in the year he would put away all
+thought of fishing, shut himself up in his study morning and evening,
+and devote himself to reading and writing. Great care was taken over his
+weekly sermons. Monday was, if possible, given to rest; but from Tuesday
+till Friday evening they took up the chief share of his thoughts. And
+then there were the books that he wrote, novels, pamphlets, history
+lectures, scientific essays, on which he largely depended to support his
+wife and family. Besides this he kept up an extensive correspondence
+with friends and acquaintances. Many wrote to consult him about
+political and religious questions; from many he was himself trying to
+draw information on the phenomena of the science which he was trying to
+study at the time. Among the latter were Geikie, Lyell, Wallace, and
+Darwin himself, giants among scientific men, to whom he wrote with
+genuine humility, even when his name was a household word throughout
+England. His books can sometimes be associated with visits to definite
+places which supplied him with material. It is not difficult to connect
+_Westward Ho!_ with his winter at Bideford in 1854, and _Two Years Ago_
+with his Pen-y-gwryd fishing in 1856. Memories of _Hereward the Wake_ go
+back to his early childhood in the Fens, of _Alton Locke_ to his
+undergraduate days at Cambridge. But he had not the time for the
+laborious search after 'local colour' with which we are familiar to-day.
+The bulk of the work was done in his study at Eversley, executed
+rapidly, some of it too rapidly; but the subjects were those of which
+his mind was full, and the thoughts must have been pursued in many a
+quiet hour on the heathery commons or beside the streams of his own
+neighbourhood.
+
+About his books, his own judgement agreed with that of his friends.
+'What you say about my "Ergon" being poetry is quite true. I could not
+write _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and I can write poetry:... there is no denying
+it: I do feel a different being when I get into metre: I feel like an
+otter in the water instead of an otter ashore.' The value of his novels
+is in their spirit rather than in their artistic form or truth; but it
+is foolish to disparage their worth, since they have exercised so marked
+an influence on the characters and lives of so many Englishmen,
+especially our soldiers and sailors, inspiring them to higher courage
+and more unselfish virtue. Perhaps the best example of his prose is the
+_Prose Idylls_, sketches of fen-land, trout streams, and moors, which
+combine his gifts so happily, his observation of natural objects, and
+the poetic imagination with which he transfuses these objects and brings
+them near to the heart of man. There were very few men who could draw
+such joy from familiar English landscapes, and could communicate it to
+others. The cult of sport, of science, and of beauty has here become one
+and has found its true high priest. In poetry his more ambitious efforts
+were _The Saint's Tragedy_, a drama in blank verse on the story of St.
+Elizabeth of Hungary, and _Andromeda_, a revival of the old Greek legend
+in the old hexameter measure. But what are most sure to live are his
+lyrics, 'Airlie Beacon', 'The Three Fishers', 'The Sands of Dee', with
+their simplicity and true note of song.
+
+The combination of this poetic gift with a strong interest in science
+and a wide knowledge of it is most unusual; but there can be no
+mistaking the genuine feeling which Charles Kingsley had for the latter.
+It took one very practical form in his zeal for sanitation. In 1854 when
+the public, so irrational in its moments of excitement, was calling for
+a national fast-day on account of the spread of cholera, he heartily
+supported Lord Palmerston, who refused to grant it. He held it impious
+and wrong to attribute to a special visitation from God what was due to
+the blindness, laziness, and selfishness of our governing classes. His
+article in _Fraser's Magazine_ entitled 'Who causes pestilence?' roused
+much criticism: it said things that comfortable people did not like to
+hear, and said them frankly; it was far in advance of the public opinion
+of that time, but its truth no one would dispute to-day. And what his
+pen did for the nation, his example did for the parish. He drained
+unwholesome pools in his own garden, and he persuaded his neighbours to
+do the same. He taught them daily lessons about the value of fresh air
+and clean water: no details were too dull and wearisome in the cause. To
+many people his novels, like those of Dickens and Charles Reade, are
+spoilt by the advocacy of social reforms. The novel with a purpose was
+characteristic of the early Victorian Age, and both in _Alton Locke_ and
+in _Two Years Ago_ he makes little disguise of the zeal with which he
+preaches sanitary reform. Of the more attractive sciences, which he
+pursued with equal intensity, there is little room to speak. Botany was
+his first love and it remained first to the end. Zoology at times ran it
+close, and his letters from seaside places are full of the names of
+marine creatures which he stored in tanks and examined with his
+microscope. A dull day on the coast was inconceivable to him. Geology,
+too, thrilled him with its wonders, and was the subject of many letters.
+
+Side by side with his hobby of natural history went his love of sport:
+it was impossible for him to separate the one from the other. Fishing
+was his chief delight; he pursued it with equal keenness in the chalk
+streams of Hampshire, in the salmon rivers of Ireland, in the desolate
+tarns on the Welsh mountains. In the visitors' book of the inn at
+Pen-y-gwryd, Tom Hughes, Tom Taylor, and he left alternate quatrains of
+doggerel to celebrate their stay, written _currente calamo_, as the
+spirit prompted them. This is Charles Kingsley's first quatrain:
+
+    I came to Pen-y-gwryd in frantic hopes of slaying
+    Grilse, salmon, three-pound red-fleshed trout
+          and what else there's no saying:
+    But bitter cold and lashing rain and black nor'-eastern skies, sir,
+    Drove me from fish to botany, a sadder man and wiser.
+
+Each had his disappointment through the weather, which each expressed in
+verse; but it took more than bad weather to damp the spirits of three
+such ardent open-air enthusiasts. Hunting was another favourite sport,
+though he rarely indulged himself in this luxury, and only when he could
+do so without much expense. But whenever a friend gave him a mount,
+Kingsley was ready to follow the Berkshire hounds, and with his
+knowledge of the country he was able to hold his own with the best.
+
+Let us try to imagine him then as he walked about the lanes and commons
+of Eversley in middle life, a spare upright figure, above the middle
+height, with alert step, informal but not slovenly in dress, with no
+white tie or special mark of his profession. His head was one to attract
+notice anywhere with the grand hawk-like nose, firm mouth, and flashing
+eye. The deep lines furrowed between the brows gave his face an almost
+stern expression which his cheery conversation soon belied. He might be
+carrying a fishing-rod or a bottle of medicine for a sick parishioner,
+or sometimes both: his faithful Dandie Dinmont would be in attendance
+and perhaps one of his children walking at his side. His walk would be
+swift and eager, with his eye wandering restlessly around to observe all
+that he passed: 'it seemed as if no bird or beast or insect, scarcely a
+cloud in the sky, passed by him unnoticed, unwelcomed.' So too with
+humanity--in breadth of sympathy he resembled 'the Shirra', who became
+known to every wayfarer between Teviot and Tweed. Gipsy boy, farm-hand,
+old grandmother, each would be sure of a greeting and a few words of
+talk when they met the Rector on his rounds. In society he might at
+times be too impetuous or insistent, when questions were stirred in
+which he was deeply interested. Tennyson tells us how he 'walked hard up
+and down the study for hours, smoking furiously and affirming that
+tobacco was the only thing that kept his nerves quiet'. Green compares
+him to a restless animal, and Stopford Brooke speaks of his
+quick-rushing walk, his keen face like a sword, and his body thinned out
+to a lath, and complains that he 'often screams when he ought to speak'.
+But this excitability was soothed by the country, and in his own parish
+he was at his best. He would never have been so beloved by his
+parishioners, if they had not found him willing to listen as well as to
+advise and to instruct.
+
+His first venture into public life met with less general favour. The
+year 1848 saw many upheavals in Europe. On the Continent thrones
+tottered and fell, republics started up for a moment and faded away. In
+England it was the year of the Chartist riots, and political and social
+problems gave plenty of matter for thought. Monster meetings were held
+in London, which were not free from disorder. The wealthier classes and
+the Government were alarmed, troops were brought up to London and the
+Duke of Wellington put in command. Events seemed to point to outbreaks
+of violence and the starting of a class-war. Frederick Denison Maurice,
+whom above all men living Kingsley revered, was the leader of a group of
+men who were greatly stirred by the movement. They saw that more than
+political reform and political charters were needed; and, while full of
+sympathy for the working classes, they were not minded to say smooth
+things and prophesy Utopias in which they had no belief. Filled with the
+desire to help his fellow-men, indignant at abuses which he had seen
+with his own eyes, Kingsley came at once to their side. He went to
+London to see for himself, attended meetings, wrote pamphlets, and
+seemed to be promoting agitation. The tone in which he wrote can best be
+seen by a few words from the pamphlet addressed to the 'Workmen of
+England', which was posted up in London. 'The Charter is not bad, if the
+men who use it are not bad. But will the Charter make you free? Will it
+free you from slavery to ten-pound bribes? Slavery to gin and beer?
+Slavery to every spouter who flatters your self-conceit and stirs up
+bitterness and headlong rage in you? That I guess is real slavery, to be
+a slave to one's own stomach, one's pocket, one's own temper.' This is
+hardly the tone of the agitator as known to us to-day. With his friends
+Kingsley brought out a periodical, _Politics for the People_, in which
+he wrote in the same tone. 'My only quarrel with the Charter is that it
+does not go far enough in reform.... I think you have fallen into the
+same mistake as the rich of whom you complain, I mean the mistake of
+fancying that legislative reform is social reform, or that men's hearts
+can be changed by Act of Parliament.' He did not limit himself to
+denouncing such errors. He encouraged the working man to educate himself
+and to find rational pleasures in life, contributing papers on the
+National Gallery and bringing out the human interest of the pictures.
+'Parson Lot', the _nom de guerre_ which Kingsley adopted, became widely
+known for warm-hearted exhortations, for practical and sagacious
+counsels.
+
+Two years later he published _Alton Locke_, describing the life of a
+young tailor whose mind and whose fortunes are profoundly influenced by
+the Chartist movement. From a literary point of view it is far from
+being his best work; and the critics agreed to belittle it at the time
+and to pass it over with apology at his death. But it received a warm
+welcome from others. While it roused the imagination of many young men
+and set them thinking, the veteran Carlyle could speak of 'the snatches
+of excellent poetical description, occasional sunbursts of noble
+insight, everywhere a certain wild intensity which holds the reader fast
+as by a spell'.
+
+Should any one ask why a rector of a country parish mixed himself up in
+London agitation, many answers could be given. His help was sought by
+Maurice, who worked among the London poor. Many of the questions at
+issue affected also the agricultural labourer. Only one who was giving
+his life to serve the poor could effectively expose the mistakes of
+their champions. The upper classes, squires and merchants and
+politicians, had shut their eyes and missed their chances. So when the
+ship is on fire, no one blames the chaplain or the ship's doctor for
+lending a hand with the buckets.[32]
+
+[Note 32: See Preface by T. Hughes prefixed to later editions of
+_Alton Locke_.]
+
+That his efforts in London met with success can be seen from many
+sources besides the popularity of _Alton Locke_. He wrote a pamphlet
+entitled 'Cheap Clothes and Nasty', denouncing the sweaters' shops and
+supporting the co-operative movement, which was beginning to arise out
+of the ashes of Chartism. Of this pamphlet a friend told him that he saw
+three copies on the table in the Guards' Club, and that he heard that
+captains in the Guards were going to the co-operative shop in Castle
+Street and buying coats there. A success of a different kind and one
+more valued by Kingsley himself was the conversion of Thomas Cooper, the
+popular writer in Socialist magazines, who preached atheistical
+doctrines weekly to many thousand working men. Kingsley found him to be
+sincerely honest, spent infinite time in writing him friendly letters,
+discussing their differences of opinion, and some years later had the
+joy of inducing him to become an active preacher of the Gospel. But most
+of the well-to-do people, including the clergy, were prejudiced against
+Kingsley by his Radical views. On one occasion he had to face a painful
+scene in a London church, when the vicar who had invited him to preach
+rose after the sermon and formally protested against the views to which
+his congregation had been listening. Bishop Blomfield at first sided
+with the vicar; but in the end he did full justice to the sincerity and
+charity of Kingsley's views and sanctioned his continuing to preach in
+the Diocese.
+
+It was his literary successes which helped most to break down the
+prejudice existing against him in society. _Hypatia_, published in 1853,
+had a mixed reception; but _Westward Ho!_ appearing two years later, was
+universally popular. His eloquence in the pulpit was becoming known to a
+wider circle, largely owing to officers who came over from Aldershot and
+Sandhurst to hear him; and early in 1859 he was asked to preach before
+the Queen and Prince Consort. His appointment as chaplain to the Queen
+followed before the year was out; and this made a great difference in
+his position and prospects. What he valued equally was the hearty
+friendship which he formed with the Prince Consort. They had the same
+tastes, the same interests, the same serious outlook on life. A year
+later came a still higher distinction when Kingsley was appointed
+Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. His history lectures, it is
+generally agreed, are not of permanent value as a contribution to the
+knowledge of the subject. With his parish work and other interests he
+had no time for profound study. But his eloquence and descriptive powers
+were such as to attract a large class of students, and many can still
+read with pleasure his lectures on _The Roman and the Teuton_, in which
+he was fired by the moral lessons involved in the decay of the Roman
+empire and the coming of the vigorous young northern races. Apart from
+his lectures he had made his mark in Cambridge by the friendly relations
+which he established with many of the undergraduates and the personal
+influence which he exercised. But he knew better than any one else his
+shortcomings as an historian, the preparation of his lectures gave him
+great anxiety and labour, and in 1869 he resigned the office.
+
+The next honour which fell to him was a canonry at Chester, and in 1873,
+less than two years before his death, he exchanged it for a stall at
+Westminster. These historic cities with their old buildings and
+associations attracted him very strongly: preaching in the Abbey was
+even dangerously exciting to a man of his temperament. But while he gave
+his services generously during his months of office, as at Chester in
+founding a Natural History Society, he never deserted his old work and
+his old parish. Eversley continued to be his home, and during the
+greater part of each year to engross his thoughts.
+
+Literature, science, and sport were, as we have seen, the three
+interests which absorbed his leisure hours. A fourth, partaking in some
+measure of all three, was travel, a hobby which the strenuous pursuit of
+duty rarely permitted him to indulge. Ill-health or a complete breakdown
+sometimes sent him away perforce, and it is to this that he chiefly owed
+his knowledge of other climes. He has left us some fascinating pictures
+of the south of France, the rocks of Biarritz, the terrace at Pau, the
+blue waters of the Mediterranean, and the golden arches of the Pont du
+Gard; but the voyages that thrilled him most were those that he took to
+America, when he sailed the Spanish main in the track of Drake and
+Raleigh and Richard Grenville. The first journey in 1870 was to the West
+Indies; the second and longer one took him to New York and Quebec, and
+across the continent to the Yosemite and San Francisco. This was in
+1874, the last year of his life, and he was received everywhere with the
+utmost respect and goodwill. His name was now famous on both sides of
+the Atlantic, and the voice of opposition was stilled. The public had
+changed its attitude to him, but he himself was unchanged. He had the
+same readiness to gather up new knowledge, and to get into friendly
+touch with every kind of man, the same reluctance to talk about himself.
+Only the yearning towards the unseen was growing stronger. The poet
+Whittier, who met him at Boston, found him unwilling to talk about his
+own books or even about the new cities which he was visiting, but
+longing for counsel from his brother poet on the high themes of a future
+life and the final destiny of the human race.
+
+While he was in California he was taken ill with pleurisy; and when he
+came back to England he had so serious a relapse in the autumn that he
+could hardly perform his duties at Westminster. He had never wished for
+long life, his strength was exhausted, the ardent soul had worn out its
+sheath. A dangerous illness of his wife's, threatening to leave him
+solitary, hastened the end. For her sake he fought a while against the
+pneumonia which set in, but the effort was in vain, and on January 23,
+in his own room at Eversley, he met his death contented and serene.
+Twenty years before he had said, 'God forgive me if I am wrong, but I
+look forward to it with an intense and reverent curiosity'.
+
+These words of his sum up some of his most marked characteristics. Of
+his 'curiosity' there is no need to say more: all his life he was
+pursuing eager researches into rocks, flowers, animals, and his
+fellow-men. 'Intensity' has been picked out by many of his friends as
+the word which, more than any other, expresses the peculiar quality of
+his nature. This does not mean a weak excitability. His letters to J. S.
+Mill on the women-suffrage movement show that this hysterical element,
+which was often to be found in the women supporting it, was what most he
+feared. He himself defines it well--'my blessed habit of intensity. I go
+at what I am about as if there was nothing else in the world for the
+time being.' This quality, which many great men put into their work,
+Kingsley put both into his work and into his play-time. Critics will say
+that he paid for it: it is easy to quote the familiar line: 'Neque
+semper arcum tendit Apollo.' But Horace is not the poet to whom Charles
+Kingsley would go for counsel: he would only say that he got full value
+in both, and that he never regretted the bargain.
+
+But it would be no less true to say that 'Reverence' is the key-note of
+his character. This fact was impressed on all who saw him take the
+services in his parish church, and it was an exaltation of reverence
+which uplifted his congregation and stamped itself on their memories. It
+is seen, too, in his political views. The Radical Parson, the upholder
+of Chartism, was in many ways a strong Tory. He had a great belief in
+the land-owning classes, and an admiration for what remained of the
+Feudal System. He believed that the old relation between squire and
+villagers, if each did his duty, worked far better than the modern
+pretence of Equality and Independence. Like Disraeli, like Ruskin, and
+like many other men of high imagination, he distrusted the Manchester
+School and the policy that in the labour market each class should be
+left to fend for itself. Radical as he was, he defended the House of
+Lords and the hereditary system. So, too, in Church questions, though he
+was an anti-Tractarian, he had a great reverence for the Athanasian
+Creed and in general was a High Churchman. He had none of the fads which
+we associate with the Radical party. Total abstinence he condemned as a
+rigid rule, though there was no man more severe in his attitude to
+drunkenness. He believed that God's gifts were for man's enjoyment, and
+he set his face against asceticism. He trained his own body to vigorous
+manhood and he had remarkable self-control; and he wished to help each
+man to do this for himself and not to be driven to it by what he
+considered a false system. Logically it may be easy to find
+contradictions in the views which he expressed at different times; but
+his life shows an essential unity in aim and practice.
+
+It has been the fashion to label Charles Kingsley and his teaching with
+the nickname of 'Muscular Christianity', a name which he detested and
+disclaimed. It implied that he and his school were of the full-blooded
+robust order of men, who had no sympathy for weakness, and no message
+for those who could not follow the same strenuous course as themselves.
+As a fact Kingsley had his full share of bodily illnesses and suffered
+at all times from a highly-wrought nervous organization; when pain to
+others was involved, he was as tender and sympathetic as a woman. He was
+a born fighter, too reckless in attack, as we see in his famous dispute
+with Cardinal Newman about the honesty of the Tractarians. But he was
+not bitter or resentful. He owned himself that in this case he had met a
+better logician than himself: later he expressed his admiration for
+Newman's poem, 'The Dream of Gerontius', and in his letters he praises
+the tone in which the Tractarians write--'a solemn and gentle
+earnestness which is most beautiful and which I wish I may ever attain'.
+The point which Matthew Arnold singles out in estimating his character
+is the width of his sympathies. 'I think', he says, 'he was the most
+generous man I have ever known, the most forward to praise what he
+thought good, the most willing to admire, the most incapable of being
+made ill-natured or even indifferent by having to support ill-natured
+attacks himself. Among men of letters I know nothing so rare as this.'
+To the gibe about 'Muscular Christianity' Kingsley had his own answer.
+He said that with his tastes and gifts he had a special power of
+appealing to the wild rough natures which were more at home in the
+country than the town, who were too self-forgetful, and too heedless of
+the need for culture and for making use of their opportunities. Jacob,
+the man of intellect, had many spiritual guides, and the poor outcast,
+Esau, was too often overlooked. As he said, 'The one idea of my life was
+to tell Esau that he has a birthright as well as Jacob'. When he was
+laid to his rest in Eversley churchyard, there were many mourners who
+represented the cultured classes of the day; but what gave its special
+character to the occasion was the presence of keepers and poachers, of
+gipsies, country rustics, and huntsmen, the Esaus of the Hampshire
+village, which was the fit resting-place for one who above all was the
+ideal of a parish priest.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS
+
+1817-1904
+
+1817. Born in London, February 23.
+1827. Begins to frequent the studio of William Behnes.
+1835. Enters Royal Academy Schools.
+1837. Working in his own studio. 'Wounded Heron' and two portraits
+      in Royal Academy exhibition.
+1842. Success in Parliament House competition: 'Caractacus' cartoon.
+1843-7. Living with Lord and Lady Holland at Florence.
+1847. Success in second competition: 'Alfred' cartoon.
+1848. Early allegorical pictures.
+1850. Friendship with the Prinseps. Little Holland House.
+1851. National series of portraits begun.
+1852. Begins Lincoln's Inn Hall fresco: finished 1859.
+1856. With Sir Charles Newton to Halicarnassus.
+1865. Correspondence with Charles Rickards of Manchester.
+1867. Elected A.R.A. and R.A. in same year. Portraits. Carlyle. W.
+      Morris.
+1872. New home at Freshwater, Isle of Wight. 'The Briary.'
+      Little Holland House sold.
+1877. Grosvenor Gallery opened. 1881. Watts exhibition there
+      (200 pictures).
+1882. D.C.L., Oxford; LL.D., Cambridge.
+1886. November; marries Miss Fraser Tytler. Winter in Egypt.
+1890. New home at Limnerslease, Compton.
+1895. National Portrait Gallery opened.
+1896. New Gallery exhibition (155 pictures).
+1897. Gift of pictures to new Tate Gallery.
+1902. Order of Merit.
+1904. Death at Compton, July 1.
+
+GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS
+
+ARTIST
+
+
+The great age of British art was past before Queen Victoria began her
+long and memorable reign. Reynolds and Gainsborough had died in the
+last years of the eighteenth century, Romney and Hoppner in the first
+decade of the nineteenth; Lawrence, the last of the Georgian
+portrait-painters, did not live beyond 1830. Of the landscapists Crome
+died in 1821 and Constable in 1837. Turner, the one survivor of the
+Giants, had done three-quarters of his work before 1837 and can hardly
+be reckoned as a Victorian worthy.
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS
+
+From a painting by himself in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+In the reign of Queen Victoria many thousands of trivial anecdotic
+pictures were bought and sold, were reproduced in Art Annuals and
+Christmas Numbers and won the favour of rich amateurs and provincial
+aldermen--so much so that Victorian art has been a favourite target for
+the shafts of critics formed in the school of Whistler and the later
+Impressionists. But however just some of their strictures may be, it is
+foolish to condemn an age wholesale or to shut our eyes to the great
+achievements of those artists who, rising above the general level,
+dignified the calling of the painter just when the painters were most
+rare. These men formed no single movement progressing in a uniform
+direction. The study of pure landscape is best seen in the water-colour
+draughtsmen, Cotman, Cox, and de Wint; of landscape as a setting for the
+life of the people, in Fred Walker and George Mason. Among
+figure-painters the 'Pre-Raphaelites', Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and
+Millais, with their forerunner Madox Brown, are the first to win
+attention by their earnestness, their romantic imagination, and their
+intense feeling for beauty: in these qualities Burne-Jones carried on
+their work and retained the allegiance of a cultured few to the very end
+of the century. Two solitary figures are more difficult to class, Alfred
+Stevens and Watts. Each learnt fruitful lessons from prolonged study of
+the great art of the past; yet each preserves a marked originality in
+his work. More than any other artists of their age they realized the
+unity of art and the dependence of one branch upon another. Painting
+should go hand in hand with sculpture, and both minister to
+architecture. So the world might hope once more to see public buildings
+nobly planned and no less nobly decorated, as in the past it saw the
+completion of the Parthenon and the churches of mediaeval Italy. It was
+unfortunate that they received so little encouragement from the public,
+and that their example had so narrow an influence. St. Paul's can show
+its Wellington monument, Lincoln's Inn its fresco; but year after year
+subject-pictures continued to be painted on an ambitious scale, which
+after a few months' exhibition on the walls of Burlington House passed
+to their tomb in provincial museums, or reappeared as ghosts in the
+sale-room only to fetch a derisory price and to illustrate the fickle
+vagaries in the public taste.
+
+In the early life of George Frederick Watts, who was born in a quiet
+street in West Marylebone, there are few incidents to narrate, there is
+little brightness to enliven the tale. His father, a maker of musical
+instruments, was poor; his mother died early; his home-life was
+overshadowed by his own ill-health and the uncertain moods of other
+members of the family. His education was casual and consisted mostly of
+reading books under the guidance of his father, who had little solid
+learning, but refined tastes and an inventive disposition. In his
+Sundays at home, where the Sabbatarian rule limited his reading, he
+became familiar with the stories of the Old Testament; he discovered for
+himself the Waverley Novels and Pope's translation of the _Iliad_; and
+he began from early years to use his pencil with the eager and
+persistent enthusiasm which marks the artist born.
+
+For a rich artistic nature it was a starved life, but he made the most
+of such chances as came in his way. He was barely ten years old when he
+found his way to the studio of a sculptor named William Behnes, a man
+of Hanoverian extraction, an indifferent sculptor but possessed of a
+real talent for drawing; and from his more intellectual brother, Charles
+Behnes, he learnt to widen his interest in literature. In this halting
+and irregular process of education he received help, some years later,
+from another friend of foreign birth, Nicholas Wanostrocht, a Belgian,
+who under the assumed name of 'Felix' became a leading authority on the
+game of cricket. Wanostrocht was a cultivated man of very wide tastes,
+and it was largely through his encouragement that Watts gave to the
+study of the French and Italian languages, and to music, what little
+time he could spare from his professional work. London was to render him
+greater services than this. Thanks to his visits to the British Museum,
+he had, while still in his teens, come under a mightier spell. Though
+few Englishmen had yet learnt to value their treasures, the Elgin
+Marbles had been resting there for twenty years. But now, two years
+before Queen Victoria's accession, there might be seen, standing rapt in
+admiration before the works of Phidias, a boy of slender figure with
+high forehead, delicately moulded features, and disordered hair, one
+who, as we can see from the earliest portrait which Mrs. Watts has
+preserved in her biography, had something of the unearthly beauty of the
+young Shelley. He was physically frail, marked off from ordinary men by
+a grace that won its way quickly to the hearts of all who were
+susceptible to spiritual charm. Untaught though he was, he had the eye
+to see for himself the grandeur of these relics of Greece, and
+throughout his life they remained one of the guiding influences in his
+development, one of the standards which he set up before himself, though
+all too conscious that he could not hope to reach that height. We see
+their influence in his treatment of drapery, of horses, of the human
+figure, in his idealization of types, in the flowing lines of his
+compositions, and in the grouping of his masses. Compared to the hours
+which he spent in the British Museum, the lessons in the Royal Academy
+schools seem unimportant. He attended classes there for some months in
+1835, but the teaching was poor and its results disappointing. William
+Hilton, R.A., who then occupied the post of Keeper, gave him some kind
+words of encouragement, but in general he came and went unnoticed, and
+he soon returned to his solitary self-training in his own studio. If we
+know little of his teaching in art, we know still less of his personal
+life during the time when he was laying the foundations of his success
+by study and self-discipline. Early rising was an art which he acquired
+early, and maintained throughout life; long after he felt the spur of
+necessity, even after the age of 80, he could rise at four when there
+was work to be done; and, living as he did on the simplest diet, he
+often achieved his best results at an hour when other men were still
+finishing their slumbers. His shyness and sensitiveness, combined with
+precarious health and weak physique, would seem to equip him but poorly
+in the struggle for life; but his steady persistence, his high
+conception of duty, his faith in his art, joined to that power which he
+had of winning friends among the noblest men and women of his day, were
+to carry him triumphantly through to the end.
+
+The career of Watts as a public man began in 1843 when he had reached
+the age of 26. The British Government, not often guilty of fostering art
+or literature, may claim at least the credit for having drawn him out of
+his seclusion at the very moment when his genius was ripening to bear
+fruit. In 1834 the Palace of Westminster, so long the home of the Houses
+of Parliament, had been burnt to the ground. The present buildings were
+begun by Sir Charles Barry in 1840, and, with a view to decorating them
+with wall-paintings, the Board of Works wisely offered prizes for
+cartoons, hoping thereby to attract the best talent of the country. In
+June 1843 they had to judge between 140 designs by various competitors,
+and to award prizes varying in value from Ł300 to Ł100. Of the three
+first prizes one fell to Watts, hitherto unknown beyond the narrow
+circle of his friends, for a design displaying 'Caractacus led in
+triumph through the streets of Rome'. This cartoon, however, was not
+employed for its original purpose: it fell into the hands of an
+enterprising, if inartistic, dealer, who cut it up and sold such
+fragments as he judged to be of value in the state of the picture market
+at the time. What was far more important was the encouragement given to
+the artist by such a success at a critical time of his life, and the
+opportunity which the money furnished him to travel abroad and enrich
+his experiences before his style was formed. He had long wished to visit
+Italy; and, after spending a few weeks in France, he made his leisurely
+way (at a pace incredible to us to-day) to Florence and its picture
+galleries. On the steamer between Marseilles and Leghorn he was
+fortunate in making friends with a Colonel Ellice and his wife, and a
+few weeks later they introduced him to Lord Holland, the British
+Minister at Florence.
+
+The story goes that Watts went to be the guest of Lord and Lady Holland
+for four days and remained there for four years--a story which is a
+tribute to the discernment of the latter and not a satire upon Watts,
+who was the last man in the world to take advantage of hospitality or to
+thrust himself into other people's houses. No doubt it is not to be
+taken too literally, but at least it is so far true that he very quickly
+became intimate with his host and hostess and found a home where he
+could pursue his art under ideal conditions. The value and the danger of
+patronage have been often discussed. Democracy may provide a discipline
+for artists and men of letters which is often salutary in testing the
+sincerity of their devotion to art and literature; but, in such a stern
+school, men of genius may easily founder and miss their way.
+
+However that may be, Watts found just the haven which was needed for a
+nature like his. So far he had known but little appreciation, and had
+lived with few who were his peers. Now he was cheered by the favour of
+men and women who had known the best and whose favour was well worth the
+winning. But he kept his independence of spirit. He lived in a palace,
+but his diet was as sparing as that of a hermit. He feasted his eyes on
+the great works of the Renaissance, but he preserved his originality,
+and continued to work, with fervour and enhanced enthusiasm, on the
+lines which he had already marked out for himself. He did not copy with
+the hand, but he drank in new lessons with the eyes and dreamed new
+dreams with the spirit.
+
+The Hollands had two houses, one in the centre of the city, the other,
+the Villa Medicea di Careggi, lying on the edge of the hills some two or
+three miles to the north. This latter had been a favourite residence of
+the first Cosimo; here Lorenzo had died, turning his face to the wall,
+unshriven by Savonarola; and here Watts decorated an open _loggia_ in
+fresco, to bear witness to its latest connexion with the patronage of
+Art. Between the two houses he passed laborious but tranquil days,
+studying, planning, training his hand to mastery, but enjoying in his
+leisure all that such a home could give him of varied entertainment.
+Music and dancing, literature and good company, all had their charms for
+him, though none of them could beguile him into neglecting his work.
+Fortune had tried him with her frowns and with her smiles; under
+temptations of both sorts he remained but more faithful to his calling.
+
+His health gave cause for anxiety from time to time, but he delighted in
+the sunshine and the genial climate of the South, and in general he was
+well enough to enjoy what Florence could give him of beautiful form and
+colour, and even to travel farther afield. One year he pushed as far as
+Naples, stopping on the way for a hurried glance at Rome. On this
+memorable day the Sistine chapel and its paintings were kept to the
+last; and Watts, high though his expectations were, was overwhelmed at
+what he saw. 'Michelangelo', he said, 'stands for Italy, as Shakespeare
+does for England.' So the four years went by till in 1847 this halcyon
+period came to an end. The Royal Commission of Fine Arts was offering
+prizes for fresco-painting, and Watts felt that he must put his growing
+powers to the test and utilize what he had learnt. This time he chose
+for his subject 'Alfred inciting the English to resist the Danes by
+sea'. He was busy at work in the early months of 1847 making many
+sketches in pencil for the figures, and by April he was on his way home,
+bringing with him the 'Alfred' almost finished and five other canvases
+in various stages of completion. The picture was placed in Westminster
+Hall for competition in June, and soon after he was announced to be the
+winner of one of the three Ł500 prizes. When the Commissioners decided
+to purchase his picture for the nation, he refused to take more than
+Ł200 for it, though he might easily have obtained a far higher price.
+This is one of the earliest instances in which he displayed that signal
+generosity which marked his whole career.
+
+During the next three years his life was rather desultory. He was hoping
+to return to Italy and did not find it easy to settle down in London. He
+changed his studio two or three times. He planned various works, but
+felt chilled at the absence of any clear encouragement from new patrons
+or from the general public. His success in 1847 had not been followed
+by any commissions for the sort of work he loved: interest in the
+decoration of public buildings was still spasmodic and too rare.
+
+He made the acquaintance of Mr. Ruskin; but, friendly though they were
+in their personal relations, they did not see eye to eye in artistic
+matters. Ruskin seemed to lay too much emphasis on points of secondary
+importance, and to fail in judging the work of Michelangelo and the
+greatest masters. So Watts thought, and many years later, in
+conversation with Jowett, declared, chary though he was of criticizing
+his friends. To-day there is little doubt whose judgement was the truer,
+even had Ruskin not weakened his position by so often contradicting
+himself. Besides Ruskin, Watts was beginning to make other friends, and
+was a member of the Cosmopolitan Club, which counted among its members
+Sir Robert Morier, Sir Henry Layard, FitzGerald, Palgrave, and Spedding.
+The large painting of the 'Story from Boccaccio', which now hangs in the
+Watts room of the Tate Gallery, hung for many years on the walls of this
+club and was presented to the nation in 1902. How frequently Watts
+attended the club or other social gatherings at this time we do not
+know. His name figures little in the biographies and memoirs of
+Londoners, and he himself would not have wished the record of his daily
+life to be preserved. His modesty in all personal matters is
+uncontested, and even if his subsequent offer of his pictures to the
+nation smacks somewhat of presumption, his motive was something other
+than conceit. His portraits were an historical record of the worthiest
+men of his own time: his allegories were of value, so he felt, not for
+their technical accomplishments, but for the high moral lessons which
+they tried to convey. The artist himself was at ease only in retirement
+and privacy. Yet complete isolation was not good for him. Ill-health
+still dogged his steps, and the dejection which came over him in the
+years 1849 and 1850 is to be seen in the gloomiest pictures which he
+ever painted. Their titles and subjects alike recall the more tragic
+poems of Thomas Hood. But the eclipse was not to last for long, and in
+1850 Watts owed his recovery to a happy chance encounter with friends
+who were to give him a new haven of refuge and gladden his life for
+thirty years to come.
+
+A high Indian official, James Pattle, had been the father of five
+daughters who were famous for their beauty, and from their tastes and
+character were particularly fitted to be the friends of artists and
+poets. If Lady Somers was the most beautiful of the sisters and Mrs.
+Cameron the most artistic, their elder sister Mrs. Prinsep proved to be
+Watts's surest friend. Her husband, Thoby Prinsep, was a member of the
+India Council in Whitehall, a large-hearted man, full of knowledge and
+full of kindliness. Mrs. Prinsep herself was mistress of the domestic
+arts in no common degree, from skilful cookery to the holding of a
+literary _salon_. She and her husband realized what friendship could do
+for a nature like that of Watts, and they provided him with an ideal
+home, where he was nursed back to health, relieved of care, and cheered
+by constant sympathy and affection. It was Watts who discovered this
+home for them in a quiet corner of London, that has not yet lost all its
+charm. Behind Holland House and adjoining its park was a smaller
+property with a rambling old-fashioned house, built in the days when
+London was still far away. At Little Holland House the Prinseps lived
+for a quarter of a century. Here the sisters came and went freely with
+their children who were growing up around them. Here were gatherings of
+their friends, among whom Tennyson, Thackeray, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones
+might be met from time to time; and here Watts remained a constant
+inmate, giving regular hours to his work, enjoying their society in his
+leisure, a special favourite with the children, who admitted him to
+their confidence and called him by pet names. There was no lionizing, no
+striving after brilliance; all work that was genuine and of high
+intention received due honour, and Watts could hope here to carry to
+fruition the noble visions which he had seen since the days of his
+youth.
+
+These visions had little to do with the exhibitions of Burlington House,
+the winning of titles, or the acquisition of worldly wealth. Watts
+cherished the old Greek conception of willing service to the community.
+And he was alive to the special needs of an age when men were struggling
+for gain, and when 'progress' was measured by material riches. To him,
+if to few others, it seemed tragic that, in the wonderful development of
+industrial Britain, art, which had spoken so eloquently to citizens of
+Periclean Athens and to Florence in the Medicean age, should remain
+without expression or sign of life. For a moment our Government had
+seemed to hear the call, and the stimulus of the Westminster
+competitions had been of value; but the interest died away all too
+quickly, and the attention of the general public was never fully roused.
+If the latter could be won, Watts was only too willing to give the time
+and the knowledge which he had acquired. The building of the great
+railway stations in London seemed to offer a chance, and Watts
+approached the directors of the North Western Company with a humble
+petition. All that he asked for was wall space and the payment of his
+expenses in material. Had his request been granted, Euston might have
+enjoyed pre-eminence among railway stations, and passengers for the
+north might have passed through, or waited in, a National Gallery of
+their own. But the Railway Director's mind is slow to move; inventions
+leave him cold, and imagination is not to be weighed in the scale
+against dividends and quick returns. The Company declined the offer on
+the ground of expense, while their architect is said to have been
+seriously alarmed at the idea of any one tampering with his building.
+
+Another proposal met with a heartier response. The men of law proved
+more generous than the men of commerce. The new Hall at Lincoln's Inn
+was being built by Mr. Philip Hardwick, in the Tudor style. Benchers and
+architect alike cordially welcomed Watts's offer to decorate a blank
+wall with fresco. The work could only be carried on during the legal
+vacations, and it proved a long business owing to the difficulties of
+the process and to the interruptions caused by the artist's ill-health.
+Watts planned it in 1852, began work in 1853, and did not put the
+finishing touch till 1859. The subject was a group of famous lawgivers,
+in which the chief figures were Moses, Mahomet, Justinian, Charlemagne,
+and Alfred, and it stands to-day as the chief witness to his powers as a
+designer on a grand scale.
+
+Before this he had already dedicated to national service his gift of
+portrait-painting. The head of Lord John Russell, painted in 1851, is
+one of the earliest portraits known to have been painted with this
+intention, though it is impossible to fix with accuracy the date when
+such a scheme took shape. In 1899, with the same patriotic intention, he
+was at work on a painting of Cecil Rhodes. In this half-century of
+activity he might have made large sums of money, if he had responded to
+the urgent demands of those men and women who were willing to pay high
+prices for the privilege of sitting to him; but few of them attained
+their object. His earlier achievements were limited to a few families
+from whom he had received help and encouragement when he was unknown.
+First among these to be remembered are the various generations of that
+family whose name is still preserved at South Kensington in the Ionides
+collection of pictures. Next came the Hollands, of whom he painted many
+portraits at Florence; and a third circle, naturally enough, was that
+of the Prinseps. In general he was most unwilling to undertake, as a
+mere matter of business, commissions from individuals unknown to him. He
+found portrait-painting most exhausting in its demands upon him. He
+threw his whole soul into the work, straining to see and to reproduce
+all that was most noble in his sitters. His nervous temperament made him
+anxious at starting, while his high standard of excellence made him
+often dissatisfied with what he had accomplished. Even when he was
+painting Tennyson, a personal friend, he was miserable at the thought of
+the responsibility which he had undertaken; and in 1879 he gave up a
+commission to paint Gladstone, feeling that he was not realizing his
+aim. So far as mere money was concerned, he would have preferred to
+leave this branch of his profession, the most lucrative of all, perhaps
+the most suited to his gifts, severely on one side, and to confine
+himself to the allegorical subjects which he felt to be independent of
+external claims.
+
+In the years after 1850, when he was first living at Little Holland
+House, Watts formed some of the friendships with brother artists which
+added so much pleasure to his life. Foremost among these friends was
+Frederic Leighton, the most famous President whom the Royal Academy has
+known since the days of Reynolds, a man of many accomplishments,
+linguist, orator, and organizer, as well as sculptor and painter, the
+very variety of whose gifts have perhaps prevented him from obtaining
+proper recognition for the things which he did really well. The worldly
+success which he won brought him under the fire of criticism as no other
+artist of the time; but, apart from his merits as a draughtsman and a
+sculptor he was a man of singularly generous temper, a staunch friend
+and a champion of good causes. These qualities, and his sincere
+admiration for all noble work, endeared him to Watts; and, at one time,
+Leighton paid daily visits to his studio to exchange views and to see
+his friend's work in progress.
+
+For a while Rossetti frequented the circle, but this wayward spirit
+drifted into other paths, and the chief service which he did to Watts
+was to introduce to him Edward Burne-Jones, most refined of artists and
+most lovable of men. The latter's work commanded Watts's highest
+admiration, and his friendship was valued to the end. To many lovers of
+painting these two remain the embodiment of all that is purest and
+loftiest in Victorian art; and though their treatment of classic
+subjects and of allegory were so different their pictures were often
+hung side by side in exhibitions and their names were coupled together
+in the current talk of the time. Burne-Jones was markedly Celtic in his
+love of beautiful pattern, in the ghostly refinement of his figures, in
+the elaborate fancifulness of his imagery. Watts had more of the
+full-blooded Englishman in his nature, and his art was simpler, grander,
+more universal. If we may compare them with the great men of the
+Renaissance, Burne-Jones recalled the grace of Botticelli, Watts the
+richness and power of Veronese or of Titian.
+
+Those who went to Little Holland House and saw the circle of the
+Prinseps adorned by these artists, and by such writers as Tennyson,
+Henry Taylor,[33] and Thackeray, had a singular impression of harmony
+between the men and their surroundings; and if they had been asked who
+best expressed the spirit of these gatherings, they would probably have
+pointed to the 'Signor', as Watts came to be called among his intimate
+friends--to the slight figure with the small delicately-shaped head, who
+seemed to recall the atmosphere of Florence in the Middle Ages, when art
+was at once a craft and a religion. But few who saw the grace and
+old-fashioned courtesy with which he moved among young and old would
+have guessed what fire and persistency were in him, that he would
+outlive all his generation, and be still wielding a vigorous brush in
+the early years of the century to come.
+
+[Note 33: Sir Henry Taylor, author of _Philip van Artevelde_ and
+other poems, and a high official of the Colonial Office.]
+
+One interlude in this busy yet tranquil life came in 1856 when he was
+asked to accompany Sir Charles Newton's party to the coast of Asia
+Minor. Newton was to explore the ruins of Halicarnassus on behalf of the
+British Government, and a man-of-war was placed at his disposal. The
+opportunity of seeing Grecian lands in this leisurely fashion was too
+good to be missed, and Watts spent eight happy months on board. He
+showed his power of adapting himself to a new situation, made friends
+with the sailors, and sang 'Tom Bowling' at their Christmas concert.
+Incidentally he visited Constantinople, as it was necessary to get a
+'firman' from the Porte, was commended to the famous ambassador Lord
+Stratford de Redcliffe and painted two portraits of him, one of which is
+in the National Portrait Gallery to-day. He also enjoyed a cruise
+through the Greek Islands, where the scenery with its rich colour and
+bold pure outlines was specially calculated to charm him. He painted few
+landscapes in his long career, but both in Italy and in Greece it was
+the distant views of mountain peaks that led him to give expression to
+his delight in the beauty of Nature.
+
+A different kind of distraction was obtained after his return by
+occasional visits to Esher, where he was the guest of Mrs. Sanderson,
+sister of Mr. Prinsep, and where he spent many a happy day riding to
+hounds. For games he had no training, and little inclination, though he
+loved in his old age to watch and encourage the village cricket in
+Surrey; but riding gave him great pleasure. His love for the horse may
+in part be due to this pastime, in part to his early study of the
+Parthenon frieze with its famous procession of horsemen. Certainly this
+animal plays a notable part in his work. Two great equestrian statues
+occupied him for many years. 'Hugh Lupus', the ancestor of the
+Grosvenors, was cast in bronze in 1884 and set up at Eaton Hall in the
+Duke of Westminster's park. 'Physical Energy' was the name given to a
+similar figure conceived on broader and more ideal lines. At this Watts
+continued to work till the year of his death, though he parted with the
+first version in response to Lord Grey's appeal when it was wanted to
+adorn the monument to Cecil Rhodes. Its original destination was the
+tomb in the Matoppo hills; but it was proved impracticable to convey
+such a colossal work, without injury, over the rough country surrounding
+them; and it was set up at Cape Town. The statue has become better known
+to the English public since a second version has been set up in
+Kensington Gardens. The rider, bestriding a powerful horse, has flung
+himself back and is gazing eagerly into the distance, shading with
+uplifted hand his eyes against the fierce sunlight which dazzles them.
+The allegory is not hard to interpret, though the tame landscape of a
+London park frames it less fitly than a wide stretch of wild and
+solitary veld.
+
+Horses of many different kinds figure in his pictures. In one, whose
+subject is taken from the Apocalypse, we see the war-horse, his neck
+'clothed with thunder'; in another his head is bowed, the lines
+harmonizing with the mood of his master, Sir Galahad. 'The Midday Rest',
+unheroic in theme but grand in treatment, shows us two massive dray
+horses, which were lent to him as models by Messrs. Barclay and Perkins,
+while 'A patient life of unrewarded toil' renders sympathetically the
+weakness of the veteran discharged after years of service, waiting
+patiently for the end. One instance of a more imaginative kind shows us
+'Neptune's Horses' as the painter dimly discerned them, with arched
+necks and flowing manes, rising and leaping in the crest of the wave.
+
+His portraits of great men generally took the form of half-lengths with
+the simplest backgrounds. His subjects were of all kinds--Tennyson and
+Browning, Rossetti and Burne-Jones, Gladstone, Mill, Motley, Joachim,
+Thiers, and Anthony Panizzi.[34] His object was a national one, and the
+foreigners admitted to the company were usually closely connected with
+England. Sometimes the pose of the body and the hands helps the
+conception, as in Lord Lytton and Cardinal Manning; more often Watts
+trusts to the simple mass of the head or to the character revealed by
+the features in repose. No finer examples for contrast can be given than
+the portraits of the two friends, Burne-Jones and William Morris,
+painted in 1870. In the former we see the spirit of the dreamer, in the
+latter the splendid vitality and force of the craftsman, who was
+impetuous in action as he was rich in invention. The room at the
+National Portrait Gallery where this collection is hung speaks
+eloquently to us of the Victorian Age and the varied genius of its
+greatest men; and in some cases we have the additional interest of being
+able to compare portraits of the same men painted by Watts and by other
+artists. Well known is the contrast in the case of Carlyle. Millais has
+painted a picturesque old man whose talk might be racy and his temper
+uncertain; but the soul of the seer, tormented by conflicts and yet
+clinging to an inner faith, is revealed only by the hands of Watts.
+Again Millais gives us the noble features, the extravagant 'hure'[35] of
+the Tennyson whom his contemporaries saw, alive, glowing with force;
+Watts has exalted this conception to a higher level and has portrayed
+the thinker whom the world will honour many centuries hence. Some will
+perhaps prefer the more objective treatment; and it is certain that
+Watts's ambition led him into difficult paths. Striving to represent the
+soul of his sitter, he was conscious at times that he failed--that he
+could not see or realize what he was searching for. More than once he
+abandoned a commission when he felt this uncertainty in himself. But
+when the accord between artist and sitter was perfect, he achieved a
+triumph of idealization, combined with a firm grasp on reality, such as
+few artists since Giorgione and the young Titian have been able to
+achieve.
+
+[Note 34: Sir Anthony Panizzi, an Italian political refugee, the
+most famous of librarians. He served the British Museum from 1831 to
+1866.]
+
+[Note 35: '"Hure: tęte hérissée et en désordre"; se dit d'un homme
+qui a les cheveux mal peignés, d'un animal, &c.'--Littré.]
+
+Apart from portraits there was a rich variety in the subjects which the
+painter handled, some drawn from Bible stories, some from Greek legends
+or mediaeval tales, some for which we can find no source save in his own
+imagination. He dealt with the myths in a way natural to a man who owed
+more to Greek art and to his own musings than to the close study of
+Greek literature. His pictures of the infancy of Jupiter, of the
+deserted Ariadne, of the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, have no
+elaborate realism in detail. The Royal Academy walls showed, in those
+days, plenty of marble halls, theatres, temples, and classic groves,
+reproduced with soulless pedantry. Watts gave us heroic figures, with
+strong masses and flowing lines, simply grouped and charged with
+emotion--the yearning love of Diana for Endymion, the patient
+resignation of Ariadne, the passionate regret of Orpheus, the cruel
+bestiality of the Minotaur. Some will find a deeper interest, a grander
+style, in the designs which he made for the story of our first parents
+in the Book of Genesis. Remorse has rarely been expressed so powerfully
+as in the averted figure of Eve after the Fall, or of Cain bowed under
+the curse, shut out from contact with all creation. In one of his
+masterpieces Watts drew his motive from the Gospel story. The picture
+entitled 'For he had great possessions' shows us the young ruler who has
+come to Christ and has failed in the supreme moment. His back, his bowed
+neck and averted head, with the gesture of indecision in his right hand,
+tell their tale with consummate eloquence.
+
+In his more famous allegories the same is true; by simple means an
+impression of great power is conveyed. The popularity of 'Love and
+Death' and its companion picture shows how little the allegory needs
+explanation. These themes were first handled between 1860 and 1870; but
+the pictures roused such widespread admiration that the painter made
+several replicas of them. Versions are now to be found in the Dominions
+and in New York, as well as in London and Manchester. Photographs have
+extended their renown and they are so familiar to-day that there is no
+need to describe them. Another masterpiece dealing with the subject of
+Death is the 'Sic transit', where the shrouded figure of the dead
+warrior is impressive in its solemnity and stillness. 'Dawn' and 'Hope'
+show what different notes Watts could strike in his treatment of the
+female form. At the other extreme is 'Mammon', the sordid power which
+preys on life and crushes his victims with the weight of his relentless
+hand. The power of conscience is shown in a more mystic figure called
+'The Dweller in the Innermost'. Judgement figures in more than one
+notable design, the most familiar being that which now hangs in St.
+Paul's Cathedral with the title of 'Time, Death, and Judgement'. Its
+position there shows how little we can draw the line between the
+different classes of subjects as they were handled by Watts. A courtier
+like Rubens could, after painting with gusto a rout of Satyrs, put on a
+cloak of decorum to suit the pageantry of a court, or even simulate
+fervour to portray the ecstasy of a saint. He is clearly acting a part,
+but in Watts the character of the man is always seen. Whether his
+subjects are drawn from the Bible or from pagan myths, they are all
+treated in the same temper of reverence and purity.
+
+It is impossible to avoid the question of didactic art in writing of
+these pictures, though such a wide question, debated for half a century,
+can receive no adequate treatment here. We must frankly allow that Watts
+was 'preaching sermons in paint', nor would he have repudiated the
+charge, however loud to-day are the protests of those who preach the
+doctrine of 'art for art's sake'. But the latter, while stating many
+principles of which the British public need to be reminded, seem to go
+beyond their rights. It is, of course, permissible for students of art
+to object to technical points of handling--Watts himself was among the
+first to deplore his own failures due to want of executive ability; it
+is open to them to debate the part which morality may have in art, and
+to express their preference for those artists who handle all subjects
+impartially and conceive all to be worthy of treatment, if truth of
+drawing or lighting be achieved. But when they make Watts's ethical
+intention the reason for depreciating him as an artist they are on more
+uncertain ground. There is no final authority in these questions. Ruskin
+was too dogmatic in the middle years of his life and only provoked a
+more violent reaction. Twenty years later the admirers of Whistler and
+Manet were equally intolerant, and assumed doctrines which may hold the
+field to-day but are certain to be questioned to-morrow.
+
+Watts was most reluctant to enter into controversy and had no ambition
+to found a school; in fact so far was he from imposing his views on
+others, that he scarcely ever took pupils, and was content to urge young
+artists to follow their own line and to be sincere. But he could at
+times be drawn into putting some of his views on paper, and in 1893 he
+wrote down a statement of the relative importance which he attached to
+the qualities which make a painter. Among these Imagination stands
+first, Intellectual idea next to it. After this follow Dignity of form,
+Harmony of lines, and Colour. Finally, in the sixth place comes Realism,
+the idol of so many of the end of the century, both in literature and
+art.
+
+Some years earlier, in meeting criticism, Watts had said, 'I admit my
+want of dexterity with the brush, in some cases a very serious defect,'
+but at the same time he refused to accept the authority of those 'who
+deny that art should have any intellectual intention'. In general, he
+pleaded that art has a very wide range over subject and treatment; but
+he did not set himself up as a reformer in art, nor inflict dogmas on
+the public gratuitously. He found that some of his more abstract themes
+needed handling in shadowy and suggestive fashion: if this gave the
+impression of fumbling, or displayed some weakness in technique, even so
+perhaps the conception reaches us in a way that could not be attained by
+dexterity of brushwork. As he himself said, 'there were things that
+could only be done in art at the sacrifice of some other things'; but
+the points which Watts was ready to sacrifice are what the realists
+conceive to be indispensable, and his aims were not as theirs. But his
+life was very little troubled by controversy; and he would not have
+wished his own work to be a subject for it.
+
+External circumstances also had little power to alter the even tenor of
+his way. Late in life, at the age of 69, he married Miss Fraser Tytler,
+a friend of some fifteen years' standing, who was herself an artist, and
+who shared all his tastes. After the marriage he and his wife spent a
+long winter in the East, sailing up the Nile in leisurely fashion,
+enjoying the monuments of ancient Egypt and the colours of the desert.
+It was a time of great happiness, and was followed by seventeen years
+of a serene old age, divided between his London house in Melbury Road
+and his new home in Surrey. Staying with friends in Surrey, Watts had
+made acquaintance with the beautiful country lying south of the Hog's
+Back; and in 1889 he chose a site at Compton, where he decided to build
+a house. To this he gave the name of Limnerslease. Thanks to the
+generosity of Mrs. Watts, who has built a gallery and hung some of his
+choicest pictures there, Compton has become one of the three shrines to
+which lovers of his work resort.[36]
+
+[Note 36: His allegorical subjects are in the Tate Gallery; his
+portraits in the National Portrait Gallery.]
+
+But for many years he met with little recognition from the world at
+large. It was only at the age of 50 that he received official honours
+from the Royal Academy, though the success of his cartoons had marked
+him out among his contemporaries twenty-five years earlier. About 1865
+his pictures won the enthusiastic admiration of Mr. Charles Rickards,
+who continued to be the most constant of his patrons, and gave to his
+admiration the most practical form. Not only did he purchase from year
+to year such pictures as Watts was willing to sell, but twenty years
+later he organized an exhibition of Watts's work at Manchester, which
+did much to spread his fame in the North. In London Watts came to his
+own more fully when the Grosvenor Gallery was opened in 1877. Here the
+Directors were at pains to attract the best painters of the day and to
+hang their pictures in such a way that their artistic qualities had full
+effect. No one gained more from this than Watts and Burne-Jones; and to
+a select but growing circle of admirers the interest of the annual
+exhibitions began and ended with the work of these two kindred spirits.
+The Directors also arranged in 1881 for a special exhibition devoted to
+the works of Watts alone, when, thanks to the generosity of lenders, 200
+of his pictures did justice to his sixty years of unwearied effort.
+This winter established his fame, and England now recognized him as one
+of her greatest sons. But when his friends tried to organize a dinner to
+be held at the Gallery in his honour, he got wind of the plot, and with
+his usual fastidious reserve begged to be spared such an ordeal. The
+_élite_ of London society, men famous in politics, literature, and other
+departments of public life, were only too anxious to honour him; but he
+could not endure to be the centre of public attention. To him art was
+everything, the artist nothing. Throughout his life he attended few
+banquets, mounted fewer platforms, and only wished to be left to enjoy
+his work, his leisure, and the society of his intimate friends.
+
+His interest in the progress of his age was profound, though it did not
+often take shape in visible form. He believed that the world might be
+better, and was not minded to acquiesce in the established order of
+things. He sympathized with the Salvation Army; he was a strong
+supporter of women's education; he was ardent for redressing the balance
+of riches and poverty, and for recognizing the heroism of those who,
+labouring under such grim disadvantages, yet played a heroic part in
+life. The latter he showed in practical form. In 1887 he had wished to
+celebrate the Queen's Jubilee by erecting a shrine in which to preserve
+the records of acts of self-sacrifice performed by the humblest members
+of the community. The scheme failed at the time to win support; but in
+1899, largely through his help, a memorial building arose in the
+churchyard of St. Botolph, near Aldersgate, better known as the
+'Postmen's Park'.
+
+In private life his kindliness and courtesy won the hearts of all who
+came near him, young and old, rich and poor. He was tolerant towards
+those who differed from him in opinion: he steadily believed the best of
+other men in passing judgement on them. No mean thought, no malicious
+word, no petty quarrel marred the purity of his life. He had lost his
+best friends: Leighton in 1896, Burne-Jones three years later; but he
+enjoyed the devotion of his wife and the tranquillity of his home. Twice
+he refused the offer of a Baronetcy. The only honour which he accepted
+was the Order of Merit, which carried no title in society and was
+reserved for intellectual eminence and public service. At the age of 80
+he presented to Eton College his picture of Sir Galahad, a fit emblem of
+his own lifelong quest. His last days of active work were spent on the
+second version of the great statue of 'Physical Energy', which had
+occupied him so long, and in which he ever found something new to
+express as he dreamed of the days to come and the future conquests of
+mankind. In 1904 his strength gradually failed him, and on July 1 he
+died in his Surrey home. Like his great exemplar Titian, whom he
+resembled in outward appearance and in much of the quality of his
+painting, he outlived his own generation and was yet learning, as one of
+the young, when death took him in the 88th year of his life.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON
+
+1827-71
+
+1827. Born in London, April 1.
+1838-45. At school at Eton.
+1841. Selwyn goes out to New Zealand as Bishop.
+1845-9. Undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford.
+1850-1. Visits Germany.
+1852-3. Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
+1853. Curate at Alphington, near Ottery.
+1854. Accepted by Bishop Selwyn for mission work.
+1855. Sails for New Zealand, March. Head-quarters at Auckland.
+1856. First cruise to Melanesia.
+1860. First prolonged stay (3 months) in Mota.
+1861. Consecrated first Bishop of Melanesia, February.
+1864. Visit to Australia to win support for Mission (repeated 1855).
+      Serious attack on his party by natives of Sta. Cruz.
+1867. Removal of head-quarters to Norfolk Island.
+1868. Selwyn goes home to become Bishop of Lichfield.
+1869. Exploitation of native labour becomes acute.
+1870. Severe illness: convalescence at Auckland.
+1871. Last stay at Mota. Cruise to Sta. Cruz. Death at Nukapu,
+      September 20.
+
+JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON
+
+MISSIONARY
+
+
+New Zealand, discovered by Captain Cook in 1769, lay derelict for half a
+century, and like others of our Colonies it came very near to passing
+under the rule of France. From this it was saved in 1840 by the
+foresight and energy of Gibbon Wakefield, who forced the hand of our
+reluctant Government; and its steady progress was secured by the
+sagacity of Sir George Grey, one of our greatest empire-builders in
+Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. Thanks to them and to others,
+there has arisen in the Southern Pacific a state which, more than any
+other, seems to resemble the mother country with its sea-girt islands,
+its temperate climate, its mountains and its plains. A population almost
+entirely British, living in these conditions, might be expected to
+repeat the history of their ancestors. In politics and social questions
+its sons show the same independence of spirit and even greater
+enterprise.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON
+
+From a drawing by William Richmond]
+
+The names of two other men deserve recognition here for the part they
+played in the history of these islands. In 1814, before they became a
+British possession, Samuel Marsden came from Australia to carry the
+Gospel to their inhabitants, and formed settlements in the Northern
+districts, in days when the lives of settlers were in constant peril
+from the Maoris. But nothing could daunt his courage; and whenever they
+came into personal contact with him, these childlike savages felt his
+power and responded to his influence, and he was able to lay a good
+foundation. In 1841 the English Church sent out George Augustus Selwyn
+as first Missionary Bishop of New Zealand, giving him a wide province
+and no less wide discretion. He was the pioneer who, from his base in
+New Zealand, was to spread Christian and British influences even farther
+afield in the vast stretches of the Pacific Ocean.
+
+Selwyn was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, and these
+famous foundations have never sent forth a man better fitted to render
+services to his country. In a small sphere, as curate of Windsor, he had
+already, by his energy, patience, and practical sagacity, achieved
+remarkable results; and it was providential that, in the strength of
+early manhood, he was selected for a responsible post which afforded
+scope for the exercise of his powers. In the old country he might have
+been hampered by routine and tradition; in a new land he could mark out
+his own path. The constitution of the New Zealand Church became a model
+for other dioceses and other lands, and his wisdom has stood the test of
+time.
+
+What sort of man he was can best be shown by quoting a story from his
+biography.[37] When the Maori War broke out he joined the troops as
+chaplain and shared their perils in the field. Against the enterprising
+native fighters these were not slight, especially as the British troops
+were few and badly led. He was travelling without escort over routes
+infested by Maoris, refusing to have any special care taken of his own
+person, and his chief security lay in rapid motion. Yet twice he
+dismounted on the way, at peril of his life, once under an impulse of
+humanity, once from sheer public spirit. The first time it was to pull
+into the shade a drunken soldier asleep on duty and in danger of
+sunstroke; the second to fill up the ruts in a sandy road, where it
+seemed possible that the transport wagons which were following might be
+upset. Many other incidents could be quoted which show his
+unconventional ways and his habitual disregard for his own comfort,
+dignity, or safety. In New Zealand he found plenty of people to
+appreciate these qualities in a bishop.
+
+[Note 37: _Life and Episcopate of G. A. Selwyn_, by H. W. Tucker, 2
+vols. (Wells Gardner, 1879).]
+
+Though Selwyn was the master and perhaps the greater man, yet a peculiar
+fame has attached to his disciple John Coleridge Patteson, owing to the
+sweetness of his disposition, the singleness of his aim, and the
+consummation of his work by a martyr's death. Born in London in 1827, he
+was more truly a son of Devon, to which he was attached by many links.
+His mother's brother, Justice Coleridge, and many other relatives, lived
+close round the old town of Ottery St. Mary; and his father, an able
+lawyer who was raised to the Bench in 1830, bought an estate at Feniton
+and came to live in the same district before the boy was fifteen years
+old. It was at Ottery, where the name of Coleridge was so familiar,
+that the earliest school-days of 'Coley' Patteson were passed; but
+before he was eleven years old he was sent to the boarding-house of
+another Coleridge, his uncle, who was a master at Eton. Here he spent
+seven happy years working in rather desultory fashion, so that he had
+his share of success and failure. His chief distinctions were won at
+cricket, where he rose to be captain of the XI; but with all whose good
+opinion was worth having he won favour by his cheerful, frank,
+independent spirit. If he was idle at one time, at another he could
+develop plenty of energy; if he was one of the most popular boys in the
+school, he was not afraid to risk his popularity by protesting strongly
+against moral laxity or abuses which others tolerated. It is well to
+remember this, which is attested by his school-fellows, when reading his
+letters, in which at times he blames himself for caring too much for the
+good opinion of others.
+
+His interest in the distant seas where he was to win fame was first
+aroused in 1841. Bishop Selwyn was a friend of his family, and coming to
+say good-bye to the Pattesons before sailing for New Zealand, he said,
+half sportively, to the boy's mother, 'Will you give me "Coley"?' This
+idea was not pursued at the time; but the name of Selwyn was kept before
+him in his school-days, as the Bishop had left many friends at Eton and
+Windsor, and Edward Coleridge employed his nephew to copy out Selwyn's
+letters from his diocese in order to enlist the sympathy of a wider
+audience. But this connexion dropped out of sight for many years and
+seems to have had little influence on Patteson's life at Oxford, where
+he spent four years at Balliol. He went up in 1845 as a commoner, and
+this fact caused him some disquietude. He felt that he ought to have won
+a scholarship, and, conscious of his failure, he took to more steady
+reading. He was also practising self-discipline, giving up his cricket
+to secure more hours for study. He did not scorn the game. He was as
+fond as ever of Eton, and of his school memories. But his life was
+shaping in another direction, and the new interests, deepening in
+strength, inevitably crowded out the old.
+
+After taking his degree he made a tour of the great cities of Italy and
+wrote enthusiastically of the famous pictures in her galleries. He also
+paid more than one visit to Germany, and when he had gained a fair
+knowledge of the German language, he went on to the more difficult task
+of learning Hebrew and Arabic. This pursuit was due partly to his
+growing interest in Biblical study, partly to the delight he took in his
+own linguistic powers. He had an ear of great delicacy; he caught up
+sounds as by instinct; and his retentive memory fixed the impression.
+Later he applied the reasoning of the philologist, classified and
+tabulated his results, and thus was able, when drawn into fields
+unexplored by science, to do original work and to produce results of
+great value to other students. But he was not the man to make a display
+of his power; in fact he apologizes, when writing to his father from
+Dresden, for making a secret of his pursuit, regarding it rather as a
+matter of self-indulgence which needed excuse. Bishop Selwyn could have
+told him that he need have no such fears, and that in developing his
+linguistic gifts he was going exactly the right way to fit himself for
+service in Melanesia.
+
+Patteson's appointment to a fellowship at Merton College, which involved
+residence in Oxford for a year, brought no great change into his life.
+Rather he used what leisure he had for strengthening his knowledge of
+the subjects which seemed to him to matter, especially the
+interpretation of the Bible. He returned to Greek and Latin, which he
+had neglected at school, and found a new interest in them. History and
+geography filled up what time he could spare from his chief studies.
+Resuming his cricket for a while, he mixed in the life of the
+undergraduates and made friends among them. At College meetings, for all
+his innate conservatism, he found himself on the side of the reformers
+in questions affecting the University; but he had not time to make his
+influence felt. At the end of the year he was ordained and took a curacy
+at Alphington, a hamlet between Feniton and Ottery. His mother had died
+in 1842, and his object was to be near his father, who was growing
+infirm and found his chief pleasure in 'Coley's' presence and talk. His
+interest in foreign missions was alive again, but at this time his first
+duty seemed to be to his family; and in a parish endeared to him by old
+associations he quickly won the affection of his flock. He was happy in
+the work and his parishioners hoped to keep him for many years; but this
+was not to be. In 1854 Bishop Selwyn and his wife were in England
+pleading for support for their Church, and their visit to Feniton
+brought matters to a crisis. Patteson was thrilled at the idea of seeing
+his hero again, and he at once seized the opportunity for serving under
+him. There was no need for the Bishop to urge him; rather he had to
+assure himself that he could fairly accept the offer. To the young man
+there was no thought of sacrifice; that fell to the father's lot, and he
+bore it nobly. His first words to the Bishop were, 'I can't let him go';
+but a moment later he repented and cried, 'God forbid that I should stop
+him'; and at parting he faced the consequences unflinchingly. 'Mind!' he
+said, 'I give him wholly, not with any thought of seeing him again.'
+
+In the following March, the young curate, leaving his home and his
+parish where he was almost idolized, where he was never to be seen
+again, set his face towards the South Seas. Once the offer had been made
+and accepted, he felt no more excitement. It was not the spiritual
+exaltation of a moment, but a deliberate applying of the lessons which
+he had been learning year by year. He had put his hand to the plough and
+would not look back.
+
+The first things which he set himself to learn, on board ship, were the
+Maori language and the art of navigation. The first he studied with a
+native teacher, the second he learnt from the Bishop, and he proved an
+apt pupil in both. In a few months he became qualified to act as master
+of the Mission ship, and the speaking of a new language was to him only
+a matter of weeks. His earliest letters show how quickly he came to
+understand the natives. He was ready to meet any and every demand made
+upon him, and to fulfil duties as different from one another as those of
+teacher, skipper, and storekeeper. His head-quarters, during his early
+months in New Zealand, were either on board ship or else at St. John's
+College, five miles from Auckland. But, before he had completed a year,
+he was called to accompany the Bishop on his tour to the Islands and to
+make acquaintance with the scene of his future labours.
+
+Bishop Selwyn had wisely limited his mission to those islands which the
+Gospel had not reached. The counsels of St. Paul and his own sagacity
+warned him against exposing his Church to the danger of jealous rivalry.
+So long as Christ was preached in an island or group of islands, he was
+content; he would leave them to the ministry of those who were first in
+the field. Many of the Polynesian groups had been visited by French and
+English missionaries and stations had been established in Samoa, Tahiti,
+and elsewhere; but north of New Zealand there was a large tract of the
+Pacific, including the New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands, where the
+natives had never heard the Gospel message. These groups were known
+collectively as Melanesia, a name hardly justified by facts,[38] as the
+inhabitants were by no means uniform in colour. If the Solomon
+Islanders had almost black skins, those who lived in the Banks Islands,
+which Patteson came to know so well, were of a warm brown hue such as
+may be seen in India or even in the south of Europe. Writing in the very
+last month of his life, Patteson tells his sisters how the colour of the
+people in Mota 'is just what Titian and the Venetian painters delighted
+in, the colour of their own weather-beaten boatmen'.
+
+[Note 38: Melanesia, from Greek [Greek: melas]=black, [Greek:
+nęsos]=island.]
+
+Selwyn had visited these islands intermittently since 1849, and had
+thought out a plan for spreading Christianity among them. With only a
+small staff of helpers and many other demands on his time, he could not
+hope to get into direct contact with a large population, so widely
+scattered. His work must be done through natives selected by himself,
+and these must be trained while they were young and open to impressions,
+while their character was still in the making. So every year he brought
+back with him from his cruise a certain number of Melanesian boys to
+spend the warmer months of the New Zealand year under the charge of the
+missionaries, and restored them to their homes at the beginning of the
+next cruise. At Auckland, with its soldiers, sailors, and merchants, the
+boys became familiar with other sides of European life beyond the walls
+of the Mission School; and their interest was stimulated by a close view
+of the strength to be drawn from European civilization. By this system
+Selwyn hoped that they on their return would spread among the islanders
+a certain knowledge of European ways, and that their relatives, seeing
+how the boys had been kindly treated, would feel confidence in the
+missionaries and would give them a hearing. This policy commended itself
+to Patteson by its practical efficacy; and though he modified it in
+details, he remained all his life a convinced adherent of the principle.
+Slow progress through a few pupils, selected when young, and carefully
+taught, was worth more than mere numbers, though too often in
+Missionary reports success is gauged by figures and statistics.
+
+These cruises furnished the adventurous part of the life. Readers of
+Stevenson and Conrad can picture to themselves to-day the colour, the
+mystery, and the magic of the South Seas. Patteson, with his reserved
+nature and his dread of seeming to throw a false glamour over his
+practical duties, wrote but sparingly of such sights; but he was by no
+means insensitive to natural beauty and his letters give glimpses of
+coral reefs and lagoons, of palms and coco-nut trees, of creepers 100
+feet long trailing over lofty crags to the clear water below.
+
+He enjoyed being on board ship, with his books at hand and some leisure
+to read them, with the Bishop at his side to counsel him, and generally
+some of his pupils to need his help. They had many delightful days when
+they received friendly greeting on the islands and found that they were
+making real progress among the natives. But the elements of discomfort,
+disappointment, and danger were rarely absent for long. For a large part
+of each voyage they had some forty or fifty Melanesian boys on board, on
+their way to school or returning to their homes. The schooner built for
+the purpose was as airy and convenient as it could be made; yet there
+was little space for privacy. The natives were constitutionally weak;
+and when illness broke out, no trained nurses were at hand and Patteson
+would give up his own quarters to the sick and spend hours at their
+bedsides. Sometimes they found, on revisiting an island, that their old
+scholars had fallen away and that they had to begin again from the
+start. Sometimes they had to abstain from landing at all, because the
+behaviour of the natives was menacing, or because news had reached the
+Mission of some recent quarrel which had roused bitter feeling. The
+traditions of the Melanesians inclined them to go on the war-path only
+too readily, and both Selwyn and Patteson had an instinctive perception
+of the native temperament and its danger.
+
+However lightly Patteson might treat these perils in his letters home,
+there was never complete security. To reassure his sisters he tells them
+of 81 landings and only two arrows fired at them in one cruise; and yet
+one poisoned arrow might be the cause of death accompanied by
+indescribable agony. Even when a landing had been effected and friendly
+trading and talk had given confidence to the visitors, it might be that
+an arrow was discharged at them by some irresponsible native as they
+made for their boats.
+
+These voyages needed unconventional qualities in the missioner; few of
+the subscribers in quiet English parishes had an idea how the Melanesian
+islanders made their first acquaintance with their Bishop. When the boat
+came near the shore, the Bishop, arrayed in some of his oldest clothes,
+would jump into the sea and swim to land, sometimes being roughly
+handled by the breakers which guarded the coral bank. It was desirable
+not to expose their precious boat to the cupidity of the natives or to
+the risk of it being dashed to pieces in the surf, so the Bishop risked
+his own person instead. He would then with all possible coolness walk
+into a gathering of savages, catch up any familiar words which seemed to
+occur in the new dialect, or, failing any linguistic help, try to convey
+his peaceful intentions by gesture or facial expression. When an island
+had been visited before, there was less reason to be on guard; but
+sometimes the Bishop had to break to relatives the sad news that one of
+the boys committed to his care had fallen a victim to the more rigorous
+climate of New Zealand or to one of the diseases to which these tribes
+were so liable. Then it was only the personal ascendancy won by previous
+visits that could secure him against a violent impulse to revenge.
+
+All practical measures were tried to establish friendly relations with
+the islanders; and when people at home might fancy the Bishop preaching
+impressively to a decorous circle of listeners, he was really engaged in
+lively talk and barter, receiving yams and other articles of food in
+return for the produce of Birmingham and Sheffield, axe-heads which he
+presented to the old, and fish-hooks with which he won the favour of the
+young. But such brief visits as could be made at a score of islands in a
+busy tour did not carry matters far, and the memory of a visit would be
+growing dim before another chance came of renewing intercourse with the
+same tribe. Selwyn felt it was most desirable that he should have
+sufficient staff to leave a missionary here and there to spend unbroken
+winter months in a single station, where he could reach more of the
+people and exercise a more continuous influence upon them. Patteson's
+first experience of this was in 1858, when he spent three months at Lifu
+in the Loyalty Islands, a group which was later to be annexed by the
+French.
+
+A sojourn which was to bear more permanent fruit was that which he made
+at Mota in 1860. This was one of the Banks Islands lying north of the
+New Hebrides, in 14° South Latitude. The inhabitants of this group
+showed unusual capacity for learning from the missionaries, and
+sufficient stability of character to promise lasting success for the
+work carried on among them. Mota, owing to the line of cliffs which
+formed its coast, was a difficult place for landing; so it escaped the
+visits of white traders who could not emulate the swimming feats of
+Selwyn and Patteson, and was free from many of the troubles which such
+visitors brought with them. Once the island was reached, it proved to be
+one of the most attractive, with rich soil, plenty of water, and a
+kindly docile population. Here, on a site duly purchased for the
+mission, under the shade of a gigantic banyan tree, on a slope where
+bread-fruit and coco-nuts (and, later, pine-apples and other
+importations) flourished, the first habitation was built, with a boarded
+floor, walls of bamboo canes, and a roof of coco-nut leaves woven
+together after the native fashion so as to be waterproof. Here, in the
+next ten years, Patteson was to spend many happy weeks, taking school,
+reading and writing when the curiosity of the natives left him any
+peace, but in general patiently conversing with all and sundry who came
+up, with the twofold object of gathering knowledge of their dialect and
+making friends with individuals. While he showed instinctive tact in
+knowing how far it was wise to go in opposing the native way of life, he
+was willing to face risks whenever real progress could be made. After he
+had been some days in Mota a special initiation in a degrading rite was
+held outside the village. Patteson exercised all his influence to
+prevent one of his converts from being drawn in; and when an old man
+came up and terrorized his pupils by planting a symbolic tree outside
+the Mission hut, Patteson argued with him at length and persuaded him to
+withdraw his threatening symbol. But apart from idolatry, from
+internecine warfare, and from such horrors as cannibalism, prevalent in
+many islands, he was studious not to attack old traditions. He wanted a
+good Melanesian standard of conduct, not a feeble imitation of European
+culture. He was prepared to build upon the foundation which time had
+already prepared and not to invert the order of nature.
+
+In writing home of his life in the island Patteson regularly depreciates
+his own hardships, saying how unworthy he feels himself to be ranked
+with the pioneers in African work. But the discomforts must often have
+been considerable to a man naturally fastidious and brought up as he had
+been.
+
+Food was most monotonous. Meat was out of the question except where the
+missioners themselves imported live stock and kept a farm of their own;
+variety of fruit depended also on their own exertions. The staple diet
+was the yam, a tuber reaching at times in good soil a weight far in
+excess of the potato. This was supplied readily by the natives in return
+for European goods, and could be cooked in different ways; but after
+many weeks' sojourn it was apt to pall. Also the climate was relaxing,
+and apt sooner or later to tell injuriously on Europeans working there.
+Dirt, disease, and danger can be faced cheerfully when a man is in good
+health himself; but a solitary European suffering from ill-health in
+such conditions is indeed put to an heroic test. Perhaps the greatest
+discomfort of all was the perpetual living in public. The natives became
+so fond of Patteson that they flocked round him at all times. His
+reading was interrupted by a stream of questions; when writing he would
+find boys standing close to his elbow, following his every movement with
+attention. The mere writing of letters seems to have been a relief to
+him, though they could not be answered for so long. His journal, into
+which he poured freely all his hopes and fears, all his daily anxieties
+over the Mission, was destined for his family. But he had other
+correspondents to whom he wrote more or less regularly, especially at
+Eton and Winchester. At Eton his uncle was one of his most ardent
+supporters and much of the money which supported the Mission funds came
+to Patteson through the Eton Association. Near Winchester was living his
+cousin Charlotte Yonge, the well-known authoress, who afterwards wrote
+his Life, and through her he established friendly communications with
+Keble at Hursley and Bishop Moberly, then Head Master of Winchester
+College. To them he could write sympathetically of Church questions at
+home, in which he maintained his interest.
+
+During the summer months also, spent near Auckland, Patteson suffered
+from the want of privacy. At Kohimarana, a small bay facing the entrance
+to the harbour, to which the school was moved in 1859, he had a tiny
+room of his own, ten feet square; but the door stood open all day long
+in fine weather, and he was seldom alone. And when there was sickness
+among the boys, his own bedroom was sure to be given up to an invalid.
+But these demands upon his time and comfort he never grudged, while he
+talks with vexation, and even with asperity, of the people from the town
+who came out to pay calls and to satisfy their curiosity with a sight of
+his school. His real friends were few and were partners in his work. The
+two chief among them were unquestionably Bishop Selwyn, too rarely seen
+owing to the many claims upon him, and Sir Richard Martin, who had been
+Chief Justice of the Colony. The latter shared Patteson's taste for
+philology, and had a wide knowledge of Melanesian dialects.
+
+By the middle of 1860, when Patteson had been five years at work, he
+became aware that the question of his consecration could not be long
+delayed. New Zealand was taxing the Primate's strength and he wished to
+constitute Melanesia a separate diocese. He believed that in Patteson,
+with his single-minded zeal and special gifts, he had found the ideal
+man for the post, and in February 1861 the consecration took place. The
+three bishops who laid hands upon him were, like the Bishop-elect,
+Etonians;[39] and thus Eton has played a very special part in founding
+the Melanesian Church. What Patteson thought and felt on this solemn
+occasion may be seen from the letters which he wrote to his father. The
+old judge, still living with his daughters at Feniton, had been stricken
+with a fatal disease, and in the last months of his life he rejoiced to
+know that his son was counted worthy of his high calling. He died in
+June 1861 and the news reached his son when cruising at sea a few months
+later. They had kept up a close correspondence all these years, which he
+now continued with his sisters; nothing shows better his simple
+affectionate nature. They are filled mostly with details of his mission
+life. It was this of which his sisters wanted to hear, and it was this
+which filled almost entirely his thoughts: though he loved his family
+and his home, he had put aside all idea of a voyage to England as
+incompatible with the call to work. To the Mission he gave his time, his
+strength, his money. Eton supplied him with regular subscriptions,
+Australia responded to appeals which he made in person and which
+furnished the only occasions of his leaving the diocese; but, without
+his devotion of the income coming from his Merton fellowship and from
+his family inheritance, it would have been impossible for him to carry
+on the work in the islands.
+
+[Note 39: Bishop Selwyn (Primate), Bishop Abraham of Wellington, and
+Bishop Hobhouse of Nelson.]
+
+In his letters written just about the time of his consecration there are
+abundant references to the qualities which he desired to see in
+Englishmen who should offer to serve with him. He did not want young men
+carried away by violent excitement for the moment, eager to make what
+they called the sacrifice of their lives. The conventional phrases about
+'sacrifices' he disliked as much as he did the sensational appeals to
+which the public had been habituated in missionary meetings. He asked
+for men of common sense, men who would take trouble over learning
+languages, men cheerful and healthy in their outlook, 'gentlemen' who
+could rise above distinctions of class and colour and treat Melanesians
+as they treated their own friends. Above all, he wanted men who would
+whole-heartedly accept the system devised by Selwyn, and approved by
+himself. He could not have the harmony of the Mission upset by people
+who were eager to originate methods before they had served their
+apprenticeship. If he could not get the right recruits from England, he
+says more than once, he would rather depend on the materials existing
+on the spot: young men from New Zealand would adapt themselves better to
+the life and he himself would try to remedy any defects in their
+education. Ultimately he hoped that by careful education and training he
+would draw his most efficient help from his converts in the islands, and
+to train them he spared no pains through the remaining ten years of his
+service.
+
+His way of life was not greatly altered by his consecration. He
+continued to divide his year between New Zealand and his ocean cruise.
+He had no body of clergy to space out over his vast diocese or to meet
+the urgent demands of the islands. In 1863 he received two valuable
+recruits--one the Rev. R. Codrington, a Fellow of Wadham College,
+Oxford, who shared the Bishop's literary tastes and proved a valued
+counsellor; the other a naval man, Lieut. Tilly, who volunteered to take
+charge of the new schooner called the _Southern Cross_, just sent out to
+him from England. Till then his staff consisted of three men in holy
+orders and two younger men who were to be ordained later. One of these,
+Joseph Atkin, a native of Auckland, proved himself of unique value to
+the Mission before he was called to share his leader's death. But the
+Bishop still took upon himself the most dangerous work, the landing at
+villages where the English were unknown or where the goodwill of the
+natives seemed to be doubtful. This he accepted as a matter of course,
+remarking casually in his letters that the others are not good enough
+swimmers to take his place. But caution was necessary long after the
+time when friendship had begun. In the interval between visits anything
+might have happened to render the natives suspicious or revengeful; and
+it is evident that, month after month, the Bishop carried his life in
+his hand.
+
+The secret of his power can be found in his letters, which are quite
+free from heroics. His religion was based on faith, simple and sincere;
+and he never hesitated to put it into practice. From the Bible, and
+especially from the New Testament, he learned the central lessons, the
+love of God and the love of man. Nothing was allowed to come between him
+and his duty; and to it he devoted the faculties which he had trained.
+His instinct often stood him in good stead, bidding him to practise
+caution and to keep at a distance from treacherous snares; but there
+were times when he felt that, to advance his work, he must show absolute
+confidence in the natives whatever he suspected, and move freely among
+them. In such cases he seemed to rise superior to all nervousness or
+fear. At one time he would find his path back to the boat cut off by
+natives who did not themselves know whether they intended violence or
+not. At another he would sit quietly alone in a circle of gigantic
+Tikopians, some of whom, as he writes, were clutching at his 'little
+weak arms and shoulders'. 'Yet it is not', he continued, 'a sense of
+fear, but simply of powerlessness.' No amount of experience could render
+him safe when he was perpetually trying to open new fields for mission
+work and when his converts themselves were so liable to unaccountable
+waves of feeling.
+
+This was proved by his terrible experience at Santa Cruz. He had visited
+these islands (which lie north of the New Hebrides) successfully in
+1862, landing at seven places and seeing over a thousand natives, and he
+had no reason to expect a different reception when he revisited it in
+1864. But on this occasion, after he had swum to land three times and
+walked freely to and fro among the people, a crowd came down to the
+water and began shooting at those in the boat from fifteen yards away,
+while others attacked in canoes. Before the boat could be pulled out of
+reach, three of its occupants were hit with poisoned arrows, and a few
+days later two of them showed signs of tetanus, which was almost
+invariably the result of such wounds. They were young natives of
+Norfolk Island, for whom the Bishop had conceived a special affection,
+and their deaths, which were painful to witness, were a very bitter
+grief to him. The reason for the attack remained unknown. The traditions
+of Melanesia in the matter of blood-feuds were like those of most savage
+nations; and under the spur of fear or revenge the islanders were
+capable of directing their anger blindly against their truest friends.
+
+The most notable development in the first year of Patteson's episcopate
+was the forming of a solid centre of work in the Banks Islands. Every
+year, while the Mission ship was cruising, some member of the Mission,
+often the Bishop himself, would be working steadily in Mota for a
+succession of months. For visitors there was not much to see. At the
+beginning, hours were given up to desultory talking with the natives,
+but perseverance was rewarded. Those who came to talk would return to
+take lessons, and some impression was gradually made even on the older
+men attached to their idolatrous rites. Many years after Patteson's
+death it was still the most civilized of the islands with a population
+almost entirely Christian.
+
+A greater change was effected in 1867 when the Bishop boldly cut adrift
+from New Zealand and made his base for summer work at Norfolk Island,
+lying 800 miles north-east of Sydney.[40] The advantages which it
+possessed over Auckland were two. Firstly, it was so many hundred miles
+nearer the centre of the Mission work; secondly, it had a climate much
+more akin to that of the Melanesian islands and it would be possible to
+keep pupils here for a longer spell without running such risks to their
+health. Another point, which to many would seem a drawback, but to
+Patteson was an additional advantage, was the absence of all
+distraction. At Auckland the clergy implored him to preach, society
+importuned him to take part in its gatherings; and if he would not come
+to the town, they pursued him to his retreat. He was always busy and
+grudged the loss of his time. A contemporary tells us that he worked
+from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. and later; and besides his philological
+interests, he needed time for his own study of the Bible. In the former
+he was a pioneer and had to mark out his own path; in the latter he
+welcomed the guidance of the best scholars whenever he could procure
+their books. He spoke with delight of his first acquaintance with
+Lightfoot's edition of St. Paul's Epistles; he wrote home for such new
+books as would be useful to him, and he read Hebrew daily whenever he
+could find time. Into this part of his life he put more conscientious
+effort the older he grew, and was always trying to learn. It may have
+seemed to many a dull routine to be followed year after year by a man
+who might have filled high place and moved in brilliant society at home;
+but from his letters it is clear that he was satisfied with his life and
+that no thought of regret assailed him.
+
+[Note 40: This island had lately been colonized by settlers from
+Pitcairn Island, descended from the mutineers of the _Bounty_, marooned
+in 1789.]
+
+The year 1868 brought a severe loss when Bishop Selwyn was called home
+to take charge of the Diocese of Lichfield. It was he who had drawn
+Patteson to the South Seas: his presence had been an abiding strength to
+the younger man, however rare their meetings; and Patteson felt his
+departure as he had felt nothing since his father's death. But he went
+on unfalteringly with his work, ever ready to look hopefully into the
+future. At the moment he was intensely interested in the ordination of
+his first native clergyman, George Sarawia, who had now been a pupil for
+nine years and had shown sufficient progress in knowledge and strength
+of character to justify the step. Eager though he was to enrol helpers
+for the work, Patteson was scrupulously careful to ensure the fitness of
+his clergy, and to lay hands hastily on no man. In little matters also
+he was careful and methodical. His scholars in Norfolk Island were
+expected to be punctual, his helpers to be content with the simple life
+which contented him. All were to give their work freely; between black
+and white there was to be equality; no service was to be considered
+degrading. He did not wish to hurry his converts into outward observance
+of European ways. More important than the wearing of clothes was the
+true respect for the sanctity of marriage; far above the question of
+Sunday observance was the teaching of the love of God.
+
+Foreign missions have come in for plenty of criticism. It is sometimes
+said that our missionaries have occasioned strife leading to
+intervention and annexation by the British Government, and have exposed
+us abroad to the charge of covetousness and hypocrisy. But there are few
+instances in which this charge can be maintained, least of all in
+Australasian waters. A more serious charge, often made in India, is that
+missioners destroy the sanctions of morality by undermining the
+traditional beliefs of the natives, and that the convert is neither a
+good Asiatic nor a passable European. This depends on the methods
+employed. It may be true in some cases. Patteson fully realized the
+danger, as we can see from his words, and built carefully on the
+foundation of native character. He took away no stone till he could
+replace it by better material. He was never content merely to destroy.
+
+Another set of critics are roused by the extravagance of some missionary
+meetings and societies: their taste is offended or (we are bound to
+admit) their sense of humour roused. It was time for Dickens to wield
+this weapon when he heard Chadbands pouring forth their oily platitudes
+and saw Mrs. Jellybys neglecting their own children to clothe the
+offspring of 'Borrioboola Gha'. Such folly caught the critic's eye when
+the steady benevolence of others, unnoticed, was effecting work which
+had a good influence equally at home and abroad. Against the fanciful
+picture of Mrs. Jellyby let us put the life-story of Charlotte Yonge,
+who, while discharging every duty to her family and her village, in a
+way which won their lasting affection, was able to put aside large sums
+from the earnings of her pen to supply the needs of the Melanesian
+Mission.
+
+Let us remember, too, that much of the bitterest criticism has come from
+those who have a direct interest in suppressing missions, who have made
+large profits in remote places by procedure which will not bear the
+light of day. Patteson would have been content to justify his work by
+his Master's bidding as quoted in the Gospel. His friends would have
+been content to claim that the actual working of the Mission should be
+examined. If outside testimony to the value of his work is wanted, one
+good instance will refute a large amount of idle calumny. Sir George
+Grey, no sentimentalist but the most practical ruler of New Zealand,
+gave his own money to get three native boys, chosen by himself, educated
+at Patteson's school, and was fully satisfied with the result.
+
+But this simple regular life was soon to be perturbed by new
+complications, which rose from the European settlers in Fiji. As their
+plantations increased, the need for labour became urgent and the
+Melanesian islands were drawn upon to supply it. In many ways Patteson
+felt that it was good for the Melanesians to be trained to agricultural
+work; but the trouble was that they were being deceived over the
+conditions of the undertaking. Open kidnapping and the revival of
+anything like a slave trade could hardly be practised under the British
+flag at this time; nor indeed did the Fiji settlers, in most cases, wish
+to do anything unfair or brutal. It was to be a matter of contracts,
+voluntarily signed by the workmen; but the Melanesian was not educated
+up to the point where he could appreciate what a contract meant. When
+they did begin to understand, many were unwilling to sign for a period
+long enough to be useful; many more grew quickly tired of the work,
+changed their mind and broke their engagements. As the trade grew, some
+islands were entirely depopulated, and it became necessary to visit
+others, where the natives refused to engage themselves. The trade was in
+jeopardy; but the captains of merchant vessels, who found it very
+lucrative, were determined that the supply of hands should not run
+short. So when they met with no volunteers, they used to cajole the
+islanders on board ship under pretence of trade and then kidnap them;
+when this procedure led to affrays, they were not slow to shoot. The
+confidence of the native in European justice was shaken, and the work of
+years was undone. Security on both sides was gone, and the missionary,
+who had been sure of a welcome for ten years, might find himself in face
+of a population burning with the desire to revenge themselves on the
+first white man who came within their reach.
+
+Patteson did all that he could, in co-operation with the local
+officials, to regulate the trade. There was no case for a crusade
+against the Fiji planters, who were doing good work in a humane way and
+were ignorant of the misdeeds practised in Melanesia. The best method
+was to forbid unauthorized vessels to pursue the trade and to put the
+authorized vessels under supervision; but, to effect this in an outlying
+part of the vast British Empire, it was necessary to educate opinion and
+to work through Whitehall. This he set himself to do; but meanwhile he
+was so distressed to find the islanders slipping out of his reach, that
+in the last months of his life he was planning a campaign in Fiji, where
+he intended to visit several of the plantations in turn and to carry to
+the expatriated workers the Gospel which he had hoped to preach to them
+in their homes.
+
+But before he could redress this wrong he was himself destined to fall
+a victim to the spirit of hostility evoked. His best work was already
+done when in 1870 he had a prolonged illness, and was forced to spend
+some months at Auckland for convalescence. In the judgement of his
+friends his exertions had aged him considerably, and the climate had
+contributed to break down his strength. Though he was back at work again
+before the end of the summer he was far more subject to weariness. His
+manner became peaceful and dreamy, and his companions found that it was
+difficult to rouse him in the ordinary interchange of talk. His thoughts
+recurred more often to the past; he would write of Devonshire and its
+charms in spring, read over familiar passages in Wordsworth, or fall
+into quiet meditation, yet he would not unbuckle his armour or think of
+leaving the Mission in order to take a holiday in England.
+
+In April 1871, when the time came for him to leave Norfolk Island for
+his annual cruise, his energy revived. He spent seven weeks at Mota,
+leaving it towards the end of August to sail for the Santa Cruz group.
+On September 20, as he came in sight of the coral reef of Nukapu, he was
+speaking to his scholars of the death of St. Stephen. Next morning he
+had the boat lowered and put off for shore accompanied by Mr. Atkin and
+three natives. He knew that feeling had lately become embittered in this
+district over the Labour trade, but the thought of danger did not shake
+his resolution. To show his confidence and disarm suspicion he entered
+one of the canoes, alone with the islanders, landed on the beach and
+disappeared among the crowd. Half an hour later, for no apparent reason,
+an attack was started by men in canoes on the boat lying close off the
+shore; and before the rowers could pull out of range, Joseph Atkin and
+two of the natives had been wounded by poisoned arrows which, some days
+later, set up tetanus with fatal effect. They reached the ship; but
+after a few hours, when their wounds had been treated, Mr. Atkin
+insisted on taking the boat in again to learn the Bishop's fate. This
+time no attack was made upon them; but a canoe was towed out part of the
+way and then left to drift towards the boat. In it was the dead body of
+the Bishop tied up in a native mat. How he died no one ever knew, but
+his face was calm and no anguish seems to have troubled him in the hour
+of death. 'The placid smile was still on the face: there was a palm leaf
+fastened over the breast, and, when the mat was opened, there were five
+wounds, no more. The strange mysterious beauty, as it may be called, of
+the circumstances almost make one feel as if this were the legend of a
+martyr of the Primitive Church.'[41]
+
+Miss Yonge, from whom these lines are quoted, goes on to show that the
+five wounds, of which the first probably proved fatal, while the other
+four were deliberately inflicted afterwards, were to be explained by
+native custom. In the long leaflets of the palm five knots had been
+tied. Five men in Fiji were known to have been stolen from this island,
+and there can be little doubt that the relatives were exacting, in
+native fashion, their vengeance from the first European victim who fell
+into their power. The Bishop would have been the first to make allowance
+for their superstitious error and to lay the blame in the right quarter.
+His surviving comrades knew this, and in reporting the tragedy they sent
+a special petition that the Colonial Office would not order a
+bombardment of the island. Unfortunately, when a ship was sent on a
+mission of inquiry, the natives themselves began hostilities and
+bloodshed ensued. But at last the Bishop had by his death secured what
+he was labouring in his life to effect. The Imperial Parliament was
+stirred to examine the Labour trade in the Pacific and regulations were
+enforced which put an end to the abuse.
+
+[Note 41: _Life of John Coleridge Patteson_, by Charlotte Yonge, 2
+vols. (Macmillan, 1874).]
+
+'Quae caret ora cruore nostro?' The Roman poet puts this question in his
+horror at the wide extension of the civil wars which stained with Roman
+blood all the seas known to the world of his day.
+
+Great Britain has its martyrs in a nobler warfare yet more widely
+spread. Not all have fallen by the weapons of war. Nature has claimed
+many victims through disease or the rigour of unknown climes. The death
+of some is a mystery to this day. India, the Soudan, South and West
+Africa, the Arctic and Antarctic regions, speak eloquently to the men of
+our race of the spirit which carried them so far afield in the
+nineteenth century. Thanks to its first bishop, the Church of Melanesia
+shares their fame, opening its history with a glorious chapter enriched
+by heroism, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom.
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT MORIER
+
+From a drawing by William Richmond]
+
+
+
+
+SIR ROBERT D. B. MORIER, G.C.B., P.C.
+
+1826-93
+
+
+1826. Born at Paris, March 31.
+1832-9. Childhood in Switzerland.
+1839-44. With private tutors.
+1845-9. Balliol College, Oxford.
+1850. Clerk in Education Office.
+1853. Attaché at Vienna Embassy.
+1858. Attaché at Berlin.
+1861. Marriage with Alice, daughter of General Jonathan Peel.
+1865. Commissioner at Vienna. Commercial Treaty. C.B. Chargé
+d'Affaires at Frankfort.
+1866-71. Chargé d'Affaires at Darmstadt.
+1870. Tour in Alsace to test national feeling.
+1871. Chargé d'Affaires at Stuttgart.
+1872-6. Chargé d'Affaires at Munich.
+1875. Danger of second Franco-German War.
+1876. Minister at Lisbon.
+1881. Minister at Madrid. 1882. K.C.B.
+1884. Bismarck vetoes Morier as Ambassador to Berlin.
+1885-93. Ambassador at St. Petersburg.
+1886. Bulgaria, Batum, and Black Sea troubles.
+1887. G.C.B. 1889. D.C.L., Oxford.
+1891. Appointed Ambassador at Rome: retained at St. Petersburg.
+1893. Death at Montreux. Funeral at Batchworth.
+
+ROBERT MORIER
+
+DIPLOMATIST
+
+
+Diplomacy as a profession is a product of modern history. As Europe
+emerged from the Middle Ages, the dividing walls between State and State
+were broken down, and Governments found it necessary to have trained
+agents resident at foreign courts to conduct the questions of growing
+importance which arose between them. Churchmen were at first best
+qualified to undertake such duties, and Nicholas Wotton, Dean of
+Canterbury, who enjoyed the confidence of four Tudor sovereigns, came to
+be as much at home in France or in the Netherlands as he was in his own
+Deanery. It was his great nephew Sir Henry (who began his days as a
+scholar at Winchester, and ended them as Provost at Eton) who did his
+profession a notable disservice by indulging his humour at Augsburg when
+acting as envoy for James I, defining the diplomatist as 'one who was
+sent to lie abroad for his country'.[42] Since then many a politician
+and writer has let fly his shafts at diplomacy, and fervent democrats
+have come to regard diplomats as veritable children of the devil. But
+this prejudice is chiefly due to ignorance, and can easily be cured by a
+patient study of history. In the nineteenth century, in particular,
+English diplomacy can point to a noble roll of ambassadors, who worked
+for European peace as well as for the triumph of liberal causes, and
+none has a higher claim to such praise than Sir Robert Morier, the
+subject of this sketch.
+
+[Note 42: The Latin form in which this epigram was originally
+couched--_mentiendi causa_--does away with all ambiguity.]
+
+The traditions of his family marked out his path in life. We can trace
+their origin to connexions in the Consular service at Smyrna, where
+Isaac Morier met and married Clara van Lennep in the latter half of the
+eighteenth century. Swiss grandfather and Dutch grandmother became
+naturalized subjects of the British Crown and brought up four sons to
+win distinction in its service. Of these the third, David, married a
+daughter of Robert Burnet Jones--a descendant of the famous Bishop
+Burnet, and himself a servant of the Crown--and held important
+diplomatic appointments for over thirty years at Paris and Berne. So it
+was that his only son Robert David Burnet Morier was born in France,
+spent much of his childhood in Switzerland, and acquired early in life
+a remarkable facility in speaking foreign languages. To his schooling
+in England he seems to have owed little of positive value. His father
+and uncles had been sent to Harrow; but perhaps it was as well that the
+son did not, in this, follow in his father's footsteps. However much he
+neglected his studies with two easy-going tutors, he preserved his
+freshness and originality and ran no danger of being drilled into a
+type. If he had as a boy undue self-confidence, no one was better fitted
+to correct it than his mother, a woman of wide sympathies and strong
+intellectual force. The letters which passed between them display, on
+his part, mature powers of expression at an early age, and show the
+generous, affectionate nature of both; and till her death in 1855 she
+remained his chief confidante and counsellor. In trying to matriculate
+at Balliol College he met with a momentary check, due to the casual
+nature of his education; but, after retrieving this, he rapidly made
+good his deficiency in Greek and Latin, and ended by taking a creditable
+degree. His time at Oxford, apart from reading, was well spent. He made
+special friends with two of the younger dons: Temple, afterwards
+Archbishop of Canterbury, and Jowett, the future Master of Balliol. The
+former was carried by rugged force and sheer ability to the highest
+position in the Church; the latter won a peculiar place, in Oxford and
+in the world outside, by his gifts of judging character and stimulating
+intellectual interest. Morier became his favourite pupil and lifelong
+friend. F. T. Palgrave, the friend of both, tells us how 'Morier went up
+to Balliol a lax and imperfectly educated fellow; but Jowett, seeing his
+great natural capacity, took him in the Long Vacation of 1848 and
+practically "converted" him to the doctrine of work. This was the
+turning-point in Morier's life.' Together the two friends spent many a
+holiday in Germany, Scotland, and elsewhere, and must have presented a
+strange contrast to one another: Jowett, small, frail, quiet and
+precise in manner, Morier big in every way, exuberant and full of
+vitality. It was with Jowett and Stanley (afterwards Dean of
+Westminster) that Morier went to Paris in 1848, eager to study the
+Revolutionary spirit in its most lively manifestations. Stanley
+describes him as 'a Balliol undergraduate of gigantic size, who speaks
+French better than English, is to wear a blouse, and to go about
+disguised to the clubs'.
+
+He took his degree in November 1849, and a month later he was visiting
+Dresden and Berlin, making German friends and initiating himself in
+German politics and German ways of thought. Though his British
+patriotism was fervid and sustained, he was capable of understanding men
+of other nations and recognizing their merits; and in knowledge of
+Germany he acquired a position among Englishmen of his day rivalled only
+by Odo Russell, afterwards Ambassador at Berlin. Morier's father had for
+many years represented Great Britain in Switzerland and could guide him
+both by precept and by example. Free intercourse with the most liberal
+minds in Oxford had developed the lessons which he had learnt at home.
+But his own energy and application effected more than anything. He was
+not satisfied till he had mastered a problem; and books, places, and
+people were laid under contribution unsparingly. He started on his tour
+carrying letters of introduction to some of the famous men in Germany,
+including the great traveller and scientist, Alexander von Humboldt. Of
+a younger generation was the philologist Max Müller, who was a frequent
+companion of Morier in Berlin, and gave up his time to nursing him back
+to health when he was taken ill with quinsy. He found friends in all
+professions, but chiefly among politicians. A typical instance is von
+Roggenbach, who rose to be Premier of Baden in the years 1861 to 1865,
+when the destinies of Germany were in the melting-pot. Baden was in
+some ways the leading state in South Germany at that time, combining
+liberal ideals with a fervent advocacy of national union, and the views
+of Roggenbach on political questions attracted Morier's warmest
+sympathy. Another state in which Morier felt genuinely at home was the
+Duchy of Coburg, from which Prince Albert had come to wed our own Queen
+Victoria. The Prince's brother, the reigning Duke, treated Morier as a
+personal friend; and here, too, he found Baron Stockmar, a Nestor among
+German Liberals, who had spent his political life in trying to promote
+goodwill between England and Germany. He received Morier into his family
+circle and adopted him as the heir to his policy. This intimacy led to
+further results; and, thanks in part to Morier's subsequent friendship
+with the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, generous ideals and a
+liberal spirit were to be found surviving in a few places even after
+1870, though Bismarck had poisoned the minds of a whole generation by
+the material successes which he achieved.
+
+In 1849 the doors of the Foreign Office were closed to Morier. The
+Secretary of State, Lord Palmerston, had treated his father unfairly, as
+he thought, some years before, and Morier would ask no favours of him.
+He continued his education, keeping in close touch with Jowett and
+Temple, and, when he saw a chance of studying politics at first hand, he
+eagerly availed himself of it. The troubles of Schleswig-Holstein, too
+intricate to be explained briefly, had been brewing for some time. In
+1850, the dispute, to which Prussia, Denmark, and the German Diet were
+all parties, came to a head. The Duchies were overrun by Prussian
+troops, while the Danish Navy held the sea. Morier rushed off to see for
+himself what was happening, and spent some interesting days at Kiel,
+talking to those who could instruct him, and forming his own judgement.
+This was adverse to the wisdom of the Copenhagen Radicals, who were
+trying to assert by force their supremacy over a German population. In
+the circumstances, as Prussia gave way to the wishes of other powers, no
+satisfactory decision could be reached; but ten years later the issue
+was in the ruthless hands of Bismarck, and was settled by 'blood and
+iron'.
+
+In 1850 Morier accepted a clerkship in the Education Office at Ł120 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
+attachéship. 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 attaché, 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 making acquaintance with the chief figures in the diplomatic world.
+He enjoyed talks with Baron Jellaçiç, who had saved the monarchy in
+1848, and with Prince Metternich, whose political career ended in that
+year of revolutions and who was now only a figure in society. After the
+Crimean War Morier obtained permission to make a tour through South-east
+Hungary and to study for himself the mixture of Slavonic, Magyar, and
+Teutonic races inhabiting that district. He followed this up by another
+tour of three months, which carried him from Agram southwards into
+Bosnia and Herzegovina, having prepared for it by working ten to twelve
+hours a day for some weeks at the language of the southern Slavs.
+Incidentally he enjoyed some hunting expeditions with Turkish pashas,
+and obtained some insight into the weakness of the British consular
+system. All his life he believed strongly in the value of such tours to
+obtain first-hand information; and thirty years later, as Ambassador, he
+encouraged his secretaries to familiarize themselves with the outlying
+districts of the Russian empire.
+
+In 1858, at the age of thirty-two, Morier passed from Vienna to Berlin.
+It was the year in which the Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of
+Queen Victoria, married the Crown Prince of Prussia.[43] Her father, the
+Prince Consort, was very anxious that Morier should be at hand to advise
+the young couple, and the appointment to Berlin was his work. Then it
+was that Morier became involved in the struggle between Bismarck and the
+Liberal influences in Germany, which had no stronger rallying-point than
+the Coburg Court. This conflict only showed itself later, and at first
+the young English attaché must have seemed a sufficiently unimportant
+person; but before 1862 Bismarck, coming home to Berlin from the St.
+Petersburg Embassy, and discerning the nature of Morier's character, had
+declared that it was desirable to remove such an influence from the path
+of his party, who were determined to bring Liberal Germany under the
+yoke of a Prussia which had no sympathy for democratic ideals.
+
+[Note 43: The ill-fated Emperor Frederick III, who died of cancer in
+1888.]
+
+For the moment the ship of State was hanging in the wind; light currents
+of air were perceptible; sails were filling in one parliamentary boat or
+another; but the chief movement was to be seen not in parliamentary
+circles but in the excellent civil service, which preserved that honesty
+and efficiency which it had acquired in the days of Stein. There were
+marked tendencies towards Liberalism and towards unification in
+different parts of Germany; and, if the Liberal party could have
+produced one man of firmness and decision, these forces might have
+triumphed over the reactionary Prussian clique. In this conflict Morier
+was bound to be a passionate sympathiser with the parties which included
+so many of his personal friends and which advocated principles so dear
+to his heart. With the triumph of his friends, too, were associated the
+prospects of a good understanding between England and Germany, for which
+Morier himself was labouring; and he was accused of having meddled
+indiscreetly with local politics. When King William broke with the
+Liberals over the Army Bill, caution was doubly necessary. Bismarck
+became Minister in 1862, and, great man though he was, he was capable of
+any pettiness when he had once declared war on an opponent. From that
+time the policy of working for an Anglo-Prussian _entente_ was a losing
+game, not only because Bismarck detested the parliamentarism which he
+associated with England, but also because, on our side too, extremists
+were stirring up ill-feeling. In his letters Morier makes frequent
+reference to the 'John Bullishness' of _The Times_. When this journal,
+to which European importance attached during the editorship of Delane,
+was not openly flouting Prussia, it was displaying reckless ignorance of
+a people who were making the most solid contributions to learning and
+raising themselves by steady industry from the losses due to centuries
+of Continental warfare.
+
+From time to time he paid visits to friends at Dresden, at Baden, and
+elsewhere. One year he was sent to Naples on a special mission, another
+year he was summoned to attend on Queen Victoria, who was visiting
+Coburg. In 1859 he is lamenting the monotony of existence at Berlin,
+which he calls 'a Dutch mud canal of a life, without even the tulip beds
+on the banks'. But when later in that year Lord John Russell, who knew
+and appreciated his talents, became Foreign Secretary and called on him
+for frequent reports on important subjects, Morier found solace in work.
+He was only too willing to put his wide knowledge of the country in
+which he was serving at the disposal of his superiors at home. He wrote
+with equal ability on political, agrarian, and financial subjects. That
+he could take into account the personal factor is shown by the long
+letter which he wrote in 1861 to Sir Henry Layard, then Political
+Under-Secretary of State.[44] It contained a masterly analysis of the
+character and upbringing of King William, showing how his intellectual
+narrowness had hampered Liberal Governments, while his professional
+training in the army had made him a most efficient instrument in
+promoting the aims of Junker politicians and ministers of war.
+
+[Note 44: _Memoirs of Sir Robert Morier_, 1826-76, by his daughter,
+Lady Rosslyn Wemyss, vol. i, p. 303 (Edward Arnold, 1911).]
+
+On Schleswig-Holstein, above all, Morier exerted himself to convey a
+right view of the question to those who guided opinion in London,
+whether newspaper editors or responsible ministers. He appealed to the
+same principle which had won support for the Lombards against Austria.
+The inhabitants of the disputed Duchies were for the most part Germans,
+and the Danish Government had done violence to their national sentiment.
+If England could have extended its sympathy to its northern kinsmen in
+time, the question might have been settled peacefully before 1862, and
+Bismarck could never have availed himself of such a lever to overthrow
+his Liberal opponents. As it was, Prussia ignored the Danish sympathies
+displayed abroad, especially in the English press, went her own way and
+invaded the Duchies, dragging in her train Austria, her confederate and
+her dupe. Palmerston, who controlled our foreign policy at the time,
+waited till the last moment, blustered, found himself impotent to move
+without French support, and left Denmark smarting with a sense of
+betrayal which lasted till 1914. By such bungling Morier knew that we
+were incurring enmity on both sides and lowering our reputation for
+courage as well as for statesmanship.
+
+In 1865 he was chosen as one of the Special Commissioners to negotiate a
+treaty of commerce between Great Britain and Austria. He had always
+been a Free-trader, and he was convinced that such economic agreements
+could do much to improve the world and to strengthen the bonds of peace.
+So he was ready and willing to do hard work in this sphere, and finding
+a congenial colleague in Sir Louis Mallet, one of the best economists of
+the day, he spent some months at Vienna in fruitful activity and won the
+good opinion of all associated with him. For his services he received
+the C.B. and high commendation from London.
+
+This same year brought promotion in rank, though for long it was
+uncertain where he would go. In August he accepted the offer of First
+Secretary to the Legation in Japan, most reluctantly, because he saw his
+peculiar knowledge of Germany would be wasted there. Ten days later this
+offer was changed for a similar position at the Court of Greece, which
+was equally uncongenial; but at the end of the year the Foreign Office
+decided that he would be most useful in the field which he had chosen
+for himself, and after a few months at Frankfort he was sent in the year
+1866 as chargé d'affaires to the Grand Ducal Court of Hesse-Darmstadt.
+
+From these posts he was destined to be a spectator of the two great
+conflicts by which Bismarck established the union of North Germany and
+its primacy in Europe. Morier detested the means by which this end was
+achieved, but he had consistently maintained that this union ought to
+be, and could only be, achieved by Prussia, and he remained true to his
+beliefs. It is a great tribute to his intellectual force that he was
+able to control his personal sympathies and antipathies, and to judge
+passing events with reference to the past and the future. He had liked
+the statesmen whom he had met at Vienna, and he recognized their good
+faith in the difficult negotiations of 1865. But for the good of Europe,
+he thought the Austrian Government should now look eastwards. It could
+not do double work at Vienna and at Frankfort. The impotence of the
+Frankfort Diet could be cured only by the North Germans, and the
+aspirations of good patriots, from Baden to the Baltic, had been for
+long directed towards Prussia. But it was no easy task to make people in
+England realize the justice of this view or the certainty that Prussia
+was strong enough to carry through the work. Led by _The Times_, the
+British Press had grown accustomed to use a contemptuous tone towards
+Prussia; and when in the decisive hour this could no longer be
+maintained, and British sentiment, as is its nature, declared for
+Austria as the beaten side, this sentiment was attributed at Berlin to
+the basest envy. Relations between the two peoples steadily grew worse
+during these years, despite the efforts of Morier and other friends of
+peace.
+
+The Franco-German war brought even greater bitterness between Prussia
+and Great Britain. The neutrality, which the latter power observed, was
+misunderstood in both camps; and the position of a British diplomat
+abroad became really unpleasant. Morier in particular, as a marked man,
+knew that he was subject to spying and misrepresentation, but this did
+not deter him from doing his duty and more than his duty. He took
+measures to safeguard those dependent on him, in case Hesse came into
+the theatre of war. He organized medical aid for the wounded on both
+sides. He took a journey in September into Alsace and Lorraine to
+ascertain the feeling of the inhabitants, that he might give the best
+possible advice to his Government if the cession of these districts
+became a European question. He came to the conclusion that Alsace was
+not a homogeneous unit--that language, religion, and sentiment varied in
+different districts, and that it was desirable to work for a compromise.
+But Bismarck was determined in 1870, as in 1866, that the settlement
+should remain in his own hands and that no European congress should
+spoil his plans. Morier found that he was being talked of at Berlin as
+'the enemy of Prussia', and atrocious calumnies were circulated. One of
+these was revived some years later when Bismarck wished to discredit
+him, and Bismarckian journals accused him of having betrayed to Marshal
+Bazaine military secrets which he discovered in Hesse. Morier obtained
+from the Marshal a letter which clearly refuted the charge, and he gave
+it the widest publicity. The plot recoiled on its author, and Morier was
+spoken of in France as 'le grand ambassadeur qui a roulé Bismarck'. Yet
+all the while, with his wife a strong partisan of France, with six
+cousins fighting in the French Army, with his friends in England only
+too ready to quarrel with him for his supposed pro-German sentiments, he
+was appealing for fair judgement, for reason, for a wise policy which
+should soften the bitterness of the settlement between victors and
+vanquished. Facts must be recognized, he pleaded, and the French claim
+for peculiar consideration and their traditional _amour propre_ must not
+be allowed to prolong the miseries of war. At the same time Morier did
+not close his eyes to the danger arising from the overwhelming victories
+of the German armies. No one saw more clearly the deterioration which
+was taking place in German character, or depicted it in more trenchant
+terms. But it was his business to work for the future and not to let
+sentiment bring fresh disasters upon Europe.
+
+Apart from this critical period, life at Darmstadt bored him
+considerably. His presence there was valued highly by Queen Victoria,
+one of whose daughters had married the Grand Duke; but Morier felt
+himself to be in a backwater, far from the main stream of European
+politics, and society there was dull. So he welcomed in 1871 his
+transference first to Stuttgart, and a few months later to Munich, the
+capital of the second state in the new Empire and a great centre of
+literary culture. Here lived Dr. Döllinger, historian and divine, a man
+suspected at Rome for his liberal Catholicism even before his definite
+severance from the Roman Church, but honoured everywhere else for the
+width and depth of his knowledge. With him Morier enjoyed many
+conversations on Church councils and other subjects which interested
+them both; and in 1874, lured by the prospect of such society, Gladstone
+paid him a visit of ten days. Morier did not admire Gladstone's conduct
+of foreign policy, but he was open-minded enough to recognize his great
+gifts and to enjoy his company, and he writes home with enthusiasm about
+his conversational powers. A still more welcome visitor in 1873 was
+Jowett, his old Oxford friend, who never lost his place in Morier's
+affections.
+
+Among these delights he retained his vigilance in political matters, and
+there was often need for it, since the German Government was now
+developing that habit of 'rattling its sword', and threatening its
+neighbours with war, which disquieted Europe for another forty years.
+The worst crisis came in 1875, when Morier heard on good authority that
+the military clique at Berlin were gaining ground, and seemed likely to
+persuade the Emperor William to force on a second war, expressly to
+prevent France recovering its strength. In general the credit for
+checking this sinister move is given to the Tsar; but English influences
+played a large part in the matter. Morier managed to catch the Crown
+Prince on his way south to Italy and had a long talk with him in the
+railway train. The Crown Prince was known to be a true lover of peace,
+but capable of being hoodwinked by Bismarck; once convinced that the
+danger was real (and he trusted Morier as he trusted no German in his
+entourage), he returned to Berlin and threw all his weight into the
+scale of peace. Queen Victoria also wrote from London; and, in face of a
+possible coalition against them, the Germans decided that it was wisest
+to abstain from all aggression.
+
+A new period opened in his life when he left German courts, never to
+return officially, and became the responsible head of Her Majesty's
+Legation at the Portuguese Court. His five years spent at Lisbon cannot
+be counted as one of his most fruitful periods, despite 'the large
+settlement of African affairs', which Lord Granville tells us that
+Morier had suggested to his predecessors in Whitehall. For the big
+schemes which he planned he could get no continuous backing at home,
+either in political or commercial circles. For the petty routine England
+hardly needed a man of such outstanding ability. Of necessity his work
+consisted often in tedious investigation of claims advanced by
+individual Englishmen, whether they were suffering from money losses or
+from summary procedure at the hands of the Portuguese police. Of the
+diplomatic questions which arose many proved to be shadowy and unreal.
+Something could be done, even in remote Portugal, to improve
+Anglo-Russian relations by a minister who had friends in so many
+European capitals. The politics of Pio Nono and the Papal Curia often
+find an echo in his correspondence. Here, too, as elsewhere, the
+intrigues of Germany had to be watched, though Morier was sensible
+enough to discriminate between the deliberate policy of Bismarck and the
+manoeuvres of those whom he 'allowed to do what they liked and say what
+they liked--or rather to do what they thought _he_ would like done, and
+say what they thought _he_ would like said--and then suddenly sent them
+about their business to ponder in poverty and disgrace on the mutability
+of human affairs'. In a passage like this Morier's letters show that he
+could distinguish between a lion and his jackals, between 'policy' and
+'intrigue'.
+
+Had it not been for Germany and German suggestions, Portuguese
+politicians would perhaps have been free from the fears which loomed
+darkest on their horizon--the fears of an 'Iberian policy' which Spain
+was supposed to be pursuing. In reality the leading men at Madrid knew
+that they had little to gain by letting loose the superior Spanish army
+against Portugal and trying to form the whole peninsula into a single
+state. Morier, at any rate, made it clear that England would throw the
+whole weight of her power against such treatment of her oldest ally. But
+alarmist politicians were perpetually harping on this string, and
+Morier, in a letter written in 1876, compares them to 'children telling
+ghost-stories to one another who have got frightened at the sound of
+their own voices, and mistake the rattling of a mouse behind the
+wainscot for the tramping of legions on the march'.
+
+To Morier it seemed that the important part of his work concerned South
+Africa, in which, at the time, Portugal and Great Britain were the
+European powers most interested. It was in 1877 that Sir Theophilus
+Shepstone annexed the Transvaal, and many people, in Europe and Africa,
+were talking as if this must lead to the expropriation of the Portuguese
+at Delagoa Bay. Morier himself was as far as possible from the
+imperialism which would ride rough-shod over a weaker neighbour. In
+fact, he pleaded strongly for British approval of the pride which
+Portugal felt in her traditions and of her desire to cling to what she
+had preserved from the past. Once break this down, he said, and we
+should see Portuguese dominions put up for auction, and England might
+not always prove to be the highest bidder. Friendly co-operation, joint
+development of railways, and commercial treaties commended themselves
+better to his judgement, and he was prepared to spend a large part even
+of his holidays in England in working out the details of such treaties.
+He studied the people among whom he was, and did his best to lead them
+gently towards reforms, whether of the slave-trade or other abuses, on
+lines which could win their sympathy. He appealed to his own Foreign
+Office to abstain from too many lectures, and to make the most of cases
+in which the Portuguese showed promise of better things. 'This diet of
+cold gruel', he says in 1878, 'must be occasionally supplemented by a
+cup of generous wine, or all intimacy must die out.' Again in 1880, he
+asks for a K.C.M.G. to be awarded to a Governor-General of Mozambique,
+who had done his best to observe English wishes in checking the
+slave-trade. 'Perpetual admonition', he says, 'and no sugar plums is bad
+policy'--a maxim too often neglected when our philanthropy outruns our
+discretion.
+
+When Morier was promoted in 1881 to Madrid, he used the same tact and
+geniality to lighten the burden of his task. No seasoned diplomatist
+took the politics of Madrid too seriously. Though the political stage
+was bigger, it was often filled by actors as petty and grasping as those
+of Lisbon. The distribution to their own friends of the 'loaves and
+fishes' was, as Morier says, the one steady aim of all aspirants to
+power; and measures of reform, much needed in education, in commerce, in
+law, were doomed to sterility by the factiousness of the men who should
+have carried them out. In the absence of principles Morier had to study
+the strife of parties, and his correspondence gives us lively pictures
+of the eloquent Castelar, the champion of a visionary Republic, the
+harsh, domineering Romero y Robledo, at once the mainstay and the terror
+of his Conservative colleagues, and the cold, egotistic Liberal leader
+Sagasta, whose shrewdness in the manipulation of votes had always to be
+reckoned with. The constitution given in 1876 had entirely failed to
+establish Parliament on a democratic basis. For this the bureaucracy was
+responsible. The Home Office abused its powers shamelessly, and by the
+votes of its functionaries, and of those who hoped to receive its
+favours, it could always secure a big majority for the Government of
+the moment. For the three years which Morier spent at Madrid, he
+recounts surprising instances of the reversal of electoral verdicts
+within a short space of time.
+
+The King was popular and deserved to be so, for his personal qualities
+of courage, intelligence, and public spirit; but his position was never
+secure. There was a bad tradition by which at intervals the army
+asserted its power and upset the constitution. Some intriguing general
+issued a _pronunciamiento_, the troops revolted, and the Central
+Government at Madrid, having no effective force and no moral ascendancy,
+gave way. Parliament had little stability. Cabinets rose and vanished
+again; the same eloquent but empty speeches were made, and the same
+abuses remained unchanged.
+
+But before now a spark from Spain had set the Continent ablaze. The past
+had bequeathed some questions which, awkwardly handled, might cause
+explosions elsewhere, and it was well to know the character of those who
+had the key to the powder magazine. More than once Morier was approached
+on the delicate question of the admission of Spain to the council of the
+Great Powers. In Egypt, where so many foreign interests were involved,
+and where Great Britain suffered, in the 'eighties, from so many
+diplomatic intrigues, Spain might easily find an opening for her
+ambitions. She might advance the plea that the Suez Canal was the direct
+route to her colonies in the Philippines. Germany, for ulterior ends,
+was encouraging Spanish pretensions; but, to the British, Spain with its
+illiberal spirit scarcely seemed likely to prove a helpful
+fellow-worker. Morier had to try to convince Spanish ministers that
+Great Britain was their truer friend while refusing them what they asked
+for; and in such interviews he had to know his men and to touch the
+right chord in appealing to their prejudices or their patriotism. The
+English tenure of Gibraltar was also a perpetual offence to Spanish
+pride. Irresponsible journalists loved to expatiate on it when they had
+no more spicy subject to handle. On this, as on all questions affecting
+prestige only, Morier was tactful and patient. When they should come
+within the range of practical politics, he could take a different tone.
+But he knew that more serious dangers were arising in Morocco, where the
+weakness of the Sultan's rule was tempting European powers to intervene,
+and he laboured to maintain peace and goodwill not only between his own
+country and Spain, but also between Spain and France. The common
+accusation that the English are not 'good Europeans' was pre-eminently
+untrue in his case. He realized that the interests of all were bound up
+together, and used his influence, which soon became considerable, to
+remove all occasions of bitterness in the European family, being fully
+aware that at Berlin there was another active intelligence working by
+hidden channels to keep open every festering sore.
+
+Morier was fertile in expedients when ministers consulted him, as we see
+notably on the occasion of King Alfonso's tour in 1883. Before the King
+started, the newspapers had been writing of it as a 'visit to Berlin',
+though it was intended to be a compliment to the heads of various
+states. To allay the sensitiveness of the French, Morier suggested to
+the Foreign Secretary that the King should make a point of visiting
+France first; but, owing to the ineptitude of President Grévy, this
+suggestion was rendered impracticable. When the King did visit Paris,
+after a sojourn at Berlin, where he received the usual compliment of
+being made titular colonel of a Prussian regiment, a terrible scene
+ensued by which Morier's sagacity was justified. The King was greeted
+with cries of 'ŕ bas le Colonel d'Uhlans', and was hissed as he passed
+along the streets; only his personal tact and restraint saved the two
+Governments from an undignified squabble. He was able to give a lesson
+in deportment to his hosts and also to satisfy the resentful pride of
+his fellow-countrymen. The whole episode shows how individuals can
+control events when the masses can only become excited; kings and
+diplomats may still be the best mechanics to handle the complicated
+machinery on which peace or war depends. Alfonso XII died in November
+1885, soon after Morier's departure for another post, but not before he
+had testified to the high esteem in which our Minister had been held in
+Spain.
+
+From Madrid he might have passed to Berlin. The British Government had
+only one man fit to replace Lord Ampthill (Lord Odo Russell), who died
+in 1884. Inquiries were made in Berlin whether it was possible to employ
+Morier's great knowledge at the centre of European gravity, but Bismarck
+made it quite clear that such an appointment would be displeasing to his
+sovereign. It was believed by a friend and admirer of both men that, if
+Bismarck and Morier could have come to know one another, mutual respect
+and liking would have followed; but magnanimity towards an old enemy, or
+one whom he had ever believed to be such, was not a Bismarckian trait,
+and it is more probable that all Morier's efforts would have been
+thwarted by misrepresentation and malignity.
+
+Instead he was sent to St. Petersburg, where he took up his duties as
+Ambassador in November 1885. Here he had to deal with bigger problems.
+The affray at Penjdeh, when the Russians attacked an Afgh[=a]n outpost
+and forcibly occupied the ground, had, after convulsing Europe, been
+settled by Mr. Gladstone's Government. Feeling did not subside for some
+years, but for the moment Asiatic questions were not so serious as the
+conflict of interests in the Balkan peninsula. The principality of
+Bulgaria created by the Congress of Berlin was the focus of the 'Eastern
+question'--that is, the question whether Russia, Austria, or a united
+Europe led by the Western powers, was to preside over the dissolution of
+Turkey. Bulgaria certainly owed its existence to Russian bayonets; in
+her cause Russian lives had been freely given; and this formed a real
+bond between the two nations, more lasting than the effect of Mr.
+Gladstone's speeches, to which English sentimentalists attached such
+importance. But the Bulgarians have often shown an obstinate tendency to
+go their own way, and their politicians were loath to be kept in Russian
+leading-strings. Their last act, in 1885, had been to annex the Turkish
+province of Eastern Roumelia without asking the consent of the Tsar. At
+the moment they could safely flout the Sultan of Turkey, their nominal
+suzerain; but diplomatists doubted whether they could, with equal
+safety, ignore the Treaty of Berlin and the wishes of their Russian
+protector. The path was full of pitfalls. The Austrian Government was on
+the watch to embarrass its great Slavonic rival; English statesmen were
+too anxious to humour Liberal sentiment as expressed at popular
+meetings; Russian agents on the spot committed indiscretions; Russian
+opinion at home suspected that Bulgaria was receiving encouragement
+elsewhere, and the air was full of rumours of war.
+
+Across this unquiet stage may be seen to pass, in the lively letters
+which Morier sent home, the figures of potential and actual princes of
+Bulgaria, of whom only two deserve mention to-day. The first, Alexander
+of Battenberg, member of a family which enjoyed Queen Victoria's special
+favour, had been put forward at the Berlin Congress, and justified his
+choice in 1885 by repelling the Serbian Army and winning a victory at
+Slivnitza. He had won the attachment of his subjects but had incurred
+the hatred of the Tsar, and the tone of his speeches in 1886 offended
+Russian sentiment. Two years after Slivnitza, in face of intrigues and
+violence, he abandoned the contest and abdicated. The second is
+Ferdinand of Coburg, whose tortuous career, begun in 1887, only ended
+with the collapse of the Central Powers in 1918. He was put forward by
+Austria and supported by Stambuloff, the dictatorial chief of the
+Bulgarian ministry. For years the Russian Government refused to
+recognize him, and it was not till 1896 that he came to heel, at the
+bidding of Prince Lobanoff, and made public submission to the Tsar. But,
+first and last, he was only an astute adventurer of no little vanity and
+of colossal egotism, and such sympathies as he had for others beside
+himself went to Austria-Hungary, where he owned landed property, and had
+served in the army. He was also displeasing to orthodox Russia as a
+Roman Catholic, and in Morier's letters we see clearly the mistrust and
+contempt which Russians felt for him.
+
+With an autocrat like Alexander III, secretive and obstinate, these
+personal questions became very serious. Ambitious generals might
+anticipate his wishes, Russian regiments might be on the march before
+the Ministers knew anything, and Europe might awake to find itself over
+the edge of the precipice.
+
+Morier's own attitude can best be judged from the letters which he
+exchanged with Sir William White, our able ambassador to the Porte, who
+was frankly anti-Russian in his views. At first he put his trust in
+strict observance of the Treaty of Berlin, and wished that Prince
+Alexander would consent to restore the _status quo ante_ (i.e. before
+the change in Eastern Roumelia); but although a stout upholder of
+treaties, he admitted as a second basis for settlement 'les voeux des
+populations', on which the modern practice of plebiscites is founded.
+The peasants of Eastern Roumelia were clearly glad to transfer their
+allegiance from the Sultan to the Prince. Also the successes achieved by
+Prince Alexander in so soon welding together Bulgaria and Eastern
+Roumelia had to be recognized as altering the situation. In fact,
+Morier's position was nearer to that of 1919 than to the old traditions
+in vogue a century earlier, and would commend itself to most English
+Liberals. But, as an ambassador paid to watch over British interests, he
+was guided by expediency rather than by sentiment. These interests, he
+was convinced, were more vitally affected in Central Asia than in the
+Balkans. He believed that, if British statesmen would recognize Russia's
+peculiar position in Bulgaria, the advance of Russian outposts towards
+India might be stayed, and the two great powers might work together all
+along the line. But, to effect this, national jealousies must be allayed
+and an understanding established. Morier had to interpret at St.
+Petersburg speeches of English politicians, which often sounded more
+offensive there than in London: he also had to watch and report to
+London the unofficial doings and sayings of the aggressive Pan-Slavist
+party, who might at any moment undermine the Ministry.
+
+Foreign policy was in the hands of de Giers, an enlightened, pacific
+minister, who lacked, however, the courage to face his master's
+prejudices and had little authority over many of his own subordinates.
+De Nelidoff, at Constantinople, dared even to make himself the centre of
+diplomatic intrigue directed against the policy of his chief. Still less
+was de Giers able to control the strong Pan-Slavist influences which
+ruled in the Church, the Home Office, and the Press. Morier gives
+interesting portraits of Pobedonóstsev, the bigoted procurator of the
+Holy Synod, of Tolstoy the reactionary Minister of the Interior, of
+Katkoff the truculent editor of the _Moscow Gazette_. These were the
+most notable of the men who flouted the authority, thwarted the work,
+and undermined the position of the Tsar's nominal adviser, and often
+they carried the day in determining the attitude of the Tsar himself.
+Yet Morier was bound by his own honesty and by the traditions of
+British diplomacy to do business with de Giers alone, to receive the
+assurances of one who was being betrayed by his own ambassadors, to make
+his protests to one who could not effectively remedy the grievances. His
+difficulty was increased by de Giers's manner--'when getting on to
+slippery ground he has a remarkable power of speaking only half
+intelligibly and swallowing a large proportion of his words'. Morier was
+often conscious that he was building on sand; but in quiet weather it
+was possible to stem the flood for a while even with dikes of sand.
+Perhaps a little later the tide of Balkan troubles might be setting in
+another direction and the danger might be past. In Russia, where so much
+was incalculable, it was wise to make the most of such help as presented
+itself. Meanwhile the Russian Ambassador in London, Baron de Staäl,
+co-operated as loyally with Lord Salisbury as Morier with de Giers; and
+thanks to their diplomatic skill, rough places were smoothed away and
+bases of agreement were found. In the course of 1887, the smouldering
+fires of Anglo-Russian antagonism died down, and Russia adopted a
+waiting attitude in Bulgaria.
+
+But this happy result was not attained till after Asiatic problems had
+given rise to serious alarms. The worst moment was in July 1886, when
+the Tsar suddenly proclaimed, contrary to the Treaty of Berlin, that the
+port of Batum was closed to foreign trade. His point of view was
+characteristic. His father had, autocratically, expressed in 1878 his
+intention to open the port; this had been done, and it had proved in
+practice a failure; as a purely administrative act, he (Alexander III)
+now declared the port closed, _et tout était dit_. But naturally foreign
+merchants resented the injury to their trade, and insisted on the
+sanctity of treaties. The Berlin Government, as usual, left to Great
+Britain all the odium incurred in making a protest, and the other
+Continental powers were equally silent. Morier asserted the British
+case so strongly that he roused even de Giers to vehemence; but when he
+saw that protests would avail nothing, he advised his Government to cut
+the loss and to avoid further bitterness. He reminded them that Russia
+had given way in Bulgaria, where the British point of view had
+prevailed, and that they must not expect her to submit to a second
+diplomatic defeat. Besides, a quarrel between Russia and Great Britain
+would only benefit a third party, ready enough to avail himself of it.
+Harmony was preserved, but the risk of a breach had been very great, and
+feeling was not improved by Russian activity at Sebastopol, where the
+Pan-Slavists were acclaiming the new birth of the Black Sea fleet. The
+death of Katkoff in 1887, and of Tolstoy in 1889, with the advent of
+more Liberal ministers, strengthened de Giers's hands; and during his
+later years, though he often needed great vigilance and tact, Morier was
+not troubled by any crisis so severe.
+
+The Grand Cross of the Bath, which he received in 1887, was a fitting
+reward for the services he had rendered to England and to Europe in this
+anxious time. He never lost heart or despaired of a peaceful solution.
+
+At bottom, as he often repeats, Russia was not ready for big
+adventures--was, in fact, still suffering from lassitude after the war
+of 1878, 'like an electric eel which, having in one great shock given
+off all its electricity, burrows in the mud to refill its battery,
+desiring nothing less than to come again too soon into contact with
+organic tissue'.
+
+Apart from _la haute politique_ and the conflicts between governments,
+Morier's own compatriots were giving him plenty to do. A few instances
+will illustrate the variety of the applications which reached the
+Embassy. Captain Beaufort requests a special permit to visit Kars and
+its famous fortifications. Mr. Littledale asks for a Russian guide to
+help him in an ascent of Mount Ararat. Father Perry, S.J. (the Jesuits
+were specially obnoxious to the Holy Synod), wishes to observe a solar
+eclipse only visible in Russia. Another traveller, Mr. Fairman, is
+summarily arrested near Rovno where the Tsar's visit is making the
+police unduly brisk for the moment. Morier procures him a prompt
+apology; but, not content with this, the Englishman now thinks himself
+entitled to a personal audience with the Tsar and the gift of some
+decoration to compensate him, which suggestion draws a curt reply from
+the much-vexed ambassador. But he was always ready to help a genuine
+explorer, whether it was Mr. de Windt in Trans-Caucasia or Captain
+Wiggins in the Kara Sea. To the latter, in his efforts to establish
+trade between Great Britain and Siberia by the Yenisei river, Morier
+lent most valuable aid, and he is proud to report the concessions which
+he won for our merchants in a new field of commerce.
+
+Meanwhile he found occasion to cultivate friendships with Russians and
+foreign diplomats of all kinds. Of the more important he sends home
+interesting sketches to his superiors in Whitehall, Vischnegradsky, the
+'wizard of finance', who raised the value of the rouble 30 per cent.,
+became one of his intimate friends. When that ambiguous figure, Witte,
+his rival and successor, tried to discredit him, Morier vindicated with
+warmth the honesty and patriotism of his friend. Baron Jomini of the
+Foreign Office was of a different kind, witty, volatile, audaciously
+outspoken, more like a character in Thackeray's novels. Pobedonóstsev,
+the Procurator of the Holy Synod, remained 'somewhat of an enigma'--as
+we can easily believe when we hear that this bigoted Churchman, the
+terror of the Jews, had been a friend of Dean Stanley, and was still
+fond of English literature and English theology.
+
+Still more amusing are the stories which he tells of foreign visitors of
+high station--of the Duke of Orleans playing truant without the
+knowledge of his parents and being snubbed by his Grand Ducal
+relatives; of Dal[=i]p Singh touring the provinces with a disreputable
+entourage and trying to make trouble for the British at Moscow; of the
+Prince of Montenegro and his beautiful daughters, whom Morier heartily
+admires--'tall and massive, strong-limbed and comely, the true type of
+the mothers of heroes in the Homeric sense'.
+
+With the Court his relations were excellent. His intimacy with members
+of our own royal family helped him, and his geniality and
+unconventional, natural manner won favour with the Romanoffs, who
+retained in their high station a great deal of simplicity. More than
+once Morier seized an opportunity for an act of special courtesy to the
+Tsar; and Alexander appreciated this from a man whose character was too
+well known for him to be suspected of obsequiousness.
+
+But the life in St. Petersburg was not all pleasure, even when
+diplomatic waters were quiet. The work was hard, the climate was very
+exacting with its extremes of temperature, and epidemics were rife. In
+November 1889 he reports the appearance of 'Siberian Catarrh, more
+usually described under the general name of Influenza', which was
+working havoc in girls' schools and guardsmen's barracks, and had laid
+low simultaneously Emperor, Empress, and half the imperial family.
+Morier himself became increasingly liable to attacks of ill-health, and
+found difficulty in discharging his duties regularly. It required a keen
+sense of duty for him to stay at his post; and when in December 1891 he
+was appointed to the Embassy at Rome, he was very willing to go. But
+public interest stood in the way. He had made for himself an exceptional
+place at St. Petersburg. No one could be found to replace him
+adequately, and the Tsar expressed a desire that his departure should be
+postponed. He consented to stay on, and the next two years of work in
+that climate, together with the death in 1891 of his only son, broke
+his spirit and his strength. Too late he went in search of health, first
+to the Crimea and then to Switzerland. Death came to him as the winter
+of 1893 was approaching, when he was at Montreux on the Lake of Geneva,
+close to the home of his ancestors.
+
+The impression which he made on his friends and colleagues is clear and
+consistent, and the ignorance of the general public about men of his
+profession justifies a few quotations. Sir Louis Mallet brackets him
+with Sir James Hudson[45] and Lord Cromer as 'the most admirable trio of
+public servants he had known'. Sir William White speaks of him and Odo
+Russell as 'two giants of the diplomatic service'. Lord Acton, who knew
+Europe as well as any Foreign Minister, and weighed his words, refers to
+him in 1884 as 'our only strong diplomatist', and again 'as a strong
+man, resolute, ready, well-informed and with some amount of real
+resource'. More than one Foreign Secretary has borne testimony to the
+value of Morier's dispatches; and Sir Charles Dilke, who, without
+holding the portfolio himself, often shaped our foreign policy and was
+an expert in European questions, is still more emphatic about his
+intellectual powers, though he thinks that Morier's imperious temper
+made him 'impossible in a small place'. Sir Horace Rumbold,[46] in his
+_Recollections_, has many references to him, especially as he was in
+earlier years. He speaks of Morier's 'prodigious fund of spirits that
+made him the most entertaining, but not always the safest, of
+companions'; 'of his imperious, not over-tolerant disposition'; 'of the
+curious compound that he was of the thoughtless, thriftless Bohemian and
+the cool, calculating man of the world'; of his 'exceptionally powerful
+brain and unflagging industry'. Elsewhere he recalls Morier's journeys
+among the Southern Slavs, in which he opened up a new field of
+knowledge, and adds, 'since then he has made himself a thorough master
+of German politics, and is, I believe, one of the few men whom Prince
+Bismarck fears and correspondingly detests'.
+
+[Note 45: Sir James Hudson, G.C.B., British minister at Turin during
+the years of Cavour's great ministry; died 1885.]
+
+[Note 46: Sir Horace Rumbold, G.C.B., Ambassador at Vienna
+1896-1900; died 1913.]
+
+Jowett's testimony may perhaps be discounted as that of an intimate
+friend; yet he was no flatterer, and as he often criticized Morier
+severely, it is of interest to read his deliberate verdict, given in
+1873, that 'if he devoted his whole mind to it, he could prevent a war
+in Europe'. Four years earlier Jowett had been told by a diplomatist
+whom he respected, 'Morier is the first man in our profession'.
+
+By those who still remember him, Morier is described as a diplomatist of
+'the old school'. His noble presence, his courtly manner, and the
+dignity which he observed on all ceremonial occasions, would have
+qualified him to adorn the court of Maria Theresa or Louis Quatorze.
+This dignity he could put off when the need for it was past. Among his
+friends his manner was vivacious, his talk racy, his criticism free. He
+was of the old school, too, in being self-confident and independent, and
+in believing that he would do his best work if there were no telegraph
+to bring frequent instructions from Whitehall. But he had not the
+natural urbanity of Odo Russell, nor the invariable discretion of Lord
+Lyons. He had hard work to discipline his imperious temper, and by no
+means always succeeded in masking his own feelings. Perhaps too high a
+value has been set on impenetrable reserve by those who have modelled
+themselves on Talleyrand. By their very candour and openness some
+British diplomatists have gained an advantage over rivals who confound
+timidity with reserve, and have won a peculiar position of trust at
+foreign courts. In dealing with de Giers, Morier at any rate found no
+need to mumble or swallow his words. He was sure of himself and of his
+honourable intentions. On one occasion, after reading to that minister
+the exact words of the dispatch which he was sending to London, he
+stated his policy to him categorically. 'I always went', he said, 'upon
+the principle, whenever it could be done, of clearing the ground of all
+possible misunderstandings at the earliest date.' Probably we shall
+never see the end of 'secret diplomacy', whether under Tory, Liberal, or
+Labour governments; but this is not the tone of one who loves secrecy
+for its own sake.
+
+In many ways Morier combined the qualities of the old and the new
+schools. Though personally a favourite with kings and queens, he was
+fully alive to the changes in the Europe of the nineteenth century,
+where, along with courts and cabinets, other more unruly forces were at
+work. His visit to Paris in 1848 showed his early interest in popular
+movements, and he maintained a catholic width of view in later life. He
+knew men of all sorts and kept himself acquainted with unofficial
+currents of opinion. He could talk freely to journalists or to
+merchants, could put them at their ease and get the information which he
+wanted. His comprehensiveness was remarkable. The strife of politicians
+in the foreground did not blur the distant landscape. In Russia, behind
+Balkan intrigues and Black Sea troubles he could see the cloud of danger
+overhanging the Pamirs. In Spain or Portugal he was watching and
+forecasting the possibilities of the white races in Africa. So his
+dispatches, varied and vivacious as they were, proved of the greatest
+value to Foreign Secretaries at home, and furnish excellent reading
+to-day.
+
+In these dispatches a few Gallicisms occur; and in writing to an old
+friend like Sir William White he uses a free mixture of French and
+English with other ingredients for seasoning. But in general the
+literary style is admirable. He has a rare command of language, a most
+inventive use of metaphor, a felicitous touch in sketching a character
+or an incident. Towards those working under him he was exacting, setting
+up a high standard of industry, but he was generous in his praise and
+very ready to take up the cudgels for them when they needed support. In
+commending one of them, he selects for special praise 'his old-fashioned
+conscientiousness about public work and his subordination of private
+comfort'. He inherited this tradition from his own family and his
+faithfulness to it cost him his life.
+
+Above all, we feel in reading these letters and memoranda that here is a
+man whose aim is truth rather than effect--not thinking of commending a
+programme to thousands of half-informed readers or hearers, in order to
+win their votes, but giving counsel to his peers, Odo Russell or Sir
+William White, Lord Granville or Lord Salisbury, on events and
+tendencies which affect the grave issues of peace and war and the lives
+of thousands of his fellow-countrymen. This generation has learnt how
+unsafe it is to treat these in a parliamentary atmosphere where men
+force themselves to believe what they wish and close their eyes to what
+is uncomfortable. While human nature remains the same, democracy cannot
+afford to deprive itself of such counsel or to belittle such a
+profession.
+
+
+
+
+JOSEPH LISTER
+
+1827-1912
+
+
+1827. Born at West Ham, April 5.
+1844-52. University College, London.
+1851. Acting House Surgeon under Erichsen.
+1852. First research work published.
+1853. Goes to Edinburgh. House Surgeon under Syme.
+1855. Assistant Surgeon and Lecturer at Edinburgh Infirmary.
+1856. Marries Agnes Syme.
+1860. Appointed Professor of Clinical Surgery at Glasgow.
+1865. Makes acquaintance with Pasteur's work.
+1866-7. Antiseptic treatment of compound fractures and abscesses.
+1867. Papers on antiseptic method in the _Lancet_.
+1869. Appointed Professor of Surgery at Edinburgh.
+1872-5. Conversion of leading scientists in Germany to Antisepticism.
+1875. Lister's triumphal reception in Germany.
+1877. Accepts professorship at King's College, London.
+1879. Medical congress at Amsterdam. Acceptance of Lister's
+      methods by Paget and others in London.
+1882. von Bergmann develops Asepticism in Berlin.
+1883. Lister created a Baronet.
+1891. British Institute of Preventive Medicine incorporated.
+1892. Lister attends Pasteur celebration in Paris.
+1893. Death of Lady Lister.
+1895-1900. President of Royal Society.
+1897. Created a Peer.
+1902. Order of Merit.
+1907. Freedom of City of London: last public appearance.
+1912. Dies at Walmer, February 10.
+
+JOSEPH LISTER
+
+SURGEON
+
+
+In a corner of the north transept of Westminster Abbey, almost lost
+among the colossal statues of our prime ministers, our judges, and our
+soldiers, will be found a small group of memorials preserving the
+illustrious names of Darwin, Lister, Stokes, Adams, and Watt, and
+reminding us of the great place which Science has taken in the progress
+of the last century. Watt, thanks partly to his successors, may be said
+to have changed the face of this earth more than any other inhabitant of
+our isles; but he is of the eighteenth century, and between those who
+developed his inventions it is not easy to choose a single
+representative of the age. Stokes and Adams command the admiration of
+all students of mathematics who can appreciate their genius, but their
+work makes little appeal to the average man. In Darwin's case no one
+would dispute his claim to represent worthily the scientists of the age,
+and his life is a noble object for study, single-hearted as he was in
+his devotion to truth, persistent as were his efforts in the face of
+prolonged ill-health. No better instance could be found to show that the
+highest intellectual genius may be found united with the most endearing
+qualities of character. Kindly and genial in his home, warmly attached
+to his friends, devoid of all jealousy of his fellow scientists, he
+lived to see his name honoured throughout the civilized world; and many
+who are incapable of appreciating his originality of mind can find an
+inspiring example in the record of his life. There is no need to make
+comparisons either of fame, of mental power, or of character; but the
+choice of Lister may be justified by the fact that his science, the
+science of Health and Disease, is one of absorbing interest to all men,
+and that with his career is bound up the history of a movement fraught
+with grave issues of life and death from which few families have been
+exempt.
+
+About these issues bitter controversies have raged; but it is to the
+lesser men that the bitterness is due. By his family traditions, as well
+as by his natural disposition, Lister was a man of peace; and though he
+left the Society of Friends at the time of his marriage, he retained a
+respect for their views which accorded well with his own nature. When
+he had to speak or write on behalf of what he believed to be the truth,
+it was from no motive of self-assertion or combativeness. He had the
+calm contemplative mind of the student, whereas Bright, the Quaker
+tribune, the champion of Repeal, had all the fervour of the man of
+action. Lister's family had been Quakers since the beginning of the
+eighteenth century; and at this time too they moved from Yorkshire to
+London, where his grandfather and father were engaged in business as
+wine merchants. But Joseph Jackson Lister, who married in 1818, and
+became in 1827 the father of the famous surgeon, was much more than a
+merchant. He had taught himself the science of optics, had made
+improvements in the microscope, and had won his way within the sacred
+portals of the Royal Society. Letters have been preserved which show us
+how keen his interest in science always remained, and with what full
+appreciation he entered into the researches which his son was making as
+professor at Glasgow in the middle of the century. A father like this
+was not likely to grudge money on the boy's education; but for the
+Friends many avenues to knowledge were still closed, including the
+Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He had to be content to go
+successively to Quaker schools at Hitchin and Tottenham, and from the
+latter to proceed, at the age of seventeen, to University College,
+London, which was non-sectarian. There the teaching was good, the
+atmosphere favourable to industry, and Lister was not conscious of
+hardship in missing the delights of youth that fell to his more
+fortunate contemporaries.
+
+His father lived in a comfortable house at Upton, some six miles east of
+London Bridge, in a district now completely swamped by the growth of the
+vast borough of West Ham. He kept up close relations with other Quaker
+families living in the neighbourhood, especially the Gurneys of
+Plashets. In their circle the most striking figure was Elizabeth Fry,
+who from 1813 to her death in 1843 devoted herself unsparingly to the
+cause of prison reform. From his home the father continued to exercise a
+strong influence over his son, who was industrious and serious beyond
+his years.
+
+From his father Lister learned as a boy to delight in the use of the
+microscope. He learned also to use his own power of observation, and to
+make hand and eye work together to minister to his studies. The power of
+drawing, which the future surgeon thus early developed, stood him in
+good stead later in life; and it is interesting to contrast his
+enjoyment of it with the laments made by his great contemporary Darwin,
+who felt keenly what he lost through his inability to use a pencil and
+to preserve the record of what he saw in nature or in the laboratory.
+Lister's school-days were over when he was seventeen years old and there
+is nothing remarkable to tell of them; but his period at University
+College was unusually prolonged. He was a student there for seven years
+and continued an eighth year, after he had taken his degree, as Acting
+House Surgeon. In 1848, half-way through his time, a physical breakdown
+was brought on by overwork, just as he was finishing his general
+studies; but a long holiday enabled him to recover his strength, and
+before the end of the year he had begun the course of medical studies
+which was to be his life-work.
+
+At school his record had been good but not brilliant, nor did he come
+quickly to the front in London. His mind was not of the sort which can
+be forced to produce untimely fruit in the hot-house of examinations.
+But his education was both extensive and thorough; it formed an
+excellent general training for the mind and a good basis for the special
+studies in which he was later to distinguish himself. He had been at
+University College for two years before he gained his first medal; but
+by 1850 he had made his name as the best man of his year, capable of
+upholding the credit of his College against any rival in the
+metropolis. Among his fellow students the best known in later years was
+Sir Henry Thompson, whose portrait by Millais hangs in our National
+Gallery. Among his professors one stands out pre-eminent, alike for his
+character and for his influence on Lister's life. This was William
+Sharpey, Professor of Physiology, an original man with a keen eye for
+originality in others. In days when most English professors were content
+with a narrow empirical training, he had trudged with his knapsack over
+half Europe in quest of knowledge, had studied in France, Switzerland,
+Italy, and Austria, and had made himself acquainted at first hand with
+the best that was taught in their schools. He was a first-rate lecturer,
+clear and simple, and took much pains to get to know his pupils. When
+Lister had held for a short time the post of Acting House Surgeon at
+University College Hospital, and needed to make definite plans for his
+career, it was Sharpey who advised him to go north for a while and
+attend some classes in Edinburgh before deciding on his course. Thus it
+was Sharpey who introduced him to Scotland and to Syme.
+
+Before we speak of the latter, a few words must be given to the year
+1851, when Lister completed his studentship and became for a time an
+active member of the hospital staff. This year was important as
+introducing him to the practice of his art under the direction of
+Erichsen, an Anglo-Dane and one of the foremost surgeons in London. It
+also led to a change in his way of living, to his being thrown into
+closer relations with men of his own age, and to his taking a more
+lively part in social gatherings. What we hear of the essays that he
+wrote at school, what we can read of his early letters, all harmonizes
+with our conception of a Quaker upbringing. There is a staid primness
+about him, which contrasts strangely with the pictures of medical
+students presented to us in the pages of Dickens. Capable though he was
+of enjoying a holiday, or of expanding among congenial associates,
+Lister was not quick to make friends. He was apt to keep too much to
+himself; and he seems to have inspired respect and even a certain awe
+among men of his own age. In his youth men noticed the same grave mien,
+steadfast eyes, and lofty intellectual forehead which are conspicuous in
+his later portraits. He was steady in conduct, serious in manner,
+precise in his way of expressing himself; and while these qualities
+helped him in the mental application which was so necessary if he was to
+profit by his student days, he needed a little shaking up in order to
+adapt himself to the ways of other men in the sphere of active life.
+This was given him by the constant activities of the hospital, and by
+the demands which the various societies made upon him; but he did not
+allow them to interfere with his own researches, for which he could find
+time when others were overwhelmed by the routine of their daily tasks.
+
+His first bit of original research is of special interest because it
+connects him with his father's work. He made special observations with
+the microscope of the muscular tissue of the iris of the eye,
+illustrated his paper by delicate drawings of his own, and published it
+in the leading microscopical journal. This and a subsequent paper on the
+phenomena of 'Goose-skin' attracted some attention among physiologists
+at home and abroad, and brought him into friendly relations with a
+German professor of world-wide reputation. They also gave great
+satisfaction to his father and to his favourite teacher Sharpey.
+
+But Lister's development henceforth was to take place on Scottish
+ground, and his visit to Edinburgh in 1853 shaped the whole course of
+his career. James Syme, under whose influence he thus came, was the most
+original and brilliant surgeon then living in the British Isles, perhaps
+in all Europe. His merits as a lecturer were somewhat overshadowed by
+his extraordinary skill as an operator; but he was a remarkable man in
+all ways, and the fact that Lister was admitted, first to his
+lecture-room and operating theatre, and then to his home, was without
+doubt the happiest accident in his life.
+
+The atmosphere of Edinburgh with its large enthusiastic classes in the
+hospitals, its cultivated and intellectual society outside, supplied
+just what was wanted to foster the genius of a young man on the
+threshold of his career. In London, centres of culture were too widely
+diffused, indifference and apathy too prevalent, conservatism in
+principles and methods too strongly entrenched. In his new home in the
+north Lister could watch the boldest operator in his own profession, and
+could daily meet men scarcely less distinguished in other sciences, and
+as a visitor to Syme's house he was from time to time thrown among able
+men following widely different lines in life. Above all, here he met one
+who was peculiarly qualified to be his helper; and three years later, at
+the age of twenty-nine, he was married to Agnes Syme, the daughter of
+his chief, to whom he had been attracted, as can be seen from the
+letters which passed between Edinburgh and Upton, soon after his arrival
+in the north. Before this event, he had already made his mark as
+Resident House Surgeon, as assistant operator to Syme, and also as an
+independent lecturer under the liberal system which gave an opening to
+all who could establish by merit a claim to be heard. He had also begun
+those researches into the early stages of inflammation which, ten years
+later, were to bear such wonderful fruit. It was a full and busy life,
+and the distraction of courtship must have made it impossible for him at
+times to meet all demands; but after 1856 his mind was set at rest and
+his strength doubled by the sympathy which his wife showed in his work,
+and by the help which she was able to render him in writing to his
+dictation.
+
+For their honeymoon they took a long journey on the Continent in the
+summer of 1856; but half, even of this rare holiday, was given to
+science, and, after some weeks' enjoyment of the beauties of Italy,
+husband and wife made the tour of German universities, as he was
+desirous to see something, if possible, of the leading surgeons and the
+newest methods. Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, Munich, Frankfort, Heidelberg,
+and Stuttgart were all included in the tour. They were well received,
+and at Vienna the most eminent professor of Pathology in the University
+gave more than three hours of his time to showing his museum to Lister,
+and also invited the young couple to dine at his house. Though he had
+not yet made a name for himself, Lister's earnestness and intelligence
+always made a favourable impression; and as he had taken pains with
+foreign languages in his youth, he was able, now and later in life, to
+address French and German friends, and even public meetings, in their
+native tongue. He came back to find work waiting for him which would tax
+his energies to the full. In October 1856 he was elected Assistant
+Surgeon to the Infirmary, and now, in addition to lecturing, he had to
+conduct public operations himself, whereas he had hitherto only acted as
+Syme's assistant. This was at first a severe trial for his nerves. That
+it affected him differently from most experienced surgeons is shown by
+the fact that he used always, all his life, to perspire freely when
+starting to operate; but he learnt to overcome this nervousness by
+concentrating his attention on his work. He was not a man who had
+religious phrases on his lips; but in letters to his family, quoted by
+Sir Rickman Godlee, he gives us the secret of his confidence and his
+power. 'Yesterday', he says in a letter written to his father on
+February 26, 'I made my début at the hospital in operating before the
+students. I felt very nervous before beginning; but when I had got
+fairly to work, this feeling went off entirely, and I performed both
+operations with entire comfort.' A week later, in a letter to his
+sister, he returns to the subject. 'The theatre was again well filled;
+and though I again felt a good deal before the operation, yet I lost all
+consciousness of the presence of the spectators during its performance,
+and did it exactly as if no one had been looking on. Just before the
+operation began I recollected that there was only one Spectator whom it
+was important to consider, one present alike in the operating theatre
+and in the private room; and this consideration gave me increased
+firmness.' Interest in the work for its own sake, forgetfulness of
+himself, these were to be the key-notes of his life-work.
+
+As yet, to a superficial observer, there were not many signs of a
+brilliant career ahead of him. His private practice was small and did
+not grow extensively for many years. The attendance at his earlier
+course of lectures was discouragingly meagre. This would have been more
+discouraging still, had not his dressers, from personal affection for
+him, made a point of attending regularly to swell the number of the
+class. Indeed, in view of the exacting demands made on him by the
+hospital, Lister might have been content to follow the ordinary routine
+of his profession. With his wife at his side and friends close at hand,
+he had every chance of living a useful and happy life. But he still
+found time to conduct experiments and to think for himself. His
+researches were continued along the line which he had opened up in 1855,
+and in 1858 he appeared before an Edinburgh Surgical Society to read a
+paper on Spontaneous Gangrene.
+
+This gave Mrs. Lister an opportunity to show her value. All his life
+Lister was prone to unpunctuality and to being late with preparations
+for his addresses, not because he was indifferent to the convenience of
+others or careless about the quality of his teaching, but because he
+became so engrossed in the work of the moment that he could not tear
+himself away from it so long as any improvement seemed possible. This
+same quality made him slow over his hospital rounds and often over
+operations, with the result that his own meal-times were most irregular
+and his assistants often had trouble to stay the pangs of hunger. This
+handicapped him in private practice and in some measure as a lecturer.
+He gave plenty of thought to his subjects, but rarely began to put
+thoughts in writing sufficiently in advance of his engagement. When he
+was in time with his written matter the credit was chiefly due to his
+wife. On the occasion of this paper she wrote for seven hours one day
+and eight hours the next, and her heroic industry saved the situation.
+
+Towards the end of 1859 Lister decided to be a candidate for the
+Surgical Professorship at Glasgow, which appointment was in the gift of
+the Crown; and in spite of some intrigues to secure the patronage for a
+local man, the post was offered by the Home Secretary, Sir George Lewis,
+to the young Edinburgh surgeon. Syme's opinion and influence no doubt
+counted for much. Lister's appointment dated from January 1860, but it
+was not till a year and a half later that his position in Glasgow was
+assured by his being elected Surgeon to the Royal Infirmary. Before this
+he could preach his principles in the lecture-room, but he had little
+influence on the practice of his students and colleagues. Thanks to the
+reputation which he brought from Edinburgh, his first lecture drew a
+full room, and his class grew year by year till it reached the
+unprecedented figure of 182, and each year the enthusiasm seemed to
+rise. But in the hospital he had an uphill task, as any one will know
+who has studied the history of these institutions in the first half of
+the century.
+
+To-day the modern hospital is an object of general admiration, with its
+high standard of cleanliness and efficiency; and few of us would have
+any hesitation if a doctor advised us to go into hospital for an
+operation. Seventy or a hundred years ago the case was very different;
+and when we read the statistics of the early nineteenth century,
+gathered by the surgeons who had known its horrors, it is hard to
+believe that we are not back among the worst abuses of the Middle Ages.
+Such terrible scourges as pyaemia and hospital gangrene were rife in all
+of them. In the chief hospital of Paris, which for centuries claimed
+pre-eminence for its medical faculty, the latter disease raged for 200
+years without intermission: 25 per cent. of those entering its doors
+were found to have died, and the mortality after certain operations was
+more than double this figure. Erichsen, who published in 1874 the
+statistics of deaths after operations, quoted 25 per cent. in London as
+satisfactory, and referred to the 60 per cent. of Paris as not
+surprising. In military practice the number of deaths might reach the
+appalling figure of 80 or 90 per cent. What was so tragic about this
+situation was that it was precisely hospitals, built to be the safeguard
+of the community, which were the most dangerous places in the case of
+wounds and amputations. In 1869 Sir James Simpson, the famous discoverer
+of chloroform, collected statistics of amputations. He took over 2,000
+cases treated in hospitals, and the same number treated outside. In the
+former 855 patients (nearly 43 per cent.) died, as it seemed, from the
+effects of the operation; in the latter only 266 cases (over 13 per
+cent.) ended fatally. He went so far as to condemn altogether the system
+of big hospitals; and under his influence a movement began for breaking
+them up and substituting a system of small huts, which, whether tending
+to security or not, was in other ways inconvenient and very expensive.
+About the same time certain other reforms, obvious as they seem to us
+since the days of Florence Nightingale, were tried in various places,
+tending to more careful organization and to greater cleanliness; but
+till the cause of the mischief could be discovered, only varying results
+could be obtained, and no real victory could be won. Hence a radical
+policy like Simpson's met with considerable support. In days when many
+surgeons submitted despairingly to what they regarded as inevitable, it
+was an advantage to have any one boldly advocating a big measure; and
+Simpson had sufficient prestige in Edinburgh and outside to carry many
+along with him. But before 1869 another line of attack had been
+initiated from Glasgow, and Lister was already applying principles which
+were to win the battle with more certainty of permanent success.
+
+Glasgow was no more free from these troubles than other great towns; in
+fact it suffered more than most of them. With its rapid industrial
+development it had already in 1860 a population of 390,000. Its streets
+were narrow, its houses often insanitary. In the haste to make money its
+citizens had little time to think of air and open spaces. The science of
+town-planning was unborn. Its hospital, far from having any special
+advantage of position, was exposed to peculiar dangers. It lay on the
+edge of the old cathedral graveyard, where the victims of cholera had
+received promiscuous pit-burial only ten years before. The uppermost
+tier of a multitude of coffins reached to within a few inches of the
+surface. These horrors have long been swept away; but, when Lister took
+charge of his wards in the Infirmary, they were infected by the
+poisonous air generated so close at hand, and in consequence they
+presented a gruesome appearance. The patients came from streets which
+often were foul with dirt, smoke, and disease, and were admitted to
+gloomy airless wards, where pyaemia or gangrene were firmly established.
+In such an environment certain death seemed to await them.
+
+Though his heart must have sunk within him, Lister set himself bravely
+to the task of fighting these grim adversaries. For two years, indeed,
+he was chiefly occupied with routine work and practical improvements;
+but he continued his speculations, and in 1861 an article on amputations
+which he contributed to the _System of Surgery_, a large work in four
+volumes published in London, showed that he had not lost his power of
+surveying questions broadly and examining them with a fresh and original
+insight. He was not in danger of letting his mind be swamped with
+details, but could put them in their place and subordinate them to
+principles; and his article is chiefly directed to a philosophical
+survey which would enable his readers to go through the same process of
+education which he had followed out for himself. Sir Hector Cameron, the
+most constant of his Glasgow disciples, once illustrated this
+philosophic spirit from a passage in Cicero contrasting the many
+scientists who 'render themselves familiar with the strange' (not
+realizing that it is strange or needs explanation) with the few who
+'render themselves strange to the familiar'--who stand away from the
+phenomena to which every one has become too accustomed and examine them
+afresh for themselves. In Lister he recognized the peculiar gift which
+enabled him to rise superior to his subject, and to interpret what was
+to his colleagues a sealed book. In these days, among the too familiar
+scourges of the hospital, his work was perpetually putting questions to
+him; to a man whose mind was open the answer might come at any moment
+and from any quarter.
+
+As a fact, already, far from his own circle and for a long while out of
+his ken, there was working in France the most remarkable scientist of
+the century, Louis Pasteur, who more than once put his scientific
+ability at the disposal of a stricken industry, and in his quiet
+laboratory revived the industrial life of a teeming population. A
+manufacturer who was confronted with difficulties in making
+beetroot-alcohol and was threatened with financial ruin, appealed for
+his help in 1856; and Pasteur spent years on the study of fermentation,
+making countless experiments to test the action of the air in the
+processes of putrefaction, and coming to the conclusion that the oxygen
+of the air was not responsible for them, as was widely believed. He went
+further and reached a positive result. He satisfied himself that
+putrefaction was set up by tiny living organisms carried in the dust of
+the air, and that the process was due to what we now familiarly term
+'germs' or 'microbes'. The existence of these infinitesimal creatures
+was known already to scientists, but their importance was not grasped
+till Pasteur, in the years 1862 to 1864, expounded the results of his
+long course of studies. He himself was no expert in medicine, but his
+discovery was to bear wonderful fruit when it was properly applied to
+the science of health and disease. Lister's study of open wounds, his
+observation of the harm done to the tissues in them when vitality was
+impaired, and of the value of protective scabs when they formed, enabled
+him to see the way and to point it out to others. When in 1865 he first
+read the papers which Pasteur had been publishing, he found the
+principle for which he had so long been searching. With what excitement
+he read them, with what suddenness of conviction he accepted the
+message, we do not know; he has left no record of his feelings at the
+time: but it was the most important moment in his career, and the rest
+of his life was spent in applying these principles to his professional
+work.
+
+With his mind thus fortified by the knowledge of the true source of the
+mischief, realizing that he had to assist in a battle between the deadly
+germs carried in the air and the living tissues trying to defend
+themselves, Lister returned afresh to the study of methods. He knew that
+he had to reckon with germs in the wound itself, if the skin was broken,
+with germs on the hands and instruments of the operator, and with germs
+on the dust in the air. He must find some defensive power which was able
+to kill the germs, at least in the first two instances, without
+exercising an irritating effect on the tissues and weakening their
+vitality. The relative importance of these various factors in the
+problem only time and experience could tell him. Carbolic acid had been
+discovered in 1834 and had already been tried by surgeons with varying
+results. At Carlisle it had been used by the town authorities to cope
+with the foul odour of sewage, and Lister visited the town to study its
+operation. In its cruder form carbolic proved only too liable to
+irritate a wound and was difficult to dissolve in water. Lister tried
+solutions of different strengths, and finally arrived at a form of
+carbolic acid which proved to be soluble in oil and to have the
+'antiseptic' force which he desired--that is, to check the process of
+sepsis or putrefaction inside the wound. He also set himself to devise
+some 'protective' which would enable Nature to do her healing work
+without further interference from without. Animals have the power to
+form quickly a natural scab over a wound, which is impermeable and at
+the same time elastic. The human skin, after a slight wound, in a pure
+atmosphere, may heal quickly; but a serious wound may continue open for
+a long time, discharging 'pus' at intervals, while decomposition is
+slowly lowering the vitality of the patient. Lister made numerous
+experiments with layers of chalk and carbolic oil, with a combination of
+shellac and gutta-percha, with everything of which he could think, to
+imitate the work of nature. His inexhaustible patience stood him in good
+stead in all these practical details. Rivals might speak contemptuously
+of the 'carbolic treatment' and the 'putty method' as if he were the
+vender of a new quack medicine; but at the back of these details was a
+scientific principle, firmly grasped by one man, while all others were
+groping in the dark.
+
+[Illustration: LORD LISTER
+
+From a photograph by Messrs. Barraud]
+
+During 1866 and 1867 we see from his letters how he set himself to apply
+the new principle first to cases of compound fracture and then to
+abscesses, how closely and anxiously he watched the progress of his
+patients, and how slow he was to claim a victory before his confidence
+was assured. In July 1867, when he was just forty years old, he felt it
+to be his duty to communicate what he had learnt and to put his
+experience at the disposal of his fellow workers. He wrote then to _The
+Lancet_ describing in detail eleven cases of compound fracture under his
+care, in which one patient had died, one had lost a limb, and the other
+nine had been successfully cured. This ratio of success to failure was
+far in advance of the average practice of the time; but, for all that,
+it is not surprising that he met with the common fate which rewards
+pioneers in new fields of study. It is true that other reforms were
+helping to reduce the number of fatal cases. Florence Nightingale had
+led the way, and much had been learnt about hospital management. It was
+possible to maintain that good results had been achieved by other
+methods, and that Lister's proofs were in no way decisive. But there was
+no need for critics to misapprehend the nature of his claims or to
+introduce the personal element and accuse him of plagiarism. Sir James
+Simpson revived the memory of a Frenchman, Lemaire, who had used
+carbolic acid and written about it in 1860, and refused to give Lister
+any credit for his discoveries. As a fact Lister had never heard of
+Lemaire or his work; and, besides, the Frenchman had never known the
+principles on which Lister based his work, nor did he succeed in
+converting others to his practice. How little the personal question need
+be raised between men of the highest character is shown by the relations
+of Darwin and Wallace, who arrived independently and almost
+simultaneously at their theory of the origin of species, Wallace put his
+notes, the fruit of many years of work, at the disposal of Darwin; and
+both continued to labour at the establishment of truth, each giving
+generous recognition to the other's part in the work.
+
+Unmoved then by this and other attacks, Lister continued his experiments
+and spent the greatest pains, for years in succession, in improving the
+details of his treatment. It would take too long to narrate his
+struggles with carbolized silk and catgut in the search for the perfect
+ligature, which should be absorbed by the living tissues without setting
+up putrefaction in the wound; or his countless experiments to find a
+dressing which should be antiseptic without bringing any irritating
+substance near the vital spot. These latter finally resulted in the
+choice of the cyanide gauze, which with its delicate shade of heliotrope
+is now a familiar object in hospital and surgery. But one story is of
+special interest because it shows us clearly how Lister, while clinging
+to a principle, was ready to modify the details of treatment by the
+lessons which experience taught him. It was on the advice of others that
+he first introduced a carbolic spray in order to purify the air in the
+neighbourhood of an operation. At first he used a small spray worked by
+hand, but this was, for practical reasons, changed into a foot-spray and
+afterwards into one worked by steam. One objection to this was that the
+steam-engine was a cumbrous bit of apparatus to carry about with him to
+operations; and Lister all his life loved simplicity in his methods.
+Another was that the carbolic solution, falling on the hands of the
+operator, might chill them and impair his skill in handling his
+instruments. Lister himself suffered less in this way than most other
+surgeons; with some men it was a grave handicap. The spectators at a
+demonstration found it inconvenient, and in one instance at least we
+know that the patient was upset by the carbolic vapour reaching her
+eyes. This was no less a person than Queen Victoria, upon whom Lister
+was called to operate at Balmoral in 1870. About the use of this
+apparatus, which was an easy mark for ridicule, Lister had doubts for
+some time; but it was not the ridicule which killed it, but his growing
+conviction that it did not afford the security which was claimed for it.
+He was hesitating in 1881; in 1887 he abandoned the use of the spray
+entirely; in 1890 he expressed publicly at Berlin his regret for having
+advocated what had proved to be a needless complication and even a
+source of trouble in conducting operations. In adopting it he had for
+once been ready to listen to the advice of others without his usual
+precaution of first-hand experiments; in abandoning it he showed his
+contempt for merely outward consistency in practice and his willingness
+to admit his own mistakes.
+
+It was at Glasgow that Lister made his initial discoveries and conducted
+his first operations under the new system. It was in the Glasgow
+Infirmary that he worked cures which roused the astonishment of his
+students, however incredulous the older generation might be. He had
+formed a school and was happy in the loyal service and in the enthusiasm
+of those who worked under him, and he had no desire to leave such a
+fruitful field of work. But when in 1869 his father-in-law, owing to
+ill-health, resigned his professorship, and a number of Edinburgh
+students addressed an appeal to Lister to become a candidate for the
+post, he was strongly drawn towards the city where he had married and
+spent such happy years. No doubt too he and his wife wished to be near
+Syme, who lived for fourteen months after his stroke, and to cheer his
+declining days. Lister was elected in August 1869 and moved to Edinburgh
+two months later. For a while he took a furnished house, but early in
+1870 he made his home in Charlotte Square, from which he had easy access
+to the gardens between Princes Street and the Castle, 'a grand place'
+for his daily meditations, as he had it all to himself before breakfast.
+Altogether, Edinburgh was a pleasant change to him, and refreshing; and
+the one man who was likely to stir controversy, Sir James Simpson, died
+six months after Lister's arrival. Among his fellow professors were men
+eminent in many lines, perhaps the most striking figures being old Sir
+Robert Christison of the medical faculty, Geikie the geologist, and
+Blackie the classical scholar. The hospital was still run on
+old-fashioned lines; but the staff were devoted to their work, from the
+head nurse, Mrs. Porter, a great 'character' whose portrait has been
+sketched in verse by Henley,[47] to the youngest student; and they were
+ready to co-operate heartily with the new chief. The hours of work
+suited Lister better than those at Glasgow, where he had begun with an
+early morning visit to the Infirmary and had to find time for a daily
+lecture. Here he limited himself to two lectures a week, visited the
+hospital at midday, and was able to devote a large amount of time to
+bacteriological study, which was his chief interest at this time.
+
+[Note 47: W. E. Henley, poet and critic, 1849-1903. His poems, 'In
+Hospital' include also a very beautiful sonnet on 'The Chief'--Lister
+himself, which almost calls up his portrait to one who has once seen it:
+'His brow spreads large and placid.... Soft lines of tranquil
+thought.... His face at once benign and proud and shy.... His wise rare
+smile.']
+
+He stayed in Edinburgh eight years, and it was during his time here that
+he saw the interest of all Europe in surgical questions quickened by the
+Franco-German war, and had to realize how incomplete as yet was his
+victory over the forces of destruction. Some enterprising British and
+American doctors, who volunteered for field-service, came to him for
+advice, and he wrote a series of short instructions for their guidance;
+but he soon learnt how difficult it was to carry out his methods in the
+field, where appliances were inadequate and where wounds often got a
+long start before treatment could be applied. The French statistics,
+compiled after the war, are appalling to read: 90 out of 100 amputations
+proved fatal, and the total number of deaths in hospital worked out at
+over 10,000. The Germans were in advance of the French in the
+cleanliness of their methods, and some of their doctors were already
+beginning to accept the antiseptic theory; but it was not till 1872 that
+this principle can be said to have won the day. The hospitals on both
+sides were left with a ghastly heritage of pyaemia and other diseases,
+raging almost unchecked in their wards; but, in the two years after the
+war, two of the most famous professors in German Universities[48] had by
+antiseptic methods obtained such striking results among their patients
+that the superiority of the treatment was evident; and both of them
+generously gave full credit to Lister as their teacher. When he made a
+long tour on the Continent in 1875, finishing up with visits to the
+chief medical schools in Germany, these men were foremost in greeting
+him, and he enjoyed a conspicuous triumph also at Leipzig. Sir Rickman
+Godlee, commenting on the indifference of his countrymen, says that
+Lister's teaching was by them 'accepted as a novelty, when it came back
+to England, refurbished from Germany'. But this was not till after he
+had left Edinburgh, to carry the torch of learning to the south.
+
+[Note 48: Professor Volkmann of Halle and Professor von Nussbaum of
+Munich.]
+
+In Edinburgh his colleagues, with all their opportunities for learning
+at first hand, seemed strangely indifferent to Lister's presence in
+their midst, even when foreigners began to make pilgrimages to the
+central shrine of antiseptics. The real encouragement which he got came,
+as before, from his pupils, who thronged his lecture-room to the number
+of three or four hundred, with sustained enthusiasm. In some ways it is
+difficult to account for the popularity of his lectures. He made no
+elaborate preparations, but was content to devote a quiet half-hour to
+thinking out the subject in his arm-chair. After this he needed no
+notes, having his ideas and the development of his thought so firmly in
+his grasp that he could follow it out clearly and could hold the
+attention of his audience. His voice, though musical, was not of great
+power. He was often impeded by a slight stammer, especially at the end
+of a session. He was not naturally an eloquent man, and attempted no
+flights of rhetoric. But it seems impossible to deny the possession of
+special ability to a man who consistently drew such large audiences
+throughout a long career; and if it was the matter rather than the
+manner which wove the spell, surely that is just the kind of good
+speaking which Scotsmen and Englishmen have always preferred.
+
+And so it needed an even greater effort than at Glasgow for Lister to
+strike his tent and adventure himself on new ground. It is true that
+London was his early home; London could give him wider fame and enable
+him to make a larger income by private practice; yet it is very doubtful
+whether these motives combined could have induced him to migrate again,
+now that he had reached the age of fifty. But he was a man with a
+mission. Some of his few converts in London held that only his presence
+there could shake the prevailing apathy, and he himself felt that he
+must make the effort in the interests of science.
+
+The professorial chair to which he was invited in 1877 was at King's
+College, which was relatively a small institution; its hospital was not
+up to the Edinburgh standard; the classes which attended his lectures
+were small. Owing to an unfortunate incident he was handicapped at the
+start. When receiving a parting address from 700 of his Edinburgh
+students he made an informal speech in the course of which he compared
+the conditions of surgical teaching then prevailing at Edinburgh and
+London, in terms which were not flattering to the southern metropolis.
+Some comparison was natural in the circumstances; Lister was not
+speaking for publication and had no idea that a reporter was present.
+But his remarks appeared in print, with the result that might be
+expected. The sting of the criticism lay in its truth, and many London
+surgeons were only too ready to resent anything which might be said by
+the new professor. When he had been living some time in London, Lister
+succeeded in allaying the ill feeling which resulted; but at first, even
+in his own hospital, he was met by coldness and opposition in his
+attempt to introduce new methods. In fact, had he not laid down definite
+conditions in accepting the post, he could never have made his way; but
+he had stipulated for bringing with him some of the men whom he had
+trained, and he was accompanied by four Edinburgh surgeons, the foremost
+of whom were John Stewart, a Canadian, and Watson Cheyne, the famous
+operator of the next generation. Even so he found his orders set at
+naught and his work hampered by a temper which he had never known
+elsewhere. In some cases the sisters entrenched themselves behind the
+Secretary's rules and refused to comply, not only with the requests of
+the new staff, but even with the dictates of common sense and humanity.
+Another trouble arose over the system of London examinations which
+tempted the students to reproduce faithfully the views of others and
+discouraged men from giving time to independent research. Lister's
+method of lecturing was designed to foster the spirit of inquiry, and he
+would not deign to fill his lecture-room by any species of 'cramming'.
+Never did his patience, his hopefulness, and his interest in the cause
+have to submit to greater trials; but the day of victory was at hand.
+
+The most visible sign of it was at the International Medical Congress
+held at Amsterdam in 1879 and attended by representatives of the great
+European nations. One sitting was devoted to the antiseptic system; and
+Lister, after delivering an address, received an ovation so marked that
+none of his fellow-countrymen could fail to see the esteem in which he
+was held abroad. Even in London many of his rivals had by now been
+converted. The most distinguished of them, Sir James Paget, openly
+expressed remorse for his reluctance to accept the antiseptic principle
+earlier, and compared his own record of failures with the successes
+attained by his colleague at St. Bartholomew's Thomas Smith, the one
+eminent London surgeon who had given Listerism a thorough trial. Other
+triumphs followed, such as the visits in 1889 to Oxford and Cambridge to
+receive Honorary Degrees, the offer of a baronetcy in 1883, and the
+conferring on him in 1885 of the Prussian 'Ordre pour le merite'.[49]
+But a chronicle of such external matters is wearisome in itself; and
+before the climax was reached, the current of opinion was, by a strange
+turn of fortune, already setting in another direction.
+
+[Note 49: Restricted to thirty German and thirty foreign members.]
+
+This was due to the introduction of the so-called aseptic theory so
+widely prevalent to-day, of which the chief prophet in 1885 was
+Professor von Bergmann of Berlin. Into the relative merits of systems,
+on which the learned disagree, it is absurd for laymen to enter; nor is
+it necessary to make such comparisons in order to appreciate the example
+of Lister's life. The new school believe that they have gained by the
+abandonment of carbolic and other antiseptics which may irritate a wound
+and by trusting to the agency of heat for killing all germs. But Lister
+himself took enormous pains to keep his antiseptic as remote as possible
+from the tissues to whose vitality he trusted, and went half-way to meet
+the aseptic doctrine. If he retained a belief in the need for carbolic
+and distrusted the elaborate ritual of the modern hospital, with its
+boiling of everybody and everything connected with an operation, it was
+not either from blindness or from pettiness of mind. As in the case of
+abandoning the spray, it was his love of simplicity which influenced
+him. If the detailed precautions of the complete aseptic system are
+found practicable and beneficial in a hospital, they are difficult to
+realize for a country surgeon who has to work in a humbler way, and
+Lister wished his procedure to be within reach of every practitioner who
+needed it.
+
+One more point must be considered before pronouncing Listerism to be
+superseded. In time of war there are occasions when necessity dictates
+the treatment to be followed. Wounded men, picked up on the field of
+battle some hours after they were hit, are not fit subjects for a method
+that needs a clear field of operation. It is then too late for aseptic
+precautions, as the wound may already be teeming with bacteria. Only the
+prompt use of carbolic can stay the ravages of putrefaction; and
+Lister's method, so often disparaged, must have saved the lives of
+thousands during the late War.
+
+In any case there is much common ground between the two schools: each
+can learn from the other, and those professors of asepticism who have
+acknowledged their debt to Lister have been wiser than those who have
+made contention their aim. This was never the spirit in which he
+approached scientific problems.
+
+An earlier controversy, in which his name was involved, was that which
+raged round the practice of vivisection. Here Lister had practically the
+whole of his profession behind him when he boldly supported the claims
+of science to have benefited humanity by the experiments conducted on
+animals and to have done so with a minimum of suffering to the latter.
+And it was well that science had a champion whose reputation for
+gentleness and moderation was so well established. Queen Victoria
+herself showed a lively interest in this fiercely-debated question; and
+in 1871, when Lister was appealed to by Sir Henry Ponsonby, her private
+secretary, to satisfy her doubts on the subject, he wrote an admirable
+reply, calm in tone and lucid in statement, in which he showed how
+unfounded were the charges brought against his profession.
+
+In 1892 his professional career was drawing to a close. In that year he
+received the heartiest recognition that France could give to his work,
+when he went there officially to represent the Royal Society at the
+Pasteur celebration. A great gathering of scientists and others,
+presided over by President Carnot, came together at the Sorbonne to
+honour Pasteur's seventieth birthday. It was a dramatic scene such as
+our neighbours love, when the two illustrious fellow workers embraced
+one another in public, and the audience rose to the occasion. To be
+acclaimed with Pasteur was to Lister a crowning honour; but a year later
+fortune dealt him a blow from which he never recovered. His wife, his
+constant companion and helper, was taken ill suddenly at Rapallo on the
+Italian Riviera, and died in a few days; and Lister's life was sadly
+changed.
+
+He was still considerably before the public for another decade. He did
+much useful work for the Royal Society, of which he became Foreign
+Secretary in 1893 and President from 1895 to 1900. He visited Canada and
+South Africa, received the freedom of Edinburgh in 1898 and of London in
+1907, and in 1897 he received the special honour of a peerage, the only
+one yet conferred on a medical man. He took an active interest in the
+discoveries of Koch and Metchnikoff, preserving to an advanced age the
+capacity for accepting new ideas. He was largely instrumental in
+founding the Institute of Preventive Medicine now established at Chelsea
+and called by his name. But his work as a surgeon was complete before
+death separated him from his truest helper. In 1903 his strength began
+to fail, and for the last nine years of his life, at London or at
+Walmer, he was shut off from general society and lived the life of an
+invalid.
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+In 1912 he passed away by almost imperceptible degrees, in his home
+by the sea, and by his own request was buried in the quiet cemetery of
+West Hampstead where his wife lay. A public service was held in
+Westminster Abbey, and a portrait medallion there preserves the memory
+of his features. The patient toil, the even temper, the noble purpose
+which inspired his life, had achieved their goal--he was a national hero
+as truly as any statesman or soldier of his generation; and if,
+according to his nature he wished his body to lie in a humble grave, he
+deserved full well to have his name preserved and honoured in our most
+sacred national shrine.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+1834-96
+
+
+1834. Born at Walthamstow, March 24.
+1848-51. Marlborough College.
+1853-5. Exeter College, Oxford.
+1856. Studies architecture under Street.
+1857. Red Lion Square; influence of D. G. Rossetti.
+1858. _Defence of Guenevere_.
+1859. Marries Miss Jane Burden.
+1860-5. 'Red House', Upton, Kent.
+1861. Firm of Art Decorators founded in Queen Square, Bloomsbury.
+(Dissolved and refounded 1875.)
+1867-8. _Life and Death of Jason_. 1868-70. _Earthly Paradise_.
+1870. Tenant of Kelmscott Manor House, on the Upper Thames.
+1871-3. Visits to Iceland; work on Icelandic Sagas.
+1876. _Sigurd the Volsung_.
+1878. Tenant of Kelmscott House, Hammersmith.
+1881. Works moved to Merton.
+1883-4. Active member of Social Democratic Federation.
+1884-90. Founder and active member of Socialist League.
+1891. Kelmscott Press founded.
+1892-6. Preparation and printing of Kelmscott _Chaucer_.
+1896. Death at Hammersmith, October 3.
+1896. Burial at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire.
+
+WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+CRAFTSMAN AND SOCIAL REFORMER
+
+
+In general it is difficult to account for the birth of an original man
+at a particular place and time. As Carlyle says: 'Priceless Shakespeare
+was the free gift of nature, given altogether silently, received
+altogether silently.' Of his childhood history has almost nothing to
+relate, and what is true of Shakespeare is true in large measure of
+Burns, of Shelley, of Keats. Even in an age when records are more
+common, we can only discern a little and can explain less of the silent
+influences at work that begin to make the man. There are few things more
+surprising than that, in an age given up chiefly to industrial
+development, two prosperous middle-class homes should have given birth
+to John Ruskin and William Morris, so alien in temper to all that
+traditionally springs from such a soil. In the case of Morris there is
+nothing known of his ancestry to explain his rich and various gifts.
+From a child he seemed to have found some spring within himself which
+drew him instinctively to all that was beautiful in nature, in art, in
+books. His earliest companions were the Waverley Novels, which he began
+at the age of four and finished at seven; his earliest haunt was Epping
+Forest, where he roamed and dreamed through many of the years of his
+youth.
+
+His father, who was in business in the City of London, as partner in a
+bill-broking firm, lived at different times at Walthamstow and at
+Woodford; and the hills of the forest, in some places covered with thick
+growth of hornbeam or of beech, in others affording a wide view over the
+levels of the lower Thames, impressed themselves so strongly on the
+boy's memory and imagination that this scenery often recurred in the
+setting of tales which he wrote in middle life.
+
+There was no need of external aid to develop these tastes; and Morris
+was fortunate in going to a school which did no violence to them by
+forcing him into other less congenial pursuits. Marlborough College, at
+the time when he went there in 1848, had only been open a few years. The
+games were not organized but left to voluntary effort; and during his
+three or four years at school Morris never took part in cricket or
+football. In the latter game, at any rate, he should have proved a
+notable performer on unorthodox lines, impetuous, forcible, and burly
+as he was. But he found no reason to regret the absence of games, or to
+feel that time hung heavy on his hands. The country satisfied his wants,
+the Druidic stones at Avebury, the green water-meadows of the Kennet,
+the deep glades of Savernake Forest. So strong was the spell of nature,
+that he hardly felt the need for companionship; and, as chance had not
+yet thrown him into close relations with any friend of similar tastes,
+he lived much alone.
+
+It was a different matter at Oxford, to which he proceeded in January
+1853. Among those who matriculated at Exeter College that year was a
+freshman from Birmingham named Edward Burne Jones; and within a few days
+Morris had begun a friendship with him which lasted for his whole life
+and was the source of his greatest happiness. For more than forty years
+their names were associated, and so they will remain for generations to
+come in Exeter College Chapel, where may be seen the great tapestry of
+the Nativity designed by one and executed by the other. Burne-Jones had
+not yet found his vocation as a painter; he came to Oxford like Morris
+with the wish to take Holy Orders. He was of Welsh family with a Celtic
+fervour for learning, and a Celtic instinct for what was beautiful, and
+at King Edward's School he had made friends with several men who came up
+to Pembroke College about the same time. Their friendship was extended
+to his new acquaintance from Marlborough. Here Morris found himself in
+the midst of a small circle who shared his enthusiasm for literature and
+art, and among whom he quickly learned to express those ideas which had
+been stirring his heart in his solitary youth. Through the knowledge
+gained by close observation and a retentive memory, through his
+impetuosity and swift decision, Morris soon became a leader among them.
+Carlyle and Ruskin, Keats and Tennyson, were at this time the most
+potent influences among them; and when Morris was not arguing and
+declaiming in the circle at Pembroke, he was sitting alone with
+Burne-Jones at Exeter reading aloud to him for hours together French
+romances and other mediaeval tales. Young men of to-day, with a wealth
+of books on their shelves and of pictures on their walls, with popular
+reproductions bringing daily to their doors things old and new, can
+little realize the thrill of excitement with which these men discovered
+and enjoyed a single new poem of Tennyson or an early drawing by Millais
+or Rossetti. How they were quickened by ever fresh delight in the beauty
+and strangeness of such things, how they responded to the magic of
+romance and dreamed of a day when they should themselves help in the
+creation of such work, how they started a magazine of their own and
+essayed short flights in prose or verse, can best be read in the volumes
+which Lady Burne-Jones[50] has dedicated to the memory of her husband.
+This period is of capital importance in the life of William Morris, and
+the year 1855 especially was fraught with momentous decisions.
+
+[Note 50: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_, by G. B.-J., 2 vols.
+(Macmillan, 1904).]
+
+Like Burne-Jones he had gone up to Oxford intending to take Holy Orders
+in the Church of England; but the last three years had taught him that
+his interest lay elsewhere. The spirit of faith, of reverence, of love
+for his fellow men still attracted him to Christianity; but he could not
+subscribe to a body of doctrine or accept the authority of a single
+Church. His ideal shifted gradually. At one time he hoped to found a
+brotherhood which was to combine art with religion and to train
+craftsmen for the service of the Church; but he was more fitted to work
+in the world than in the cloister, and the social aspect of this
+foundation prevailed over the religious. Nor was it mere self-culture to
+which he aspired. The arts as he understood them were one field, and a
+wide field, for enlarging the powers of men and increasing their
+happiness, for continuing all that was most precious in the heritage of
+the past and passing on the torch to the future; in this field there was
+work for many labourers and all might be serving the common good.
+
+His own favourite study was the thirteenth century, when princes and
+merchants, monks and friars, poets and craftsmen had combined to exalt
+the Church and to beautify Western Europe; and he wished to recreate the
+nineteenth century in its spirit. And so while Burne-Jones discovered
+his true gift in the narrower field of painting, Morris began his
+apprenticeship in the master craft of architecture, and passed from one
+art to another till he had covered nearly the whole field of endeavour
+with ever-growing knowledge of principle and restless activity of hand
+and eye. His father had died in 1847; and when Morris came of age he
+inherited a fortune of about Ł900 a year and was his own master. Before
+the end of 1855 he imparted to his mother his decision about taking
+Orders. The Rubicon was crossed; but on which road he was to reach his
+goal was not settled for many years. Twice he had to retrace his steps
+from a false start and begin a fresh career. The year 1856 saw him still
+working at Oxford, in the office of Street, the architect. Two more
+years (1857-8) saw him labouring at easel pictures under the influence
+of Rossetti, though he also published his first volume of poetry at this
+time. The year 1859 found him married, and for the time absorbed in the
+making of a home, but still feeling his way towards the choice of a
+profession.
+
+Dante Gabriel Rossetti was in some ways the most original man of his
+generation; certainly he was the only individual whose influence was
+ever capable of dominating Morris and drawing him to a course of action
+which he would not have chosen for himself. Rossetti's tragic collapse
+after his wife's death, and the pictures which he painted in his later
+life, have obscured the true portrait of this virile and attractive
+character. Burne-Jones fell completely under his spell, and he tells us
+how for many years his chief anxiety, over each successive work of art
+that he finished, was 'what Gabriel would have thought of it'. So
+decisive was his judgement, so dominating his personality.
+
+Morris's period of hesitation ended in 1861, when the first firm of
+decorators was started among the friends. Of the old Oxford set it
+included Burne-Jones and Faulkner; new elements were introduced by
+Philip Webb the architect and Madox Brown the painter. The leadership in
+ideas might still perhaps belong to Rossetti; but in execution William
+Morris proved himself at once the captain. The actual work which he
+contributed in the first year was more than equal to that produced by
+his six partners, and future years told the same tale.
+
+In the early part of his married life Morris lived in Kent, at Upton,
+some twelve miles from Charing Cross, in a house built for him by his
+friend Webb. The house was of red brick, simple but unconventional in
+character, built to be the home of one who detested stucco and all other
+shams, and wished things to seem what they were. Its decoration was to
+be the work of its owner and his friends.
+
+Here we see Morris in the strength of early manhood and in all the
+exuberance of his rich vigorous nature, surrounded by friends for whom
+he kept open house, in high contentment with life, eager to respond to
+all the claims upon his energy. Here came artists and poets, in the
+pleasant summer days, jesting, dreaming, discussing, indulging in bouts
+of single-stick or game of bowls in the garden, walking through the
+country-side, quoting poets old and new, and scheming to cover the walls
+and cupboards of the rooms with the legends of mediaeval romance.
+Visitors of the conventional aesthetic type would have many a surprise
+and many a shock. The jests often took the form of practical jokes, of
+which Morris, from his explosive temper, was chosen to be the butt, but
+which in the end he always shared and enjoyed. Rossetti, Burne-Jones,
+and Faulkner would conspire to lay booby traps on the doors for him,
+would insult him with lively caricatures, and with relentless humour
+would send him to 'Coventry' for the duration of a dinner. Or he would
+have a sudden tempestuous outbreak in which chairs would collapse and
+door panels be kicked in and violent expletives would resound through
+the hall. In all, Morris was the central figure, impatient, boisterous,
+with his thick-set figure, unkempt hair, and untidy clothing, but with
+the keenest appreciation and sympathy for any manifestation of beauty in
+literature or in art. But this idyll was short-lived. Ill-health in the
+Burne-Jones family was followed by an illness which befell Morris
+himself; and the demand of the growing business and the need for the
+master to be nearer at hand forced him to leave Upton. The Red House was
+sold in 1865; and first Bloomsbury and later Hammersmith furnished him
+with a home more conveniently placed.
+
+The period of his return to London coincided with the most fruitful
+period of his poetic work. Already at Oxford he had written some pieces
+of verse which had found favour with his friends. He soon found that his
+taste and his talent was for narrative poetry; and in 1856 he made
+acquaintance with his two supreme favourites, Chaucer and Malory. It is
+to them that he owes most in all that he produced in poetry or in prose,
+and notably in the _Earthly Paradise_, which he published between 1868
+and 1870. This consists of a collection of stories drawn chiefly from
+Greek sources, but supposed to be told by a band of wanderers in the
+fourteenth century. Thus the classic legends are seen through a veil of
+mediaeval romance. He had no wish to step back, in the spirit of a
+modern scholar, across the ages of ignorance or mist, and to pick up
+the classic stones clear-cut and cold as the Greeks left them. To him
+the legends had a continuous history up to the Renaissance; as they were
+retold by Romans, Italians, or Provençals, they were as a plant growing
+in our gardens, still putting out fresh shoots, not an embalmed corpse
+such as later scholars have taught us to exhume and to study in the
+chill atmosphere of our libraries and museums. This mediaevalism of his
+was much misunderstood, both in literature and in art; people would talk
+to him as if he were imitating the windows or tapestries of the Middle
+Ages, whereas what he wanted was to recapture the technical secrets
+which the true craftsmen had known and then to use these methods in a
+live spirit to carry on the work to fresh developments in the future.
+
+If the French tales of the fourteenth century were an inspiration to him
+in his earliest poems, a second influence no less potent was that of the
+Icelandic Sagas. He began to study them in 1869, and a little later,
+with the aid of Professor Magnusson, he was translating some of them
+into English. He made two journeys to Iceland, and was deeply moved by
+the wild grandeur of the scenes in which these heroic tales were set.
+For many successive days he rode across grim solitary wastes with more
+enthusiasm than he could give to the wonted pilgrimages to Florence and
+Venice. When he was once under the spell, only the geysers with their
+suggestion of modern text-books and _Mangnall's Questions_[51] could
+bore him; all else was magical and entrancing. This enthusiasm bore
+fruit in _Sigurd the Volsung_, the most powerful of his epic poems,
+written in an old English metre, which Morris, with true feeling for
+craftsmanship, revived and adapted to his theme. His poetry in general,
+less rich than that of Tennyson, less intense than that of Rossetti,
+had certain qualities of its own, and owed its popularity chiefly to his
+gift for telling a story swiftly, naturally and easily, and in such a
+way as to carry his reader along with him.
+
+[Note 51: Letter quoted in _Life of Morris_, by J. W. Mackail, vol.
+i, p. 257 (Longmans, Green & Co., 1911).]
+
+His fame was growing in London, which was ready enough in the nineteenth
+century to make the most of its poets. In Society, if he had allowed it
+to entertain him, he would have been a picturesque figure, though hardly
+such as was expected by admirers of his poetry and his art. To some his
+dress suggested only the prosperous British workman; to one who knew him
+later he seemed like 'the purser of a Dutch brig' in his blue tweed
+sailor-cut suit. This was his Socialist colleague Mr. Hyndman, who
+describes 'his imposing forehead and clear grey eyes with the powerful
+nose and slightly florid cheeks', and tells us how, when he was talking,
+'every hair of his head and his rough shaggy beard appeared to enter
+into the subject as a living part of himself.' Elsewhere he speaks of
+Morris's 'quick, sharp manner, his impulsive gestures, his hearty
+laughter and vehement anger'. At times Morris could be bluff beyond
+measure. Stopford Brooke, who afterwards became one of his friends,
+recounts his first meeting with Morris in 1867. 'He didn't care for
+parsons, and he glared at me when I said something about good manners.
+Leaning over the table with his eyes set and his fist clenched he
+shouted at me, "I am a boor and the son of a boor".' So ready as he was
+to challenge anything which smacked of conventionality or pretension, he
+was not quite a safe poet to lionize or to ask into mixed company.
+
+But it was less in literature than in art that he influenced his
+generation, and we must return to the history of the firm. From small
+beginnings it had established itself in the favourable esteem of the
+few, and, thanks to exhibitions, its fame was spreading. Though as many
+as twelve branches are mentioned in a single copy of its prospectus,
+there was generally one department which for the moment occupied most of
+the creative energy of the chief.
+
+Painted glass is named first on the prospectus, and was one of the
+earlier successes of the firm. As it was employed for churches more
+often than for private houses, it is familiar to many who do not know
+Morris's work in their homes; but it is hardly the most characteristic
+of his activities. For one thing, the material, the 'pot glass', was
+purchased, not made on the premises. Morris's skill lay in selecting the
+best colours available rather than in creating them himself. For
+another, he knew that his own education in figure-drawing was
+incomplete, and he left this to other artists. Most of the figures were
+designed by Burne-Jones, and some of the best-known examples of his
+windows are at St. Philip's, Birmingham, near the artist's birthplace,
+and at St. Margaret's, Rottingdean, where he died.[52] But no cartoon,
+by Burne-Jones or any one else, was executed till Morris had supervised
+the colour scheme; and he often designed backgrounds of foliage or
+landscape.
+
+[Note 52: Other easily accessible examples are in Christ Church
+Cathedral, Oxford, and Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge.]
+
+To those people of limited means who cannot afford tapestries and
+embroidery (which follow painted glass on the firm's list), yet who wish
+to beautify their homes, interest centres in the chintzes and
+wall-papers. These show the distinctive gifts by which Morris most
+widely influenced the Victorian traditions. It is not easy to explain
+why one design stirs our curiosity and quickens our delight, while
+another has the opposite effect. Critics can prate about natural and
+conventional art without helping us to understand; but a passage from
+Mr. Clutton-Brock seems worth quoting as simply and clearly phrased.[53]
+'Morris would start', he says, 'with a pattern in his mind and from the
+first saw everything as a factor in that pattern. But in these early
+wall-papers he showed a power of pattern-making that has never been
+equalled in modern times. For though everything is subject to the
+pattern, yet the pattern itself expresses a keen delight in the objects
+of which it is composed. So they are like the poems in which the words
+keep a precise and homely sense and yet in their combination make a
+music expressive of their sense.' Beginning with the design of the
+rose-trellis in 1862, Morris laid under contribution many of the most
+familiar flowers and trees. The daisy, the honeysuckle, the willow
+branch, are but a few of the best known: each bears the stamp of his
+inventive fancy and his cunning hand: each flower claims recognition for
+itself, and reveals new charms in its appointed setting. Of these papers
+we hear that Morris himself designed between seventy and eighty, and
+when we add chintzes, tapestry, and other articles we may well be
+astonished at the fertility of his brain.
+
+[Note 53: _William Morris_, by A. Clutton-Brock (Williams and
+Norgate, 1914).]
+
+Even so, much must have depended on his workmen as the firm's operations
+extended.
+
+Mr. Mackail tells us of the faith which Morris had in the artistic
+powers of the average Englishman, if rightly trained. He was ready to
+take and train the boy whom he found nearest to hand, and he often
+achieved surprising results. His own belief was that a good tradition
+once established in the workshops, by which the workman was allowed to
+develop his intelligence, would of itself produce good work: others
+believed that the successes would have been impossible without the
+unique gifts of the master, one of which was that he could intuitively
+select the right man for each job.
+
+The material as well as the workers needed this selective power. The
+factories of the day had accustomed the public to second-rate material
+and second-rate colour, and Morris was determined to set a higher
+standard. In 1875 he was absorbed in the production of vegetable dyes,
+which he insisted on having pure and rich in tone. Though madder and
+weld might supply the reds and yellows which he needed, blue was more
+troublesome. For a time he accepted prussian blue, but he knew that
+indigo was the right material, and to indigo he gave days of
+concentrated work, preparing and watching the vats, dipping the wool
+with his own hands (which often bore the stain of work for longer than
+he wished), superintending the minutest detail and refusing to be
+content with anything short of the best. But these two qualities of
+industry and of aiming at a high standard would not have carried him so
+far if he had not added exceptional gifts of nature. With him hand and
+eye worked together as in few craftsmen of any age; and thus he could
+carry his experiments to a successful end, choosing his material, mixing
+his colours, and timing his work with exact felicity. And when he had
+found the right way he had the rare skill to communicate his knowledge
+to others and thus to train them for the work.
+
+Queen Square, Bloomsbury, was the first scene of his labours; but as the
+firm prospered and the demands for their work grew, Morris found the
+premises too small. At one time he had hopes of finding a suitable spot
+near the old cloth-working towns at the foot of the Cotswolds, where
+pure air and clear water were to be found; but the conditions of trade
+made it necessary for him to be nearer to London. In 1881 he bought an
+old silk-weaving mill at Merton near Wimbledon, on the banks of the
+Wandle, and this is still the centre of the work.
+
+To study special industries, or to execute a special commission, he was
+often obliged to make long journeys to the north of England or
+elsewhere; but the routine of his life consisted in daily travelling
+between his house at Hammersmith and the mills at Merton, which was
+more tiresome than it is to-day owing to the absence of direct connexion
+between these districts. But his energy overbore these obstacles; and,
+except when illness prevented him, he remained punctual in his
+attendance to business and in close touch with all his workers. Towards
+them Morris was habitually generous. The weaker men were kept on and
+paid by time, long after they had ceased to produce remunerative work,
+while the more capable were in course of time admitted as profit-sharers
+into the business. Every man who worked under him had to be prepared for
+occasional outbursts of impatient temper, when Morris spoke, we are
+told, rather as a good workman scornful of bad work, than as an employer
+finding fault with his men; but in the long run all were sure to receive
+fair and friendly treatment.
+
+Such was William Morris at his Merton works, a master craftsman worthy
+of the best traditions of the Middle Ages, fit to hold his place with
+the masons of Chartres, the weavers of Bruges, and the wood-carvers of
+Nuremberg. As a manager of a modern industrial firm competing with
+others for profit he was less successful. The purchasing of the best
+material, the succession of costly experiments, the 'scrapping' of all
+imperfect work, meant a heavy drain on the capital. Also the society had
+been hurriedly formed without proper safeguards for fairly recompensing
+the various members according to their work; and when in 1875 it was
+found necessary to reconstitute it, that Morris might legally hold the
+position which he had from the outset won by his exertions, this could
+not be effected without loss, nor without a certain friction between the
+partners. So, however prosperous the business might seem to be through
+its monopoly of certain wares, it was difficult even for a skilful
+financier to make on each year a profit which was in any way
+proportionate to the fame of the work produced. But in 1865 Morris was
+fortunate in finding a friend ready to undertake the keeping of the
+books, who sympathized with his aims and whose gifts supplemented his
+own; and, for the rest, he had read and digested the work of Ruskin, and
+had learnt from him that the function of the true merchant was to
+produce goods of the best quality, and only secondarily to produce a
+profitable balance-sheet.
+
+How it was that from being the head of an industrial business Morris
+came to be an ardent advocate of Socialism is the central problem of his
+life. The root of the matter lay in his love of art and of the Middle
+Ages. He had studied the centuries productive of the best art known to
+him, and he believed that he understood the conditions under which it
+was produced. The one essential was that the workers found pleasure in
+their work. They were not benumbed by that Division of Labour which set
+the artisan laboriously repeating the same mechanical task; they worked
+at the bidding of no master jealously measuring time, material, and
+price against his competitors; they passed on from one generation to
+another the tradition of work well done for its own sake. He knew there
+was another side to the picture, and that in many ways the freedom of
+the mediaeval craftsman had been curtailed. He did not ask history to
+run backwards, but he felt that the nineteenth century was advancing on
+the wrong line of progress. To him there seemed to be three types of
+social framework. The feudal or Tory type was past and obsolete; for the
+richer classes of to-day had neither the power nor the will to renew it.
+The Whig or Manchester ideal held the field, the rich employer regarding
+his workmen as so many hands capable of producing so much work and so
+much profit, and believing that free bargaining between free men must
+yield the best economic results for all classes, and that beyond
+economic and political liberty the State had no more to give, and a man
+must be left to himself. Against this doctrine emphatic protests had
+been uttered in widely differing forms by Carlyle and Disraeli, by
+Ruskin and Dickens; but it was slow to die.
+
+The third ideal was that of the Socialist; and to Morris this meant that
+the State should appropriate the means of production and should so
+arrange that every worker was assured of the means of livelihood and of
+sufficient leisure to enjoy the fruits of what he had made. He who could
+live so simply himself thought more of the unjust distribution of
+happiness than of wealth, as may be seen in his _News from Nowhere_,
+where he gives a Utopian picture of England as it was to be after the
+establishment of Socialism. Here rather than in polemical speeches or
+pamphlets can we find the true reflection of his attitude and the way in
+which he thought about reform.
+
+It was not easy for him to embark on such a crusade. In his early
+manhood, except for his volunteering in the war scare of 1859, he had
+taken no part in public life. The first cause which led to his appearing
+at meetings was wrath at the ill-considered restoration of old
+buildings. In 1877, when a society was formed for their protection,
+Morris was one of the leaders, and took his stand by Ruskin, who had
+already stated the principles to be observed. They believed that the
+presentation of nineteenth-century masonry in the guise of mediaeval
+work was a fraud on the public, that it obscured the true lessons of the
+past, and that, under the pretence of reviving the original design, it
+marred the development which had naturally gone forward through the
+centuries. It was from his respect for work and the workman that Morris
+denounced this pedantry, from his love of stones rightly hewn and laid,
+of carving which the artist had executed unconsciously in the spirit of
+his time, and which was now being replaced by lifeless imitation to the
+order of a bookish antiquary. Against this he was ready to protest at
+all times, and references to meetings of 'Antiscrape', as he calls the
+society, are frequent in his letters. He also was rigid in declining all
+orders to the firm where his own decorations might seem to disturb the
+relics of the past.
+
+His next step was still more difficult. The plunge of a famous poet and
+artist into agitation, of a capitalist and employer into Socialism,
+provoked much wonder and many indignant protests. His severer critics
+seized on any pamphlet of his in which they could detect logical
+fallacies and scornfully asked whether this was fit work for the author
+of the _Earthly Paradise_. Many liberal-minded people indeed regretted
+the diversion of his activities, but the question whether he was wasting
+them is one that needs consideration; and to judge him fairly we must
+look at the problem from his side and postulate that Socialism (whether
+he interpreted its theories aright or not) did pursue practical ideals.
+If Aeschylus was more proud of fighting at Marathon than of writing
+tragedies--if Socrates claimed respect as much for his firmness as a
+juryman as for his philosophic method--surely Morris might believe that
+his duty to his countrymen called him to leave his study and his
+workshop to take an active part in public affairs. He might be more
+prone to error than those who had trained themselves to political life,
+but he faced the problems honestly and sacrificed his comfort for the
+common good.
+
+Criticism took a still more personal turn in the hands of those who
+pointed out that Morris himself occupied the position of a capitalist
+employer, and who asked him to live up to his creed by divesting himself
+of his property and taking his place in the ranks of the proletariat.
+This argument is dealt with by Mr. Mackail,[54] who describes the steps
+which Morris took to admit his foremen to sharing the profits of the
+business, and defends him against the charge of inconsistency. Morris
+may not have thought out the question in all its aspects, but much of
+the criticism passed upon him was even more illogical and depended on
+far too narrow and illiterate a use of the word Socialism. He knew as
+well as his critics that no new millennium could be introduced by merely
+taking the wealth of the rich and dividing it into equal portions among
+the poor.
+
+[Note 54: _Life of Morris_, by J. W. Mackail, vol. ii, pp. 133-9.]
+
+However reluctant Morris might be to leave his own work for public
+agitation, he plunged into the Socialist campaign with characteristic
+energy. For two or three years he was constantly devoting his Sundays to
+open-air speech-making, his evenings to thinly-attended meetings in
+stuffy rooms in all the poorer parts of London; and, at the call of
+comrades, he often travelled into the provinces, and even as far as
+Scotland, to lend a hand. And he spent time and money prodigally in
+supporting journals which were to spread the special doctrines of his
+form of Socialism. Nor was it only the indifference and the hostility of
+those outside which he had to meet; quarrels within the party were
+frequent and bitter, though Morris himself, despite his impetuous
+temper, showed a wonderful spirit of brotherliness and conciliation. For
+two years his work lay with the Socialist Democratic Federation, till
+differences of opinion with Mr. Hyndman drove him to resign; in 1885 he
+founded the Socialist League, and for this he toiled, writing, speaking,
+and attending committees, till 1889, when the control was captured by a
+knot of anarchists, in spite of all his efforts. After this he ceased to
+be a 'militant'; but in no way did he abandon his principles or despair
+of the ultimate triumph of the cause. The result of his efforts must
+remain unknown. If the numbers of his audiences were often
+insignificant, and the visible outcome discouraging to a degree, yet in
+estimating the value of personal example no outward test can satisfy us.
+He gave of his best with the same thoroughness as in all his crafts, and
+no man can do more. But, looking at the matter from a regard to his
+special gifts and to his personal happiness, we may be glad that his
+active connexion with Socialism ceased in 1889, and that he was granted
+seven years of peace before the end.
+
+These were the years that saw the birth and growth of the 'Kelmscott'
+printing press, so called after his country house. Of illuminated
+manuscripts[55] he had always been fond, but it was only in 1888 that
+his attention was turned to details of typography. The mere study of old
+and new founts did not satisfy him for long; the creative impulse
+demanded that he should design types of his own and produce his own
+books. As in the other arts, his lifelong friend Burne-Jones was called
+in to supply figure drawings for the illustrated books which Morris was
+himself to adorn with decorative borders and initials. Of his many
+schemes, not all came to fruition; but after four years of planning, and
+a year and a half given to the actual process of printing, his
+masterpiece, the Kelmscott edition of Chaucer, was completed, and a copy
+was in his hands a few months before his death.
+
+[Note 55: Mr. Hyndman (_Story of an Adventurous Life_, p. 355)
+describes a visit to the Bodleian Library at Oxford with Morris, and how
+'quickly, carefully, and surely' he dated the illuminated manuscripts.]
+
+The last seven years of his life were spent partly at Hammersmith and
+partly at Kelmscott, the old manor house, lying on the banks of the
+Upper Thames, which he had tenanted since 1878. He had never been a
+great traveller, dearly though he loved the north of France with its
+Gothic cathedrals and 'the river bottoms with the endless poplar forests
+and the green green meadows'. His tastes were very individual. Iceland
+made stronger appeals to him than Greece or Rome; and even at Florence
+and Venice he was longing to return to England and its homely familiar
+scenes. Scotland with its bare hills, 'raw-boned' as he called it, never
+gave him much pleasure; for he liked to see the earth clothed by nature
+and by the hand of man. By the Upper Thames, at the foot of the
+Cotswolds, the buildings of the past were still generally untouched; and
+beyond the orchards and gardens, with their old-world look, lay
+stretches of meadows, diversified by woods and low hills, haunted with
+the song of birds; and he could believe himself still to be in the
+England of Chaucer and Shakespeare. There he would always welcome the
+friends whom he loved and who loved him; but to the world at large he
+was a recluse. His abrupt manner, his Johnsonian utterances, would have
+made him a disconcerting element in Victorian tea-parties. When provoked
+by foolish utterances, he was, no less than Johnson, downright in
+contradiction. There was nothing that he disliked so much as being
+lionized; and there was much to annoy him when he stepped outside his
+own home and circle. His last public speech was made on the abuses of
+public advertisement; and in the last year of his life we hear him
+growling in Ruskinian fashion that he was ever 'born with a sense of
+romance and beauty in this accursed age'.
+
+His life had been a strenuous and exhausting one, but he enjoyed it to
+the last. As he said to Hyndman ten days before the end, 'It has been a
+jolly good world to me when all is said, and I don't wish to leave it
+yet awhile'. At least his latter years had been years of peace. He had
+been freed from the stress of conflict; he had found again the joys of
+youth, and could recapture the old music.
+
+    The days have slain the days, and the seasons have gone by
+    And brought me the summer again; and here on the grass I lie
+    As erst I lay and was glad, ere I meddled with right and wrong.
+
+After an illness in 1891 he never had quite the same physical vigour,
+though he continued to employ himself fully for some years in a way
+which would tax the energy of many robust men. In 1895 the vital energy
+was failing, and he was content to relax his labours. In August 1896 he
+was suffering from congestion of the lungs, and in October he died
+peacefully at Hammersmith, attended by the loving care of his wife and
+his oldest friends. The funeral at Kelmscott was remarkable for
+simplicity and beauty, the coffin being borne along the country road in
+a farm wagon strewn with leaves; and he lies in the quiet churchyard
+amid the meadows and orchards which he loved so well.
+
+Among the prophets and poets who took up their parable against the
+worship of material wealth and comfort, he will always have a foremost
+place. The thunder of Carlyle, the fiery eloquence of Ruskin, the
+delicate irony of Matthew Arnold, will find a responsive echo in the
+heart of one reader or another; will expose the false standards of life
+set up in a materialistic age and educate them in the pursuit of what is
+true, what is beautiful, and what is reasonable. But to men who work
+with their hands there must always be something specially inspiring in
+the life and example of one who was a handicraftsman and so much beside.
+And Morris was not content to denounce and to despair. He enjoyed what
+was good in the past and the present, and he preached in a hopeful
+spirit a gospel of yet better things for the future. He was an artist in
+living. Amid all the diversity of his work there was an essential unity
+in his life. The men with whom he worked were the friends whom he
+welcomed in his leisure; the crafts by which he made his wealth were the
+pastimes over which he talked and thought in his home; his dreams for
+the future were framed in the setting of the mediaeval romances which he
+loved from his earliest days. Though he lived often in an atmosphere of
+conflict, and often knew failure, he has left us an example which may
+help to fill the emptiness and to kindle the lukewarmness of many an
+unquiet heart, and may reconcile the discords that mar the lives of too
+many of his countrymen in this age of transition and of doubt.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN RICHARD GREEN
+
+From a drawing by Frederick Sandys]
+
+
+
+
+JOHN RICHARD GREEN
+
+1837-83
+
+1837. Born at Oxford, December 12.
+1845-52. Magdalen College School, Oxford.
+1852-4. With a private tutor.
+1855-9. Jesus College, Oxford.
+1861-3. Curate at Goswell Road, E.C.
+1863-4. Curate at Hoxton.
+1864-9. Mission Curate and Rector of St. Philip's, Stepney.
+1869. Abandons parochial work. Librarian at Lambeth Palace.
+1867-73. Contributor to _Saturday Review_.
+1874. _Short History of the English People_ published.
+1877. Marries Miss Alice Stopford.
+1877-80. Four volumes of larger _History of the English People_ published.
+1880-1. Winter in Egypt.
+1882. January, _Making of England_ published.
+1883. January, _Conquest of England_ finished (published posthumously).
+      Last illness. Death, March 7.
+
+JOHN RICHARD GREEN
+
+HISTORIAN
+
+
+The eighteenth century did some things with a splendour and a
+completeness which is the despair of later, more restlessly striving
+generations. Barren though it was of poetry and high imagination, it
+gave birth to our most famous works in political economy, in biography,
+and in history; and it has set up for us classic models of imperishable
+fame. But the wisdom of Adam Smith, the shrewd observation of Boswell,
+the learning of Gibbon, did not readily find their way into the
+market-place. Outside of the libraries and the booksellers' rows in
+London and Edinburgh they were in slight demand. Even when the volumes
+of Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson had been added to the library shelves,
+where Clarendon and Burnet reigned before them, too often they only
+passed to a state of dignified retirement and slumber. No hand disturbed
+them save that of the conscientious housemaid who dusted them in due
+season. They were part of the furnishings indispensable to the elegance
+of a 'gentleman's seat'; and in many cases the guests, unless a Gibbon
+were among them, remained ignorant whether the labels on their backs
+told a truthful tale, or whether they disguised an ingenious box or
+backgammon board, or formed a mere covering to the wall.
+
+The fault was with the public more than with the authors. Those who
+ventured on the quest would find noble eloquence in Clarendon, lively
+narrative in Burnet, critical analysis in Hume; but the indolence of the
+Universities and the ignorance of the general public unfitted them for
+the effort required to value a knowledge of history or to take steps to
+acquire it. It is true that the majestic style of Clarendon was puzzling
+to a generation accustomed to prose of the fashion inaugurated by Dryden
+and Addison; and that Hume and other historians, with all their
+precision and clearness, were wanting in fervour and imagination. But
+the record of English history was so glorious, so full of interest for
+the patriot and for the politician, that it should have spoken for
+itself, and the apathy of the educated classes was not creditable to
+them. Even so Ezekiel found the Israelites of his day, forgetful of
+their past history and its lessons, sunk in torpor and indifference. He
+looked upon the wreckage of his nation, settled in the Babylonian plain;
+in his fervent imagination he saw but a valley of dry bones, and called
+aloud to the four winds that breath should come into them and they
+should live.
+
+In our islands the prophets who wielded the most potent spell came from
+beyond the Border. Walter Scott exercised the wider influence, Carlyle
+kindled the intenser flame. As artists they followed very different
+methods. Scott, like a painter, wielding a vigorous brush full charged
+with human sympathies, set before us a broad canvas in lively colours
+filled with a warm diffused light. Carlyle worked more in the manner of
+an etcher, the mordant acid eating deep into the plate. From the depth
+of his shadows would stand out single figures or groups, in striking
+contrast, riveting the attention and impressing themselves on the
+memory. Scott drew thousands of readers to sympathize with the men and
+women of an earlier day, and to feel the romance that attaches to lost
+causes in Church and State. Carlyle set scores of students striving to
+recreate the great men of the past and by their standards to reject the
+shibboleths of the present. However different were the methods of the
+enchanters, the dry bones had come to life. Mediaeval abbot and
+crusader, cavalier and covenanter, Elizabeth and Cromwell, spoke once
+more with a living voice to ears which were opened to hear.
+
+Nor did the English Universities fail to send forth men who could meet
+the demands of a generation which was waking up to a healthier political
+life. The individual who achieved most in popularizing English history
+was Macaulay, who began to write his famous Essays in 1825, the year
+after he won his fellowship at Trinity, though the world had to wait
+another twenty-five years for his History of the English Revolution.
+Since then Cambridge historians like Acton, or Maitland, have equalled
+or excelled him in learning, though none has won such brilliant success.
+But it was the Oxford School which did most, in the middle of the
+nineteenth century, to clear up the dark places of our national record
+and to present a complete picture of the life of the English people.
+Freeman delved long among the chronicles of Normans and Saxons; Stubbs
+no less laboriously excavated the charters of the Plantagenets; Froude
+hewed his path through the State papers of the Tudors; while Gardiner
+patiently unravelled the tangled skein of Stuart misgovernment. John
+Richard Green, one of the youngest of the school, took a wider subject,
+the continuous history of the English people. He was fortunate in
+writing at a time when the public was prepared to find the subject
+interesting, but he himself did wonders in promoting this interest, and
+since then his work has been a lamp to light teachers on the way.
+
+In a twofold way Green may claim to be a child of Oxford. Not only was
+he a member of the University, but he was a native of the town, being
+born in the centre of that ancient city in the year of Queen Victoria's
+accession. His family had been engaged in trade there for two
+generations without making more than a competence; and even before his
+father died in 1852 they were verging on poverty. Of his parents, who
+were kind and affectionate, but not gifted with special talents, there
+is little to be told; the boy was inclined, in after life, to attribute
+any literary taste that he may have inherited to his mother. From his
+earliest days reading was his passion, and he was rarely to be seen
+without a book. Old church architecture and the sound of church bells
+also kindled his childish enthusiasms, and he would hoard his pence to
+purchase the joy of being admitted into a locked-up church. So he was
+fortunate in being sent at the age of eight to Magdalen College School,
+where he had daily access to the old buildings of the College and the
+beautiful walks which had been trodden by the feet of Addison a century
+and a half before. An amusing contrast could be drawn between the
+decorous scholar of the seventeenth century, handsome, grave of mien,
+calmly pacing the gravel walk, while he tasted the delights of classic
+literature, and little 'Johnny Green', a mere shrimp of a boy with
+bright eyes and restless ways, darting here and there, eagerly searching
+for anything new or exciting which he might find, whether in the bushes
+or in the pages of some romance which he was carrying.
+
+But, for all his lively curiosity, Green seems to have got little out of
+his lessons at school. The classic languages formed the staple of his
+education, and he never had that power of verbal memory which could
+enable him to retain the rules of the Greek grammar or to handle the
+Latin language with the accuracy of a scholar. He soon gave up trying to
+do so. Instead of aspiring to the mastery of accidence and syntax, he
+aimed rather at securing immunity from the rod. At Magdalen School it
+was still actively in use; but there were certain rules about the number
+of offences which must be committed in a given time to call for its
+application. Green was clever enough to notice this, and to shape his
+course accordingly; and thus his lessons became, from a sporting point
+of view, an unqualified success.
+
+But his real progress in learning was due to his use of the old library
+in his leisure hours. Here he made acquaintance with Marco Polo and
+other books of travel; here he read works on history of various kinds,
+and became prematurely learned in the heresies of the early Church. The
+views which he developed, and perhaps stated too crudely, did not win
+approval. He was snubbed by examiners for his interest in heresiarchs,
+and gravely reproved by Canon Mozley[56] for justifying the execution of
+Charles I. The latter subject had been set for a prize essay; and the
+Canon was fair-minded enough to give the award to the boy whose views he
+disliked, but whose merit he recognized. Partial and imperfect though
+this education was, the years spent under the shadow of Magdalen must
+have had a deep influence on Green; but he tells us little of his
+impressions, and was only half conscious of them at the time. The
+incident which perhaps struck him most was his receiving a prize from
+the hands of the aged Dr. Routh, President of the College, who had seen
+Dr. Johnson in his youth, and lived to be a centenarian and the pride of
+Oxford in early Victorian days.
+
+[Note 56: Rev. J. B. Mozley, 1813-78. Canon of Worcester and Regius
+Professor of Divinity at Oxford: a Tractarian; author of essays on
+Strafford, Laud, &c.]
+
+Green's school life ended in 1852, the year in which his father died. He
+was already at the top of the school; and to win a scholarship at the
+University was now doubly important for him. This he achieved at Jesus
+College, Oxford, in December 1854, after eighteen months spent with a
+private tutor; and, as he was too young to go into residence at once, he
+continued for another year to read by himself. Though he gave closer
+attention to his classics he did not drop his general reading; and it
+was a landmark in his career when at the age of sixteen he made
+acquaintance with Gibbon.
+
+His life as an undergraduate was not very happy and was even less
+successful than his days at school, though the fault did not lie with
+him. Shy and sensitive as he was, he had a sociable disposition and was
+naturally fitted to make friends. But he had come from a solitary life
+at a tutor's to a college where the men were clannish, most of them
+Welshmen, and few of them disposed to look outside their own circle for
+friends. Had Green been as fortunate as William Morris, his life at
+Oxford might have been different; but there was no Welshman at Jesus of
+the calibre of Burne-Jones; and Green lived in almost complete isolation
+till the arrival of Boyd Dawkins in 1857. The latter, who became in
+after years a well-known professor of anthropology, was Green's first
+real friend, and the letters which he wrote to him show how necessary it
+was for Green to have one with whom he could share his interests and
+exchange views freely. Dawkins had the scientific, Green the literary,
+nature and gifts; but they had plenty of common ground and were always
+ready to explore the records of the past, whether they were to be found
+in barrows, in buildings, or in books. If Dawkins was the first friend,
+the first teacher who influenced him was Arthur Stanley, then Canon of
+Christ Church and Professor of Ecclesiastical History. An accident led
+Green into his lecture-room one day; but he was so much delighted with
+the spirit of Stanley's teaching, and the life which he imparted to
+history, that he became a constant member of the class. And when Stanley
+made overtures of friendship, Green welcomed them warmly.
+
+A new influence had come into his life. Not only was his industry, which
+had been feeble and irregular, stimulated at last to real effort; but
+his attitude to religious questions and to the position of the English
+Church was at this time sensibly modified. He had come up to the
+University a High Churchman; like many others at the time of the Oxford
+Movement, he had been led half-way towards Roman Catholicism, stirred by
+the historical claims and the mystic spell of Rome. But from now
+onwards, under the guidance of Stanley and Maurice, he adopted the views
+of what is called the 'Broad Church Party', which suited his moral
+fervour and the liberal character of his social and political opinions.
+
+Despite, however, the stimulus given to him (perhaps too late) by
+Dawkins and Stanley, Green won no distinctions at the University, and
+few men of his day could have guessed that he would ever win distinction
+elsewhere. He took a dislike to the system of history-teaching then in
+vogue, which consisted in demanding of all candidates for the schools a
+knowledge of selected fragments of certain authors, giving them no
+choice or scope in the handling of wider subjects. He refused to enter
+for a class in the one subject in which he could shine, and managed to
+scrape through his examination by combining a variety of uncongenial
+subjects. This was perverse, and he himself recognized it to be so
+afterwards. All the while there was latent in him the talent, and the
+ambition, which might have enabled him to surpass all his
+contemporaries. His one literary achievement of the time was unknown to
+the men of his college, but it is of singular interest in view of what
+he came to achieve later. He was asked by the editor of the _Oxford
+Chronicle_, an old-established local paper, to write two articles on the
+history of the city of Oxford. To most undergraduates the town seemed a
+mere parasite of the University; to Green it was an elder sister. Many
+years later he complained in one of his letters that the city had been
+stifled by the University, which in its turn had suffered similar
+treatment from the Church. To this task, accordingly, he brought a ready
+enthusiasm and a full mind; and his articles are alive with the essence
+of what, since the days of his childhood, he had observed, learnt, and
+imagined, in the town of his birth. We see the same spirit in a letter
+which he wrote to Dawkins in 1860, telling him how he had given up a day
+to following the Mayor of Oxford when he observed the time-honoured
+custom of beating the bounds of the city. He describes with gusto how he
+trudged along roads, clambered over hedges, and even waded through
+marshes in order to perform the rite with scrupulous thoroughness. But
+it was years before he could find an audience who would appreciate his
+power of handling such a subject, and his University career must, on his
+own evidence, be written down a failure.
+
+When it was over he was confronted with the need for choosing a
+profession. It had strained the resources of his family to give him a
+good education, and now he must fend for himself. To a man of his nature
+and upbringing the choice was not wide. His age and his limited means
+put the Services out of the question; nor was he fitted to embark in
+trade. Medicine would revolt his sensibility, law would chill his
+imagination, and journalism did not yet exist as a profession for men of
+his stamp. In the teaching profession, for which he had such rare gifts,
+he would start handicapped by his low degree. In any case, he had for
+some time cherished the idea of taking Holy Orders. The ministry of the
+Church would give him a congenial field of work and, so he hoped, some
+leisure to continue his favourite studies. Perhaps he had not the same
+strong conviction of a 'call' as many men of his day in the High Church
+or Evangelical parties; but he was, at the time, strongly drawn by the
+example and teaching of Stanley and Maurice, and he soon showed that it
+was not merely for negative reasons or from half-hearted zeal that he
+had made the choice. When urged by Stanley to seek a curacy in West
+London, he deliberately chose the East End of the town because the need
+there was greater and the training in self-sacrifice was sterner; and
+there is no doubt that the popular sympathies, which the reading of
+history had already implanted in him, were nourished and strengthened by
+nine years of work among the poor. The exertion of parish work taxed his
+physical resources, and he was often incapacitated for short periods by
+the lavish way in which he spent himself. Indeed, but for this constant
+drain upon his strength, he might have lived a longer life and left more
+work behind him.
+
+Of the parishes which he served, the last and the most interesting was
+St. Philip's, Stepney, to which he went from Hoxton in 1864. It was a
+parish of 16,000 souls, lying between Whitechapel and Poplar, not far
+from the London Docks. Dreary though the district seems to us
+to-day--and at times Green was fully conscious of this--he could
+re-people it in imagination with the men of the past, and find pleasure
+in the noble views on the river and the crowded shipping that passed so
+near its streets. But above all he found a source of interest in the
+living individuals whom he met in his daily round and who needed his
+help; and though he achieved signal success in the pulpit by his power
+of extempore preaching, he himself cared more for the effect of his
+visiting and other social work. Sermons might make an impression for the
+moment; personal sympathy, shown in the moment when it was needed, might
+change the whole current of a life.
+
+For children his affection was unfailing; and for the humours of older
+people he had a wide tolerance and charity. His letters abound with
+references to this side of his work. He tells us of his 'polished' pork
+butcher and his learned parish clerk, and boasts how he won the regard
+of the clerk's Welsh wife by correctly pronouncing the magic name of
+Machynlleth. He gave a great deal of time to his parishioners, to
+consulting his churchwardens, to starting choirs, to managing classes
+and parish expeditions. He could find time to attend a morning police
+court when one of his boys got into difficulties, or to hold a midnight
+service for the outcasts of the pavement.
+
+When cholera broke out in Stepney in 1866, Green visited the sick and
+dying in rooms that others did not dare to enter, and was not afraid to
+help actively in burying those who had died of the disease. At holiday
+gatherings he was the life and soul of the body, 'shocking two prim
+maiden teachers by starting kiss-in-the-ring', and surprising his most
+vigorous helpers by his energy and decision. On such occasions he
+exhausted himself in the task of leadership, and he was no less generous
+in giving financial help to every parish institution that was in need.
+
+What hours he could snatch from these tasks he would spend in the
+Reading Room of the British Museum; but these were all too few. His
+position, within a few miles of the treasure houses of London, and of
+friends who might have shared his studies, must have been tantalizing
+to a degree. To parish claims also was sacrificed many a chance of a
+precious holiday. We have one letter in which he regretfully abandons
+the project of a tour with Freeman in his beloved Anjou because he finds
+that the only dates open to his companion clash with the festival of the
+patron saint of his church. In another he resists the appeal of Dawkins
+to visit him in Somerset on similar grounds. His friend may become
+abusive, but Green assures him emphatically that it cannot be helped. 'I
+am not a pig,' he writes; 'I am a missionary curate.... I could not come
+to you, because I was hastily summoned to the cure of 5,000
+costermongers and dock labourers.' We are far from the easy standard of
+work too often accepted by 'incumbents' in the opening years of the
+nineteenth century.
+
+Early in his clerical career he had begun to form plans for writing on
+historical subjects, most of which had to be abandoned for one reason or
+another. At one time he was planning with Dawkins a history of Somerset,
+which would have been a forerunner of the County Histories of the
+twentieth century. Dawkins was to do the geology and anthropology; Green
+would contribute the archaeology and history. In many ways they were
+well equipped for the task; but the materials had not been sifted and
+the demands on their time would have been excessive, even if they
+abstained from all other work. Another scheme was for a series of Lives
+of the Archbishops of Canterbury. Green was much attracted by the
+subject. Already he had made a special study of Dunstan and other great
+holders of the See; and he believed that the series would illustrate,
+better than the lives of kings, the growth of certain principles in
+English history. But with other archbishops he found himself out of
+sympathy; and in the end he was not sorry to abandon the idea, when he
+found that Dean Hook was already engaged upon it.
+
+A project still nearer to his heart, which he cherished till near the
+end of his life, was to write a history of our Angevin kings. For this
+he collected a vast quantity of materials, and it was a task for which
+he was peculiarly fitted. It would be difficult to say whether Fulc
+Nerra, the founder of the dynasty, or Black Angers, the home of the
+race, was more vividly present to him. Grim piles of masonry, stark
+force of character, alike compelled his admiration and he could make
+them live again in print. As it proved, his life was too short to
+realize this ambition and he has only left fragments of what he had to
+tell, though we are fortunate in having other books on parts of the
+subject from his wife and from Miss Norgate, which owed their origin to
+his inspiration.
+
+During his time as a London clergyman Green used to pay occasional
+visits to Dawkins in Somerset; and in 1862, when he went to read a paper
+on Dunstan to a society at Taunton, he renewed acquaintance with his old
+schoolfellow, E. A. Freeman, a notable figure in the county as squire,
+politician, and antiquarian, and already becoming known outside it as a
+historian. The following year, as Freeman's guest, he met Professor
+Stubbs; and about this time he also made friends with James Bryce, 'the
+Holy Roman', as he calls him in later letters.[57] The friendship of
+these three men was treasured by Green throughout his life, and it gave
+rise to much interesting correspondence on historical subjects. They
+were the central group of the Oxford School; they reverenced the same
+ideals and were in general sympathy with one another. But this sympathy
+never descended to mere mutual admiration, as with some literary
+coteries. Between Freeman and Green in particular there was kept up a
+running fire of friendly but outspoken criticism, which would have
+strained the tie between men less generous and less devoted to
+historical truth. Freeman was the more arbitrary and dogmatic, Green
+the more sensitive and discriminating. Green bows to Freeman's superior
+knowledge of Norman times, acknowledges him his master, and apologizes
+for hasty criticisms when they give offence; but he boldly rebukes his
+friend for his indifference to the popular movements in Italian cities
+and for his pedantry about Italian names.
+
+[Note 57: The first edition of Bryce's _Holy Roman Empire_ was
+published in 1862.]
+
+And he treads on even more delicate ground when he taxes him with
+indulging too frequently in polemics, urging him to 'come out of the
+arena' and to cease girding at Froude and Kingsley, whose writings
+Freeman loved to abuse. Freeman, on the other hand, grumbles at Green
+for going outside the province of history to write on more frivolous
+subjects, and scolds him for introducing fanciful ideas into his
+narrative of events. The classic instance of this was when Green, after
+describing the capture by the French of the famous Château Gaillard in
+Normandy, had the audacity to say, 'from its broken walls we see not
+merely the pleasant vale of Seine, but also the sedgy flats of our own
+Runnymede'. Thereby he meant his readers to learn that John would never
+have granted the Great Charter to the Barons, had he not already
+weakened the royal authority by the loss of Coeur-de-Lion's great
+fortress beyond the sea, and that to a historian the germs of English
+freedom, won beside the Thames, were to be seen in the wreckage of
+Norman power above the Seine. But Freeman was too matter of fact to
+allow such flights of fancy; and a lively correspondence passed between
+the two friends, each maintaining his own view of what might or might
+not be permitted to the votaries of Clio.
+
+But before this episode Green had been introduced by Freeman to John
+Douglas Cook, founder and editor of the _Saturday Review_, and had begun
+to contribute to its columns. Naturally it was on historical subjects
+that his pen was most active; but apart from the serious 'leading
+articles', the _Saturday_ found place for what the staff called
+'Middles', light essays written after the manner of Addison or Steele on
+matters of every-day life. Here Green was often at his best. Freeman
+growled, in his dictatorial fashion, when he found his friend turning
+away from the strait path of historical research to describe the humours
+of his parish, the foibles of district visitors and deaconesses, the
+charms of the school-girl before she expands her wings in the
+drawing-room--above all (and this last was quoted by the author as his
+best literary achievement) the joys of 'Children by the sea'. But any
+one who turns over the pages of the volume called _Stray Studies from
+England and Italy_, where some of these articles are reprinted, will
+probably agree with the verdict of the author on their merits. The
+subjects are drawn from all ages and all countries. Historical scenes
+are peopled with the figures of the past, treated in the magical style
+which Green made his own. Dante is seen against the background of
+mediaeval Florence; Tintoret represents the life of Venice at its
+richest, most glorious time. The old buildings of Lambeth make a noble
+setting for the portraits of archbishops, the gentle Warham, the hapless
+Cranmer, the tyrannical Laud. Many of these studies are given to the
+pleasant border-land between history and geography, and to the
+impressions of travel gathered in England or abroad. In one sketch he
+puts into a single sentence all the features of an old English town
+which his quick eye could note, and from which he could 'work out the
+history of the men who lived and died there. In quiet quaintly-named
+streets, in the town mead and the market-place, in the lord's mill
+beside the stream, in the ruffed and furred brasses of its burghers in
+the church, lies the real life of England and Englishmen, the life of
+their home and their trade, their ceaseless, sober struggle with
+oppression, their steady, unwearied battle for self-government.'
+
+In another he follows the funeral procession of his Angevin hero Henry
+II from the stately buildings of Chinon 'by the broad bright Vienne
+coming down in great gleaming curves, under the grey escarpments of rock
+pierced here and there with the peculiar cellars or cave-dwellings of
+the country', to his last resting-place in the vaults of Fontevraud.
+Standing beside the monuments on their tombs he notes the striking
+contrast of type and character which Henry offers to his son Richard
+Coeur-de-Lion. 'Nothing', he says, 'could be less ideal than the narrow
+brow, the large prosaic eyes, the coarse full cheeks, the sensual dogged
+jaw, that combine somehow into a face far higher than its separate
+details, and which is marked by a certain sense of power and command. No
+countenance could be in stronger contrast with his son's, and yet in
+both there is the same look of repulsive isolation from men. Richard's
+is a face of cultivation and refinement, but there is a strange severity
+in the small delicate mouth and in the compact brow of the lion-hearted,
+which realizes the verdict of his day. To an historical student one
+glance at these faces, as they lie here beneath the vault raised by
+their ancestor, the fifth Count Fulc, tells more than pages of history.'
+Our reviews and magazines may abound to-day in such vivid pen-pictures
+of places and men; but it was Green and others of his day who watered
+the dry roots of archaeology and restored it to life.
+
+But from his earliest days as a student Green had looked beyond the
+figures of kings, ministers, and prelates, who had so long filled the
+stage in the volumes of our historians. However clearly they stood out
+in their greatness and in their faults, they were not, and could not be,
+the nation. And when he came to write on a larger scale, the title which
+he chose for his book showed that he was aiming at new ideals.
+
+The _Short History of the English People_ is the book by which Green's
+fame will stand or fall, and it occupied him for the best years of his
+life. The true heroes of it are the labourer and the artisan, the friar,
+the printer, and the industrial mechanic--'not many mighty, not many
+noble'. The true growth of the English nation is seen broad-based on the
+life of the commonalty, and we can study it better in the rude verse of
+Longland, or the parables of Bunyan, than in the formal records of
+battles and dynastic schemes.
+
+The periods into which the book is divided are chosen on other grounds
+than those of the old handbooks, where the accession of a new king or a
+new dynasty is made a landmark; and a different proportion is observed
+in the space given to events or to prominent men. The Wars of the Roses
+are viewed as less important than the Peasants' Revolt; the scholars of
+the New Learning leave scant space for Lambert Simnels and Perkin
+Warbecks. Henry Pelham, one of the last prime ministers to owe his
+position to the king's favour, receives four lines, while forty are
+given to John Howard, a pioneer in the new path of philanthropy. Besides
+social subjects, literature receives generous measure, but even here no
+rigid system is observed. Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare take a
+prominent place in their epochs; Byron, Wordsworth, and Tennyson are
+ignored. This is not because Green had no interest in them or
+undervalued their influence. Far from it. But, as the history of the
+nation became more complex, he found it impossible, within the limits
+prescribed by a _Short_ History, to do justice to everything. He
+believed that the industrialism, which grew up in the Georgian era,
+exercised a wider influence in changing the character of the people than
+the literature of that period; and so he turned his attention to Watt
+and Brindley, and deliberately omitted the poets and painters of that
+day. With his wide sympathies he must have found this rigorous
+compression the hardest of his tasks, and only in part could he
+compensate it later. He never lived long enough to treat, as he wished
+to do, in the fullness of his knowledge, the later periods of English
+history.
+
+In writing this book Green had many discouragements to contend against,
+apart from his continual ill-health. Even his friends spoke doubtfully
+of its method and style, with the exception of his publisher, George
+Macmillan, and of Stopford Brooke, whose own writings breathe the same
+spirit as Green's, and who did equally good work in spreading a real
+love of history and literature among the classes who were beginning to
+read. It was true that Green's book failed to conform to the usual type
+of manual; it was not orderly in arrangement, it was often allusive in
+style, it seemed to select what it pleased and to leave out what
+students were accustomed to learn. But Green's faith in its power to
+reach the audience to whom he appealed was justified by the enthusiasm
+with which the general public received it. This success was largely due
+to the literary style and artistic handling of the subject. Green claims
+himself that on most literary questions he is French in his point of
+view. 'It seems to me', he says, 'that on all points of literary art we
+have to sit at the feet of French Gamaliels'; and in his best work he
+has more in common with Michelet than with our own classic historians.
+But while Michelet had many large volumes in which to expand his
+treatment of picturesque episodes, Green was painfully limited by space.
+
+What he can give us of clear and lively portraiture in a few lines is
+seen in his presentation of the gallant men who laid the foundation of
+our Empire overseas. By a few lines of narrative, and a happy quotation
+from their own words, Green brings out the heroism of their sacrifice or
+their success, the faith which inspired Humphry Gilbert to meet his
+death at sea, the patience which enabled John Smith to achieve the
+tillage of Virginian soil.
+
+Side by side with these masterly vignettes are full-length portraits of
+great rulers such as Alfred, Elizabeth, and Cromwell, and vivid
+descriptions of religious leaders such as Cranmer, Laud, and Wesley.
+Strong though Green's own views on Church and State were, we do not feel
+that he is deserting the province of the historian to lecture us on
+religion or politics. The book is real narrative written in a fair
+spirit, the author rendering justice to the good points of men like
+Laud, whom he detested, and aiming above all at conveying clearly to his
+readers the picture of what he believed to have happened in the past. As
+a narrative it was not without faults. The reviewers at once seized on
+many small mistakes, into which Green had fallen through the uncertainty
+of his memory for names and words. To these Green cheerfully confessed,
+and was thankful that they proved to be so slight. But when other
+critics accused him of superficiality they were in error. On this point
+we have the verdict of Bishop Stubbs, the most learned and conscientious
+historian of the day. 'All Green's work', he says, 'was real and
+original work. Few people beside those who knew him well could see,
+under the charming ease and vivacity of his style, the deep research and
+sustained industry of the laborious student. But it was so; there was no
+department of our national records that he had not studied, and, I think
+I may say, mastered. Hence, I think, the unity of his dramatic scenes
+and the cogency of his historical arguments.'
+
+Green himself was as severe a critic of the book as any one. Writing in
+1877 to his future wife, he says, 'I see the indelible mark of the
+essayist, the "want of long breath", as the French say, the jerkiness,
+the slurring over of the uninteresting parts, above all, the want of
+grasp of the subject as a whole'. On the advice of some of his best
+friends, confirmed by his own judgement, in 1874 he gave up contributing
+to the _Saturday Review_, in order to free his style from the character
+imparted to it by writing detached weekly articles. The composing of
+these articles had been a pleasure; the writing of English history was
+to be his life-work, and no divided allegiance was conceivable to him.
+But we may indeed be thankful that he resisted the views of other
+friends who wished to drive him into copying German models. This class
+Green called 'Pragmatic Historians';[58] and, while acknowledging their
+solid contributions to history, he maintains his conviction that there
+is another method and another school worthy of imitation, and that he
+must 'hold to what he thinks true and work it out as he can'.
+
+Green was a rapid reader and a rapid writer. In a letter to Freeman,
+written when he was wintering in Florence in 1872, he admits covering
+the period from the Peasant Revolt to the end of the New Learning
+(1381-1520) in ten days. But he was writing from notes which represented
+years of previous study. In another letter, written in 1876, he
+confesses a tendency to 'wild hitting', and perhaps he was too rapid at
+times in drawing his inferences. 'With me', he says, 'the impulse to try
+to connect things, to find the "why" of things, is irresistible; and
+even if I overdo my political guesses, you or some German will punch my
+head and put things rightly and intelligibly again.' It is this power of
+connecting events and explaining how one movement leads to another which
+makes the stimulating quality of Green's work; and to a nation like the
+English, too little apt to indulge in general ideas, this quality may be
+of more value than the German erudition which tends to overburden the
+intelligence with too great a load of 'facts'. And, after all the
+labours of Carlyle and Froude, of Stubbs and Freeman, and all the
+delving into records and chronicles, who shall say what _are_ facts, and
+what is inference, legitimate or illegitimate, from them?
+
+[Note 58: Pragmatic: 'treating facts of history with reference to
+their practical lessons.' _Concise Oxford Dictionary._]
+
+Whatever were the shortcomings of the book, which Green in his letters
+to Freeman called by the affectionate names of 'Shorts' and 'Little
+Book', it inaugurated a new method, and won a hearing among readers who
+had hitherto professed no taste for history; and, financially, it proved
+so far a success that Green was relieved from the necessity of
+continuing work that was uncongenial. He had already given up his parish
+in 1869. Ill-health and the advice of his doctor were the deciding
+factors; but there is no doubt that Green was also finding it difficult
+to subscribe to all the doctrines of the Church. He took up the same
+liberal comprehensive attitude to Church questions as he did to
+politics, and opposed any attempt to stifle honest inquiry or to punish
+honest doubt. He was much disturbed by some of the attempts made at this
+time by the more extreme parties in the Church to enforce uniformity.
+Also he felt that the Church was not exercising its proper influence on
+the nation, owing to the prejudice or apathy of the clergy in meeting
+the social movements of the day. If he had found more support, inside
+the diocese, for his social and educational work, the breach might have
+been healed, or at any rate postponed, in the hope of his health
+mending.
+
+Relieved of parish work, he found plentiful occupation in revising his
+old books and in planning new; he showed wonderful zest for travelling
+abroad, and, by choosing carefully the places for his winter sojourn, he
+fought heroically to combat increasing ill-health and to achieve his
+literary ambitions. Thus it was that he made intimate acquaintance with
+San Remo, Mentone, and Capri; and one winter he went as far as Luxor in
+the hope that the Egyptian climate might help him; but in vain. Under
+the guidance of his friend Stopford Brooke he visited for shorter
+periods Venice, Florence, and other Italian towns. He was catholic in
+his sympathies but not over-conscientious in sight-seeing. When Brooke
+left him at Florence, Green was openly glad to relapse into vagrant
+pilgrimage, to put aside his guide-book and to omit the daily visit to
+the Uffizi Gallery. But, on the other hand, he reproached Freeman for
+confining his interests entirely to architecture and emperors while
+ignoring pictures and sculpture, mediaeval guilds, and the relics of old
+civic life. It was at Troyes that Bryce observed him 'darting hither and
+thither through the streets like a dog following a scent'--and to such
+purpose that after a few hours of research he could write a brilliant
+paper sketching the history of the town as illustrated in its
+monuments--but in Italy, as in France, he had a wonderful gift for
+discovering all that was most worth knowing about a town, which other
+men passed by and ignored.
+
+Capri, which he first visited at Christmas 1872, was the most successful
+of his winter haunts. The climate, the beauty of the scenery, the
+simplicity of the life, all suited him admirably. On this occasion he
+stayed four months in the island, and he has sung its praises in one of
+the 'Stray Studies'. Within a small compass there is a wonderful variety
+of scene. Green delights in it all, 'in the boldly scarped cliffs, in
+the dense scrub of myrtle and arbutus, in the blue strips of sea that
+seem to have been cunningly let in among the rocks, in the olive yards
+creeping thriftily up the hill sides, in the remains of Roman sculptures
+and mosaics, in the homesteads of grey stone and low domes and Oriental
+roofs'. And he found it an ideal place for literary work, restful and
+remote, 'where one can live unscourged by Kingsley's "wind of God".'
+'The island', he writes, 'is a paradise of silence for those to whom
+silence is a delight. One wanders about in the vineyards without a sound
+save the call of the vinedressers: one lies on the cliff and hears, a
+thousand feet below, the dreary wash of the sea. There is hardly the cry
+of a bird to break the spell; even the girls who meet one with a smile
+on the hillside smile quietly and gravely in the Southern fashion as
+they pass by.' No greater contrast could be found to the conditions
+under which he began his books; and it is not surprising that in this
+haven of peace, with no parish business to break in upon his study, he
+worked more rapidly and confidently--when his health allowed.
+
+From such retreats he would return refreshed in body and mind to
+continue studying and writing in London and to sketch out new plans for
+the future. One that bore rich fruit was that of a series of Primers,
+dealing shortly with great subjects and commending them to the general
+reader by attractive literary style. They were produced by Macmillan,
+Green acting as editor; and notable volumes were contributed by
+Gladstone on Homer, by Creighton on Rome, and by Stopford Brooke on
+English Literature. Here, again, Green was a pioneer in a path where he
+has had many followers since; and he would have been the first to edit
+an English Historical Review if more support had been forthcoming from
+the public. But for financial reasons he was obliged to abandon the
+scheme, and it did not see the light of day till Creighton launched it
+in 1886.
+
+In 1877 he married and found in his wife just the helper that he needed.
+She too had the historical imagination, the love of research, and the
+power of writing. Husband and wife produced in co-operation a small
+geography of the British Isles, well planned, clear, and pleasant to
+read. But, apart from this, she was content, during the too brief period
+of their married life, to subordinate her activities to helping her
+husband, and her aid was invaluable at the time when he was writing his
+later books. There is no doubt that his marriage prolonged his life. The
+care which his wife took of him, whether in their home in foggy London,
+or in primitive lodgings in beautiful Capri, helped him over his worst
+days; and the new value which he now set on life and its happiness gave
+him redoubled force of will. There were others who helped him in these
+days of perpetual struggle with ill-health. His doctors, Sir Andrew
+Clark and Sir Lauder Brunton, rendered him the devotion of personal
+friends. The historians gathered round him in Kensington Square, the
+home of his later years, and cheered him with good talk. Those who were
+lucky enough to be admitted might hear him at his best, discussing
+historical questions in a circle which included Sir Henry Maine and
+Bishop Stubbs, as well as Lecky, Freeman, and Bryce. He had many other
+interests. Such a man could not be indifferent to contemporary politics.
+His heroes--and he was an ardent worshipper of heroes--were Gladstone
+and Garibaldi, and, like many Liberals of the day, he was violent in his
+opposition to Beaconsfield's policy in Eastern Europe. Hatred of
+Napoleonic tyranny killed for a while his sympathy with France, and in
+1870 he sympathized with the German cause--at least till the rape of the
+two provinces and the sorrows of disillusioned France revived his old
+feeling for the French nation. Over everything he felt keenly and
+expressed himself warmly. As Tennyson said to him at the close of a
+visit to Aldworth, 'You're a jolly, vivid man; you're as vivid as
+lightning'.
+
+Particularly dear to him was the close sympathy of Stopford Brooke and
+that of Humphry Ward, to whose father he had been curate in 1860 and who
+had himself for years learnt to cherish the friendship of Green and to
+seek his counsel. Mrs. Ward has told us how she (then Miss Arnold)
+brought her earliest literary efforts to Green, how kindly was his
+encouragement but how formidable was the standard of excellence which he
+set up. She has also pictured for us 'the thin wasted form seated in the
+corner of the sofa... the eloquent lips... the life flashing from his
+eyes beneath the very shadow of death'. His latter years, lived
+perpetually under this grim shadow, were yet full of cheerfulness and
+of hope. However the body might fail, the active brain was planning and
+the high courage was bracing him to further effort. Between 1877 and
+1880 he published in four volumes a _History of the English People_,
+which follows the same plan and covers much the same ground as the
+_Short History_. He was able to revise his views on points where recent
+study threw fresh light and to include subjects which had been crowded
+out for want of space. But the book failed to attract readers to the
+same extent as the _Short History_. The freshness and buoyancy of the
+earlier sketch could not be recaptured after so long an interval. In the
+last year of his life he began again on the early history of England,
+working at a pace which would have been astonishing even in a man of
+robust health, and he completed in the short period of eleven months the
+brilliant volume called _The Making of England_. He had thought out the
+subject during many a day and night of pain and had the plan clear in
+his head; but he was indefatigable in revising his work, and would make
+as many as eight or ten drafts of a chapter before it satisfied his
+judgement. His last autumn and winter were occupied with the succeeding
+volume, _The Conquest of England_, and he left it sufficiently complete
+for his wife to edit and publish a few months after his death.
+
+The end came at Mentone early in 1883. Two years of life had been won,
+as his doctor said, by sheer force of will; but the frail body could no
+longer obey the soul, and nature could bear no more.
+
+If in the twentieth century history is losing its hold on the thought
+and feeling of the rising generation, Green is the last man whom we can
+blame. He gave all his faculties unsparingly to his task--patience,
+enthusiasm, single-hearted love of truth; and he encouraged others to do
+the same. No man was more free from the pontifical airs of those
+historians who proclaimed history as an academic science to be confined
+within the chilly walls of libraries and colleges. We may apply to his
+work what Mr. G. M. Trevelyan has said of the English historians from
+Clarendon down to recent times; it was 'the means of spreading far and
+wide, throughout all the reading classes, a love and knowledge of
+history, an elevated and critical patriotism, and certain qualities of
+mind and heart'.[59] Against the danger which he mentions in his next
+sentence, that we are now being drilled into submission to German
+models, Mr. Trevelyan is himself one of our surest protectors.
+
+[Note 59: _Clio and other Essays_, by G. M. Trevelyan, p. 4
+(Longmans, Green & Co., 1913).]
+
+
+
+
+CECIL RHODES
+
+1853-1902
+
+1853. Born at Bishop's Stortford, July 5.
+1870. Goes out to Natal.
+1871. Moves to Kimberley.
+1873-81. Intermittent visits to Oxford.
+1880. First De Beers Company started.
+1880. Member for Barkly West.
+1883. Commissioner in Bechuanaland.
+1885. Warren expedition: Bechuanaland annexed by British Government.
+1887. Acute rivalry between Rhodes and Barnato.
+1888. Barnato gives way: De Beers Consolidated founded.
+1888. Lobengula grants concession for mining.
+1889. British South Africa Chartered Company formed.
+1890. Prime Minister of Cape Colony.
+1890. Occupation of Mashonaland.
+1893. Second Rhodes ministry.
+1893. War with Lobengula. Matabeleland occupied.
+1895. 'Drifts' question between Cape and Transvaal Government.
+1895. Jameson Raid, December 28.
+1896. January, Rhodes's resignation. Visit to England.
+1896. Rebellion in Rhodesia.
+1897. Inquiry into the Raid by Committee of the House of Commons.
+1899. D.C.L., Oxford.
+1899. Outbreak of Great Boer War.
+1902. Dies at Muizenberg, March 26.
+
+CECIL RHODES
+
+COLONIST
+
+
+The Rhodes family can be traced back to sturdy English yeoman stock. In
+the eighteenth century they had held land in North London. Cecil's
+father was vicar of Bishop's Stortford, a quiet country town in
+Hertfordshire on the Essex border; he was a man of mark, wealthy,
+liberal, and unconventional, with the rare gift of preaching ten-minute
+sermons which were well worth hearing. Of his eldest sons, Herbert went
+to Winchester, Frank to Eton; Cecil, the fifth son, born on July 5,
+1853, was kept at home. He had part of his education at the local
+Grammar School, but perhaps the better part at the Vicarage from his
+father himself. The shrewd Vicar soon saw that his fifth son was not
+fitted for the ordinary routine of professional life at home, and at the
+age of seventeen he was sent out to visit his brother Herbert, who had
+emigrated to Natal. Cecil said good-bye to his native land for the first
+time in 1870, and thus early elected to be a citizen of the Greater
+Britain beyond the seas.
+
+[Illustration: CECIL RHODES
+
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+The brothers had certain points of resemblance, being both original and
+adventurous; but they had marked differences. The elder was a wanderer
+pure and simple, a lover of sport and of novelty. He could follow a new
+track with all the ardour of a pioneer; he could not sit down and
+develop the wealth which he had opened up. The management of the Natal
+cotton farm soon fell into the hands of Cecil, now eighteen years old,
+who noted every detail, and studied his crops, his workmen, and his
+markets, while Herbert was absent in quest of game and adventure. It was
+this spirit which led Herbert westward in 1871, among the earliest of
+the immigrants into the diamond fields: before the end of the year Cecil
+followed and soon took over and developed his brother's claim. It was no
+case of Esau and Jacob; the brothers had great affection for one another
+and fitted in together without jealousy. Each lived his own life and
+followed his own bent. As Kimberley was the first field in which Cecil
+showed his abilities, it is worth while to try to picture the scene. It
+remained a centre of interest to him for thirty years, the scene of many
+troubles and of many triumphs.
+
+'The New Rush', as Kimberley was called in 1872, was a chaos of tents
+and rubbish heaps seen through a haze of dust--a heterogeneous
+collection of tents, wagons, native kraals and debris heaps, each set
+down with cheerful irresponsibility and indifference to order. The
+funnel of blue clay so productive of diamonds had been found on a bit of
+the bare Griqualand Veld, marked out by no geographical advantages, with
+no charm of woodland or river scenery. Here in the years to come the
+great pits, familiar in modern photographs, were to grow deeper and
+deeper, as the partitions fell in between the small claims, or as the
+more enterprising miners bought up their neighbours' plots. Here the
+debris heaps were to grow higher and higher, as more hundreds of Kaffirs
+were brought in to dig, or new machinery arrived, as the buckets plied
+more rapidly on the network of ropes overhead. In the early 'seventies
+there were few signs of these marvels to be seen by the outward
+eye--everything was in the rough--but they were no doubt already
+existing in the brain of 'a tall fair boy, blue eyed and with somewhat
+aquiline features, wearing flannels of the school playing-field,
+somewhat shrunken with strenuous rather than effectual washings, that
+still left the colour of the red veld dust'.
+
+Here Cecil Rhodes lived for the greater part of ten years, finding time
+amid his work for dreams: living, in general, aloof from the men with
+whom he did his daily business, but laying here and there the
+foundations of a friendship which was to bear fruit hereafter. Rudd,[60]
+of the Matabeleland concessions, came out in 1873; Beit,[61] the partner
+in diamond fields and gold fields, the co-founder of the Chartered
+Company, in 1875; and in 1878 there came out from Edinburgh one whose
+name was to be linked still more closely with that of Rhodes. Leander
+Starr Jameson, a skilful doctor, a cheerful companion, gifted with a
+great capacity for self-devotion, and with unshakeable firmness of will,
+was now twenty-five years old. Rhodes and he soon drew closely together
+and for years they were living under one roof. While his casual and
+rather overbearing manners repelled many of his acquaintances, Rhodes
+had a genius for friendship with the few; and it was such men as these
+who shared his work, his pastimes, and his thoughts, and reconciled him
+to spending many years in the unattractive surroundings of the mines.
+
+[Note 60: C. D. Rudd (1844-96), educated at Harrow and Cambridge.]
+
+[Note 61: Alfred Beit, born at Hamburg, 1853; died in London, 1906.]
+
+But his life at this time had other phases. Not the least wonderful
+chapter in it was the series of visits which he paid to Oxford between
+1873 and 1881. The atmosphere of a mining camp does not seem likely to
+draw a man towards academic studies and a University life. But Rhodes,
+who had a great power of absorbing himself in work, had also the power
+of projecting himself beyond the interests of the moment. Seven times he
+found opportunity to tear himself away from the busy work of mining and
+to keep terms at Oxford; and they made a lasting impression upon him. It
+was not the love of book-learning, still less the love of games, which
+drew him there. To many he may have seemed to be spending his time
+unprofitably. He indulged in some rowing and polo, he was master of the
+drag-hounds, he worried his neighbours by nocturnal practising of the
+horn. The examinations in the schools, and the more popular athletic
+contests, knew little of him. But his sojourn in Oxford was a tribute
+paid by the higher side of his mind to education and to the value of
+high thinking as compared with material progress; and no one who knew
+him well in later life could doubt that the traditions of Oxford had
+deeply influenced his mind. On these things he was by nature reticent,
+and was often misjudged.
+
+Between the years 1878 and 1888 must be placed the struggle between him
+and his rivals for predominance in Kimberley. It had begun with small
+enterprises, the purchasing of adjoining claims, the undertaking of
+drainage work, the introduction of better machinery. It attracted more
+attention in 1880 with the founding of the first De Beers Company, named
+after a Boer who had owned the land on which the mine lay. It culminated
+in 1887 in the battle with Barnato,[62] his most dangerous competitor,
+when by dexterous purchasing of shares in his rival's company Rhodes
+forced him into a final scheme of amalgamation. In 1888 was founded the
+great corporation of De Beers Consolidated mines. The masterful will of
+Rhodes dictated the terms of the Trust deed, giving very extensive power
+to the Directorate for the using of their funds. He was already laying
+his foundations, though few could then have guessed what imperial work
+was to be done with the money thus obtained. The process of amalgamation
+was not popular in Kimberley. It resulted in closing down many of the
+less profitable claims and in reducing the amount of labour employed.
+But it brought in better machinery and it saved expenses of management.
+Above all, it curtailed the output of diamonds and so kept up the market
+price in Europe and elsewhere. Many people refused to believe that
+Rhodes could have outmanoeuvred a man of exceptional financial ability
+without using dishonourable means. But there is no doubt that it was
+masterful character which won the day, that strength of will which
+decides the issue at the critical moment. Many others have been
+prejudiced against him merely from the fact that he spent so much time
+and energy in the pursuit of 'filthy lucre'. We must remember that
+Rhodes himself said: 'What's the earthly use of having ideas if you
+haven't the money to carry them out?' We must also remember that all
+witnesses of his life agree that the ideas were always foremost, the
+money a mere instrument to realize them. The story was told to Edmund
+Garrett by one of Rhodes's old Kimberley associates 'how one day in
+those scheming years, deep in the sordid details of amalgamation, Rhodes
+("always a bit of a crank") suddenly put his hand over a great piece of
+No Man's Africa on the map and said, "Look here: all that British--that
+is my dream".'[63]
+
+[Note 62: Barney Barnato, born in Houndsditch, 1852; died at sea,
+1897.]
+
+[Note 63: Perhaps the best character sketch of Rhodes is that
+printed as an appendix to Sir E. T. Cook's _Life of Edmund Garrett_
+(Edward Arnold, 1909). Garrett's career as journalist and politician in
+South Africa was terminated by illness in 1899.]
+
+But long before this struggle was over, Rhodes had embarked on new
+courses which were to carry him still farther. His dreams of political
+work began to take shape when Griqualand was created a British province
+in 1880. Two electoral divisions were formed, Kimberley and Barkly West;
+and it was for the latter that Rhodes first took his seat in the Cape
+Parliament in 1880, a seat which he retained till his death. The Prime
+Minister was Sir Gordon Sprigg, a politician with experience but few
+ideas, more skilled in retaining office than in formulating a policy.
+Rhodes was at first reticent about his own projects, and spent his time
+quietly studying commercial questions, examining the problem of the
+native races and making friends among the Boers. If these friendships
+were obscured later by political quarrels, there is no reason to suspect
+their genuineness. His sympathy with the Dutch farmers had begun in
+1872, when he made a long, lonely trek through the Northern Transvaal,
+and it lasted through life. He was interested in farming, he liked
+natural men, and was at home in unconventional surroundings. One of the
+closest observers of his character said that to see the true Rhodes you
+must see him on the veld. So long as the supremacy of the British flag
+was assured, there was nothing that he so ardently desired as friendly
+relations between British and Dutch, a real union of the races, a South
+African nation. It was for this that he worked so long with Jan Hofmeyr,
+leader of the Cape Dutch, and earned so many unfair suspicions from the
+short-sighted politicians of Cape Town.
+
+Hofmeyr was a curious man. He had a great understanding of the Dutch
+character and a great power of influencing men; but this was not done by
+parliamentary eloquence. By one satirist he was called 'the captain who
+never appeared on the bridge'; by another he was nicknamed 'the Mole',
+because his activity could only be conjectured from the tracks which he
+left behind him. A third name current in Cape Town, 'the Blind Man,' was
+an ironical tribute to his exceptional astuteness in politics. His organ
+was 'the Afrikander Bond', a society formed partly for agricultural,
+partly for political purposes, a creature which like a chameleon has
+often changed its colour, sometimes working peacefully beside British
+politicians, at other times openly conducting an anti-British agitation.
+He certainly had no enthusiasm for the British flag, but he probably
+realized the freedom which the Colony enjoyed under it, and was clear of
+all disloyalty to the Crown. The policy dearest to the farmers of the
+Afrikander Bond was the protective system for their agricultural
+produce. If Rhodes would support this, he might induce the Dutch to give
+him a free hand in his plans for expansion towards the North; and this
+was needed, because the problem of the North was becoming urgent, and
+Sprigg and his party were blind to its importance.
+
+A glance at the nineteenth-century map will show that the territories of
+the Dutch Republic, lying on the less barren side of the continent,
+tended to block the extension of Cape Colony and Natal towards the
+north, the more so as the Boers from time to time sent out fresh swarms
+westward and encroached on native territory in Bechuanaland. The Germans
+did not annex Namaqualand till 1885, but already their interest in this
+district was becoming evident to close observers. Rhodes's most
+cherished dream had been the development of the high-lying healthy
+inland regions to the north by the British race under the British flag.
+But in those days, when Whitehall was asleep and officials in Cape Town
+were indifferent, Rhodes saw that his best chance was to convert the
+Dutch in the Colony. He hoped to make them realize that, if they
+supported him, the development of the interior might bring trade through
+Cape Town, which otherwise would go eastward through Portuguese
+channels. The building of railways, the settlement of new lands in which
+Dutch and English would share alike, were practical questions which
+might interest them, and Rhodes was quite genuine in his desire to see
+both races going forward together. 'Equal rights for every civilized man
+south of the Zambezi' was his motto, and to this he steadfastly clung.
+
+To describe all the means by which Rhodes worked towards this end would
+be impossible. He worked hard at Kimberley to furnish the sinews of war;
+he used his personal influence and power of persuasion at Cape Town to
+win support from Hofmeyr and others; and he was ready to go to the
+frontier at any moment when there was work to be done. His first
+commission of this sort had been in Basutoland in 1882, when he helped
+the famous General Gordon to pacify native discontent; but the following
+year saw him at work on another frontier more directly affecting his
+programme. The Boers had again been raiding westwards and had started
+two new republics, called Goshen and Stellaland, on the route from
+Kimberley to the north. Rhodes travelled to the scene of action,
+interviewed Mankoroane, the Bechuana chief, and Van Niekerk, the head of
+the new settlement, and by sheer personal magnetism persuaded them both
+to accept British control. When the Cape Parliament refused the
+responsibility, he referred to the Colonial Office in London, and by the
+help of Sir Hercules Robinson, the High Commissioner, he carried his
+point. When the new Governor, who was appointed by the Colonial Office,
+quarrelled with the Boers, it was Rhodes who made up the quarrel, and
+when in 1885 the Transvaal Dutch interfered and provoked our home
+Government into sending out an overpowering force under Sir Charles
+Warren, it was Rhodes once more who acted as the reconciler, and
+effected a settlement between Dutch and British. When the indignant
+Delarey,[64] provoked by English blundering, said ominously that 'blood
+must flow', Rhodes replied, 'No, give me my breakfast, and then we can
+talk about blood'. He stayed with Delarey a week, came to terms on the
+points at issue, and even became godfather to Delarey's grandchild. He
+was never the man to resort to force when persuasion could be employed,
+and he usually won his end by his own means.
+
+[Note 64: General Jacobus Delarey, one of the most successful
+commanders in the Great Boer War of 1899-1902.]
+
+While his great work in 1883-5 was on the northern frontier he was
+growing to be a familiar figure among politicians at Cape Town. We have
+an impression of him as he appeared on his entrance into politics. 'He
+was tall, broad-shouldered, with face and figure of somewhat loose
+formation. His hair was auburn, carelessly flung over his forehead, his
+eyes of bluish grey, dreamy but kindly. But the mouth--aye, that was the
+unruly member of his face--with deep lines following the curve of the
+moustache, it had a determined, masterful, and sometimes scornful
+expression.... His style of speaking was straight and to the point. He
+was not a hard hitter in debate--rather a persuader, reasoning and
+pleading in a conversational way as one more anxious to convince an
+opponent than to expose his weakness. He used little gesture: what there
+was, was most expressive, his hands held behind him, or thrust out,
+sometimes passed over his brow.'[65] Such success as he had in
+Parliament he owed less to art than to nature, less to oratorical gifts
+than to force of character; but this brought him rapidly to the front.
+As early as 1884 he was in the Ministry, and despite his long absences
+over his northern work he was judged to be the only man who could become
+Prime Minister in the parliamentary crisis of 1890. There was, by that
+year, little question that he was the most influential man in South
+Africa. He had a large holding in the Transvaal goldfields, discovered
+in 1886; he was head of the great De Beers Corporation of Kimberley; and
+he was chairman of the newly-created Chartered Company. To many it
+seemed impossible that one man could combine these great financial
+interests with the position of First Minister of the Colony; but at
+least it was clear that the interests of the companies were subordinated
+to national aims, that the money which he obtained from mines was spent
+on imperial ends, and that his political position was never used for the
+promoting of financial objects.
+
+[Note 65: _Cecil Rhodes: a Monograph and a Reminiscence_, by Sir
+Thomas Fuller (Longmans & Co., 1910)]
+
+But it is time to return to the development of the north, the greatest
+of his schemes and the one dearest to his heart. The year 1885 had
+secured Bechuanaland to the river Molopo as British territory, while a
+large stretch farther north was under a British protectorate. One danger
+had been avoided. The neck of the bottle was not corked up: a way to the
+interior was now open. The next factor to reckon with was the Matabele
+nation and its chief, Lobengula. They were a Bantu tribe, fond of
+fighting and hunting, an offshoot of the Zulus who fought us in 1881.
+They had a very large country surrounding the Matoppo hills, and
+Lobengula ruled the various districts through 'indunas' or chiefs, who
+had 'impis' or armies of fighting men at their disposal. To the
+north-east of them lay the weaker tribe of the Mashona, who paid tribute
+to Lobengula and whose country was a common hunting-ground for the
+Matabele braves. Over the latter, so long as he did not check too much
+their love of fighting, Lobengula exercised a fairly effective control.
+He himself was a remarkable man, strong in body and mind. Sir Lewis
+Michell describes him as he appeared to English visitors: 'A somewhat
+grotesque costume of four yards of blue calico over his shoulders and a
+string of tigers' tails round his waist could not make his imposing
+figure ridiculous. In early days he was an athlete and a fine shot; and
+though, as years went on, his voracious appetite rendered him
+conspicuously obese, he was every inch a ruler.... Visitors were much
+struck by his capacity for government: very little went on in his wide
+dominions of which he was not instantly and accurately informed.' He was
+an arbitrary ruler, but not cruel to Europeans, of whom a few, like the
+famous hunter Selous, visited his capital from time to time. He clearly
+held the keys to the north, and it was with him that Rhodes had now to
+deal.
+
+The first step was the mission sent out by Rhodes and Beit early in
+1888, headed by their old associate Rudd. He and his two fellow-envoys
+stayed some months with Lobengula watching for favourable moments and
+trying to win his favour. They shifted their quarters when the king did
+so, touring from village to village, plied the king and his indunas with
+offers and arguments, and finally in October they obtained his signature
+to a treaty giving full and unqualified rights to the envoys for working
+minerals in his country. In return they covenanted to give him money,
+rifles, ammunition, and an armed steamboat.
+
+The next step was to get the support of the British authorities in
+London for that political extension which was dearer to Rhodes than the
+richest mines and the biggest dividends. In this he was greatly helped
+by his consistent supporter, Sir Hercules Robinson, who held office in
+Africa for many years, studied men and matters at first hand, and had a
+juster estimate of Rhodes and his value to the Empire than the officials
+in Whitehall. The method of proceeding was by chartered company, the old
+Elizabethan method, which still has its value to-day, as it relieves the
+home Government of the expense of developing new countries, yet reserves
+to it the right to control policy and to enter into the harvest. The
+Company was to build railways and telegraphs, encourage colonization and
+spread trade; the Government was to escape from the diplomatic
+difficulties which might arise with neighbours if it were acting under
+its own name.
+
+The third step was to make a way into the country and to start actual
+work. Lobengula's consent was given conditionally: the first expedition
+was to avoid his capital, Bulawayo, and to go by the south-east to
+Mashonaland. The chief knew how difficult it might prove to hold in his
+impis when, instead of a solitary Selous, some hundreds of Europeans
+began to cross their hunting-grounds. And so it proved. Lobengula had to
+pretend later that he had not consented to their passage, and the
+expedition had to slip through the dangerous zone before they could be
+recalled authoritatively. By May 1890 a column of nearly one thousand
+men was ready to start from Khama's country; and in June their equipment
+was approved by a British officer. On September 11, after a march of
+four hundred miles through trackless country (some of it unknown even to
+Selous, their guide), the British flag was hoisted on the site of the
+modern town of Salisbury. It is a chapter of history well worth reading
+in detail, but Rhodes himself could not be there: the heroes of the
+march were Jameson and Selous. The other half of Rhodesia, Matabeleland,
+was not added till a few years later; but British enterprise had now
+found the way and overcome the worst difficulties. 'Occupation Day' is
+still kept as the chief festival of the Colony.
+
+Further extension was inevitable. The Matabele impis would not forgo
+their old habit of raiding amongst the Mashonas. Jameson's complaints
+received only partial satisfaction from Lobengula. He himself did not
+want war, but he failed to control his men, and in September 1893 the
+Chartered Company was driven to fight. They had on the spot about nine
+hundred men and some machine-guns. Against these the Matabele with all
+their bravery could effect little. In two engagements they threw away
+their lives with reckless gallantry, and then they broke and fled.
+Lobengula himself was never heard of again. His rearguard cut up a small
+party of British who were too impetuous in pursuit, but by the end of
+the year the country was at peace. In 1894 Matabeleland was added to the
+territory of the Chartered Company, in 1895 the term 'Rhodesia' came
+into use for postal purposes, and in 1897 it was officially adopted for
+administrative purposes.
+
+The jealousy of the Portuguese, who claimed the 'Hinterland' behind
+their East African colony, though they had never occupied it, caused a
+good deal of ill feeling, and very nearly led to hostilities both in
+Africa and Europe. The Boers formed schemes for raiding the new lands
+before they could be effectively occupied, and had to be headed off. The
+Matabele impis continued for months in a state of excitement; and their
+forays made it far too dangerous for Rhodes or for others to go up there
+for some time. But Rhodes himself said that he had less trouble with
+natives, with Dutch, and with Portuguese, than he had with compatriots
+of his own, who claimed to have received concessions from native chiefs
+and intrigued against him in London. But here his peculiar gifts came
+out, his patience, his persuasive power, his readiness to pour out money
+like water for a worthy end. Some he beat, others he bought; and in all
+cases he maintained his position against his rivals. Robinson, Rudd,
+Jameson, Selous, had all done their parts well, and Rhodes gave them
+full credit and generous praise; but the mind and the will that planned
+and carried out the whole movement, and added a province to the British
+Empire, was unquestionably his own.
+
+Rhodes was Prime Minister of Cape Colony from 1890 to 1895; and during
+this time he was obliged to be more often at Cape Town. It was in 1891
+that he first leased the property lying on the eastern slopes of Table
+Mountain where he built 'Groote Schuur', the famous house which he
+bequeathed to the service of the State. Here he gradually acquired 1,500
+acres of land, laying them out with a sure eye to the beauty of the
+surroundings, and to the pleasure of his fellow-citizens. Here he lived
+from time to time, and received all kinds of men with boundless
+hospitality. No one can fully understand him who does not read the
+varying impressions of the friends and guests who sat with him on the
+'stoep', under the trees in his garden, or high up on the mountain side,
+where he had his favourite nooks. The visitors saw what they had eyes to
+see. One would note his foibles, his blunt manner, his slovenly dress,
+his want of skill at billiards, his fondness for special dishes or
+drinks. Another would be impressed by his library with its teak
+panelling, by the books which he read and the questions which he asked,
+by his love for Gibbon and Plutarch, by his interest in Marcus Aurelius
+and other writers on high themes. Others again tell us of his relations
+to his fellow-men, how recklessly generous he was to young and old, to
+British and Dutch, and how his generosity was abused: how his
+acquaintances preyed upon him; how, for all that, he kept his true
+friendships few in number and he held them sacred. In fact, loyalty to
+friends meant more to Rhodes than loyalty to principles. His temper was
+impatient, especially in the last years of physical pain; he often tried
+to take short cuts to his ends, believing that his ends were worthy and
+knowing that life was short. He made many mistakes, but he retrieved
+them nobly. He was in some ways rough-hewn and unpolished, but he was a
+great man.
+
+It is impossible to put in a short compass the many important questions
+with which he dealt. His policy towards the natives was moderate and
+wise. He wished to educate them and then to trust them; to restrict the
+sale of liquor among them and to open to them the nobler lessons of
+civilization; to give them the vote when they were educated enough to
+use it well, but not before; to apply to them too his motto of 'Equal
+rights for every civilized man south of the Zambezi'. His policy towards
+the Dutch was to establish identity of interest between the two nations
+and so to secure friendly relations with them; to draw them into
+co-operation in agriculture, in railways, in colonization, in export
+trade, in imperial politics. He did his best to win over the Orange Free
+State by a policy of common railways, and even to break down the sullen
+opposition of the Transvaal. But the latter proved impossible. President
+Kruger leant more and more upon Dutch counsellors from Holland; he
+looked more and more to Delagoa Bay and turned his back upon Cape Town:
+and the antagonism became more acute. In 1895 Mr. Chamberlain initiated
+a new era at the Colonial Office. He was actively awake to British
+interests in all parts of the globe; and President Kruger, who had tried
+to check trade with Cape Town by stopping the Cape railway at his
+frontier, and then by closing the 'Drifts' or fords over the Vaal, was
+compelled to give way and to keep to the agreements made with the
+Suzerain State.
+
+A still more serious question was the treatment of the 'Uitlanders' or
+alien European settlers in the Transvaal. Though the Boer rulers took an
+increasingly large share of their earnings, they restricted more and
+more the grant of the franchise. In taxation, in commerce, in education,
+there was no prospect between the Vaal and the Limpopo of 'Equal rights
+for all civilized men' or anything like it. In June 1894 the High
+Commissioner frankly told Kruger that the Uitlanders had 'very real and
+substantial grievances'; in 1895 they were no less substantial, and
+agitation was rife in Johannesburg. On December 28, Jameson at the head
+of an armed column left Pitsani on the borders and rode into the
+Transvaal to support a rising against the Boer Government. The
+Uitlanders were not expecting him; no rising took place, and Jameson's
+small column was surrounded some miles west of Johannesburg,
+outnumbered, and forced to surrender. The Jameson Raid, for which Rhodes
+was generally held responsible, attracted all eyes in Europe as in
+Africa. How President Kruger used his advantage against the Uitlanders,
+among whom Col. Frank Rhodes was a leader, can be read in many books:
+here we need only relate how the event affected the Premier of Cape
+Colony. He resigned office at once and put himself at the disposal of
+the Government. Despite his past record he was judged by the Dutch,
+alike in the Cape and in the Transvaal, to have been the author of the
+Raid, and all chance of his doing further service in reconciling the two
+races was at an end. The beginning of 1895 saw him at the height of his
+ambition. The end of it saw his power shattered beyond repair.
+
+His behaviour in this crisis enables us to know the real man. For a few
+days he kept aloof, unapproachable, overcome by the ruin of his work. He
+made no attempt to conciliate opinion: in moments of bitterness he
+scoffed at the 'unctuous rectitude' of certain politicians who were
+improving the occasion. But he spoke frankly to those who had the right
+to question him. He went to London in February and saw Mr. Chamberlain,
+the Colonial Secretary, and his Directors. He admitted that he was at
+fault. Believing that Kruger would always yield to a show of force, he
+had been responsible for putting troops near the border to exercise
+moral pressure. But neither then nor at any time had he given Jameson
+orders to invade the Transvaal, or to precipitate an armed conflict,
+which he believed to be unnecessary. Such was his consistent statement,
+and he was ready to face, when the time should come, the Parliamentary
+committees appointed by the British and South African Houses to report
+on the Raid. Meanwhile he put all brooding away and looked round for
+some practical work. Fortunately he found it in the most congenial
+sphere. His colony of Rhodesia, to which he had gone straight from
+London, was threatened with disaster from a great native outbreak. The
+causes were various. Rinderpest had spoiled one of the chief native
+industries, and superstition had invented foolish reasons for it; also
+the rumours, which were spreading about the Raid, made the natives
+believe that the British power was shaken. The Mashonas, as well as the
+Matabele, took part in the revolt which began early in April 1896. To
+meet it the colonists mustered their full strength, while General
+Carrington was sent out from home with some regular troops. Several
+engagements in difficult country followed: the enemies' forces were
+quickly broken up, and by the end of July the time for negotiation was
+come.
+
+But the chiefs of the Matabele had retired into their fortresses in the
+Matoppo hills and could not be reached. To send small columns to track
+them down might mean needless loss of life: to keep the forces in the
+field right through the winter was ruinous to the Company's finances.
+Rhodes offered his own services as negotiator, and they were accepted.
+The man who could carry his point with Jewish financiers and Dutch
+politicians might hope to achieve his ends with the simpler native
+chiefs. But it was a sore trial of patience. He moved his own tent two
+miles away from the British troops to the foot of the hills, sent native
+messengers to the chiefs, and waited. During this time he was not idle:
+he put in a lot of riding and of miscellaneous reading: his mind was
+actively employed in planning roads and dams for irrigation, in scheming
+for the future greatness of the country. It was six weeks before a chief
+responded. Gradually they began to drop in and to hold informal meetings
+round the tent, putting questions, replying to Rhodes's jokes, relapsing
+into fits of silence, oblivious as all savages are of the value of time.
+He would spend hours day after day in this apparently futile way;
+accustoming them to his presence, coaxing them into the right humour. At
+last he persuaded them to meet him in a formal 'indaba', which must have
+been a dramatic scene. Alone he stood facing them, boldly reproaching
+them with their bad faith and cruel acts. They stated their grievances:
+some were admitted: satisfaction was promised. In the end peace was
+proclaimed and the delighted natives greeted him uproariously with the
+title of Lamula 'm Kunzi (Separator of the Fighting Bulls). The
+discussions were not over till the end of October, and it was a month
+later ere Rhodes was able to leave the country and face the Committee in
+London--a very different gathering in very different surroundings. His
+work during these two months was perhaps the greatest of his life; and
+that he should have been able to concentrate all his powers upon it so
+soon after the shattering blow of the Raid is a great tribute to his
+essential manliness and patriotism.
+
+The two Committees, sitting in London and Cape Town, agreed to censure,
+though in modified terms, Rhodes's conduct over the Raid; but he still
+retained the respect of the bulk of his countrymen, and on his return
+the citizens of Cape Town gave him an enthusiastic welcome. They and he
+were looking ahead as well as behind: they felt that his services were
+still needed for the establishing of a United South Africa under the
+British flag. But in this respect his work was done. The Cape Dutch were
+more and more influenced by their sentiment for the Transvaal, and
+racial feeling ran high. Rhodes severed himself from all his old Dutch
+colleagues and became more of a party leader. Meanwhile Kruger watched
+the breach, assured himself of Dutch support, made no concessions to the
+Uitlanders, repelled all overtures from Mr. Chamberlain, and steered
+straight for war. Rhodes, despite his knowledge of the Dutch, made the
+mistake of believing up to the last moment that Kruger would give way
+and not fight; but, when the war broke out in 1899, he went up to
+Kimberley to take his share of the work and the danger. The siege lasted
+about four months, and Rhodes, though he failed to work harmoniously
+with the military commandant, rendered many services to the town, thanks
+to his wealth, influence, and knowledge of the place. When the town was
+relieved in February 1900, he went to Rhodesia and spent many months
+there. Though he was urged by his followers to return to politics, Cape
+Town saw little of him; when he was not in the north, he was mostly at
+his seaside cottage at Muizenberg, half-way between the capital and the
+Cape of Good Hope. The heart complaint, from which he had suffered
+intermittently all his life, had rapidly grown worse; his last year was
+one of great suffering, and in March 1902 he breathed his last at
+Muizenberg with Jameson and a few of his dearest friends around him. He
+was buried in the place which he had himself chosen amid the Matoppo
+hills. On a bare hill-top seven gigantic boulders keep guard round the
+simple tombstone on which his name is engraved. After the English
+service was over, the natives celebrated in their own fashion the
+passing of the great chief who had already been enshrined in their
+imagination.
+
+At Kimberley, at Cape Town, in the Matoppos, his work was done before
+the nineteenth century was finished, and he had earned his rest. The
+complete union of the European races for which he laboured in Parliament
+is yet to come. The vast wealth which he won in Kimberley is fulfilling
+a noble purpose. By his will he founded scholarships at Oxford for
+scholars from the Dominions and Colonies, from the United States and
+from Germany--his faith in the Anglo-Saxon race being extended to our
+Teutonic kinsmen. He regarded a common education and common ideals as
+the surest cement of Empire. But above all else his name will be
+preserved among his countrymen by the provinces which he added to the
+British dominions. Kimberley and Cape Town have their monuments, their
+memories of his many successes and his few failures: the Matoppos have
+his grave. To us the peace and solitude of the hills where he lies may
+seem to contrast strangely with the stirring activity of his life. But
+solitude will not reign there always, if Rhodes's ideal is fulfilled. It
+was here that he had stood with a friend, looking towards the vast
+horizon northwards, and, in an often-quoted sentence, expressed his
+dream for the future: 'Homes, more homes, that's what I work for!' So
+long as our race produces such bold dreamers, such strenuous workers,
+its future, in Africa and elsewhere, need occasion no doubts or fears.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+A
+
+Aberdeen, 4th Earl of, 32, 51
+
+Acton, Lord, 5, 272, 325
+
+Adams, Professor J. C., 277
+
+Addison, Joseph, 137, 326, 336
+
+Afghanistan, 62, 103, 107
+
+Afrikander Bond, 354
+
+Agram, 251
+
+Agricultural labourers, 79, 117
+
+Aldworth, 171, 176, 345
+
+Alexander III, Tsar, 266, 268, 271
+
+Alexander, Prince of Bulgaria, 265-6
+
+Alexandria, 127
+
+Alfonso XII, King of Spain, 262-4
+
+Alsace, 256, 345
+
+Althorp, Lord (3rd Earl Spencer), 42, 43, 83
+
+American Civil War, 121, 123-4
+
+Ampthill, Lord, _v._ Odo Russell, 248, 264, 272, 273, 275
+
+Angevin kings, 334, 337
+
+Anglesey, Lord, 39
+
+Annandale, 10-13, 16, 29
+
+Appomattox, 124
+
+Argyll, 8th Duke of, 86
+
+Arnold, Matthew, 6, 8, 194, 321
+
+Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 8, 24
+
+Ashburton, 2nd Lord, 23
+
+Atkin, Joseph, 235, 242-3
+
+Auckland, N. Z., 226-7, 237-8, 242
+
+
+B
+
+Baden, 249, 256
+
+Bagehot, Walter, 33
+
+Baird-Smith, 104
+
+Baluchs, 62-6
+
+Bamford, Samuel, 175
+
+Baring, Lady Harriet, 23
+
+Barnack, 178
+
+Barnato, Barney, 352
+
+Barry, Sir Charles, 200
+
+Basutoland, 355
+
+Batum, 268
+
+Bazaine, Marshal, 257
+
+Bechuanaland, 357
+
+de Beers Company, 352, 357
+
+Behnes, Charles and Wm., 199
+
+Beit, Alfred, 350, 358
+
+Bentham, Jeremy, 2
+
+Bergmann, Professor von, 298
+
+Berlin, 248, 252-3, 263, 293;
+  Treaty of, 268
+
+Bermuda, 58
+
+Besant, Sir Walter, 89
+
+Biarritz, 191
+
+Bideford, 183
+
+Bird, Robert, 98
+
+Birmingham, 6, 126, 304, 311
+
+Bishop's Stortford, 348
+
+Bismarck, 252-9, 264, 273
+
+Blackburn, 32
+
+Blackie, Professor, 294
+
+Blomfield, Bishop, 190
+
+Bloomsbury, 313
+
+Boehm, Sir J. E., 21
+
+Bolivar, Simon, 60
+
+Borrow, George, 6
+
+Bright, Jacob, 111-13
+
+Bright, John: America, 123;
+  Anti-Corn-Law League, 114-19;
+  education, 111-12;
+  family, 111-14, 126;
+  foreign policy, 122, 127;
+  Ireland, 121, 127;
+  oratorical style, 117, 119-20;
+  Parliament, 85, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125;
+  public meetings, 116, 117, 125;
+  Quakers, 111, 113, 115, 117, 122;
+  Reform, 113, 124-5;
+  other references, 25-6, 85, 278
+
+Brindley, James, 120, 338
+
+Brontë, Charlotte, 7
+
+Brooke, Stopford, 162, 187, 310, 339, 342-5
+
+Brookfield, Rev. W., 157
+
+Brougham, Lord, 7, 40, 42
+
+Brown, Ford Madox, 197, 307
+
+Browning, E. B., 81
+
+Browning, Robert, 5, 9, 140, 158, 165, 169, 170, 175, 250
+
+Brunton, Sir Lauder, 345
+
+Bryce, Viscount, 334, 343, 345
+
+Bulgaria, 264-8
+
+Burlington House (Royal Academy), 198, 200, 206, 217
+
+Burne-Jones, Sir E., 197, 205, 209, 212, 217, 219, 304-8, 311, 319, 328
+
+Burton, Richard, 4
+
+Byron, Lord, 33, 60, 153
+
+
+C
+
+Cambridge, 153-4, 179, 190, 221
+
+Cameron, Sir Hector, 288
+
+Cameron, Julia, 172, 205
+
+Campbell, Sir Colin (Lord Clyde), 69, 70, 105
+
+Canning, Charles, Lord, 105, 122
+
+Canning, George, 32, 35, 37, 38
+
+Capri, 343
+
+Carlisle, 10, 290
+
+Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 14-19, 22, 25, 27
+
+Carlyle, John, 14
+
+Carlyle, Thomas: appearance, 19, 212;
+  books, chief, 11, 20, 22, 23, 25-7;
+  character, 16, 17, 29;
+  education, 12, 13;
+  family, 11, 15, 29;
+  friends, 4, 13, 18, 23, 30, 140, 163;
+  German literature, 16, 17;
+  homes, 6, 11, 13, 15, 18, 21;
+  lectures, 22;
+  literary style, 20, 29, 321, 324-5;
+  quoted opinions, 71, 164, 189, 302
+
+Carnot, President, 300
+
+Carrington, General, 364
+
+Cashel, 34
+
+Castelar, Emilio, 261
+
+Castlereagh, Lord, 38
+
+Cauteretz, 173
+
+Celbridge, 55, 56
+
+Cephalonia, 59
+
+Chamberlain, Joseph, 6, 53, 362, 364, 366
+
+Chartered Company, 359, 360, 364-5
+
+Chartists, 61, 187-9
+
+Chatham, 130, 144
+
+Chelsea, 21, 163, 179
+
+Chester, 191
+
+Cheyne, Sir Watson, 297
+
+Chili[=a]nw[=a]la, 69, 101
+
+Christison, Sir Robert, 294
+
+Clare election, 39, 49
+
+Clarendon, Edw. Hyde, Earl of, 324
+
+Clarendon, Geo. Villiers, Earl of, 7, 250
+
+Clark, Sir Andrew, 345
+
+Clovelly, 178
+
+Cobden, Richard, 2;
+  and Bright, 114-19, 124, 127;
+  and Peel, 48, 49, 51;
+  and Shaftesbury, 84, 87
+
+Coburg, Duchy of, 249, 253
+
+Codrington, Rev. R., 235
+
+Coleridge, Rev. Derwent, 178
+
+Coleridge, Rev. Edward, 223
+
+Coleridge, John, 222
+
+Coleridge, S. T., 13, 29
+
+Cook, Captain James, 220
+
+Cook, John Douglas, 335
+
+Cooper, Thomas, 189
+
+Corn Laws, 47, 115-20
+
+Coruńa, 57
+
+Craigenputtock, 18
+
+Creighton, Bishop, 344
+
+Crimean War, 121-3, 167, 251
+
+Cromer, Earl of, 123, 272
+
+Crotch, W. W., 136, 146
+
+Crown Prince of Germany (Frederick III), 252, 258
+
+Currency, Reform of, 36-7
+
+
+D
+
+Dabo, Battle of, 65
+
+Dalhousie, Marquis of, 69, 70, 100, 101, 103
+
+Dal[=i]p Singh, 271
+
+Dalling, Lord, 45
+
+Darmstadt, Court of, 255-7
+
+Darwin, Charles, 2, 4, 5, 6, 152, 183, 277, 279, 291
+
+Dawkins, Boyd, 328-30, 333-4
+
+Delagoa Bay, 260, 362
+
+Delane, John Thaddeus, 8, 123, 253
+
+Delarey, General, 356
+
+Delhi, 95, 99, 103-4
+
+Derby, Edw. Stanley, 14th Earl of, 32, 42-4
+
+Dickens, Charles: appearance, 132-3;
+  character, 131-3, 141, 146;
+  friends, 140;
+  influence, 130, 135, 147;
+  journalism, 132, 138;
+  novels, 132-9;
+  Poor Law, 146-7;
+  'purpose', 130, 135, 144-8, 185;
+  readings, 142-3;
+  satire, 137, 145, 239;
+  sensation, 141-2;
+  sentiment, 136;
+  travels, 136-8;
+  other references, 4, 82, 89
+
+Dilke, Sir Charles, 6, 272
+
+Disraeli, Benjamin: novels, 3, 34;
+  personal, 28, 53;
+  political, 32, 47, 50, 90, 121, 123-5, 128, 193
+
+Döllinger, 257
+
+Durham City, 117
+
+
+E
+
+East India Company, 68, 76, 94, 105
+
+Edinburgh, 12-13, 18, 27, 120, 280-4, 293-6
+
+Edwardes, Sir Herbert, 101, 103
+
+Eldon, Lord, 34, 38
+
+Elgin, Lord, 105
+
+Elgin Marbles, 199, 210
+
+Ellenborough, Lord, 62
+
+Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 19-20, 29, 30, 164
+
+Epping Forest, 303
+
+Erichsen, Sir J. E., 286
+
+Et[=a]wa, 98, 100
+
+Eton, 219, 221, 223, 232-4, 246, 349
+
+Euston station, 206
+
+Eversley, 180-3, 186-7, 191-2, 195
+
+
+F
+
+Factory Acts, 81-6, 135
+
+Fairman, Mr., 270
+
+Farnham, 58, 180
+
+Farringford, 171-2
+
+Faulkner, C. J., 307-8
+
+Feniton, 222, 225
+
+Ferdinand, Prince of Bulgaria, 266
+
+Fiji, 240-3
+
+FitzGerald, Edward, 6, 153-4, 164, 175, 204
+
+Fitzgerald, William Vesey, 39
+
+Florence, 201-3, 206, 309, 343
+
+Fontevraud, 337
+
+Forster, John, 131, 140, 142-3
+
+Fox, George, 20
+
+Franco-German War, 256, 294, 345
+
+Frederick the Great, 26
+
+Freeman, Edward A., 5, 325, 334-6, 341-3, 345
+
+Froude, James Anthony, 5, 23, 28, 172, 325, 335
+
+Fry, Elizabeth, 279
+
+
+G
+
+Gadshill, 143, 148
+
+Gardiner, Professor S. R., 326
+
+Garibaldi, 60, 172, 345
+
+Garrett, Edmund, 353
+
+Gaskell, Mrs., 163
+
+Geikie, Professor, 183, 294
+
+Genoa, 138
+
+George III, 37
+
+George IV, 37, 78
+
+Gibbon, Edward, 14, 323, 328, 361
+
+Giers, Monsieur de, 267-9, 274
+
+Gladstone, W. E., 6, 265;
+  and Bright, 120, 123, 126-8;
+  and Green, 344-5;
+  and Morier, 258;
+  and Peel, 32, 47, 51-3;
+  and Shaftesbury, 90;
+  and Tennyson, 152, 154, 173;
+  and Watts, 208
+
+Glasgow, 125, 285-7, 293
+
+Godlee, Sir Rickman, 283, 295
+
+Goethe, 19
+
+Gordon, General, 4, 66, 70, 355
+
+Gough, Viscount, 68, 69, 100
+
+Graham, Sir James, 43, 85
+
+Granville, Earl, 259, 275
+
+Green, John Richard: books, 336-46;
+  church views, 329, 342;
+  conversation, 345;
+  education, 326-8;
+  essays, 336-7, 340;
+  friends, 187, 328-9, 334, 342, 345;
+  historical method, 336-42;
+  historical schemes, 333-4, 344;
+  parochial work, 331-3, 342;
+  travels, 342-3
+
+Greenbank, 112
+
+Greville, Charles, 44, 46
+
+Grévy, President, 263
+
+Grey, Charles, Earl, 41, 42
+
+Grey, Sir George, 5, 220, 240
+
+Griqualand, 350, 353
+
+Groote Schuur, 361
+
+
+H
+
+Haddington, 15
+
+Haileybury, 94
+
+Hallam, Arthur, 154, 156-8, 161, 173
+
+Hammersmith, 308, 319, 321
+
+Hardinge, 1st Viscount, 68, 99
+
+Hardwick, Philip, 207
+
+Harrow, 33, 75, 247
+
+Harte, Bret, 136
+
+Haworth, Mr., 32
+
+Helston, 179
+
+Henley, W. E., 294
+
+Henry II, 337
+
+Herbert, Sidney, 51
+
+Hilton, William, 200
+
+Hodder River, 111
+
+Hofmeyr, Jan, 354-5
+
+Holland, 4th Baron, 201-2, 207
+
+Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 137
+
+Hook, Dean, 178, 333
+
+Horner, Francis, 36, 37
+
+Howard, John, 3, 338
+
+Huddlestone, John, 94
+
+Hudson, Sir James, 272
+
+Hughes, Tom, 182, 186, 189
+
+Humboldt, Alexander von, 248
+
+Huskisson, William, 36, 48
+
+Huxley, T. H., 5
+
+Hyder[=a]b[=a]d, 65, 67
+
+Hyndman, H. M., 310, 318, 320
+
+
+I
+
+Iceland, 309
+
+Indian Mutiny, 69, 103-5
+
+Ionides family, 207
+
+Irish politics, 35, 38, 49, 51, 119, 121-2, 127
+
+Irving, Edward, 13-15
+
+Irving, Sir Henry, 169, 172
+
+
+J
+
+Jackson, General 'Stonewall', 59
+
+Jacob, Colonel, 65
+
+J[=a]landhar, 99-100
+
+Jameson, Leander Starr, 350, 360-3, 366
+
+Jeffrey, Francis, Lord, 18, 136
+
+Jellaçiç, Baron, 251
+
+Johnson, Samuel, 14
+
+Jomini, Baron, 270
+
+Jowett, Benjamin, 172, 204, 247, 249, 258, 273
+
+
+K
+
+Kachhi Hills, 67
+
+Karachi, 67
+
+Katkoff, Monsieur, 267, 269
+
+Keble, John, 232
+
+Kelmscott, 319, 321
+
+Kelmscott Press, 319
+
+Kiel, 249
+
+Kimberley, 349-53, 355, 357, 366
+
+King's College, 179, 296
+
+Kingsley, Charles: character, 179, 186-7, 192-5;
+  church views, 181, 193;
+  history lectures, 190, 335;
+  novels, 183, 185;
+  parish work, 180-3, 195;
+  poetry, 184;
+  physical science, 183-5;
+  social reform, 187-90;
+  sport, 18-56;
+  travels, 191;
+  other references, 335, 343
+
+Kirkcaldy, 13
+
+Knox, John, 15, 93
+
+Knox, Rev. James, 93
+
+Koch, Professor, 300
+
+Kruger, President, 362-4, 366
+
+
+L
+
+Lahore, 68, 100, 103-4
+
+Lamb, Charles, 29, 165
+
+Lambeth, 336
+
+Landor, Walter Savage, 136, 165
+
+Larkin, Henry, 27
+
+Laud, Archbishop, 336, 340
+
+Lausanne, 138
+
+Lawrence, Alexander, 93, 94
+
+Lawrence, Henry, 59, 66, 94, 100, 101-3
+
+Lawrence, John: administrative posts, 96, 98-9, 101, 105;
+  administrative talents, 97, 100, 102, 106;
+  character, 97, 105;
+  family, 93-4, 98;
+  frontier question, 107;
+  Indian Mutiny, 103-5;
+  Indian peasantry, 98, 100;
+  official subordinates, 102-3
+
+Layard, Sir H. A., 204, 254
+
+Lecky, W. E. H., 345
+
+Leighton, Frederic, Lord, 208, 219
+
+Lemaire, Monsieur, 291
+
+Lennox, Lady Sarah (Napier), 55, 57
+
+Lewis, Sir G. C., 285
+
+Lightfoot, Bishop, 238
+
+Limerick, 57
+
+Limnerslease, 217
+
+Lincoln's Inn, 198, 207
+
+Lincolnshire, 151
+
+Lister, Joseph Jackson, 278-9
+
+Lister, Joseph: antiseptic method, 288-95;
+  aseptic method, 298-9;
+  honours, 295, 297, 300;
+  hospitals, 285-7;
+  lecturing, 284-5, 295-7;
+  operations, 283, 292;
+  opponents, 291, 296-7;
+  research, 281-2, 288;
+  teachers, 280-2;
+  travels, 283;
+  vivisection, 299;
+  war, 294, 299
+
+Littledale, Mr., 269
+
+Liverpool, Earl of, 34, 38
+
+Livingstone, David, 4
+
+Lobanoff, Prince, 266
+
+Lobengula, 357-60
+
+Locker [-Lampson], Frederick, 172
+
+Londonderry, 93
+
+Louis Philippe, 40
+
+Louth, 152
+
+Lowe, Robert, Lord Sherbrooke, 8, 124
+
+Loyalty Islands, 230
+
+Lucknow, 103, 105, 174
+
+Lushington, Edmund, 154
+
+Lycidas, 155
+
+Lyons, Viscount, 123, 273
+
+Lyttelton, Sarah, Lady, 44
+
+Lytton, Robert, Earl of, 108, 212
+
+
+M
+
+Mablethorpe, 151, 171
+
+Macaulay, Lord, 8, 325
+
+Mackintosh, Sir James, 37
+
+Maclise, Daniel, 133, 140
+
+Macmillan, George, 339, 344
+
+Macready, William Charles, 138, 140
+
+Magnusson, Professor, 309
+
+Maine, Sir Henry, 345
+
+Mainhill, 15
+
+Mallet, Sir Louis, 255, 272
+
+Manchester, 112, 116, 214, 217, 315
+
+Manning, Cardinal, 212
+
+Marlborough College, 303
+
+Marsden, Samuel, 221
+
+Martin, Sir Richard, 233
+
+Matabele, 357-60, 364-5
+
+Matoppo Hills, 364, 367
+
+Maurice, Rev. F. D., 187, 189, 329, 331
+
+McMurdo, General Sir W. M., 70
+
+Melbourne, Viscount, 43
+
+Mentone, 346
+
+Meredith, George, 6, 26
+
+Merivale, Dean, 154-5
+
+Merton, Surrey, 313
+
+Metternich, Prince, 251
+
+Miani, 63-4
+
+Michel Angelo, 203
+
+Michelet, Jules, 339
+
+Mill, John Stuart, 2, 3, 22, 25, 29, 157, 193, 212
+
+Millais, Sir John, 8, 197, 212, 280, 305
+
+Milnes, R. Monckton, 159
+
+Milton, 75, 112, 120, 155, 161
+
+Moberly, Bishop, 232
+
+Montgomery, Sir Robert, 93, 101, 103
+
+Moore, Sir John, 57, 62
+
+Morier, David, 246, 248
+
+Morier, Sir Robert: appearance, 248, 251;
+  Austria, 251, 254-5;
+  character, 251, 272-5;
+  commercial treaties, 254, 260;
+  diplomatic methods, 260, 262-3, 266, 273-4;
+  diplomatic posts, 245, 250, 252, 255, 257, 259, 261, 264, 271;
+  friends, 204, 247-9, 258, 270;
+  Germany, 248-9, 252-8;
+  Portugal, 259-61;
+  Russia, 26-71;
+  Spain, 261-4
+
+Morley, Viscount, 2, 51, 86
+
+Morocco, 263
+
+Morris, William: appearance, 310;
+  character, 6, 307, 321;
+  designing, 311-12;
+  dyeing, 313;
+  friends, 304, 308, 321, 328;
+  homes, 307-8, 319;
+  painting, 306;
+  poetry, 159, 175, 308-9;
+  printing, 319;
+  Socialism, 315-19;
+  travels, 309, 318-19;
+  workshop, 313-14
+
+Mota, 227, 230, 237, 242
+
+Mozley, Canon J. B., 327
+
+Muizenberg, 366
+
+Müller, Professor Max, 248
+
+
+N
+
+Napier, Charles: campaigns, 57, 58, 63-5, 67;
+  character, 56, 66, 70;
+  military commands, 59, 61, 62, 68;
+  military training, 58, 62;
+  official superiors, 57, 68, 70, 100;
+  rank and file, 66-7, 69, 72
+
+Napier, Hon. George, 54
+
+Napier, Sir George, 54, 57
+
+Napier, Robert (Lord N. of Magdala), 103, 106
+
+Napier, Sir William, 54-5, 57, 70, 71
+
+Napoleon III, Emperor, 123
+
+Natal, 349
+
+National Gallery, 53, 188
+
+Nelidoff, Monsieur de, 267
+
+Neuberg, Joseph, 27
+
+Newbattle, 79
+
+Newman, Cardinal, 5, 194
+
+Newton, Sir Charles, 210
+
+Nicholson, John, 66, 101-2, 104
+
+Nightingale, Florence, 286, 291
+
+Norfolk Island, 237, 239, 242
+
+Nukapu, 242
+
+
+O
+
+Oaklands, 70
+
+O'Connell, Daniel, 38, 39, 42, 44, 49
+
+Omarkot, 63
+
+Orleans, Duke of, 270
+
+Oxford, 12-13, 34, 38, 40, 75, 196, 223-5, 247, 278, 304-6, 325-30, 351, 367
+
+
+P
+
+Paget, Sir James, 298
+
+Palgrave, Francis T., 172, 204, 247
+
+Palmerston, Viscount, 8, 32, 42, 78, 90, 123-4, 127, 185, 249-50, 254
+
+P[=a]n[=i]pat, 96, 99
+
+Panizzi, Sir A.; 212
+
+Parkes, Sir Henry, 5
+
+Parnell, Charles Stewart, 127
+
+Pasteur, Louis, 288-9, 300
+
+Patteson, Sir John, 222, 225, 233
+
+Patteson, John Coleridge:
+  centres of work, 226, 230, 237;
+  character, 223, 231, 233, 235-6;
+  consecration, 233;
+  family, 222, 225, 234;
+  labour trade, 240-1;
+  languages, 224, 226;
+  mission methods and principles, 227, 229, 234, 238-9;
+  workers, 234, 238
+
+Pattle family, 205
+
+Pau, 191
+
+Peel, 1st Sir Robert, 32-3, 37, 82
+
+Peel, 2nd Sir Robert:
+  administrative gifts, 35, 36, 52;
+  character, 33, 45, 52-3, 80, 90;
+  constituencies, 34, 38, 40, 43;
+  education, 33-4;
+  finance, 36;
+  free trade, 47-51, 87, 118-19;
+  Ireland, 35, 38-9;
+  patronage, 159-60;
+  political parties, 34, 50-1, 53;
+  quoted on Napier, 72;
+  Reform, 40-1
+
+Pen-y-gwryd, 183, 186
+
+Perry, Father, S.J., 270
+
+Pio Nono, Pope, 259
+
+Pitt, William, 31, 33-8
+
+Plutarch, 56, 57, 361
+
+Pobedonóstsev, Monsieur, 267, 270
+
+Porter, Mrs., 294
+
+Portsmouth, 70, 72, 130
+
+Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 4, 197
+
+Prince Consort, 52, 85, 100, 252
+
+Prinsep, Mr., 205, 207, 210
+
+Punjab, 68-9, 102-4
+
+Pusey, Canon E. B., 87
+
+
+R
+
+Reade, Charles, 185
+
+Reform Bills, 40-3, 124-5
+
+Rhodes, Cecil: 207, 211;
+  Boers, 353-5, 362-4, 366;
+  character, 356, 361-2;
+  friends, 350-1, 361;
+  imperial extension, 4, 353, 355, 357-61;
+  mines, 350, 352;
+  native wars, 360, 364-5;
+  Oxford, 351, 367;
+  political work, 353-6, 362
+
+Rhodes, Colonel Frank, 349, 363
+
+Rhodes, Herbert, 349
+
+Rickards, Charles, 217
+
+Roberts, Earl, 108
+
+Robinson, Sir Hercules (Lord Rosmead), 356, 359, 361
+
+Rochdale, 111-13, 119, 127-8
+
+Rochester, 135, 143-4, 148
+
+Rogers, Samuel, 163
+
+Roggenbach, Herr von, 248
+
+Romero y Robledo, 261
+
+Rome, 43, 79, 203
+
+Romilly, Sir Samuel, 36
+
+Rose, Sir Hugh, 106
+
+Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 154, 163, 197, 205, 209, 212, 305-8
+
+Rottingdean, 311
+
+Routh, Dr., 328
+
+Royal Academy, 198, 200, 206, 217
+
+Rubens, 214
+
+Rudd, Charles D., 350, 358, 361
+
+Rumbold, Sir H., 272
+
+Runnymede, 335
+
+Ruskin, John: art, 129, 204, 316;
+  economics, 8, 30, 147, 193, 315;
+  general, 4, 6, 23, 303
+
+Russell, Lord John, 32, 42, 44, 46, 50, 118, 123-4, 207, 253
+
+Russell, Odo, 248, 264, 272-3, 275
+
+
+S
+
+Sadler, Michael T., 82
+
+Sagasta, Senor, 261
+
+Salisbury, Marquess of, 268, 275
+
+Salisbury, Rhodesia, 359
+
+Santa Cruz, 236
+
+Sarawia, George, 238
+
+Schiller, 17
+
+Schleswig-Holstein, 249, 254
+
+Schools, 88-9, 135-6
+
+Scotsbrig, 15
+
+Scott, Sir Walter, 11, 78, 187, 198, 303, 324-5
+
+Scott, Capt. R. F., 4
+
+Selous, Frederick C., 358-61
+
+Selwyn, Bishop, 221-30, 233, 238
+
+Shaftesbury, 3rd Earl, 74, 79
+
+Shaftesbury, 4th Earl: administrative offices, 76, 80;
+  appearance, 83;
+  character, 74, 76;
+  Factory Acts, 83-6, 135;
+  family, 74, 77-9, 89;
+  other philanthropic work, 77, 87-8;
+  and political leaders, 46, 85-6, 90;
+  religious work, 77, 87;
+  schools, 88-9
+
+Shakespeare, 302
+
+Sharpey, William, 280-1
+
+Shelley, 199, 303
+
+Shepstone, Sir Theophilus, 260
+
+Sikh wars, 68-9, 99-100
+
+Simeon, Sir John, 166, 172
+
+Simpson, Sir James, 286, 291, 294
+
+Sind, 62-8
+
+Smith, Sir Harry, 59
+
+Smith, R. Bosworth, 93, 97
+
+Smith, Sir Thomas, 298
+
+Somers, Lady, 205
+
+Somersby, 151, 156
+
+Southey, 82
+
+Spedding, James, 154, 165, 175, 204
+
+Sprigg, Sir Gordon, 353
+
+Staäl, Baron de, 268
+
+Stanley, Dean, 248, 329, 331
+
+Stanley, Edward, _v._ Derby
+
+Stein, Baron von, 252
+
+Stepney, 331-2
+
+Sterling, John, 23
+
+Stevens, Alfred, 197
+
+Stewart, John, M.D., 297
+
+Stockmar, Baron, 249
+
+Stokes, Sir George G., 277
+
+Stratford de Redcliffe, Viscount, 210
+
+Street, George E., 306
+
+Stubbs, Bishop, 5, 325, 334, 340-1, 345
+
+Syme, James, 280-3, 285, 293
+
+
+T
+
+Talleyrand, 273
+
+Tamworth, 32, 43
+
+Taylor, Alexander, 104
+
+Taylor, Sir Henry, 165, 209
+
+Taylor, Tom, 186
+
+Temple, Archbishop, 247, 249
+
+Tennyson, Alfred: appearance, 157, 164, 212;
+  character, 155, 156, 173;
+  conversation, 155, 164, 250;
+  education, 152-6, 158;
+  family, 153, 156, 163;
+  friends, 23, 154, 163-5, 172, 205, 209;
+  homes, 151, 171;
+  poems, dramatic, 169;
+  epic, 166-8;
+  lyric, 156-7, 159, 161-3, 166, 174;
+  patriotic, 174;
+  political ideas, 167, 175;
+  quoted opinions, 187, 345;
+  travels, 173;
+  other references, 5, 6, 208, 305
+
+Tennyson, Frederick, 153
+
+Thackeray, W. M., 5, 7, 140, 154, 205, 209
+
+Thompson, Sir Henry, 280
+
+Tilly, Lieutenant, 235
+
+Titian, 173, 213, 219, 227
+
+Tolstoy, Count Dmitri, 267, 269
+
+Trevelyan, George Macaulay, 121, 347
+
+Troyes, 343
+
+
+U
+
+University College, London, 278-9
+
+Upton, Essex, 278
+
+Upton, Kent, 307
+
+Utilitarians, 2, 3
+
+
+V
+
+Vere, Aubrey de, 165
+
+Victoria, Queen: official, 46, 50, 52, 126, 174, 190, 253, 257;
+  personal, 44, 78, 85, 148, 162, 175
+
+Vienna, 250, 255, 283
+
+Villiers, Charles Pelham, 50
+
+Virgil, 167, 173
+
+Vischnegradsky, 270
+
+
+W
+
+Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 4, 220
+
+Wallace, Alfred Russel, 183, 291
+
+Walmer, 300
+
+Wanostrocht, Nicholas, 199
+
+Ward, Mr. and Mrs. Humphry, 345
+
+Waterloo, 58
+
+Watt, James, 2, 277, 338
+
+Watts, George Frederick: Academy, Royal, 200, 217;
+  appearance, 199, 209;
+  art--views on, 215-16;
+  character, 200, 202, 208, 218;
+  education, 198-200;
+  exhibitions, 217;
+  friends, 172, 201, 204-5, 208-9, 250;
+  homes, 205, 217;
+  mural decoration, 202, 206-7;
+  pictures, allegories, 214, 217;
+  pictures, myths, 213;
+  pictures, portraits, 93, 207-8, 212, 217;
+  sculpture, 211, 219;
+  travels, 201, 203, 210, 216
+
+Webb, Philip, 307
+
+Wellesley, Marquis, 95
+
+Wellington, Duke of: military, 57, 68, 71-2, 76, 93, 187;
+  personal, 46, 70, 78, 80;
+  political, 35, 38-41, 43, 46, 51
+
+Welsh, John, 15
+
+Wesley, John, 3, 92, 340
+
+West Indies, 178, 191
+
+Westminster, 191, 200, 203
+
+Westminster, Duke of, 211
+
+Westmorland, Earl of, 250
+
+Whistler, J. McN., 197, 215
+
+White, Sir William, 266, 272, 274-5
+
+Whittier, John Greenleaf, 192
+
+Wiggins, Captain, 270
+
+Wilberforce, Bishop Samuel, 5
+
+Wilberforce, William, 3
+
+William I, German Emperor, 253-4, 258
+
+William IV, King, 41
+
+Wimborne St. Giles, 75, 89, 90
+
+Winchester, 232, 246
+
+Windsor, 221
+
+Windt, Harry de, 270
+
+Wolseley, Viscount, 57
+
+Wordsworth, William, 29, 163, 165-6, 242
+
+Wotton, Sir Henry, 246
+
+Wotton, Dean Nicholas, 246
+
+Wraxall, 93
+
+Wyndham, George, 122
+
+
+Y
+
+Yonge, Charlotte, 232, 240, 243
+
+
+Z
+
+Zambezi, 355, 362
+
+Zionist movement, 87
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTORIAN WORTHIES***
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Victorian Worthies, by George Henry Blore</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Victorian Worthies, by George Henry Blore</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Victorian Worthies</p>
+<p>       Sixteen Biographies</p>
+<p>Author: George Henry Blore</p>
+<p>Release Date: December 26, 2006  [eBook #20196]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTORIAN WORTHIES***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Chuck Greif,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net/c/)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="footnotes">
+Transcriber's note:<br />
+<br />
+The reader might encounter characters which do not display properly
+in the browser. If so, they are most likely due to attempts to
+preserve the author's use of a lower case "a" with macron
+and lower case "i" with macron.
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a name="carlyle" id="carlyle"></a><img src="images/carlyle.jpg" alt="THOMAS CARLYLE" /><a name="front" id="front"></a><br /><span class="smcap">thomas carlyle</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 100%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h1>VICTORIAN WORTHIES</h1>
+
+
+<h2><i>SIXTEEN BIOGRAPHIES</i></h2>
+
+<p class="center">BY</p>
+
+<h2>G. H. BLORE</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">ASSISTANT MASTER AT WINCHESTER COLLEGE</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 10%;" />
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+'We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on
+Great Men, their manner of appearance in our world's
+business, how they shaped themselves in the world's
+history, what ideas men formed of them, what work they
+did;&mdash;on Heroes, namely, and on their reception and
+performance.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Carlyle</span>.
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 10%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">
+HUMPHREY MILFORD<br />
+OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS<br />
+LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO<br />
+MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY CALCUTTA<br />
+1920<br />
+PRINTED IN ENGLAND<br />
+AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table summary="toc" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2">
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#PREFACE"><b>PREFACE</b></a></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#LIST_OF_PORTRAITS"><b>LIST OF PORTRAITS</b></a></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#INTRODUCTION"><b>INTRODUCTION: THE VICTORIAN ERA </b></a></td><td align="right">1</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1.</td><td><a href="#THOMAS_CARLYLE"><b>THOMAS CARLYLE. Prophet </b></a></td><td align="right">10</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">2.</td><td><a href="#SIR_ROBERT_PEEL"><b>SIR ROBERT PEEL. Statesman </b></a></td><td align="right">31</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">3.</td><td><a href="#CHARLES_JAMES_NAPIER"><b>SIR CHARLES NAPIER. Soldier </b></a></td><td align="right">54</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">4.</td><td><a href="#ANTHONY_ASHLEY_COOPER"><b>THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY. Philanthropist </b></a></td><td align="right">73</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">5.</td><td><a href="#JOHN_LAWRENCE"><b>LORD LAWRENCE. Administrator </b></a></td><td align="right">92</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">6.</td><td><a href="#JOHN_BRIGHT"><b>JOHN BRIGHT. Tribune </b></a></td><td align="right">110</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">7.</td><td><a href="#CHARLES_DICKENS"><b>CHARLES DICKENS. Novelist and Social Reformer </b></a></td><td align="right">129</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">8.</td><td><a href="#ALFRED_TENNYSON"><b>LORD TENNYSON. Poet </b></a></td><td align="right">150</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">9.</td><td><a href="#CHARLES_KINGSLEY"><b>CHARLES KINGSLEY. Parish Priest </b></a></td><td align="right">177</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">10.</td><td><a href="#GEORGE_FREDERICK_WATTS"><b>GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS. Artist </b></a></td><td align="right">196</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">11.</td><td><a href="#JOHN_COLERIDGE_PATTESON"><b>BISHOP PATTESON. Missionary </b></a></td><td align="right">220</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">12.</td><td><a href="#SIR_ROBERT_D_B_MORIER_GCB_PC"><b>SIR ROBERT MORIER. Diplomatist </b></a></td><td align="right">245</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">13.</td><td><a href="#JOSEPH_LISTER"><b>LORD LISTER. Surgeon </b></a></td><td align="right">276</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">14.</td><td><a href="#WILLIAM_MORRIS"><b>WILLIAM MORRIS. Craftsman </b></a></td><td align="right">302</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">15.</td><td><a href="#JOHN_RICHARD_GREEN"><b>JOHN RICHARD GREEN. Historian </b></a></td><td align="right">323</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">16.</td><td><a href="#CECIL_RHODES"><b>CECIL RHODES. Colonist </b></a></td><td align="right">348</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"></td><td><a href="#INDEX"><b>INDEX</b></a></td><td align="right">369</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p>Some excuse seems to be needed for venturing at this time to publish
+biographical sketches of the men of the Victorian era. Several have been
+written by men, like Lord Morley and Lord Bryce, having first-hand
+knowledge of their subjects, others by the best critics of the next
+generation, such as Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Clutton-Brock. With their
+critical ability I am not able to compete; but they often postulate a
+knowledge of facts which the average reader has forgotten or has never
+known. Having written these sketches primarily for boys at school I am
+not ashamed to state well-known facts, nor have I wished to avoid the
+obvious.</p>
+
+<p>Nor do these sketches aim at obtaining a sensation by the shattering of
+idols. I have been content to accept the verdicts passed by their
+contemporaries on these great servants of the public, verdicts which, in
+general, seem likely to stand the test of time. Boys will come soon
+enough on books where criticism has fuller play, and revise the
+judgements of the past. Such a revision is salutary, when it is not
+unfair or bitter in tone.</p>
+
+<p>At a time when the subject called 'civics' is being more widely
+introduced into schools, it seems useful to present the facts of
+individual lives, instances chosen from different professions, as a
+supplement to the study of principles and institutions. There is a
+spirit of public service which is best interpreted through concrete
+examples. If teachers will, from their own knowledge, fill in these
+outlines and give life to these portraits, the younger generation may
+find it not uninteresting to 'praise famous men and our fathers that
+begat us'.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span>
+It seems hardly necessary in a book of this kind to give an imposing
+list of authorities consulted. In some cases I should find it difficult
+to trace the essay or memoir from which a statement is drawn; but in the
+main I have depended on the standard Lives of the various men portrayed,
+from Froude's <i>Carlyle</i> and Forster's <i>Dickens</i> to Mackail's <i>Morris</i>
+and Michell's <i>Rhodes</i>. And, needless to say, I have found the
+<i>Dictionary of National Biography</i> most valuable. If boys were not
+frightened from the shelves by its bulk, it would render my work
+superfluous; but, though I often recommend it to them, I find few signs
+that they consult it as often as they should. It may seem that no due
+proportion has been observed in the length of the different sketches;
+but it must be remembered that, while short Lives of Napier and Lawrence
+have been written by well-known authors, it is more difficult for a boy
+to satisfy his curiosity about Lister, Patteson, or Green; and of Morier
+no complete life has yet been published.</p>
+
+<p>I am indebted to Mr. Emery Walker for assistance in the selection of the
+portraits.</p>
+
+<p>Three of my friends have been kind enough to read parts of the book and
+to give me advice: the Rev. A. T. P. Williams and Mr. C. E. Robinson, my
+colleagues here, and Mr. Nowell Smith, Head Master of Sherborne. I owe
+much also to the good judgement of Mr. Milford's reader. If I venture to
+thank them for their help, they are in no way responsible for my
+mistakes. Writing in the intervals of school-mastering I have no doubt
+been guilty of many, and I shall be grateful if any reader will take the
+trouble to inform me of those which he detects.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 80%;">G.H.B.<br /></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Winchester</span>,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>April 1920.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="LIST_OF_PORTRAITS" id="LIST_OF_PORTRAITS"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">LIST OF PORTRAITS</a></h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
+
+<table summary="illustrations" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0">
+<tr><td>Thomas Carlyle </td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#front"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the painting by <span class="smcap">G. F. Watts</span> in the National Portrait Gallery.</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sir Robert Peel </td><td><i>Facing Page:</i></td><td align="right"><a href="#peel">31</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the painting by <span class="smcap">J. Linnell</span> in the National Portrait Gallery.</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sir Charles Napier </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#napier">54</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the drawing by <span class="smcap">Edwin Williams</span> in the National Portrait Gallery.</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Lord Shaftesbury </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#shaftesbury">73</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the painting by <span class="smcap">G. F. Watts</span> in the National Portrait Gallery.</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Lord Lawrence </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#lawrence">92</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the painting by <span class="smcap">G. F. Watts</span> in the National Portrait Gallery.</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>John Bright </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#bright">110</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the painting by <span class="smcap">W. W. Ouless</span> in the National Portrait Gallery.</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Charles Dickens </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#dickens">129</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the painting by <span class="smcap">Daniel Maclise</span> in the National Portrait Gallery.</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Alfred, Lord Tennyson </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#tennyson">150</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the painting by <span class="smcap">G. F. Watts</span> in the National Portrait Gallery.</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Charles Kingsley </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#kingsley">177</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From a drawing by <span class="smcap">W. S. Hunt</span> in the National Portrait Gallery.</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>George Frederick Watts </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#watts">196</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From a painting by himself in the National Portrait Gallery.</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>John Coleridge Patteson </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#patteson">220</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From a drawing by <span class="smcap">William Richmond</span>.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(<i>By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan &amp; Co., Ltd.</i>)</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sir Robert Morier </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#morier">245</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From a drawing by <span class="smcap">William Richmond</span>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(<i>By kind permission of Mr. Edward Arnold.</i>)</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Lord Lister </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#lister">276</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From a photograph by <span class="smcap">Messrs. Barraud</span>.</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>William Morris </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#morris">300</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the painting by <span class="smcap">G. F. Watts</span> in the National Portrait Gallery.</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>John Richard Green </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#green">323</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From a drawing by <span class="smcap">Frederick Sandys</span>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(<i>By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan &amp; Co., Ltd.</i>)</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Cecil Rhodes </td><td align="center">&quot;</td><td align="right"><a href="#rhodes">349</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td style="padding-bottom: 10px;"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the painting by <span class="smcap">G. F. Watts</span> in the National Portrait Gallery.</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Page 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">INTRODUCTION</a></h2>
+
+<p class="center">THE VICTORIAN ERA</p>
+
+
+<p>We like to fancy, when critics are not at our elbow, that each Age in
+our history has a character and a physiognomy of its own. The sixteenth
+century speaks to us of change and adventure in every form, of ships and
+statecraft, of discovery and desecration, of masterful sovereigns and
+unscrupulous ministers. We evoke the memory of Henry VIII and Elizabeth,
+of Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, of Drake and Raleigh, while the gentler
+virtues of Thomas More and Philip Sidney seem but rare flowers by the
+wayside.</p>
+
+<p>The glory of the seventeenth century shines out amid the clash of arms,
+in battles fought for noble principles, in the lives and deaths of
+Falkland and Hampden, of Blake, Montrose, and Cromwell. If its nobility
+is dimmed as we pass from the world of Shakespeare and Milton to that of
+Dryden and Defoe, yet there is sufficient unity in its central theme to
+justify the enthusiasm of those who praise it as the heroic age of
+English history.</p>
+
+<p>Less justice, perhaps, is done when we characterize the eighteenth
+century as that of elegance and wit; when, heedless of the great names
+of Chatham, Wolfe, and Clive, we fill the forefront of our picture with
+clubs and coffee-houses, with the graces of Chesterfield and Horace
+Walpole, the beauties of Gainsborough and Romney, or the masterpieces of
+Sheraton and Adam. But each generalization, as we make it, seems more
+imperfect and unfair; and partly because Carlyle abused it so
+unmercifully, this century has in the last fifty years received ample
+justice from many of our ablest writers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Difficult indeed then it must seem to give adequate expression to the
+life of a century like the nineteenth, so swift, so restless, so
+many-sided, so full of familiar personages, and of conflicts which have
+hardly yet receded to a distance where the historian can judge them
+aright. The rich luxuriance of movements and of individual characters
+chokes our path; it is a labyrinth in which one may well lose one's way
+and fail to see the wood for the trees.</p>
+
+<p>The scientist would be protesting (all this time) that this is a very
+superficial aspect of the matter. He would recast our framework for us
+and teach us to follow out the course of our history through the
+development of mathematics, physics, and biology, to pass from Newton to
+Harvey, and from Watt to Darwin, and in the relation of these sciences
+to one another to find the clue to man's steady progress.</p>
+
+<p>The tale thus told is indeed wonderful to read and worthy of the
+telling; but, to appreciate it fully, it needs a wider and deeper
+knowledge than many possess. And it tends to leave out one side of our
+human nature. There are many whose sympathies will always be drawn
+rather to the influence of man upon man than to the extension of man's
+power over nature, to the development of character rather than of
+knowledge. To-day literature must approach science, her all-powerful
+sister, with humility, and crave indulgence for those who still wish to
+follow in the track where Plutarch led the way, to read of human
+infirmity as well as of human power, not to scorn anecdotes or even
+comparisons which illustrate the qualities by which service can be
+rendered to the State.</p>
+
+<p>To return to the nineteenth century, some would find a guiding thread in
+the progress of the Utilitarian School, which based its teaching on the
+idea of pursuing the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the
+school which produced philosophers like Bentham and J. S. Mill, and
+politicians like Cobden and Morley. It was congenial to the English<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+mind to follow a line which seemed to lead with certainty to practical
+results; and the industrial revolutions caused men at this time to look,
+perhaps too much, to the material conditions of well-being. Along with
+the discoveries that revolutionized industry, the eighteenth century had
+bequeathed something more precious than material wealth. John Wesley,
+the strongest personal influence of its latter half, had stirred the
+spirit of conscious philanthropy and the desire to apply Christian
+principles to the service of all mankind. Howard, Wilberforce, and
+others directed this spirit into definite channels, and many of their
+followers tinged with a warm religious glow the principles which, even
+in agnostics like Mill, lent consistent nobility to a life of service.
+The efforts which these men made, alone or banded into societies, to
+enlarge the liberties of Englishmen and to distribute more fairly the
+good things of life among them, were productive of much benefit to the
+age.</p>
+
+<p>Under such leadership indeed as that of Bentham and Wilberforce, the
+Victorian Age might have been expected to follow a steady course of
+beneficence which would have drawn all the nobler spirits of the new
+generation into its main current. Clear, logical, and persuasive, the
+Utilitarians seemed likely to command success in Parliament, in the
+pulpit, and in the press. But the criterion of happiness, however widely
+diffused (and that it had not gone far in 1837 Disraeli's <i>Sybil</i> will
+attest), was not enough to satisfy the ardent idealism that blazed in
+the breasts of men stirred by revolutions and the new birth of Christian
+zeal. In contrast to the ordered pursuit of reform, the spirit of which
+the Utilitarians hoped to embody in societies and Acts of Parliament,
+were the rebellious impulses of men filled with a prophetic spirit,
+walking in obedience to an inward voice, eager to cry aloud their
+message to a generation wrapped in prosperity and self-contentment. They
+formed no single school and followed no single line. In a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> few cases we
+may observe the relation of master and pupil, as between Carlyle and
+Ruskin; in more we can see a small band of friends like the
+Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the leaders of the Oxford Movement, or the
+scientific circle of Darwin and Hooker, working in fellowship for a
+common end. But individuality is their note. They sprang often from
+surroundings most alien to their genius; they wandered far from the
+courses which their birth seemed to prescribe; the spirit caught them
+and they went forth to the fray.</p>
+
+<p>The time in which they grew up was calculated to mould characters of
+strength. Self-control and self-denial had been needed in the protracted
+wars with France. Self-reliance had been learnt in the hard school of
+adversity. Imagination was quickened by the heroism of the struggle
+which had ended in the final victory of our arms. And to the generations
+born in the early days of the nineteenth century lay open fields wider
+than were offered to human activity in any other age of the world's
+history. Now at last the full fruits of sixteenth-century discovery were
+to be reaped. It was possible for Gordon, by the personal ascendancy
+which he owed to his single-minded faith, to create legends and to work
+miracles in Asia and in Africa; for Richard Burton to gain an intimate
+knowledge of Islam in its holiest shrines; for Livingstone, Hannington,
+and other martyrs to the Faith to breathe their last in the tropics; for
+Franklin, dying, as Scott died nearly seventy years later, in the cause
+of Science, to hallow the polar regions for the Anglo-Saxon race.
+Darkest Africa was to remain impenetrable yet awhile. Only towards the
+end of the century, when Stanley's work was finished, could Rhodes and
+Kitchener conspire to clasp hands across its deserts and its swamps: but
+on the other side of the globe a new island-empire had been already
+created by the energy of Wakefield, and developed by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> wisdom of
+Parkes and Grey. In distant lands, on stricken fields less famous but no
+less perilous, Wellington's men were applying the lessons which they had
+learnt in the Peninsula. On distant seas Nelson's ships were carrying
+explorers equipped for the more peaceful task of scientific observation.
+In this century the highest mountains, the deepest seas, the widest
+stretches of desert were to reveal their secrets to the adventurers who
+held the whole world for their playground or field of conquest.</p>
+
+<p>And not only in the great expansion of empire abroad but in the growth
+of knowledge at home and the application of it to civil life, there was
+a field to employ all the vigour of a race capable of rising to its
+opportunities. There is no need to remind this generation of such names
+as Stephenson and Herschel, Darwin and Huxley, Faraday and Kelvin; they
+are in no danger of being forgotten to-day. The men of letters take
+relatively a less conspicuous place in the evolution of the Age; but the
+force which they put into their writings, the wealth of their material,
+the variety of their lives, and the contrasts of their work, endow the
+annals of the nineteenth century with an absorbing interest. While
+Tennyson for the most part stayed in his English homes, singing the
+beauties of his native land, Browning was a sojourner in Italian palaces
+and villas, studying men of many races and many times, exploring the
+subtleties of the human heart. The pen of Dickens portrayed all classes
+of society except, perhaps, that which Thackeray made his peculiar
+field. The historians, too, furnish singular contrasts: the vehement
+pugnacity of Freeman is a foil to the serene studiousness of Acton; the
+erratic career of Froude to the concentration of Stubbs. The influence
+exercised on their contemporaries by recluses such as Newman or Darwin
+may be compared with the more worldly activities of Huxley and Samuel
+Wilberforce. Often we see equally diverse elements in following the
+course of a single life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> In Matthew Arnold we wonder at the poet of
+'The Strayed Reveller' coexisting with the zealous inspector of schools;
+in William Morris we find it hard to reconcile the creative craftsman
+with the fervent apostle of social discontent. Perhaps the most notable
+case of this diversity is the long pilgrimage of Gladstone which led him
+from the camp of the 'stern, unbending Tories' to the leadership of
+Radicals and Home Rulers. There is an interest in tracing through these
+metamorphoses the essential unity of a man's character. On the other
+hand, one cannot but admire the steadfastness with which Darwin and
+Lister, Tennyson and Watts, pursued the even tenor of their way.</p>
+
+<p>Again we may notice the strange irony of fortune which drew Carlyle from
+his native moorlands to spend fifty years in a London suburb, while his
+disciple Ruskin, born and bred in London, and finding fit audience in
+the universities of the South, closed his long life in seclusion amid
+the Cumbrian fells. So two statesmen, who were at one time very closely
+allied, present a similarly striking contrast in the manner of their
+lives. Till the age of forty Joseph Chamberlain limited himself to
+municipal work in Birmingham, and yet he rose in later life to imperial
+views wider than any statesman's of his day. Charles Dilke, on the other
+hand, could be an expert on 'Greater Britain' at thirty and yet devote
+his old age to elaborating the details of Local Government and framing
+programmes of social reform for the working classes of our towns.
+Accidents these may be, but they lend to Victorian biography the charm
+of a fanciful arabesque or mosaic of varied pattern and hue.</p>
+
+<p>Eccentrics, too, there were in fact among the literary men of the day,
+even as there are in the fiction of Dickens, of Peacock, of George
+Meredith. There was Borrow, who, as an old man, was tramping solitarily
+in the fields of Norfolk, as earlier he wandered alone in wild Wales or
+wilder Spain. There was FitzGerald, who remained all his life constant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+to one corner of East Anglia, and who yet, by the precious thread of his
+correspondence, maintained contact with the great world of Victorian
+letters to which he belonged.</p>
+
+<p>Some wandered as far afield as Asia or the South Seas; some buried
+themselves in the secluded courts of Oxford and Cambridge and became
+mythical figures in academic lore. Not many were to be found within hail
+of London or Edinburgh in these forceful days. Brougham, the most
+omniscient of reviewers, with the most ill-balanced of minds, belongs
+more properly to the preceding age, though he lived to 1868; and it is
+from this age that the novelists probably drew their eccentric types.
+But between eccentricity and vigorous originality who shall draw the
+dividing line?</p>
+
+<p>Men like these it is hard to label and to classify. Their individuality
+is so patent that any general statement is at once open to attack. The
+most that we can do is to indicate one or two points in which the true
+Victorians had a certain resemblance to one another, and were unlike
+their successors of our own day. They were more evidently in earnest,
+less conscious of themselves, more indifferent to ridicule, more
+absorbed in their work. To many of them full work and the cares of
+office seemed a necessity of life. It was a typical Victorian who, after
+sixteen years of public service, writing a family letter, says, 'I feel
+that the interest of business and the excitement of responsibility are
+indispensable to me, and I believe that I am never happier than when I
+have more to think of and to do than I can manage in a given period'.
+Idleness and insouciance had few temptations for them, cynicism was
+abhorrent to them. Even Thackeray was perpetually 'caught out' when he
+assumed the cynic's pose. Charlotte Bront&euml;, most loyal of his admirers
+and critics, speaks of the 'deep feelings for his kind' which he
+cherished in his large heart, and again of the 'sentiment, jealously
+hidden but genuine, which extracts the venom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> from that formidable
+Thackeray'. Large-hearted and generous to one another, they were ready
+to face adventure, eager to fight for an ideal, however impracticable it
+seemed. This was as true of Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, and all
+the <i>genus irritabile vatum</i>, as of the politicians and the men of
+action. They made many mistakes; they were combative, often difficult to
+deal with. Some of them were deficient in judgement, others in the
+saving gift of humour; but they were rarely petty or ungenerous, or
+failed from faint-heartedness or indecision. Vehemence and impatience
+can do harm to the best causes, and the lives of men like the Napiers
+and the Lawrences, like Thomas Arnold and Charles Kingsley, like John
+Bright and Robert Lowe, are marred by conflicts which might have been
+avoided by more studied gentleness or more philosophic calm. But the
+time seemed short in which they could redress the evils which offended
+them. They saw around them a world which seemed to be lapped in comfort
+or swathed in the dead wrappings of the past, and would not listen to
+reasoned appeals; and it would be futile to deny that, by lifting their
+voices to a pitch which offends fastidious critics, Carlyle and Ruskin
+did sometimes obtain a hearing and kindle a passion which Matthew Arnold
+could never stir by his scholarly exhortations to 'sweetness and light'.</p>
+
+<p>But it would be a mistake to infer from such clamour and contention that
+the Victorians did not enjoy their fair share of happiness in this
+world. The opposite would be nearer the truth: happiness was given to
+them in good, even in overflowing measure. Any one familiar with
+Trevelyan's biography of Macaulay will remember with what fullness and
+intensity he enjoyed his life; and the same fact is noted by Dr. Mozley
+in his Essay on that most representative Victorian, Thomas Arnold. The
+lives of Delane, the famous editor of <i>The Times</i>, of the statesman
+Palmerston, of the painter Millais, and of many other men in many
+professions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> might be quoted to support this view. In some cases this
+was due to their strong family affections, in others to their genius for
+friendship. A good conscience, a good temper, a good digestion, are all
+factors of importance. But perhaps the best insurance against moodiness
+and melancholy was that strenuous activity which made them forget
+themselves, that energetic will-power which was the driving force in so
+many movements of the day.</p>
+
+<p>How many of the changes of last century were due to general tendencies,
+how far the single will of this man or that has seriously affected its
+history, it is impossible to estimate. To many it seems that the r&ocirc;le of
+the individual is played out. The spirit of the coming era is that of
+organized fellowship and associated effort. The State is to prescribe
+for all, and the units are, somehow, to be marshalled into their places
+by a higher collective will. Under the shadow of socialism the more
+ambitious may be tempted to quit the field of public service at home and
+to look to enterprises abroad&mdash;to resign poor England to a mechanical
+bureaucracy, a soulless uniformity where one man is as good as another.
+But it is difficult to believe that society can dispense with leaders,
+or afford to forget the lessons which may be learnt from the study of
+such noble lives. The Victorians had a robuster faith. Their faith and
+their achievements may help to banish such doubts to-day. As one of the
+few survivors of that Victorian era has lately said: 'Only those whose
+minds are numbed by the suspicion that all times are tolerably alike,
+and men and women much of a muchness, will deny that it was a generation
+of intrepid efforts forward.' Some fell in mid-combat: some survived to
+witness the eventual victory of their cause. For all might be claimed
+the funeral honours which Browning claimed for his Grammarian. They
+aimed high; they 'threw themselves on God': the mountain-tops are their
+appropriate resting-place.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THOMAS_CARLYLE" id="THOMAS_CARLYLE"></a>THOMAS CARLYLE</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1795-1881</p>
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1795.</td><td> Born at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, December 4.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1809.</td><td> Enters Edinburgh University.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1814-18.</td><td> Schoolmaster at Annan and Kirkcaldy. Friendship with Edward Irving.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1819-21.</td><td> Reading law and literature at Edinburgh and Mainhill.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1821.</td><td> First meeting with Jane Welsh at Haddington.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1822-3.</td><td> Tutorship in Buller family.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1824-5.</td><td> German literature, Goethe, <i>Life of Schiller</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1826.</td><td> October 17, marriage; residence at Comely Bank, Edinburgh.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1827.</td><td> Jeffrey's friendship; articles for <i>Edinburgh Review</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1828-34.</td><td> Craigenputtock, with intervals in London and Edinburgh; poverty; solitude; profound study; <i>Sartor Resartus</i> written; reading for <i>French Revolution</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1834.</td><td> Cheyne Row, Chelsea, permanent home.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1834.</td><td> Begins to read for, 1841 to write, <i>Cromwell</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1834-6.</td><td> <i>French Revolution</i> written; finished January 12, 1837.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1837-40.</td><td> Four courses of lectures in London. (German literature, <i>Heroes</i>.)</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1844.</td><td> Changes plan of, 1845 finishes writing, <i>Cromwell</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1846-51.</td><td> Studies Ireland and modern questions; <i>Latter-Day Pamphlets</i>, 1849.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1851.</td><td> Choice of Frederick the Great of Prussia for next subject.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1857.</td><td> Two vols. printed; 1865, rest finished and published.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1865.</td><td> Lord Rector of Edinburgh University.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1866.</td><td> Death of Mrs. Carlyle, April 21.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1867-9.</td><td> Prepares Memorials of his wife; friendship with Froude.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1870.</td><td> Loses the use of his right hand.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1874.</td><td> Refuses offer of Baronetcy or G.C.B.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1881.</td><td> Death at Chelsea, February 5; burial at Ecclefechan.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">THOMAS CARLYLE</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Prophet</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>North-west of Carlisle (from which town the Carlyle family in all
+probability first took their name), a little way along the border, the
+river Annan comes down its green<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> valley from the lowland hills to lose
+itself in the wide sands of the Solway Firth. At the foot of these hills
+is the village of Ecclefechan, some eight miles inland. Here in the wide
+irregular street, down the side of which flows a little beck, stands the
+grey cottage, built by the stonemason James Carlyle, where he lived with
+his second wife, Margaret Aitken; and here on December 4, 1795, the
+eldest of nine children, their son Thomas was born. There is little to
+redeem the place from insignificance; the houses are mostly mean, the
+position of the village is tame and commonplace. But if a visitor will
+mount the hills that lie to the north, turn southward and look over the
+wide expanse of land and water to the Cumbrian mountains, then, should
+he be fortunate enough to see the landscape in stormy and unsettled
+weather, he may realize why the land was so dear to its most famous son
+that he could return to it from year to year throughout his life and
+could there at all times soothe his most unquiet moods. Through all his
+years in London he remained a lowland Scot and was most at home in
+Annandale. With this district his fame is still bound up, as that of
+Walter Scott with the Tweed, or that of Wordsworth with the Lakes.</p>
+
+<p>In this humble household Thomas Carlyle first learnt what is meant by
+work, by truthfulness, and by reverence, lessons which he never forgot.
+He learnt to revere authority, to revere worth, and to revere something
+yet higher and more mysterious&mdash;the Unseen. In <i>Sartor Resartus</i> he
+describes how his hero was impressed by his parents' observance of
+religious duties. 'The highest whom I knew on earth I here saw bowed
+down with awe unspeakable before a Higher in Heaven; such things
+especially in infancy, reach inwards to the very core of your being.'
+His father was a man of unusual force of character and gifted with a
+wonderful power of speech, flashing out in picturesque metaphor, in
+biting satire, in humorous comment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> upon life. He had, too, the Scotch
+genius for valuing education; and it was he who decided that Tom, whose
+character he had observed, should have every chance that schooling could
+give him. His mother was a most affectionate, single-hearted, and
+religious woman; labouring for her family, content with her lot, her
+trust for her son unfailing, her only fear for him lest in his new
+learning he might fall away from the old Biblical faith which she held
+so firmly herself.</p>
+
+<p>Reading with his father or mother, lending a hand at housework when
+needed, nourishing himself on the simple oatmeal and milk which
+throughout life remained his favourite food, submitting himself
+instinctively to the stern discipline of the home, he passed, happily on
+the whole, through his childhood and soon outstripped his comrades in
+the village school. His success there led to his going in his tenth year
+to the grammar school at Annan; and before he reached his fourteenth
+year he trudged off on foot to Edinburgh to begin his studies at the
+university.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of young men caught up by express trains and deposited, by the
+aid of cabmen and porters, in a few hours in the sheltered courts of
+Oxford and Cambridge, we must imagine a party of boys, of fourteen or
+fifteen years old, trudging on foot twenty miles a day for five days
+across bleak country, sleeping at rough inns, and on their arrival
+searching for an attic in some bleak tenement in a noisy street. Here
+they were to live almost entirely on the baskets of home produce sent
+through the carriers at intervals by their thrifty parents. It was and
+is a Spartan discipline, and it turns out men who have shown their grit
+and independence in all lands where the British flag is flown.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest successes which Carlyle won, both at Annan and at
+Edinburgh, were in mathematics. His classical studies received little
+help from his professors, and his literary gifts were developed mostly
+by his own reading,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> and stimulated from time to time by talks with
+fellow students. Perhaps it was for his ultimate good that he was not
+brought under influences which might have guided him into more
+methodical courses and tamed his rugged originality. The universities
+cannot often be proved to have fostered kindly their poets and original
+men of letters; at least we may say that Edinburgh was a more kindly
+Alma Mater to Carlyle than Oxford and Cambridge proved to Shelley and
+Byron. His native genius, and the qualities which he inherited from his
+parents, were not starved in alien soil, but put out vigorous growth.
+From such letters to his friends as have survived, we can see what a
+power Carlyle had already developed of forcibly expressing his ideas and
+establishing an influence over others.</p>
+
+<p>He left the university at the age of nineteen, and the next twelve years
+of his life were of a most unsettled character. He made nearly as many
+false starts in life as Goldsmith or Coleridge, though he redeemed them
+nobly by his persistence in after years. In 1814 his family still
+regarded the ministry as his vocation, and Carlyle was himself quite
+undecided about it. To promote this idea the profession of schoolmaster
+was taken up for the time. He continued in it for more than six years,
+first at Annan and then at Kirkcaldy; but he was soon finding it
+uncongenial and rebelling against it. A few years later he tried reading
+law with no greater contentment; and in order to support himself he was
+reduced to teaching private pupils. The chief friend of this period was
+Edward Irving, the gifted preacher who afterwards, in London, came to
+tragic shipwreck. He was a native of Annan, five years older than
+Carlyle, and he had spent some time in preaching and preparing for the
+ministry. He was one of the few people who profoundly influenced
+Carlyle's life. At Kirkcaldy he was his constant companion, shared his
+tastes, lent him books, and kindled his powers of insight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> and judgement
+in many a country walk. Carlyle has left us records of this time in his
+<i>Reminiscences</i>, how he read the twelve volumes of Irving's <i>Gibbon</i> in
+twelve days, how he tramped through the Trossachs on foot, how in summer
+twilights he paced the long stretches of sand at Irving's side.</p>
+
+<p>It was Irving who in 1822 commended him to the Buller family, with whom
+he continued as tutor for two years. Charles Buller, the eldest son, was
+a boy of rare gifts and promise, worthy of such a teacher; and but for
+his untimely death in 1848 he might have won a foremost place in
+politics. The family proved valuable friends to Carlyle in after-life,
+besides enabling him at this time to live in comfort, with leisure for
+his own studies and some spare money to help his family. But for this
+aid, his brother Alexander would have fared ill with the farming, and
+John could never have afforded the training for the medical profession.</p>
+
+<p>Again, it was Irving who first took him to Haddington in 1821 and
+introduced him to Jane Baillie Welsh, his future wife. Irving's
+sincerity and sympathy, his earnest enthusiasm joined with the power of
+genuine laughter (always to Carlyle a mark of a true rich nature), made
+him through all these years a thoroughly congenial companion. He really
+understood Carlyle as few outside his family did, and he never grew
+impatient at Carlyle's difficulty in settling to a profession. 'Your
+mind,' he wrote, 'unfortunately for its present peace, has taken in so
+wide a range of study as to be almost incapable of professional
+trammels; and it has nourished so uncommon and so unyielding a
+character, as first unfits you for, and then disgusts you with, any
+accommodations which for so cultivated and so fertile a mind would
+easily procure favour and patronage.' Well might Carlyle in later days
+find a hero in tough old Samuel Johnson, whose sufferings were due to
+similar causes. The other source which kept the fire in him aglow
+through these difficult years was the confidence and affection of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+whole family, and the welcome which he always found at home.
+Disappointed though they were at his failure, as yet, to settle to a
+profession and to earn a steady income, for all that 'Tom' was to be a
+great man; and when he could find time to spend some months at Mainhill,
+or later at Scotsbrig,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> a room could always be found for him, hours of
+peace and solitude could be enjoyed, the most wholesome food, and the
+most cordial affection, were there rendered as loyal ungrudging tribute.
+But new ties were soon to be knit and a new chapter to be opened in his
+life.</p>
+
+<p>John Welsh of Haddington, who died before Carlyle met his future wife,
+was a surgeon and a man of remarkable gifts; and his daughter could
+trace her descent to such famous Scotsmen as Wallace and John Knox. Her
+own mental powers were great, and her vivacity and charming manners
+caused her to shine in society wherever she was. She had an unquestioned
+supremacy among the ladies of Haddington and many had been the suitors
+for her hand. When Irving had given her lessons there, love had sprung
+up between tutor and pupil, but this budding romance ended tragically in
+1822. Before meeting her he had been engaged to another lady; and when a
+new appointment gave him a sure income, he was held to his bond and was
+forced to crush down his passion and to take farewell of Miss Welsh. At
+what date Carlyle conceived the hope of making her his wife it is
+difficult to say. Her beauty and wit seem to have done their work
+quickly in his case; but she was not one to give her affections readily,
+for all the intellectual sympathy which united them. In 1823 she was
+contemplating marriage, but had made no promise; in 1824 she had
+accepted the idea of marrying him, but in 1825 she still scouted the
+conditions in which he proposed to live. His position was precarious,
+his projects visionary,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> and his immediate desire was to settle on a
+lonely farm, where he could devote himself to study, if she would do the
+household drudgery. Because his mother whom he loved and honoured was
+content to lead this life, he seemed to think that his wife could do the
+same; but her nature and her rearing were not those of the Carlyles and
+their Annandale neighbours. It involved a complete renunciation of the
+comforts of life and the social position which she enjoyed; and much
+though she admired his talents and enjoyed his company, she was not in
+that passion of love which could lift her to such heights of
+self-sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>By this time we can begin to discern in his letters the outline of his
+character&mdash;his passionate absorption in study, his moodiness, his fits
+of despondency, his intense irritability; his incapacity to master his
+own tongue and temper. In happy moments he shows great tenderness of
+feeling for those whom he loves or pities; but this alternates with
+inconsiderate clamour and loud complaints deafening the ears of all
+about him, provoked often by slight and even imaginary grievances. It is
+the artistic nature run riot, and that in one who preached silence and
+stoicism as the chief virtues&mdash;an inconsistency which has amused and
+disgusted generations of readers. It was impossible for him to do his
+work with the regular method, the equable temper, of a Southey or a
+Scott. In dealing with history he must image the past to himself most
+vividly before he could expound his subject; and that effort and strain
+cost him sleepless nights and days of concentrated thought. Nor was he
+an easier companion when his work was finished and he could take his
+ease. Then life seemed empty and profitless; and in its emptiness his
+voice echoed all the louder. The ill was within him, and outward
+circumstances were powerless to affect his nature.</p>
+
+<p>At this time he was chiefly occupied in reading German literature and
+spreading the knowledge of it among his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> countrymen. After Coleridge he
+was the first of our literary men to appreciate the poets and mystics of
+Germany, and he did more even than Coleridge to make Englishmen familiar
+with them. He acquired at this time a knowledge of French and Italian
+literature too; but the philosophy of Kant and the writings of Goethe
+and Schiller roused him to greater enthusiasm. From Kant he learnt that
+the guiding principle of conduct was not happiness, but the 'categorical
+imperative' of duty; from Goethe he drew such hopefulness as gleams
+occasionally through his despondent utterances on the progress of the
+human race. He translated Goethe's novel, <i>Wilhelm Meister</i>, in 1823,
+and followed it up with the <i>Life of Schiller</i>. There was no
+considerable sale for either of these books till his lectures in London
+and his established fame roused a demand for all he had written. In
+these days he was practising for the profession of a man of letters, and
+was largely influenced by personal ambition and the desire to earn an
+income which would make him independent; he was not yet fired with a
+mission, or kindled to white heat.</p>
+
+<p>His long courtship was rewarded in October 1826. When the marriage took
+place the bride was twenty-five years old and the bridegroom thirty. Men
+of letters have not the reputation of making ideal husbands, and the
+qualities to which this is due were possessed by Carlyle in exaggerated
+measure. It was a perilous enterprise for any one to live with him, most
+of all for such a woman, delicately bred, nervous, and highly strung.
+She was aware of this, and was prepared for a large measure of
+self-denial; but she could not have foreseen how severe she would find
+the trial. The morbid sensitiveness of Carlyle to his own pains and
+troubles, so often imaginary, joined with his inconsiderate blindness to
+his wife's real sufferings, led to many heart-burnings. If she
+contributed to them, in some degree, by her wilfulness, jealous temper,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+and sharpness of tongue, ill-health and solitude may well excuse her.</p>
+
+<p>His own confessions, made after her death, are coloured by sorrow and
+deep affection: no doubt he paints his own conduct in hues darker than
+the truth demands. Shallow critics have sneered at the picture of the
+philosopher whose life was so much at variance with his creed, and too
+much has, perhaps, been written about the subject. If reference must be
+made to such a well-worn tale, it is best to let Carlyle's own account
+stand as he wished it to stand. His moral worth has been vindicated in a
+hundred ways, not least by his humility and honesty about himself, and
+can bear the test of time.</p>
+
+<p>For the first two years of married life Carlyle's scheme of living on a
+farm was kept at bay by his wife, and their home was at Edinburgh.
+Carlyle refers to this as the happiest period of his life, though he did
+not refrain from loud laments upon occasions. The good genius of the
+household was Jeffrey, the famous editor of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, who
+was distantly related to Mrs. Carlyle. He made friends with the
+newly-married pair, opened a path for them into the society of the
+capital, and enabled Carlyle to spread the knowledge of German authors
+in the <i>Review</i> and to make his bow before a wider public. The prospects
+of the little household seemed brighter, but, by generously making over
+all her money to her mother, his wife had crippled its resources; and
+Carlyle was of so difficult a humour that neither Jeffrey nor any one
+else could guide his steps for long. Living was precarious; society made
+demands even on a modest household, and in 1828 he at length had his way
+and persuaded his wife to remove to Craigenputtock. It was in the
+loneliness of the moors that Carlyle was to come to his full stature and
+to develop his astonishing genius.</p>
+
+<p>Craigenputtock was a farm belonging to his wife's family,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> lying seventy
+feet above the sea, sixteen miles from Dumfries, among desolate moors
+and bogs, and fully six miles from the nearest village. 'The house is
+gaunt and hungry-looking. It stands with the scanty fields attached as
+an island in a sea of morass. The landscape is unredeemed either by
+grace or grandeur, mere undulating hills of grass and heather with peat
+bogs in the hollows between them.' So Froude describes the home where
+the Carlyles were to spend six years, the wife in domestic labours, in
+solitude, in growing ill-health, the husband in omnivorous reading, in
+digesting the knowledge that he gathered, in transmuting it and marking
+it with the peculiar stamp of his genius. There was no true
+companionship over the work. As the moorland gave the fresh air and
+stillness required, so the wife might nourish the physical frame with
+wholesome digestible food and save him from external cares; the rest
+must be done by lonely communing with himself. He needed no Fleet Street
+taverns or literary salons to encourage him. Goethe, with whom he
+exchanged letters and compliments at times, said with rare insight that
+he 'had in himself an originating principle of conviction, out of which
+he could develop the force that lay in him unassisted by other men'.</p>
+
+<p>Few were the interruptions from without. His fame was not yet
+established. In any case pilgrims would have to undertake a very rough
+journey, and the fashion of such pilgrimages had hardly begun. But in
+1833 from distant America came one disciple, afterwards to be known as
+the famous author Ralph Waldo Emerson; and he has left us in his
+<i>English Traits</i> a vivid record of his impression of two or three famous
+men of letters whom he saw. He describes Carlyle as 'tall and gaunt,
+with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary
+powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent
+with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> a streaming
+humour, which floated everything he looked upon'.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>Much of his time was given to reading about the French Revolution, which
+was to be the subject of his greatest literary triumph. But the
+characteristic work of this period is <i>Sartor Resartus</i> ('The tailor
+patched anew'), in which Carlyle, under a thin German disguise, reveals
+himself to the world, with his views on the customs and ways of society
+and his contempt for all the pretensions and absurdities which they
+involved. In many places it is extravagant and fantastic, as when 'the
+most remarkable incident in modern history' proves to be George Fox the
+Quaker making a suit of leather to render himself independent of
+tailors; in others it rises to the highest pitch of poetry, as in the
+sympathetic lament over the hardships of manual labour. 'Venerable to me
+is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a
+cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet.
+Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with
+its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. O,
+but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity
+as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so
+bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert
+our Conscript on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so
+marred.' It is through such passages that Carlyle has won his way to the
+hearts of many who care little for history, or for German literature.</p>
+
+<p>The book evidently contains much that is autobiographical, and helps us
+to understand Carlyle's childhood and youth; but it is so mixed up with
+fantasy and humour that it is difficult to separate fiction from fact.
+Its chief aim seems to be the overthrow of cant, the ridiculing of
+empty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> conventions, and the preaching of sincerity and independence. But
+not yet was Carlyle's generation prepared to listen to such sermons.
+Jeffrey was bewildered by the tone and offended at the style; publisher
+after publisher refused it; and when at length it was launched upon the
+world piecemeal in <i>Fraser's Magazine</i>, the reading public either
+ignored it or abused it in the roundest terms. During all this time
+Carlyle was anxiously looking for some surer means of livelihood, and
+had not yet decided that literature was to be his profession. He had
+hopes at different times of professorships in Edinburgh and St. Andrews,
+and of the editorship of various reviews; but these all came to nothing.
+For some posts he was not suited; for others his application could find
+no support. He even thought of going to America, where Emerson and other
+admirers would have welcomed him. But the disappointments in Scotland
+decided him to make one more effort in London before accepting defeat,
+and in 1834 he found a house at Chelsea and prepared to quit his
+hermitage among the moors.</p>
+
+<p>Cheyne Row, Chelsea, was to be his new home, a quiet street running
+northward from the riverside in a quarter of London not then invaded by
+industrialism. The house, No. 24, with its little garden, has been made
+into a Carlyle museum, and may still be seen on the east side of the
+street facing a few survivors of the sturdy old pollarded lime-trees
+standing there 'like giants in Tawtie wigs'. His bust, by Boehm, is in
+the garden on the Embankment not a hundred yards away. With this
+district are connected other names famous in literature and art, but its
+presiding genius is the 'Sage of Chelsea', who spent the last
+forty-seven years of his life in it; and there, in a double-walled room,
+in spite of trivial disturbances from without, in spite of far more
+serious fits of dejection and discontent within, he composed his three
+greatest historical books. At the outset his prospects were not bright,
+and at the end of 1834 he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> confessed 'it is now twenty-three months
+since I earned a penny by the craft of literature'. There was need of
+much faith; and it was fortunate for him that he had at his side one who
+believed in his genius and who was well qualified to judge. He must have
+been thinking of this when he wrote of Mahomet in <i>Heroes</i> and of the
+prophet's gratitude to his first wife Kadijah: 'She believed in me when
+none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one friend and she
+was that!' In the same place he quoted the German writer Novalis: 'It is
+certain my conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will
+believe in it.'</p>
+
+<p>So fortified, he worked through the days of poverty and gloom, with
+groans and outbursts of fury, kindling to white heat as he imaged to
+himself the men and events of the French Revolution, and throwing them
+on to paper in lurid pictures of flame. One terrible misadventure
+chilled his spirit in 1835, when the manuscript of the first volume was
+lent to J. S. Mill, and was accidentally burnt; but, after a short fit
+of despair, he set manfully to work to repair the loss, and the new
+version was finished in January, 1837. This book marked an epoch in the
+writing of history. Hitherto few had realized what potent force there
+was in the original documents lying stored in libraries and record
+offices. They were 'live shells' buried in the dust of a neglected
+magazine; and in the hands of Carlyle they came to life again and worked
+havoc among the traditional judgements of history. This book was also
+the turning point in his career. Dickens, Thackeray, and others hailed
+it with enthusiasm; gradually it made its way with the public at large;
+and as in the following years Carlyle, prompted by some friends, gave
+successful courses of lectures,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> his position among men of letters
+became assured, and he had no more need to worry over money. Living in
+London he became known to a wider circle, and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> marvellous powers of
+conversation brought visitors and invitations in larger measure than he
+desired. The new friends whom he valued most were Mr. and Lady Harriet
+Baring,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> and he was often their guest in London, in Surrey, in
+Scotland, and later at The Grange in Hampshire. But he remained faithful
+to his older and more humble friends, while he also made himself
+accessible to young men of letters who seemed anxious to learn, and who
+did not offend one or other of his many prejudices. Such were Sterling,
+Ruskin, Tennyson, and James Anthony Froude.</p>
+
+<p>Despite these successes Carlyle's letters at this time are full of the
+usual discontents. London life and society stimulated him for the time,
+but he paid dearly for it. Late dinners and prolonged bouts of talk, in
+which he put forth all his powers, were followed by dyspepsia and
+lassitude next day; and the neighbours, who kept dogs or cocks which
+were accused of disturbing his slumbers, were the mark for many plaints
+and lamentations. He could not in any circumstances be entirely happy.
+Work was so exciting with the imagination on fire, that it kept him
+awake at night; idleness was still more fatal in its effects. And so,
+after a few years of relative calm, in 1839 we find his active brain
+struggling to create a true picture of Oliver Cromwell and to expound
+the meaning of the Great Civil War.</p>
+
+<p>It was to be no easy task. For nearly five years he was to wrestle with
+the subject, trying in vain to give it adequate shape and form, and then
+to scrap the labours of years and to start again on a new plan; but in
+the end he was to win another signal victory. While the <i>French
+Revolution</i> may be the higher artistic triumph, <i>Cromwell</i> is more
+important for one who wishes to understand the life-work of Carlyle and
+all for which he stood. The emptiness of political theories and
+institutions, the enduring value of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> character, are lessons which no one
+has preached more forcibly. In his opinion the success of the English
+revolution, the blow to tyranny and misgovernment in Church and State,
+was not due to eloquent members of the Long Parliament, but to plain
+God-fearing men, who, if they quoted scripture, did so not from
+hypocrisy but because it was the language in which they habitually
+thought. Nor could they build up a new England till they had found a
+leader. It was the ages which had faith to recognize their worthiest man
+and to accept his guidance which had achieved great things in the world,
+not those which prated of democracy and progress. To make his
+countrymen, in this age of fluent political talk, see the true moral
+quality of the men of the seventeenth century&mdash;this it was which
+occupied seven years of Carlyle's life and filled his thoughts. It was
+indeed a labour of Hercules. Much of the material was lost beyond
+repair, much buried in voluminous folios and State papers, much obscured
+by the cant and prejudice of eighteenth-century authors. To recall the
+past, Carlyle needed such help as geography would give him, and he spent
+many days in visiting Dunbar, Worcester, and other sites. To Naseby he
+went in 1842, in company with Dr. Arnold, and 'plucked two gowans and a
+cowslip from the burial heaps of the slain'. A more important task was
+to recover authentic utterances of Cromwell and his fellow workers, and
+to put these in the place of the second-hand judgements of political
+partisans; and this involved laborious researches in libraries. Above
+all, he had to interpret these records in a new spirit, exercising true
+insight and sympathy, to put life into the dry bones and to present his
+readers with the living image of a man. He combined in unique fashion
+the laborious research of a student with the moral fervour of a prophet.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the strain of these labours Carlyle showed few signs of his
+fifty years. The family were of tough stock;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> and the years which he had
+spent in moorland air had increased the capital of health on which he
+could draw. The flight of time was chiefly marked by his growing
+antipathy to the political movements of the day, and by a growing
+despondency about the future. People might buy his books; but he looked
+in vain for evidence that they paid heed to the lessons which he
+preached. The year of revolutions, 1848, followed by the setting up of
+the French Empire and the collapse of the Roman Republic, produced
+nothing but disappointment, and he became louder and more bitter in his
+judgements on democracy. 1849 saw the birth of the <i>Latter-Day
+Pamphlets</i> in which he outraged Mill and the Radicals by his scornful
+words about Negro Emancipation, and by the savage delight with which he
+shattered their idols. He loved to expose what seemed to him the
+sophistries involved in the conventional praise of liberty. Of old the
+mediaeval serf or the negro slave had some one who was responsible for
+him, some one interested in his physical well-being. The new conditions
+too often meant nothing but liberty to starve, liberty to be idle,
+liberty to slip back into the worst indulgences, while those who might
+have governed stood by regardless and lent no help. Such from an extreme
+point of view appeared the policy of <i>laisser-faire</i>; and he was neither
+moderate nor impartial in stating his case. 'An idle white gentleman is
+not pleasant to me;... but what say you to an idle black gentleman, with
+his rum bottle in his hand,... no breeches on his body, pumpkin at
+discretion, and the fruitfullest region of the earth going back to
+jungle round him?' In a similar vein he dealt with stump oratory, prison
+reform, and other subjects, tilting in reckless fashion at the shields
+of the reforming Radicals of the day; nor was he less outspoken when he
+met in person the champions of these views. A letter to his wife in 1847
+tells of a visit to the Brights at Rochdale; how 'John<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> and I discorded
+in our views not a little', and how 'I shook peaceable Brightdom as with
+a passing earthquake'. From books he could learn: to human teachers he
+proved refractory. Had he been more willing to listen to others, his
+judgements on contemporary events might have been more valuable. All his
+life he was, as George Meredith says, 'Titanic rather than Olympian, a
+heaver of rocks, not a shaper'; and this fever of denunciation grew with
+advancing years. But with these spurts of volcanic energy alternate
+moods of the deepest depression. His journal for 1850 says, 'This seems
+really the Nadir of my fortunes; and in hope, desire, or outlook, so far
+as common mortals reckon such, I never was more bankrupt. Lonely, shut
+up within my contemptible and yet <i>not</i> deliberately ignoble self,
+perhaps there never was, in modern literary or other history, a more
+solitary soul, <i>capable</i> of any friendship or honest relation to
+others.' By this time he was feeling the need of another task, and in
+1851 he chose Frederick the Great of Prussia for the subject of his next
+book.</p>
+
+<p>To this generation apology seems to be needed for an English author who
+lavishes so much admiration on Prussian men and institutions. But
+Carlyle, whose chief heroes had been men of intense religious
+convictions, like Luther, Knox, and Cromwell, could find no hero after
+his heart in English history subsequent to the Civil War. Eloquent Pitts
+and Burkes, jobbing Walpoles and Pelhams, were to him types of
+politicians who had brought England to her present plight. German
+literature had always kept its influence over him and had directed his
+attention to German history; Frederick, without religion as he was,
+seemed at any rate sincere, recognized facts, and showed practical
+capacity for ruling (essential elements in the Carlylean hero), and the
+subject would be new to his readers. The labour involved was stupendous;
+it was to fill his life and the lives of his helpers for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> thirteen
+years. Of these helpers the chief credit is due to Joseph Neuberg, who
+piloted him over German railways, libraries, and battle-fields in the
+search for picturesque detail, and to Henry Larkin, who toiled in London
+to trace references in scores of authors, and who finally crowned the
+work by laborious indexing, which made Carlyle's labyrinth accessible to
+his readers. There were masses of material hidden away and unsifted;
+and, as in the case of Cromwell, only a man of original genius could
+penetrate this inert mass with shafts of light and make the past live
+again. The task grew as he continued his researches. He groped his way
+back to the beginning of the Hohenzollerns, and sketched the portraits
+of the old Electors in a style unequalled for vividness and humour. He
+drew a full-length portrait of Frederick William, most famous of
+drill-sergeants, and he studied the campaigns of his son with a
+thoroughness which has been a model to soldiers and civilians ever
+since. We have the record of two tours which he made in Germany to view
+the scene of operations;<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> and it is amazing how exact a picture he
+could bring away from a short visit to each separate battle-field. His
+diligence, accuracy, and wide grasp of the subject satisfied the
+severest judges; and the book won him a success as complete and enduring
+in Germany as in England and America.</p>
+
+<p>When this was finished, Carlyle was on the verge of seventy and his work
+was done; though the evening of his life was long, his strength was
+exhausted. His wife lived just long enough to see the seal set upon his
+fame, and to hear of his election to be Lord Rector of Edinburgh
+University. But in April 1866, while he was in Scotland for his
+installation, which she was too weak to attend, he heard the news of her
+sudden death from heart failure in London; and after this he was a
+broken man. By reading<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> her journal he learnt, too late, how much his
+own inconsiderate temper had added to her trials, and his remorse was
+bitter and lasting. He shut himself off from all his friends except
+Froude, who was to be his literary executor, and gave himself to
+collecting and annotating the memorials which she had left. Each letter
+is followed by some words of tender recollection or some cry of
+self-reproach. He has erected to her the most singular of literary
+monuments, morbid perhaps, but inspired by a feeling which was in his
+case natural and sincere.</p>
+
+<p>About 1870 he began to lose the use of his right hand and he found it
+impossible to compose by dictation. Of the last years of his life there
+is little to narrate. The offer of a baronetcy or the G.C.B. from Mr.
+Disraeli in 1874 pleased him for the moment, but he resolutely refused
+external honours. He took daily walks with Froude, daily drives when he
+became too weak to go on foot. Towards the end the Bible and Shakespeare
+were his most habitual reading. He had long ceased to be a member of any
+church, but his belief in God and in God's working in history was the
+very foundation of his being, and the lessons of the Bible were to him
+inexhaustible and ever new. Death came to him peacefully in February,
+1881; and as he had expressed a definite wish, he was buried at
+Ecclefechan, though a public funeral in the Abbey was offered and its
+acceptance would have met with the approval of his countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>The very wealth of records makes it difficult to judge his character
+fairly. Few men have so laid bare the thoughts and feelings of their
+hearts. It is easy to blame the unmanly laments which he utters over his
+health, his solitude, and his sufferings, real or imaginary; few
+imaginative writers have the every-day virtues. His egotism, too, is
+difficult to defend. If, as he himself admits, he invariably took an
+undue share of talk, often in fact monopolizing it, wherever he was, we
+must remember that the brilliance of his gifts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> was admitted by all;
+less pardonable is his habit of disparaging other men, and especially
+other men of letters. His pen-pictures of Mill, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
+and others, are wonderfully vivid but too often sour in flavour; his
+sketch of Charles Lamb is an outrage on that generous and kindly soul.
+Too often he was unconscious of the pain given by such random words.
+When he was brought to book, he was honourable enough to recant. Fearing
+on one occasion to have offended even the serene loyalty of Emerson, he
+cries out protestingly, 'Has not the man Emerson, from old years, been a
+Human Friend to me? Can I ever forget, or think otherwise than lovingly
+of the man Emerson?'</p>
+
+<p>But whatever offence Carlyle committed with his ungovernable tongue or
+pen, he had rare virtues in conduct. His generosity was as unassuming as
+it was persistent; and it began at home. Long before he was free from
+anxieties about money for himself, he was helping two of his brothers to
+make a career, one in agriculture, and the other in medicine. In his
+latter days he regularly gave away large sums in such a way that no one
+knew the source from which they came. His letters show a deep tenderness
+of affection for his mother, his wife, and others of the family; and the
+humble Annandale home was always in his thoughts. His charity embraced
+even those whose claim on him was but indirect. When his wife was dead,
+he could remember to celebrate her birthday by sending a present to her
+old nurse. He was scrupulous in money-dealing and frugal in all matters
+of personal comfort; in his innermost thoughts he was always
+pure-hearted and sincere; for nothing on earth would he traffic in his
+independence or in adherence to the truth.</p>
+
+<p>His style has not largely influenced other historians; and this is as
+well, since imitations of it easily fall into mere obscurity and
+extravagance. But his historical method<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> has been of great value, the
+patient study of original authorities, the copious references quoted,
+the careful indexing, all being proof how anxious he was that the
+subject should be presented clearly and veraciously, rather than that
+the books should shine as literary performances. How far the principles
+which he valued and taught have spread it is difficult to say. Party
+politicians still appeal to the sacred name of liberty without inquiring
+what true liberty means; publicists still speak as if the material gains
+of modern life, cheap food and machine-made products, meant nothing but
+advance in the history of the human race; but there are others who look
+to the spiritual factors and wish to enlarge the bounds of political
+economy.</p>
+
+<p>The writings of Carlyle, and of Ruskin, on whom fell the prophet's
+mantle, certainly made their influence felt in later books devoted to
+that once 'dismal' science. Few can be quite indifferent to the man or
+to his message. Those who demand moderation, clearness, and Attic
+simplicity, will be repelled by his extravagances or by his mysticism.
+Others will be attracted by his glowing imagination and by his fiery
+eloquence, and will reserve for him a foremost place in their
+affections. These will echo the words which Emerson was heard to say on
+his death-bed, when his eyes fell on a portrait of the familiar rugged
+features, '<i>That</i> is the man, my man'.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="peel" id="peel"></a><img src="images/peel.jpg" alt="SIR ROBERT PEEL" />
+<br /><span class="smcap">sir robert peel</span><br />
+From the painting by J. Linnell in the National Portrait Gallery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIR_ROBERT_PEEL" id="SIR_ROBERT_PEEL"></a>SIR ROBERT PEEL</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1788-1850</p>
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1788.</td><td> Born near Bury, Lancashire, July 5.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1801-4.</td><td> Harrow School.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1805.</td><td> Christ Church, Oxford.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1809.</td><td> M.P. for Cashel, Ireland.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1811.</td><td> Under-Secretary for the Colonies.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1812-18.</td><td> Chief Secretary for Ireland.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1817.</td><td> M.P. for Oxford University.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1819.</td><td> President of Bullion Committee.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1820.</td><td> Marriage to Julia, daughter of General Sir John Floyd.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1822-7.</td><td> Home Secretary in Lord Liverpool's Government.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1827.</td><td> Canning's short ministry and death.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1828-30.</td><td> Home Secretary and leader in Commons under the Duke of Wellington.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1829.</td><td> Catholic Emancipation carried.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1832.</td><td> Lord Grey's Reform Bill carried.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1834-5.</td><td> Prime Minister; Tamworth manifesto.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1839.</td><td> 'Bedchamber Plot': Peel fails to form ministry.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1841-6.</td><td> Prime Minister a second time.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1844.</td><td> Peel's Bank Act.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1846.</td><td> Corn Laws repealed. Peel, defeated on Irish Coercion Bill, resigns.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1850.</td><td> Accident, June 29, and death, July 2.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">SIR ROBERT PEEL</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Statesman</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>In the years that lay between the Treaty of Utrecht and the close of the
+Napoleonic wars British politics were largely dominated by Walpole and
+the two Pitts: their great figures only stand out in stronger relief
+because their place was filled for a time by such weak ministers as
+Newcastle and Bute, as Grafton and North. In the nineteenth century
+there were many gifted statesmen who held the position of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> first
+minister of the Crown. Disraeli and Palmerston by shrewdness and force
+of character, Canning and Derby by brilliant oratorical gifts, Russell
+and Aberdeen by earnest devotion to public service, were all commanding
+figures in their day, whose claims to the chieftainship of a party and
+of a government were generally admitted. Gladstone, the most versatile
+genius of them all, had abilities second to none; but his place in
+history will for long be a subject of acute controversy. He stands too
+close to our own time to be fairly judged. Of the others no one had the
+same combination of gifts as Sir Robert Peel, no one had in the same
+measure that particular knowledge, judgement, and ability which
+characterize the <i>statesman</i>. His career was the most fruitful, his work
+the most enduring: he has left his mark in English history to a degree
+which no one of his rivals can equal.</p>
+
+<p>The Peel family can be traced back to the misty days of Danish inroads.
+Its original home in England is disputed between Yorkshire and
+Lancashire; but as early as the days of Elizabeth the branch from which
+our statesman was descended is certainly to be found at Blackburn, and
+its members lived for generations as sturdy yeomen of that district. The
+first of them known to strike out an independent line was his
+grandfather, Robert Peel, who with his brother-in-law, Mr. Haworth,
+started the first firm for calico-printing in Lancashire about the year
+1760, ceasing the practice of sending the material to be printed in
+France. This grandfather was a type of the men who were making the new
+England, leading the way in the creation of industries that were to
+transform the North and Midlands. The business prospered and he moved
+from Blackburn to Burton-on-Trent, where he built three new mills. His
+third son, named Robert, was also gifted with resource. Beginning as a
+member of the family firm, he soon came to be its chief director, and
+added another branch at Tamworth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> where later he built the house of
+Drayton Manor, the family seat in the nineteenth century. He was a Tory
+and a staunch follower of the younger Pitt, who rewarded his services
+with a baronetcy in 1800. He too was a typical man of his age and class,
+an age of material progress and expansion, a class full of
+self-confidence and animated by a spirit of stubborn resistance to
+so-called un-English ideas. His eldest son, the third Robert and the
+second baronet, is our subject. It is impossible to grasp the springs of
+his conduct unless we know what traditions he inherited from his
+forbears.</p>
+
+<p>Peel's education was begun at home with a specific purpose. Though his
+father had every reason to be satisfied with his own success, for his
+son he cherished a yet higher ambition and one which he did not conceal.
+He said openly that he intended him to be Prime Minister of his country.
+The knowledge of this provoked many jests among the boy's friends and
+caused him no slight embarrassment. It conspired with the shyness and
+reserve, which were innate in him, to win him from the outset a
+reputation for pride and aloofness. If he had not been forced to mix
+with those of his own age, and if he had not resolutely set himself to
+overcome this feeling, he might have grown into a student and a recluse.
+Both at school and college he did 'attend to his book': at Harrow he
+roused the greatest hopes. His brilliant schoolfellow, Lord Byron, while
+claiming to excel him in general information and history, admits that
+Peel was greatly his superior as a scholar. The working of their minds,
+now and afterwards, was curiously different. Bagehot<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> illustrates the
+contrast by a striking metaphor: Byron's mind, he says, worked by
+momentary eruptions of volcanic force from within and then relapsed into
+inactivity. Peel on the other hand steadily accumulated knowledge and
+opinions, his mind receiving impressions from outward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> experience like
+the alluvial soil deposited by a river in its course. But this is to
+anticipate. At Oxford Peel was the first man to win a 'Double First'
+(i.e. a first class both in classics and mathematics), in which
+distinction Gladstone alone, among our Prime Ministers, equalled him.
+But he also found time during the term to indulge in cricket, in rowing,
+and in riding, while in the vacation he developed a more marked taste
+for shooting, and thus freed himself from the charge of being a mere
+bookworm. He was good-looking, rather a dandy in his dress, stiff in his
+manner, regular in his habits, conforming to the Oxford standards of
+excellence and as yet showing few signs of independence of character.</p>
+
+<p>Peel went into Parliament early, after the fashion of the day. He was
+twenty-one when, in 1809, a seat was offered him at Cashel in Ireland.
+The system of 'rotten boroughs' had many faults&mdash;our text-books of
+history do not spare it&mdash;but it may claim to have offered an easy way
+into Parliament for some men of brilliant talents. Peel's family
+connexions and his own training marked out the path for him. It was
+difficult for the young Oxford prizeman not to follow Lord Chancellor
+Eldon, that stout survival of the high old Tories: it was impossible for
+his father's son not to sit behind the successors of Pitt. We shall see
+how far his own reasoning powers and clear vision led him from this
+path; but the early influences were never quite effaced. His first
+patron was Lord Liverpool, to whom he became private secretary in the
+following year. This nobleman, described by Disraeli in a famous passage
+as an 'arch-mediocrity' was Prime Minister for fifteen years. He owed
+his long tenure of office largely to the tolerance with which he allowed
+his abler lieutenants to usurp his power: perhaps he owed it still more
+to the victories which Wellington was then winning abroad and which
+secured the confidence of the country; but at least he seems to have
+been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> a good judge of men. In 1811 he promoted Peel to be
+Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and in 1812 to be Chief Secretary for
+Ireland. His abilities must have made a great impression to win him such
+promotion: he must have had plenty of self-confidence to undertake such
+duties, for he was only twenty-four years old. We are accustomed to-day
+to under-secretaries of forty or forty-five; but we must remember that
+the younger Pitt led the House of Commons at twenty-four and was Prime
+Minister at twenty-five.</p>
+
+<p>At Dublin Castle Peel was not expected to deal with the great political
+questions which convulsed Parliament at different periods of the
+century. He had to administer the law. It was routine work of a tedious
+and difficult kind; it involved the close study of facts&mdash;not in order
+to make a showy speech or to win a case for the moment, but in order to
+frame practical measures which would stand the test of time. Peel
+eschewed the usual recreations of Dublin society, and flung himself into
+his work whole-heartedly. In Roman history we see how Caesar was trained
+in the details of administration as quaestor, aedile, praetor, consul,
+while Pompeius passed in a lordly progress from one high command to
+another; how Caesar voluntarily exiled himself from Rome for ten years
+to conquer and develop Gaul, while Cicero bewailed himself over a few
+months' absence from the Forum. Of these three famous men only one
+proved himself able to guide the ship of state in stormy waters. Analogy
+must not be too closely pressed; but we see that, while Canning for all
+his ability established no durable influence, and his oratory burnt
+itself out after a brief blaze, while Wellington's fame paled year after
+year from his inability to control the course of civil strife, Peel's
+light burnt brighter every decade, as he rose from office to office and
+faced one difficult situation after another with coolness and success.
+He stayed at his post in Dublin for six years: he worked at the details
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> his office&mdash;education, agriculture, and police&mdash;and brought in many
+practical reforms. His beneficial activity is still better seen in the
+years 1821 to 1827 when he was Home Secretary. To-day he is chiefly
+remembered as the eponymous hero of our police; but in many other ways
+his tenure of the latter office is a landmark in departmental work. It
+may be that he originated little himself: that Romilly was the pioneer
+in the humanizing of law, that Horner taught him the doctrines of sound
+finance, that Huskisson led the way in freeing trade from the shackles
+with which it had been bound. But Peel in all these cases lent generous
+support and made their cause his own. He had a cool head and a warm
+heart, a knowledge of Parliament and an influence in Parliament already
+unrivalled. He saw what could be done, and how it could be done, and so
+he was able to push through successfully the reforms which his
+colleagues initiated. The value of his work in this sphere has never
+been seriously contested.</p>
+
+<p>The point on which Peel's enemies fastened in judging his career was the
+number of times that he changed his convictions, abandoned his party,
+and carried through a measure which he himself had formerly opposed. To
+understand his claim to be called a great statesman it is particularly
+necessary to study these changes.</p>
+
+<p>The first instance was the Reform of the Currency. Early in the French
+wars the London banks had been in difficulties. The Government was
+forced to borrow large sums from the Bank of England in order to give
+subsidies to our allies, and was unable to pay its debts. The Bank could
+not at the same time meet the demands of the Government and the claims
+of its private customers. Since a panic might at any moment cause an
+unprecedented run on its reserves, Pitt suspended cash payments till six
+months after the conclusion of peace. The Bank was thus allowed to
+circulate notes without being obliged to pay full cash value for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> them
+immediately on demand, and the purchasing power of these notes tended to
+vary far more than that of a metal currency. Also foreigners refused to
+accept a pound note in the place of a pound sterling; foreign payments
+had to be made in specie, and the gold was rapidly drained abroad. When
+the war was over, Horner and other economists began to draw attention to
+the bad effect of this on foreign trade and to the varying price of
+commodities at home, due to the want of a fixed currency. As Pitt had
+allowed the system of inconvertible paper, the Tories generally
+applauded and were ready to perpetuate it. The elder Sir Robert Peel had
+been always a firm supporter of these views and his son began by
+accepting them. He continued to acquiesce in them till his attention was
+definitely turned to the subject. In 1819 he was asked to be a member of
+a committee of very eminent men, including Canning and Mackintosh, which
+was to investigate the question, and he was elected chairman of it. But,
+though his verdict was taken for granted by his party, his mind was so
+constituted that he could not shut it against evidence. He listened to
+arguments, and judged them fairly; and, being by nature unable to palter
+with the truth, once he was convinced of it, he threw in all his weight
+with the reformers and reported in favour of a return to cash payments.
+History has vindicated his judgement, and he himself crowned his
+financial work by the famous Bank Act of 1844, passed when he was Prime
+Minister.</p>
+
+<p>The second question on which Peel's conduct surprised his colleagues was
+that of Catholic Emancipation. Since 1793 Roman Catholic electors had
+the parliamentary vote; but, since no Roman Catholic could sit in
+Parliament, they had hitherto been content to cast their votes for the
+more tolerant of the Protestant candidates. Pitt had failed to induce
+George III to grant the Catholics civil equality, and George IV, despite
+his liberal professions, took up the same attitude as his father on
+succeeding to the throne. But the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> majority of the Whigs, and some even
+of the Tories, such as Castlereagh and Canning, were prepared to make
+concessions; and since 1820 the Irish agitation led by O'Connell had
+been gaining in strength. Peel had several reasons for being on the
+other side. His early training by his father, his friendship with Eldon
+and Wellington, his attachment to the Established Church, all had
+influence upon him. He saw clearly that Disestablishment would follow
+closely in Ireland on the granting of the Catholic demands; and since
+1817, when he became Member for Oxford University, he felt bound to
+resist this. In taking this line he was no better and no worse than any
+other Tory member of the day; and in later times many politicians have
+allowed their traditions and prejudices to blind them to the existence
+of an Irish problem.</p>
+
+<p>For all that, Peel ought earlier to have recognized the facts, to have
+looked ahead and formed a policy. As Chief Secretary for Ireland he had
+unrivalled opportunities for studying the whole question; but he did not
+let it penetrate beneath the surface of his mind. He had continued to
+bring up the same arguments on the few occasions when he spoke at
+Westminster, and had buried himself in administrative work. He seems to
+have hoped that he could evade it. If the Whigs got a majority and
+introduced an Emancipation Bill, he would have satisfied his
+constituents by formally opposing the measure and would not have gone
+beyond this. As he saw it gradually coming, he satisfied his own
+conscience by retiring from Lord Liverpool's Government and by refusing
+to join Canning, when he became Prime Minister in 1827. As a private
+member he would only be responsible for his own vote, and would not feel
+that he was settling the question for others. But Canning died after
+holding office only a month, and a Government was formed by Wellington
+in which Peel returned to office as Home Secretary and became leader of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+the House of Commons. Now he had to pay the penalty for his lack of
+foresight, and to deal with the tide of feeling which had been rising
+for some years on both sides of the Irish Channel. At least he could see
+facts which were before his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>In 1828, before he had been twelve months in office, his decision was
+aided by a definite event. A by-election had to be fought in Clare, Mr.
+Fitzgerald seeking re-election on joining the Government. Against him
+came forward no less a person than Daniel O'Connell himself, the most
+eloquent and most popular of the Catholic leaders; and, although under
+the existing laws his candidature was void, he received an overwhelming
+majority. The bewilderment of the Tories was ludicrous. Fitzgerald
+himself wrote, 'The proceedings of yesterday were those of madmen; but
+the country is mad.' Peel took a careful view of the situation and
+decided on his course. He certainly laid himself open to the charge of
+giving way before a breach of the law, and the charge was pressed by the
+angry Tories. But his judgement was clearly based on a complete survey
+of all the facts. A single event was the candle which lit up the scene,
+but by the light of it he surveyed the whole room. He still held to his
+view about the dangers of Disestablishment ahead, but he maintained that
+a crisis had arisen involving graver dangers at the moment, and that the
+statesman must choose the lesser of two evils. There is no doubt that
+the situation was critical. The Duke of Wellington and Lord Anglesey (a
+Waterloo veteran, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) both had fears of
+mutiny in the army; and civil war was to be expected, if O'Connell was
+not admitted to the House of Commons. Peel's personal consistency was
+one matter; the public welfare was another and a weightier. His first
+idea was to retire from office and to lend unofficial support to a
+measure which he could not advocate in principle. But the only hope of
+breaking down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> the old Tory opposition lay in the influence of the Tory
+ministers; no Whig Government could prevail in the temper of that time;
+and Wellington appealed in the strongest terms to Peel to remain in
+office and to lead the House. Peel yielded from motives of public policy
+and made himself responsible for a measure of Catholic Emancipation,
+which he had been pledged to resist.</p>
+
+<p>It was a surrender&mdash;an undisguised surrender&mdash;and Peel did not, as on
+the Bullion Committee, profess to have changed his mind. But it was an
+honest surrender carried out in the light of day; and, before Parliament
+met, Peel announced his decision to resign his seat at Oxford and to
+give his constituents the chance of expressing their opinion of his
+conduct. The verdict was not long in doubt: the University, which in
+1865 rejected another of its brilliant sons, gave a majority of one
+hundred and forty-six against him, and his political connexion with
+Oxford was severed. The verdict of posterity has been more liberal. The
+chief fault laid to Peel's charge is that he should for so many years
+have ignored all signs of the danger which was approaching, and not have
+made up his mind in time. He could see the crisis clearly, when it came,
+and could put the national interest above everything else: he could not
+look far enough ahead.</p>
+
+<p>It was a similar want of foresight that led to the fall of the Tory
+Government in 1830. The Reform movement, so long delayed by the great
+wars, had been gathering force again. Events in France, where Charles X
+was driven from the throne and Louis Philippe proclaimed as
+Citizen-king, gave it additional impetus. The famous lawyer Brougham was
+thundering against the Government in Parliament, while throughout the
+country the platforms from which Radical orators declaimed were
+surrounded by eager throngs. The history of the movement cannot be told
+here. Its chief actors were the Whigs, who on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> Wellington's resignation
+formed a Government under Earl Grey at the end of 1830. Peel was
+fighting a losing fight and he did not show his usual judgement or cool
+temper. He opposed the Reform Bill to the last: he was haranguing
+violently against it when Black Rod arrived to summon the Commons to the
+presence of the King. William IV came down in person, at the instance of
+the Whig ministers, to dissolve Parliament and so to stay all
+proceedings by which, in the as yet unreformed Parliament, the Bill
+might have been defeated. In the General Election of 1831 the Whigs
+carried all before them, and in July, when Lord Grey carried the second
+reading, he could command a majority of 136. Even then it took three
+months of stubborn fighting to vanquish the Tory opposition in the House
+of Commons. When the Peers rejected the Bill, the question was raised
+whether a Tory Government could be formed; but Peel, however he might
+dislike the Bill, could recognize facts, and his refusal to co-operate
+in defying public opinion was decisive. Lord Grey returned to office
+fortified by the King's promise to make any number of new peers, if
+required; and the influence of Wellington was effective in dissuading
+the Upper House from further futile resistance. Again Peel had shown his
+good sense in accepting the situation. So far as he was concerned, there
+was no talk of repeal. He explicitly said that he regarded the question
+as 'finally and irrevocably disposed of', and he set to work to adapt
+his policy to the new situation.</p>
+
+<p>It might well seem a desperate one for the Tories. Here were three
+hundred new members, most of whom had just received their seats from the
+Whigs against the direct opposition of their rivals. Gratitude and
+self-interest impelled them to support the Whig party; and its leaders,
+who had for nearly fifty years been out in the cold shade of opposition,
+might count on a long spell of power, especially as the Canningites,
+stronger in talents than in numbers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> joined them at this juncture.
+Brougham had gone to the House of Lords, but three future Prime
+Ministers&mdash;Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), Lord John Russell, and
+Palmerston&mdash;were in the House of Commons serving under Lord Althorp,
+who, though gifted with no oratorical talent, by his good sense and
+still more by his high character, commanded general respect. On the
+other side there was only one figure of the first rank, and that was
+Peel. Till 1832 he had not grown to his full stature: the Reformed
+Parliament gave him his chance and drew forth all his powers. It
+represented a new force in politics. No longer were the members sent to
+Westminster by a few great land-holders, by the small market towns, and
+by the agricultural labourers. The great industrial districts,
+Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the Midlands, were there in the persons of
+well-to-do citizens, experienced in business and serious in temper; and
+Peel, who was himself sprung from a notable family of this kind, was
+eminently the man to lead these classes and to win their confidence. It
+was also a gain to him to stand alone. His judgement was ripened, his
+confidence firm; and he could dominate his party, while the able and
+ambitious leaders on the other side too often clashed with one another.
+Above all, in the years 1832 to 1834, he showed that he had patience.
+Instead of snatching at occasions to ally himself with O'Connell, who
+was in opposition to every Government, and to embarrass the Whigs in a
+factious party-spirit, he showed a marked respect for principle. He
+supported or opposed the Whig bills purely on their merits, and
+gradually trained his party to be ready for the inevitable reaction when
+it should come.</p>
+
+<p>By 1834 the tendencies to disruption in the victorious party were
+clearly showing themselves. First Stanley, on grounds of policy, and
+then Lord Grey, for personal reasons never quite cleared up, resigned
+office. Soon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> after, Lord Althorp left the House of Commons on
+succeeding to his father's earldom, and a little later Melbourne, the
+new Premier, was unexpectedly dismissed by the King. At the time Peel,
+expecting no immediate crisis, was abroad, in Rome; and we have
+interesting details of his slow journey home to meet the urgent call of
+Wellington, who was carrying on the administration provisionally. The
+changes of the last few years were shown by the fact that the Tories
+felt bound to choose their Premier from the Lower House. It was
+Wellington who recommended Peel for the place which, under the old
+conditions, he might have been expected to take himself. On his return,
+Peel accepted the task of forming a ministry, and, conscious of the
+numerical weakness of his own party, he made overtures to some of the
+Whigs. But Stanley and Graham<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> refused to join him, and he had to fall
+back on the Tories of Wellington's last Government. Before going to the
+country he laid down his principles in the famous Tamworth Manifesto.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>
+This manifesto is important for its acceptance of the changes
+permanently made by the Reform Bill, and for the clear exposition of his
+attitude towards the important Church questions which were imminent. It
+is an excellent document for any one to study who wishes to understand
+the evolution of the old Tories into the modern Conservative party.</p>
+
+<p>Peel's first administration was not destined to last long. The Liberal
+wave was not spent, and the Tories had little to hope for, at this
+moment, from a General Election. As so often happened afterwards, when
+the two English parties were evenly balanced, the Irish votes turned the
+scale. Peel had been forced into this position by the King: his own
+judgement would have led him to wait some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> years. He fought dexterously
+for four months, helped in some measure by Stanley, who had left the
+Whigs when they threatened the Established Church in Ireland; but it was
+this question which in the end upset him. Lord John Russell, in alliance
+with O'Connell, proposed the disendowment of that Church and defeated
+Peel by thirty-three votes. It was a question of principle, though it
+was raised in a factious way, and subsequent history showed that the
+mover, after his tactical victory of the moment, could not effect any
+practical solution. Peel was driven to resign. But in this short period,
+so far from losing credit, he had won the confidence of his party and
+the respect of his opponents; he had put some useful measures on the
+Statute Book; and he had shown the country that a new spirit, practical
+and enlightened, was growing up in the Tory party, and that there was a
+minister capable of utilizing it for the general good.</p>
+
+<p>In the Greville papers and other literature of the time we get many
+references to the predominant place which he held in the esteem of the
+House of Commons. An entry in Greville's journal for February 1834 shows
+Peel's unique power. 'No matter how unruly the House, how impatient or
+fatigued, the moment he rises, all is silence, and he is sure of being
+heard with profound attention and respect.' Lady Lyttelton,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> who met
+him later at Windsor, shows us another aspect. His readiness and
+presence of mind come out in the most trivial matters. When Queen
+Victoria suddenly, one evening, issued her command that all who could
+dance were to dance, the more elderly guests were much embarrassed. Such
+an order was not to Peel's taste. 'He was, in fact, to a close observer,
+evidently both shy and cross'; but he was 'much the best figure of all,
+so mincing with his legs and feet, his countenance full of the funniest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+attempt to look unconcerned and "matter of course".' Another time when
+games were improvised in the royal circle, Lady Lyttelton was 'much
+struck with the quickness and watchful cautious characteristic sagacity
+which Sir Robert showed in learning and playing a new round game'. And
+to the ladies-in-waiting he commended himself by his quiet courtesy.
+'Sir Robert Peel', we read, 'was in his most conversable mood and so
+very agreeable. I never enjoyed an evening more.'</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the best description to show how personally he impressed his
+contemporaries at this time is given by Lord Dalling and Bulwer in his
+memoir. Sir Robert Peel, he tells us, was 'tall and powerfully built,
+his body somewhat bulky for his limbs, his head small and well-formed,
+his features regular. His countenance was not what would be generally
+called expressive, but it was capable of taking the expression he wished
+to give it, humour, sarcasm, persuasion, and command, being its
+alternate characteristics. The character of the man was seen more... in
+the whole person than in the face. He did not stoop, but he bent rather
+forwards; his mode of walking was peculiar, and rather like that of a
+cat, but of a cat that was well acquainted with the ground it was moving
+over; the step showed no doubt or apprehension, it could hardly be
+called stealthy, but it glided on firmly and cautiously, without haste,
+or swagger, or unevenness.... The oftener you heard him speak, the more
+his speaking gained upon you.... He never seemed occupied with himself.
+His effort was evidently directed to convince you, not that he was
+<i>eloquent</i>, but that he was <i>right</i>.... He seemed rather to aim at
+gaining the doubtful, than mortifying or crushing the hostile.' These
+qualities appealed especially to the practical men of business whom the
+Reform Bill had brought into politics. They were suited to the temper of
+the day, and his speaking won the favour of the best<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> judges in the
+House of Commons. Though he disappointed ardent crusaders like Lord
+Shaftesbury by his apparent coldness and calculating caution, he
+impressed his fellow members as pre-eminently honest and as anxious to
+advance in the most effective manner those causes which his judgement
+approved. He was not the man to lead a forlorn hope, but rather the
+sagacious commander who directed his troops through a practicable
+breach.</p>
+
+<p>He was to be in opposition for another six years; but during these years
+the Whigs were in constant difficulties, and, as Greville notes, it was
+often obvious that Peel was leading the House from the front Opposition
+bench. Had he imitated Russell's conduct in 1834 and devoted his chief
+energies to overthrowing the Whigs, he could have found many an
+occasion. Sedition in Canada and Jamaica, rivalry with France in the
+Levant and with Russia in the Farther East, financial troubles and
+deficits, the spread of Chartist doctrine, all combined to embarrass a
+Government which had no single will and no concentrated resolution. The
+accession of Queen Victoria, in 1837, made no change for the moment. But
+Wellington's famous remark that the Tories would have no chance with a
+Queen because Peel had no manners and he had no small talk, is only
+quoted now because of the falsity of the prediction; both politicians
+soon came to form a better estimate of her judgement and public spirit.
+It was some years before this could be fairly tested. The Tories, while
+improving their position, failed to gain an absolute majority in the
+elections, and Peel's want of tact in insisting on the Queen changing
+all the ladies of her household delayed his triumph from 1839 to 1841.
+Meanwhile he spent his energies in training his party and organizing
+their resources. He studied measures and he studied men, and he
+gradually gathered round him a body of loyal followers who believed in
+their chief and were ready to help him in administrative<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> reform when
+the time should come. Among his most devoted adherents was Mr.
+Gladstone, at this time more famous as a churchman than as a financier;
+and even Mr. Disraeli, for all his eccentricities, accepted Peel's
+leadership without question. Few could then foresee the very different
+careers that lay before his two brilliant lieutenants.</p>
+
+<p>By 1841 the power of the Whigs was spent. A vote of want of confidence
+was carried by Peel, the King dissolved Parliament, and the Tories came
+back with a majority of ninety in the new House of Commons. Now begins
+the most famous part of Peel's career, that associated with the Repeal
+of the Corn Laws, the third of his so-called 'betrayals' of his party.
+No action of his has been so variously criticized, none caused such
+bitterness in political circles. There is no space here to discuss the
+value of Protection or the wisdom of the Anti-Corn-Law League, still
+less the merits or demerits of a fixed duty as opposed to a
+'sliding-scale'. We are concerned with Peel's conduct and must try to
+answer the questions&mdash;What were Peel's earlier views on the subject?
+What caused him to change these views? Was this change effected
+honestly, or was he guilty of abandoning his party in order to retain
+office himself?</p>
+
+<p>The Corn Laws, introThatduced in 1670, re-enacted in 1815, forbade any one
+to import corn into England till the price of home-grown corn had
+reached eighty shillings a quarter. It is easy to attack a system based
+on rigid figures applied to conditions varying widely in every century;
+but the idea was that the English farmer should be given a decisive
+advantage over his foreign rivals, and only when the price rose to a
+prohibitive point might the interest of the consumer be allowed to
+outweigh that of the producer. The revival of the old law in 1815 met
+with strong opposition. England had greatly changed; the agricultural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+area had not been widely increased, but there were many more millions of
+mouths to feed, thanks to the growth of population in the industrial
+districts. But while in 1815 the House of Commons represented almost
+exclusively the land-owning and corn-growing classes, between 1815 and
+1840 opposition to their policy had lately been growing and had been
+organized, outside Parliament, by the famous league of which Richard
+Cobden was the leading spirit. Peel, though he had been brought up by
+his father a strong Protectionist and Tory, had been largely influenced
+by Huskisson, the most remarkable President of the Board of Trade that
+this country has ever seen, and had shown on many occasions that he
+grasped the principle of Free Trade as well as any statesman of the day.
+The Whigs had left the finances of the country in a very bad state, and
+Peel had to take sweeping measures to restore credit. From 1842 to 1845
+he brought in Budgets of a Free Trade character, designed to encourage
+commerce by remitting taxation, especially on raw material; and he made
+up the loss thus incurred by the Treasury, by imposing an income-tax. To
+this policy there were two exceptions, the Corn Laws and the Sugar
+Duties. On the latter he felt that England, since she had abolished
+slave-owning, had a duty to her colonies to see that they did not suffer
+by the competition of sugar produced by slave labour elsewhere. On the
+former he held that England ought, so far as possible, to produce its
+own food and to be self-sufficing; and as a practical man he recognized
+that it was too much to expect of the agricultural interest, so strongly
+represented in both Houses of Parliament, to pronounce what seemed to be
+its death-warrant. But through these years he came more and more to see
+that the interest of a class must give way to the interest of the
+nation; and his clear intellect was from time to time shaken by the
+arguments of the Anti-Corn-Law League and its orators. In 1845 he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+probably expecting that he would tide over this Parliament, thanks to
+his Budgets and to good harvests, and that at a general election he
+would be able to declare for a change of fiscal policy without going
+back on his pledges to the party. Meanwhile his general attitude had
+been noted by shrewd observers. Cobden himself in a speech delivered at
+Birmingham said, 'There can be no doubt that Sir Robert Peel is at heart
+as good a Free Trader as I am. He has told us so in the House of Commons
+again and again.'</p>
+
+<p>Among the causes which influenced Peel at the moment two are specially
+noteworthy as reminding us of the way in which his opinion was changed
+over Catholic Emancipation. Severe critics say that, to retain office,
+he surrendered to the agitation of Cobden, as he had surrendered to that
+of O'Connell. Undoubtedly the increasing size and success of Cobden's
+meetings, which were on a scale unknown before in political agitation,
+did cause Peel to consider fully what he had only half considered
+before: it did help to force open a door in his mind, and to break down
+a water-tight compartment. But Peel's mind, once opened, saw far more
+than an agitation and a transfer of votes: it looked at the merits of
+the question and surveyed the interest of the whole country. He had seen
+that the fall of a Protestant Church was less serious than the loss of
+Ireland: he now saw that a shock to the agricultural interest was less
+serious than general starvation in the country. And as with the Clare
+election, so with the Irish potato famine in 1845: a definite event
+arrested his attention and clamoured for instant decision. Peel was as
+humane a man as has ever presided over the destinies of this country,
+and the picture of Ireland's sufferings was brought forcibly before his
+imagination by the reports presented to him and by his own knowledge of
+the country. His personal consistency could not be put in the balance
+against national distress.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That the manner in which he made the change did give great offence to
+his followers, there is no room to doubt. Peel was naturally reserved in
+manner and in his Cabinet he occupied a position of such unquestioned
+superiority that he had no need of advice to make up his mind, and was
+apt to keep matters in his own hand. Whether he was preparing to consult
+his colleagues or not, the Irish potato famine forced his hand before he
+had done so. When in November 1845 he made suddenly in the Cabinet a
+definite proposal to suspend the duties on corn, only three members
+supported him. Year after year Peel had opposed the motion brought in by
+Mr. Villiers<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> for repeal: only those who had been studying the
+situation as closely as Peel and with as clear a vision&mdash;and they were
+few&mdash;could understand this sudden declaration of a change of policy.
+After holding four Cabinet councils in one week, winning over some
+waverers, but still failing to get a unanimous vote, he expressed a wish
+to resign. But the Whigs, owing to personal disagreements, could not
+form a ministry and Queen Victoria asked Peel to retain office: it was
+evident that he alone could carry through the measure which he believed
+to be so urgent, and he steeled himself to face the breach with his own
+party. As Lord John Russell had already pledged the Whigs to repeal, the
+issue was no longer in doubt; but Peel was not to win the victory
+without heavy cost. Disraeli, who had been offended at not being given a
+place in the ministry in 1841, came forward, rallied the agricultural
+interest, and attacked his leader in a series of bitter speeches,
+opening old sores, and charging him with having for the second time
+broken his pledges and betrayed his party. The Protectionists could not
+defeat the Government. In the Commons the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> Whig votes ensured a
+majority: in the Lords the influence of Wellington triumphed over the
+resistance of the more obstinate landowners. The Bill passed its third
+reading by ninety-eight votes.</p>
+
+<p>But Peel knew how uncertain was his position in view of the hostility
+aroused. At this very time the Irish question was acute, as a Coercion
+Bill was under consideration, and this gave his enemies their chance.
+The Protectionist Tories made an unprincipled alliance for the moment
+with the Irish members; and on the very day when the Repeal of the Corn
+Laws passed the House of Lords, the ministry was defeated in the
+Commons. The moment of his fall, when Disraeli and the Protectionists
+were loudest in their exultation, was the moment of his triumph. It is
+the climax of his career. In the long debate on Repeal he had refused to
+notice personal attacks: he now rose superior to all personal rancour.
+In defeat he bore himself with dignity, and in his last speech as
+minister he praised Cobden in very generous terms, giving him the chief
+credit for the benefits which the Bill conferred upon his
+fellow-countrymen. This speech gave offence to his late colleagues,
+Aberdeen, Sidney Herbert, and Gladstone, and was interpreted as being
+designed to mark clearly Peel's breach with the Conservative party. The
+whole episode is illustrated in an interesting way in the <i>Life of
+Gladstone</i>. Lord Morley<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> reports a long conversation between the two
+friends and colleagues, where Peel declares his intention to act in
+future as a private member and to abstain from party politics.
+Gladstone, while fully allowing that Peel had earned the right to retire
+after such labours ('you have been Prime Minister in a sense in which no
+other man has been since Mr. Pitt's time'), pointed out how impossible
+it would be for him to carry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> out his intentions. His personal
+ascendancy in Parliament was too great: men must look to him as a
+leader. But Peel evidently was at the end of his strength, and had been
+suffering acutely from pains in the head, due to an old shooting
+accident but intensified by recent hard work. For the moment repose was
+essential.</p>
+
+<p>It was Gladstone, Peel's disciple and true successor, who seven years
+later paid the following tribute to his memory: 'It is easy', he said,
+'to enumerate many characteristics of the greatness of Sir Robert Peel.
+It is easy to speak of his ability, of his sagacity, of his
+indefatigable industry. But there was something yet more admirable...
+and that was his sense of public virtue;... when he had to choose
+between personal ease and enjoyment, or again, on the other hand,
+between political power and distinction, and what he knew to be the
+welfare of the nation, his choice was made at once. When his choice was
+made, no man ever saw him hesitate, no man ever saw him hold back from
+that which was necessary to give it effect.' Though his own political
+views changed, Gladstone always paid tribute to the moral influence
+which Peel had exercised in political life, purifying its practices and
+ennobling its traditions.</p>
+
+<p>For the last four years of his life he was in opposition, but he held a
+place of dignity and independence which few fallen ministers have ever
+enjoyed. He was the trusted friend and adviser of Queen Victoria and the
+Prince Consort; he was often consulted in grave matters by the chiefs of
+the Government; his speeches both in the House and in the country
+carried greater weight than those of any minister. Despite the
+bitterness of the Protectionists he seemed still to have a great future
+before him, and in any national emergency the country would unfailingly
+have called him to the helm. But on July 29, 1850, when he was just
+reaching the age of sixty-two, he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> a fall from his horse which
+caused very grave injuries, and he only survived three days.</p>
+
+<p>The interest of Peel's life is almost absorbed by public questions. He
+was not picturesque like Disraeli; he did not, like Gladstone, live long
+enough to be in his lifetime a mythical figure; the public did not
+cherish anecdotes about his sayings or doings, nor did he lend himself
+to the art of the caricaturist. He was an English gentleman to the
+backbone, in his tastes, in his conduct, in his nature. His married life
+was entirely happy, he had a few devoted friends, he avoided general
+society; he had a genuine fondness for shooting and country life, he was
+a judicious patron of art, and his collection of Dutch pictures form
+to-day a very precious part of our National Gallery. Just because of his
+aloofness, his gravity, the concentration of his energies, he is the
+best example that we can study if we want to know how an English
+statesman should train himself to do work of lasting value and how he
+should bear himself in the hour of trial. Within little more than half a
+century three famous politicians, Peel, Gladstone, and Chamberlain, have
+split their parties in two by an abrupt change of policy, and their
+conduct has been bitterly criticized by those to whom the traditions of
+party are dear. It is the glory of British politics that these
+traditions remained honourable so long, and no one of these statesmen
+broke with them lightly or without regret. For all that, let us be
+thankful that from time to time statesmen do arise who are capable of
+responding to a still higher call, of following their own individual
+consciences and of looking only to what, so far as they can judge, is
+the highest interest of the nation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHARLES_JAMES_NAPIER" id="CHARLES_JAMES_NAPIER"></a>CHARLES JAMES NAPIER</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1782-1853</p>
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1782.</td><td> Born in London, August 10.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1794.</td><td> Commission in 33rd Regiment.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1800.</td><td> At Shorncliffe with Sir John Moore.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1809.</td><td> Wounded and prisoner at Coru&ntilde;a.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1810-11.</td><td> Peninsula War: Busaco, Fuentes d'Onoro, &amp;c. Lieut.-Colonel, 1811.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1812-13.</td><td> Bermuda and American War.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1815-17.</td><td> Military College at Farnham.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1820.</td><td> Corfu.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1822-30.</td><td> Cephalonia.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1835.</td><td> Living quietly in France and England.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1837.</td><td> Major-General.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1838.</td><td> K.C.B.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1839.</td><td> Command in North of England. Chartist agitation.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1841.</td><td> Command in India at Poona.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1842-7.</td><td> War and organization in Sind.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1849-50.</td><td> Commander-in-Chief in India.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1853.</td><td> Died at Oaklands, near Portsmouth, August 29.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">SIR CHARLES NAPIER, G.C.B.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Soldier</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>The famous Napier brothers, Charles, George, and William, came of no
+mean parentage. Their father, Colonel the Hon. George Napier, of a
+distinguished Scotch family, was remarkable alike for physical strength
+and mental ability. In the fervour of his admiration his son Charles
+relates how he could 'take a pewter quart and squeeze it flat in his
+hand like a bit of paper'. In height 6 feet 3 inches, in person very
+handsome, he won the admiration of others besides his sons. He had
+served in the American war, but his later years were passed in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+organizing work, and he showed conspicuous honesty and ability in
+dealing with Irish military accounts. One of his reforms was the
+abolition of all fees in his office, by which he reduced his own salary
+from &pound;20,000 to &pound;600 per annum, emulating the more famous act of the
+elder Pitt as Paymaster-general half a century before. Their mother,
+Lady Sarah Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond, had been a reigning
+toast in 1760. She had even been courted by George III, and might have
+been handed down to history as the mother of princes. In her old age she
+was more proud to be the mother of heroes; and her letters still exist,
+written in the period of the great wars, to show how a British mother
+could combine the Spartan ideal with the tenderest personal affection.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="napier" id="napier"></a><img src="images/napier.jpg" alt="SIR CHARLES NAPIER" />
+<br /><span class="smcap">sir charles napier</span><br />
+From the drawing by Edwin Williams in the National Portrait Gallery</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Their father's appointment involved residence in Ireland from 1785
+onwards, and the boys passed their early years at Celbridge in the
+neighbourhood of Dublin. Here they were far from the usual amusements
+and society of the time, but they were fortunate in their home circle
+and in the character of their servants, and they learnt to cherish the
+ancient legends of Ireland and to pick up everything that could feed
+their innate love of adventure and romance. Close to their doors lived
+an old woman named Molly Dunne, who claimed to be one hundred and
+thirty-five years of age, and who was ready to fill the children's ears
+with tales of past tragedies whenever they came to see her. Sir William
+Napier tells us how she was 'tall, gaunt, and with high sharp
+lineaments, her eyes fixed in their huge orbs, and her tongue
+discoursing of bloody times: she was wondrous for the young and fearful
+for the aged'.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of class feeling and narrow interests the boys developed early a
+great sympathy for the poor, and a capacity for judging people
+independently of rank. Charles Napier himself, born in Whitehall, was
+three years old when they moved to Ireland. He was a sickly child,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> the
+one short member of a tall family, but equal to any of them in courage
+and resolution. His heroism in endurance of pain was put to a severe
+test when he broke his leg at the age of seventeen. It was twice badly
+set. He was threatened first by the entire loss of it, next with the
+prospect of a crooked leg, but he bore cheerfully the most excruciating
+torture in having it straightened by a series of painful experiments,
+and in no long time he recovered his activity. In the army he showed his
+strength of will by rigid abstinence from drinking and gambling, no easy
+feat in those days; and he learned by his father's example to control
+all extravagance and to live contentedly on a small allowance. His
+earliest enthusiasm among books was for Plutarch's <i>Lives</i>, the
+favourite reading of so many great commanders. He had many outdoor
+tastes: riding, fishing, and shooting, and he was soon familiar with the
+country-side. There was no need of classes or prizes to stimulate his
+reading, no need of organized games to provide an outlet for his
+energies or to fill his leisure time.</p>
+
+<p>The confidence that his father had in the training of his sons is best
+shown by the early age at which he put them in responsible positions.
+Charles actually received a commission in the 33rd Regiment at the age
+of twelve, but he did not see service till he was seventeen. Meanwhile
+the young ensign continued his schooling from his father's house at
+Celbridge, to which he and his brother returned every evening, sometimes
+in the most unconventional manner. Celbridge, like other Irish villages,
+had its pigs. The Irish pig is longer in the leg and more active than
+his English cousin, and the Napier boys would be seen careering along at
+a headlong pace on these strange mounts, with a cheering company of
+village boys behind them. They were Protestants among older Roman
+Catholic comrades, but they soon became the leaders in the school, and
+Charles, despite his youth and small stature, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> chosen to command a
+school volunteer corps at the age of fourteen. At seventeen he joined
+his regiment at Limerick, and for six or seven years he led the life of
+a soldier in various garrison towns of southern England, fretting at
+inaction, learning what he could, and welcoming any chance of increased
+work and danger. At this time his enthusiasm for soldiering was very
+variable. In a letter written in 1803 he makes fun of the routine of his
+profession, as he was set to practise it, and ends up, 'Such is the
+difference between a hero of the present time and the idea of one formed
+from reading Plutarch! Yet people wonder I don't like the army!'</p>
+
+<p>But this was a passing mood. When stirring events were taking place, no
+one was more full of ardour, and when he came under such a general as
+Sir John Moore he expressed himself in a very different tone. In 1805
+Moore was commanding at Hythe, and Charles Napier's letters are aglow
+with enthusiasm for the great qualities which he showed as an
+administrator and army reformer. Like Wolseley seventy or eighty years
+later, Moore had the gift of finding the best among his subalterns and
+training them in his own excellences. After his own father there was no
+one who had so much influence as Moore in the making of Charles Napier.
+In 1808 he sailed for the Peninsula with the rank of major, commanding
+the 50th Regiment in the colonel's absence; he took an active part in
+Moore's famous retreat at Coru&ntilde;a, and in the battle was taken prisoner
+after conduct of the greatest gallantry in leading his regiment under
+fire. Two months later he was released and again went to the front. In
+1810 and 1811 he and his brothers George and William were fighting under
+Wellington, and were all so frequently wounded that the family fortunes
+became a subject of common talk. On more than one occasion Wellington
+himself wrote to Lady Sarah to inform her of the gallantry and
+misfortunes of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> her sons. At Busaco Charles had his jaw broken and was
+forced to retire into hospital at Lisbon. In his haste to rejoin the
+army, which he did when only half convalescent, he accomplished the feat
+of riding ninety miles on one horse in a single day; and in the course
+of his ride met two of his brothers being carried down, wounded, to the
+base. But in 1811 promotion withdrew Charles Napier from the Peninsula.
+A short command in Guernsey was followed by another in Bermuda, which
+involved him in the American war. He had little taste for warfare with
+men of the same race as himself, and was heartily glad to exchange back
+to the 50th in 1813, and to return to England. He started out as a
+volunteer to share in the campaign of Waterloo, but all was over before
+he could join the army in Flanders, and this part of his soldiering
+career ended quietly. He had received far more wounds than honours, and
+might well have been discouraged in the pursuit of his profession.</p>
+
+<p>But here we can put to the test how far Napier's expressions of distaste
+for the service affected his conduct. He chafed at the inactivity of
+peace; but instead of abandoning the army for some more profitable
+career, he used his enforced leisure to prepare for further service and
+to extend his knowledge of political and military history. He spent the
+greater part of three years at the Military College, then established at
+Farnham, varying his professional studies with sallies into the domain
+of politics, and as a result he developed marked Radical views which he
+held through life. His note-books show a splendid grasp of principles
+and a close attention to facts; they range from the enforcing of the
+death penalty for marauding to the details of cavalry-kit. His Spartan
+regime became famous in later years; even now he prescribed a strict
+rule, 'a cloak, a pair of shoes, two flannel shirts, and a piece of
+soap&mdash;these, wrapped up in an oil-skin, must go in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> right holster,
+and a pistol in the left.' He took no opinions at second hand, but
+studied the best authorities and thought for himself; he was as thorough
+in self-education as the famous Confederate general 'Stonewall' Jackson,
+who every evening sat for an hour, facing a blank wall and reviewing in
+his mind the subjects which he had read during the day.</p>
+
+<p>No opportunity for reaping the fruit of these studies and exercising his
+great gifts was given him till May 1819. Then he was appointed to the
+post of inspecting-officer in the Ionian Islands;<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> and in 1822 he was
+appointed Military Resident in Cephalonia, the largest of these islands,
+a pile of rugged limestone hills, scantily supplied with water, and
+ruined by years of neglect and the oppression of Turkish pashas. So
+began what was certainly the happiest, and perhaps the most fruitful,
+period in Charles Napier's life. It was not strictly military work, but,
+without the authority which his military rank gave him and without the
+despotic methods of martial law, little could have been achieved in the
+disordered state of the country. The whole episode is a good example of
+how a well-trained soldier of original mind can, when left to himself,
+impress his character on a semi-civilized people, and may be compared
+with the work of Sir Harry Smith in South Africa, or Sir Henry Lawrence
+in the Punjab. The practical reforms which he initiated in law, in
+commerce, in agriculture, are too numerous to mention. 'Expect no
+letters from me', he writes to his mother, 'save about roads. No going
+home for me: it would be wrong to leave a place where so much good is
+being done.... My market-place is roofed. My pedestal is a tremendous
+job, but two months more will finish that also. My roads will not be
+finished by me.' And again, 'I take no rest myself and give nobody else
+any.' To his superiors he showed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> himself somewhat impracticable in
+temper, and he was certainly exacting to his subordinates, though
+generous in his praise of those who helped him. He was compassionate to
+the poor and vigorous in his dealings with the privileged classes; and
+he gave the islanders an entirely new conception of justice. When he
+quitted the island after six years of office he left behind him two new
+market-places, one and a half miles of pier, one hundred miles of road
+largely blasted out of solid rock, spacious streets, a girls' school,
+and many other improvements; and he put into the natives a spirit of
+endeavour which outlived his term of office. One sign of the latter was
+that, after his departure, some peasants yearly transmitted to him the
+profits of a small piece of land which he had left uncared for, without
+disclosing the names of those whose labours had earned it.</p>
+
+<p>During this period, in visits to Corinth and the Morea, he worked out
+strategic plans for keeping the Turks out of Greece. He also made
+friends with Lord Byron, who came out in 1823 to help the Greek patriots
+and to meet his death in the swamps of Missolonghi. Byron conceived the
+greatest admiration for Napier's talents and believed him to be capable
+of liberating Greece, if he were given a free hand. But this was not to
+be. Reasons of State and petty rivalries barred the way to the
+appointment of a British general, though it might have set the name of
+Napier in history beside those of Bolivar and Garibaldi; for he would
+have identified himself heart and soul with such a cause, and, in the
+opinion of many good judges, would have triumphed over the difficulties
+of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>From 1830 to 1839 there is little to narrate. The gifts which might have
+been devoted to commanding a regiment, to training young officers, or to
+ruling a distant province, were too lightly rated by the Government, and
+he spent his time quietly in England and France educating his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> two
+daughters,<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> interesting himself in politics, and continuing to learn.
+It was the political crisis in England which called him back to active
+life. The readjustment of the labour market to meet the use of
+machinery, and the occurrence of a series of bad harvests had caused
+widespread discontent, and the Chartist movement was at its height in
+1839. Labourers and factory owners were alarmed; the Government was
+besieged with petitions for military protection at a hundred points, and
+all the elements of a dangerous explosion were gathered together. At
+this critical time Charles Napier was offered the command of the troops
+in the northern district, and amply did he vindicate the choice. By the
+most careful preparation beforehand, by the most consummate coolness in
+the moment of danger, he rode the storm. He saw the danger of billeting
+small detachments of troops in isolated positions; he concentrated them
+at the important points. He interviewed alarmed magistrates, and he
+attended, in person and unarmed, a large gathering of Chartists. To all
+he spoke calmly but resolutely. He made it clear to the rich that he
+would not order a shot to be fired while peaceful measures were
+possible; he made it equally clear to the Chartists that he would
+suppress disorder, if it arose, promptly and mercilessly. With only four
+thousand troops under his command to control all the industrial
+districts of the north, Newcastle and Manchester, Sheffield and
+Nottingham, he did his work effectually without a shot being fired. 'Ars
+est celare artem': and just because of his success, few observers
+realized from how great a danger the community had been preserved.</p>
+
+<p>Thus he had proved his versatile talents in regimental service in the
+Peninsula, in the reclamation of an eastern island from barbarism, and
+in the control of disorder at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> home. It was not till he had reached the
+age of sixty that he was to prove these gifts in the highest sphere, in
+the handling of an army in the field and in the direction of a campaign.
+But the offer of a command in India roused his indomitable spirit, the
+more so as trouble was threatening on the north-west frontier. An
+ill-judged interference in Afgh&#257;nist&#257;n had in 1841 caused the
+massacre near K&#257;bul of one British force: other contingents were
+besieged in Jal&#257;l&#257;b&#257;d and Ghazni, and were in danger of a
+similar fate, and the prestige of British arms was at its lowest in the
+valley of the Indus. Lord Ellenborough, the new Viceroy, turned to
+Charles Napier for advice, and in April 1842 he was given the command in
+Upper and Lower Sind, the districts comprising the lower Indus valley.
+It was his first experience of India and his first command in war. He
+was sixty years old and he had not faced an enemy's army in the field
+since the age of twenty-five. As he said, 'I go to command in Sind with
+no orders, no instructions, no precise line of policy given! How many
+men are in Sind? How many soldiers to command? No one knows!... They
+tell me I must form and model the staff of the army altogether! Feeling
+myself but an apprentice in Indian matters, I yet look in vain for a
+master.' But the years of study and preparation had not been in vain,
+and responsibility never failed to call out his best qualities. It was
+not many months before British officers and soldiers, Baluch chiefs and
+Sindian peasants owned him as a master&mdash;such a master of the arts of war
+and peace as had not been seen on the Indus since the days of Alexander
+the Great.</p>
+
+<p>First, like a true pupil of Sir John Moore, he set to work thoroughly to
+drill his army. He experimented in person with British muskets and
+Mar&#257;th&#257; matchlocks, and reassured his soldiers on the superiority
+of the former. He experimented with rockets to test their efficiency;
+and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> with his usual luck in the matter of wounds, he had the calf of
+his leg badly torn by one that burst. He would put his hand to any
+labour and his life to any risk, if so he might stir the activity of
+others and promote the cause. He convinced himself, by studying the
+question at first hand, that the Baluch Am&#299;rs, who ruled the country,
+were not only aliens but oppressors of the native peasantry, not only
+ill-disposed to British policy, but actively plotting with the
+hill-tribes beyond the Indus, and at the right moment he struck.</p>
+
+<p>The danger of the situation lay in the great extent of the country, in
+the difficulty of marching in such heat amid the sand, and in the
+possibility of the Am&#299;rs escaping from his grasp and taking refuge in
+fortresses in the heart of the desert, believed to be inaccessible. His
+first notable exploit was a march northwards one hundred miles into the
+desert to capture Im&#257;mghar; his last, crowning a memorable sixteen
+days, was a similar descent upon Omarkot, which lay one hundred miles
+eastward beyond M&#299;rpur. These raids involved the organization of a
+camel corps, the carrying of water across the desert, and the greatest
+hardships for the troops, all of which Charles Napier shared
+uncomplainingly in person. Under his leadership British regiments and
+Bombay sepoys alike did wonders. Who could complain for himself when he
+saw the spare frame of the old general, his health undermined by fever
+and watches, his hooked nose and flashing eye turned this way and that,
+riding daily at their head, prepared to stint himself of all but the
+barest necessaries and to share every peril? He had begun the campaign
+in January; the crowning success was won on April 6. Between these dates
+he fought two pitched battles at Mi&#257;ni and Dabo, and completely broke
+the power of the Am&#299;rs.</p>
+
+<p>Mi&#257;ni (February 17, 1843) was the most glorious day in his life. With
+2,400 troops, of whom barely 500<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> were Europeans, he attacked an army
+variously estimated between 20,000 and 40,000. Drawn up in a position,
+which they had themselves chosen, on the raised bank of a dry river bed,
+the Baluch&#299; seemed to have every advantage on their side. But the
+British troops, advancing in echelon from the right, led by the 22nd
+Regiment, and developing an effective musketry fire, fought their way up
+to the outer slope of the steep bank and held it for three hours. Here
+the 22nd, with the two regiments of Bombay sepoys on their left,
+trusting chiefly to the bayonet, but firing occasional volleys, resisted
+the onslaught of Baluch&#299; swordsmen in overwhelming numbers. During
+nearly all this time the two lines were less than twenty yards apart,
+and Napier was conspicuous on horseback riding coolly along the front of
+the British line. The matchlocks, with which many of the Baluch&#299; were
+armed, seem to have been ineffective; their national weapon was the
+sword. The tribesmen were grand fighters but badly led. They attacked in
+detachments with no concerted action. For all that, the British line
+frequently staggered under the weight of their courageous rushes, and
+irregular firing went on across the narrow gap. Napier says, 'I expected
+death as much from our own men as from the enemy, and I was much singed
+by our fire&mdash;my whiskers twice or thrice so, and my face peppered by
+fellows who, in their fear, fired over all heads but mine, and nearly
+scattered my brains'. Not even Scarlett at Balaclava had a more
+miraculous escape. This exposure of his own person to risk was not due
+to mere recklessness. In his days at the Royal Military College he had
+carefully considered the occasions when a commander must expose himself
+to get the best out of his men; and from Coru&ntilde;a to Dabo he acted
+consistently on his principles. Early in the battle he had cleverly
+disposed his troops so as to neutralize in some measure the vast
+numerical superiority of the enemy; his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> few guns were well placed and
+well served. At a critical moment he ordered a charge of cavalry which
+broke the right of their position and threatened their camp; but the
+issue had to be decided by hard fighting, and all depended on the morale
+which was to carry the troops through such a punishing day.</p>
+
+<p>The second battle was fought a month later at Dabo, near
+Hyder&#257;b&#257;d. The most redoubtable of the Am&#299;rs, Sher Muhammad,
+known as 'the Lion of M&#299;rpur', had been gathering a force of his own
+and was only a few miles distant from Mi&#257;ni when that battle was
+fought. Napier could have attacked him at once; but, to avoid bloodshed,
+he was ready to negotiate. 'The Lion' only used the respite to collect
+more troops, and was soon defying the British with a force of 25,000
+men, full of ardour despite their recent defeat. Indeed Napier
+encouraged their confidence by spreading rumours of the terror
+prevailing in his own camp. He did not wish to exhaust his men
+needlessly by long marches in tropical heat; so he played a waiting
+game, gathering reinforcements and trusting that the enemy would soon
+give him a chance of fighting. This chance came on March 24, and with a
+force of 5,000 men and 19 guns Napier took another three hours to win
+his second battle and to drive Sher Muhammad from his position with the
+loss of 5,000 killed. The British losses were relatively trifling,
+amounting to 270, of whom 147 belonged to the sorely tried 22nd
+Regiment. They were all full of confidence and fought splendidly under
+the general's eye. 'The Lion' himself escaped northwards, and two months
+of hard marching and clever strategy were needed to prevent him stirring
+up trouble among the tribesmen. The climate took toll of the British
+troops and even the general was for a time prostrated by sunstroke; but
+the operations were successful and the last nucleus of an army was
+broken up by Colonel Jacob<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> on June 15. Sher Muhammad ended his days
+ignominiously at Lahore, then the capital of the Sikhs, having outlived
+his fame and sunk into idleness and debauchery.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in June 1843 the general could write in his diary: 'We have taught
+the Baluch that neither his sun nor his desert nor his jungles nor his
+nullahs can stop us. He will never face us more.' But Charles Napier's
+own work was far from being finished. He had to bind together the
+different elements in the province, to reconcile chieftain and peasant
+Baluch, Hindu, and Sindian, to living together in amity and submitting
+to British rule; and he had to set up a framework of military and
+civilian officers to carry on the work. He held firmly the principle
+that military rule must be temporary. For the moment it was more
+effective; but it was his business to prepare the new province for
+regular civil government as soon as was feasible. He showed his
+ingenuity in the personal interviews which he had with the chieftains;
+and the ascendancy which he won by his character was marked. Perhaps his
+qualities were such as could be more easily appreciated by orientals
+than by his own countrymen, for he was impetuous, self-reliant, and
+autocratic in no common degree. He was only one of a number of great
+Englishmen of this century whose direct personal contact with Eastern
+princes was worth scores of diplomatic letters and paper constitutions.
+Such men were Henry Lawrence, John Nicholson, and Charles Gordon; in
+them the power of Great Britain was incarnate in such a form as to
+strike the imagination and leave an ineffaceable impression. Many of the
+Am&#299;rs wished to swear allegiance to a governor present in the flesh
+rather than to the distant queen beyond the sea, so strongly were they
+impressed by Napier's personal character.</p>
+
+<p>He did not forget his own countrymen, least of all that valued friend
+'Thomas Atkins' and his comrade the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> sepoy. By the erection of spacious
+barracks he made the soldier's life more pleasant and his health more
+secure; and in a hundred other ways he showed his care and affection for
+them. In return few British generals have been so loved by the rank and
+file. He also gave much thought to material progress, to strengthening
+the fortress of Hyder&#257;b&#257;d, to developing the harbour at
+Kar&#257;chi, and, above all, to enriching the peasants by irrigation
+schemes. It was the story of Cephalonia on a bigger scale; but Napier
+was now twenty years older, overwhelmed with work, and he could give
+less attention to details. He did his best to find subordinates after
+his own heart, men who would 'scorn delights and live laborious days'.
+'Does he wear varnished boots?' was a typical question that he put to a
+friend in Bombay, when a new engineer was commended to him. His own
+rewards were meagre. The Grand Cross of the Bath and the colonelcy of
+his favourite regiment, the 22nd, were all the recognition given for a
+campaign whose difficulties were minimized at home because he had
+mastered them so triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>Two other achievements belong to the period of his government of Sind.
+The campaign against the tribes of the Kachhi Hills, to the north-west
+of his province, rendered necessary by continued marauding, shows all
+his old mastery of organization. Any one who has glanced into Indian
+history knows the danger of these raids and the bitter experience which
+our Indian army has gained in them. In less than two months
+(January-March 1845) Napier had led five thousand men safely over
+burning deserts and through most difficult mountain country, had by
+careful strategy driven the marauders into a corner, forcing them to
+surrender with trifling loss, and had made an impression on the hill
+chieftains which lasted for many a year. This work, though slighted by
+the directors of the Company, received enthusiastic praise from such
+good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> judges of war as Lord Hardinge and the Duke of Wellington. The
+second emergency arose when the first Sikh war broke out in the Punjab.
+Napier felt so confident in the loyalty of his newly-pacified province
+that within six weeks he drew together an army of 15,000 men, and took
+post at Rohri, ready to co-operate against the Sikhs from the south,
+while Lord Hardinge advanced from the east. Before he could arrive, the
+decisive battle had been fought, and all he was asked to do was to
+assist in a council of war at Lahore. The mistakes made in the campaign
+had been numerous. No one saw them more clearly than Napier, and no one
+foretold more accurately the troubles which were to follow. For all
+that, he wrote in generous admiration of Lord Hardinge the Viceroy and
+Lord Gough the Commander-in-Chief at a time when criticism and personal
+bitterness were prevalent in many quarters.</p>
+
+<p>After this he returned to Sind with health shattered and a longing for
+rest. He continued to work with vigour, but his mind was set on
+resignation; and the bad relations which had for years existed between
+him and the directors embittered his last months. No doubt he was
+impatient and self-willed, inclined to take short cuts through the
+system of dual control<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> and to justify them by his own single-hearted
+zeal for the good of the country. But the directors had eyes for all the
+slight irregularities, which are inevitable in the work of an original
+man, and failed entirely to estimate the priceless services that he
+rendered to British rule. In July 1847 he resigned and returned to
+Europe; but even now the end was not come. 'The tragedy must be re-acted
+a year or two hence,' he had written in March 1846, seeing clearly that
+the Sikhs had not been reconciled to British rule. In February 1849 the
+directors were forced by the national voice to send<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> him out to take
+supreme military command and to retrieve the disasters with which the
+second Sikh war began. They were very reluctant to do so, and Napier
+himself had little wish for further exertions in so thankless a service.
+But the Duke of Wellington himself appealed to him, the nation spoke
+through all its organs, and he could not put his own wishes in the scale
+against the demands of public service.</p>
+
+<p>He made all speed and reached Calcutta early in May, but he found no
+enemy to fight. The issue had been decided by Lord Gough and the hard
+fighting of Chili&#257;nw&#257;la. He had been cheated by fortune, as in
+1815, and he never knew the joy of battle again. He was accustomed to
+settle everything as a dictator; he found it difficult to act as part of
+an administrative machine. He was unfamiliar with the routine of Indian
+official life, and he was now growing old; he was impatient of forms,
+impetuous in his likes and dislikes, outspoken in praise and
+condemnation. His relations with the masterful Viceroy, Lord Dalhousie,
+were soon clouded; and though he delighted in the friendship of Colin
+Campbell and many other able soldiers, he was too old to adapt himself
+to new men and new measures. In 1850 the rumblings of the storm, which
+was to break seven years later, could already be heard, and Napier had
+much anxiety over the mutinous spirit rising in the sepoy regiments. He
+did his best to go to the bottom of the trouble and to establish
+confidence and friendly relations between British and natives, but he
+had not time enough to achieve permanent results, and he was often
+fettered by the regulations of the political service. His predictions
+were as striking now as in the first Sikh war; but he was not content to
+predict and to sit idle. He was unwearied in working for the reform of
+barracks, though his plans were often spoiled by the careless execution
+of others. He was urgent for a better tone among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> regimental officers
+and for more consideration on their part towards their soldiers. If more
+men in high position had similarly exerted themselves, the mutiny would
+have been less widespread and less fatal. His resignation was due to a
+dispute with Lord Dalhousie about the sepoys' pay. Napier acted <i>ultra
+vires</i> in suspending on his own responsibility an order of the
+Government, because he believed the situation to be critical, while the
+Viceroy refused to regard this as justified. His departure, in December
+1850, was the signal for an outburst of feeling among officers,
+soldiers, and all who knew him. His return by way of Sind was a
+triumphal progress.</p>
+
+<p>He had two years to live when he set foot again in England, and most of
+this was spent at Oaklands near Portsmouth. His health had been ruined
+in the public service; but he continued to take a keen interest in
+passing events and to write on military subjects to Colin Campbell and
+other friends. At the same time he devoted much of his time to his
+neighbours and his farm. In 1852 he attended as pall-bearer at the Duke
+of Wellington's funeral; his own was not far distant. His brother, Sir
+William, describes the last scene thus: 'On the morning of August 29th
+1853, at 5 o'clock, he expired like a soldier on a naked camp bedstead,
+the windows of the room open and the fresh air of Heaven blowing on his
+manly face&mdash;as the last breath escaped, Montagu McMurdo (his
+son-in-law), with a sudden inspiration, snatched the old colours of the
+22nd Regiment, the colour that had been borne at Mi&#257;ni and
+Hyder&#257;b&#257;d, and waved them over the dying hero. Thus Charles Napier
+passed from the world.'</p>
+
+<p>He was a man who roused enthusiastic devotion and provoked strong
+resentment. Like Gordon, he was a man who could rule others, but could
+not be ruled; and his official career left many heart-burnings behind.
+His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> equally passionate brother, Sir William, who wrote his life, took
+up the feud as a legacy and pursued it in print for many years. It is
+regrettable that such men cannot work without friction; but in all
+things it was devotion to the public service, and not personal ambition,
+that carried Charles Napier to such extremes. From his youth he had
+trained himself to such a pitch of self-denial and ascetic rigour that
+he could not make allowance for the frailties of the average man. His
+keen eye and swift brain made him too impatient of the shortcomings of
+conscientious officials. He was ready to work fifteen hours a day when
+the need came; he was able to pierce into the heart of a matter while
+others would be puzzling round the fringes of it. Rarely in his long and
+laborious career did an emergency arise capable of bringing out all his
+gifts; and his greatest exploits were performed on scenes unfamiliar to
+the mass of his fellow countrymen. But a few opinions can be given to
+show that he was rated at his full value by the foremost men of the day.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most striking testimony comes from one who never saw him; it
+was written three years after his death, when his brother's biography
+appeared. It was Carlyle, the biographer of Cromwell and Frederick the
+Great, the most famous man of letters of the day, who wrote in 1856:
+'The fine and noble qualities of the man are very recognizable to me;
+his piercing, subtle intellect turned all to the practical, giving him
+just insight into men and into things; his inexhaustible, adroit
+contrivances; his fiery valour; sharp promptitude to seize the good
+moment that will not return. A lynx-eyed, fiery man, with the spirit of
+an old knight in him; more of a hero than any modern I have seen for a
+long time.' A second tribute comes from one who had known him as an
+officer and was a supreme judge of military genius. Wellington was not
+given to extravagant words, but on many occasions he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> expressed himself
+in the warmest terms about Napier's talents and services. In 1844,
+speaking of the Sind campaign in the House of Lords, he said: 'My Lords,
+I must say that, after giving the fullest consideration to these
+operations, I have never known any instance of an officer who has shown
+in a higher degree that he possesses all the qualities and
+qualifications necessary to enable him to conduct great operations.' In
+the House of Commons at the same time Sir Robert Peel&mdash;the ablest
+administrative statesman of that generation, who had read for himself
+some of Napier's masterly dispatches&mdash;said: 'No one ever doubted Sir
+Charles Napier's military powers; but in his other character he does
+surprise me&mdash;he is possessed of extraordinary talent for civil
+administration.' Again, he speaks of him as 'one of three brothers who
+have engrafted on the stem of an ancient and honourable lineage that
+personal nobility which is derived from unblemished private character,
+from the highest sense of personal honour, and from repeated proofs of
+valour in the field, which have made their name conspicuous in the
+records of their country'.</p>
+
+<p>Indifferent as Charles Napier was to ordinary praise or blame, he would
+have appreciated the words of such men, especially when they associated
+him with his brothers; but perhaps he would have been more pleased to
+know how many thousands of his humble fellow countrymen walked to his
+informal funeral at Portsmouth, and to know that the majority of those
+who subscribed to his statue in Trafalgar Square were private soldiers
+in the army that he had served and loved.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="shaftesbury" id="shaftesbury"></a><img src="images/shaftesbury.jpg" alt="LORD SHAFTESBURY" />
+<br /><span class="smcap">lord shaftesbury</span><br />
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ANTHONY_ASHLEY_COOPER" id="ANTHONY_ASHLEY_COOPER"></a>ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">1801-85</p>
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+
+<tr><td valign="top">1801.</td><td> Born in Grosvenor Square, London, April 28.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1811.</td><td> His father succeeds to the earldom. He himself becomes Lord Ashley.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1813-17.</td><td> Harrow.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1819-22.</td><td> Christ Church, Oxford.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1826.</td><td> M.P. for Woodstock.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1828.</td><td> Commissioner of India Board of Control.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1829.</td><td> Chairman of Commission for Lunatic Asylums.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1830.</td><td> Marries Emily, daughter of fifth Earl Cowper.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1832.</td><td> Takes up the cause of the Ten Hours Bill or Factory Act.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1833.</td><td> M.P. for Dorset.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1836.</td><td> Founds Church Pastoral Aid Society.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1839.</td><td> Founds Indigent Blind Visiting Society.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1840.</td><td> Takes up cause of Boy Chimney-sweepers.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1842.</td><td> Mines and Collieries Bill carried.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1843.</td><td> Joins the Ragged School movement.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1847.</td><td> Ten Hours Bill finally carried.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1847.</td><td> M.P. for Bath.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1848.</td><td> Public Health Act. Chairman of Board of Health.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1851.</td><td> President of British and Foreign Bible Society.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1851.</td><td> Succeeds to the earldom.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1855.</td><td> Lord Palmerston twice offers him a seat in the Cabinet.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1872.</td><td> Death of Lady Shaftesbury.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1884.</td><td> Receives the Freedom of the City of London.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1885.</td><td> Dies at Folkestone, October 1.</td></tr>
+
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">LORD SHAFTESBURY</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Philanthropist</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>The word 'Philanthropist' has suffered the same fate as many other words
+in our language. It has become hackneyed and corrupted; it has taken a
+professional taint; it has almost become a byword. We are apt to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> think
+of the philanthropist as an excitable, contentious creature, at the
+mercy of every fad, an ultra-radical in politics, craving for notoriety,
+filled with self-confidence, and meddling with other people's business.
+Anthony Ashley Cooper, the greatest philanthropist of the nineteenth
+century, was of a different type. By temper he was strongly
+conservative. He always loved best to be among his own family; he was
+fond of his home, fond of the old associations of his house. To come out
+into public life, to take his place in Parliament or on the platform, to
+be mixed up in the wrangling of politics was naturally distasteful to
+him. It continually needed a strong effort for him to overcome this
+distaste and to act up to his sense of duty. It is only when we remember
+this that we can do justice to his lifelong activity, and to the high
+principles which bore him up through so many efforts and so many
+disappointments. For himself he would submit to injustice and be still:
+for his fellow countrymen and for his religion he would renew the battle
+to the last day of his life.</p>
+
+<p>His childhood was not happy. His parents had little sympathy with
+children, his father being absorbed in the cares of public life, his
+mother given up to society pleasures. He had three sisters older than
+himself, but no brother or companion, and he was left largely to
+himself. At the age of seven he went to a preparatory school, where he
+was made miserable by the many abuses which flourished there; and it was
+not till he went to Harrow at the age of twelve that he began to enjoy
+life. He had few of the indulgences which we associate with the early
+days of those who are born heirs to high position. But, thus thrown back
+on himself, the boy nurtured strong attachments, for the old housekeeper
+who first showed him tenderness at home, for the school where he had
+learnt to be happy, and for the Dorset home, which was to be throughout
+his life the pole-star of his affections. The village of Wimborne<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> St.
+Giles lies some eight miles north of Wimborne, in Dorset, on the edge of
+Cranborne Forest, one of the most beautiful and unspoiled regions in the
+south of England, which 'as late as 1818 contained twelve thousand deer
+and as many as six lodges, each of which had its walk and its ranger'.
+Here he wandered freely in his holidays for many years, giving as yet
+little promise of an exceptional career; here you may find in outlying
+cottages those who still treasure his memory and keep his biography
+among the few books that adorn their shelves.</p>
+
+<p>From Harrow, Lord Ashley went at the age of sixteen to read for two
+years with a clergyman in Derbyshire; in 1819 he went to Christ Church,
+Oxford, and three years later succeeded in taking a first class in
+classics. He had good abilities and a great power of concentration.
+These were to bear fruit one day in the gathering of statistics, in the
+marshalling of evidence, and in the presentation of a case which needed
+the most lucid and most laborious advocacy.</p>
+
+<p>He came down from Oxford in 1822, but did not go into Parliament till
+1826, and for the intervening years there is little to chronicle. In
+those days it was usual enough for a young nobleman to take up politics
+when he was barely of age, but Lord Ashley needed some other motive than
+the custom of the day. It is characteristic of his whole life that he
+responded to a call when there was a need, but was never in a hurry to
+put himself forward or to aim at high position. We have a few of his own
+notes from this time which show the extent of his reading, and still
+more, the depth of his reflections. As with Milton, who spent over five
+years at Cambridge and then five more in study and retirement at Horton,
+the long years of self-education were profitable and left their mark on
+his life. His first strong religious impulse he himself dates back to
+his school-days at Harrow, when (as is now recorded in a mural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> tablet
+on the spot) in walking up the street one day he was shocked by the
+indignities of a pauper funeral. The drunken bearers, staggering up the
+hill and swearing over the coffin, so appalled him that the sight
+remained branded on his memory and he determined to devote his life to
+the service of the poor. But one such shock would have achieved little,
+if the decision had not been strengthened by years of thought and
+resolution. His tendency to self-criticism is seen in the entry in his
+diary for April, 1826 (his twenty-fifth birthday). He blames himself for
+indulging in dreams and for having performed so little; but he himself
+admits that the visions were all of a noble character, and we know what
+abundant fruit they produced in the sixty years of active effort which
+were to follow. The man who a year later could write sincerely in his
+diary, 'Immortality has ceased to be a longing with me. I desire to be
+useful in my generation,' had been little harmed by a few years of
+dreaming dreams, and had little need to be afraid of having made a false
+start in life.</p>
+
+<p>When he entered the House of Commons as member for Woodstock in 1826,
+Lord Ashley had strong Conservative instincts, a fervid belief in the
+British constitution, and an unbounded admiration for the Duke of
+Wellington, whose Peninsula victories had fired his enthusiasm at
+Harrow. It was to his wing of the Conservative party that Ashley
+attached himself; and it was the duke who, succeeding to the premiership
+on the premature death of Canning, gave him his first office, a post on
+the India Board of Control. The East India Company with its board of
+directors (abolished in 1858) still ruled India, but was since 1778
+subject in many ways to the control of the British Parliament, and the
+board to which Lord Ashley now belonged exercised some of the functions
+since committed to the Secretary of State for India. He set himself
+conscientiously to study the interests of India, but over the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> work of
+his department he had little chance of winning distinction. In fact his
+first prominent speech was on the Reform of Lunatic Asylums, not an easy
+subject for a new member to handle. He was diffident in manner and
+almost inaudible. Without the kindly encouragement of friends he might
+have despaired of future success; but his sincerity in the cause was
+worth more than many a brilliant speech. The Bill was carried, a new
+board was constituted, and of this Lord Ashley became chairman in 1829,
+and continued to hold the office till his death fifty-six years later.
+This was the first of the burdens that he took upon himself without
+thought of reward, and so is worthy of special mention, though it never
+won the fame of his factory legislation. But it shows the character of
+the man, how ready he was to step into a post which meant work without
+remuneration, drudgery without fame, prejudice and opposition from all
+whose interests were concerned in maintaining the abuses of the past.</p>
+
+<p>It was this spirit which led him in 1836 to take up the Church Pastoral
+Aid Society,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> in 1839 to found the Indigent Blind Visiting Society,
+in 1840 to champion the cause of chimney-sweeps, and in all these cases
+to continue his support for fifty years or more. We are accustomed
+to-day to 'presidents' and 'patrons' and a whole broadsheet of
+complimentary titles, to which noblemen give their names and often give
+little else. Lord Ashley understood such an office differently. He was
+regular in attendance at meetings, generous in giving money, unflinching
+in his advocacy of the cause. We shall see this more fully in dealing
+with the two most famous crusades associated with his name.</p>
+
+<p>Though these growing labours began early to occupy his time, we find the
+record of his life diversified by other claims and other interests. In
+1830 he married Emily, daughter of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> Lord Cowper, who bore him several
+children, and who shared all his interests with the fullest sympathy;
+and henceforth his greatest joys and his deepest sorrows were always
+associated with his family life. At home his first hobby was astronomy.
+At the age of twenty-eight he was ardently devoted to it and would spend
+all his leisure on it for weeks together, till graver duties absorbed
+his time. But he was no recluse, and all through his life he found
+pleasure in the society of his friends and in paying them visits in
+their homes. Many of his early visits were paid to the Iron Duke at
+Strathfieldsaye; in later life no one entertained him more often than
+Lord Palmerston, with whom he was connected by marriage. He was the
+friend and often the guest of Queen Victoria, and in his twenty-eighth
+year he is even found as a guest at the festive board of George IV.
+'Such a round of laughing and pleasure I never enjoyed: if there be a
+hospitable gentleman on earth it is His Majesty.' And at all times he
+was ready to mix freely and on terms of social equality with all who
+shared his sympathies, dukes and dustmen, Cabinet ministers and
+costermongers.</p>
+
+<p>In the holiday season he delighted to travel. In his journals he sets
+down the impressions which he felt among the pictures and churches of
+Italy, and in the mountains of Germany and Switzerland; he loves to
+record the friendliness of the greetings which he met among the
+peasantry of various lands. When he talked to them no one could fail to
+see that he was genuinely interested in them, that he wanted to know
+their joys and their sorrows, and to enrich his own knowledge by
+anything that the humblest could tell him. Still more did he delight in
+Scotland, where he had many friends. He was of the generation
+immediately under the spell of the 'Wizard of the North', and the whole
+country was seen through a veil of romantic and historical association.
+There he went nearly every year, to Edinburgh, to Roslin, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> Inveraray,
+to the Trossachs, and to a hundred other places&mdash;and if his heart was
+stirred with the glories of the past, his eye was quick to 'catch the
+manners living as they rise'. As he commented caustically at Rome on
+'the church lighted up and decorated like a ball-room&mdash;the bishop with a
+stout train of canons, listening to the music precisely like an opera',
+so at Newbattle he criticizes the coldness of the kirk, 'all is silent
+save the minister, who discharges the whole ceremony and labours under
+the weight of his own tautologies'. His bringing up had been in the
+Anglican church; he was devoted to her liturgy, her congregational
+worship, her moderation and simplicity combined with reverence and
+warmth. Although these travels were but interludes in his busy life,
+they show that it was not for want of other tastes and interests of his
+own that his life was dedicated to laborious service. He was very human
+himself, and there were few aspects of humanity which did not attract
+him.</p>
+
+<p>With his father relations were very difficult. As his interest in social
+questions grew, his attention was naturally turned on the poor nearest
+to his own doors, the agricultural labourers of Dorset. Even in those
+days of low wages Dorset was a notorious example quoted on many a
+Radical platform: the wages of the farm labourers were frequently as low
+as seven shillings a week, and the conditions in which they had often to
+bring up a large family of children were deplorable. If Lord Ashley had
+not himself felt the shame of their poverty, their bad housing and their
+other hardships, there were plenty of opponents ready to force them on
+his notice in revenge for his having exposed their own sores. He was
+made responsible for abuses which he could not remedy. While his father,
+a resolute Tory of the old type, still lived, the son was unable to
+stir. He sedulously tried to avoid all bitterness; but he could not,
+when publicly challenged, avoid stating his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> views about fair wages
+and fair conditions of living, and his father took offence. For years it
+was impossible for the son to come under his father's roof. When the old
+earl died in 1851, his son lost no time in proving his sincerity as a
+reformer; but meanwhile he had to go into the fray against the
+manufacturers with his arms tied behind his back and submit to taunts
+which he little deserved. That he could carry on this struggle for so
+many years, without embittering the issues, and without open exposure of
+the family quarrel, shows the strength of character which he had gained
+by years of religious discipline and self-control.</p>
+
+<p>Politics proper played but a small part in his career. The politicians
+found early that he was not of the 'available' type&mdash;that he would not
+lend himself to party policy or compromise on any matter which seemed to
+him of national interest. Such political posts as were offered to him
+were largely held out as a bait to silence him, and to prevent his
+bringing forward embarrassing measures which might split the party.
+Ashley himself found how much easier it was for him to follow a single
+course when he was an independent member. Reluctantly in 1834 he
+accepted a post at the Board of Admiralty and worked earnestly in his
+department; but this ministry only lasted for one year, and he never
+held office again, though he was often pressed to do so. He was attached
+to Wellington; but for Peel, now become the Tory leader, he had little
+love. The two men were very dissimilar in character; and though at times
+Ashley had friendly communications with Peel, yet in his diary Ashley
+often complains bitterly of his want of enthusiasm, of what he regarded
+as Peel's opportunism and subservience to party policy. The one had an
+instinct for what was practical and knew exactly how far he could
+combine interests to carry a measure; the other was all on fire for the
+cause and ready to push it forward against all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> obstacles, at all costs.
+Ashley, it is true, had to work through Parliament to attain his chief
+ends, and many a bitter moment he had to endure in striving towards the
+goal. But if he was not an adroit or successful politician, he
+gradually, as the struggle went on, by earnestness and force of
+character, made for himself in the House a place apart, a place of rare
+dignity and influence; and with the force of public opinion behind him
+he was able to triumph over ministers and parties.</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1832 that he first had his attention drawn to the conditions
+of labour in factories. He never claimed to be the pioneer of the
+movement, but he was early in the field. The inventions of the latter
+part of the eighteenth century had transformed the north of England. The
+demand for labour had given rise to appalling abuses, especially in the
+matter of child labour. From London workhouses and elsewhere children
+were poured into the labour market, and by the 'Apprentice System' were
+bound to serve their masters for long periods and for long hours
+together. A pretence of voluntary contract was kept up, but fraud and
+deception were rife in the system and its results were tragic. Mrs.
+Browning's famous poem, 'The Cry of the Children,' gives a more vivid
+picture of the children's sufferings than many pages of prose. At the
+same time we have plenty of first-hand evidence from the great towns of
+the misery which went along with the wonderful development of national
+wealth. Speaking in 1873 Lord Shaftesbury said, 'Well can I recollect in
+the earlier periods of the Factory movement waiting at the factory gates
+to see the children come out, and a set of dejected cadaverous creatures
+they were. In Bradford especially the proofs of long and cruel toil were
+most remarkable. The cripples and distorted forms might be numbered by
+hundreds perhaps by thousands. A friend of mine collected together a
+vast number for me; the sight was most piteous, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> deformities
+incredible.' And an eye-witness in Bolton reports in 1792: 'Anything
+like the squalid misery, the slow, mouldering, putrefying death by which
+the weak and feeble are perishing here, it never befell my eyes to
+behold, nor my imagination to conceive.' Some measures of relief were
+carried by the elder Sir Robert Peel, himself a cotton-spinner; but
+public opinion was slow to move and was not roused till 1830, when Mr.
+Sadler,<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> member for Newark, led the first fight for a 'Ten Hours
+Bill'. When Sadler was unseated in 1832, Lord Ashley offered his help,
+and so embarked on the greatest of his works performed in the public
+service. He had the support of a few of the noblest men in England,
+including Robert Southey and Charles Dickens; but he had against him the
+vast body of well-to-do people in the country, and inside Parliament
+many of the most progressive and influential politicians. The factory
+owners were inspired at once by interest and conviction; the political
+economy of the day taught them that all restrictions on labour were
+harmful to the progress of industry and to the prosperity of the
+country, while the figures in their ledgers taught them what was the
+most economical method of running their own mills.</p>
+
+<p>Already it was clear that Lord Ashley was no mere sentimentalist out for
+a momentary sensation. At all times he gave the credit for starting the
+work to Sadler and his associates; and from the outset he urged his
+followers to fix on a limited measure first, to concentrate attention on
+the work of children and young persons, and to avoid general questions
+involving conflicts between capital and labour. Also he took endless
+pains to acquaint himself at first hand with the facts. 'In factories,'
+he said afterwards, 'I examined the mills, the machinery, the homes, and
+saw the workers and their work in all its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> details. In collieries I went
+down into the pits. In London I went into lodging-houses and thieves'
+haunts, and every filthy place. It gave me a power I could not otherwise
+have had.' And this was years before 'slumming' became fashionable and
+figured in the pages of <i>Punch</i>; it was no distraction caught up for a
+week or a month, but a labour of fifty years! We have an account of him
+as he appeared at this period of his life: 'above the medium height,
+about 5 feet 6 inches, with a slender and extremely graceful figure...
+curling dark hair in thick masses, fine brow, features delicately cut,
+the nose perhaps a trifle too prominent,... light blue eyes deeply set
+with projecting eyelids, his mouth small and compressed.' His whole face
+and appearance seems to have had a sculpturesque effect and to have
+suggested the calm and composure of marble. But under this marble
+exterior there was burning a flame of sympathy for the poor, a fire of
+indignation against the system which oppressed them.</p>
+
+<p>In 1833 some progress was made. Lord Althorp, the Whig leader in the
+Commons, under pressure from Lord Ashley, carried a bill dealing indeed
+with some of the worst abuses in factories, but applying only to some of
+the great textile industries. That it still left much to be done can be
+seen from studying the details of the measure. Children under eleven
+years of age were not to work more than nine hours a day, and young
+persons under nineteen not more than twelve hours a day. Adults might
+still work all day and half the night if the temptation of misery at
+home and extra wages to be earned was too strong for them. It seems
+difficult now to believe that this was a great step forward, yet for the
+moment Ashley found that he could do no more and must accept what the
+politicians gave him. In 1840, however, he started a fresh campaign on
+behalf of children not employed in these factories, who were not
+included in the Act of 1833, and who, not being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> concentrated in the
+great centres of industry, escaped the attention of the general public.
+He obtained a Royal Commission to investigate mines and other works, and
+to report upon their condition. The Blue Book was published in 1842 and
+created a sensation unparalleled of its kind. Men read with horror the
+stories of the mines, of children employed underground for twelve or
+fourteen hours a day, crouching in low passages, monotonously opening
+and shutting the trap-doors as the trollies passed to and fro. Alone
+each child sat in pitchy darkness, unable to stir for more than a few
+paces, unable to sleep for fear of punishment with the strap in case of
+neglect, and often surrounded with vermin. Women were employed crawling
+on hands and knees along these passages, stripped to the waist, stooping
+under the low roofs, and even so chafing and wounding their backs, as
+they hauled the coal along the underground rails, or carrying in baskets
+on their backs, up steps and ladders, loads which varied in weight from
+a half to one and a half hundredweights. The physical health, the mental
+education, and the moral character of these poor creatures suffered
+equally under such a system; and well might those responsible for the
+existence of such abuses fear to let the Report be published. But copies
+of it first reached members of Parliament, then the public at large
+learnt the burden of the tale, and Lord Ashley might now hope for enough
+support from outside to break down the opposition in the House of
+Commons and the delays of parliamentary procedure.</p>
+
+<p>'The Mines and Collieries Bill' was brought in before the impression
+could fade, and on June 7, 1842, Ashley made one of the greatest of his
+speeches and drove home powerfully the effect of the Report. His mastery
+of facts was clear enough to satisfy the most dispassionate politician;
+his sincerity disarmed Richard Cobden, the champion of the Lancashire
+manufacturers and brought about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> a reconciliation between them; his
+eloquence stirred the hearts of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort,
+and drew from the latter words of glowing admiration and promises of
+support. In August the bill finally passed the House of Lords, and a
+second great blow had been struck. Practices which were poisoning at the
+source the lives of the younger generation were forbidden by law; above
+all, it was expressly laid down that, after a few years, no woman or
+girl should be employed in mines at all. The influence which such a law
+had on the family life in the mining districts was incalculable; the
+women were rescued from servitude in the mines and restored to their
+natural place at home.</p>
+
+<p>There was still much to do. In 1844 the factory question was again
+brought to the front by the demands of the working classes, and again
+Ashley was ready to champion their cause, and to propose that the
+working day should now be limited to eight hours for children, and to
+ten hours for grown men. In Parliament there was long and weary fighting
+over the details. The Tory Government did not wish to oppose the bill
+directly. Neither party had really faced the question or made up its
+mind. Expediency rather than justice was in the minds of the official
+politicians.</p>
+
+<p>Such a straightforward champion as Lord Ashley was a source of
+embarrassment to these gentlemen, to be met by evasion rather than
+direct opposition. The radical John Bright, a strong opponent of State
+interference and equally straightforward in his methods, made a personal
+attack on Lord Ashley. He referred to the Dorset labourers, as if Ashley
+was indifferent to abuses nearer home, and left no one in doubt of his
+opinions. At the same time, Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, did
+all in his power to defeat Ashley's bill by bringing forward alternative
+proposals, which he knew would be unacceptable to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>the workers. In face
+of such opposition most men would have given way. Ashley, who had been a
+consistent Tory all his life, was bitterly aggrieved at the treatment
+which his bill met with from his official leaders. He persevered in his
+efforts, relying on support from outside; but in Parliament the
+Government triumphed to the extent of defeating the Ten Hours Bill in
+March 1844 and again in April 1846. Still, the small majority (ten) by
+which this last division was decided showed in which direction the
+current was flowing, and when a few months later the Tories were ousted
+from office, the Whigs took up the bill officially, and in June 1847
+Lord Ashley, though himself out of Parliament for the moment, had the
+satisfaction of seeing the bill become the law of the land.</p>
+
+<p>There was great rejoicing in the manufacturing districts, and Lord
+Ashley was the hero of the day. The working classes had no direct
+representative in Parliament in those days: without his constant efforts
+neither party would have given a fair hearing to their cause. He had
+argued with politicians without giving away principles; he had stirred
+the industrial districts without rousing class hatred; he had been
+defeated time after time without giving up the struggle. Much has been
+added since then to the laws restricting the conditions of labour till,
+in the often quoted words of Lord Morley, the biographer of Cobden, we
+have 'a complete, minute, and voluminous code for the protection of
+labour... an immense host of inspectors, certifying surgeons and other
+authorities whose business it is to "speed and post o'er land and ocean"
+in restless guardianship of every kind of labour'. But these were the
+heroic days of the struggle for factory legislation, and also of the
+struggle for cheap food for the people. Reviewing these great events
+many years later the Duke of Argyll said, 'During that period two great
+discoveries have been made in the science of Government: the one is the
+immense advantage of abolishing restrictions on trade, the other is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> the
+absolute necessity of imposing restrictions on labour'. While Sir Robert
+Peel might with some justice contest with Cobden the honour of
+establishing the first principle, few will challenge Lord Ashley's right
+to the honour of securing the second.</p>
+
+<p>Of the many religious and political causes which he undertook during and
+after this time, of the Zionist movement to repatriate the Jews, of the
+establishing of a Protestant bishopric at Jerusalem, of his attacks on
+the war with Sind and the opium trade with China, of his championship of
+the Nestorian Christians against the Turk, of his leadership of the
+great Bible Society, there is not space to speak. The mere list gives an
+idea of the width of his interests and the warmth of his sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Some of these questions were highly contentious; and Lord Ashley, who
+was a fervent Evangelical, was less than fair to churchmen of other
+schools. To Dr. Pusey himself he could write a kindly and courteous
+letter; but on the platform, or in correspondence with friends, he could
+denounce 'Puseyites' in the roundest terms. One cannot expect that a man
+of his character will avoid all mistakes. It was a time when feeling ran
+high on religious questions, and he was a declared partisan; but at
+least we may say that the public good, judged from the highest point,
+was his objective; there was no room for self-seeking in his heart. Nor
+did this wide extension of his activity mean neglect of his earlier
+crusades. On the contrary, he continued to work for the good of the
+classes to whom his Factory Bills had been so beneficial. Not content
+with prohibiting what was harmful, he went on to positive measures of
+good; restriction of hours was followed by sanitation, and this again by
+education, and by this he was led to what was perhaps the second most
+famous work of his life.</p>
+
+<p>In 1843 his attention had already been drawn to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> question of
+educating the neglected children, and he was making acquaintance at
+first hand with the work of the Ragged Schools, at that time few in
+number and poorly supported. He visited repeatedly the Field Lane
+School, in a district near Holborn notoriously frequented by the
+criminal classes, and soon the cause, at which he was to work
+unsparingly for forty years, began to move forward. He went among the
+poor with no thought of condescension. Simple as he was by nature, he
+possessed in perfection the art of speaking to children, and he was soon
+full of practical schemes for helping them. Sanitary reform was not
+neglected in his zeal for religion, and emigration was to be promoted as
+well as better housing at home; for, till the material conditions of
+life were improved, he knew that it was idle to hope for much moral
+reform. 'Plain living and high thinking' is an excellent ideal for those
+whose circumstances put them out of reach of anxiety over daily bread;
+it is a difficult gospel to preach to those who are living in
+destitution and misery.</p>
+
+<p>The character of his work soon won confidence even in the most unlikely
+quarters. In June 1848 he received a round-robin signed by forty of the
+most notorious thieves in London, asking him to come and meet them in
+person at a place appointed; and on his going there he found a mob of
+nearly four hundred men, all living by dishonesty and crime, who
+listened readily and even eagerly to his brotherly words.</p>
+
+<p>Several of them came forward in turn and made candid avowal of their
+respective difficulties and vices, and of the conditions of their lives.
+He found that they were tired of their own way of life, and were ready
+to make a fresh start; and in the course of the next few months he was
+able, thanks to the generosity of a rich friend, to arrange for the
+majority of them to emigrate to another country or to find new openings
+away from their old haunts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But, apart from such special occasions, the work of the schools went
+steadily forward. In seven years, more than a hundred such schools were
+opened, and Lord Shaftesbury was unfailing in his attendance whenever he
+could help forward the cause. His advice to the managers to 'keep the
+schools in the mire and the gutter' sounds curious; but he was afraid
+that, as they throve, boys of more prosperous classes would come in and
+drive out those for whom they were specially founded. 'So long', he
+said, 'as the mire and gutter exist, so long as this class exists, you
+must keep the school adapted to their wants, their feelings, their
+tastes and their level.' And any of us familiar with the novels of
+Charles Dickens and Walter Besant will know that such boys still existed
+unprovided for in large numbers in 1850 and for many years after.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the years went by. He succeeded to the earldom on his father's
+death in 1851. His heart was wrung by the early deaths of two of his
+children and by the loss of his wife in 1872. In his home he had his
+full share of the joys and sorrows of life, but his interest in his work
+never failed. If new tasks were taken up, it was not at the expense of
+the old; the fresh demand on his unwearied energies was met with the
+same spirit. At an advanced age he opened a new and attractive chapter
+in his life by his friendly meetings with the London costermongers. He
+gave prizes for the best-kept donkey, he attended the judging in person,
+he received in return a present of a donkey which was long cherished at
+Wimborne St. Giles. It is impossible to deal fully with his life in each
+decade; one page from his journal for 1882 shows what he could still do
+at the age of eighty-one, and will be the best proof of his persistence
+in well-doing. He began the day with a visit to Greenhithe to inspect
+the training ships for poor boys, at midday he came back to Grosvenor
+Square to attend a committee meeting of the Bible Society at his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> home,
+he then went to a public banquet in honour of his godson, and he
+finished with a concert at Buckingham Palace, thus keeping up his
+friendly relations with all classes in the realm. To the very last, in
+his eighty-fifth year, he continued to attend a few meetings and to
+visit the scenes of his former labours; and on October 1, 1885, full of
+years and full of honours, he died quietly at Folkestone, where he had
+gone for the sake of his health.</p>
+
+<p>In this sketch attention has been drawn to his labours rather than to
+his honours. He might have had plenty of the latter if he had wished. He
+received the Freedom of the City of London and of other great towns.
+Twice he was offered the Garter, and he only accepted the second offer
+on Lord Palmerston's urgent request that he should treat it as a tribute
+to the importance of social work. Three times he was offered a seat in
+the Cabinet, but he refused each time, because official position would
+fetter his special work. He kept aloof from party politics, and was only
+roused when great principles were at stake. Few of the leading
+politicians satisfied him. Peel seemed too cautious, Gladstone too
+subtle, Disraeli too insincere. It was the simplicity and kindliness of
+his relative Palmerston that won his heart, rather than confidence in
+his policy at home or abroad. The House of Commons suited him better
+than the colder atmosphere of the House of Lords; but in neither did he
+rise to speak without diffidence and fear. It is a great testimony to
+the force of his conviction that he won as many successes in Parliament
+as he did. But the means through which he effected his chief work were
+committees, platform meetings, and above all personal visits to scenes
+of distress.</p>
+
+<p>The nation would gladly have given him the last tribute of burial in
+Westminster Abbey, but he had expressed a clear wish to be laid among
+his own people at Wimborne St. Giles, and the funeral was as simple as
+he had wished it to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> be. His name in London is rather incongruously
+associated with a fountain in Piccadilly Circus, and with a street full
+of theatres, made by the clearing of the slums where he had worked: the
+intention was good, the result is unfortunate. More truly than in any
+sculpture or buildings his memorial is to be found in the altered lives
+of thousands of his fellow citizens, in the happy looks of the children,
+and in the pleasant homes and healthy workshops which have transformed
+the face of industrial England.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="JOHN_LAWRENCE" id="JOHN_LAWRENCE"></a>JOHN LAWRENCE</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1811-79</p>
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+
+<tr><td valign="top">1811.</td><td> Born at Richmond, Yorkshire, March 4.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1823.</td><td> School at Londonderry.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1827.</td><td> Haileybury I.C.S. College.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1829.</td><td> Goes out to India as a member of Civil Service.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1831.</td><td> Delhi.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1834.</td><td> P&#257;n&#299;pat.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1836.</td><td> Et&#257;wa.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1840-2.</td><td> Furlough and marriage to Harriette Hamilton.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1844.</td><td> Collector and Magistrate of Delhi and P&#257;n&#299;pat.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1845.</td><td> First Sikh War.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1846.</td><td> Governor of J&#257;landhar Do&#257;b.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1848.</td><td> Second Sikh War.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1849.</td><td> Lord Dalhousie annexes Punjab. Henry and John Lawrence members of Punjab Board.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1852-3.</td><td> New Constitution. John Lawrence, Chief Commissioner of Punjab.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1856.</td><td> Oudh annexed. Henry Lawrence first Governor.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1857.</td><td> Indian Mutiny. Death of Henry Lawrence at Lucknow (July). Punjab secured. Delhi retaken (September).</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1858-9.</td><td> Baronetcy; G.C.B. Return to England.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1864.</td><td> Governor-General of India. Irrigation. Famine relief.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1869.</td><td> Return to England. Peerage.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1870.</td><td> Chairman of London School Board.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1876.</td><td> Failure of eyesight.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1879.</td><td> Death in London, June 27.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">JOHN LAWRENCE</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Indian Administrator</span>
+</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p>
+<p>The north of Ireland and its Scoto-Irish stock has given birth to some
+of the toughest human material that our British Isles have produced. Of
+this stock was John Wesley, who at the age of eighty-five attributed his
+good health to rising every day at four and preaching every day at
+five. Of this was Arthur Wellesley, who never knew defeat and 'never
+lost a British gun'. Of this was Alexander Lawrence, sole survivor among
+the officers of the storming party at Seringapatam, who lived to rear
+seven stout sons, five of whom went out to service in India, two at
+least to win imperishable fame. His wife, a Miss Knox, came also from
+across the sea; and, if the evidence fails to prove Mr. Bosworth Smith's
+statement that she was akin to the great Reformer, she herself was a
+woman of strong character and great administrative talent. When we
+remember John Lawrence's parentage, we need not be surprised at the
+character which he bore, nor at the evidence of it to be seen in the
+grand rugged features portrayed by Watts in the picture in the National
+Portrait Gallery.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="lawrence" id="lawrence"></a><img src="images/lawrence.jpg" alt="LORD LAWRENCE" />
+<br /><span class="smcap">lord lawrence</span><br />
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Of these parents John Laird Mair Lawrence was the fourth surviving son,
+one boy, the eldest, having died in infancy. He owed the accident of his
+birth in an English town to his father's regiment being quartered at the
+time in Yorkshire, his first schooling at Bristol to his father's
+residence at Clifton; but when he was twelve years old, he followed his
+elder brothers to Londonderry, where his maternal uncle, the Rev. James
+Knox, was Headmaster of the Free Grammar School, situated within the
+walls of that famous Protestant fortress. It was a rough school, of
+which the Lawrence brothers cherished few kindly recollections. It is
+difficult to ascertain what they learnt there: perhaps the grim
+survivals of the past, town-walls, bastions, and guns, made the deepest
+impression upon them. John's chief friend at school was Robert
+Montgomery, whom, many years later, he welcomed as a sympathetic
+fellow-worker in India; and the two boys continued their education
+together at Wraxall in Wiltshire, to which they were transferred in
+1825. Here John spent two years, working at his books by fits and
+starts, and finding an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> outlet for his energy in climbing, kite-flying,
+and other unconventional amusements, and then his turn came to profit by
+the goodwill of a family friend, who was an influential man and a
+director of the East India Company. To this man, John Huddlestone by
+name, his brothers Alexander and George owed their commissions in the
+Indian cavalry, while Henry had elected for the artillery. John hoped
+for a similar favour, but was offered, in its place, a post in the
+Indian Civil Service. This was a cruel disappointment to him as he had
+set his heart on the army. In fact he was only reconciled to the
+prospect by the influence of his eldest sister Letitia, who held a
+unique place as the family counsellor now and throughout her life.</p>
+
+<p>When he sailed first for India at the age of eighteen, John Lawrence had
+done little to give promise of future distinction. He had strong
+attachments to his mother and sister; outside the family circle he was
+not eager to make new friends. In his work and in his escapades he
+showed an independent spirit, and seemed to care little what others
+thought of him; even at Haileybury, at that time a training-school for
+the service of the East India Company, he was most irregular in his
+studies, though he carried off several prizes; and he seems to have
+impressed his fellows rather as an uncouth person who preferred mooning
+about the college, or rambling alone through the country-side, to
+spending his days in the pursuits which they esteemed.</p>
+
+<p>When the time came for John Lawrence to take up his work, his brother
+Henry, his senior by five years, was also going out to India to rejoin
+his company of artillery, and the brothers sailed together. John had to
+spend ten weary months in Calcutta learning languages, and was very
+unhappy there. Ill-health was one cause; another was his distaste for
+strangers' society and his longing for home; it was only the definite
+prospect of work which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> rescued him from despondency. He applied for a
+post at Delhi; and, as soon as this was granted, he was all eagerness to
+leave Calcutta. But he had used the time well in one respect: he had
+acquired the power of speaking Persian with ease and fluency, and this
+stood him in good stead in his dealings with the princes and the
+peasants of the northern races, whose history he was to influence in the
+coming years.</p>
+
+<p>Delhi has been to many Englishmen besides John Lawrence a city of
+absorbing interest. It had even then a long history behind it, and its
+history, as we in the twentieth century know, is by no means finished
+yet. It stands on the Jumna, the greatest tributary of the Ganges, at a
+point where the roads from the north-west reach the vast fertile basin
+of these rivers, full in the path of an invader. Many races had swept
+down on it from the mountain passes before the English soldiery appeared
+from the south-east; its mosques, its palaces, its gates, recall the
+memory of many princes and conquerors. At the time of Lawrence's arrival
+it was still the home of the heir of Akbar and Aurangzeb, the last of
+the great Mughals. The dynasty had been left in 1804, after the wars of
+Lord Wellesley, shorn of its power, but not robbed of its dignity or
+riches. As a result it had degenerated into an abuse of the first order,
+since all the scoundrels of the district infested the palace and preyed
+upon its owner, who had no work to occupy him, no call of duty to rouse
+him from sloth and sensuality. The town was filled with a turbulent
+population of many different tribes, and the work of the European
+officials was exacting and difficult. But at the same time it gave
+unique opportunities for an able man to learn the complexity of the
+Indian problem; and the knowledge which John Lawrence acquired there
+proved of incalculable value to him when he was called to higher posts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At Delhi he was working as an assistant to the Resident, one of a staff
+of four or five, with no independent authority. But in 1834 he was given
+temporary charge of the district of P&#257;n&#299;pat, fifty miles to the
+north, and it is here that we begin to get some measure of the man and
+his abilities. The place was the scene of more than one famous battle in
+the past; armies of Mughals and Persians and Mar&#257;th&#299;s had swept
+across its plains. Its present inhabitants were J&#257;ts, a race widely
+extended through the eastern Punjab and the western part of the province
+of Agra. Originally invaders from the north, they espoused the religions
+of those around them, some Brahman, some Muhammadan, some Sikh, and
+settled down as thrifty industrious peasants; though inclined to
+peaceful pursuits, they still preserved some strength of character and
+were the kind of people among whom Lawrence might hope to enjoy his
+work. The duties of the magistrate are generally divided into judicial
+and financial. But, as an old Indian official more exhaustively stated
+it: 'Everything which is done by the executive government is done by the
+Collector in one or another of his capacities&mdash;publican, auctioneer,
+sheriff, road-maker, timber-dealer, recruiting sergeant, slayer of wild
+beasts, bookseller, cattle-breeder, postmaster, vaccinator, discounter
+of bills, and registrar.' It is difficult to see how one can bring all
+these departments under two headings; it is still more difficult to see
+how such diverse demands can possibly be met by a single official,
+especially by one little over twenty years of age coming from a distant
+country. No stay-at-home fitting himself snugly into a niche in the
+well-manned offices of Whitehall can expect to see his powers develop so
+rapidly or so rapidly collapse (whichever be his fate) as these solitary
+outposts of our empire, bearing, Atlas-like, a whole world on their
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>With John Lawrence, fortunately, there was no question of collapse till
+many years of overwork broke down his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> physical strength. He grappled
+with the task like a giant, passing long days in his office or in the
+saddle, looking into everything for himself, laying up stores of
+knowledge about land tenure and agriculture, training his judgement to
+deal with the still more difficult problem of the workings of the
+Oriental mind. He had no friends or colleagues of his own at hand; and
+when the day's work was done he would spend his evenings holding an
+informal durbar outside his tent, chatting with all and sundry of the
+natives who happened to be there. The peoples of India are familiar with
+pomp and outward show such as we do not see in the more prosaic west;
+but they also know a man when they see one. And this young man with the
+strongly-marked features, curt speech, and masterful manner, sitting
+there alone in shirt-sleeves and old trousers as he listened to their
+tales, was an embodiment of the British rule which they learnt to
+respect&mdash;if not to love&mdash;for the solid benefits which it conferred upon
+them. He had an element of hardness in him; by many he was thought to be
+unduly harsh at different periods of his life; but he spared no trouble
+to learn the truth, he was inflexibly just in his decisions, and his
+reputation spread rapidly throughout the district. In cases of genuine
+need he could be extremely kind and generous; but he did not lavish
+these qualities on the first comer, nor did he wear his heart upon his
+sleeve. His informal ways and unconventional dress were a bugbear to
+some critics; his old waywardness and love of adventure was still alive
+in him, and he thoroughly enjoyed the more irregular sides of his work.
+Mr. Bosworth Smith has preserved some capital stories of the crimes with
+which he had to deal, and how the young collector took an active part in
+arresting the criminals&mdash;stories which some years later the future
+Viceroy dictated to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>But, after two years thus spent in constant activity and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> ever-growing
+mastery of his work, he had to come down in rank; the post was filled by
+a permanent official, and John Lawrence returned to the Delhi staff as
+an assistant.</p>
+
+<p>He soon received other 'acting appointments' in the neighbourhood of
+Delhi, one of which at Et&#257;wa gave him valuable experience in dealing
+with the difficult revenue question. The Government was in the habit of
+collecting the land tax from the 'ryot' or peasant through a class of
+middle-men called 'talukd&#257;rs',<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> who had existed under the native
+princes for a long time. Borrowing perhaps from western ideas, the
+English had regarded the latter as landowners and the peasants as mere
+tenants; this had often caused grave injustice to the latter, and the
+officials now desired to revise the settlement in order to put all
+classes on a fair footing. In this department Robert Bird was supreme,
+and under his direction John Lawrence and others set themselves to
+measure out areas, to record the nature of the various soils, and to
+assess rents at a moderate rate. Still this was dull work compared to
+the planning of practical improvements and the conviction of dangerous
+criminals; and as, towards the end of 1839, Lawrence was struck down by
+a bad attack of fever, he was not sorry to be ordered home on long leave
+and to revisit his native land. He had been strenuously at work for ten
+years on end and he had well earned a holiday.</p>
+
+<p>His father was now dead, and his favourite sister married, but of his
+mother he was for many years the chief support, contributing liberally
+of his own funds and giving his time and judgement to managing what the
+brothers put together for that purpose. In 1840 he was travelling both
+in Scotland and Ireland; and it was near Londonderry that he met his
+future wife, daughter of the Rev. Richard Hamilton, who, besides being
+rector of his parish, was an active justice of the peace. He met<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> her
+again in the following summer, and they were married on August 26, 1841.
+Their life together was a tale of unbroken happiness, which was only
+ended by his death. A long tour on the Continent was followed by a
+severe illness, which threatened to forbid all prospect of work in
+India. However, by the end of that summer he had recovered his health
+enough to contemplate returning, and in October, 1842, he set sail to
+spend another sixteen years in labouring in India.</p>
+
+<p>In 1843 he resumed work at Delhi, holding temporary posts till the end
+of 1844, when he became in his own right Collector and Magistrate of
+Delhi and P&#257;n&#299;pat. This time his position, besides involving much
+familiar work, threw him in the way of events of wider interest. Lord
+Hardinge, the Governor-General, on his way to the first Sikh war, came
+to Delhi, and was much impressed with Lawrence's ability; and when he
+annexed the Do&#257;b<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> of J&#257;landhar and wanted a governor for it, he
+could find no one more suitable than the young magistrate, who had so
+swiftly collected 4,000 carts and sent them up laden with supplies on
+the eve of the battle of Sobraon.</p>
+
+<p>This was a great step in advance and carried John Lawrence ahead of many
+of his seniors; but it was promotion that was fully justified by events.
+He was not wanting in self-confidence, and the tone of some of his
+letters to the Secretary at head-quarters might seem boastful, had not
+his whole career shown that he could more than make good his promise.
+'So far as I am concerned as supervisor,' he says, 'I could easily
+manage double the extent of country'; and then, comparing his district
+with another, he continues: 'I only ask you to wait six months, and then
+contrast the civil management of the two charges.' As a fact, during the
+three years that he held this post, he was often acting as deputy for
+his brother<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> Henry at Lahore, during his illness or absence, and this
+alone clears him of the charge of idle boasting. J&#257;landhar was
+comparatively a simple job for him, whatever it might be for others; he
+was able to apply his knowledge of assessment and taxation gained at
+Et&#257;wa, and need only satisfy himself. At Lahore, on the other hand,
+he had to consider the very strong views held by his brother about the
+respect due to the vested rights of the chiefs; and he studiously set
+himself to deal with matters in the way in which his brother would have
+done. The Sirdars or Sikh chieftains had inherited traditions of corrupt
+and oppressive rule; but the chivalrous Henry Lawrence always looked at
+the noble side of native character; and, as by his personal gifts he was
+able to inspire devotion, so he could draw out what was good in those
+who came under his influence. The cooler and more practical John looked
+at both sides, at the traditions, good and evil, which came to them from
+their forefathers, and he considered carefully how these chiefs would
+act when not under his immediate influence. Above all, he looked to the
+prosperity and happiness of the millions of peasants out of sight, who
+toiled laboriously to get a living from the land.</p>
+
+<p>The second Sikh war, which broke out in 1848, can only be treated here
+so far as it affected the fortunes of the Lawrences. Lord Gough's
+strategical blunders, redeemed by splendid courage, give it great
+military interest; but it was the new Viceroy, Lord Dalhousie, who
+decided the fate of the Punjab. He was a very able, hard-working Scotch
+nobleman, who devoted himself to his work in India for eight years with
+such self-sacrifice that he returned home in 1856 already doomed to an
+early death. But he was masterful and self-confident to a degree; and
+against his imperious will the impulsive forces of Charles Napier and
+Henry Lawrence broke like waves on a granite coast. He was not blind to
+their exceptional gifts, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> to him the wide knowledge, coolness, and
+judgement of John Lawrence made a greater appeal; and when, after the
+victory of Chili&#257;nw&#257;la and the submission of the Sikh army in
+1849, he annexed the Punjab, he decided to rule it by a Board and not by
+a single governor, and to direct the diverse talents of the brothers to
+a common end. He could not dispense with Henry's influence among the
+Sikh chieftains, and John's knowledge of civil government was of equal
+value.</p>
+
+<p>Each would to a certain extent have his department, but a vast number of
+questions would have to be decided jointly by the Board, of which the
+third member, from 1850, was their old schoolfellow and friend Robert
+Montgomery. The friction which resulted was often intolerable. Without
+the least personal animosity, the brothers were forced into frequent
+conflicts of opinion; each was convinced of the justice of his attitude
+and most unwilling to sacrifice the interests of those in whom he was
+especially interested. After three years of the strain, Lord Dalhousie
+decided that it was time to put the country under a single ruler. For
+the honour of being first Chief Commissioner of the Punjab he chose the
+younger brother; and Sir Henry was given the post of Agent in
+R&#257;jput&#257;na, from which he was promoted in 1857 to be the first
+Governor of Oudh.</p>
+
+<p>It was a tragic parting. The ablest men in the Punjab, like John
+Nicholson and Herbert Edwardes, regarded Sir Henry as a father, and many
+felt that it would be impossible to continue their work without him. No
+Englishman in India made such an impression by personal influence on
+both Europeans and Asiatics. As a well-known English statesman said:
+'His character was far above his career, distinguished as that career
+was.' But there is little doubt, now, that for the development of the
+new province Lord Dalhousie made the right choice. And there is no
+higher proof of the magnanimity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> John Lawrence than the way in which
+he won the respect, and retained the services, of the most ardent
+supporters of his brother. His dealings with Nicholson alone would fill
+a chapter; few lessons are more instructive than the way in which he
+controlled the waywardness of this heroic but self-willed officer, while
+giving full scope to his singular abilities.</p>
+
+<p>The tale of John Lawrence's government of the Punjab is in some measure
+a repetition of his work at P&#257;n&#299;pat and Delhi. It had the same
+variety, it was carried out with the same thoroughness; but on this vast
+field it was impossible for him to see everything for himself. While
+directing the policy, he had to work largely through others and to leave
+many important decisions to his subordinates. The quality of the Punjab
+officials&mdash;of men who owed their inspiration to Henry Lawrence, or to
+John, or to both of them&mdash;was proved in many fields of government during
+the next thirty years. Soldiers on the frontier passes, judges and
+revenue officers on the plains, all worked with a will and contributed
+of their best. The Punjab is from many points of view the most
+interesting province in India. Its motley population, chiefly
+Musalm&#257;ns, but including Sikhs and other Hindus; its extremes of heat
+and cold, of rich alluvial soil and barren deserts; its vast
+water-supplies, largely running to waste; its great frontier ramparts
+with the historic passes&mdash;each of these gave rise to its own special
+problems. It is impossible to deal with so complex a subject here; all
+that we can do is to indicate a few sides of the work by which John
+Lawrence had so developed the provinces within the short period of eight
+years that it was able to bear the strain of the Mutiny, and to prove a
+source of strength and not of weakness. He put the right men in the
+right places and supported them with all his power. He broke up the old
+Sikh army, and reorganized the forces in such a way as to weaken tribal
+feeling and make it less easy for them to combine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> against us. He so
+administered justice that the natives came to know that an English
+official's word was as good as his bond. And, with the aid of Robert
+Napier and others, he so helped forward irrigation as to redeem the
+waste places and develop the latent wealth of the country. In all these
+years he had little recognition or reward. His chief, Lord Dalhousie,
+valued his work and induced the Government to make him K.C.B. in 1856;
+but to the general public at home he was still unknown.</p>
+
+<p>In 1857 the crisis came. The greased cartridges were an immediate cause;
+there were others in the background. The sepoy regiments were too
+largely recruited from one race, the Poorbeas of the North-west
+Province, and they were too numerous in proportion to the Europeans;
+vanity, greed, superstition, fear, all influenced their minds.
+Fortunately, they produced no leader of ability; and, where the British
+officials were prompt and firm, the sparks of rebellion were swiftly
+stamped out; Montgomery at Lahore, Edwardes at Pesh&#257;war, and many
+others, did their part nobly and disarmed whole regiments without
+bloodshed. But at Meerut and Cawnpore there was hesitation; rebellion
+raised its head, encouragement was given to a hundred local discontents,
+little rills flowed together from all directions, and finally two great
+streams of rebellion surged round Delhi and Lucknow. The latter, where
+Henry Lawrence met a hero's death in July, does not here concern us; but
+the reduction of Delhi was chiefly the work of John Lawrence, and its
+effect on the history of the Mutiny was profound.</p>
+
+<p>He might well have been afraid for the Punjab, won by conquest from the
+most military race in India only eight years before, lying on the
+borders of our old enemy Afgh&#257;nist&#257;n, garrisoned by 11,000
+Europeans and about 50,000 native troops. It might seem a sufficient
+achievement to preserve his province to British rule, with rebellion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+raging all around and making inroads far within its borders. But as soon
+as he had secured the vital points in his own province (Mult&#257;n,
+Pesh&#257;war, Lahore), John Lawrence devoted himself to a single task, to
+recover Delhi, directing against it every man and gun, and all the
+stores that the Punjab could spare. Many of his subordinates, brave men
+though they were, were alarmed to see the Punjab so denuded and exposed
+to risks; but we now see the strength of character and determination of
+the man who swayed the fortunes of the north. He knew the importance of
+Delhi, of its geographical position and its imperial traditions; and he
+felt sure that no more vital blow could be struck at the Mutiny than to
+win back the city. The effort might seem hopeless; the military
+commanders might hesitate; the small force encamped on the historic
+ridge to the west of the town might seem to be besieged rather than
+besiegers. But continuous waves of energy from the Punjab reinforced
+them. One day it was 'the Guides', marching 580 miles in twenty-two
+days, or some other European regiment hastening from some hotbed of
+fanaticism where it could ill be spared; another day it was a train of
+siege artillery, skilfully piloted across rivers and past ambushes;
+lastly, it was the famous moving column led by John Nicholson in person
+which restored the fortunes of the day. Through June, July, August, and
+half of September, the operations dragged wearily on; but thanks to the
+exertions of Baird Smith and Alexander Taylor, the chief engineers, an
+assault was at last judged to be feasible. After days of street
+fighting, the British secured control of the whole city on September
+20th, and Nicholson, who was fatally wounded in the assault, lived long
+enough to hear the tale of victory. Without aid from England this great
+triumph had been won by the resources of the Punjab; and great was the
+moral effect of the news, as it spread through the bazaars.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This success did not exhaust Lawrence's energy. For months after, he
+continued to help Sir Colin Campbell in his operations against Lucknow,
+and to correspond with the Viceroy, Lord Canning, and others about the
+needs of the time. More perhaps than any one else, he laboured to check
+savage reprisals and needless brutality, and thereby incurred much odium
+with the more reckless and ignorant officers, who, coming out after the
+most critical hour, talked loudly about punishment and revenge. He was
+as cool in victory as he had been firm in the hour of disaster, and
+never ceased to look ahead to rebuilding the shaken edifice on sounder
+foundations when the danger should be past. It was only in the autumn of
+1858, when the ship of State was again in smooth water, that he began to
+think of a holiday for himself. He had worked continuously for sixteen
+years; his health was not so strong as of old, and he could not safely
+continue at his post. He received a Baronetcy and the Grand Cross of the
+Bath from the Crown, while the Company recognized his great services by
+conferring on him a pension of &pound;2,000 a year.</p>
+
+<p>From these heroic scenes it is difficult to pass to the humdrum life in
+England, the receptions at Windsor, the parties in London, and the
+discussions on the Indian Council. He himself (though not indifferent to
+honourable recognition of his work) found far more pleasure in the quiet
+days passed in the home circle, the games of croquet on his lawn, and
+the occasional travels in Scotland and Ireland. Four years of repose
+were none too long, for other demands were soon to be made upon him.
+When Lord Elgin died suddenly in 1863, John Lawrence received the offer
+of the highest post under the Crown, and, before the end of the year, he
+was sailing for Calcutta as Governor-General of India.</p>
+
+<p>In some ways he was able to fill the place without great effort. He had
+never been a respecter of persons; he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> had been quite indifferent
+whether his decisions were approved by those about him, and had always
+learnt to walk alone with a single eye to the public good. Also, he had
+such vast store of knowledge of the land and its inhabitants as no
+Viceroy before him for many decades. But the ceremonial fatigued him;
+and the tradition of working 'in Council', as the Viceroy must, was
+embarrassing to one who could always form a decision alone and had
+learnt to trust his own judgement.</p>
+
+<p>Many of Lawrence's best friends and most trusted colleagues had left
+India, and he had, seated at his Council board, others who did not share
+his views, and who opposed the measures that he advocated. Especially
+was this true of the distinguished soldier Sir Hugh Rose; and Lawrence
+had to endure the same strain as in 1850, in the days of the Punjab
+board. But he was able to do great service to the country in many ways,
+and especially to the agricultural classes by pushing forward large
+schemes of irrigation. Finance was one of his strong points, and any
+expenditure which would be reproductive was sure of his support owing to
+his care for the peasants and his love of a sound budget. The period of
+his Viceroyalty was what is generally called uneventful&mdash;that is, it was
+chiefly given up to such schemes as promoted peace and prosperity, and
+did not witness any extension of our dominions. Even when Robert
+Napier's<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> expedition went to Abyssinia, few people in England
+realized that it was organized in India and paid for by India; and the
+credit for its success was given elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>But it is necessary to refer to one great subject of controversy, which
+was prominent all through Lawrence's career and with which his name is
+associated. This is the 'Frontier Policy' and the treatment of
+Afgh&#257;nist&#257;n, on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> which two distinct schools of thought emerged.
+One school, ever jealous of the Russian advance, maintained that our
+Indian Government should establish agencies in Afgh&#257;nist&#257;n with or
+without the consent of the Am&#299;r; that it should interfere, if need
+be, to secure the throne for a prince who was attached to us; that
+British troops should be stationed beyond the Indus, where they could
+make their influence felt beyond our borders. The other maintained that
+our best policy was to keep within our natural boundaries, and in this
+respect the Indus with its fringe of desert was second only to the high
+mountain chains; that we should recognize the wild love of independence
+which the Afgh&#257;ns felt, that we should undertake no obligations
+towards the Am&#299;r except to observe the boundaries between him and us.
+If the Russians threatened our territories through Afgh&#257;nist&#257;n,
+the natives would help us from hatred of the invaders; but if we began
+to establish agents and troops in their towns, we should ourselves
+become to them the hated enemy.</p>
+
+<p>One school said that the Afgh&#257;ns respected strength and would support
+us, if we seemed capable of a vigorous policy. The other replied that
+they resented foreign intrusion and would oppose Great Britain or
+Russia, if either attempted it. One said that we ought to have a
+resident in K&#257;bul and Kandah&#257;r, the other said that it was a pity
+that we had ever occupied Pesh&#257;war, in its exposed valley at the foot
+of the Khyber Pass, and that Attock, where the Indus was bridged, was
+the ideal frontier post.</p>
+
+<p>No one doubted that Lawrence would be found on the side of the less
+showy and less costly policy; and he kept unswervingly true to his
+ideal. The verdict of history must not be claimed too confidently in a
+land which has seen so many races come and go. At least it may be said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+that the men who advocated advance were unable to make it good. Few
+chapters in our history are more tragic than the Afgh&#257;n Wars of
+1838-42 and 1878-80, though the last was redeemed by General Roberts's
+great achievements. Our present policy is in accord with this verdict.
+There is to-day no British agency at K&#257;bul or Kandah&#257;r; and the
+loyalty of the Am&#299;rs, during some forty years of faithful adherence
+on our part to this policy, have been sufficiently firm to justify
+Lawrence's opposition to the Forward Policy. To-day it seems easy to
+vindicate his wisdom; but in 1878, when the Conservative Government
+kindled the war fever and allowed Lord Lytton to initiate a new
+adventure, it was not easy to stem the tide, and Lawrence came in for
+much abuse and unpopularity in maintaining the other view.</p>
+
+<p>But long before this happened he had returned to England. His term of
+office was over early in 1869, and his work in India was finished. His
+last years at home were quiet, but not inactive. In 1870 he was invited
+to become the first chairman of the new School Board for London, and he
+held this office three years. Board work was always uncongenial to him,
+and the subject was, of course, unfamiliar; but he gave his best efforts
+to the cause and did other voluntary work in London. This came to an end
+in 1876, when his eyesight failed, and for nearly two years he had much
+suffering and was in danger of total blindness for a time. A second
+operation saved him from this, and in 1878 he put forth his strength in
+writing and speaking vigorously, but without success, against Lord
+Lytton's Afgh&#257;n War. In June, 1879, he was stricken with sudden
+illness, and died a week later in his seventieth year. It was hardly to
+be expected that one who had spent himself so freely, amid such stirring
+events, should live beyond the Psalmist's span of life.</p>
+
+<p>He had started at the bottom of the official ladder; by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> his own efforts
+he had won his way to the top; and his career will always be a notable
+example to those young Englishmen who cross the sea to serve the Empire
+in our great Dependency with its 300 million inhabitants. How the
+relations between India and Great Britain will develop&mdash;how long the
+connexion will last may be debated by politicians and authors; it is in
+careers like that of John Lawrence (and there were many such in the
+nineteenth century) that the noblest fruit of the connexion may be
+seen.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="JOHN_BRIGHT" id="JOHN_BRIGHT"></a>JOHN BRIGHT</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1811-89</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1811.</td><td> Born at Greenbank, Rochdale, November 16.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1827.</td><td> Leaves school. Enters his father's mill.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1839.</td><td> Marries Elizabeth Priestman (died 1841).</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1841.</td><td> Joins Cobden in constitutional agitation for Repeal of Corn Laws.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1843.</td><td> Enters Parliament as Member for Durham.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1846.</td><td> Corn Laws repealed.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1847.</td><td> Marries Margaret Leatham (died 1878).</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1847.</td><td> Member for Manchester.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1854-5.</td><td> Opposes Crimean War.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1856-7.</td><td> Long illness.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1857.</td><td> Unseated for Manchester. Member for Birmingham.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1861.</td><td> Supports the North in American Civil War.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1868.</td><td> President of Board of Trade in Gladstone's first Government.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1870.</td><td> Second long illness.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1880.</td><td> Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster in Gladstone's second Government.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1882.</td><td> Resigns office over bombardment of Alexandria.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1886.</td><td> Opposes Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1889.</td><td> Dies at Rochdale, March 29.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">JOHN BRIGHT</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Tribune</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>The word 'tribune' comes to us from the early days of the Roman
+Republic; and even in Rome the tribunate was unlike all other
+magistracies. The holder had no outward signs of office, no satellites
+to execute his commands, no definite department to administer like the
+consul or the praetor. It was his first function to protest on behalf of
+the poorer citizens against the violent exercise of authority, and, on
+certain occasions, to thwart the action of other magistrates. He was to
+be the champion of the weak and helpless against the privileged orders;
+and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> power depended on his courage, his eloquence, and the
+prestige of his office. England has no office of the sort in her
+constitutional armoury; but the word 'tribune' expresses, better than
+any other title, the position occupied in our political life by many of
+the men who have been the conspicuous champions of liberty, and few
+would contest the claim of John Bright to a foremost place among them.
+He, too, stood forth to vindicate the rights of the <i>plebs</i>; he, too,
+resisted the will of governments; and in no common measure did he give
+evidence, through forty years of public life, of the possession of the
+highest eloquence and the highest courage.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="bright" id="bright"></a><img src="images/bright.jpg" alt="JOHN BRIGHT" />
+<br /><span class="smcap">john bright</span><br />
+From the painting by W. W. Ouless in the National Portrait Gallery</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>His early life gave little promise of a great career. He was born in
+1811, the son of Jacob Bright, of Rochdale, who had risen by his own
+efforts to the ownership of a small cotton-mill in Lancashire, a man of
+simple benevolence and genuine piety, and a member of the Society of
+Friends&mdash;a society more familiar to us under the name of Quakers, though
+this name is not employed by them in speaking of themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The boy left home early, and between the ages of eight and fifteen he
+was successively a pupil at five Quaker schools in the north of England.
+Here he enjoyed little comfort, and none of the aristocratic seclusion
+in which most statesmen have been reared at Eton and Harrow. He rubbed
+shoulders with boys of various degrees of rank and wealth, and learnt to
+be simple, true, and serious-minded; but he was in no way remarkable at
+this age. We hear little of his recreations, and still less of his
+reading; the school which pleased him most and did him most good was the
+one which he attended last, lying among the moors on the borders of
+Lancashire and Yorkshire. In the river Hodder he learnt to swim; still
+more he learnt to fish, and it was fishing which remained his favourite
+outdoor pastime throughout his life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When school-days were over&mdash;at the age of fifteen&mdash;there was no question
+of the University: a rigorous life awaited him and he began at once to
+work in his father's business. The mill stood close beside his father's
+house at Greenbank near Rochdale, some ten miles northward from
+Manchester, and had been built in 1809 by Jacob Bright, out of a capital
+lent to him by two members of the Society of Friends. Here he received
+bales of new cotton by canal or from carriers, span it in his mill, and
+gave out the warp and weft thus manufactured to handloom weavers, whom
+he paid by the piece to weave it in the weaving chamber at the top of
+their own houses. He then sold the fully manufactured article in
+Manchester or elsewhere. In such surroundings, many a clever boy has
+developed into a hard-headed prosperous business man; material interests
+have cased in his soul, and he has been content to limit his thoughts to
+buying and selling, to the affairs of his factory and his town, and he
+has heard no call to other fields of work. But John Bright's education
+in books and in life was only just beginning, and though it may be
+regrettable that he missed the leisured freedom of university life, we
+must own that he really made good the loss by his own effort (and that
+without neglecting the work of the mill), and thereby did much to
+strengthen the independence of his character.</p>
+
+<p>In the mill he was the earliest riser, and often spent hours before
+breakfast at his books. History and poetry were his favourite reading,
+and periodicals dealing with social and political questions; his taste
+was severe and had the happiest effect in chastening his oratorical
+style. To him, as to the earnest Puritans of the seventeenth century,
+the Bible and Milton were a peculiar joy; no other stories were so
+moving, no other music so thrilling to the ear. In his family there was
+no want of good talk. His mother, who died in 1830, was a woman of great
+gifts, who helped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> largely in developing the minds of her children.
+After her death John continued to live with his sisters, who were clever
+and original in mind, becoming the leader in the home circle, where
+views were freely exchanged on the questions of the day.</p>
+
+<p>The Society of Friends was adverse to political discussion, as
+interfering with the religious life. But the Brights could not be kept
+from such a field of interest; and during these years theirs, like many
+other quiet homes, was stirred by the excitement roused by the fortunes
+of the Reform Bill.</p>
+
+<p>The mill, too, did much to educate him. In the Rochdale factory there
+was no marked separation as at Manchester between rich and poor. Master
+and men lived side by side, knew one another's family history and
+fortunes, and fraternized over their joys and sorrows. Even in those
+days of backward education 'Old Jacob' made himself responsible for the
+schooling of his workmen's children; his son, too, made personal friends
+among those working under him and kept them throughout his life. Outside
+the mill Rochdale offered opportunities which he readily took. In 1833
+he became one of the founders and first president of a debating society,
+and he began early to address Bible meetings and to lecture on
+temperance in his native town, moved by no conscious idea of learning to
+speak in public, but by the simple desire to be useful in good work. In
+such holidays as he took he was eager to travel abroad and to learn more
+of the outside world, and before he started at the age of twenty-four on
+his longest travels (a nine months' journey to Palestine and the eastern
+Mediterranean) he had, by individual effort, fitted himself to hold his
+own with the best students of the universities in width of outlook and
+capacity for mastering a subject. Like them, he had his limitations and
+his prejudices; but however we may admire wide toleration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> in itself,
+depth and intensity of feeling are often of more value to a man in
+enabling him to influence his fellows.</p>
+
+<p>The year of Queen Victoria's accession may be counted a landmark in the
+life of this great Victorian. Then for the first time he met Richard
+Cobden, who was destined to extend his labours and to share his glory;
+and in the following year he began to co-operate actively in the Free
+Trade cause, attending meetings in the Rochdale district and gradually
+developing his power of speaking. It was about this time that he came to
+know his first wife, Elizabeth Priestman, of the Society of Friends, in
+Newcastle-on-Tyne, a woman of refined nature and rare gifts, whom he was
+to marry in 1839 and to lose in 1841. Then it was that he built the
+house 'One Ash', facing the same common as the house in which he was
+born. Here he lived many years, and here he died in the fullness of
+time, a Lancashire man, content to dwell among his own people, in his
+native town, and to forgo the grandeur of a country house. It was from
+here that he was called in the decisive hour of his life to take part in
+a national work with which his name will ever be associated. At the
+moment when Bright was prostrated with grief at his wife's death Cobden
+appeared on the scene and made his historic appeal. He urged his friend
+to put aside his private grief, to remember the miseries of so many
+other homes, miseries due directly to the Corn Laws, to put his shoulder
+to the wheel, and never to rest till they were repealed.</p>
+
+<p>Cobden had been less happy than Bright in his schooling. His father's
+misfortune led to his spending five years at a Yorkshire school of the
+worst type, and seven more as clerk in the warehouse of an unsympathetic
+uncle. Like Bright, he had early to take the lead in his own family;
+also, like Bright, he had to educate himself; but he had a far harder
+struggle, and the enterprise which he showed in commerce in early
+manhood would have left him the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> possessor of a vast fortune, had he not
+preferred to devote his energies to public causes. The two men were by
+nature well suited to complement one another. If Cobden was the more
+ingenious in explaining an argument, Bright was more forcible in
+asserting a principle. If Cobden could, above all other men, convince
+the intellects of his hearers, Bright could, as few other speakers,
+kindle their spirits for a fray. His figure on a platform was striking.
+His manly expressive face, with broad brow, straight nose, and square
+chin, was essentially English in type. Though in the course of his
+political career he discarded the distinctive Quaker dress, he never
+discarded the Quaker simplicity. His costume was plain, his style of
+speaking severe, his bearing dignified and restrained. Only when his
+indignation was kindled at injustice was he swept far away from the
+calmness of Quaker tradition.</p>
+
+<p>The Corn Laws were a sequel to the Napoleonic wars and to the insecurity
+of foreign trade which these caused. While war lasted it had inflated
+prices, and brought to English growers of corn a period of extraordinary
+prosperity. When peace came, to escape from a sudden fall in prices, the
+landed proprietors, who formed a majority of the House of Commons, had
+fixed by Act of Parliament the conditions under which corn might be
+imported from abroad. This measure was to perpetuate by law, in time of
+peace, the artificial conditions from which the people had unavoidably
+suffered by the accident of war. The legislators paid no heed to the
+growth of population, which was enormous, or to the distress of the
+working classes, who needed time to adjust themselves to the rapid
+changes in industry. Even the middle classes suffered, and the poor
+could only meet such trouble by 'clemming' or self-starvation. A noble
+duke, speaking in all good faith, advised them to 'try a pinch of curry
+powder in hot water', as making the pangs of hunger less intolerable.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+He met with little thanks for his advice from the sufferers, who
+demanded a radical cure. Parliament as a whole showed few signs of
+wishing to probe the question more deeply, and shut its eyes to the
+evidence of distress, whether shown in peaceful petitions or in
+disorderly riots. Many of the members were personally humane men and
+good landlords; but there were no powerful newspapers to enlighten them,
+and they knew little of the state of the manufacturing districts.</p>
+
+<p>The cause had now found its appropriate champions. We in this day are
+familiar with appeals to the great mass of the people: we know the story
+of Midlothian campaigns and Belfast reviews; we hear the distant thunder
+from Liverpool, Manchester, or Birmingham, when the great men of
+Parliament go down from London to thrill vast audiences in the
+provincial towns. But the agitation of the Anti-Corn-Law League was a
+new thing. It was initiated by men unknown outside the Manchester
+district; few of the thousands to whom it was directed possessed the
+vote; and yet it wrought one of the greatest changes of the nineteenth
+century, a change of which the influence is perhaps not yet spent. In
+this campaign, Cobden and Bright were, without doubt, the leading
+spirits.</p>
+
+<p>The movement filled five years of Bright's life. His hopes and fears
+might alternate&mdash;at one moment he was stirred to exultation over
+success, at another to regrets at the break-up of his home life, at
+another to bitter complaints and hatred of the landed interest&mdash;but his
+exertions never relaxed. As he was so often absent, the business at
+Rochdale had to be entrusted to his brother. Whenever he could be there,
+Bright was at his home with his little motherless daughter; but his
+efforts on the platform were more and more appreciated each year, and
+the campaign made heavy demands upon him.</p>
+
+<p>At the opening of the Free Trade Hall in Manchester,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> on the site of the
+'Peterloo' riots, he won a signal triumph. The vast audience was
+enthusiastic: several of them also were discriminating in their praise.
+One lady said that the chief charm of Mr. Bright was in the simplicity
+of his manner, the total absence of anything like showing off; another
+that she should never attend another meeting if he were announced to
+speak, as she could not bear the excitement. Simplicity and profound
+emotion were the secrets of his influence. The London Opera House saw
+similar scenes once a month, from 1843 till the end of the struggle.
+Villages and towns, and all classes of society, were instructed in the
+principles of the League and induced to help forward the cause. Not only
+did the wealthy factory owner, conscious as he was of the loss which the
+high price of food inflicted on the manufacturing interest, contribute
+his thousands; the factory hand too contributed his mite to further the
+welfare of his class. Even farmers were led to take a new view of the
+needs of agriculture, and the country labourer was made to see that his
+advantage lay in the success of the League. It was a farm-hand who put
+the matter in a nutshell at one of the meetings: 'I be protected,' he
+said, 'and I be starving.'</p>
+
+<p>In 1843 Bright joined his leader in Parliament as member for Durham
+city, though his Quaker relatives disapproved of the idea that one of
+their society should so far enter the world and take part in its
+conflicts. In the House of Commons he met with scant popularity but with
+general respect. He was no mob orator of the conventional type. The
+simplicity and good taste of his speeches satisfied the best judges. He
+expressed sentiments hateful to his hearers in such a way that they
+might dislike the speech, but could not despise the speaker. Even when
+he boldly attacked the Game Laws in an assembly of landowners, the House
+listened to him respectfully, and the spokesman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> of the Government
+thanked him for the tone and temper of his speech, admitting that he had
+made out a strong case. But it was in the country and on the platform
+that the chief efforts of Cobden and Bright were made, and their chief
+successes won.</p>
+
+<p>In 1845 they had an unexpected but most influential ally. Nature herself
+took a hand in the game. From 1842 to 1844 the bad effects of the Corn
+Laws were mitigated by good harvests and by the wise measures of Peel in
+freeing trade from various restrictions. But in 1845 first the corn, and
+then the potato crop, failed calamitously. Peel's conscience had been
+uneasy for years: he had been studying economics, and his conclusions
+did not square with the orthodox Tory creed. So when the Whig leader,
+Lord John Russell, ventured to express himself openly for Free Trade in
+his famous Edinburgh letter of November 28, Peel at last saw some chance
+of converting his party. It has already been told in this book how at
+length he succeeded in his aims, how he broke up his party but saved the
+country, and how in the hour of mingled triumph and defeat he generously
+gave to Cobden the chief credit for success. Whigs and Tories might
+taunt one another with desertion of principles, or might claim that
+their respective leaders collaborated at the end; certainly the question
+would never have been put before the Cabinet or the House of Commons as
+a Government measure but for the untiring efforts of the two Tribunes.
+History can show few greater triumphs of Government by moral suasion and
+the art of speech. Throughout, violence had been eschewed, even though
+men were starving, and appeals had been made solely to the justice and
+expediency of their case. Nothing illustrates better the sincerity and
+disinterestedness of John Bright than his conduct in these last decisive
+months. The tide was flowing with him; the opposition was reduced to a
+shadow. He might have enjoyed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> luxury of applause from Radicals,
+Whigs, and the more advanced Tories, and won easy victories over a
+hostile minority. But the cause was now in the safe hands of Peel, whose
+honesty they respected and whose generalship they trusted; so Cobden and
+Bright were content to stand aside and watch. Instead of carping at his
+tardy conversion, Bright wrote in generous praise of Peel's speech: 'I
+never listened', he said, 'to any human being speaking in public with so
+much delight.' His heart was in the cause and not in his own
+advancement. When he did rise to speak, it was to vindicate Peel's
+honour and his statesmanship.</p>
+
+<p>A few months later this honourable alliance came to an abrupt end.
+Bright was forced, by the same incorruptible sense of right and by the
+absence of all respect of persons, to oppose Peel in the crisis of his
+fate. The Government brought in an Irish Coercion Bill, which was
+naturally opposed by the Whigs. The Protectionist Tories saw their
+chance of taking revenge on Peel for repealing the Corn Laws and made
+common cause with their enemies; and from very different motives, Bright
+went into the same lobby. His conscience forbade him to support any
+coercive measure. No Prime Minister could please him as much as Peel;
+but no surrender, no mere evasion of responsibilities was possible in
+the case of a measure of which he disapproved. So firm was the bed-rock
+of principle on which Bright's political conduct was based; and it was
+to this uncompromising sincerity above all that he owed the triumphs of
+his oratory.</p>
+
+<p>His method as an orator is full of interest.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> In his youth he had
+begun by writing out and learning his speeches in full; but, before he
+quitted Rochdale for a wider theatre, he had discarded this rather
+mechanical method, and trusted more freely to his growing powers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> He
+still made careful preparation for his speeches. He tells us how he
+often composed them in bed, as Carlyle's 'rugged Brindley' wrestled in
+bed with the difficulties of his canal-schemes, the silence and the dim
+light favouring the birth of ideas. He prepared words as well as ideas;
+but he only committed to memory enough to be a guide to him in marking
+the order and development of his thoughts, and filled up the original
+outline according to the inspiration of the moment. A few sentences,
+where the balance of words was carefully studied; a few figures of
+speech, where his imagination had taken flight into the realm of poetry;
+a few notable illustrations from history or contemporary politics, with
+details of names and figures,&mdash;these would be found among the notes
+which he wrote on detached slips of paper and dropped successively into
+his hat as each milestone was attained. As compared with his illustrious
+rival Gladstone, he was very sparing of gesture, depending partly on
+facial expression, still more on the modulations of his voice, to give
+life to the words which he uttered. His reading had formed his diction,
+his constant speaking had taught him readiness, and his study of great
+questions at close quarters and his meditation on them supplied him with
+the facts and the conclusions which he wished to put forward; but the
+fire which kindled this material to white heat was the passion for great
+principles which glowed in his heart. He himself in 1868, in returning
+thanks for the gift of the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh, quoted with
+obvious sincerity a sentence from his favourite Milton: 'True eloquence
+I find to be none but the serious and hearty love of Truth.'</p>
+
+<p>Bright's public life was in the main a tale of devotion to two great
+causes, the Repeal of the Corn Laws, consummated in 1846, and the
+extension of the Franchise, which was not realized till twenty years
+later. But he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> found time to examine other questions and to utter shrewd
+opinions on the government of India and of Ireland, and to influence
+English sentiment on the Crimean War and the War of Secession in the
+United States. In advance of his time, he wished to develop
+cotton-growing in India and so to prevent the great industry of his own
+district being dependent on America alone. He attacked the existing
+board of directors and preferred immediate control by the Crown; and,
+while wishing to preserve the Viceroy's supremacy over the whole, he
+spoke in favour of admitting Indians to a larger share in the government
+of the various provinces. Many of the best judges of to-day are now
+working towards the same end, but at the time he met with little
+support. It is interesting to find that both on India and on Ireland
+similar views were put forward by men so different as John Bright and
+Benjamin Disraeli. Mr. Trevelyan has preserved the memory of several
+episodes in which they were connected with one another and of attempts
+which Disraeli made to win Bright's support and co-operation. Bright
+could cultivate friendships with politicians of very different schools
+without being induced to deviate by a hair's breadth from the cause
+which his principles dictated, and he could treat his friends, at times,
+with refreshing frankness. When Disraeli warmly admired one of his
+greatest speeches and expressed the wish that he himself could emulate
+it, the outspoken Quaker replied: 'Well, you might have made it, if you
+had been honest.'</p>
+
+<p>It was the young Disraeli who, as early as 1846, had attributed the
+Irish troubles to 'a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and
+an alien church'. It was Bright who never hesitated, when opportunity
+arose, to work for the Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland and for
+the security of Irish tenants in their holdings. A succession of
+measures, carried by Liberals and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> Conservatives from Gladstone to
+George Wyndham, have made us familiar with the idea of land purchase in
+Ireland; but Bright had been there as early as 1849 and had learnt for
+himself. Though at the end of his life he was a stubborn opponent of
+Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, he had long ago won the gratitude of Ireland
+as no other Englishman of his day, and his name has been preserved there
+in affectionate remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>In 1854, the year of the Crimean War, Bright reached the zenith of his
+oratorical power, and at the same time touched the nadir of his
+popularity. Public opinion was setting strongly against Russia. In
+stemming the tide of war the so-called 'Manchester school' had a
+difficult task, and was severely criticized. The idea of the 'balance of
+power' made little appeal to Bright; and as a Quaker he was reluctant to
+see England interfering in a quarrel which did not seem to concern her.
+The satirists indeed scoffed unfairly at the doctrine of 'Peace at any
+price'; for Bright was content to put aside the principle and to argue
+the case on pure political expediency. But his attacks on the wars of
+the last century were too often couched in an offensive tone with
+personal references to the peerages won in them, and he spoke at times
+too bitterly of the diplomatic profession and especially of our
+ambassador at Constantinople. Nothing shows so clearly the danger of the
+imperfect education which was forced on Bright by necessity, and which
+he had done so much to remedy, as his attitude to foreign and imperial
+politics. In his home he had too readily imbibed the crude notion that
+our Empire existed to provide careers for the needy cadets of
+aristocratic families, and that our foreign policy was inspired by
+self-seeking officials who cared little for moral principles or for the
+lives of their fellow countrymen. A few months spent with Lord Canning
+at Calcutta, or with the Lawrences at Lahore, frequent intercourse with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+men of the calibre of Lord Lyons or Lord Cromer, would have enlightened
+him on the subject and prevented him from uttering the unwarranted
+imputations which he did. Yet in his great parliamentary speeches of
+1854 he rose high above all pettiness and made a deep impression on a
+hostile house. Damaging though his speech of December 22 was to the
+Government, no minister attempted to reply. Palmerston, Russell, and
+Gladstone, with all their power, were unequal to the task. Disraeli told
+Bright that a few more such speeches 'would break up the Government';
+and Delane, the famous editor of <i>The Times</i>, wrote that 'Cobden and
+Bright would be our ministers but for their principle of peace at any
+price'.</p>
+
+<p>But Bright was not thinking of office or of breaking up Governments: he
+was thinking of the practical end in view. His next great speech was on
+February 23, 1855, when a faint hope of peace appeared. It was most
+conciliatory in tone, and was a solemn appeal to Palmerston to use his
+influence in ending the war. This was known as 'the Angel of Death'
+speech, from a famous passage which occurs in it. At the end he was
+'overloaded with compliments', but the minister, who was hampered by
+Russian intrigues with Napoleon, seemed deaf to all appeals, and Bright
+again returned to the attack. Till the last days of the war, he
+continued to raise his voice on behalf of peace; but his exertions had
+told on his strength, and for the greater part of two years he had to
+abandon public life and devote himself to recovering his health.</p>
+
+<p>Six years later he was to prove that 'peace at any price' was no fair
+description of his attitude. The Southern States of America seceded on
+the question of State rights and the institution of slavery, and the
+Federal Government declared war on them as rebels. This time it was not
+a war for the balance of power, but one fought to vindicate a moral
+principle, and Bright was strongly in favour of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> fighting it to a
+finish. For different reasons most of our countrymen favoured the South,
+but he appealed for British sympathy for the other side, on the ground
+that no true Briton could abet slavery. He was the most prominent
+supporter of the North, for long the only prominent one, but he
+gradually made converts and did much to wipe away the reproach which
+attached to the name of Englishmen in America, when the North triumphed
+in the end. The war ended in 1865 with the surrender of General Lee at
+Appomattox, and Bright wrote in his journal, 'This great triumph of the
+Republic is the event of our age'.</p>
+
+<p>But long before 1865 the question of Reform and of the extension of the
+franchise had been revived. Gladstone might speak in favour of the
+principle in 1864; Russell might introduce a Reform Bill in 1866; a year
+later Disraeli might 'dish the Whigs'; and Whig and Tory might wrangle
+over the question who were the friends of the 'working man', but Bright
+had made his position clear to his friends in 1846. He began a popular
+movement in 1849 and for the next fifteen years of his life it was the
+object dearest to his heart. He was not afraid to walk alone. When his
+old fellow worker, Cobden, refused his aid, on the ground that he was
+not convinced of the need for extending the franchise, Bright himself
+assumed the lead and bore the brunt of the battle. Till 1865 his main
+obstacle was Palmerston, who since he took the helm in the worst days of
+the Crimean War and conducted the ship of State into harbour, occupied
+an impregnable position. Palmerston was dear to 'the man in the street',
+shared his prejudices and understood his humours; and nothing could make
+him into a serious Democrat or reformer. Even after Palmerston's death,
+Bright's chief opponent was to be found in the Whig ranks, in Robert
+Lowe, who was a master of parliamentary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> eloquence and who managed, in
+1866, to wreck Lord John Russell's Reform Bill in the House. But Bright
+had his revenge in the country. Such meetings as ensued in the great
+provincial towns had not been seen for twenty years: the middle class
+and the artisans were fused as in the great Repeal struggle of 1846. At
+Glasgow as many as 150,000 men paraded outside the town, and no hall
+could contain the thousands who wished to hear the great Tribune. He
+claimed that eighty-four per cent. of his countrymen were still excluded
+from the vote, and he bluntly asserted that the existing House of
+Commons did not represent 'the intelligence and the justice of the
+nation, but the prejudices, the privileges, and the selfishness, of a
+class'.</p>
+
+<p>But however blind many of this class might still be to the signs of the
+times, they found an astute leader in Disraeli, who had few principles
+and could trim his sails to any wind. The Tory Reform Bill, which he put
+forward in February 1867, came out a very different Bill in July, after
+discussion in the Cabinet, which led to the resignation of three
+ministers, and after debates in the House of Commons, where it was
+roughly handled. The principle of household suffrage was conceded, and
+another million voters were added to the electorate. Disraeli had made a
+greater change of front than any which he could attribute to Peel, and
+that without conviction, for reasons of party expediency. The real
+triumph belonged to Bright. 'The Bill adopted', he writes, 'is the
+precise franchise I recommended in 1858.' He had not only roused the
+country by his platform speeches, he had carefully watched the Bill in
+all its stages through the House, and gradually transformed it till it
+satisfied the aspirations of the people. He had been content to work
+with Disraeli so long as he could further the cause of Reform; and he
+only quarrelled with that statesman finally when, in 1878, he revived
+the anti-Russian policy of Palmerston.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>During this strenuous time his domestic life was happy and tranquil.
+After the death of his first wife he had remained a widower for six
+years, and in 1847 he had married Margaret Leatham, who bore him seven
+children and shared his joys and sorrows in no ordinary measure for
+thirty years. Whenever politics took him away from his Rochdale home, he
+wrote constantly to her, and his letters throw most valuable light on
+his inmost feelings. She died in 1878, and after this his life was
+pitched in a different key. The outer world might suppose that high
+political office was crowning his career, but his enthusiasm and his
+power were ebbing and his physical health failed him more than once. He
+was as affectionate to his children, as friendly to his neighbours, as
+true to his principles; but the old fire was gone.</p>
+
+<p>The outward events of his life from 1867 to 1889 must be passed over
+lightly. Against his own wishes he was persuaded by Gladstone to join
+the Cabinet in 1868 and again in 1880. His name was a tower of strength
+to the Government with the newly-enfranchised electors, but he himself
+had little taste for the routine of office. At Birmingham, for which he
+had sat since 1857, he compared himself to the Shunammite woman who
+refused the offer of advancement at court, and replied to the prophet,
+'I dwell among mine own people'. But events were too strong for him: he
+was drawn first to Westminster to share in the government of the
+country, and then to Osborne to visit the Queen. Both the Queen and he
+were nervous at the prospect, but the interview passed off happily.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a>
+Family affections and sorrows were a bond between them, and he talked to
+her with his usual frankness and simplicity. Even the difficult question
+of costume was settled by a compromise, and the usual gold-braided
+livery was replaced by a sober suit of black. Ministerial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> work in
+London might have proved irksome to him; but his colleagues in the
+Cabinet were indulgent, and no excessive demands were made upon his
+strength. It was recognized that Bright was no longer in the fighting
+line. In 1870 he was incapacitated by a second long illness, and he had
+little share in the measures carried through Parliament for Irish land
+purchase and national education.</p>
+
+<p>His official career was finally closed in 1882, when the bombardment of
+Alexandria seemed to open a new and aggressive chapter in our Eastern
+policy. Bright was true to his old principles and resigned office.</p>
+
+<p>He severed himself still more from the official Liberals in 1886, when
+he refused to follow Gladstone into the Home Rule camp. He disliked the
+methods of Parnell, the obstruction in Parliament, and the campaign of
+lawlessness in Ireland. His own victories had not been won so, and he
+had a great respect for the traditions of the House. He also believed
+that the Home Rule Bill would vitally weaken the unity of the realm. But
+no personal bitterness entered into his relations with his old
+colleagues: he did not attack Gladstone, as he had attacked Palmerston
+in 1855. From his death-bed he sent a cordial message to his old chief,
+and received an answer full of high courtesy and affection.</p>
+
+<p>His illness lasted several months. From the autumn of 1888 he lay at One
+Ash, weak but not suffering acutely; and on March 27, 1889, he quietly
+passed away. His old friend Cobden had preceded him more than twenty
+years, having died in 1865, and had been buried at his birthplace in
+Sussex, where he had made himself a peaceful home in later life. Bright
+proved himself equally faithful to the home of his earliest years. He
+was laid to rest in the small burying-ground in front of the Friends'
+meeting-house where he had worshipped as a child. In his long career he
+had served noble causes, and scaled the heights of fame,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> and the crowds
+at his funeral testified to the love which his neighbours bore him. He
+had never willingly been absent for long from his native town. His life,
+compared with that of Disraeli or Gladstone, seems almost bleak in its
+simplicity, varied as it was by so few excursions into other fields. But
+two strong passions enriched it with warmth and glow, his family
+affections and his zeal for the common good. These filled his heart, and
+he was content that it should be so.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Type of the wise who soar but never roam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="dickens" id="dickens"></a><img src="images/dickens.jpg" alt="CHARLES DICKENS" />
+<br /><span class="smcap">charles dickens</span><br />
+From the painting by Daniel Maclise in the National Portrait Gallery</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHARLES_DICKENS" id="CHARLES_DICKENS"></a>CHARLES DICKENS</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1812-1870</p>
+
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1812.</td><td> Born at Landport, Portsmouth, February 7.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1816.</td><td> Parents move to Chatham; 1821, to London.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1822.</td><td> Father bankrupt and in prison. Charles in blacking warehouse.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1827.</td><td> Charles enters lawyer's office.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1831.</td><td> Reporters' Gallery in Parliament.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1836.</td><td> Marries Catherine Hogarth. Publishes <i>Sketches by Boz</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1837.</td><td> <i>Pickwick Papers.</i> 1838. <i>Nicholas Nickleby.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1842.</td><td> First American journey. 1843. <i>Martin Chuzzlewit.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1844-5.</td><td> Eleven months' residence in Italy, chiefly at Genoa.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1846.</td><td> Editor of <i>Daily News</i> for a few weeks.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1846-7.</td><td> Six months at Lausanne; three months at Paris. <i>Dombey and Son.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1849-50.</td><td> <i>David Copperfield.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1850.</td><td> Editor of weekly periodical, <i>Household Words</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1851-2.</td><td> Manager of theatrical performances. 1852. <i>Bleak House.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1853.</td><td> Italian tour: Rome, Naples, and Venice.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1856.</td><td> Purchase of Gadshill House, near Rochester.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1858.</td><td> Beginning of public readings.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1859.</td><td> <i>Tale of Two Cities</i> appears in <i>All the Year Round</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1860.</td><td> Gadshill becomes his home instead of London.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1867.</td><td> Second American journey. Public readings in America.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1869.</td><td> April, collapse at Chester. Readings stopped.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1870.</td><td> Dies at Gadshill, June 9.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">CHARLES DICKENS</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Novelist and Social Reformer</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>In these days when critics so often repeat the cry of 'art for art's
+sake' and denounce Ruskin for bringing moral canons into his judgements
+of pictures or buildings, it is dangerous to couple these two titles
+together, and to label Dickens as anything but a novelist pure and
+simple. And indeed, all would admit that the creator of Sam Weller and
+Sarah Gamp will live when the crusade against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> 'Bumbledom' and its
+abuses is forgotten and the need for such a crusade seems incredible.
+But when so many recent critics have done justice to his gifts as a
+creative artist, this aspect of his work runs no danger of being
+forgotten. Moreover, when we are considering Dickens as a Victorian
+worthy and as a representative man of his age, it is desirable to bring
+out those qualities which he shared with so many of his great
+contemporaries. Above all, we must remember that Dickens himself would
+be the last man to be ashamed of having written 'with a purpose', or to
+think that the fact should be concealed as a blemish in his art. There
+was nothing in which he felt more genuine pride than in the thought that
+his talents thus employed had brought public opinion to realize the need
+for many practical reforms in our social condition. If these old abuses
+have mostly passed away, we may be thankful indeed; but we cannot feel
+sure that in the future fresh abuses will not arise with which the
+example of Dickens may inspire others to wage war. His was a strenuous
+life; he never spared himself nor stinted his efforts in any cause for
+which he was fighting; and if he did not win complete victory in his
+lifetime, he created the spirit in which victory was to be won.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Dickens was born in 1812, the second child of a large family,
+his father being at the time a Navy clerk employed at Portsmouth. Of his
+birthplace in Commercial Road Portsmouth is justifiably proud; but we
+must think of him rather as a Kentishman and a Londoner, since he never
+lived in Hampshire after his fourth year. The earliest years which left
+a distinct impress on his mind were those passed at Chatham, to which
+his father moved in 1816. This town and its neighbouring cathedral city
+of Rochester, with their narrow old streets, their riverside and
+dockyard, took firm hold of his memory and imagination. To-day no places
+speak more intimately of him to the readers of his books. Here he passed
+five years of happy childhood till<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> his father's work took the family to
+London and his father's improvidence plunged them into misfortune.</p>
+
+<p>For those who know Wilkins Micawber it is needless to describe the
+failings of Mr. Dickens; for others we may be content to say that he was
+kindhearted, sanguine and improvident, quite incapable of the steady
+industry needed to support a growing family. When his debts overwhelmed
+him and he was carried off to the Marshalsea prison, Charles was only
+ten years old, but already he took the lead in the house. On him fell
+the duty of pacifying creditors at the door, and of making visits to the
+pawn-broker to meet the daily needs of the household. His initiation
+into life was a hard one and it began cruelly soon. If he was active and
+enterprising beyond his years, with his nervous high-strung temperament
+he was capable of suffering acutely; and this capacity was now to be
+sorely tried. For a year or more of his life this proud sensitive child
+had to spend long hours in the cellars of a warehouse, with rough
+uneducated companions, occupied in pasting labels on pots of
+boot-blacking. This situation was all that the influence of his family
+could procure for him; and into this he was thrust at the age of ten
+with no ray of hope, no expectation of release. His shiftless parents
+seemed to acquiesce in this drudgery as an opening for their cleverest
+son; and instead of their helping and comforting him in his sorrow, it
+was he who gave his Sundays to visiting them in prison and to offering
+them such consolation as he could. The iron burnt deep into his soul.
+Long after, in fact till the day when the district was rebuilt and
+changed out of knowledge, he owned that he could not bear to revisit the
+scene; so painful were his recollections, so vivid his sense of
+degradation. Twenty-five years later he narrated the facts to his friend
+and biographer John Forster in a private conversation; and he only
+recurred to the subject once more when under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> the disguise of a novel he
+told the story of the childhood of David Copperfield. By shifting the
+horror from the realm of fact to that of fiction, perhaps he lifted the
+weight of it from the secret recesses of his heart.</p>
+
+<p>When his father's debts were relieved, the child regained his freedom
+from servitude, but even then his schooling was desultory and
+ineffective. Well might the elder Dickens, in a burst of candour, say to
+a stranger who asked him about his son's education, 'Why indeed, sir,
+ha! ha! he may be said to have educated himself.'</p>
+
+<p>At the age of fifteen Charles embarked again on his career as a
+wage-earner. At first he was taken into a lawyer's office, where he
+filled a position somewhat between that of office-boy and clerk, and two
+years later he was qualifying himself by the study of shorthand for the
+profession of a parliamentary reporter, which his father was then
+following. He entered 'the Gallery' in 1831, first representing the
+<i>True Sun</i> and later the well-known <i>Morning Chronicle</i>; and at
+intervals he enlarged his experiences by journeys into the provinces to
+report political meetings. Thus it was that he familiarized himself with
+the mail coaches, the wayside hostelries, and the rich variety of types
+that were to be found there; with London in most of its phases he was
+already at home. So, when in 1834 he made his first attempts at writing
+in periodical literature, although he was only twenty-two years old, he
+had a wealth of first-hand experiences quite outside the range of the
+man who is just finishing his leisurely passage through a public school
+and university: of schools and offices, of parliaments and prisons, of
+the street and of the high road, he had been a diligent and observant
+critic; for many years he had practised the maxim of Pope: 'The proper
+study of mankind is Man.'</p>
+
+<p>Friends sprang up wherever he went. His open face, his sparkling eye,
+his humorous tongue, his ready sympathy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> were a passport to the
+goodwill of those whom he met; few could resist the appeal. Many readers
+will be familiar with the early portrait by Maclise; but his friends
+tell us how little that did justice to the lively play of feature, 'the
+spirited air and carriage' which were indescribable. On the top of a
+mail coach, on a fresh morning, they must have won the favour of his
+fellow travellers more easily than Alfred Jingle won the hearts of the
+Pickwickians. And beneath the radiant cheerfulness of his manner, the
+quick flash of observation and of speech, there was in him an element of
+hard persistence and determination which would carry him far. If the
+years of poverty and neglect had failed to chill his hopes and break his
+spirit, there was no fear that he would tire in the pursuit of his
+ambition when fortune began to smile upon him. He had touched life on
+many sides. He had kept his warmth of sympathy, his buoyancy, his
+capacity for rising superior to ill-fortune; and the years of adversity
+had only deepened his feeling for all that were oppressed. He had much
+to learn about the craft of letters; but he already had the first
+essential of an author&mdash;he had something to say.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1836 is a definite landmark in the life of Dickens. In this
+year he married; in this year he gave up the practice of parliamentary
+reporting, published the <i>Sketches by Boz</i>, and began the writing of
+<i>The Pickwick Papers</i>. This immortal work achieved wide popularity at
+once. Criticism cannot hope to do justice to the greatness of Sam
+Weller, to the humours of Dingley Dell and Eatanswill, to the adventures
+of the hero in back gardens or in prison, on coaches or in wheelbarrows.
+Every one must read them in the original for himself. In this book
+Dickens reached at once the height of his success in making his fellow
+countrymen laugh with him at their own foibles. If in the art of
+constructing a story, in the depiction of character, in deepening the
+interest by the alternation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> happiness and misfortune, he was to go
+far beyond his initial triumph,&mdash;still with many Dickensians, who love
+him chiefly for his liveliness of observation and broad humour, Pickwick
+remains the prime favourite.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this success on the fortunes of the author was immediate
+and lasting. Henceforth he could live in a comfortable house and look
+forward to a family life in which his children should be free from all
+risk of repeating his own experience. He could afford himself the
+pleasures and the society which he needed, and he became the centre of a
+circle of friends who appreciated his talents and encouraged him in his
+career. His relations with his publishers, though not without incident,
+were generally of the most cordial kind. If Dickens had the
+self-confidence to estimate his own powers highly, and the shrewd
+instinct to know when he was getting less than his fair share in a
+bargain, yet in a difference of opinion he was capable of seeing the
+other side, and he was loyal in the observance of all agreements.</p>
+
+<p>The five years which followed were so crowded with various activities
+that it is difficult to date the events exactly, especially when he was
+producing novels in monthly or weekly numbers. Generally he had more
+than one story on the stocks. Thus in 1837, before <i>Pickwick</i> was
+finished, <i>Oliver Twist</i> was begun, and it was not itself complete
+before the earlier numbers of <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> were appearing. In the
+same way <i>The Old Curiosity Shop</i> and <i>Barnaby Rudge</i>, which may be
+dated 1840 and 1841, overlapped one another in the planning of the
+stories, if not in the execution of the weekly parts. There is no period
+of Dickens's life which enables us better to observe his intense mental
+activity, and at the same time the variety of his creations. Here we
+have the luxuriant humour of Mrs. Nickleby and the Crummles family side
+by side with the tragedy of Bill Sikes and the pathos of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> Little Nell.
+Here also we can see the gradual development of constructive power in
+the handling of the story. But for our purpose it is more significant to
+notice that we here find Dickens's pen enlisted in the service of the
+noblest cause for which he fought, the redemption from misery and
+slavery of the children of his native land. Lord Shaftesbury's life has
+told us what their sufferings were and how the machinery of Government
+was slowly forced to do its part; and Dickens would be the last to
+detract from the fame of that great philanthropist, whose efforts on
+many occasions he supported and praised. But there were wide circles
+which no philanthropist could reach, hearts which no arguments or
+statistics could rouse; men and women who attended no meetings and read
+no pamphlets but who eagerly devoured anything that was written by the
+author of <i>The Pickwick Papers</i>. To them Smike and Little Nell made a
+personal and irresistible appeal; they could not remain insensible to
+the cruelty of Dotheboys Hall and to the depravity of Fagin's school;
+and if these books did not themselves recruit active workers to improve
+the conditions of child life, at least society became permeated with a
+temper which was favourable to the efforts of the reformers.</p>
+
+<p>As far back as the days of his childhood at Rochester Dickens had been
+indignant at what he had casually heard of the Yorkshire schools; and
+his year of drudgery in London had made him realize, in other cases
+beside his own, the degradation that followed from the neglect of
+children. On undertaking to handle this subject in <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>,
+he journeyed to Yorkshire to gather evidence at first hand for his
+picture of Dotheboys Hall. And for many years afterwards he continued to
+correspond with active workers on the subject of Ragged Schools and on
+the means of uplifting children out of the conditions which were so
+fruitful a source of crime. He discovered for himself how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> easily
+miscreants like Fagin could find recruits in the slums of London, and
+how impossible it was to bring up aright boys who were bred in these
+neglected homes. Even where efforts had been begun, the machinery was
+quite inadequate, the teachers few, the schoolrooms cheerless and
+ill-equipped. Mr. Crotch<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> has preserved a letter of 1843 in which
+Dickens makes the practical offer of providing funds for a washing-place
+in one school where the children seemed to be suffering from inattention
+to the elementary needs. His heart warmed towards individual cases and
+he faced them in practical fashion; he was not one of those reformers
+who utter benevolent sentiments on the platform and go no further.</p>
+
+<p>Critics have had much to say about Dickens's treatment of child
+characters in his novels; the words 'sentimental' and 'mawkish' have
+been hurled at scenes like the death of Paul Dombey and Little Nell and
+at the more lurid episodes in <i>Oliver Twist</i>. But Dickens was a pioneer
+in his treatment of children in fiction; and if he did smite resounding
+blows which jar upon critical ears, at least he opened a rich vein of
+literature where many have followed him. He wrote not for the critics
+but for the great popular audience whom he had created, comprising all
+ages and classes, and world-wide in extent. The best answer to such
+criticism is to be found in the poem which Bret Harte dedicated to his
+memory in 1870, which beautifully describes how the pathos of his
+child-heroine could move the hearts of rough working men far away in the
+Sierras of the West. Nor did this same character of Little Nell fail to
+win special praise from literary critics so fastidious as Landor and
+Francis Jeffrey.</p>
+
+<p>In 1842 he embarked on his first voyage to America. Till then he had
+travelled little outside his native land, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> this expedition was
+definitely intended to bear fruit. Before starting he made a bargain
+with his publishers to produce a book on his return. The <i>American
+Notes</i> thus published, dealing largely with institutions and with the
+notable 'sights' of the country, have not retained a prominent place
+among his works; with <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> and its picture of American
+manners it is different. This stands alone among his writings in having
+left a permanent heritage of ill-will. Reasons in abundance can be found
+for the bitterness caused. He portrayed the conceit, the self-interest,
+the disregard for the feelings of others which the less-educated
+American showed to foreigners in a visible and often offensive guise;
+and the portraits were so life-like that no arrow fails to hit the mark.
+The American people were young; they had made great strides in material
+prosperity, they had not been taught to submit to the lash by satirists
+like Swift or more kindly mentors like Addison. Their own Oliver Wendell
+Holmes had not yet begun to chastise them with gentle irony. So they
+were aghast at Dickens's audacity, and indignant at what seemed an
+outrage on their hospitality, and few stopped to ask what elements of
+truth were to be found in the offending book. No doubt it was one-sided
+and unfair; Dickens, like most tourists, had been confronted by the
+louder and more aggressive members of the community and had not time to
+judge the whole. In large measure he recanted in subsequent writings;
+and on his second visit the more generous Americans showed how little
+rancour they bore. But the portraits of Jefferson Brick and Elijah
+Pogram will live; with Pecksniff, 'Sairey' Gamp, and other immortals
+they bear the hall-mark of Dickens's creative genius.</p>
+
+<p>To America he did not go again for twenty-five years; but, as he grew
+older, he seemed to feel increasing need for change and variety in his
+mode of life. In 1844 he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> went for nearly twelve months to Italy, making
+his head-quarters at Genoa; and in 1846 he repeated the experiment at
+Lausanne on the lake of Geneva. Later, between 1853 and 1856, he spent a
+large part of three summers in a villa near Boulogne. Though he desired
+the change for reasons connected with his work, and though in each case
+he formed friendly connexions with his neighbours, it cannot be said
+that his books show the influence of either country. His genius was
+British to the core and he remained an Englishman wherever he went. He
+complained when abroad that he missed the stimulus of London, where the
+lighted streets, through which he walked at night, caused his
+imagination to work with intensified force. But even in Genoa he proved
+capable of writing <i>The Chimes</i>, which is as markedly English in temper
+as anything which he wrote.</p>
+
+<p>The same spirit of restlessness comes out in his ventures into other
+fields of activity at home. At one time he assumed the editorship of a
+London newspaper; but a few weeks showed that he was incapable of
+editorial drudgery and he resigned. His taste for acting played a larger
+part in his life; and in 1851 and other years he put an enormous amount
+of energy into organizing public theatrical performances with his
+friends in London. He always loved the theatre. Macready was one of his
+innermost circle, and he had other friends on the stage. Indeed there
+were moments in his life when it seemed that the genius of the novelist
+might be lost to the world, which would have found but a sorry
+equivalent in one more actor of talent on the stage, however brilliant
+that talent was. But the main current of his life went on in London with
+diligent application to the book or books in hand; or at Broadstairs,
+where Dickens made holiday in true English fashion with his children by
+the sea.</p>
+
+<p>In the years following the American voyage the chief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> landmarks were the
+production of <i>Dombey and Son</i> (begun in 1846) and <i>David Copperfield</i>
+(begun in 1849). From many points of view they may be regarded as his
+masterpieces, where his art is best seen in depicting character and
+constructing a story, though the infectious gaiety of the earlier novels
+may at times be missed. Dickens's insight into human nature had ripened,
+and he had learnt to group his lesser figures and episodes more
+skilfully round the central plot. And <i>David Copperfield</i> has the
+peculiar interest which attaches to those works where we seem to read
+the story of the author's own life. Evidently we have memories here of
+his childhood, of his school-days and his apprenticeship to work, and of
+the first gleams of success which met him in life. It is generally
+assumed that the book throws light on his own family relations; but it
+would be rash to argue confidently about this, as the inventive impulse
+was so strong in him. At least we may say that it is the book most
+necessary for a student who wishes to understand Dickens himself and his
+outlook on the world.</p>
+
+<p>Also <i>David Copperfield</i> may be regarded as the central point and the
+culmination of Dickens's career as a novelist. Before it, and again
+after it, he had a spell of about fifteen years' steady work at novel
+writing, and no one would question that the first spell was productive
+of the better work. <i>Bleak House</i>, <i>Hard Times</i>, <i>Little Dorrit</i>, <i>Our
+Mutual Friend</i> all show evidence of greater effort and are less happy in
+their effect. No man could live the life that Dickens had lived for
+fifteen years and not show some signs of exhaustion; the wonder is that
+his creative power continued at all. He was capable of brilliant
+successes yet. <i>The Tale of Two Cities</i> is among the most thrilling of
+his stories, while <i>Edwin Drood</i> and parts of <i>Great Expectations</i> show
+as fine imagination and character drawing as anything which he wrote
+before 1850; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> there is no injustice in drawing a broad distinction
+between the two parts of his career.</p>
+
+<p>His home during the most fertile period of his activity was in
+Devonshire Terrace, near Regent's Park, a house with a garden of
+considerable size. Here he was within reach of his best friends, who
+were drawn from all the liberal professions represented in London. First
+among them stands John Forster, lawyer, journalist, and author, his
+adviser and subsequently his biographer, the friend of Robert Browning,
+a man with a genius for friendship, unselfish, loyal, discreet and wise
+in counsel. Next came the artists Maclise and Clarkson Stanfield, the
+actor Macready, Talfourd, lawyer and poet, Douglas Jerrold and Mark
+Lemon, the two famous contributors to <i>Punch</i>, and some fellow
+novelists, of whom Harrison Ainsworth was conspicuous in the earlier
+group and Wilkie Collins in later years. Less frequent visitors were
+Carlyle, Thackeray, and Bulwer Lytton, but they too were proud to
+welcome Dickens among their friends. With some of these he would walk,
+ride, or dine, go to the theatre or travel in the provinces and in
+foreign countries. His biographer loves to recall the Dickens Dinners,
+organized to celebrate the issue of a new book, when songs and speeches
+were added to good cheer and when 'we all in the greatest good-humour
+glorified each other'. Dickens always retained the English taste for a
+good dinner and was frankly fond of applause, and there was no element
+of exclusive priggishness about the cordial admiration which these
+friends felt for one another and their peculiar enthusiasm for Dickens
+and his books. Around him the enthusiasm gathered, and few men have
+better deserved it.</p>
+
+<p>When he was writing he needed quiet and worked with complete
+concentration; and when he had earned some leisure he loved to spend it
+in violent physical exercise. He would suddenly call on Forster to come
+out for a long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> ride on horseback to occupy the middle of the day; and
+his diligent friend, unable to resist the lure of such company, would
+throw his own work to the winds and come. Till near the end of his life
+Dickens clung to these habits, thinking nothing of a walk of from twenty
+to thirty miles; and there seems reason to believe that by constant
+over-exertion he sapped his strength and shortened his life. But
+lameness in one foot, the result of an illness early in 1865,
+handicapped him severely at times; and in the same year he sustained a
+rude shock in a railway accident where his nerves were upset by what he
+witnessed in helping the injured. He ought to have acquired the wisdom
+of the middle-aged man, and to have taken things more easily, but with
+him it was impossible to be doing nothing; physical and mental activity
+succeeded one another and often went together with a high state of
+nervous tension.</p>
+
+<p>This love of excitement sometimes took forms which modern taste would
+call excessive and unwholesome. His attendance at the public execution
+of the Mannings in 1849, his going so often to the Morgue in Paris, his
+visit to America to 'the exact site where Professor Webster did that
+amazing murder', may seem legitimate for one who had to study crime
+among the other departments of life; but at times he revels in gruesome
+details in a way which jars on our feeling, and betrays too theatrical a
+love of sensation. However, no one could say that Dickens is generally
+morbid, in view of the sound and hearty appreciation which he had for
+all that is wholesome and genial in life.</p>
+
+<p>In many ways the latter part of his life shows a less even tenor, a less
+steady development. Though he was so domestic in his tastes and devoted
+to his children, his relations with his wife became more and more
+difficult owing to incompatibility of temperament; and from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> 1858 they
+found it desirable to live apart. This no doubt added to his
+restlessness and the craving for excitement, which showed itself in the
+ardour with which he took up the idea of public readings. These readings
+are only less famous than his writings, so prodigious was their success.
+His great dramatic gifts, enlisted in the service of his own creations,
+made an irresistible appeal to the public, and till the day of his
+collapse, ten years later, their popularity showed no sign of waning.
+The amount of money which he earned thereby was amazing; the American
+tour alone gave him a net profit of &pound;20,000; and he expected to make as
+much more in two seasons in England. But he paid dearly for these
+triumphs, being often in trouble with his voice, suffering from fits of
+sleeplessness, aggravating the pain in his foot, and affecting his
+heart. In spite, then, of the success of the readings, his faithful
+friends like Forster would gladly have seen him abandon a practice which
+could add little to his future fame, while it threatened to shorten his
+life. But, however arduous the task which he set himself, when the
+moment came Dickens could brace himself to meet the demands and satisfy
+the high expectations of his audience. His nerves seemed to harden, his
+voice to gain strength; his spirit flashed out undimmed, and he won
+triumph after triumph, in quiet cathedral cities, in great industrial
+towns, in the more fatiguing climate of America and before the huge
+audiences of Philadelphia and New York. He began his programme with a
+few chosen pieces from <i>Pickwick</i> and the Christmas Books, and with
+selected characters like Paul Dombey and Mrs. Gamp; he added Dotheboys
+Hall and the story of David Copperfield in brief; in his last series,
+against the advice of Forster, he worked up the more sensational
+passages from <i>Oliver Twist</i>. His object, he says, was 'to leave behind
+me the recollection of something very passionate and dramatic, done with
+simple means, if the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> act would justify the theme'. It was because the
+art of reading was unduly strained that Forster protested, and his
+judgement is confirmed by Dickens's boast (perhaps humorously
+exaggerated) that 'at Clifton we had a contagion of fainting, and yet
+the place was not hot&mdash;a dozen to twenty ladies taken out stiff and
+rigid at various times'. The physical effects of this fresh strain soon
+appeared. After a month his doctor ordered him to cease reading; and,
+though he resumed it after a few days' rest, in April 1869 he had a
+worse attack of giddiness and was obliged to abandon it permanently. The
+history of these readings illustrates the character of Dickens perhaps
+better than any other episode in his later life.</p>
+
+<p>But the same restless energy is visible even in his life at Gadshill,
+which was his home from 1860 to 1870. The house lies on the London road
+a few miles west of Rochester, and can easily be seen to-day, almost
+unaltered, by the passer-by. It had caught his fancy in his childhood
+before the age of ten when he was walking with his father, and his
+father had promised that, if he would only work hard enough, he might
+one day live in it. The associations of the place with the Falstaff
+scenes in <i>Henry IV</i> had also endeared it to him; and so, when in 1855
+he heard that it was for sale, he jumped at the opportunity. For some
+years after purchasing it he let it to tenants, but from 1860 he made it
+his permanent abode. It has no architectural features to charm the eye;
+with its many changes and additions made for comfort, its bow-windows
+and the plantations in the garden, it is a typical Victorian home. Here
+Dickens could live at ease, surrounded by his children, his dogs, his
+books, his souvenirs of his friends, and the Kentish scenery which he
+loved. To the north lay the flat marshlands of the lower Thames, to the
+south and west lay rolling hills crowned with woodlands, with hop
+gardens on the lower slopes; to the east lay the valley<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> of the Medway
+with the quaint old streets of Rochester and the bustling dockyard of
+Chatham. All that makes the familiar beauty and richness of English
+landscape was here, above all the charm of associations. So many names
+preserved memories of his books. To Rochester the Pickwickians had
+driven on their first search for knowledge; to Cobham Mr. Winkle had
+fled, and at the 'Leather Bottle' his friends had found him; in the
+marshlands Joe Gargery and Pip had watched for the escaped convict; in
+the old gateway by the cathedral Jasper had entertained Edwin Drood on
+the eve of his disappearance; along that very high-road over which
+Dickens's windows looked the child David Copperfield had tramped in his
+journey from London to Dover.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, though his creative vein may have been less fertile than of
+old, his efforts for the good of his fellow men were no less continuous
+and sincere. His first books had aimed at killing by ridicule certain
+social institutions which had sunk into abuses. The pictures of
+parliamentary elections, of schools, of workhouses, had not only created
+a hearty laugh, but they had disposed the public to listen to the
+reformers and to realize the need for reform. As he grew older he went
+deeper into the evil, and he also blended his reforming purpose better
+with his story. The characters of Mr. Dombey and the Chuzzlewits are not
+mere incidents in the tale, nor are they monstrosities which call forth
+immediate astonishment and horror. But in each case the ingrained
+selfishness which spreads misery through a family is the very mainspring
+of the story; and the dramatic power by which Dickens makes it reveal
+itself in action has something Shakespearian in it. Here there is still
+a balance between the different elements, the human interest and the
+moral lesson, and as works of art they are on a higher plane than <i>Hard
+Times</i>, where the purpose is too clearly shown. Still if we wish to
+understand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> this side of Dickens's work, it is just such a book as <i>Hard
+Times</i> that we must study.</p>
+
+<p>It deals with the relation of classes to one another in an industrial
+district, and especially with the faults of the class that rose to power
+with the development of manufacturing. Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby,
+the well-meaning pedant and the offensive parvenu, preach the same
+gospel. Political economy, as they understand it, is to rule life, and
+this dismal science is not concerned with human well-being and
+happiness, but only with the profit and loss on commercial undertakings.
+Hard facts then are to be the staple of education; memory and accurate
+calculation are to be cultivated; the imagination is to be driven out.
+In depicting the manner of this education Dickens rather overshoots the
+mark. The visit of Mr. Gradgrind to Mr. M'Choakumchild's school (when
+the sharp-witted Bitzer defines the horse according to the scientific
+handbook, while poor Cissy, who has only an affection for horses,
+indulges in fancies and collapses in disgrace) is too evident a
+caricature. But the effects of this kind of teaching are painted with a
+powerful hand, and we see the faculty for joy blighted almost in the
+cradle. And the lesson is enforced not only by the working man and his
+family but by Gradgrind's own daughter, who pitilessly convicts her
+father of having stifled every generous impulse in her and of having
+sacrificed her on the altar of fancied self-interest.</p>
+
+<p>Side by side with the dismal Mr. Gradgrind is the poor master of the
+strolling circus, Mr. Sleary, with his truer philosophy of life. He can
+see the real need that men have for amusement and for brightness in
+their lives; and, though he lives under the shadow of bankruptcy, he can
+hold his head up and preach the gospel of happiness. This was a cause
+which never failed to win the enthusiastic advocacy of Dickens. He
+fought, as men still have to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> fight to-day, against those Pharisees who
+prescribe for the working classes how they should spend their weekly day
+of freedom; he supported the opening on Sunday of parks, museums, and
+galleries; whole-heartedly he loved the theatre and the circus, and he
+wished as many as possible to share those delights. In defiance of 'Mrs.
+Grundy' he ventured to maintain that the words 'music-hall' and
+'public-house', rightly understood, should be held in honour. It is one
+thing to hate drunkenness and indecency; it is quite another to assume
+that these must be found in the poor man's place of recreation, and this
+roused him to anger. To him 'public-house' meant a place of fellowship,
+and 'music-hall' a place of song and mirth; and if some critics complain
+of an excess of material good-cheer in his picture of life, Dickens is
+certainly here in sympathy with the bulk of his fellow-countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>Another cause in which Dickens was always ready to lead a crusade was
+the amendment of the Poor Law. This will remind us of the early days of
+Oliver Twist, of such a friendless outcast as Jo in <i>Bleak House</i>, of
+the struggle of Betty Higden in <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> and her
+determination never to be given up to 'the Parish'. But, even more than
+the famous novels, the casual writings of Dickens in his own magazines
+and elsewhere throw light on his activities in this cause and on the
+researches which he made into the working of the system. Mr. Crotch
+describes visits which he paid to the workhouses in Wapping and
+Whitechapel, quoting his comments on the 'Foul Ward' in one, on the old
+men's ward in the other, and on the torpor of despair which settled down
+on these poor wrecks of humanity. Could such a system, he asked himself,
+be wise which robbed men not of liberty alone but of all hope for the
+future, which left them no single point of interest except the
+statistics of their fellows who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> had gone before them and who had been
+finally liberated by death? A still more striking passage, just because
+Dickens here shows unusual restraint and moderation in his language,
+tells us of the five women whom he saw sleeping all night outside the
+workhouse through no fault of any official, but simply because there was
+no room for them inside and because society had nothing to offer, no
+form of 'relief' which could touch these unfortunates. Many will be
+familiar with passages in Ruskin, where he denounces similar tragedies
+due to our inhuman disregard of what is happening at our doors.</p>
+
+<p>Though the most valuable part of his work was the effective appeal to
+the hearts of his brother men, Dickens had the practical wisdom to
+suggest definite remedies in some cases. He saw that the districts in
+the East End of London, even with a heavy poor rate, failed to supply
+adequate relief for their waifs and strays, while the wealthy
+inhabitants of the West End, having few paupers, paid on their riches a
+rate that was negligible, and he boldly suggested the equalization of
+rates. All London should jointly share the burden of maintaining those
+for whose welfare they were responsible and should pay shares
+proportioned to their wealth. This wise reform was not carried into
+effect till some thirty or forty years later; but the principle is now
+generally accepted. Though in this case, as in his famous attack on the
+Court of Chancery in <i>Bleak House</i>, Dickens failed in obtaining any
+immediate effect, it is unquestionable that he influenced the minds of
+thousands and changed the temper in which they looked at the problem of
+the poor. In this nothing that he wrote was more powerful than the
+series of Christmas Books, in which his imagination, with the power of a
+Rembrandt, threw on to a smaller canvas the lights and shades of London
+life, the grim background of mean streets, and the cheerful virtues
+which throw a glamour over their humble<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> homes. His advocacy of these
+social causes came to be known far and wide and contributed a second
+element to the popularity won by his novels; long before his death
+Dickens stood on a pinnacle alone, loved by the vast reading public
+among those who toil in our towns and villages, and wherever English is
+read and understood. He was not only their entertainer, but their friend
+and brother; he had been through his days of sorrow and suffering and he
+had kept that vast fund of cheerfulness which overflowed into his books
+and gladdened the lives of so many thousands. When he died in 1870 after
+a year of intermittent illness, following on his breakdown over the
+public readings, there was naturally a widespread desire that he should
+be buried in Westminster Abbey, as a great Englishman and a true
+representative of his age. During life he had expressed his desire for a
+private funeral, unheralded in the press, and he had thought of two or
+three quiet churches in the neighbourhood of Rochester and Gadshill.
+These particular graveyards were found to be already closed, and the
+family consented to a compromise by which their father should be buried
+in the Abbey at an early hour when no strangers would be aware of it.
+After his body was laid to rest, the people were admitted to pay their
+homage; the universality and the sincerity of their feelings was shown
+in a wonderful way. Among men of letters he had reigned in the hearts of
+the people, as Queen Victoria reigned among our sovereigns. In the
+annals of her reign his name will outlive those of soldiers, of
+prelates, and of politicians.</p>
+
+<p>The causes for which he fought have not all been won yet. Officialdom
+still dawdles over the work of the State, hearts are still broken by the
+law's delays, the path of crime still lies too easily open to the young.
+Vast progress has been made; a humane spirit is to be found in the
+working of our Government, and a truer knowledge of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> social problems is
+spreading among all classes. But the world cannot afford to relegate
+Charles Dickens to oblivion, and shows no desire to do so; his books are
+and will be a wellspring of cheerfulness, of faith in human nature, and
+of true Christian charity from which all will do well to drink.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ALFRED_TENNYSON" id="ALFRED_TENNYSON"></a>ALFRED TENNYSON</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1809-92</p>
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1809.</td><td> Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, August 6.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1816-20.</td><td> At school at Louth.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1820-7.</td><td> Educated at home.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1827.</td><td> <i>Poems by Two Brothers</i>, Charles and Alfred.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1828-31.</td><td> Trinity College, Cambridge.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1830-2.</td><td> Early volumes of poetry published.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1833.</td><td> Death of Arthur Hallam at Vienna.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1837.</td><td> High Beech, Essex.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1840.</td><td> Tunbridge Wells.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1842.</td><td> Collected poems, including 'Morte d'Arthur' and 'English Idyls'.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1846.</td><td> Cheltenham.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1847.</td><td> <i>The Princess</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1850.</td><td> <i>In Memoriam</i>, printed and given to friends before March; published June. Marriage, June. Poet Laureate, November.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1852.</td><td> 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.'</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1853.</td><td> Becomes tenant&mdash;1856, owner&mdash;of Farringford, Isle of Wight.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1855.</td><td> <i>Maud</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1859.</td><td> First four 'Idylls of the King' published.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1864.</td><td> <i>Enoch Arden</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1869.</td><td> Second home at Aldworth, near Haslemere.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1875-84.</td><td> <i>Plays</i> (1875 'Queen Mary', 1876 'Harold', 1884 'Becket').</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1880.</td><td> <i>Ballads and other Poems</i> ('The Revenge', &amp;c.).</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1884.</td><td> Created a Peer of the realm.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1892.</td><td> October 6, death at Aldworth. October 12, funeral at Westminster Abbey.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">TENNYSON</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Poet</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>The Victorians, as a whole, were a generation of fighters. They battled
+against Nature's forces, subduing floods and mountain barriers,
+pestilence and the worst extremes of heat and cold; they also went forth
+into the market-place and battled with their fellow men for laws, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+tariffs, for empire. Their triumphs, like those of the Romans, are
+mostly to be seen in the practical sphere. But there were others of that
+day who chose the contemplative life of the recluse, and who yet, by
+high imaginings, contributed in no less degree to enrich the fame of
+their age; and among these the first name is that of Alfred Tennyson,
+the most representative of Victorian poets.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="tennyson" id="tennyson"></a><img src="images/tennyson.jpg" alt="ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON" />
+<br /><span class="smcap">alfred, lord tennyson</span><br />
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>His early environment may be said to have marked him out for such a
+life. He was born in one of the remotest districts of a rural county.
+The village of Somersby lies in a hollow among the Lincolnshire wolds,
+twenty miles east of Lincoln, midway between the small towns of Spilsby,
+Horncastle, and Louth. There are no railways to disturb its peace; no
+high roads or broad rivers to bring trade to its doors. The 'cold
+rivulet' that rises just above the village flows down some twenty miles
+to lose itself in the sea near Skegness; in the valley the alders sigh
+and the aspens quiver, while around are rolling hills covered by long
+fields of corn broken by occasional spinneys. It is not a country to
+draw tourists for its own sake; but Tennyson knew, as few other poets
+know, the charm that human association lends to the simplest English
+landscape, and he cherished the memory of these scenes long after he had
+gone to live among the richer beauties of the south. From the garners of
+memory he drew the familiar features of this homely land showing that he
+had forgotten</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No grey old grange, or lonely fold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or low morass and whispering reed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or simple stile from mead to mead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or sheepwalk up the winding wold.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are days when the wolds seem dreary and monotonous; but if change
+is wanted, a long walk or an easy drive will take us from Somersby, as
+it often took the Tennyson brothers, to the coast at Mablethorpe, where
+the long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> rollers of the North Sea beat upon the sandhills that guard
+the flat stretches of the marshland. Here the poet as a child used to
+lie upon the beach, his imagination conjuring up Homeric pictures of the
+Grecian fleet besieging Troy; and if, on his last visit before leaving
+Lincolnshire, he found the spell broken, he could still describe vividly
+what he saw with the less fanciful vision of manhood.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Grey sandbanks, and pale sunsets, dreary wind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea!<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These wide expanses of sea, sand, and sky figure many times in his
+poetry and furnish a background for the more tragic scenes in the
+<i>Idylls of the King</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Nor does the vicarage spoil the harmony of the scene, an old-fashioned
+low rambling house, to which a loftier hall adjoining, with its Gothic
+windows, lends a touch of distinction. The garden with one towering
+sycamore and the wych-elms, that threw long shadows on the lawn, opened
+on to the parson's field, where on summer mornings could be heard the
+sweep of the scythe in the dewy grass. Here Tennyson's father had been
+rector for some years when his fourth child Alfred was born in August
+1809, the year which also saw the birth of Darwin and Gladstone. The
+family was a large one; there were eight sons and four daughters, the
+last of whom was still alive in 1916. Alfred's education was as
+irregular as a poet's could need to be, consisting of a few years'
+attendance at Louth Grammar School, where he suffered from the rod and
+other abuses of the past, and of a larger number spent in studying
+literature at home under his father's guidance. These left him a liberal
+amount of leisure which he devoted to reading at large and roaming the
+country-side. His father was a man of mental cultivation far beyond the
+average, well fitted to expand the mind of a boy of literary tastes and
+to lead him on at a pace suited to his abilities. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> had suffered from
+disappointments which had thrown a shadow over his life, having been
+disinherited capriciously by his father, who was a wealthy man and a
+member of Parliament. The inheritance passed to the second brother, who
+took the name of Tennyson d'Eyncourt; and though the Rector resented the
+injustice of the act, he did not allow it to embitter the relations
+between his own children and their cousins. His character was of the
+stern, dominating order, and both his parishioners and his children
+stood in awe of him; but the gentle nature of their mother made amends.
+She is described by Edward FitzGerald, the poet's friend, as 'one of the
+most innocent and tender-hearted ladies I ever met, devoted to husband
+and children'. In her youth she had been a noted beauty, and in her old
+age was not too unworldly to remember that she had received twenty-five
+proposals of marriage. It was from her that the family derived their
+beauty of feature, while in their strength of intellect they resembled
+rather their father. One of Alfred's earliest literary passions was a
+love of Byron, and he remembered in after life how as a child he had
+carved on a rock the woful tidings that his hero was dead. In this
+period he was already writing poetry himself, though he did not publish
+his first volume till after he had gone up to Cambridge.</p>
+
+<p>From this home life, filled with leisurely reading, rambling, and
+dreaming, he was sent in 1828 to join his brother Frederick at Trinity
+College, Cambridge, and he came into residence in February of that year.
+Cambridge has been called the poets' University. Here in early days came
+Spenser and Milton, Dryden and Gray; and&mdash;in the generation preceding
+Tennyson&mdash;Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron had followed in their steps.
+However little we can trace directly the development of the poetic gift
+to local influence, at least we can say that Tennyson gained greatly by
+the time he spent within its walls. He came up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> an unknown man without
+family connexions to help him, and without the hall-mark of any famous
+school upon him. Shy and retiring by nature as he was, he might easily
+have failed to win his way to notice. But there was something in his
+appearance, in his manner, and in the personality that lay behind, which
+never failed to impress observers, and gradually he attached to himself
+the most brilliant undergraduates of his time and became a leader among
+them. Thackeray and FitzGerald were in residence; but it was not till
+later that he came to know them well, and we hear more of Spedding (the
+editor of Bacon), of Alford and Merivale (deans of Canterbury and Ely),
+of Trench (Archbishop of Dublin), of Lushington, who married one of his
+sisters, and of Arthur Hallam, who was engaged to another sister at the
+time of his early death. Hallam came from Eton, where his greatest
+friend had been W. E. Gladstone, and he had not been long at Cambridge
+before he was led by kindred tastes and kindred nature into close
+friendship with Tennyson. In the judgement of all who knew him, a career
+of the highest usefulness and distinction was assured to him. His
+intellectual force and his high aspirations would have shone in the
+public service; and at least they won him thus early the affection of
+the noblest among his compeers, and a fame that is almost unique in
+English literature.</p>
+
+<p>Much has been written about the society which these young men formed and
+which they called 'the Apostles'. The name has been thought to suggest a
+certain complacency and mutual admiration. But enough letters and
+personal recollections of their talk have been preserved to show how
+simple and unaffected the members were in their intercourse with one
+another. They had their enthusiasms, but they had also their jests.
+Their humour was not perhaps the boisterous fun of William Morris and
+Rossetti, but it was lively and buoyant enough to banish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> all suspicion
+of priggishness. Just because their enthusiasm was for the best in
+literature and art, Tennyson was quickly at home among them. Already he
+had learnt at home to love Shakespeare and Milton, Coleridge and Keats,
+and no effort was required, in this circle of friends, to keep his
+reading upon this high level. <i>Lycidas</i> was always a special favourite
+of Tennyson's, and appreciation of it seemed to him a sure 'touchstone
+of poetic taste'. In conversation he did not tend to declaim or
+monopolize the talk. He was noted rather for short sayings and for
+criticisms tersely expressed. He had his moods, contemplative, genial or
+gay; but all his utterances were marked by independence of thought, and
+his silence could be richer than the speech of other men. But for
+display he had no liking. In fact, so reluctant was he to face an
+audience of strangers, that when in 1829 it was his duty to recite his
+prize poem in the senate-house, he obtained leave for Merivale to read
+it on his behalf. On the other hand, he was ready enough to impart to
+his real friends the poems that he wrote from time to time, and he would
+pass pleasant hours with them reciting old ballads and reading aloud the
+plays of Shakespeare. His sonorous voice, his imagination, and his
+feeling for all the niceties of rhythm made his reading unusually
+impressive, as we know from the testimony of many who heard him.</p>
+
+<p>The course of his education is, in fact, more truly to be found in this
+free companionship than in the lecture room or the examination hall. His
+opinion of the teaching which he received from the Dons was formed and
+expressed in a sonnet of 1830, though he refrained from publishing it
+for half a century. He addresses them as 'you that do profess to teach
+and teach us nothing, feeding not the heart'&mdash;and complains of their
+indifference to the movements of their own age and to the needs of their
+pupils. For, despite the ferment which was spreading in the realms of
+theology, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> politics, and of natural science, the Dons still taught
+their classics in the dry pedantic manner of the past, and refused to
+face the problems of the nineteenth century. For Tennyson, whose mind
+was already capacious and deep, these problems had a constant
+attraction, and he had to fall back upon solitary musings and on talks
+with Hallam and other friends. Partly perhaps because he missed the more
+rigorous training of the schools, we have to wait another ten years
+before we see marks of his deeper thinking in his work. He was but
+groping and feeling his way. In the 'Poems, chiefly Lyrical' which he
+produced in 1830, rich images abound, play of fancy and beauty of
+expression; but there are few signs of the power of thought which he was
+to show in later volumes.</p>
+
+<p>After three years thus spent, by no means unfruitfully, though it was
+only by his prize poem of 'Timbuctoo' that he won public honours, he was
+called away from Cambridge by family troubles and returned to Somersby
+in February 1831. His father had broken down in health, and a month
+later he died, suddenly and peacefully, in his arm-chair. After the
+rector's death an arrangement was made that the family should continue
+to inhabit the Rectory; and Tennyson, who was now his mother's chief
+help and stay, settled down to a studious life at home, varied by
+occasional visits to London. The habit of seclusion was already forming.
+He was much given to solitary walking and to spending his evening in an
+attic reading by himself. But this was not due to moroseness or
+selfishness, as we can see from his intercourse with family and friends.
+He would willingly give hours to reading aloud to his mother, or sit
+listening happily while his sisters played music. From this time indeed
+he seems to have taken his father's place in the home; and with Hallam
+and other friends he continued on the same affectionate terms. He had
+not Dickens's buoyant temper and love of company,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> nor did he indulge in
+the splenetic outbursts of Carlyle. He could, when it was needed, find
+time to fulfil the humblest duties and then return with contentment to
+his solitude. But his thoughts seemed naturally to lift him above the
+level of others, and he was most truly himself when he was alone. Apart
+from his eyesight, which began to trouble him at this time, he was
+enjoying good health, which he maintained by a steady regime of physical
+exercise. His strength and his good looks were alike remarkable.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> As
+his friend Brookfield laughingly said, 'It was not fair that he should
+be Hercules as well as Apollo'.</p>
+
+<p>Another volume of verse appeared in 1832; and its appearance seems to
+have been due rather to the urgent persuasion of his friends than to his
+own eagerness to appear in print. Though J. S. Mill and a few other
+critics wrote with good judgement and praised the book, it met with a
+cold reception in most places, and the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, regardless of
+its blunder over Keats, spoke of it in most contemptuous terms. All can
+recognize to-day how unfair this was to the merits of a volume which
+contained the 'Lotos-Eaters', 'Oenone', and the 'Lady of Shalott'; but
+the effect of the harsh verdict on the poet, always sensitive about the
+reception of his work, was unfortunate to a degree. For a time it seemed
+likely to chill his ardour and stifle his poetic gifts at the very age
+when they ought to be bearing fruit. He writes of himself at this time
+as 'moping like an owl in an ivy bush, or as that one sparrow which the
+Hebrew mentioneth as sitting on the house-top'; and, despite his
+friendship with Hallam, which was closer than ever since the latter's
+engagement to his sister Emily, he had thoughts of settling abroad in
+France or Italy, since he found, or fancied that he found, in England
+too unsympathetic an atmosphere.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span></p>
+<p>Such a decision would have been disastrous. Residence abroad might suit
+the robust, many-sided genius of Robert Browning with his gift for
+interpreting the thoughts of other nations and other times; it would
+have been fatal to Tennyson, whose affections were rooted in his native
+soil, and who had a special call to speak to Englishmen of English
+scenes and English life.</p>
+
+<p>The following year brought him a still severer shock in the loss of his
+beloved friend, Arthur Hallam, who was taken ill at Vienna and died
+there a few days later, to the deep sorrow of all who knew him. Many
+besides Tennyson have borne witness to his character and gifts; thanks
+to their tribute, and above all to the verses of <i>In Memoriam</i>, though
+his life was all too short to realize the promise of his youth, his name
+will be preserved. The gradual growth of Tennyson's elegy can be
+discerned from the letters of his friends, to whom from time to time he
+read some of the stanzas which he had completed. Even in the first
+winter after Hallam's death, he wrote a few lines in the manuscript book
+which he kept by him for the purpose during the next fifteen years, and
+which he was within an ace of losing in 1850, just when the poem was
+completed and ready for publication. As a statesman turns from his
+private sorrow to devote himself to a public cause, so the poet's
+instinct was to find comfort in the practice of his art. Under the
+stress of feelings aroused by this event and under the influence of a
+wider reading, his mind was maturing. We hear of a steady discipline of
+mental work, of hours given methodically to Italian and German, to
+theology and history, to chemistry, botany, and other branches of
+science. Above all, he pondered now, as he did later so constantly, on
+the mystery of death and life after death. Outwardly this seems the most
+uneventful period of his career; but, in their effect on his mind and
+work, these years were very far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> from being wasted. When next, in 1842,
+he emerges from seclusion to offer his verses to the public, he had
+enlarged the range of his subjects and deepened his powers of thought.
+We see less richness in the images, less freedom in the play of fancy,
+but there is a firmer grip of character, a surer handling of the
+problems affecting the life of man. Underground was flowing the hidden
+stream of <i>In Memoriam</i>, unknown save to the few; only in part were the
+fruits of this period to be seen in the two volumes containing 'English
+Idyls' and other new poems, along with a selection of earlier lyrics now
+revised and reprinted.</p>
+
+<p>The distinctive quality of the book is given by the word Idyl, which was
+to be so closely connected with Tennyson's fame. Here he is working in a
+small compass, but he breaks fresh ground in describing scenes of
+English village life, and shows that he has used his gifts of
+observation to good purpose. Better than the slight sketches of
+character, of girls and their lovers, of farmers and their children, are
+the landscapes in which they are set; and many will remember the
+charming passages in which he describes the morning songs of birds in a
+garden, or the twinkling of evening lights in the still waters of a
+harbour. More original and more full of lyrical fervour was 'Locksley
+Hall', where he expresses many thoughts that were stirring the younger
+spirits of his day. Perhaps the most perfect workmanship, in a volume
+where much calls for admiration, is to be found in 'Ulysses', which the
+poet's friend Monckton Milnes gave to Sir Robert Peel to read, in order
+to convince him that Tennyson's work merited official recognition. His
+treatment of the hero is as far from the classical spirit as anything
+which William Morris wrote. He preserves little of the directness or
+fierce temper of the early epic. Rather does his Ulysses think and speak
+like some bold adventurer of the Renaissance, with the combination of
+ardent curiosity and reflective thought which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> was the mark of that age.
+Even so Tennyson himself, as he passed from youth to middle life, and
+from that to old age, was ever trying to achieve one more 'work of noble
+note', and yearning</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To follow knowledge like a sinking star<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But between this and the production of his next volume comes the most
+unhappy period in the poet's career, when his friends for a time
+despaired of his future and even of his life. At the marriage of his
+brother Charles in 1836, Tennyson had fallen in love with the bride's
+sister, Emily Sellwood; and in the course of the next three or four
+years they became informally engaged to one another. But his prospects
+of earning enough money to support a wife seemed so remote that in 1840
+her family insisted on breaking off the engagement, and the lovers
+ceased to write to one another. Even the volumes of 1842, while winning
+high favour with cultivated readers, and stirring enthusiasm at the
+Universities, failed to attract the larger public and to make a success
+in the market. So when he sustained a further blow in the loss of his
+small fortune owing to an unwise investment, his health gave way and he
+fell into a dark mood of hypochondria. His star seemed to be sinking,
+just as he was winning his way to fame. Thanks to medical attention,
+aided by his own natural strength and the affections of his friends, he
+was already rallying in 1845, when Peel conferred on him the timely
+honour of a pension; and he was able not only to continue working at <i>In
+Memoriam</i>, but also to produce in 1847 <i>The Princess</i>, which gives clear
+evidence of renewed cheerfulness and vigour. Dealing as it does, half
+humorously, with the question of woman's education and her claim to a
+higher place in the scheme of life, it illustrates the interest which
+Tennyson, despite his seclusion, felt in social questions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> of the day.
+From this point of view it may be linked with <i>Locksley Hall</i> and
+<i>Maud</i>; but in <i>The Princess</i> the treatment is half humorous and the
+setting is more artificial. Tennyson's lyrical power is seen at its best
+in the magical songs which occur in the course of the story or
+interposed between the different scenes. They have deservedly won a
+place in all anthologies. His facility in the handling of blank verse is
+also remarkable. Lovers of Milton may regret the massive grandeur of an
+earlier style; but, as in every art, so in poetry, we pay for advance in
+technical accomplishment, in suppleness and melodious phrasing, by the
+loss of other qualities which are difficult to recapture.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile <i>In Memoriam</i> was approaching completion; and this the most
+central and characteristic of his poems illustrates, more truly than a
+narrative of outward events, the phases through which Tennyson had been
+passing. Desultory though the method of its production be, and loose
+'the texture of its fabric', there is a certain sequence of thought
+running through the cantos. We see how from the first poignancy of
+grief, when he can only brood passively over his friend's death, he was
+led to questioning the basis of his faith, shaken as it was by the
+claims of physical science&mdash;how from those doubts of his own, he was led
+to think of the universal trouble of the world&mdash;how at length by
+throwing himself into the hopes and aspiration of humanity he attained
+to victory and was able to put away his personal grief, believing that
+his friend's soul was still working with him in the universe for the
+good of all. At intervals, during the three years mirrored in the poem,
+we get definite notes of time. We see how the poet is affected each year
+as the winter and the spring come round, and how the succeeding
+anniversaries of Hallam's death stir the old pain in varying degree. But
+we must not suppose that each section was composed at the time
+represented in this scheme. Seventeen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> years went to the perfecting of
+the work; it is impossible to tell when each canto was first outlined
+and how often it was re-written; and we must be content with general
+notions of its development. The poet's memory was fully charged. As he
+could recall so vividly the Lincolnshire landscape when he was living in
+the south, so he could portray the emotions of the past though he had
+entered on a new period of life fraught with a different spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Thus many elements go to make up the whole, and readers of <i>In Memoriam</i>
+can choose what suits their mood. To some, who wish to compare the
+problems of different ages, chief interest will attach to that section
+where the active mind wakes up to the conflict between science and
+faith. It was a difficult age for poets and believers. The preceding
+generation had for a time been swept far from their bearings by the
+tornado of the French Revolution. Some of them found an early grave
+while still upholding the flag; others had won back to harbour when
+their youth was past and ended their days in calm&mdash;if not
+stagnant&mdash;waters. But the advance of scientific discoveries and the
+scientific spirit sapped the defences of faith in more methodical
+fashion, and Tennyson's mind was only too open to all the evidence of
+natural law and the stern lessons of the struggle for life. To
+understand the influence of Tennyson on his age it is necessary to
+inquire how he reconciled religion with science; but this is too large a
+subject for a biographical sketch, and valuable studies have been
+written which deal with it more or less fully, by Stopford Brooke<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a>
+and many others.</p>
+
+<p>To Queen Victoria, and to others who had been stricken in their home
+affections, the human interest outweighed all others; the sorrow of
+those who gave little thought to systems of philosophy or religion was
+instinctively<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> comforted by the note of faith in a future life and by
+the haunting melodies in which it found expression.</p>
+
+<p>Many were content to return again and again to those passages where the
+beauty of nature is depicted in stanzas of wonderful felicity. No such
+gift of observation had yet ministered to their delight. Readers of Mrs.
+Gaskell will be reminded of the old farmer in <i>Cranford</i> revelling in
+the new knowledge which he has gained of the colour of ash-buds in
+March. So too we are taught to look afresh at larch woods in spring and
+beech woods in autumn, at the cedar in the garden and the yew tree in
+the churchyard. We are vividly conscious of the summer's breeze which
+tumbles the pears in the orchard, and the winter's storm when the
+leafless ribs of the wood clang and gride. As the perfect stanza lingers
+in our memory, our eyes are opened and we are taught to observe the
+marvels of nature for ourselves. Here, more than anywhere else, is he
+the true successor of Wordsworth, the Wordsworth of the daisy, the
+daffodil, and the lesser celandine, though following a method of his
+own&mdash;at once a disciple and a master.</p>
+
+<p>But other influences than those of nature were coming into his life. In
+1837 the Tennyson family had been compelled to leave Somersby; and the
+poet, recluse though he was, showed that he could rouse himself to meet
+a practical emergency with good sense. He took charge of all
+arrangements and transplanted his mother successively to new homes in
+Essex and Kent. This brought him nearer to London and enlarged
+considerably his circle of friends. The list of men of letters who
+welcomed him there is a long one, from Samuel Rogers to the Rossettis,
+and includes poets, novelists, historians, scholars, and scientists. The
+most interesting, to him and to us, was Carlyle, then living at Chelsea,
+who had published his <i>French Revolution</i> in 1837, and had thereby
+become notable among literary men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> Carlyle's judgements on the poet and
+his poems have often been quoted. At first he was more than contemptuous
+over the latter, and exhorted Tennyson to leave verse and rhyme and
+apply himself to prose. But familiar converse, in which both men spoke
+their opinions without reserve, soon enlightened 'the sage', and he
+delighted in his new friend. Long after, in 1879, he confessed that
+'Alfred always from the beginning took a grip at the right side of every
+question'. He could not fail to appreciate the man when he saw him in
+the flesh, and it is he who has left us the most striking picture of
+Tennyson's appearance in middle life. In 1842 he wrote to Emerson:
+'Alfred is one of the few... figures who are and remain beautiful to
+me;&mdash;a true human soul... one of the finest-looking men in the world. A
+great shock of rough dusty-dark hair, bright-laughing hazel eyes,
+massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate, of sallow-brown
+complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose,
+free-and-easy;&mdash;smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical
+metallic,&mdash;fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie
+between; speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in
+these late decades, such company over a pipe!' Not only were pipes
+smoked at home, but walks were taken in the London streets at night,
+with much free converse, in which art both were masters, but of which
+Carlyle, no doubt, had the larger share. Tennyson was a master of the
+art of silence, which Carlyle could praise but never practice; but when
+he spoke his remarks rarely failed to strike the bell.</p>
+
+<p>Another comrade worthy of special notice was FitzGerald, famous to-day
+as the translator of Omar Khayyam, and also as the man whom two great
+authors, Tennyson and Thackeray, named as their most cherished friend.
+He was living a hermit's life in Suffolk, dividing his day between his
+yacht, his garden, and his books; and writing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> when he was in the
+humour, those gossipy letters which have placed him as a classic with
+Cowper and Lamb. From time to time he would come to London for a visit
+to a picture gallery or an evening with his friends; and for many years
+he never failed to write once a year for news of the poet, whose books
+he might criticize capriciously, but whose image was always fresh in his
+affectionate heart. Of his old Cambridge circle Tennyson honoured, above
+all others, 'his domeship' James Spedding, of the massive rounded head,
+of the rare judgement in literature, of the unselfish and faithful
+discharge of all the duties which he could take upon himself. Great as
+was his edition of Bacon, he was by the common consent of his friends
+far greater than anything which he achieved, and his memory is most
+worthily preserved in the letters of Tennyson, and of others who knew
+him. In London he was present at gatherings where Landor and Leigh Hunt
+represented the elder generation of poets; but he was more familiar with
+his contemporaries Henry Taylor and Aubrey de Vere. It is the latter who
+gives us an interesting account of two meetings between Wordsworth and
+his successor in the Laureateship.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> The occasions when Tennyson and
+Browning met one another and read their poetry aloud were also cherished
+in the memory of those friends who were fortunate enough to be
+present.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> Differing as they did in temperament and in tastes, they
+were rivals in generosity to one another and indeed to all their
+brethren who wielded the pen of the writer. To meet such choice spirits
+Tennyson would leave for a while his precious solitude and his books.
+London could not be his home, but it became a place of pleasant meetings
+and of friendships in which he found inspiration and help.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></p><p>Thus it was that Tennyson spent the quiet years of meditation and study
+before he achieved his full renown. This was no such sensational event
+as Byron's meteoric appearance in 1812; but one year, 1850, is a clear
+landmark in his career. This was the date of the publication of <i>In
+Memoriam</i> and of his appointment, on the death of Wordsworth, to the
+office of Poet Laureate. This year saw the end of his struggle with
+ill-fortune and the end of his long courtship. In June he was married,
+at Shiplake on the Thames, to Emily Sellwood. Henceforth his happiness
+was assured and he knew no more the restlessness and melancholy which
+had clouded his enjoyment of life. His course was clear, and for forty
+years his position was hardly questioned in all lands where the English
+tongue was spoken. Noble companies of worshippers might worthily swear
+allegiance to Thackeray and Browning; but by the voice of the people
+Dickens and Tennyson were enthroned supreme.</p>
+
+<p>To deal with all the volumes of poetry that Tennyson published between
+1850 and his death would be impossible within the limits of these pages.
+In some cases he reverted to themes which he had treated before and he
+preserved for many years the same skill in craftsmanship. But in <i>Maud</i>,
+in <i>The Idylls of the King</i>, and in the historical dramas,
+unquestionably, he broke new ground.</p>
+
+<p>Partly on account of the scheme of the poem, partly for the views
+expressed on questions of the day, <i>Maud</i> provoked more hostile
+criticism than anything which he wrote; yet it seems to have been the
+poet's favourite work. The story of its composition is curious. It was
+suggested by a short lyric which Tennyson had printed privately in 1837
+beginning with the words 'Oh, that 'twere possible after long grief'.
+His friend, Sir John Simeon, urged him to write a poem which would lead
+up to and explain it; and the poet, adopting the idea, used <i>Maud</i> as a
+vehicle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> for much which he was feeling in the disillusionment of middle
+life. The form of a monodrama was unfamiliar to the public and has
+difficulties of its own. Tennyson has combined action, proceeding
+somewhat spasmodically, with a skilful study of character, showing us
+the exaggerated sensibility of a nature which under the successive
+influence of misanthropy, hope, love, and tragic disappointment, may
+easily pass beyond the border-land of insanity. In the scene where love
+is triumphant, Tennyson touches the highest point of lyrical passion;
+but there are jarring notes introduced in the satirical descriptions of
+Maud's brother and of the rival who aspires to her hand. And in the
+later cantos where, after the fatal quarrel, the hero is driven to moody
+thoughts and dark presages of woe, there are passages which seem to be
+charged with the doctrine that England was being corrupted by long peace
+and needed the purifying discipline of war. For this the poet was taken
+to task by his critics; and, though it is unfair in dramatic work to
+attribute to an author the words of his characters, Tennyson found it
+difficult to clear himself of suspicion, the more so that the Crimean
+War inspired at this time some of his most popular martial ballads and
+songs.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Idylls of the King</i> had a different fate and achieved instant
+popularity. The first four were published in 1859 and within a few
+months 10,000 copies were sold. Tennyson's original design, formed early
+in life, had been to build a single epic on the Arthurian theme, which
+seemed to him to give scope, like Virgil's <i>Aeneid</i>, for patriotic
+treatment. 'The greatest of all poetical subjects' he called it, and it
+haunted his mind perpetually. But if Virgil found such a task difficult
+nineteen hundred years before, it was doubly difficult for Tennyson to
+satisfy his generation, with scientific historians raking the ash heaps
+of the past, and pedants demanding local colour. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> shaping his poem to
+meet the requirements of history he was in danger of losing that breadth
+of treatment which is essential for epic poetry. He fell back on the
+device of selecting episodes, each a complete picture in itself, and
+grouping them round a single hero. The story is placed in the twilight
+between the Roman withdrawal and the conquests of the Saxons, when the
+lamp of history was glimmering most faintly. In these troublous times a
+king is miraculously sent to be a bulwark to the people against the
+inroads of their foes. He founds an order of Knighthood bound by vows to
+fight for all just and noble causes, and upholds for a time victoriously
+the standard of chivalry within his realm, till through the entrance of
+sin and treachery the spell is broken and the heathen overrun the land.
+After his last battle, in the far west of our island, the king passes
+away to the supernatural world from which he came. This last episode had
+been handled many years before, and the 'Morte d'Arthur', which had
+appeared in the volume of 1842, was incorporated into the 'Passing of
+Arthur' to close the series of Idylls.</p>
+
+<p>With what admixture of allegory this story was set out it is hard to
+say&mdash;Tennyson himself could not in later years be induced to define his
+purpose&mdash;but it seems certain that many of the characters are intended
+to symbolize higher and lower qualities. According to some
+interpretations King Arthur stands for the power of conscience and Queen
+Guinevere for the heart. Galahad represents purity, Bors rough honesty,
+Percivale humility, and Merlin the power of the intellect, which is too
+easily beguiled by treachery. So the whole story is moralized by the
+entrance, through Guinevere and Lancelot, of sin; by the gradual fading,
+through the lightness of one or the treachery of another, of the
+brightness of chivalry; and by the final ruin which shatters the fair
+ideal.</p>
+
+<p>But there is no need to darken counsel by questions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> about history or
+allegory, if we wish, first and last, to enjoy poetry, for its own sake.
+Here, as in Spenser's <i>Faerie Queene</i>, forth go noble knights with
+gentle maidens through the enchanted scenes of fairyland; for their
+order and its vows they are ready to dare all. Lawlessness is tamed and
+cruelty is punished, and no perilous quest presents itself but there is
+a champion ready to follow it to the end. And if severe critics tell us
+that they find no true gift of story-telling here, let us go for a
+verdict to the young. They may not be good judges of style, or safe
+interpreters of shades of thought, but they know when a story carries
+them away; and the <i>Idylls of the King</i>, like the Waverley Novels, have
+captured the heart of many a lover of literature who has not yet learnt
+to question his instinct or to weigh his treasures in the scales of
+criticism. And older readers may find themselves kindled to enthusiasm
+by reflective passages rich in high aspiration, or charmed by
+descriptions of nature as beautiful as anything which Tennyson wrote.</p>
+
+<p>In the historical plays, which occupied a large part of his attention
+between 1874 and 1879, Tennyson undertook a yet harder task. He chose
+periods when national issues of high importance were at stake, such as
+the conflict between the Church and the Crown, between the domination of
+the priest and the claim of the individual to freedom of belief. He put
+aside all exuberance of fancy and diction as unsuited to tragedy; he
+handled his theme with dignity and at times with force, and attained a
+literary success to which Browning and other good judges bore testimony.
+Of Becket in particular he made a sympathetic figure, which, in the
+skilful hands of Henry Irving, won considerable favour upon the stage.
+But the times were out of joint for the poetic drama, and he had not the
+rich imagination of Shakespeare, nor the power to create living men and
+women who compel our hearts to pity, to horror,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> or to delight. For the
+absence of this no studious reading of history, no fine sentiment, no
+noble cadences, can make amends, and it seems doubtful whether future
+ages will regard the plays as anything but a literary curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, nothing which he wrote has touched the human heart
+more genuinely than the poems of peasant life, some of them written in
+the broadest Lincolnshire dialect, which Tennyson produced during the
+years in which he was engaged on the Idylls and the plays. 'The
+Grandmother', 'The Northern Cobbler', and the two poems on the
+Lincolnshire farmers of following generations, were as popular as
+anything which the Victorian Age produced, and seem likely to keep their
+pre-eminence. The two latter illustrate, by their origin, Tennyson's
+power of seizing on a single impression, and building on it a work of
+creative genius. It was enough for him to hear the anecdote of the dying
+farmer's words, 'God A'mighty little knows what he's about in taking me!
+And Squire will be mad'; and he conceived the character of the man, and
+his absorption in the farm where he had lived and worked and around
+which he grouped his conceptions of religion and duty. The later type of
+farmer was evoked similarly by a quotation in the dialect of his county:
+'When I canters my herse along the ramper, I 'ears "proputty, proputty,
+proputty"'; and again Tennyson achieved a triumph of characterization.
+It is here perhaps that he comes nearest to the achievements of his
+great rival Browning in the field of dramatic lyrics.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the writing and publication of his poems, we cannot divide
+Tennyson's later life into definite sections. By 1850 his habits had
+been formed, his friendships established, his fame assured; such
+landmarks as are furnished by the birth of his children, by his
+journeyings abroad, by the homes in which he settled, point to no
+essential change in the current of his life. Of the perfect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> happiness
+which marriage brought to him, of the charm and dignity which enabled
+Mrs. Tennyson to hold her place worthily at his side, many witnesses
+have spoken. Two sons were born to him, one of whom died in 1886, while
+the other, named after his lost friend, lived to write the Memoir which
+will always be the chief authority for our knowledge of the man. His
+homes soon became household words&mdash;so great was the spell which Tennyson
+cast over the hearts of his readers. Farringford, at the western end of
+the Isle of Wight, was first tenanted by him in 1853, and was bought in
+1856. Here the poet enjoyed perfect quiet, a genial climate and the
+proximity of the sea, for which his love never failed. It was a very
+different coast to the bleak sandhills and wide flats of Mablethorpe.
+Above Freshwater the noble line of the Downs rises and falls as it runs
+westward to the Needles, where it plunges abruptly into the sea; and
+here on the springy turf, a tall romantic figure in wide-brimmed hat and
+flowing cloak, the poet would often walk. But Farringford, lying low in
+the shelter of the hills, proved too hot in summer; Freshwater was
+discovered by tourists too often inquisitive about the great; and so,
+after ten or twelve years, he was searching for another home, some
+remoter fastness set on higher ground. This he discovered on the borders
+of Surrey and Sussex near Haslemere, where Black Down rises to a height
+of 900 feet above the sea and commands a wide prospect over the blue
+expanse of the weald. Here he found copses and commons haunted by the
+song of birds, here he raised plantations close at hand to shelter him
+from the rude northern winds, and here he built the stately house of
+Aldworth where, some thirty years later, he was to die.</p>
+
+<p>To both houses came frequent guests. For, shy as he was of paying
+visits, he loved to see in his own house men and women who could talk to
+him as equals&mdash;nor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> was he always averse to those of reverent temper, so
+they were careful not to jar on his fastidious tastes. In some ways it
+was a pity that he did not come to closer quarters with the rougher
+forces that were fermenting in the industrial districts. It might have
+helped him to a better understanding of the classes that were pushing to
+the front, who were to influence so profoundly the England of the
+morrow. But the strain of kindly sympathy in Tennyson's nature can be
+seen at its best in his intercourse with cottagers, sailors, and other
+humble folk who lived near his doors. The stories which his son tells us
+show how the poet was able to obtain an insight into their minds and to
+write poems like 'The Grandmother' with artistic truth. And no visitor
+received a heartier welcome at Farringford than Garibaldi, who was at
+once peasant and sailor, and who remained so none the less when he had
+become a hero of European fame. To Englishmen of nearly every cultured
+profession Tennyson's hospitality was freely extended&mdash;we need only
+instance Professor Tyndall, Dean Bradley, James Anthony Froude, Aubrey
+de Vere, G. F. Watts, Henry Irving, Hubert Parry, Lord Dufferin, and
+that most constant of friends, Benjamin Jowett, pre-eminent among the
+Oxford celebrities of the day. Among his immediate neighbours he
+conceived a peculiar affection for Sir John Simeon, whose death in 1870
+called forth the stanzas 'In the Garden at Swainston'; and no one was
+more at home at Farringford than Julia Cameron, famous among early
+photographers, who has left us some of the best likenesses of the poet
+in middle and later life.</p>
+
+<p>Tennyson was not familiar with foreign countries to the same degree as
+Browning, nor was he ever a great traveller. When he went abroad he
+needed the help of some loyal friend, like Francis Palgrave or Frederick
+Locker, to safeguard him against pitfalls, and to shield him from
+annoyance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> When he was too old to stand the fatigue of railway
+journeys, he was willing to be taken for a cruise on a friend's yacht;
+and thus he visited many parts of Scotland and the harbours of
+Scandinavia. Amid new surroundings he was not always easy to please; bad
+food or smelly streets would call forth loud protests and upset him for
+a day; but his friends found it worth their while to risk some anxiety
+in order to enjoy his keen observation and the originality of his talk.
+Wherever he went he took with him his stored wisdom on Homer, Dante, and
+the 'Di maiores' of literature; and when Gladstone, too, happened to be
+one of the party on board ship, the talk must have been well worth
+hearing. As in his youth, so now, Tennyson's mind moved most naturally
+on a lofty plane and he was most at home with the great poets of the
+past; and with the exception of a few poems like 'All along the valley',
+where the torrents at Cauteretz reminded him of an early visit with
+Hallam to the Pyrenees, we can trace little evidence in his poetry of
+the journeys which he made. But we can see from his letters that he was
+kindled by the beauty of Italian cities and their treasures. In every
+picture-gallery which he visited he showed his preference for Titian and
+the rich colour of the Venetian painters. He refused to be bound by the
+conventional English taste for Alpine scenery, and broke out into abuse
+of the discoloured water in the Grindelwald glacier&mdash;'a filthy thing,
+and looking as if a thousand London seasons had passed over it'. In all
+places, among all people, he said what he thought and felt, with
+independence and conviction.</p>
+
+<p>One incident connecting him with Italy is worthy of mention as showing
+that the poet, who 'from out the northern island' came at times to visit
+them, was known and esteemed by the people of Italy. When the Mantuans
+celebrated in 1885 the nineteenth centenary of the death of Virgil, the
+classic poet to whom Tennyson owed most,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> they asked him to write an
+ode, and nobly he rose to the occasion, attaining a felicity of phrase
+which is hardly excelled in the choicest lines of Virgil himself. But it
+is as the laureate of his own country that he is of primary interest,
+and it is time to inquire how he fulfilled the functions of his office,
+and how he rendered that office of value to the State.</p>
+
+<p>When he was first appointed, Queen Victoria had let him know that he was
+to be excused from the obligation of writing complimentary verse to
+celebrate the doings of the court. Of his own accord he composed
+occasional odes for the marriages of her sons, and showed some of his
+practised skill in dignifying such themes; but it is not here that he
+found his work as laureate. He achieved greater success in the poems
+which he wrote to honour the exploits of our army and navy, in the past
+or the present. In his ballad of 'The Revenge', in his Balaclava poems,
+in the 'Siege of Lucknow', he struck a heroic note which found a ready
+echo in the hearts of soldiers and sailors and those who love the
+services. Above all, in the great ode on the death of the Duke of
+Wellington he has stirred all the chords of national feeling as no other
+laureate before him, and has enriched our literature with a jewel which
+is beyond price.</p>
+
+<p>The Arthurian epic failed to achieve its national aim, and the
+historical dramas, though inspired by great principles which have helped
+to shape our history, never touched those large circles to which as
+laureate he should appeal. Some might judge that his function was best
+fulfilled in the lyrics to be found scattered throughout his work which
+praise the slow, ordered progress of English liberties. Passages from
+<i>Maud</i> or <i>In Memoriam</i> will occur to many readers, still more the three
+lyrics generally printed together at the end of the 1842 poems,
+beginning with the well-known tines, 'Of old sat Freedom on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+heights', 'Love thou thy land', and 'You ask me why though ill at ease'.
+Here we listen to the voice of English Liberalism uttered in very
+different tones from those of Byron and Shelley, expressing the mind of
+one who recoiled from French Revolutions and had little sympathy with
+their aims of universal equality. In this he represented very truly that
+Victorian movement which was guided by Cobden and Mill, by Peel and
+Gladstone, which conferred such practical benefits upon the England of
+their day; but it is hardly the temper that we expect of an ardent poet,
+at any rate in the days of his youth. The burning passion of Carlyle,
+Ruskin, or William Morris, however tempered by other feelings, called
+forth a heartier response in the breast of the toiling multitudes.</p>
+
+<p>It may be that the claim of Tennyson to popular sovereignty will, in the
+end, rest chiefly on the pleasure which he gave to many thousands of his
+fellow-countrymen, a pleasure to be renewed and found again in English
+scenes, and in thoughts which coloured grey lives and warmed cold
+hearts, which shed the ray of faith on those who could accept no creeds
+and who yet yearned for some hope of an after-life to cheer their
+declining days. That he gave this pleasure is certain&mdash;to men and women
+of all classes from Samuel Bamford,<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> the Durham weaver, who saved his
+pence to buy the precious volumes of the 'thirties, to Queen Victoria on
+her throne, who in the reading of <i>In Memoriam</i> found one of her chief
+consolations in the hour of widowhood.</p>
+
+<p>It was given to Tennyson to live a long life, and to know more joy than
+sorrow&mdash;to be gladdened by the homage of two hemispheres, to lament the
+loss of his old friends who went before him (Spedding in 1881,
+FitzGerald in 1883, Robert Browning in 1889), to write his most famous
+lyric<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> 'Crossing the Bar' at the age of 80, and to be soothed and
+strengthened to the end by the presence of his wife. For some weeks in
+the autumn of 1892 he lay in growing weakness at Aldworth taking
+farewell of the sights and sounds that he had loved so long. To him now
+it had come to hear with dying ears 'the earliest pipe of half-awakened
+birds' and to see with dying eyes 'the casement slowly grow a glimmering
+square'. Early on October 5 he had an access of energy, and called to
+have the blinds drawn up&mdash;'I want', he said, 'to see the sky and the
+light'. The next day he died, and a week later a country wagon bore the
+coffin to Haslemere. Thence it passed to Westminster, where his dust was
+to be laid beside that of Browning, among the great men who had gone
+before. In what mood he faced death we can learn from his own words:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the limit of thy human state,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is great,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor the myriad world, His shadow, nor the silent Opener of the Gate!<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="kingsley" id="kingsley"></a><img src="images/kingsley.jpg" alt="CHARLES KINGSLEY" />
+<br /><span class="smcap">charles kingsley</span><br />
+From a drawing by W. S. Hunt in the National Portrait Gallery</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHARLES_KINGSLEY" id="CHARLES_KINGSLEY"></a>CHARLES KINGSLEY</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1819-75</p>
+
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1819.</td><td> Born at Holne on Dartmoor, June 12.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1830-6.</td><td> Father rector of Clovelly.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1832.</td><td> Grammar School at Helston, Cornwall.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1836.</td><td> Father rector of St. Luke's, Chelsea. C. K. to King's College, London.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1838-42.</td><td> Magdalene College, Cambridge.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1842.</td><td> Ordained at Farnham. Curate of Eversley.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1844.</td><td> Marriage to Fanny Grenfell. Friendship with F. D. Maurice.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1844.</td><td> Rector of Eversley.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1848.</td><td> Chartist riots. 'Parson Lot' pamphlets.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1850.</td><td> <i>Alton Locke</i> published.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1855.</td><td> <i>Westward Ho!</i> published.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1857.</td><td> <i>Two Years Ago</i> published.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1859.</td><td> Chaplain to the Queen.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1860.</td><td> Professor of Modern History at Cambridge.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1864.</td><td> Tour in the south of France.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1869.</td><td> Canon of Chester.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1870.</td><td> Tour to the West Indies.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1873.</td><td> Canon of Westminster.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1874.</td><td> Tour to California.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1875.</td><td> Death at Eversley, January 23.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">CHARLES KINGSLEY</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Parish Priest</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>If Charles Kingsley had been born in Scandinavia a thousand years
+earlier, one more valiant Viking would have sailed westward from the
+deep fiords of his native home to risk his fortunes in a new world, one
+who by his courage, his foresight, and his leadership of men was well
+fitted to be captain of his bark. The lover of the open-air life, the
+searcher after knowledge, the fighter that he was, he would have been in
+his element, foremost in the fray,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> most eager in the quest. But it was
+given to him to live in quieter times, to graft on the old Norse stock
+the graces of modern culture and the virtues of a Christian; and in a
+peaceful parish of rural England he found full scope for his gifts.
+There he taught his own and succeeding generations how full and
+beneficent the life of a parish priest can be. Our villages and towns
+produced many notable types of rector in the nineteenth century, Keble,
+Hawker, Hook, Robertson, Dolling, and scores of others; but none touched
+life at more points, none became so truly national a figure as Charles
+Kingsley in his Eversley home.</p>
+
+<p>His father was of an old squire family; like his son he was a clergyman,
+a naturalist, and a sportsman. His mother, a Miss Lucas, came from
+Barbados; and while she wrote poetry with feeling and skill, she had
+also a practical gift of management. His father's calling involved
+several changes of residence. Those which had most influence on his son
+were his removal in 1824 to Barnack, on the edge of the fens, still
+untamed and full of wild life, and in 1830 to Clovelly in North Devon.
+More than thirty years later, when asked to fill up the usual questions
+in a lady's album, he wrote that his favourite scenery was 'wide flats
+and open sea'. He was precocious as a child and perpetrated poems and
+sermons at the age of four; but very early he developed a habit of
+observation and a healthy interest in things outside himself. Such a
+nature could not be indifferent to the beauty of Clovelly, to the coming
+and going of its fishermen, and to the romance and danger of their
+lives. The steep village-street nestling among the woods, the little
+harbour sheltered by the sandstone cliffs, the wide view over the blue
+water, won his lifelong affection.</p>
+
+<p>His parents talked of sending him to Eton or Rugby, but in the end they
+decided to put him with Derwent Coleridge, the poet's son, at the
+Grammar School of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> Helston. Here he had the scenery which he loved, and
+masters who developed his strong bent towards natural science; and here
+he laid the foundations of his knowledge of botany, which remained all
+his life his favourite recreation. He was an eager reader, but not a
+close student of books; fond of outdoor life, but not skilled in
+athletic games; capable of much effort and much endurance, but rather
+irregular in his spurts of energy. A more methodical training might have
+saved him some mistakes, but it might also have taken the edge off that
+fresh enthusiasm which made intercourse with him at all times seem like
+a breath of moorland air. Here he developed an independence of mind and
+a fearlessness of opinion which is rarely to be found in the atmosphere
+of a big public school.</p>
+
+<p>At the age of seventeen, when his father was appointed to St. Luke's,
+Chelsea, he left Helston and spent two years attending lectures at
+King's College, London, and preparing for Cambridge. These were by no
+means among his happier years. He disliked London and he rebelled
+against the dullness of life in a vicarage overrun with district
+visitors and mothers' meetings. His father, a strong evangelical,
+objected to various forms of public amusement, and Charles, though loyal
+and affectionate to his parents, fretted to find no outlet for his
+energies. He made a few friends and devoured many books, but his chief
+delight was to get away from town to old west-country haunts. Nor was
+his life at Cambridge entirely happy. His excitability was great: his
+self-control was not yet developed. Rowing did not exhaust his physical
+energy, which broke out from time to time in midnight fishing raids and
+walks from Cambridge to London. He wasted so much of his time that he
+nearly imperilled his chance of taking a good degree, and might perhaps
+count himself lucky when, thanks to a heroic effort at the eleventh
+hour, his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> excellent abilities won him a first class in classics. At
+this time he was terribly shaken by religious doubts. But in one of his
+vacations in 1839 he met Fanny Grenfell, his future wife, and soon he
+was on such a footing that he could open to her his inmost thoughts. It
+was she who helped him in his wavering decision to take Holy Orders;
+and, when he went down in 1842, he set himself to read seriously and
+thoroughly for Ordination. Early in 1844 he was admitted to deacon's
+orders at Farnham.</p>
+
+<p>His first office marked out his path through life. With a short interval
+between his holding the curacy and the rectory of Eversley,<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> he had
+his home for thirty-three years at this Hampshire village so intimately
+connected with his name. Eversley lies on the borders of Berkshire and
+Hampshire, in the diocese of Winchester, near the famous house of
+Bramshill, on the edge of the sandy fir-covered waste which stretches
+across Surrey. To understand the charm of its rough commons and
+self-sown woods one must read Kingsley's <i>Prose Idylls</i>, especially the
+sketch called 'My Winter Garden'. There he served for a year as curate,
+living in bachelor quarters on the green, learning to love the place and
+its people: there, when Sir John Cope offered him the living in 1844, he
+returned a married man to live in the Rectory House beside the church,
+which may still be seen little altered to-day. A breakdown from
+overwork, an illness of his wife's, a higher appointment in the Church,
+might be the cause of his passing a few weeks or even months away; but
+year in, year out, he gave of his very best to Eversley for thirty-three
+years, and to it he returned from his journeys with all the more ardour
+to resume his work among his own people. The church was dilapidated, the
+Rectory was badly drained, the parish had been neglected by an absentee
+rector. For long periods together Kingsley was too poor to afford<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> a
+curate: when he had one, the luxury was paid for by extra labour in
+taking private pupils. He had disappointments and anxieties, but his
+courage never faltered. He concentrated his energies on steady progress
+in things material and moral, and whatever his hand found to do, he did
+it with his might.</p>
+
+<p>The church and its services called for instant attention. The Holy
+Communion had been celebrated only three times a year; the other
+services were few and irregular; on Sundays the church was empty and the
+alehouse was full. The building was badly kept, the churchyard let out
+for grazing, the whole place destitute of reverence. What the service
+came to be under the new Rector we can read on the testimony of many
+visitors. The intensity of his devotion at all times, the inspiration
+which the great festivals of the Church particularly roused in him,
+changed all this rapidly. He did all he could to draw his parishioners
+to church; but he had no rigid Puritanical views about the Sabbath. A
+Staff-College officer, who frequently visited him on Sundays, tells us
+of 'the genial, happy, unreserved intercourse of those Sunday afternoons
+spent at the Rectory, and how the villagers were free to play their
+cricket&mdash;"Paason he do'ant objec'&mdash;not 'e&mdash;as loik as not, 'e'll come
+and look on".' All his life he supported the movement for opening
+museums to the public on Sundays, and this at a time when few of the
+clergy were bold enough to speak on his side. The Church was not his
+only organ for teaching. He started schools and informal classes. In
+winter he would sometimes give up his leisure to such work every evening
+of the week. The Rectory, for all its books and bottles, its
+fishing-rods and curious specimens, was not a mere refuge for his own
+work and his own hobbies, but a centre of light and warmth where all his
+parishioners might come and find a welcome. He was one of the first to
+start 'Penny<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> Readings' in his parish, to lighten the monotony of winter
+evenings with music, poetry, stories, and lectures; and though his
+parish was so wide and scattered, he tried to rally support for a
+village reading-room, and kept it alive for some years.</p>
+
+<p>His afternoons were regularly given to parish visiting, except when
+there were other definite calls upon his time. He soon came to know
+every man, woman, and child in his parish. His sympathies were so wide
+that he could make himself at home with every one, with none more so
+than the gipsies and poachers, who shared his intimate knowledge of the
+neighbouring heaths and of the practices, lawful and unlawful, by which
+they could be made to supply food. He would listen to their stories,
+sympathize with their troubles and speak frankly in return. There was no
+condescension. One of his pupils speaks of 'the simple, delicate, deep
+respect for the poor', which could be seen in his manner and his talk
+among the cottagers. He could be severe enough when severity was needed,
+as when he compelled a cruel farmer to kill 'a miserable horse which was
+rotting alive in front of his house'; and he could deal no less
+drastically with hypocrisy. When a professional beggar fell on his knees
+at the Rectory gate and pretended to pray, he was at once ejected by the
+Rector with every mark of indignation and contumely. But the weak and
+suffering always made a special appeal to him. Though it was easy to vex
+and exasperate him, he could always put away his own troubles in
+presence of his own children or of any who needed his help. He had that
+intense power of sympathy which enabled him to understand and reach the
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>From a letter to his greatest friend, Tom Hughes, written in 1851, we
+get a glimpse of a day in his life&mdash;'a sorter kinder sample day'. He was
+up at five to see a dying man and stayed with him till eight. He then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+went out for air and exercise, fished all the morning and killed eight
+fish. He went back to his invalid at three. Later he spent three hours
+attending a meeting convoked by his Archdeacon about Sunday schools, and
+at 10.30 he was back in his study writing to his friends.</p>
+
+<p>But though he himself calls this a 'sample day', it does no justice to
+one form of his activities. Most days in the year he would put away all
+thought of fishing, shut himself up in his study morning and evening,
+and devote himself to reading and writing. Great care was taken over his
+weekly sermons. Monday was, if possible, given to rest; but from Tuesday
+till Friday evening they took up the chief share of his thoughts. And
+then there were the books that he wrote, novels, pamphlets, history
+lectures, scientific essays, on which he largely depended to support his
+wife and family. Besides this he kept up an extensive correspondence
+with friends and acquaintances. Many wrote to consult him about
+political and religious questions; from many he was himself trying to
+draw information on the phenomena of the science which he was trying to
+study at the time. Among the latter were Geikie, Lyell, Wallace, and
+Darwin himself, giants among scientific men, to whom he wrote with
+genuine humility, even when his name was a household word throughout
+England. His books can sometimes be associated with visits to definite
+places which supplied him with material. It is not difficult to connect
+<i>Westward Ho!</i> with his winter at Bideford in 1854, and <i>Two Years Ago</i>
+with his Pen-y-gwryd fishing in 1856. Memories of <i>Hereward the Wake</i> go
+back to his early childhood in the Fens, of <i>Alton Locke</i> to his
+undergraduate days at Cambridge. But he had not the time for the
+laborious search after 'local colour' with which we are familiar to-day.
+The bulk of the work was done in his study at Eversley, executed
+rapidly, some of it too rapidly; but the subjects were those of which
+his mind was full,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> and the thoughts must have been pursued in many a
+quiet hour on the heathery commons or beside the streams of his own
+neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>About his books, his own judgement agreed with that of his friends.
+'What you say about my "Ergon" being poetry is quite true. I could not
+write <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i> and I can write poetry:... there is no denying
+it: I do feel a different being when I get into metre: I feel like an
+otter in the water instead of an otter ashore.' The value of his novels
+is in their spirit rather than in their artistic form or truth; but it
+is foolish to disparage their worth, since they have exercised so marked
+an influence on the characters and lives of so many Englishmen,
+especially our soldiers and sailors, inspiring them to higher courage
+and more unselfish virtue. Perhaps the best example of his prose is the
+<i>Prose Idylls</i>, sketches of fen-land, trout streams, and moors, which
+combine his gifts so happily, his observation of natural objects, and
+the poetic imagination with which he transfuses these objects and brings
+them near to the heart of man. There were very few men who could draw
+such joy from familiar English landscapes, and could communicate it to
+others. The cult of sport, of science, and of beauty has here become one
+and has found its true high priest. In poetry his more ambitious efforts
+were <i>The Saint's Tragedy</i>, a drama in blank verse on the story of St.
+Elizabeth of Hungary, and <i>Andromeda</i>, a revival of the old Greek legend
+in the old hexameter measure. But what are most sure to live are his
+lyrics, 'Airlie Beacon', 'The Three Fishers', 'The Sands of Dee', with
+their simplicity and true note of song.</p>
+
+<p>The combination of this poetic gift with a strong interest in science
+and a wide knowledge of it is most unusual; but there can be no
+mistaking the genuine feeling which Charles Kingsley had for the latter.
+It took one very practical form in his zeal for sanitation. In 1854 when
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> public, so irrational in its moments of excitement, was calling for
+a national fast-day on account of the spread of cholera, he heartily
+supported Lord Palmerston, who refused to grant it. He held it impious
+and wrong to attribute to a special visitation from God what was due to
+the blindness, laziness, and selfishness of our governing classes. His
+article in <i>Fraser's Magazine</i> entitled 'Who causes pestilence?' roused
+much criticism: it said things that comfortable people did not like to
+hear, and said them frankly; it was far in advance of the public opinion
+of that time, but its truth no one would dispute to-day. And what his
+pen did for the nation, his example did for the parish. He drained
+unwholesome pools in his own garden, and he persuaded his neighbours to
+do the same. He taught them daily lessons about the value of fresh air
+and clean water: no details were too dull and wearisome in the cause. To
+many people his novels, like those of Dickens and Charles Reade, are
+spoilt by the advocacy of social reforms. The novel with a purpose was
+characteristic of the early Victorian Age, and both in <i>Alton Locke</i> and
+in <i>Two Years Ago</i> he makes little disguise of the zeal with which he
+preaches sanitary reform. Of the more attractive sciences, which he
+pursued with equal intensity, there is little room to speak. Botany was
+his first love and it remained first to the end. Zoology at times ran it
+close, and his letters from seaside places are full of the names of
+marine creatures which he stored in tanks and examined with his
+microscope. A dull day on the coast was inconceivable to him. Geology,
+too, thrilled him with its wonders, and was the subject of many letters.</p>
+
+<p>Side by side with his hobby of natural history went his love of sport:
+it was impossible for him to separate the one from the other. Fishing
+was his chief delight; he pursued it with equal keenness in the chalk
+streams of Hampshire, in the salmon rivers of Ireland, in the desolate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+tarns on the Welsh mountains. In the visitors' book of the inn at
+Pen-y-gwryd, Tom Hughes, Tom Taylor, and he left alternate quatrains of
+doggerel to celebrate their stay, written <i>currente calamo</i>, as the
+spirit prompted them. This is Charles Kingsley's first quatrain:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I came to Pen-y-gwryd in frantic hopes of slaying<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grilse, salmon, three-pound red-fleshed trout and what else there's no saying:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But bitter cold and lashing rain and black nor'-eastern skies, sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drove me from fish to botany, a sadder man and wiser.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Each had his disappointment through the weather, which each expressed in
+verse; but it took more than bad weather to damp the spirits of three
+such ardent open-air enthusiasts. Hunting was another favourite sport,
+though he rarely indulged himself in this luxury, and only when he could
+do so without much expense. But whenever a friend gave him a mount,
+Kingsley was ready to follow the Berkshire hounds, and with his
+knowledge of the country he was able to hold his own with the best.</p>
+
+<p>Let us try to imagine him then as he walked about the lanes and commons
+of Eversley in middle life, a spare upright figure, above the middle
+height, with alert step, informal but not slovenly in dress, with no
+white tie or special mark of his profession. His head was one to attract
+notice anywhere with the grand hawk-like nose, firm mouth, and flashing
+eye. The deep lines furrowed between the brows gave his face an almost
+stern expression which his cheery conversation soon belied. He might be
+carrying a fishing-rod or a bottle of medicine for a sick parishioner,
+or sometimes both: his faithful Dandie Dinmont would be in attendance
+and perhaps one of his children walking at his side. His walk would be
+swift and eager, with his eye wandering restlessly around to observe all
+that he passed: 'it seemed as if no bird or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> beast or insect, scarcely a
+cloud in the sky, passed by him unnoticed, unwelcomed.' So too with
+humanity&mdash;in breadth of sympathy he resembled 'the Shirra', who became
+known to every wayfarer between Teviot and Tweed. Gipsy boy, farm-hand,
+old grandmother, each would be sure of a greeting and a few words of
+talk when they met the Rector on his rounds. In society he might at
+times be too impetuous or insistent, when questions were stirred in
+which he was deeply interested. Tennyson tells us how he 'walked hard up
+and down the study for hours, smoking furiously and affirming that
+tobacco was the only thing that kept his nerves quiet'. Green compares
+him to a restless animal, and Stopford Brooke speaks of his
+quick-rushing walk, his keen face like a sword, and his body thinned out
+to a lath, and complains that he 'often screams when he ought to speak'.
+But this excitability was soothed by the country, and in his own parish
+he was at his best. He would never have been so beloved by his
+parishioners, if they had not found him willing to listen as well as to
+advise and to instruct.</p>
+
+<p>His first venture into public life met with less general favour. The
+year 1848 saw many upheavals in Europe. On the Continent thrones
+tottered and fell, republics started up for a moment and faded away. In
+England it was the year of the Chartist riots, and political and social
+problems gave plenty of matter for thought. Monster meetings were held
+in London, which were not free from disorder. The wealthier classes and
+the Government were alarmed, troops were brought up to London and the
+Duke of Wellington put in command. Events seemed to point to outbreaks
+of violence and the starting of a class-war. Frederick Denison Maurice,
+whom above all men living Kingsley revered, was the leader of a group of
+men who were greatly stirred by the movement. They saw that more than
+political reform and political charters were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> needed; and, while full of
+sympathy for the working classes, they were not minded to say smooth
+things and prophesy Utopias in which they had no belief. Filled with the
+desire to help his fellow-men, indignant at abuses which he had seen
+with his own eyes, Kingsley came at once to their side. He went to
+London to see for himself, attended meetings, wrote pamphlets, and
+seemed to be promoting agitation. The tone in which he wrote can best be
+seen by a few words from the pamphlet addressed to the 'Workmen of
+England', which was posted up in London. 'The Charter is not bad, if the
+men who use it are not bad. But will the Charter make you free? Will it
+free you from slavery to ten-pound bribes? Slavery to gin and beer?
+Slavery to every spouter who flatters your self-conceit and stirs up
+bitterness and headlong rage in you? That I guess is real slavery, to be
+a slave to one's own stomach, one's pocket, one's own temper.' This is
+hardly the tone of the agitator as known to us to-day. With his friends
+Kingsley brought out a periodical, <i>Politics for the People</i>, in which
+he wrote in the same tone. 'My only quarrel with the Charter is that it
+does not go far enough in reform.... I think you have fallen into the
+same mistake as the rich of whom you complain, I mean the mistake of
+fancying that legislative reform is social reform, or that men's hearts
+can be changed by Act of Parliament.' He did not limit himself to
+denouncing such errors. He encouraged the working man to educate himself
+and to find rational pleasures in life, contributing papers on the
+National Gallery and bringing out the human interest of the pictures.
+'Parson Lot', the <i>nom de guerre</i> which Kingsley adopted, became widely
+known for warm-hearted exhortations, for practical and sagacious
+counsels.</p>
+
+<p>Two years later he published <i>Alton Locke</i>, describing the life of a
+young tailor whose mind and whose fortunes are profoundly influenced by
+the Chartist movement. From<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> a literary point of view it is far from
+being his best work; and the critics agreed to belittle it at the time
+and to pass it over with apology at his death. But it received a warm
+welcome from others. While it roused the imagination of many young men
+and set them thinking, the veteran Carlyle could speak of 'the snatches
+of excellent poetical description, occasional sunbursts of noble
+insight, everywhere a certain wild intensity which holds the reader fast
+as by a spell'.</p>
+
+<p>Should any one ask why a rector of a country parish mixed himself up in
+London agitation, many answers could be given. His help was sought by
+Maurice, who worked among the London poor. Many of the questions at
+issue affected also the agricultural labourer. Only one who was giving
+his life to serve the poor could effectively expose the mistakes of
+their champions. The upper classes, squires and merchants and
+politicians, had shut their eyes and missed their chances. So when the
+ship is on fire, no one blames the chaplain or the ship's doctor for
+lending a hand with the buckets.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+<p>That his efforts in London met with success can be seen from many
+sources besides the popularity of <i>Alton Locke</i>. He wrote a pamphlet
+entitled 'Cheap Clothes and Nasty', denouncing the sweaters' shops and
+supporting the co-operative movement, which was beginning to arise out
+of the ashes of Chartism. Of this pamphlet a friend told him that he saw
+three copies on the table in the Guards' Club, and that he heard that
+captains in the Guards were going to the co-operative shop in Castle
+Street and buying coats there. A success of a different kind and one
+more valued by Kingsley himself was the conversion of Thomas Cooper, the
+popular writer in Socialist magazines, who preached atheistical
+doctrines weekly to many thousand working men. Kingsley found him to be
+sincerely honest,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> spent infinite time in writing him friendly letters,
+discussing their differences of opinion, and some years later had the
+joy of inducing him to become an active preacher of the Gospel. But most
+of the well-to-do people, including the clergy, were prejudiced against
+Kingsley by his Radical views. On one occasion he had to face a painful
+scene in a London church, when the vicar who had invited him to preach
+rose after the sermon and formally protested against the views to which
+his congregation had been listening. Bishop Blomfield at first sided
+with the vicar; but in the end he did full justice to the sincerity and
+charity of Kingsley's views and sanctioned his continuing to preach in
+the Diocese.</p>
+
+<p>It was his literary successes which helped most to break down the
+prejudice existing against him in society. <i>Hypatia</i>, published in 1853,
+had a mixed reception; but <i>Westward Ho!</i> appearing two years later, was
+universally popular. His eloquence in the pulpit was becoming known to a
+wider circle, largely owing to officers who came over from Aldershot and
+Sandhurst to hear him; and early in 1859 he was asked to preach before
+the Queen and Prince Consort. His appointment as chaplain to the Queen
+followed before the year was out; and this made a great difference in
+his position and prospects. What he valued equally was the hearty
+friendship which he formed with the Prince Consort. They had the same
+tastes, the same interests, the same serious outlook on life. A year
+later came a still higher distinction when Kingsley was appointed
+Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. His history lectures, it is
+generally agreed, are not of permanent value as a contribution to the
+knowledge of the subject. With his parish work and other interests he
+had no time for profound study. But his eloquence and descriptive powers
+were such as to attract a large class of students, and many can still
+read with pleasure his lectures on <i>The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> Roman and the Teuton</i>, in which
+he was fired by the moral lessons involved in the decay of the Roman
+empire and the coming of the vigorous young northern races. Apart from
+his lectures he had made his mark in Cambridge by the friendly relations
+which he established with many of the undergraduates and the personal
+influence which he exercised. But he knew better than any one else his
+shortcomings as an historian, the preparation of his lectures gave him
+great anxiety and labour, and in 1869 he resigned the office.</p>
+
+<p>The next honour which fell to him was a canonry at Chester, and in 1873,
+less than two years before his death, he exchanged it for a stall at
+Westminster. These historic cities with their old buildings and
+associations attracted him very strongly: preaching in the Abbey was
+even dangerously exciting to a man of his temperament. But while he gave
+his services generously during his months of office, as at Chester in
+founding a Natural History Society, he never deserted his old work and
+his old parish. Eversley continued to be his home, and during the
+greater part of each year to engross his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>Literature, science, and sport were, as we have seen, the three
+interests which absorbed his leisure hours. A fourth, partaking in some
+measure of all three, was travel, a hobby which the strenuous pursuit of
+duty rarely permitted him to indulge. Ill-health or a complete breakdown
+sometimes sent him away perforce, and it is to this that he chiefly owed
+his knowledge of other climes. He has left us some fascinating pictures
+of the south of France, the rocks of Biarritz, the terrace at Pau, the
+blue waters of the Mediterranean, and the golden arches of the Pont du
+Gard; but the voyages that thrilled him most were those that he took to
+America, when he sailed the Spanish main in the track of Drake and
+Raleigh and Richard Grenville. The first journey in 1870 was to the West
+Indies; the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> second and longer one took him to New York and Quebec, and
+across the continent to the Yosemite and San Francisco. This was in
+1874, the last year of his life, and he was received everywhere with the
+utmost respect and goodwill. His name was now famous on both sides of
+the Atlantic, and the voice of opposition was stilled. The public had
+changed its attitude to him, but he himself was unchanged. He had the
+same readiness to gather up new knowledge, and to get into friendly
+touch with every kind of man, the same reluctance to talk about himself.
+Only the yearning towards the unseen was growing stronger. The poet
+Whittier, who met him at Boston, found him unwilling to talk about his
+own books or even about the new cities which he was visiting, but
+longing for counsel from his brother poet on the high themes of a future
+life and the final destiny of the human race.</p>
+
+<p>While he was in California he was taken ill with pleurisy; and when he
+came back to England he had so serious a relapse in the autumn that he
+could hardly perform his duties at Westminster. He had never wished for
+long life, his strength was exhausted, the ardent soul had worn out its
+sheath. A dangerous illness of his wife's, threatening to leave him
+solitary, hastened the end. For her sake he fought a while against the
+pneumonia which set in, but the effort was in vain, and on January 23,
+in his own room at Eversley, he met his death contented and serene.
+Twenty years before he had said, 'God forgive me if I am wrong, but I
+look forward to it with an intense and reverent curiosity'.</p>
+
+<p>These words of his sum up some of his most marked characteristics. Of
+his 'curiosity' there is no need to say more: all his life he was
+pursuing eager researches into rocks, flowers, animals, and his
+fellow-men. 'Intensity' has been picked out by many of his friends as
+the word which, more than any other, expresses the peculiar quality<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> of
+his nature. This does not mean a weak excitability. His letters to J. S.
+Mill on the women-suffrage movement show that this hysterical element,
+which was often to be found in the women supporting it, was what most he
+feared. He himself defines it well&mdash;'my blessed habit of intensity. I go
+at what I am about as if there was nothing else in the world for the
+time being.' This quality, which many great men put into their work,
+Kingsley put both into his work and into his play-time. Critics will say
+that he paid for it: it is easy to quote the familiar line: 'Neque
+semper arcum tendit Apollo.' But Horace is not the poet to whom Charles
+Kingsley would go for counsel: he would only say that he got full value
+in both, and that he never regretted the bargain.</p>
+
+<p>But it would be no less true to say that 'Reverence' is the key-note of
+his character. This fact was impressed on all who saw him take the
+services in his parish church, and it was an exaltation of reverence
+which uplifted his congregation and stamped itself on their memories. It
+is seen, too, in his political views. The Radical Parson, the upholder
+of Chartism, was in many ways a strong Tory. He had a great belief in
+the land-owning classes, and an admiration for what remained of the
+Feudal System. He believed that the old relation between squire and
+villagers, if each did his duty, worked far better than the modern
+pretence of Equality and Independence. Like Disraeli, like Ruskin, and
+like many other men of high imagination, he distrusted the Manchester
+School and the policy that in the labour market each class should be
+left to fend for itself. Radical as he was, he defended the House of
+Lords and the hereditary system. So, too, in Church questions, though he
+was an anti-Tractarian, he had a great reverence for the Athanasian
+Creed and in general was a High Churchman. He had none of the fads which
+we associate with the Radical party. Total abstinence he condemned as a
+rigid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> rule, though there was no man more severe in his attitude to
+drunkenness. He believed that God's gifts were for man's enjoyment, and
+he set his face against asceticism. He trained his own body to vigorous
+manhood and he had remarkable self-control; and he wished to help each
+man to do this for himself and not to be driven to it by what he
+considered a false system. Logically it may be easy to find
+contradictions in the views which he expressed at different times; but
+his life shows an essential unity in aim and practice.</p>
+
+<p>It has been the fashion to label Charles Kingsley and his teaching with
+the nickname of 'Muscular Christianity', a name which he detested and
+disclaimed. It implied that he and his school were of the full-blooded
+robust order of men, who had no sympathy for weakness, and no message
+for those who could not follow the same strenuous course as themselves.
+As a fact Kingsley had his full share of bodily illnesses and suffered
+at all times from a highly-wrought nervous organization; when pain to
+others was involved, he was as tender and sympathetic as a woman. He was
+a born fighter, too reckless in attack, as we see in his famous dispute
+with Cardinal Newman about the honesty of the Tractarians. But he was
+not bitter or resentful. He owned himself that in this case he had met a
+better logician than himself: later he expressed his admiration for
+Newman's poem, 'The Dream of Gerontius', and in his letters he praises
+the tone in which the Tractarians write&mdash;'a solemn and gentle
+earnestness which is most beautiful and which I wish I may ever attain'.
+The point which Matthew Arnold singles out in estimating his character
+is the width of his sympathies. 'I think', he says, 'he was the most
+generous man I have ever known, the most forward to praise what he
+thought good, the most willing to admire, the most incapable of being
+made ill-natured or even indifferent by having to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> support ill-natured
+attacks himself. Among men of letters I know nothing so rare as this.'
+To the gibe about 'Muscular Christianity' Kingsley had his own answer.
+He said that with his tastes and gifts he had a special power of
+appealing to the wild rough natures which were more at home in the
+country than the town, who were too self-forgetful, and too heedless of
+the need for culture and for making use of their opportunities. Jacob,
+the man of intellect, had many spiritual guides, and the poor outcast,
+Esau, was too often overlooked. As he said, 'The one idea of my life was
+to tell Esau that he has a birthright as well as Jacob'. When he was
+laid to his rest in Eversley churchyard, there were many mourners who
+represented the cultured classes of the day; but what gave its special
+character to the occasion was the presence of keepers and poachers, of
+gipsies, country rustics, and huntsmen, the Esaus of the Hampshire
+village, which was the fit resting-place for one who above all was the
+ideal of a parish priest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="GEORGE_FREDERICK_WATTS" id="GEORGE_FREDERICK_WATTS"></a>GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1817-1904</p>
+
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1817.</td><td> Born in London, February 23.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1827.</td><td> Begins to frequent the studio of William Behnes.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1835.</td><td> Enters Royal Academy Schools.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1837.</td><td> Working in his own studio. 'Wounded Heron' and two portraits in Royal Academy exhibition.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1842.</td><td> Success in Parliament House competition: 'Caractacus' cartoon.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1843-7.</td><td> Living with Lord and Lady Holland at Florence.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1847.</td><td> Success in second competition: 'Alfred' cartoon.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1848.</td><td> Early allegorical pictures.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1850.</td><td> Friendship with the Prinseps. Little Holland House.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1851.</td><td> National series of portraits begun.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1852.</td><td> Begins Lincoln's Inn Hall fresco: finished 1859.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1856.</td><td> With Sir Charles Newton to Halicarnassus.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1865.</td><td> Correspondence with Charles Rickards of Manchester.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1867.</td><td> Elected A.R.A. and R.A. in same year. Portraits. Carlyle. W. Morris.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1872.</td><td> New home at Freshwater, Isle of Wight. 'The Briary.' Little Holland House sold.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1877.</td><td> Grosvenor Gallery opened. 1881. Watts exhibition there (200 pictures).</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1882.</td><td> D.C.L., Oxford; LL.D., Cambridge.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1886.</td><td> November; marries Miss Fraser Tytler. Winter in Egypt.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1890.</td><td> New home at Limnerslease, Compton.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1895.</td><td> National Portrait Gallery opened.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1896.</td><td> New Gallery exhibition (155 pictures).</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1897.</td><td> Gift of pictures to new Tate Gallery.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1902.</td><td> Order of Merit.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1904.</td><td> Death at Compton, July 1.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Artist</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>The great age of British art was past before Queen Victoria began her
+long and memorable reign. Reynolds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> and Gainsborough had died in the
+last years of the eighteenth century, Romney and Hoppner in the first
+decade of the nineteenth; Lawrence, the last of the Georgian
+portrait-painters, did not live beyond 1830. Of the landscapists Crome
+died in 1821 and Constable in 1837. Turner, the one survivor of the
+Giants, had done three-quarters of his work before 1837 and can hardly
+be reckoned as a Victorian worthy.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="watts" id="watts"></a><img src="images/watts.jpg" alt="GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS" />
+<br /><span class="smcap">george frederick watts</span><br />
+From a painting by himself in the National Portrait Gallery</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In the reign of Queen Victoria many thousands of trivial anecdotic
+pictures were bought and sold, were reproduced in Art Annuals and
+Christmas Numbers and won the favour of rich amateurs and provincial
+aldermen&mdash;so much so that Victorian art has been a favourite target for
+the shafts of critics formed in the school of Whistler and the later
+Impressionists. But however just some of their strictures may be, it is
+foolish to condemn an age wholesale or to shut our eyes to the great
+achievements of those artists who, rising above the general level,
+dignified the calling of the painter just when the painters were most
+rare. These men formed no single movement progressing in a uniform
+direction. The study of pure landscape is best seen in the water-colour
+draughtsmen, Cotman, Cox, and de Wint; of landscape as a setting for the
+life of the people, in Fred Walker and George Mason. Among
+figure-painters the 'Pre-Raphaelites', Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and
+Millais, with their forerunner Madox Brown, are the first to win
+attention by their earnestness, their romantic imagination, and their
+intense feeling for beauty: in these qualities Burne-Jones carried on
+their work and retained the allegiance of a cultured few to the very end
+of the century. Two solitary figures are more difficult to class, Alfred
+Stevens and Watts. Each learnt fruitful lessons from prolonged study of
+the great art of the past; yet each preserves a marked originality in
+his work. More than any other artists of their age they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> realized the
+unity of art and the dependence of one branch upon another. Painting
+should go hand in hand with sculpture, and both minister to
+architecture. So the world might hope once more to see public buildings
+nobly planned and no less nobly decorated, as in the past it saw the
+completion of the Parthenon and the churches of mediaeval Italy. It was
+unfortunate that they received so little encouragement from the public,
+and that their example had so narrow an influence. St. Paul's can show
+its Wellington monument, Lincoln's Inn its fresco; but year after year
+subject-pictures continued to be painted on an ambitious scale, which
+after a few months' exhibition on the walls of Burlington House passed
+to their tomb in provincial museums, or reappeared as ghosts in the
+sale-room only to fetch a derisory price and to illustrate the fickle
+vagaries in the public taste.</p>
+
+<p>In the early life of George Frederick Watts, who was born in a quiet
+street in West Marylebone, there are few incidents to narrate, there is
+little brightness to enliven the tale. His father, a maker of musical
+instruments, was poor; his mother died early; his home-life was
+overshadowed by his own ill-health and the uncertain moods of other
+members of the family. His education was casual and consisted mostly of
+reading books under the guidance of his father, who had little solid
+learning, but refined tastes and an inventive disposition. In his
+Sundays at home, where the Sabbatarian rule limited his reading, he
+became familiar with the stories of the Old Testament; he discovered for
+himself the Waverley Novels and Pope's translation of the <i>Iliad</i>; and
+he began from early years to use his pencil with the eager and
+persistent enthusiasm which marks the artist born.</p>
+
+<p>For a rich artistic nature it was a starved life, but he made the most
+of such chances as came in his way. He was barely ten years old when he
+found his way to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> studio of a sculptor named William Behnes, a man
+of Hanoverian extraction, an indifferent sculptor but possessed of a
+real talent for drawing; and from his more intellectual brother, Charles
+Behnes, he learnt to widen his interest in literature. In this halting
+and irregular process of education he received help, some years later,
+from another friend of foreign birth, Nicholas Wanostrocht, a Belgian,
+who under the assumed name of 'Felix' became a leading authority on the
+game of cricket. Wanostrocht was a cultivated man of very wide tastes,
+and it was largely through his encouragement that Watts gave to the
+study of the French and Italian languages, and to music, what little
+time he could spare from his professional work. London was to render him
+greater services than this. Thanks to his visits to the British Museum,
+he had, while still in his teens, come under a mightier spell. Though
+few Englishmen had yet learnt to value their treasures, the Elgin
+Marbles had been resting there for twenty years. But now, two years
+before Queen Victoria's accession, there might be seen, standing rapt in
+admiration before the works of Phidias, a boy of slender figure with
+high forehead, delicately moulded features, and disordered hair, one
+who, as we can see from the earliest portrait which Mrs. Watts has
+preserved in her biography, had something of the unearthly beauty of the
+young Shelley. He was physically frail, marked off from ordinary men by
+a grace that won its way quickly to the hearts of all who were
+susceptible to spiritual charm. Untaught though he was, he had the eye
+to see for himself the grandeur of these relics of Greece, and
+throughout his life they remained one of the guiding influences in his
+development, one of the standards which he set up before himself, though
+all too conscious that he could not hope to reach that height. We see
+their influence in his treatment of drapery, of horses, of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> human
+figure, in his idealization of types, in the flowing lines of his
+compositions, and in the grouping of his masses. Compared to the hours
+which he spent in the British Museum, the lessons in the Royal Academy
+schools seem unimportant. He attended classes there for some months in
+1835, but the teaching was poor and its results disappointing. William
+Hilton, R.A., who then occupied the post of Keeper, gave him some kind
+words of encouragement, but in general he came and went unnoticed, and
+he soon returned to his solitary self-training in his own studio. If we
+know little of his teaching in art, we know still less of his personal
+life during the time when he was laying the foundations of his success
+by study and self-discipline. Early rising was an art which he acquired
+early, and maintained throughout life; long after he felt the spur of
+necessity, even after the age of 80, he could rise at four when there
+was work to be done; and, living as he did on the simplest diet, he
+often achieved his best results at an hour when other men were still
+finishing their slumbers. His shyness and sensitiveness, combined with
+precarious health and weak physique, would seem to equip him but poorly
+in the struggle for life; but his steady persistence, his high
+conception of duty, his faith in his art, joined to that power which he
+had of winning friends among the noblest men and women of his day, were
+to carry him triumphantly through to the end.</p>
+
+<p>The career of Watts as a public man began in 1843 when he had reached
+the age of 26. The British Government, not often guilty of fostering art
+or literature, may claim at least the credit for having drawn him out of
+his seclusion at the very moment when his genius was ripening to bear
+fruit. In 1834 the Palace of Westminster, so long the home of the Houses
+of Parliament, had been burnt to the ground. The present buildings were
+begun by Sir Charles Barry in 1840, and, with a view to decorating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> them
+with wall-paintings, the Board of Works wisely offered prizes for
+cartoons, hoping thereby to attract the best talent of the country. In
+June 1843 they had to judge between 140 designs by various competitors,
+and to award prizes varying in value from &pound;300 to &pound;100. Of the three
+first prizes one fell to Watts, hitherto unknown beyond the narrow
+circle of his friends, for a design displaying 'Caractacus led in
+triumph through the streets of Rome'. This cartoon, however, was not
+employed for its original purpose: it fell into the hands of an
+enterprising, if inartistic, dealer, who cut it up and sold such
+fragments as he judged to be of value in the state of the picture market
+at the time. What was far more important was the encouragement given to
+the artist by such a success at a critical time of his life, and the
+opportunity which the money furnished him to travel abroad and enrich
+his experiences before his style was formed. He had long wished to visit
+Italy; and, after spending a few weeks in France, he made his leisurely
+way (at a pace incredible to us to-day) to Florence and its picture
+galleries. On the steamer between Marseilles and Leghorn he was
+fortunate in making friends with a Colonel Ellice and his wife, and a
+few weeks later they introduced him to Lord Holland, the British
+Minister at Florence.</p>
+
+<p>The story goes that Watts went to be the guest of Lord and Lady Holland
+for four days and remained there for four years&mdash;a story which is a
+tribute to the discernment of the latter and not a satire upon Watts,
+who was the last man in the world to take advantage of hospitality or to
+thrust himself into other people's houses. No doubt it is not to be
+taken too literally, but at least it is so far true that he very quickly
+became intimate with his host and hostess and found a home where he
+could pursue his art under ideal conditions. The value and the danger of
+patronage have been often discussed. Democracy may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> provide a discipline
+for artists and men of letters which is often salutary in testing the
+sincerity of their devotion to art and literature; but, in such a stern
+school, men of genius may easily founder and miss their way.</p>
+
+<p>However that may be, Watts found just the haven which was needed for a
+nature like his. So far he had known but little appreciation, and had
+lived with few who were his peers. Now he was cheered by the favour of
+men and women who had known the best and whose favour was well worth the
+winning. But he kept his independence of spirit. He lived in a palace,
+but his diet was as sparing as that of a hermit. He feasted his eyes on
+the great works of the Renaissance, but he preserved his originality,
+and continued to work, with fervour and enhanced enthusiasm, on the
+lines which he had already marked out for himself. He did not copy with
+the hand, but he drank in new lessons with the eyes and dreamed new
+dreams with the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The Hollands had two houses, one in the centre of the city, the other,
+the Villa Medicea di Careggi, lying on the edge of the hills some two or
+three miles to the north. This latter had been a favourite residence of
+the first Cosimo; here Lorenzo had died, turning his face to the wall,
+unshriven by Savonarola; and here Watts decorated an open <i>loggia</i> in
+fresco, to bear witness to its latest connexion with the patronage of
+Art. Between the two houses he passed laborious but tranquil days,
+studying, planning, training his hand to mastery, but enjoying in his
+leisure all that such a home could give him of varied entertainment.
+Music and dancing, literature and good company, all had their charms for
+him, though none of them could beguile him into neglecting his work.
+Fortune had tried him with her frowns and with her smiles; under
+temptations of both sorts he remained but more faithful to his calling.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His health gave cause for anxiety from time to time, but he delighted in
+the sunshine and the genial climate of the South, and in general he was
+well enough to enjoy what Florence could give him of beautiful form and
+colour, and even to travel farther afield. One year he pushed as far as
+Naples, stopping on the way for a hurried glance at Rome. On this
+memorable day the Sistine chapel and its paintings were kept to the
+last; and Watts, high though his expectations were, was overwhelmed at
+what he saw. 'Michelangelo', he said, 'stands for Italy, as Shakespeare
+does for England.' So the four years went by till in 1847 this halcyon
+period came to an end. The Royal Commission of Fine Arts was offering
+prizes for fresco-painting, and Watts felt that he must put his growing
+powers to the test and utilize what he had learnt. This time he chose
+for his subject 'Alfred inciting the English to resist the Danes by
+sea'. He was busy at work in the early months of 1847 making many
+sketches in pencil for the figures, and by April he was on his way home,
+bringing with him the 'Alfred' almost finished and five other canvases
+in various stages of completion. The picture was placed in Westminster
+Hall for competition in June, and soon after he was announced to be the
+winner of one of the three &pound;500 prizes. When the Commissioners decided
+to purchase his picture for the nation, he refused to take more than
+&pound;200 for it, though he might easily have obtained a far higher price.
+This is one of the earliest instances in which he displayed that signal
+generosity which marked his whole career.</p>
+
+<p>During the next three years his life was rather desultory. He was hoping
+to return to Italy and did not find it easy to settle down in London. He
+changed his studio two or three times. He planned various works, but
+felt chilled at the absence of any clear encouragement from new patrons
+or from the general public. His success in 1847<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> had not been followed
+by any commissions for the sort of work he loved: interest in the
+decoration of public buildings was still spasmodic and too rare.</p>
+
+<p>He made the acquaintance of Mr. Ruskin; but, friendly though they were
+in their personal relations, they did not see eye to eye in artistic
+matters. Ruskin seemed to lay too much emphasis on points of secondary
+importance, and to fail in judging the work of Michelangelo and the
+greatest masters. So Watts thought, and many years later, in
+conversation with Jowett, declared, chary though he was of criticizing
+his friends. To-day there is little doubt whose judgement was the truer,
+even had Ruskin not weakened his position by so often contradicting
+himself. Besides Ruskin, Watts was beginning to make other friends, and
+was a member of the Cosmopolitan Club, which counted among its members
+Sir Robert Morier, Sir Henry Layard, FitzGerald, Palgrave, and Spedding.
+The large painting of the 'Story from Boccaccio', which now hangs in the
+Watts room of the Tate Gallery, hung for many years on the walls of this
+club and was presented to the nation in 1902. How frequently Watts
+attended the club or other social gatherings at this time we do not
+know. His name figures little in the biographies and memoirs of
+Londoners, and he himself would not have wished the record of his daily
+life to be preserved. His modesty in all personal matters is
+uncontested, and even if his subsequent offer of his pictures to the
+nation smacks somewhat of presumption, his motive was something other
+than conceit. His portraits were an historical record of the worthiest
+men of his own time: his allegories were of value, so he felt, not for
+their technical accomplishments, but for the high moral lessons which
+they tried to convey. The artist himself was at ease only in retirement
+and privacy. Yet complete isolation was not good for him. Ill-health
+still dogged his steps, and the dejection which came over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> him in the
+years 1849 and 1850 is to be seen in the gloomiest pictures which he
+ever painted. Their titles and subjects alike recall the more tragic
+poems of Thomas Hood. But the eclipse was not to last for long, and in
+1850 Watts owed his recovery to a happy chance encounter with friends
+who were to give him a new haven of refuge and gladden his life for
+thirty years to come.</p>
+
+<p>A high Indian official, James Pattle, had been the father of five
+daughters who were famous for their beauty, and from their tastes and
+character were particularly fitted to be the friends of artists and
+poets. If Lady Somers was the most beautiful of the sisters and Mrs.
+Cameron the most artistic, their elder sister Mrs. Prinsep proved to be
+Watts's surest friend. Her husband, Thoby Prinsep, was a member of the
+India Council in Whitehall, a large-hearted man, full of knowledge and
+full of kindliness. Mrs. Prinsep herself was mistress of the domestic
+arts in no common degree, from skilful cookery to the holding of a
+literary <i>salon</i>. She and her husband realized what friendship could do
+for a nature like that of Watts, and they provided him with an ideal
+home, where he was nursed back to health, relieved of care, and cheered
+by constant sympathy and affection. It was Watts who discovered this
+home for them in a quiet corner of London, that has not yet lost all its
+charm. Behind Holland House and adjoining its park was a smaller
+property with a rambling old-fashioned house, built in the days when
+London was still far away. At Little Holland House the Prinseps lived
+for a quarter of a century. Here the sisters came and went freely with
+their children who were growing up around them. Here were gatherings of
+their friends, among whom Tennyson, Thackeray, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones
+might be met from time to time; and here Watts remained a constant
+inmate, giving regular hours to his work, enjoying their society in his
+leisure, a special<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> favourite with the children, who admitted him to
+their confidence and called him by pet names. There was no lionizing, no
+striving after brilliance; all work that was genuine and of high
+intention received due honour, and Watts could hope here to carry to
+fruition the noble visions which he had seen since the days of his
+youth.</p>
+
+<p>These visions had little to do with the exhibitions of Burlington House,
+the winning of titles, or the acquisition of worldly wealth. Watts
+cherished the old Greek conception of willing service to the community.
+And he was alive to the special needs of an age when men were struggling
+for gain, and when 'progress' was measured by material riches. To him,
+if to few others, it seemed tragic that, in the wonderful development of
+industrial Britain, art, which had spoken so eloquently to citizens of
+Periclean Athens and to Florence in the Medicean age, should remain
+without expression or sign of life. For a moment our Government had
+seemed to hear the call, and the stimulus of the Westminster
+competitions had been of value; but the interest died away all too
+quickly, and the attention of the general public was never fully roused.
+If the latter could be won, Watts was only too willing to give the time
+and the knowledge which he had acquired. The building of the great
+railway stations in London seemed to offer a chance, and Watts
+approached the directors of the North Western Company with a humble
+petition. All that he asked for was wall space and the payment of his
+expenses in material. Had his request been granted, Euston might have
+enjoyed pre-eminence among railway stations, and passengers for the
+north might have passed through, or waited in, a National Gallery of
+their own. But the Railway Director's mind is slow to move; inventions
+leave him cold, and imagination is not to be weighed in the scale
+against dividends and quick returns. The Company declined the offer on
+the ground of expense, while their architect is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> said to have been
+seriously alarmed at the idea of any one tampering with his building.</p>
+
+<p>Another proposal met with a heartier response. The men of law proved
+more generous than the men of commerce. The new Hall at Lincoln's Inn
+was being built by Mr. Philip Hardwick, in the Tudor style. Benchers and
+architect alike cordially welcomed Watts's offer to decorate a blank
+wall with fresco. The work could only be carried on during the legal
+vacations, and it proved a long business owing to the difficulties of
+the process and to the interruptions caused by the artist's ill-health.
+Watts planned it in 1852, began work in 1853, and did not put the
+finishing touch till 1859. The subject was a group of famous lawgivers,
+in which the chief figures were Moses, Mahomet, Justinian, Charlemagne,
+and Alfred, and it stands to-day as the chief witness to his powers as a
+designer on a grand scale.</p>
+
+<p>Before this he had already dedicated to national service his gift of
+portrait-painting. The head of Lord John Russell, painted in 1851, is
+one of the earliest portraits known to have been painted with this
+intention, though it is impossible to fix with accuracy the date when
+such a scheme took shape. In 1899, with the same patriotic intention, he
+was at work on a painting of Cecil Rhodes. In this half-century of
+activity he might have made large sums of money, if he had responded to
+the urgent demands of those men and women who were willing to pay high
+prices for the privilege of sitting to him; but few of them attained
+their object. His earlier achievements were limited to a few families
+from whom he had received help and encouragement when he was unknown.
+First among these to be remembered are the various generations of that
+family whose name is still preserved at South Kensington in the Ionides
+collection of pictures. Next came the Hollands, of whom he painted many
+portraits at Florence; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> a third circle, naturally enough, was that
+of the Prinseps. In general he was most unwilling to undertake, as a
+mere matter of business, commissions from individuals unknown to him. He
+found portrait-painting most exhausting in its demands upon him. He
+threw his whole soul into the work, straining to see and to reproduce
+all that was most noble in his sitters. His nervous temperament made him
+anxious at starting, while his high standard of excellence made him
+often dissatisfied with what he had accomplished. Even when he was
+painting Tennyson, a personal friend, he was miserable at the thought of
+the responsibility which he had undertaken; and in 1879 he gave up a
+commission to paint Gladstone, feeling that he was not realizing his
+aim. So far as mere money was concerned, he would have preferred to
+leave this branch of his profession, the most lucrative of all, perhaps
+the most suited to his gifts, severely on one side, and to confine
+himself to the allegorical subjects which he felt to be independent of
+external claims.</p>
+
+<p>In the years after 1850, when he was first living at Little Holland
+House, Watts formed some of the friendships with brother artists which
+added so much pleasure to his life. Foremost among these friends was
+Frederic Leighton, the most famous President whom the Royal Academy has
+known since the days of Reynolds, a man of many accomplishments,
+linguist, orator, and organizer, as well as sculptor and painter, the
+very variety of whose gifts have perhaps prevented him from obtaining
+proper recognition for the things which he did really well. The worldly
+success which he won brought him under the fire of criticism as no other
+artist of the time; but, apart from his merits as a draughtsman and a
+sculptor he was a man of singularly generous temper, a staunch friend
+and a champion of good causes. These qualities, and his sincere
+admiration for all noble work, endeared him to Watts;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> and, at one time,
+Leighton paid daily visits to his studio to exchange views and to see
+his friend's work in progress.</p>
+
+<p>For a while Rossetti frequented the circle, but this wayward spirit
+drifted into other paths, and the chief service which he did to Watts
+was to introduce to him Edward Burne-Jones, most refined of artists and
+most lovable of men. The latter's work commanded Watts's highest
+admiration, and his friendship was valued to the end. To many lovers of
+painting these two remain the embodiment of all that is purest and
+loftiest in Victorian art; and though their treatment of classic
+subjects and of allegory were so different their pictures were often
+hung side by side in exhibitions and their names were coupled together
+in the current talk of the time. Burne-Jones was markedly Celtic in his
+love of beautiful pattern, in the ghostly refinement of his figures, in
+the elaborate fancifulness of his imagery. Watts had more of the
+full-blooded Englishman in his nature, and his art was simpler, grander,
+more universal. If we may compare them with the great men of the
+Renaissance, Burne-Jones recalled the grace of Botticelli, Watts the
+richness and power of Veronese or of Titian.</p>
+
+<p>Those who went to Little Holland House and saw the circle of the
+Prinseps adorned by these artists, and by such writers as Tennyson,
+Henry Taylor,<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> and Thackeray, had a singular impression of harmony
+between the men and their surroundings; and if they had been asked who
+best expressed the spirit of these gatherings, they would probably have
+pointed to the 'Signor', as Watts came to be called among his intimate
+friends&mdash;to the slight figure with the small delicately-shaped head, who
+seemed to recall the atmosphere of Florence in the Middle Ages, when art
+was at once a craft and a religion. But few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> who saw the grace and
+old-fashioned courtesy with which he moved among young and old would
+have guessed what fire and persistency were in him, that he would
+outlive all his generation, and be still wielding a vigorous brush in
+the early years of the century to come.</p>
+
+<p>One interlude in this busy yet tranquil life came in 1856 when he was
+asked to accompany Sir Charles Newton's party to the coast of Asia
+Minor. Newton was to explore the ruins of Halicarnassus on behalf of the
+British Government, and a man-of-war was placed at his disposal. The
+opportunity of seeing Grecian lands in this leisurely fashion was too
+good to be missed, and Watts spent eight happy months on board. He
+showed his power of adapting himself to a new situation, made friends
+with the sailors, and sang 'Tom Bowling' at their Christmas concert.
+Incidentally he visited Constantinople, as it was necessary to get a
+'firman' from the Porte, was commended to the famous ambassador Lord
+Stratford de Redcliffe and painted two portraits of him, one of which is
+in the National Portrait Gallery to-day. He also enjoyed a cruise
+through the Greek Islands, where the scenery with its rich colour and
+bold pure outlines was specially calculated to charm him. He painted few
+landscapes in his long career, but both in Italy and in Greece it was
+the distant views of mountain peaks that led him to give expression to
+his delight in the beauty of Nature.</p>
+
+<p>A different kind of distraction was obtained after his return by
+occasional visits to Esher, where he was the guest of Mrs. Sanderson,
+sister of Mr. Prinsep, and where he spent many a happy day riding to
+hounds. For games he had no training, and little inclination, though he
+loved in his old age to watch and encourage the village cricket in
+Surrey; but riding gave him great pleasure. His love for the horse may
+in part be due to this pastime, in part to his early study of the
+Parthenon frieze with its famous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> procession of horsemen. Certainly this
+animal plays a notable part in his work. Two great equestrian statues
+occupied him for many years. 'Hugh Lupus', the ancestor of the
+Grosvenors, was cast in bronze in 1884 and set up at Eaton Hall in the
+Duke of Westminster's park. 'Physical Energy' was the name given to a
+similar figure conceived on broader and more ideal lines. At this Watts
+continued to work till the year of his death, though he parted with the
+first version in response to Lord Grey's appeal when it was wanted to
+adorn the monument to Cecil Rhodes. Its original destination was the
+tomb in the Matoppo hills; but it was proved impracticable to convey
+such a colossal work, without injury, over the rough country surrounding
+them; and it was set up at Cape Town. The statue has become better known
+to the English public since a second version has been set up in
+Kensington Gardens. The rider, bestriding a powerful horse, has flung
+himself back and is gazing eagerly into the distance, shading with
+uplifted hand his eyes against the fierce sunlight which dazzles them.
+The allegory is not hard to interpret, though the tame landscape of a
+London park frames it less fitly than a wide stretch of wild and
+solitary veld.</p>
+
+<p>Horses of many different kinds figure in his pictures. In one, whose
+subject is taken from the Apocalypse, we see the war-horse, his neck
+'clothed with thunder'; in another his head is bowed, the lines
+harmonizing with the mood of his master, Sir Galahad. 'The Midday Rest',
+unheroic in theme but grand in treatment, shows us two massive dray
+horses, which were lent to him as models by Messrs. Barclay and Perkins,
+while 'A patient life of unrewarded toil' renders sympathetically the
+weakness of the veteran discharged after years of service, waiting
+patiently for the end. One instance of a more imaginative kind shows us
+'Neptune's Horses' as the painter dimly discerned them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> with arched
+necks and flowing manes, rising and leaping in the crest of the wave.</p>
+
+<p>His portraits of great men generally took the form of half-lengths with
+the simplest backgrounds. His subjects were of all kinds&mdash;Tennyson and
+Browning, Rossetti and Burne-Jones, Gladstone, Mill, Motley, Joachim,
+Thiers, and Anthony Panizzi.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> His object was a national one, and the
+foreigners admitted to the company were usually closely connected with
+England. Sometimes the pose of the body and the hands helps the
+conception, as in Lord Lytton and Cardinal Manning; more often Watts
+trusts to the simple mass of the head or to the character revealed by
+the features in repose. No finer examples for contrast can be given than
+the portraits of the two friends, Burne-Jones and William Morris,
+painted in 1870. In the former we see the spirit of the dreamer, in the
+latter the splendid vitality and force of the craftsman, who was
+impetuous in action as he was rich in invention. The room at the
+National Portrait Gallery where this collection is hung speaks
+eloquently to us of the Victorian Age and the varied genius of its
+greatest men; and in some cases we have the additional interest of being
+able to compare portraits of the same men painted by Watts and by other
+artists. Well known is the contrast in the case of Carlyle. Millais has
+painted a picturesque old man whose talk might be racy and his temper
+uncertain; but the soul of the seer, tormented by conflicts and yet
+clinging to an inner faith, is revealed only by the hands of Watts.
+Again Millais gives us the noble features, the extravagant 'hure'<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> of
+the Tennyson whom his contemporaries saw, alive, glowing with force;
+Watts has exalted this conception to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> a higher level and has portrayed
+the thinker whom the world will honour many centuries hence. Some will
+perhaps prefer the more objective treatment; and it is certain that
+Watts's ambition led him into difficult paths. Striving to represent the
+soul of his sitter, he was conscious at times that he failed&mdash;that he
+could not see or realize what he was searching for. More than once he
+abandoned a commission when he felt this uncertainty in himself. But
+when the accord between artist and sitter was perfect, he achieved a
+triumph of idealization, combined with a firm grasp on reality, such as
+few artists since Giorgione and the young Titian have been able to
+achieve.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from portraits there was a rich variety in the subjects which the
+painter handled, some drawn from Bible stories, some from Greek legends
+or mediaeval tales, some for which we can find no source save in his own
+imagination. He dealt with the myths in a way natural to a man who owed
+more to Greek art and to his own musings than to the close study of
+Greek literature. His pictures of the infancy of Jupiter, of the
+deserted Ariadne, of the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, have no
+elaborate realism in detail. The Royal Academy walls showed, in those
+days, plenty of marble halls, theatres, temples, and classic groves,
+reproduced with soulless pedantry. Watts gave us heroic figures, with
+strong masses and flowing lines, simply grouped and charged with
+emotion&mdash;the yearning love of Diana for Endymion, the patient
+resignation of Ariadne, the passionate regret of Orpheus, the cruel
+bestiality of the Minotaur. Some will find a deeper interest, a grander
+style, in the designs which he made for the story of our first parents
+in the Book of Genesis. Remorse has rarely been expressed so powerfully
+as in the averted figure of Eve after the Fall, or of Cain bowed under
+the curse, shut out from contact with all creation. In one of his
+masterpieces Watts drew his motive from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> Gospel story. The picture
+entitled 'For he had great possessions' shows us the young ruler who has
+come to Christ and has failed in the supreme moment. His back, his bowed
+neck and averted head, with the gesture of indecision in his right hand,
+tell their tale with consummate eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>In his more famous allegories the same is true; by simple means an
+impression of great power is conveyed. The popularity of 'Love and
+Death' and its companion picture shows how little the allegory needs
+explanation. These themes were first handled between 1860 and 1870; but
+the pictures roused such widespread admiration that the painter made
+several replicas of them. Versions are now to be found in the Dominions
+and in New York, as well as in London and Manchester. Photographs have
+extended their renown and they are so familiar to-day that there is no
+need to describe them. Another masterpiece dealing with the subject of
+Death is the 'Sic transit', where the shrouded figure of the dead
+warrior is impressive in its solemnity and stillness. 'Dawn' and 'Hope'
+show what different notes Watts could strike in his treatment of the
+female form. At the other extreme is 'Mammon', the sordid power which
+preys on life and crushes his victims with the weight of his relentless
+hand. The power of conscience is shown in a more mystic figure called
+'The Dweller in the Innermost'. Judgement figures in more than one
+notable design, the most familiar being that which now hangs in St.
+Paul's Cathedral with the title of 'Time, Death, and Judgement'. Its
+position there shows how little we can draw the line between the
+different classes of subjects as they were handled by Watts. A courtier
+like Rubens could, after painting with gusto a rout of Satyrs, put on a
+cloak of decorum to suit the pageantry of a court, or even simulate
+fervour to portray the ecstasy of a saint. He is clearly acting a part,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+but in Watts the character of the man is always seen. Whether his
+subjects are drawn from the Bible or from pagan myths, they are all
+treated in the same temper of reverence and purity.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to avoid the question of didactic art in writing of
+these pictures, though such a wide question, debated for half a century,
+can receive no adequate treatment here. We must frankly allow that Watts
+was 'preaching sermons in paint', nor would he have repudiated the
+charge, however loud to-day are the protests of those who preach the
+doctrine of 'art for art's sake'. But the latter, while stating many
+principles of which the British public need to be reminded, seem to go
+beyond their rights. It is, of course, permissible for students of art
+to object to technical points of handling&mdash;Watts himself was among the
+first to deplore his own failures due to want of executive ability; it
+is open to them to debate the part which morality may have in art, and
+to express their preference for those artists who handle all subjects
+impartially and conceive all to be worthy of treatment, if truth of
+drawing or lighting be achieved. But when they make Watts's ethical
+intention the reason for depreciating him as an artist they are on more
+uncertain ground. There is no final authority in these questions. Ruskin
+was too dogmatic in the middle years of his life and only provoked a
+more violent reaction. Twenty years later the admirers of Whistler and
+Manet were equally intolerant, and assumed doctrines which may hold the
+field to-day but are certain to be questioned to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Watts was most reluctant to enter into controversy and had no ambition
+to found a school; in fact so far was he from imposing his views on
+others, that he scarcely ever took pupils, and was content to urge young
+artists to follow their own line and to be sincere. But he could at
+times be drawn into putting some of his views on paper,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> and in 1893 he
+wrote down a statement of the relative importance which he attached to
+the qualities which make a painter. Among these Imagination stands
+first, Intellectual idea next to it. After this follow Dignity of form,
+Harmony of lines, and Colour. Finally, in the sixth place comes Realism,
+the idol of so many of the end of the century, both in literature and
+art.</p>
+
+<p>Some years earlier, in meeting criticism, Watts had said, 'I admit my
+want of dexterity with the brush, in some cases a very serious defect,'
+but at the same time he refused to accept the authority of those 'who
+deny that art should have any intellectual intention'. In general, he
+pleaded that art has a very wide range over subject and treatment; but
+he did not set himself up as a reformer in art, nor inflict dogmas on
+the public gratuitously. He found that some of his more abstract themes
+needed handling in shadowy and suggestive fashion: if this gave the
+impression of fumbling, or displayed some weakness in technique, even so
+perhaps the conception reaches us in a way that could not be attained by
+dexterity of brushwork. As he himself said, 'there were things that
+could only be done in art at the sacrifice of some other things'; but
+the points which Watts was ready to sacrifice are what the realists
+conceive to be indispensable, and his aims were not as theirs. But his
+life was very little troubled by controversy; and he would not have
+wished his own work to be a subject for it.</p>
+
+<p>External circumstances also had little power to alter the even tenor of
+his way. Late in life, at the age of 69, he married Miss Fraser Tytler,
+a friend of some fifteen years' standing, who was herself an artist, and
+who shared all his tastes. After the marriage he and his wife spent a
+long winter in the East, sailing up the Nile in leisurely fashion,
+enjoying the monuments of ancient Egypt and the colours of the desert.
+It was a time of great happiness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> and was followed by seventeen years
+of a serene old age, divided between his London house in Melbury Road
+and his new home in Surrey. Staying with friends in Surrey, Watts had
+made acquaintance with the beautiful country lying south of the Hog's
+Back; and in 1889 he chose a site at Compton, where he decided to build
+a house. To this he gave the name of Limnerslease. Thanks to the
+generosity of Mrs. Watts, who has built a gallery and hung some of his
+choicest pictures there, Compton has become one of the three shrines to
+which lovers of his work resort.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+<p>But for many years he met with little recognition from the world at
+large. It was only at the age of 50 that he received official honours
+from the Royal Academy, though the success of his cartoons had marked
+him out among his contemporaries twenty-five years earlier. About 1865
+his pictures won the enthusiastic admiration of Mr. Charles Rickards,
+who continued to be the most constant of his patrons, and gave to his
+admiration the most practical form. Not only did he purchase from year
+to year such pictures as Watts was willing to sell, but twenty years
+later he organized an exhibition of Watts's work at Manchester, which
+did much to spread his fame in the North. In London Watts came to his
+own more fully when the Grosvenor Gallery was opened in 1877. Here the
+Directors were at pains to attract the best painters of the day and to
+hang their pictures in such a way that their artistic qualities had full
+effect. No one gained more from this than Watts and Burne-Jones; and to
+a select but growing circle of admirers the interest of the annual
+exhibitions began and ended with the work of these two kindred spirits.
+The Directors also arranged in 1881 for a special exhibition devoted to
+the works of Watts alone, when, thanks to the generosity of lenders, 200
+of his pictures did justice to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> sixty years of unwearied effort.
+This winter established his fame, and England now recognized him as one
+of her greatest sons. But when his friends tried to organize a dinner to
+be held at the Gallery in his honour, he got wind of the plot, and with
+his usual fastidious reserve begged to be spared such an ordeal. The
+<i>&eacute;lite</i> of London society, men famous in politics, literature, and other
+departments of public life, were only too anxious to honour him; but he
+could not endure to be the centre of public attention. To him art was
+everything, the artist nothing. Throughout his life he attended few
+banquets, mounted fewer platforms, and only wished to be left to enjoy
+his work, his leisure, and the society of his intimate friends.</p>
+
+<p>His interest in the progress of his age was profound, though it did not
+often take shape in visible form. He believed that the world might be
+better, and was not minded to acquiesce in the established order of
+things. He sympathized with the Salvation Army; he was a strong
+supporter of women's education; he was ardent for redressing the balance
+of riches and poverty, and for recognizing the heroism of those who,
+labouring under such grim disadvantages, yet played a heroic part in
+life. The latter he showed in practical form. In 1887 he had wished to
+celebrate the Queen's Jubilee by erecting a shrine in which to preserve
+the records of acts of self-sacrifice performed by the humblest members
+of the community. The scheme failed at the time to win support; but in
+1899, largely through his help, a memorial building arose in the
+churchyard of St. Botolph, near Aldersgate, better known as the
+'Postmen's Park'.</p>
+
+<p>In private life his kindliness and courtesy won the hearts of all who
+came near him, young and old, rich and poor. He was tolerant towards
+those who differed from him in opinion: he steadily believed the best of
+other men in passing judgement on them. No mean thought, no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> malicious
+word, no petty quarrel marred the purity of his life. He had lost his
+best friends: Leighton in 1896, Burne-Jones three years later; but he
+enjoyed the devotion of his wife and the tranquillity of his home. Twice
+he refused the offer of a Baronetcy. The only honour which he accepted
+was the Order of Merit, which carried no title in society and was
+reserved for intellectual eminence and public service. At the age of 80
+he presented to Eton College his picture of Sir Galahad, a fit emblem of
+his own lifelong quest. His last days of active work were spent on the
+second version of the great statue of 'Physical Energy', which had
+occupied him so long, and in which he ever found something new to
+express as he dreamed of the days to come and the future conquests of
+mankind. In 1904 his strength gradually failed him, and on July 1 he
+died in his Surrey home. Like his great exemplar Titian, whom he
+resembled in outward appearance and in much of the quality of his
+painting, he outlived his own generation and was yet learning, as one of
+the young, when death took him in the 88th year of his life.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="JOHN_COLERIDGE_PATTESON" id="JOHN_COLERIDGE_PATTESON"></a>JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1827-71</p>
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1827.</td><td> Born in London, April 1.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1838-45.</td><td> At school at Eton.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1841.</td><td> Selwyn goes out to New Zealand as Bishop.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1845-9.</td><td> Undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1850-1.</td><td> Visits Germany.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1852-3.</td><td> Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1853.</td><td> Curate at Alphington, near Ottery.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1854.</td><td> Accepted by Bishop Selwyn for mission work.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1855.</td><td> Sails for New Zealand, March. Head-quarters at Auckland.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1856.</td><td> First cruise to Melanesia.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1860.</td><td> First prolonged stay (3 months) in Mota.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1861.</td><td> Consecrated first Bishop of Melanesia, February.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1864.</td><td> Visit to Australia to win support for Mission (repeated 1855). Serious attack on his party by natives of Sta. Cruz.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1867.</td><td> Removal of head-quarters to Norfolk Island.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1868.</td><td> Selwyn goes home to become Bishop of Lichfield.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1869.</td><td> Exploitation of native labour becomes acute.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1870.</td><td> Severe illness: convalescence at Auckland.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1871.</td><td> Last stay at Mota. Cruise to Sta. Cruz. Death at Nukapu, September 20.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Missionary</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>New Zealand, discovered by Captain Cook in 1769, lay derelict for half a
+century, and like others of our Colonies it came very near to passing
+under the rule of France. From this it was saved in 1840 by the
+foresight and energy of Gibbon Wakefield, who forced the hand of our
+reluctant Government; and its steady progress was secured by the
+sagacity of Sir George Grey, one of our greatest empire-builders in
+Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. Thanks to them and to others,
+there has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> arisen in the Southern Pacific a state which, more than any
+other, seems to resemble the mother country with its sea-girt islands,
+its temperate climate, its mountains and its plains. A population almost
+entirely British, living in these conditions, might be expected to
+repeat the history of their ancestors. In politics and social questions
+its sons show the same independence of spirit and even greater
+enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="patteson" id="patteson"></a><img src="images/patteson.jpg" alt="JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON" />
+<br /><span class="smcap"> john coleridge patteson</span><br />
+From a drawing by William Richmond</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The names of two other men deserve recognition here for the part they
+played in the history of these islands. In 1814, before they became a
+British possession, Samuel Marsden came from Australia to carry the
+Gospel to their inhabitants, and formed settlements in the Northern
+districts, in days when the lives of settlers were in constant peril
+from the Maoris. But nothing could daunt his courage; and whenever they
+came into personal contact with him, these childlike savages felt his
+power and responded to his influence, and he was able to lay a good
+foundation. In 1841 the English Church sent out George Augustus Selwyn
+as first Missionary Bishop of New Zealand, giving him a wide province
+and no less wide discretion. He was the pioneer who, from his base in
+New Zealand, was to spread Christian and British influences even farther
+afield in the vast stretches of the Pacific Ocean.</p>
+
+<p>Selwyn was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, and these
+famous foundations have never sent forth a man better fitted to render
+services to his country. In a small sphere, as curate of Windsor, he had
+already, by his energy, patience, and practical sagacity, achieved
+remarkable results; and it was providential that, in the strength of
+early manhood, he was selected for a responsible post which afforded
+scope for the exercise of his powers. In the old country he might have
+been hampered by routine and tradition; in a new land he could mark out
+his own path. The constitution of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> New Zealand Church became a model
+for other dioceses and other lands, and his wisdom has stood the test of
+time.</p>
+
+<p>What sort of man he was can best be shown by quoting a story from his
+biography.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> When the Maori War broke out he joined the troops as
+chaplain and shared their perils in the field. Against the enterprising
+native fighters these were not slight, especially as the British troops
+were few and badly led. He was travelling without escort over routes
+infested by Maoris, refusing to have any special care taken of his own
+person, and his chief security lay in rapid motion. Yet twice he
+dismounted on the way, at peril of his life, once under an impulse of
+humanity, once from sheer public spirit. The first time it was to pull
+into the shade a drunken soldier asleep on duty and in danger of
+sunstroke; the second to fill up the ruts in a sandy road, where it
+seemed possible that the transport wagons which were following might be
+upset. Many other incidents could be quoted which show his
+unconventional ways and his habitual disregard for his own comfort,
+dignity, or safety. In New Zealand he found plenty of people to
+appreciate these qualities in a bishop.</p>
+
+<p>Though Selwyn was the master and perhaps the greater man, yet a peculiar
+fame has attached to his disciple John Coleridge Patteson, owing to the
+sweetness of his disposition, the singleness of his aim, and the
+consummation of his work by a martyr's death. Born in London in 1827, he
+was more truly a son of Devon, to which he was attached by many links.
+His mother's brother, Justice Coleridge, and many other relatives, lived
+close round the old town of Ottery St. Mary; and his father, an able
+lawyer who was raised to the Bench in 1830, bought an estate at Feniton
+and came to live in the same district before the boy was fifteen years
+old. It was at Ottery, where the name of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> Coleridge was so familiar,
+that the earliest school-days of 'Coley' Patteson were passed; but
+before he was eleven years old he was sent to the boarding-house of
+another Coleridge, his uncle, who was a master at Eton. Here he spent
+seven happy years working in rather desultory fashion, so that he had
+his share of success and failure. His chief distinctions were won at
+cricket, where he rose to be captain of the XI; but with all whose good
+opinion was worth having he won favour by his cheerful, frank,
+independent spirit. If he was idle at one time, at another he could
+develop plenty of energy; if he was one of the most popular boys in the
+school, he was not afraid to risk his popularity by protesting strongly
+against moral laxity or abuses which others tolerated. It is well to
+remember this, which is attested by his school-fellows, when reading his
+letters, in which at times he blames himself for caring too much for the
+good opinion of others.</p>
+
+<p>His interest in the distant seas where he was to win fame was first
+aroused in 1841. Bishop Selwyn was a friend of his family, and coming to
+say good-bye to the Pattesons before sailing for New Zealand, he said,
+half sportively, to the boy's mother, 'Will you give me "Coley"?' This
+idea was not pursued at the time; but the name of Selwyn was kept before
+him in his school-days, as the Bishop had left many friends at Eton and
+Windsor, and Edward Coleridge employed his nephew to copy out Selwyn's
+letters from his diocese in order to enlist the sympathy of a wider
+audience. But this connexion dropped out of sight for many years and
+seems to have had little influence on Patteson's life at Oxford, where
+he spent four years at Balliol. He went up in 1845 as a commoner, and
+this fact caused him some disquietude. He felt that he ought to have won
+a scholarship, and, conscious of his failure, he took to more steady
+reading. He was also practising self-discipline, giving up his cricket
+to secure more hours for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> study. He did not scorn the game. He was as
+fond as ever of Eton, and of his school memories. But his life was
+shaping in another direction, and the new interests, deepening in
+strength, inevitably crowded out the old.</p>
+
+<p>After taking his degree he made a tour of the great cities of Italy and
+wrote enthusiastically of the famous pictures in her galleries. He also
+paid more than one visit to Germany, and when he had gained a fair
+knowledge of the German language, he went on to the more difficult task
+of learning Hebrew and Arabic. This pursuit was due partly to his
+growing interest in Biblical study, partly to the delight he took in his
+own linguistic powers. He had an ear of great delicacy; he caught up
+sounds as by instinct; and his retentive memory fixed the impression.
+Later he applied the reasoning of the philologist, classified and
+tabulated his results, and thus was able, when drawn into fields
+unexplored by science, to do original work and to produce results of
+great value to other students. But he was not the man to make a display
+of his power; in fact he apologizes, when writing to his father from
+Dresden, for making a secret of his pursuit, regarding it rather as a
+matter of self-indulgence which needed excuse. Bishop Selwyn could have
+told him that he need have no such fears, and that in developing his
+linguistic gifts he was going exactly the right way to fit himself for
+service in Melanesia.</p>
+
+<p>Patteson's appointment to a fellowship at Merton College, which involved
+residence in Oxford for a year, brought no great change into his life.
+Rather he used what leisure he had for strengthening his knowledge of
+the subjects which seemed to him to matter, especially the
+interpretation of the Bible. He returned to Greek and Latin, which he
+had neglected at school, and found a new interest in them. History and
+geography filled up what time he could spare from his chief studies.
+Resuming his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> cricket for a while, he mixed in the life of the
+undergraduates and made friends among them. At College meetings, for all
+his innate conservatism, he found himself on the side of the reformers
+in questions affecting the University; but he had not time to make his
+influence felt. At the end of the year he was ordained and took a curacy
+at Alphington, a hamlet between Feniton and Ottery. His mother had died
+in 1842, and his object was to be near his father, who was growing
+infirm and found his chief pleasure in 'Coley's' presence and talk. His
+interest in foreign missions was alive again, but at this time his first
+duty seemed to be to his family; and in a parish endeared to him by old
+associations he quickly won the affection of his flock. He was happy in
+the work and his parishioners hoped to keep him for many years; but this
+was not to be. In 1854 Bishop Selwyn and his wife were in England
+pleading for support for their Church, and their visit to Feniton
+brought matters to a crisis. Patteson was thrilled at the idea of seeing
+his hero again, and he at once seized the opportunity for serving under
+him. There was no need for the Bishop to urge him; rather he had to
+assure himself that he could fairly accept the offer. To the young man
+there was no thought of sacrifice; that fell to the father's lot, and he
+bore it nobly. His first words to the Bishop were, 'I can't let him go';
+but a moment later he repented and cried, 'God forbid that I should stop
+him'; and at parting he faced the consequences unflinchingly. 'Mind!' he
+said, 'I give him wholly, not with any thought of seeing him again.'</p>
+
+<p>In the following March, the young curate, leaving his home and his
+parish where he was almost idolized, where he was never to be seen
+again, set his face towards the South Seas. Once the offer had been made
+and accepted, he felt no more excitement. It was not the spiritual
+exaltation of a moment, but a deliberate applying of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> lessons which
+he had been learning year by year. He had put his hand to the plough and
+would not look back.</p>
+
+<p>The first things which he set himself to learn, on board ship, were the
+Maori language and the art of navigation. The first he studied with a
+native teacher, the second he learnt from the Bishop, and he proved an
+apt pupil in both. In a few months he became qualified to act as master
+of the Mission ship, and the speaking of a new language was to him only
+a matter of weeks. His earliest letters show how quickly he came to
+understand the natives. He was ready to meet any and every demand made
+upon him, and to fulfil duties as different from one another as those of
+teacher, skipper, and storekeeper. His head-quarters, during his early
+months in New Zealand, were either on board ship or else at St. John's
+College, five miles from Auckland. But, before he had completed a year,
+he was called to accompany the Bishop on his tour to the Islands and to
+make acquaintance with the scene of his future labours.</p>
+
+<p>Bishop Selwyn had wisely limited his mission to those islands which the
+Gospel had not reached. The counsels of St. Paul and his own sagacity
+warned him against exposing his Church to the danger of jealous rivalry.
+So long as Christ was preached in an island or group of islands, he was
+content; he would leave them to the ministry of those who were first in
+the field. Many of the Polynesian groups had been visited by French and
+English missionaries and stations had been established in Samoa, Tahiti,
+and elsewhere; but north of New Zealand there was a large tract of the
+Pacific, including the New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands, where the
+natives had never heard the Gospel message. These groups were known
+collectively as Melanesia, a name hardly justified by facts,<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> as the
+inhabitants were by no means uniform in colour. If the Solomon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+Islanders had almost black skins, those who lived in the Banks Islands,
+which Patteson came to know so well, were of a warm brown hue such as
+may be seen in India or even in the south of Europe. Writing in the very
+last month of his life, Patteson tells his sisters how the colour of the
+people in Mota 'is just what Titian and the Venetian painters delighted
+in, the colour of their own weather-beaten boatmen'.</p>
+
+<p>Selwyn had visited these islands intermittently since 1849, and had
+thought out a plan for spreading Christianity among them. With only a
+small staff of helpers and many other demands on his time, he could not
+hope to get into direct contact with a large population, so widely
+scattered. His work must be done through natives selected by himself,
+and these must be trained while they were young and open to impressions,
+while their character was still in the making. So every year he brought
+back with him from his cruise a certain number of Melanesian boys to
+spend the warmer months of the New Zealand year under the charge of the
+missionaries, and restored them to their homes at the beginning of the
+next cruise. At Auckland, with its soldiers, sailors, and merchants, the
+boys became familiar with other sides of European life beyond the walls
+of the Mission School; and their interest was stimulated by a close view
+of the strength to be drawn from European civilization. By this system
+Selwyn hoped that they on their return would spread among the islanders
+a certain knowledge of European ways, and that their relatives, seeing
+how the boys had been kindly treated, would feel confidence in the
+missionaries and would give them a hearing. This policy commended itself
+to Patteson by its practical efficacy; and though he modified it in
+details, he remained all his life a convinced adherent of the principle.
+Slow progress through a few pupils, selected when young, and carefully
+taught, was worth more than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> mere numbers, though too often in
+Missionary reports success is gauged by figures and statistics.</p>
+
+<p>These cruises furnished the adventurous part of the life. Readers of
+Stevenson and Conrad can picture to themselves to-day the colour, the
+mystery, and the magic of the South Seas. Patteson, with his reserved
+nature and his dread of seeming to throw a false glamour over his
+practical duties, wrote but sparingly of such sights; but he was by no
+means insensitive to natural beauty and his letters give glimpses of
+coral reefs and lagoons, of palms and coco-nut trees, of creepers 100
+feet long trailing over lofty crags to the clear water below.</p>
+
+<p>He enjoyed being on board ship, with his books at hand and some leisure
+to read them, with the Bishop at his side to counsel him, and generally
+some of his pupils to need his help. They had many delightful days when
+they received friendly greeting on the islands and found that they were
+making real progress among the natives. But the elements of discomfort,
+disappointment, and danger were rarely absent for long. For a large part
+of each voyage they had some forty or fifty Melanesian boys on board, on
+their way to school or returning to their homes. The schooner built for
+the purpose was as airy and convenient as it could be made; yet there
+was little space for privacy. The natives were constitutionally weak;
+and when illness broke out, no trained nurses were at hand and Patteson
+would give up his own quarters to the sick and spend hours at their
+bedsides. Sometimes they found, on revisiting an island, that their old
+scholars had fallen away and that they had to begin again from the
+start. Sometimes they had to abstain from landing at all, because the
+behaviour of the natives was menacing, or because news had reached the
+Mission of some recent quarrel which had roused bitter feeling. The
+traditions of the Melanesians inclined them to go on the war-path only
+too readily, and both Selwyn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> and Patteson had an instinctive perception
+of the native temperament and its danger.</p>
+
+<p>However lightly Patteson might treat these perils in his letters home,
+there was never complete security. To reassure his sisters he tells them
+of 81 landings and only two arrows fired at them in one cruise; and yet
+one poisoned arrow might be the cause of death accompanied by
+indescribable agony. Even when a landing had been effected and friendly
+trading and talk had given confidence to the visitors, it might be that
+an arrow was discharged at them by some irresponsible native as they
+made for their boats.</p>
+
+<p>These voyages needed unconventional qualities in the missioner; few of
+the subscribers in quiet English parishes had an idea how the Melanesian
+islanders made their first acquaintance with their Bishop. When the boat
+came near the shore, the Bishop, arrayed in some of his oldest clothes,
+would jump into the sea and swim to land, sometimes being roughly
+handled by the breakers which guarded the coral bank. It was desirable
+not to expose their precious boat to the cupidity of the natives or to
+the risk of it being dashed to pieces in the surf, so the Bishop risked
+his own person instead. He would then with all possible coolness walk
+into a gathering of savages, catch up any familiar words which seemed to
+occur in the new dialect, or, failing any linguistic help, try to convey
+his peaceful intentions by gesture or facial expression. When an island
+had been visited before, there was less reason to be on guard; but
+sometimes the Bishop had to break to relatives the sad news that one of
+the boys committed to his care had fallen a victim to the more rigorous
+climate of New Zealand or to one of the diseases to which these tribes
+were so liable. Then it was only the personal ascendancy won by previous
+visits that could secure him against a violent impulse to revenge.</p>
+
+<p>All practical measures were tried to establish friendly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> relations with
+the islanders; and when people at home might fancy the Bishop preaching
+impressively to a decorous circle of listeners, he was really engaged in
+lively talk and barter, receiving yams and other articles of food in
+return for the produce of Birmingham and Sheffield, axe-heads which he
+presented to the old, and fish-hooks with which he won the favour of the
+young. But such brief visits as could be made at a score of islands in a
+busy tour did not carry matters far, and the memory of a visit would be
+growing dim before another chance came of renewing intercourse with the
+same tribe. Selwyn felt it was most desirable that he should have
+sufficient staff to leave a missionary here and there to spend unbroken
+winter months in a single station, where he could reach more of the
+people and exercise a more continuous influence upon them. Patteson's
+first experience of this was in 1858, when he spent three months at Lifu
+in the Loyalty Islands, a group which was later to be annexed by the
+French.</p>
+
+<p>A sojourn which was to bear more permanent fruit was that which he made
+at Mota in 1860. This was one of the Banks Islands lying north of the
+New Hebrides, in 14&deg; South Latitude. The inhabitants of this group
+showed unusual capacity for learning from the missionaries, and
+sufficient stability of character to promise lasting success for the
+work carried on among them. Mota, owing to the line of cliffs which
+formed its coast, was a difficult place for landing; so it escaped the
+visits of white traders who could not emulate the swimming feats of
+Selwyn and Patteson, and was free from many of the troubles which such
+visitors brought with them. Once the island was reached, it proved to be
+one of the most attractive, with rich soil, plenty of water, and a
+kindly docile population. Here, on a site duly purchased for the
+mission, under the shade of a gigantic banyan tree, on a slope where
+bread-fruit and coco-nuts (and, later, pine-apples and other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+importations) flourished, the first habitation was built, with a boarded
+floor, walls of bamboo canes, and a roof of coco-nut leaves woven
+together after the native fashion so as to be waterproof. Here, in the
+next ten years, Patteson was to spend many happy weeks, taking school,
+reading and writing when the curiosity of the natives left him any
+peace, but in general patiently conversing with all and sundry who came
+up, with the twofold object of gathering knowledge of their dialect and
+making friends with individuals. While he showed instinctive tact in
+knowing how far it was wise to go in opposing the native way of life, he
+was willing to face risks whenever real progress could be made. After he
+had been some days in Mota a special initiation in a degrading rite was
+held outside the village. Patteson exercised all his influence to
+prevent one of his converts from being drawn in; and when an old man
+came up and terrorized his pupils by planting a symbolic tree outside
+the Mission hut, Patteson argued with him at length and persuaded him to
+withdraw his threatening symbol. But apart from idolatry, from
+internecine warfare, and from such horrors as cannibalism, prevalent in
+many islands, he was studious not to attack old traditions. He wanted a
+good Melanesian standard of conduct, not a feeble imitation of European
+culture. He was prepared to build upon the foundation which time had
+already prepared and not to invert the order of nature.</p>
+
+<p>In writing home of his life in the island Patteson regularly depreciates
+his own hardships, saying how unworthy he feels himself to be ranked
+with the pioneers in African work. But the discomforts must often have
+been considerable to a man naturally fastidious and brought up as he had
+been.</p>
+
+<p>Food was most monotonous. Meat was out of the question except where the
+missioners themselves imported live stock and kept a farm of their own;
+variety of fruit depended also on their own exertions. The staple diet
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> the yam, a tuber reaching at times in good soil a weight far in
+excess of the potato. This was supplied readily by the natives in return
+for European goods, and could be cooked in different ways; but after
+many weeks' sojourn it was apt to pall. Also the climate was relaxing,
+and apt sooner or later to tell injuriously on Europeans working there.
+Dirt, disease, and danger can be faced cheerfully when a man is in good
+health himself; but a solitary European suffering from ill-health in
+such conditions is indeed put to an heroic test. Perhaps the greatest
+discomfort of all was the perpetual living in public. The natives became
+so fond of Patteson that they flocked round him at all times. His
+reading was interrupted by a stream of questions; when writing he would
+find boys standing close to his elbow, following his every movement with
+attention. The mere writing of letters seems to have been a relief to
+him, though they could not be answered for so long. His journal, into
+which he poured freely all his hopes and fears, all his daily anxieties
+over the Mission, was destined for his family. But he had other
+correspondents to whom he wrote more or less regularly, especially at
+Eton and Winchester. At Eton his uncle was one of his most ardent
+supporters and much of the money which supported the Mission funds came
+to Patteson through the Eton Association. Near Winchester was living his
+cousin Charlotte Yonge, the well-known authoress, who afterwards wrote
+his Life, and through her he established friendly communications with
+Keble at Hursley and Bishop Moberly, then Head Master of Winchester
+College. To them he could write sympathetically of Church questions at
+home, in which he maintained his interest.</p>
+
+<p>During the summer months also, spent near Auckland, Patteson suffered
+from the want of privacy. At Kohimarana, a small bay facing the entrance
+to the harbour, to which the school was moved in 1859, he had a tiny<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+room of his own, ten feet square; but the door stood open all day long
+in fine weather, and he was seldom alone. And when there was sickness
+among the boys, his own bedroom was sure to be given up to an invalid.
+But these demands upon his time and comfort he never grudged, while he
+talks with vexation, and even with asperity, of the people from the town
+who came out to pay calls and to satisfy their curiosity with a sight of
+his school. His real friends were few and were partners in his work. The
+two chief among them were unquestionably Bishop Selwyn, too rarely seen
+owing to the many claims upon him, and Sir Richard Martin, who had been
+Chief Justice of the Colony. The latter shared Patteson's taste for
+philology, and had a wide knowledge of Melanesian dialects.</p>
+
+<p>By the middle of 1860, when Patteson had been five years at work, he
+became aware that the question of his consecration could not be long
+delayed. New Zealand was taxing the Primate's strength and he wished to
+constitute Melanesia a separate diocese. He believed that in Patteson,
+with his single-minded zeal and special gifts, he had found the ideal
+man for the post, and in February 1861 the consecration took place. The
+three bishops who laid hands upon him were, like the Bishop-elect,
+Etonians;<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> and thus Eton has played a very special part in founding
+the Melanesian Church. What Patteson thought and felt on this solemn
+occasion may be seen from the letters which he wrote to his father. The
+old judge, still living with his daughters at Feniton, had been stricken
+with a fatal disease, and in the last months of his life he rejoiced to
+know that his son was counted worthy of his high calling. He died in
+June 1861 and the news reached his son when cruising at sea a few months
+later. They had kept up a close correspondence all these years, which he
+now continued<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> with his sisters; nothing shows better his simple
+affectionate nature. They are filled mostly with details of his mission
+life. It was this of which his sisters wanted to hear, and it was this
+which filled almost entirely his thoughts: though he loved his family
+and his home, he had put aside all idea of a voyage to England as
+incompatible with the call to work. To the Mission he gave his time, his
+strength, his money. Eton supplied him with regular subscriptions,
+Australia responded to appeals which he made in person and which
+furnished the only occasions of his leaving the diocese; but, without
+his devotion of the income coming from his Merton fellowship and from
+his family inheritance, it would have been impossible for him to carry
+on the work in the islands.</p>
+
+<p>In his letters written just about the time of his consecration there are
+abundant references to the qualities which he desired to see in
+Englishmen who should offer to serve with him. He did not want young men
+carried away by violent excitement for the moment, eager to make what
+they called the sacrifice of their lives. The conventional phrases about
+'sacrifices' he disliked as much as he did the sensational appeals to
+which the public had been habituated in missionary meetings. He asked
+for men of common sense, men who would take trouble over learning
+languages, men cheerful and healthy in their outlook, 'gentlemen' who
+could rise above distinctions of class and colour and treat Melanesians
+as they treated their own friends. Above all, he wanted men who would
+whole-heartedly accept the system devised by Selwyn, and approved by
+himself. He could not have the harmony of the Mission upset by people
+who were eager to originate methods before they had served their
+apprenticeship. If he could not get the right recruits from England, he
+says more than once, he would rather depend on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> materials existing
+on the spot: young men from New Zealand would adapt themselves better to
+the life and he himself would try to remedy any defects in their
+education. Ultimately he hoped that by careful education and training he
+would draw his most efficient help from his converts in the islands, and
+to train them he spared no pains through the remaining ten years of his
+service.</p>
+
+<p>His way of life was not greatly altered by his consecration. He
+continued to divide his year between New Zealand and his ocean cruise.
+He had no body of clergy to space out over his vast diocese or to meet
+the urgent demands of the islands. In 1863 he received two valuable
+recruits&mdash;one the Rev. R. Codrington, a Fellow of Wadham College,
+Oxford, who shared the Bishop's literary tastes and proved a valued
+counsellor; the other a naval man, Lieut. Tilly, who volunteered to take
+charge of the new schooner called the <i>Southern Cross</i>, just sent out to
+him from England. Till then his staff consisted of three men in holy
+orders and two younger men who were to be ordained later. One of these,
+Joseph Atkin, a native of Auckland, proved himself of unique value to
+the Mission before he was called to share his leader's death. But the
+Bishop still took upon himself the most dangerous work, the landing at
+villages where the English were unknown or where the goodwill of the
+natives seemed to be doubtful. This he accepted as a matter of course,
+remarking casually in his letters that the others are not good enough
+swimmers to take his place. But caution was necessary long after the
+time when friendship had begun. In the interval between visits anything
+might have happened to render the natives suspicious or revengeful; and
+it is evident that, month after month, the Bishop carried his life in
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>The secret of his power can be found in his letters, which are quite
+free from heroics. His religion was based<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> on faith, simple and sincere;
+and he never hesitated to put it into practice. From the Bible, and
+especially from the New Testament, he learned the central lessons, the
+love of God and the love of man. Nothing was allowed to come between him
+and his duty; and to it he devoted the faculties which he had trained.
+His instinct often stood him in good stead, bidding him to practise
+caution and to keep at a distance from treacherous snares; but there
+were times when he felt that, to advance his work, he must show absolute
+confidence in the natives whatever he suspected, and move freely among
+them. In such cases he seemed to rise superior to all nervousness or
+fear. At one time he would find his path back to the boat cut off by
+natives who did not themselves know whether they intended violence or
+not. At another he would sit quietly alone in a circle of gigantic
+Tikopians, some of whom, as he writes, were clutching at his 'little
+weak arms and shoulders'. 'Yet it is not', he continued, 'a sense of
+fear, but simply of powerlessness.' No amount of experience could render
+him safe when he was perpetually trying to open new fields for mission
+work and when his converts themselves were so liable to unaccountable
+waves of feeling.</p>
+
+<p>This was proved by his terrible experience at Santa Cruz. He had visited
+these islands (which lie north of the New Hebrides) successfully in
+1862, landing at seven places and seeing over a thousand natives, and he
+had no reason to expect a different reception when he revisited it in
+1864. But on this occasion, after he had swum to land three times and
+walked freely to and fro among the people, a crowd came down to the
+water and began shooting at those in the boat from fifteen yards away,
+while others attacked in canoes. Before the boat could be pulled out of
+reach, three of its occupants were hit with poisoned arrows, and a few
+days later two of them showed signs of tetanus, which was almost
+invariably the result of such wounds. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> were young natives of
+Norfolk Island, for whom the Bishop had conceived a special affection,
+and their deaths, which were painful to witness, were a very bitter
+grief to him. The reason for the attack remained unknown. The traditions
+of Melanesia in the matter of blood-feuds were like those of most savage
+nations; and under the spur of fear or revenge the islanders were
+capable of directing their anger blindly against their truest friends.</p>
+
+<p>The most notable development in the first year of Patteson's episcopate
+was the forming of a solid centre of work in the Banks Islands. Every
+year, while the Mission ship was cruising, some member of the Mission,
+often the Bishop himself, would be working steadily in Mota for a
+succession of months. For visitors there was not much to see. At the
+beginning, hours were given up to desultory talking with the natives,
+but perseverance was rewarded. Those who came to talk would return to
+take lessons, and some impression was gradually made even on the older
+men attached to their idolatrous rites. Many years after Patteson's
+death it was still the most civilized of the islands with a population
+almost entirely Christian.</p>
+
+<p>A greater change was effected in 1867 when the Bishop boldly cut adrift
+from New Zealand and made his base for summer work at Norfolk Island,
+lying 800 miles north-east of Sydney.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> The advantages which it
+possessed over Auckland were two. Firstly, it was so many hundred miles
+nearer the centre of the Mission work; secondly, it had a climate much
+more akin to that of the Melanesian islands and it would be possible to
+keep pupils here for a longer spell without running such risks to their
+health. Another point, which to many would seem a drawback, but to
+Patteson was an additional advantage, was the absence of all
+distraction. At Auckland the clergy implored him to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> preach, society
+importuned him to take part in its gatherings; and if he would not come
+to the town, they pursued him to his retreat. He was always busy and
+grudged the loss of his time. A contemporary tells us that he worked
+from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. and later; and besides his philological
+interests, he needed time for his own study of the Bible. In the former
+he was a pioneer and had to mark out his own path; in the latter he
+welcomed the guidance of the best scholars whenever he could procure
+their books. He spoke with delight of his first acquaintance with
+Lightfoot's edition of St. Paul's Epistles; he wrote home for such new
+books as would be useful to him, and he read Hebrew daily whenever he
+could find time. Into this part of his life he put more conscientious
+effort the older he grew, and was always trying to learn. It may have
+seemed to many a dull routine to be followed year after year by a man
+who might have filled high place and moved in brilliant society at home;
+but from his letters it is clear that he was satisfied with his life and
+that no thought of regret assailed him.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1868 brought a severe loss when Bishop Selwyn was called home
+to take charge of the Diocese of Lichfield. It was he who had drawn
+Patteson to the South Seas: his presence had been an abiding strength to
+the younger man, however rare their meetings; and Patteson felt his
+departure as he had felt nothing since his father's death. But he went
+on unfalteringly with his work, ever ready to look hopefully into the
+future. At the moment he was intensely interested in the ordination of
+his first native clergyman, George Sarawia, who had now been a pupil for
+nine years and had shown sufficient progress in knowledge and strength
+of character to justify the step. Eager though he was to enrol helpers
+for the work, Patteson was scrupulously careful to ensure the fitness of
+his clergy, and to lay hands hastily on no man. In little matters also
+he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> was careful and methodical. His scholars in Norfolk Island were
+expected to be punctual, his helpers to be content with the simple life
+which contented him. All were to give their work freely; between black
+and white there was to be equality; no service was to be considered
+degrading. He did not wish to hurry his converts into outward observance
+of European ways. More important than the wearing of clothes was the
+true respect for the sanctity of marriage; far above the question of
+Sunday observance was the teaching of the love of God.</p>
+
+<p>Foreign missions have come in for plenty of criticism. It is sometimes
+said that our missionaries have occasioned strife leading to
+intervention and annexation by the British Government, and have exposed
+us abroad to the charge of covetousness and hypocrisy. But there are few
+instances in which this charge can be maintained, least of all in
+Australasian waters. A more serious charge, often made in India, is that
+missioners destroy the sanctions of morality by undermining the
+traditional beliefs of the natives, and that the convert is neither a
+good Asiatic nor a passable European. This depends on the methods
+employed. It may be true in some cases. Patteson fully realized the
+danger, as we can see from his words, and built carefully on the
+foundation of native character. He took away no stone till he could
+replace it by better material. He was never content merely to destroy.</p>
+
+<p>Another set of critics are roused by the extravagance of some missionary
+meetings and societies: their taste is offended or (we are bound to
+admit) their sense of humour roused. It was time for Dickens to wield
+this weapon when he heard Chadbands pouring forth their oily platitudes
+and saw Mrs. Jellybys neglecting their own children to clothe the
+offspring of 'Borrioboola Gha'. Such folly caught the critic's eye when
+the steady benevolence of others, unnoticed, was effecting work which
+had a good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> influence equally at home and abroad. Against the fanciful
+picture of Mrs. Jellyby let us put the life-story of Charlotte Yonge,
+who, while discharging every duty to her family and her village, in a
+way which won their lasting affection, was able to put aside large sums
+from the earnings of her pen to supply the needs of the Melanesian
+Mission.</p>
+
+<p>Let us remember, too, that much of the bitterest criticism has come from
+those who have a direct interest in suppressing missions, who have made
+large profits in remote places by procedure which will not bear the
+light of day. Patteson would have been content to justify his work by
+his Master's bidding as quoted in the Gospel. His friends would have
+been content to claim that the actual working of the Mission should be
+examined. If outside testimony to the value of his work is wanted, one
+good instance will refute a large amount of idle calumny. Sir George
+Grey, no sentimentalist but the most practical ruler of New Zealand,
+gave his own money to get three native boys, chosen by himself, educated
+at Patteson's school, and was fully satisfied with the result.</p>
+
+<p>But this simple regular life was soon to be perturbed by new
+complications, which rose from the European settlers in Fiji. As their
+plantations increased, the need for labour became urgent and the
+Melanesian islands were drawn upon to supply it. In many ways Patteson
+felt that it was good for the Melanesians to be trained to agricultural
+work; but the trouble was that they were being deceived over the
+conditions of the undertaking. Open kidnapping and the revival of
+anything like a slave trade could hardly be practised under the British
+flag at this time; nor indeed did the Fiji settlers, in most cases, wish
+to do anything unfair or brutal. It was to be a matter of contracts,
+voluntarily signed by the workmen; but the Melanesian was not educated
+up to the point where he could appreciate what a contract meant. When
+they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> did begin to understand, many were unwilling to sign for a period
+long enough to be useful; many more grew quickly tired of the work,
+changed their mind and broke their engagements. As the trade grew, some
+islands were entirely depopulated, and it became necessary to visit
+others, where the natives refused to engage themselves. The trade was in
+jeopardy; but the captains of merchant vessels, who found it very
+lucrative, were determined that the supply of hands should not run
+short. So when they met with no volunteers, they used to cajole the
+islanders on board ship under pretence of trade and then kidnap them;
+when this procedure led to affrays, they were not slow to shoot. The
+confidence of the native in European justice was shaken, and the work of
+years was undone. Security on both sides was gone, and the missionary,
+who had been sure of a welcome for ten years, might find himself in face
+of a population burning with the desire to revenge themselves on the
+first white man who came within their reach.</p>
+
+<p>Patteson did all that he could, in co-operation with the local
+officials, to regulate the trade. There was no case for a crusade
+against the Fiji planters, who were doing good work in a humane way and
+were ignorant of the misdeeds practised in Melanesia. The best method
+was to forbid unauthorized vessels to pursue the trade and to put the
+authorized vessels under supervision; but, to effect this in an outlying
+part of the vast British Empire, it was necessary to educate opinion and
+to work through Whitehall. This he set himself to do; but meanwhile he
+was so distressed to find the islanders slipping out of his reach, that
+in the last months of his life he was planning a campaign in Fiji, where
+he intended to visit several of the plantations in turn and to carry to
+the expatriated workers the Gospel which he had hoped to preach to them
+in their homes.</p>
+
+<p>But before he could redress this wrong he was himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> destined to fall
+a victim to the spirit of hostility evoked. His best work was already
+done when in 1870 he had a prolonged illness, and was forced to spend
+some months at Auckland for convalescence. In the judgement of his
+friends his exertions had aged him considerably, and the climate had
+contributed to break down his strength. Though he was back at work again
+before the end of the summer he was far more subject to weariness. His
+manner became peaceful and dreamy, and his companions found that it was
+difficult to rouse him in the ordinary interchange of talk. His thoughts
+recurred more often to the past; he would write of Devonshire and its
+charms in spring, read over familiar passages in Wordsworth, or fall
+into quiet meditation, yet he would not unbuckle his armour or think of
+leaving the Mission in order to take a holiday in England.</p>
+
+<p>In April 1871, when the time came for him to leave Norfolk Island for
+his annual cruise, his energy revived. He spent seven weeks at Mota,
+leaving it towards the end of August to sail for the Santa Cruz group.
+On September 20, as he came in sight of the coral reef of Nukapu, he was
+speaking to his scholars of the death of St. Stephen. Next morning he
+had the boat lowered and put off for shore accompanied by Mr. Atkin and
+three natives. He knew that feeling had lately become embittered in this
+district over the Labour trade, but the thought of danger did not shake
+his resolution. To show his confidence and disarm suspicion he entered
+one of the canoes, alone with the islanders, landed on the beach and
+disappeared among the crowd. Half an hour later, for no apparent reason,
+an attack was started by men in canoes on the boat lying close off the
+shore; and before the rowers could pull out of range, Joseph Atkin and
+two of the natives had been wounded by poisoned arrows which, some days
+later, set up tetanus with fatal effect. They reached the ship;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> but
+after a few hours, when their wounds had been treated, Mr. Atkin
+insisted on taking the boat in again to learn the Bishop's fate. This
+time no attack was made upon them; but a canoe was towed out part of the
+way and then left to drift towards the boat. In it was the dead body of
+the Bishop tied up in a native mat. How he died no one ever knew, but
+his face was calm and no anguish seems to have troubled him in the hour
+of death. 'The placid smile was still on the face: there was a palm leaf
+fastened over the breast, and, when the mat was opened, there were five
+wounds, no more. The strange mysterious beauty, as it may be called, of
+the circumstances almost make one feel as if this were the legend of a
+martyr of the Primitive Church.'<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>Miss Yonge, from whom these lines are quoted, goes on to show that the
+five wounds, of which the first probably proved fatal, while the other
+four were deliberately inflicted afterwards, were to be explained by
+native custom. In the long leaflets of the palm five knots had been
+tied. Five men in Fiji were known to have been stolen from this island,
+and there can be little doubt that the relatives were exacting, in
+native fashion, their vengeance from the first European victim who fell
+into their power. The Bishop would have been the first to make allowance
+for their superstitious error and to lay the blame in the right quarter.
+His surviving comrades knew this, and in reporting the tragedy they sent
+a special petition that the Colonial Office would not order a
+bombardment of the island. Unfortunately, when a ship was sent on a
+mission of inquiry, the natives themselves began hostilities and
+bloodshed ensued. But at last the Bishop had by his death secured what
+he was labouring in his life to effect. The Imperial Parliament was
+stirred to examine the Labour trade in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> the Pacific and regulations were
+enforced which put an end to the abuse.</p>
+
+<p>'Quae caret ora cruore nostro?' The Roman poet puts this question in his
+horror at the wide extension of the civil wars which stained with Roman
+blood all the seas known to the world of his day.</p>
+
+<p>Great Britain has its martyrs in a nobler warfare yet more widely
+spread. Not all have fallen by the weapons of war. Nature has claimed
+many victims through disease or the rigour of unknown climes. The death
+of some is a mystery to this day. India, the Soudan, South and West
+Africa, the Arctic and Antarctic regions, speak eloquently to the men of
+our race of the spirit which carried them so far afield in the
+nineteenth century. Thanks to its first bishop, the Church of Melanesia
+shares their fame, opening its history with a glorious chapter enriched
+by heroism, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="morier" id="morier"></a><img src="images/morier.jpg" alt="SIR ROBERT MORIER" />
+<br /><span class="smcap"><br /> sir robert morier</span><br />
+From a drawing by William Richmond</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIR_ROBERT_D_B_MORIER_GCB_PC" id="SIR_ROBERT_D_B_MORIER_GCB_PC"></a>SIR ROBERT D. B. MORIER, G.C.B., P.C.</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1826-93</p>
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1826.</td><td> Born at Paris, March 31.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1832-9.</td><td> Childhood in Switzerland.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1839-44.</td><td> With private tutors.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1845-9.</td><td> Balliol College, Oxford.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1850.</td><td> Clerk in Education Office.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1853.</td><td> Attach&eacute; at Vienna Embassy.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1858.</td><td> Attach&eacute; at Berlin.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1861.</td><td> Marriage with Alice, daughter of General Jonathan Peel.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1865.</td><td> Commissioner at Vienna. Commercial Treaty. C.B. Charg&eacute; d'Affaires at Frankfort.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1866-71.</td><td> Charg&eacute; d'Affaires at Darmstadt.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1870.</td><td> Tour in Alsace to test national feeling.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1871.</td><td> Charg&eacute; d'Affaires at Stuttgart.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1872-6.</td><td> Charg&eacute; d'Affaires at Munich.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1875.</td><td> Danger of second Franco-German War.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1876.</td><td> Minister at Lisbon.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1881.</td><td> Minister at Madrid. 1882. K.C.B.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1884.</td><td> Bismarck vetoes Morier as Ambassador to Berlin.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1885-93.</td><td> Ambassador at St. Petersburg.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1886.</td><td> Bulgaria, Batum, and Black Sea troubles.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1887.</td><td> G.C.B. 1889. D.C.L., Oxford.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1891.</td><td> Appointed Ambassador at Rome: retained at St. Petersburg.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1893.</td><td> Death at Montreux. Funeral at Batchworth.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">ROBERT MORIER</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Diplomatist</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>Diplomacy as a profession is a product of modern history. As Europe
+emerged from the Middle Ages, the dividing walls between State and State
+were broken down, and Governments found it necessary to have trained
+agents resident at foreign courts to conduct the questions of growing
+importance which arose between them. Churchmen were at first best
+qualified to undertake such duties,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> and Nicholas Wotton, Dean of
+Canterbury, who enjoyed the confidence of four Tudor sovereigns, came to
+be as much at home in France or in the Netherlands as he was in his own
+Deanery. It was his great nephew Sir Henry (who began his days as a
+scholar at Winchester, and ended them as Provost at Eton) who did his
+profession a notable disservice by indulging his humour at Augsburg when
+acting as envoy for James I, defining the diplomatist as 'one who was
+sent to lie abroad for his country'.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> Since then many a politician
+and writer has let fly his shafts at diplomacy, and fervent democrats
+have come to regard diplomats as veritable children of the devil. But
+this prejudice is chiefly due to ignorance, and can easily be cured by a
+patient study of history. In the nineteenth century, in particular,
+English diplomacy can point to a noble roll of ambassadors, who worked
+for European peace as well as for the triumph of liberal causes, and
+none has a higher claim to such praise than Sir Robert Morier, the
+subject of this sketch.</p>
+
+<p>The traditions of his family marked out his path in life. We can trace
+their origin to connexions in the Consular service at Smyrna, where
+Isaac Morier met and married Clara van Lennep in the latter half of the
+eighteenth century. Swiss grandfather and Dutch grandmother became
+naturalized subjects of the British Crown and brought up four sons to
+win distinction in its service. Of these the third, David, married a
+daughter of Robert Burnet Jones&mdash;a descendant of the famous Bishop
+Burnet, and himself a servant of the Crown&mdash;and held important
+diplomatic appointments for over thirty years at Paris and Berne. So it
+was that his only son Robert David Burnet Morier was born in France,
+spent much of his childhood in Switzerland, and acquired early in life
+a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> remarkable facility in speaking foreign languages. To his schooling
+in England he seems to have owed little of positive value. His father
+and uncles had been sent to Harrow; but perhaps it was as well that the
+son did not, in this, follow in his father's footsteps. However much he
+neglected his studies with two easy-going tutors, he preserved his
+freshness and originality and ran no danger of being drilled into a
+type. If he had as a boy undue self-confidence, no one was better fitted
+to correct it than his mother, a woman of wide sympathies and strong
+intellectual force. The letters which passed between them display, on
+his part, mature powers of expression at an early age, and show the
+generous, affectionate nature of both; and till her death in 1855 she
+remained his chief confidante and counsellor. In trying to matriculate
+at Balliol College he met with a momentary check, due to the casual
+nature of his education; but, after retrieving this, he rapidly made
+good his deficiency in Greek and Latin, and ended by taking a creditable
+degree. His time at Oxford, apart from reading, was well spent. He made
+special friends with two of the younger dons: Temple, afterwards
+Archbishop of Canterbury, and Jowett, the future Master of Balliol. The
+former was carried by rugged force and sheer ability to the highest
+position in the Church; the latter won a peculiar place, in Oxford and
+in the world outside, by his gifts of judging character and stimulating
+intellectual interest. Morier became his favourite pupil and lifelong
+friend. F. T. Palgrave, the friend of both, tells us how 'Morier went up
+to Balliol a lax and imperfectly educated fellow; but Jowett, seeing his
+great natural capacity, took him in the Long Vacation of 1848 and
+practically "converted" him to the doctrine of work. This was the
+turning-point in Morier's life.' Together the two friends spent many a
+holiday in Germany, Scotland, and elsewhere, and must have presented a
+strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> contrast to one another: Jowett, small, frail, quiet and
+precise in manner, Morier big in every way, exuberant and full of
+vitality. It was with Jowett and Stanley (afterwards Dean of
+Westminster) that Morier went to Paris in 1848, eager to study the
+Revolutionary spirit in its most lively manifestations. Stanley
+describes him as 'a Balliol undergraduate of gigantic size, who speaks
+French better than English, is to wear a blouse, and to go about
+disguised to the clubs'.</p>
+
+<p>He took his degree in November 1849, and a month later he was visiting
+Dresden and Berlin, making German friends and initiating himself in
+German politics and German ways of thought. Though his British
+patriotism was fervid and sustained, he was capable of understanding men
+of other nations and recognizing their merits; and in knowledge of
+Germany he acquired a position among Englishmen of his day rivalled only
+by Odo Russell, afterwards Ambassador at Berlin. Morier's father had for
+many years represented Great Britain in Switzerland and could guide him
+both by precept and by example. Free intercourse with the most liberal
+minds in Oxford had developed the lessons which he had learnt at home.
+But his own energy and application effected more than anything. He was
+not satisfied till he had mastered a problem; and books, places, and
+people were laid under contribution unsparingly. He started on his tour
+carrying letters of introduction to some of the famous men in Germany,
+including the great traveller and scientist, Alexander von Humboldt. Of
+a younger generation was the philologist Max M&uuml;ller, who was a frequent
+companion of Morier in Berlin, and gave up his time to nursing him back
+to health when he was taken ill with quinsy. He found friends in all
+professions, but chiefly among politicians. A typical instance is von
+Roggenbach, who rose to be Premier of Baden in the years 1861 to 1865,
+when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> destinies of Germany were in the melting-pot. Baden was in
+some ways the leading state in South Germany at that time, combining
+liberal ideals with a fervent advocacy of national union, and the views
+of Roggenbach on political questions attracted Morier's warmest
+sympathy. Another state in which Morier felt genuinely at home was the
+Duchy of Coburg, from which Prince Albert had come to wed our own Queen
+Victoria. The Prince's brother, the reigning Duke, treated Morier as a
+personal friend; and here, too, he found Baron Stockmar, a Nestor among
+German Liberals, who had spent his political life in trying to promote
+goodwill between England and Germany. He received Morier into his family
+circle and adopted him as the heir to his policy. This intimacy led to
+further results; and, thanks in part to Morier's subsequent friendship
+with the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, generous ideals and a
+liberal spirit were to be found surviving in a few places even after
+1870, though Bismarck had poisoned the minds of a whole generation by
+the material successes which he achieved.</p>
+
+<p>In 1849 the doors of the Foreign Office were closed to Morier. The
+Secretary of State, Lord Palmerston, had treated his father unfairly, as
+he thought, some years before, and Morier would ask no favours of him.
+He continued his education, keeping in close touch with Jowett and
+Temple, and, when he saw a chance of studying politics at first hand, he
+eagerly availed himself of it. The troubles of Schleswig-Holstein, too
+intricate to be explained briefly, had been brewing for some time. In
+1850, the dispute, to which Prussia, Denmark, and the German Diet were
+all parties, came to a head. The Duchies were overrun by Prussian
+troops, while the Danish Navy held the sea. Morier rushed off to see for
+himself what was happening, and spent some interesting days at Kiel,
+talking to those who could instruct him, and forming his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> own judgement.
+This was adverse to the wisdom of the Copenhagen Radicals, who were
+trying to assert by force their supremacy over a German population. In
+the circumstances, as Prussia gave way to the wishes of other powers, no
+satisfactory decision could be reached; but ten years later the issue
+was in the ruthless hands of Bismarck, and was settled by 'blood and
+iron'.</p>
+
+<p>In 1850 Morier accepted a clerkship in the Education Office at &pound;120 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
+attach&eacute;ship. 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> serve Her Majesty as unpaid attach&eacute;, 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 <i>bon
+vivant</i>, 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 making acquaintance with the chief figures in the diplomatic world.
+He enjoyed talks with Baron Jella&ccedil;i&ccedil;, who had saved the monarchy in
+1848, and with Prince Metternich, whose political career ended in that
+year of revolutions and who was now only a figure in society. After the
+Crimean War Morier obtained permission to make a tour through South-east
+Hungary and to study for himself the mixture of Slavonic, Magyar, and
+Teutonic races inhabiting that district. He followed this up by another
+tour of three months, which carried him from Agram southwards into
+Bosnia and Herzegovina, having prepared for it by working ten to twelve
+hours a day for some weeks at the language of the southern Slavs.
+Incidentally he enjoyed some hunting expeditions with Turkish pashas,
+and obtained some insight into the weakness of the British consular
+system. All his life he believed strongly in the value of such tours to
+obtain first-hand information; and thirty years later, as Ambassador, he
+encouraged his secretaries to familiarize<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> themselves with the outlying
+districts of the Russian empire.</p>
+
+<p>In 1858, at the age of thirty-two, Morier passed from Vienna to Berlin.
+It was the year in which the Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of
+Queen Victoria, married the Crown Prince of Prussia.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> Her father, the
+Prince Consort, was very anxious that Morier should be at hand to advise
+the young couple, and the appointment to Berlin was his work. Then it
+was that Morier became involved in the struggle between Bismarck and the
+Liberal influences in Germany, which had no stronger rallying-point than
+the Coburg Court. This conflict only showed itself later, and at first
+the young English attach&eacute; must have seemed a sufficiently unimportant
+person; but before 1862 Bismarck, coming home to Berlin from the St.
+Petersburg Embassy, and discerning the nature of Morier's character, had
+declared that it was desirable to remove such an influence from the path
+of his party, who were determined to bring Liberal Germany under the
+yoke of a Prussia which had no sympathy for democratic ideals.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment the ship of State was hanging in the wind; light currents
+of air were perceptible; sails were filling in one parliamentary boat or
+another; but the chief movement was to be seen not in parliamentary
+circles but in the excellent civil service, which preserved that honesty
+and efficiency which it had acquired in the days of Stein. There were
+marked tendencies towards Liberalism and towards unification in
+different parts of Germany; and, if the Liberal party could have
+produced one man of firmness and decision, these forces might have
+triumphed over the reactionary Prussian clique. In this conflict Morier
+was bound to be a passionate sympathiser with the parties which included
+so many of his personal friends and which advocated principles so dear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+to his heart. With the triumph of his friends, too, were associated the
+prospects of a good understanding between England and Germany, for which
+Morier himself was labouring; and he was accused of having meddled
+indiscreetly with local politics. When King William broke with the
+Liberals over the Army Bill, caution was doubly necessary. Bismarck
+became Minister in 1862, and, great man though he was, he was capable of
+any pettiness when he had once declared war on an opponent. From that
+time the policy of working for an Anglo-Prussian <i>entente</i> was a losing
+game, not only because Bismarck detested the parliamentarism which he
+associated with England, but also because, on our side too, extremists
+were stirring up ill-feeling. In his letters Morier makes frequent
+reference to the 'John Bullishness' of <i>The Times</i>. When this journal,
+to which European importance attached during the editorship of Delane,
+was not openly flouting Prussia, it was displaying reckless ignorance of
+a people who were making the most solid contributions to learning and
+raising themselves by steady industry from the losses due to centuries
+of Continental warfare.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time he paid visits to friends at Dresden, at Baden, and
+elsewhere. One year he was sent to Naples on a special mission, another
+year he was summoned to attend on Queen Victoria, who was visiting
+Coburg. In 1859 he is lamenting the monotony of existence at Berlin,
+which he calls 'a Dutch mud canal of a life, without even the tulip beds
+on the banks'. But when later in that year Lord John Russell, who knew
+and appreciated his talents, became Foreign Secretary and called on him
+for frequent reports on important subjects, Morier found solace in work.
+He was only too willing to put his wide knowledge of the country in
+which he was serving at the disposal of his superiors at home. He wrote
+with equal ability on political, agrarian, and financial subjects. That
+he could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> take into account the personal factor is shown by the long
+letter which he wrote in 1861 to Sir Henry Layard, then Political
+Under-Secretary of State.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> It contained a masterly analysis of the
+character and upbringing of King William, showing how his intellectual
+narrowness had hampered Liberal Governments, while his professional
+training in the army had made him a most efficient instrument in
+promoting the aims of Junker politicians and ministers of war.</p>
+
+<p>On Schleswig-Holstein, above all, Morier exerted himself to convey a
+right view of the question to those who guided opinion in London,
+whether newspaper editors or responsible ministers. He appealed to the
+same principle which had won support for the Lombards against Austria.
+The inhabitants of the disputed Duchies were for the most part Germans,
+and the Danish Government had done violence to their national sentiment.
+If England could have extended its sympathy to its northern kinsmen in
+time, the question might have been settled peacefully before 1862, and
+Bismarck could never have availed himself of such a lever to overthrow
+his Liberal opponents. As it was, Prussia ignored the Danish sympathies
+displayed abroad, especially in the English press, went her own way and
+invaded the Duchies, dragging in her train Austria, her confederate and
+her dupe. Palmerston, who controlled our foreign policy at the time,
+waited till the last moment, blustered, found himself impotent to move
+without French support, and left Denmark smarting with a sense of
+betrayal which lasted till 1914. By such bungling Morier knew that we
+were incurring enmity on both sides and lowering our reputation for
+courage as well as for statesmanship.</p>
+
+<p>In 1865 he was chosen as one of the Special Commissioners to negotiate a
+treaty of commerce between Great Britain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> and Austria. He had always
+been a Free-trader, and he was convinced that such economic agreements
+could do much to improve the world and to strengthen the bonds of peace.
+So he was ready and willing to do hard work in this sphere, and finding
+a congenial colleague in Sir Louis Mallet, one of the best economists of
+the day, he spent some months at Vienna in fruitful activity and won the
+good opinion of all associated with him. For his services he received
+the C.B. and high commendation from London.</p>
+
+<p>This same year brought promotion in rank, though for long it was
+uncertain where he would go. In August he accepted the offer of First
+Secretary to the Legation in Japan, most reluctantly, because he saw his
+peculiar knowledge of Germany would be wasted there. Ten days later this
+offer was changed for a similar position at the Court of Greece, which
+was equally uncongenial; but at the end of the year the Foreign Office
+decided that he would be most useful in the field which he had chosen
+for himself, and after a few months at Frankfort he was sent in the year
+1866 as charg&eacute; d'affaires to the Grand Ducal Court of Hesse-Darmstadt.</p>
+
+<p>From these posts he was destined to be a spectator of the two great
+conflicts by which Bismarck established the union of North Germany and
+its primacy in Europe. Morier detested the means by which this end was
+achieved, but he had consistently maintained that this union ought to
+be, and could only be, achieved by Prussia, and he remained true to his
+beliefs. It is a great tribute to his intellectual force that he was
+able to control his personal sympathies and antipathies, and to judge
+passing events with reference to the past and the future. He had liked
+the statesmen whom he had met at Vienna, and he recognized their good
+faith in the difficult negotiations of 1865. But for the good of Europe,
+he thought the Austrian Government should now look eastwards. It could
+not do double<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> work at Vienna and at Frankfort. The impotence of the
+Frankfort Diet could be cured only by the North Germans, and the
+aspirations of good patriots, from Baden to the Baltic, had been for
+long directed towards Prussia. But it was no easy task to make people in
+England realize the justice of this view or the certainty that Prussia
+was strong enough to carry through the work. Led by <i>The Times</i>, the
+British Press had grown accustomed to use a contemptuous tone towards
+Prussia; and when in the decisive hour this could no longer be
+maintained, and British sentiment, as is its nature, declared for
+Austria as the beaten side, this sentiment was attributed at Berlin to
+the basest envy. Relations between the two peoples steadily grew worse
+during these years, despite the efforts of Morier and other friends of
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>The Franco-German war brought even greater bitterness between Prussia
+and Great Britain. The neutrality, which the latter power observed, was
+misunderstood in both camps; and the position of a British diplomat
+abroad became really unpleasant. Morier in particular, as a marked man,
+knew that he was subject to spying and misrepresentation, but this did
+not deter him from doing his duty and more than his duty. He took
+measures to safeguard those dependent on him, in case Hesse came into
+the theatre of war. He organized medical aid for the wounded on both
+sides. He took a journey in September into Alsace and Lorraine to
+ascertain the feeling of the inhabitants, that he might give the best
+possible advice to his Government if the cession of these districts
+became a European question. He came to the conclusion that Alsace was
+not a homogeneous unit&mdash;that language, religion, and sentiment varied in
+different districts, and that it was desirable to work for a compromise.
+But Bismarck was determined in 1870, as in 1866, that the settlement
+should remain in his own hands and that no European congress should
+spoil his plans. Morier found that he was being talked of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span> at Berlin as
+'the enemy of Prussia', and atrocious calumnies were circulated. One of
+these was revived some years later when Bismarck wished to discredit
+him, and Bismarckian journals accused him of having betrayed to Marshal
+Bazaine military secrets which he discovered in Hesse. Morier obtained
+from the Marshal a letter which clearly refuted the charge, and he gave
+it the widest publicity. The plot recoiled on its author, and Morier was
+spoken of in France as 'le grand ambassadeur qui a roul&eacute; Bismarck'. Yet
+all the while, with his wife a strong partisan of France, with six
+cousins fighting in the French Army, with his friends in England only
+too ready to quarrel with him for his supposed pro-German sentiments, he
+was appealing for fair judgement, for reason, for a wise policy which
+should soften the bitterness of the settlement between victors and
+vanquished. Facts must be recognized, he pleaded, and the French claim
+for peculiar consideration and their traditional <i>amour propre</i> must not
+be allowed to prolong the miseries of war. At the same time Morier did
+not close his eyes to the danger arising from the overwhelming victories
+of the German armies. No one saw more clearly the deterioration which
+was taking place in German character, or depicted it in more trenchant
+terms. But it was his business to work for the future and not to let
+sentiment bring fresh disasters upon Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from this critical period, life at Darmstadt bored him
+considerably. His presence there was valued highly by Queen Victoria,
+one of whose daughters had married the Grand Duke; but Morier felt
+himself to be in a backwater, far from the main stream of European
+politics, and society there was dull. So he welcomed in 1871 his
+transference first to Stuttgart, and a few months later to Munich, the
+capital of the second state in the new Empire and a great centre of
+literary culture. Here lived Dr. D&ouml;llinger, historian and divine, a man
+suspected at Rome for his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> liberal Catholicism even before his definite
+severance from the Roman Church, but honoured everywhere else for the
+width and depth of his knowledge. With him Morier enjoyed many
+conversations on Church councils and other subjects which interested
+them both; and in 1874, lured by the prospect of such society, Gladstone
+paid him a visit of ten days. Morier did not admire Gladstone's conduct
+of foreign policy, but he was open-minded enough to recognize his great
+gifts and to enjoy his company, and he writes home with enthusiasm about
+his conversational powers. A still more welcome visitor in 1873 was
+Jowett, his old Oxford friend, who never lost his place in Morier's
+affections.</p>
+
+<p>Among these delights he retained his vigilance in political matters, and
+there was often need for it, since the German Government was now
+developing that habit of 'rattling its sword', and threatening its
+neighbours with war, which disquieted Europe for another forty years.
+The worst crisis came in 1875, when Morier heard on good authority that
+the military clique at Berlin were gaining ground, and seemed likely to
+persuade the Emperor William to force on a second war, expressly to
+prevent France recovering its strength. In general the credit for
+checking this sinister move is given to the Tsar; but English influences
+played a large part in the matter. Morier managed to catch the Crown
+Prince on his way south to Italy and had a long talk with him in the
+railway train. The Crown Prince was known to be a true lover of peace,
+but capable of being hoodwinked by Bismarck; once convinced that the
+danger was real (and he trusted Morier as he trusted no German in his
+entourage), he returned to Berlin and threw all his weight into the
+scale of peace. Queen Victoria also wrote from London; and, in face of a
+possible coalition against them, the Germans decided that it was wisest
+to abstain from all aggression.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A new period opened in his life when he left German courts, never to
+return officially, and became the responsible head of Her Majesty's
+Legation at the Portuguese Court. His five years spent at Lisbon cannot
+be counted as one of his most fruitful periods, despite 'the large
+settlement of African affairs', which Lord Granville tells us that
+Morier had suggested to his predecessors in Whitehall. For the big
+schemes which he planned he could get no continuous backing at home,
+either in political or commercial circles. For the petty routine England
+hardly needed a man of such outstanding ability. Of necessity his work
+consisted often in tedious investigation of claims advanced by
+individual Englishmen, whether they were suffering from money losses or
+from summary procedure at the hands of the Portuguese police. Of the
+diplomatic questions which arose many proved to be shadowy and unreal.
+Something could be done, even in remote Portugal, to improve
+Anglo-Russian relations by a minister who had friends in so many
+European capitals. The politics of Pio Nono and the Papal Curia often
+find an echo in his correspondence. Here, too, as elsewhere, the
+intrigues of Germany had to be watched, though Morier was sensible
+enough to discriminate between the deliberate policy of Bismarck and the
+man&oelig;uvres of those whom he 'allowed to do what they liked and say what
+they liked&mdash;or rather to do what they thought <i>he</i> would like done, and
+say what they thought <i>he</i> would like said&mdash;and then suddenly sent them
+about their business to ponder in poverty and disgrace on the mutability
+of human affairs'. In a passage like this Morier's letters show that he
+could distinguish between a lion and his jackals, between 'policy' and
+'intrigue'.</p>
+
+<p>Had it not been for Germany and German suggestions, Portuguese
+politicians would perhaps have been free from the fears which loomed
+darkest on their horizon&mdash;the fears of an 'Iberian policy' which Spain
+was supposed to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span> pursuing. In reality the leading men at Madrid knew
+that they had little to gain by letting loose the superior Spanish army
+against Portugal and trying to form the whole peninsula into a single
+state. Morier, at any rate, made it clear that England would throw the
+whole weight of her power against such treatment of her oldest ally. But
+alarmist politicians were perpetually harping on this string, and
+Morier, in a letter written in 1876, compares them to 'children telling
+ghost-stories to one another who have got frightened at the sound of
+their own voices, and mistake the rattling of a mouse behind the
+wainscot for the tramping of legions on the march'.</p>
+
+<p>To Morier it seemed that the important part of his work concerned South
+Africa, in which, at the time, Portugal and Great Britain were the
+European powers most interested. It was in 1877 that Sir Theophilus
+Shepstone annexed the Transvaal, and many people, in Europe and Africa,
+were talking as if this must lead to the expropriation of the Portuguese
+at Delagoa Bay. Morier himself was as far as possible from the
+imperialism which would ride rough-shod over a weaker neighbour. In
+fact, he pleaded strongly for British approval of the pride which
+Portugal felt in her traditions and of her desire to cling to what she
+had preserved from the past. Once break this down, he said, and we
+should see Portuguese dominions put up for auction, and England might
+not always prove to be the highest bidder. Friendly co-operation, joint
+development of railways, and commercial treaties commended themselves
+better to his judgement, and he was prepared to spend a large part even
+of his holidays in England in working out the details of such treaties.
+He studied the people among whom he was, and did his best to lead them
+gently towards reforms, whether of the slave-trade or other abuses, on
+lines which could win their sympathy. He appealed to his own Foreign
+Office to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> abstain from too many lectures, and to make the most of cases
+in which the Portuguese showed promise of better things. 'This diet of
+cold gruel', he says in 1878, 'must be occasionally supplemented by a
+cup of generous wine, or all intimacy must die out.' Again in 1880, he
+asks for a K.C.M.G. to be awarded to a Governor-General of Mozambique,
+who had done his best to observe English wishes in checking the
+slave-trade. 'Perpetual admonition', he says, 'and no sugar plums is bad
+policy'&mdash;a maxim too often neglected when our philanthropy outruns our
+discretion.</p>
+
+<p>When Morier was promoted in 1881 to Madrid, he used the same tact and
+geniality to lighten the burden of his task. No seasoned diplomatist
+took the politics of Madrid too seriously. Though the political stage
+was bigger, it was often filled by actors as petty and grasping as those
+of Lisbon. The distribution to their own friends of the 'loaves and
+fishes' was, as Morier says, the one steady aim of all aspirants to
+power; and measures of reform, much needed in education, in commerce, in
+law, were doomed to sterility by the factiousness of the men who should
+have carried them out. In the absence of principles Morier had to study
+the strife of parties, and his correspondence gives us lively pictures
+of the eloquent Castelar, the champion of a visionary Republic, the
+harsh, domineering Romero y Robledo, at once the mainstay and the terror
+of his Conservative colleagues, and the cold, egotistic Liberal leader
+Sagasta, whose shrewdness in the manipulation of votes had always to be
+reckoned with. The constitution given in 1876 had entirely failed to
+establish Parliament on a democratic basis. For this the bureaucracy was
+responsible. The Home Office abused its powers shamelessly, and by the
+votes of its functionaries, and of those who hoped to receive its
+favours, it could always secure a big majority for the Government of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+the moment. For the three years which Morier spent at Madrid, he
+recounts surprising instances of the reversal of electoral verdicts
+within a short space of time.</p>
+
+<p>The King was popular and deserved to be so, for his personal qualities
+of courage, intelligence, and public spirit; but his position was never
+secure. There was a bad tradition by which at intervals the army
+asserted its power and upset the constitution. Some intriguing general
+issued a <i>pronunciamiento</i>, the troops revolted, and the Central
+Government at Madrid, having no effective force and no moral ascendancy,
+gave way. Parliament had little stability. Cabinets rose and vanished
+again; the same eloquent but empty speeches were made, and the same
+abuses remained unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>But before now a spark from Spain had set the Continent ablaze. The past
+had bequeathed some questions which, awkwardly handled, might cause
+explosions elsewhere, and it was well to know the character of those who
+had the key to the powder magazine. More than once Morier was approached
+on the delicate question of the admission of Spain to the council of the
+Great Powers. In Egypt, where so many foreign interests were involved,
+and where Great Britain suffered, in the 'eighties, from so many
+diplomatic intrigues, Spain might easily find an opening for her
+ambitions. She might advance the plea that the Suez Canal was the direct
+route to her colonies in the Philippines. Germany, for ulterior ends,
+was encouraging Spanish pretensions; but, to the British, Spain with its
+illiberal spirit scarcely seemed likely to prove a helpful
+fellow-worker. Morier had to try to convince Spanish ministers that
+Great Britain was their truer friend while refusing them what they asked
+for; and in such interviews he had to know his men and to touch the
+right chord in appealing to their prejudices or their patriotism. The
+English tenure of Gibraltar was also a perpetual offence to Spanish
+pride.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> Irresponsible journalists loved to expatiate on it when they had
+no more spicy subject to handle. On this, as on all questions affecting
+prestige only, Morier was tactful and patient. When they should come
+within the range of practical politics, he could take a different tone.
+But he knew that more serious dangers were arising in Morocco, where the
+weakness of the Sultan's rule was tempting European powers to intervene,
+and he laboured to maintain peace and goodwill not only between his own
+country and Spain, but also between Spain and France. The common
+accusation that the English are not 'good Europeans' was pre-eminently
+untrue in his case. He realized that the interests of all were bound up
+together, and used his influence, which soon became considerable, to
+remove all occasions of bitterness in the European family, being fully
+aware that at Berlin there was another active intelligence working by
+hidden channels to keep open every festering sore.</p>
+
+<p>Morier was fertile in expedients when ministers consulted him, as we see
+notably on the occasion of King Alfonso's tour in 1883. Before the King
+started, the newspapers had been writing of it as a 'visit to Berlin',
+though it was intended to be a compliment to the heads of various
+states. To allay the sensitiveness of the French, Morier suggested to
+the Foreign Secretary that the King should make a point of visiting
+France first; but, owing to the ineptitude of President Gr&eacute;vy, this
+suggestion was rendered impracticable. When the King did visit Paris,
+after a sojourn at Berlin, where he received the usual compliment of
+being made titular colonel of a Prussian regiment, a terrible scene
+ensued by which Morier's sagacity was justified. The King was greeted
+with cries of '&agrave; bas le Colonel d'Uhlans', and was hissed as he passed
+along the streets; only his personal tact and restraint saved the two
+Governments from an undignified<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> squabble. He was able to give a lesson
+in deportment to his hosts and also to satisfy the resentful pride of
+his fellow-countrymen. The whole episode shows how individuals can
+control events when the masses can only become excited; kings and
+diplomats may still be the best mechanics to handle the complicated
+machinery on which peace or war depends. Alfonso XII died in November
+1885, soon after Morier's departure for another post, but not before he
+had testified to the high esteem in which our Minister had been held in
+Spain.</p>
+
+<p>From Madrid he might have passed to Berlin. The British Government had
+only one man fit to replace Lord Ampthill (Lord Odo Russell), who died
+in 1884. Inquiries were made in Berlin whether it was possible to employ
+Morier's great knowledge at the centre of European gravity, but Bismarck
+made it quite clear that such an appointment would be displeasing to his
+sovereign. It was believed by a friend and admirer of both men that, if
+Bismarck and Morier could have come to know one another, mutual respect
+and liking would have followed; but magnanimity towards an old enemy, or
+one whom he had ever believed to be such, was not a Bismarckian trait,
+and it is more probable that all Morier's efforts would have been
+thwarted by misrepresentation and malignity.</p>
+
+<p>Instead he was sent to St. Petersburg, where he took up his duties as
+Ambassador in November 1885. Here he had to deal with bigger problems.
+The affray at Penjdeh, when the Russians attacked an Afgh&#257;n outpost
+and forcibly occupied the ground, had, after convulsing Europe, been
+settled by Mr. Gladstone's Government. Feeling did not subside for some
+years, but for the moment Asiatic questions were not so serious as the
+conflict of interests in the Balkan peninsula. The principality of
+Bulgaria created by the Congress of Berlin was the focus of the 'Eastern
+question'&mdash;that is, the question whether Russia,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> Austria, or a united
+Europe led by the Western powers, was to preside over the dissolution of
+Turkey. Bulgaria certainly owed its existence to Russian bayonets; in
+her cause Russian lives had been freely given; and this formed a real
+bond between the two nations, more lasting than the effect of Mr.
+Gladstone's speeches, to which English sentimentalists attached such
+importance. But the Bulgarians have often shown an obstinate tendency to
+go their own way, and their politicians were loath to be kept in Russian
+leading-strings. Their last act, in 1885, had been to annex the Turkish
+province of Eastern Roumelia without asking the consent of the Tsar. At
+the moment they could safely flout the Sultan of Turkey, their nominal
+suzerain; but diplomatists doubted whether they could, with equal
+safety, ignore the Treaty of Berlin and the wishes of their Russian
+protector. The path was full of pitfalls. The Austrian Government was on
+the watch to embarrass its great Slavonic rival; English statesmen were
+too anxious to humour Liberal sentiment as expressed at popular
+meetings; Russian agents on the spot committed indiscretions; Russian
+opinion at home suspected that Bulgaria was receiving encouragement
+elsewhere, and the air was full of rumours of war.</p>
+
+<p>Across this unquiet stage may be seen to pass, in the lively letters
+which Morier sent home, the figures of potential and actual princes of
+Bulgaria, of whom only two deserve mention to-day. The first, Alexander
+of Battenberg, member of a family which enjoyed Queen Victoria's special
+favour, had been put forward at the Berlin Congress, and justified his
+choice in 1885 by repelling the Serbian Army and winning a victory at
+Slivnitza. He had won the attachment of his subjects but had incurred
+the hatred of the Tsar, and the tone of his speeches in 1886 offended
+Russian sentiment. Two years after Slivnitza, in face of intrigues and
+violence, he abandoned the contest and abdicated. The second is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+Ferdinand of Coburg, whose tortuous career, begun in 1887, only ended
+with the collapse of the Central Powers in 1918. He was put forward by
+Austria and supported by Stambuloff, the dictatorial chief of the
+Bulgarian ministry. For years the Russian Government refused to
+recognize him, and it was not till 1896 that he came to heel, at the
+bidding of Prince Lobanoff, and made public submission to the Tsar. But,
+first and last, he was only an astute adventurer of no little vanity and
+of colossal egotism, and such sympathies as he had for others beside
+himself went to Austria-Hungary, where he owned landed property, and had
+served in the army. He was also displeasing to orthodox Russia as a
+Roman Catholic, and in Morier's letters we see clearly the mistrust and
+contempt which Russians felt for him.</p>
+
+<p>With an autocrat like Alexander III, secretive and obstinate, these
+personal questions became very serious. Ambitious generals might
+anticipate his wishes, Russian regiments might be on the march before
+the Ministers knew anything, and Europe might awake to find itself over
+the edge of the precipice.</p>
+
+<p>Morier's own attitude can best be judged from the letters which he
+exchanged with Sir William White, our able ambassador to the Porte, who
+was frankly anti-Russian in his views. At first he put his trust in
+strict observance of the Treaty of Berlin, and wished that Prince
+Alexander would consent to restore the <i>status quo ante</i> (i.e. before
+the change in Eastern Roumelia); but although a stout upholder of
+treaties, he admitted as a second basis for settlement 'les v&oelig;ux des
+populations', on which the modern practice of plebiscites is founded.
+The peasants of Eastern Roumelia were clearly glad to transfer their
+allegiance from the Sultan to the Prince. Also the successes achieved by
+Prince Alexander in so soon welding together Bulgaria and Eastern
+Roumelia had to be recognized as altering the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> situation. In fact,
+Morier's position was nearer to that of 1919 than to the old traditions
+in vogue a century earlier, and would commend itself to most English
+Liberals. But, as an ambassador paid to watch over British interests, he
+was guided by expediency rather than by sentiment. These interests, he
+was convinced, were more vitally affected in Central Asia than in the
+Balkans. He believed that, if British statesmen would recognize Russia's
+peculiar position in Bulgaria, the advance of Russian outposts towards
+India might be stayed, and the two great powers might work together all
+along the line. But, to effect this, national jealousies must be allayed
+and an understanding established. Morier had to interpret at St.
+Petersburg speeches of English politicians, which often sounded more
+offensive there than in London: he also had to watch and report to
+London the unofficial doings and sayings of the aggressive Pan-Slavist
+party, who might at any moment undermine the Ministry.</p>
+
+<p>Foreign policy was in the hands of de Giers, an enlightened, pacific
+minister, who lacked, however, the courage to face his master's
+prejudices and had little authority over many of his own subordinates.
+De Nelidoff, at Constantinople, dared even to make himself the centre of
+diplomatic intrigue directed against the policy of his chief. Still less
+was de Giers able to control the strong Pan-Slavist influences which
+ruled in the Church, the Home Office, and the Press. Morier gives
+interesting portraits of Pobedon&oacute;stsev, the bigoted procurator of the
+Holy Synod, of Tolstoy the reactionary Minister of the Interior, of
+Katkoff the truculent editor of the <i>Moscow Gazette</i>. These were the
+most notable of the men who flouted the authority, thwarted the work,
+and undermined the position of the Tsar's nominal adviser, and often
+they carried the day in determining the attitude of the Tsar himself.
+Yet Morier was bound by his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> honesty and by the traditions of
+British diplomacy to do business with de Giers alone, to receive the
+assurances of one who was being betrayed by his own ambassadors, to make
+his protests to one who could not effectively remedy the grievances. His
+difficulty was increased by de Giers's manner&mdash;'when getting on to
+slippery ground he has a remarkable power of speaking only half
+intelligibly and swallowing a large proportion of his words'. Morier was
+often conscious that he was building on sand; but in quiet weather it
+was possible to stem the flood for a while even with dikes of sand.
+Perhaps a little later the tide of Balkan troubles might be setting in
+another direction and the danger might be past. In Russia, where so much
+was incalculable, it was wise to make the most of such help as presented
+itself. Meanwhile the Russian Ambassador in London, Baron de Sta&auml;l,
+co-operated as loyally with Lord Salisbury as Morier with de Giers; and
+thanks to their diplomatic skill, rough places were smoothed away and
+bases of agreement were found. In the course of 1887, the smouldering
+fires of Anglo-Russian antagonism died down, and Russia adopted a
+waiting attitude in Bulgaria.</p>
+
+<p>But this happy result was not attained till after Asiatic problems had
+given rise to serious alarms. The worst moment was in July 1886, when
+the Tsar suddenly proclaimed, contrary to the Treaty of Berlin, that the
+port of Batum was closed to foreign trade. His point of view was
+characteristic. His father had, autocratically, expressed in 1878 his
+intention to open the port; this had been done, and it had proved in
+practice a failure; as a purely administrative act, he (Alexander III)
+now declared the port closed, <i>et tout &eacute;tait dit</i>. But naturally foreign
+merchants resented the injury to their trade, and insisted on the
+sanctity of treaties. The Berlin Government, as usual, left to Great
+Britain all the odium incurred in making a protest, and the other
+Continental powers were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> equally silent. Morier asserted the British
+case so strongly that he roused even de Giers to vehemence; but when he
+saw that protests would avail nothing, he advised his Government to cut
+the loss and to avoid further bitterness. He reminded them that Russia
+had given way in Bulgaria, where the British point of view had
+prevailed, and that they must not expect her to submit to a second
+diplomatic defeat. Besides, a quarrel between Russia and Great Britain
+would only benefit a third party, ready enough to avail himself of it.
+Harmony was preserved, but the risk of a breach had been very great, and
+feeling was not improved by Russian activity at Sebastopol, where the
+Pan-Slavists were acclaiming the new birth of the Black Sea fleet. The
+death of Katkoff in 1887, and of Tolstoy in 1889, with the advent of
+more Liberal ministers, strengthened de Giers's hands; and during his
+later years, though he often needed great vigilance and tact, Morier was
+not troubled by any crisis so severe.</p>
+
+<p>The Grand Cross of the Bath, which he received in 1887, was a fitting
+reward for the services he had rendered to England and to Europe in this
+anxious time. He never lost heart or despaired of a peaceful solution.</p>
+
+<p>At bottom, as he often repeats, Russia was not ready for big
+adventures&mdash;was, in fact, still suffering from lassitude after the war
+of 1878, 'like an electric eel which, having in one great shock given
+off all its electricity, burrows in the mud to refill its battery,
+desiring nothing less than to come again too soon into contact with
+organic tissue'.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from <i>la haute politique</i> and the conflicts between governments,
+Morier's own compatriots were giving him plenty to do. A few instances
+will illustrate the variety of the applications which reached the
+Embassy. Captain Beaufort requests a special permit to visit Kars and
+its famous fortifications. Mr. Littledale asks for a Russian guide to
+help him in an ascent of Mount Ararat. Father<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> Perry, S.J. (the Jesuits
+were specially obnoxious to the Holy Synod), wishes to observe a solar
+eclipse only visible in Russia. Another traveller, Mr. Fairman, is
+summarily arrested near Rovno where the Tsar's visit is making the
+police unduly brisk for the moment. Morier procures him a prompt
+apology; but, not content with this, the Englishman now thinks himself
+entitled to a personal audience with the Tsar and the gift of some
+decoration to compensate him, which suggestion draws a curt reply from
+the much-vexed ambassador. But he was always ready to help a genuine
+explorer, whether it was Mr. de Windt in Trans-Caucasia or Captain
+Wiggins in the Kara Sea. To the latter, in his efforts to establish
+trade between Great Britain and Siberia by the Yenisei river, Morier
+lent most valuable aid, and he is proud to report the concessions which
+he won for our merchants in a new field of commerce.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile he found occasion to cultivate friendships with Russians and
+foreign diplomats of all kinds. Of the more important he sends home
+interesting sketches to his superiors in Whitehall, Vischnegradsky, the
+'wizard of finance', who raised the value of the rouble 30 per cent.,
+became one of his intimate friends. When that ambiguous figure, Witte,
+his rival and successor, tried to discredit him, Morier vindicated with
+warmth the honesty and patriotism of his friend. Baron Jomini of the
+Foreign Office was of a different kind, witty, volatile, audaciously
+outspoken, more like a character in Thackeray's novels. Pobedon&oacute;stsev,
+the Procurator of the Holy Synod, remained 'somewhat of an enigma'&mdash;as
+we can easily believe when we hear that this bigoted Churchman, the
+terror of the Jews, had been a friend of Dean Stanley, and was still
+fond of English literature and English theology.</p>
+
+<p>Still more amusing are the stories which he tells of foreign visitors of
+high station&mdash;of the Duke of Orleans playing truant without the
+knowledge of his parents and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> being snubbed by his Grand Ducal
+relatives; of Dal&#299;p Singh touring the provinces with a disreputable
+entourage and trying to make trouble for the British at Moscow; of the
+Prince of Montenegro and his beautiful daughters, whom Morier heartily
+admires&mdash;'tall and massive, strong-limbed and comely, the true type of
+the mothers of heroes in the Homeric sense'.</p>
+
+<p>With the Court his relations were excellent. His intimacy with members
+of our own royal family helped him, and his geniality and
+unconventional, natural manner won favour with the Romanoffs, who
+retained in their high station a great deal of simplicity. More than
+once Morier seized an opportunity for an act of special courtesy to the
+Tsar; and Alexander appreciated this from a man whose character was too
+well known for him to be suspected of obsequiousness.</p>
+
+<p>But the life in St. Petersburg was not all pleasure, even when
+diplomatic waters were quiet. The work was hard, the climate was very
+exacting with its extremes of temperature, and epidemics were rife. In
+November 1889 he reports the appearance of 'Siberian Catarrh, more
+usually described under the general name of Influenza', which was
+working havoc in girls' schools and guardsmen's barracks, and had laid
+low simultaneously Emperor, Empress, and half the imperial family.
+Morier himself became increasingly liable to attacks of ill-health, and
+found difficulty in discharging his duties regularly. It required a keen
+sense of duty for him to stay at his post; and when in December 1891 he
+was appointed to the Embassy at Rome, he was very willing to go. But
+public interest stood in the way. He had made for himself an exceptional
+place at St. Petersburg. No one could be found to replace him
+adequately, and the Tsar expressed a desire that his departure should be
+postponed. He consented to stay on, and the next two years of work in
+that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> climate, together with the death in 1891 of his only son, broke
+his spirit and his strength. Too late he went in search of health, first
+to the Crimea and then to Switzerland. Death came to him as the winter
+of 1893 was approaching, when he was at Montreux on the Lake of Geneva,
+close to the home of his ancestors.</p>
+
+<p>The impression which he made on his friends and colleagues is clear and
+consistent, and the ignorance of the general public about men of his
+profession justifies a few quotations. Sir Louis Mallet brackets him
+with Sir James Hudson<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> and Lord Cromer as 'the most admirable trio of
+public servants he had known'. Sir William White speaks of him and Odo
+Russell as 'two giants of the diplomatic service'. Lord Acton, who knew
+Europe as well as any Foreign Minister, and weighed his words, refers to
+him in 1884 as 'our only strong diplomatist', and again 'as a strong
+man, resolute, ready, well-informed and with some amount of real
+resource'. More than one Foreign Secretary has borne testimony to the
+value of Morier's dispatches; and Sir Charles Dilke, who, without
+holding the portfolio himself, often shaped our foreign policy and was
+an expert in European questions, is still more emphatic about his
+intellectual powers, though he thinks that Morier's imperious temper
+made him 'impossible in a small place'. Sir Horace Rumbold,<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> in his
+<i>Recollections</i>, has many references to him, especially as he was in
+earlier years. He speaks of Morier's 'prodigious fund of spirits that
+made him the most entertaining, but not always the safest, of
+companions'; 'of his imperious, not over-tolerant disposition'; 'of the
+curious compound that he was of the thoughtless, thriftless Bohemian and
+the cool, calculating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> man of the world'; of his 'exceptionally powerful
+brain and unflagging industry'. Elsewhere he recalls Morier's journeys
+among the Southern Slavs, in which he opened up a new field of
+knowledge, and adds, 'since then he has made himself a thorough master
+of German politics, and is, I believe, one of the few men whom Prince
+Bismarck fears and correspondingly detests'.</p>
+
+<p>Jowett's testimony may perhaps be discounted as that of an intimate
+friend; yet he was no flatterer, and as he often criticized Morier
+severely, it is of interest to read his deliberate verdict, given in
+1873, that 'if he devoted his whole mind to it, he could prevent a war
+in Europe'. Four years earlier Jowett had been told by a diplomatist
+whom he respected, 'Morier is the first man in our profession'.</p>
+
+<p>By those who still remember him, Morier is described as a diplomatist of
+'the old school'. His noble presence, his courtly manner, and the
+dignity which he observed on all ceremonial occasions, would have
+qualified him to adorn the court of Maria Theresa or Louis Quatorze.
+This dignity he could put off when the need for it was past. Among his
+friends his manner was vivacious, his talk racy, his criticism free. He
+was of the old school, too, in being self-confident and independent, and
+in believing that he would do his best work if there were no telegraph
+to bring frequent instructions from Whitehall. But he had not the
+natural urbanity of Odo Russell, nor the invariable discretion of Lord
+Lyons. He had hard work to discipline his imperious temper, and by no
+means always succeeded in masking his own feelings. Perhaps too high a
+value has been set on impenetrable reserve by those who have modelled
+themselves on Talleyrand. By their very candour and openness some
+British diplomatists have gained an advantage over rivals who confound
+timidity with reserve, and have won a peculiar position of trust at
+foreign courts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> In dealing with de Giers, Morier at any rate found no
+need to mumble or swallow his words. He was sure of himself and of his
+honourable intentions. On one occasion, after reading to that minister
+the exact words of the dispatch which he was sending to London, he
+stated his policy to him categorically. 'I always went', he said, 'upon
+the principle, whenever it could be done, of clearing the ground of all
+possible misunderstandings at the earliest date.' Probably we shall
+never see the end of 'secret diplomacy', whether under Tory, Liberal, or
+Labour governments; but this is not the tone of one who loves secrecy
+for its own sake.</p>
+
+<p>In many ways Morier combined the qualities of the old and the new
+schools. Though personally a favourite with kings and queens, he was
+fully alive to the changes in the Europe of the nineteenth century,
+where, along with courts and cabinets, other more unruly forces were at
+work. His visit to Paris in 1848 showed his early interest in popular
+movements, and he maintained a catholic width of view in later life. He
+knew men of all sorts and kept himself acquainted with unofficial
+currents of opinion. He could talk freely to journalists or to
+merchants, could put them at their ease and get the information which he
+wanted. His comprehensiveness was remarkable. The strife of politicians
+in the foreground did not blur the distant landscape. In Russia, behind
+Balkan intrigues and Black Sea troubles he could see the cloud of danger
+overhanging the Pamirs. In Spain or Portugal he was watching and
+forecasting the possibilities of the white races in Africa. So his
+dispatches, varied and vivacious as they were, proved of the greatest
+value to Foreign Secretaries at home, and furnish excellent reading
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>In these dispatches a few Gallicisms occur; and in writing to an old
+friend like Sir William White he uses a free mixture of French and
+English with other ingredients for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> seasoning. But in general the
+literary style is admirable. He has a rare command of language, a most
+inventive use of metaphor, a felicitous touch in sketching a character
+or an incident. Towards those working under him he was exacting, setting
+up a high standard of industry, but he was generous in his praise and
+very ready to take up the cudgels for them when they needed support. In
+commending one of them, he selects for special praise 'his old-fashioned
+conscientiousness about public work and his subordination of private
+comfort'. He inherited this tradition from his own family and his
+faithfulness to it cost him his life.</p>
+
+<p>Above all, we feel in reading these letters and memoranda that here is a
+man whose aim is truth rather than effect&mdash;not thinking of commending a
+programme to thousands of half-informed readers or hearers, in order to
+win their votes, but giving counsel to his peers, Odo Russell or Sir
+William White, Lord Granville or Lord Salisbury, on events and
+tendencies which affect the grave issues of peace and war and the lives
+of thousands of his fellow-countrymen. This generation has learnt how
+unsafe it is to treat these in a parliamentary atmosphere where men
+force themselves to believe what they wish and close their eyes to what
+is uncomfortable. While human nature remains the same, democracy cannot
+afford to deprive itself of such counsel or to belittle such a
+profession.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="JOSEPH_LISTER" id="JOSEPH_LISTER"></a>JOSEPH LISTER</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1827-1912</p>
+
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1827.</td><td> Born at West Ham, April 5.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1844-52.</td><td> University College, London.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1851.</td><td> Acting House Surgeon under Erichsen.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1852.</td><td> First research work published.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1853.</td><td> Goes to Edinburgh. House Surgeon under Syme.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1855.</td><td> Assistant Surgeon and Lecturer at Edinburgh Infirmary.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1856.</td><td> Marries Agnes Syme.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1860.</td><td> Appointed Professor of Clinical Surgery at Glasgow.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1865.</td><td> Makes acquaintance with Pasteur's work.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1866-7.</td><td> Antiseptic treatment of compound fractures and abscesses.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1867.</td><td> Papers on antiseptic method in the <i>Lancet</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1869.</td><td> Appointed Professor of Surgery at Edinburgh.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1872-5.</td><td> Conversion of leading scientists in Germany to Antisepticism.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1875.</td><td> Lister's triumphal reception in Germany.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1877.</td><td> Accepts professorship at King's College, London.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1879.</td><td> Medical congress at Amsterdam. Acceptance of Lister's methods by Paget and others in London.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1882.</td><td> von Bergmann develops Asepticism in Berlin.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1883.</td><td> Lister created a Baronet.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1891.</td><td> British Institute of Preventive Medicine incorporated.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1892.</td><td> Lister attends Pasteur celebration in Paris.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1893.</td><td> Death of Lady Lister.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1895-1900.</td><td> President of Royal Society.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1897.</td><td> Created a Peer.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1902.</td><td> Order of Merit.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1907.</td><td> Freedom of City of London: last public appearance.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1912.</td><td> Dies at Walmer, February 10.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">JOSEPH LISTER</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Surgeon</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>In a corner of the north transept of Westminster Abbey, almost lost
+among the colossal statues of our prime ministers, our judges, and our
+soldiers, will be found a small group of memorials preserving the
+illustrious names of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> Darwin, Lister, Stokes, Adams, and Watt, and
+reminding us of the great place which Science has taken in the progress
+of the last century. Watt, thanks partly to his successors, may be said
+to have changed the face of this earth more than any other inhabitant of
+our isles; but he is of the eighteenth century, and between those who
+developed his inventions it is not easy to choose a single
+representative of the age. Stokes and Adams command the admiration of
+all students of mathematics who can appreciate their genius, but their
+work makes little appeal to the average man. In Darwin's case no one
+would dispute his claim to represent worthily the scientists of the age,
+and his life is a noble object for study, single-hearted as he was in
+his devotion to truth, persistent as were his efforts in the face of
+prolonged ill-health. No better instance could be found to show that the
+highest intellectual genius may be found united with the most endearing
+qualities of character. Kindly and genial in his home, warmly attached
+to his friends, devoid of all jealousy of his fellow scientists, he
+lived to see his name honoured throughout the civilized world; and many
+who are incapable of appreciating his originality of mind can find an
+inspiring example in the record of his life. There is no need to make
+comparisons either of fame, of mental power, or of character; but the
+choice of Lister may be justified by the fact that his science, the
+science of Health and Disease, is one of absorbing interest to all men,
+and that with his career is bound up the history of a movement fraught
+with grave issues of life and death from which few families have been
+exempt.</p>
+
+<p>About these issues bitter controversies have raged; but it is to the
+lesser men that the bitterness is due. By his family traditions, as well
+as by his natural disposition, Lister was a man of peace; and though he
+left the Society of Friends at the time of his marriage, he retained a
+respect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> for their views which accorded well with his own nature. When
+he had to speak or write on behalf of what he believed to be the truth,
+it was from no motive of self-assertion or combativeness. He had the
+calm contemplative mind of the student, whereas Bright, the Quaker
+tribune, the champion of Repeal, had all the fervour of the man of
+action. Lister's family had been Quakers since the beginning of the
+eighteenth century; and at this time too they moved from Yorkshire to
+London, where his grandfather and father were engaged in business as
+wine merchants. But Joseph Jackson Lister, who married in 1818, and
+became in 1827 the father of the famous surgeon, was much more than a
+merchant. He had taught himself the science of optics, had made
+improvements in the microscope, and had won his way within the sacred
+portals of the Royal Society. Letters have been preserved which show us
+how keen his interest in science always remained, and with what full
+appreciation he entered into the researches which his son was making as
+professor at Glasgow in the middle of the century. A father like this
+was not likely to grudge money on the boy's education; but for the
+Friends many avenues to knowledge were still closed, including the
+Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He had to be content to go
+successively to Quaker schools at Hitchin and Tottenham, and from the
+latter to proceed, at the age of seventeen, to University College,
+London, which was non-sectarian. There the teaching was good, the
+atmosphere favourable to industry, and Lister was not conscious of
+hardship in missing the delights of youth that fell to his more
+fortunate contemporaries.</p>
+
+<p>His father lived in a comfortable house at Upton, some six miles east of
+London Bridge, in a district now completely swamped by the growth of the
+vast borough of West Ham. He kept up close relations with other Quaker
+families living in the neighbourhood, especially the Gurneys of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>
+Plashets. In their circle the most striking figure was Elizabeth Fry,
+who from 1813 to her death in 1843 devoted herself unsparingly to the
+cause of prison reform. From his home the father continued to exercise a
+strong influence over his son, who was industrious and serious beyond
+his years.</p>
+
+<p>From his father Lister learned as a boy to delight in the use of the
+microscope. He learned also to use his own power of observation, and to
+make hand and eye work together to minister to his studies. The power of
+drawing, which the future surgeon thus early developed, stood him in
+good stead later in life; and it is interesting to contrast his
+enjoyment of it with the laments made by his great contemporary Darwin,
+who felt keenly what he lost through his inability to use a pencil and
+to preserve the record of what he saw in nature or in the laboratory.
+Lister's school-days were over when he was seventeen years old and there
+is nothing remarkable to tell of them; but his period at University
+College was unusually prolonged. He was a student there for seven years
+and continued an eighth year, after he had taken his degree, as Acting
+House Surgeon. In 1848, half-way through his time, a physical breakdown
+was brought on by overwork, just as he was finishing his general
+studies; but a long holiday enabled him to recover his strength, and
+before the end of the year he had begun the course of medical studies
+which was to be his life-work.</p>
+
+<p>At school his record had been good but not brilliant, nor did he come
+quickly to the front in London. His mind was not of the sort which can
+be forced to produce untimely fruit in the hot-house of examinations.
+But his education was both extensive and thorough; it formed an
+excellent general training for the mind and a good basis for the special
+studies in which he was later to distinguish himself. He had been at
+University College for two years before he gained his first medal; but
+by 1850 he had made his name as the best man of his year, capable of
+upholding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> the credit of his College against any rival in the
+metropolis. Among his fellow students the best known in later years was
+Sir Henry Thompson, whose portrait by Millais hangs in our National
+Gallery. Among his professors one stands out pre-eminent, alike for his
+character and for his influence on Lister's life. This was William
+Sharpey, Professor of Physiology, an original man with a keen eye for
+originality in others. In days when most English professors were content
+with a narrow empirical training, he had trudged with his knapsack over
+half Europe in quest of knowledge, had studied in France, Switzerland,
+Italy, and Austria, and had made himself acquainted at first hand with
+the best that was taught in their schools. He was a first-rate lecturer,
+clear and simple, and took much pains to get to know his pupils. When
+Lister had held for a short time the post of Acting House Surgeon at
+University College Hospital, and needed to make definite plans for his
+career, it was Sharpey who advised him to go north for a while and
+attend some classes in Edinburgh before deciding on his course. Thus it
+was Sharpey who introduced him to Scotland and to Syme.</p>
+
+<p>Before we speak of the latter, a few words must be given to the year
+1851, when Lister completed his studentship and became for a time an
+active member of the hospital staff. This year was important as
+introducing him to the practice of his art under the direction of
+Erichsen, an Anglo-Dane and one of the foremost surgeons in London. It
+also led to a change in his way of living, to his being thrown into
+closer relations with men of his own age, and to his taking a more
+lively part in social gatherings. What we hear of the essays that he
+wrote at school, what we can read of his early letters, all harmonizes
+with our conception of a Quaker upbringing. There is a staid primness
+about him, which contrasts strangely with the pictures of medical
+students presented to us in the pages of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> Dickens. Capable though he was
+of enjoying a holiday, or of expanding among congenial associates,
+Lister was not quick to make friends. He was apt to keep too much to
+himself; and he seems to have inspired respect and even a certain awe
+among men of his own age. In his youth men noticed the same grave mien,
+steadfast eyes, and lofty intellectual forehead which are conspicuous in
+his later portraits. He was steady in conduct, serious in manner,
+precise in his way of expressing himself; and while these qualities
+helped him in the mental application which was so necessary if he was to
+profit by his student days, he needed a little shaking up in order to
+adapt himself to the ways of other men in the sphere of active life.
+This was given him by the constant activities of the hospital, and by
+the demands which the various societies made upon him; but he did not
+allow them to interfere with his own researches, for which he could find
+time when others were overwhelmed by the routine of their daily tasks.</p>
+
+<p>His first bit of original research is of special interest because it
+connects him with his father's work. He made special observations with
+the microscope of the muscular tissue of the iris of the eye,
+illustrated his paper by delicate drawings of his own, and published it
+in the leading microscopical journal. This and a subsequent paper on the
+phenomena of 'Goose-skin' attracted some attention among physiologists
+at home and abroad, and brought him into friendly relations with a
+German professor of world-wide reputation. They also gave great
+satisfaction to his father and to his favourite teacher Sharpey.</p>
+
+<p>But Lister's development henceforth was to take place on Scottish
+ground, and his visit to Edinburgh in 1853 shaped the whole course of
+his career. James Syme, under whose influence he thus came, was the most
+original and brilliant surgeon then living in the British Isles, perhaps
+in all Europe. His merits as a lecturer were somewhat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> overshadowed by
+his extraordinary skill as an operator; but he was a remarkable man in
+all ways, and the fact that Lister was admitted, first to his
+lecture-room and operating theatre, and then to his home, was without
+doubt the happiest accident in his life.</p>
+
+<p>The atmosphere of Edinburgh with its large enthusiastic classes in the
+hospitals, its cultivated and intellectual society outside, supplied
+just what was wanted to foster the genius of a young man on the
+threshold of his career. In London, centres of culture were too widely
+diffused, indifference and apathy too prevalent, conservatism in
+principles and methods too strongly entrenched. In his new home in the
+north Lister could watch the boldest operator in his own profession, and
+could daily meet men scarcely less distinguished in other sciences, and
+as a visitor to Syme's house he was from time to time thrown among able
+men following widely different lines in life. Above all, here he met one
+who was peculiarly qualified to be his helper; and three years later, at
+the age of twenty-nine, he was married to Agnes Syme, the daughter of
+his chief, to whom he had been attracted, as can be seen from the
+letters which passed between Edinburgh and Upton, soon after his arrival
+in the north. Before this event, he had already made his mark as
+Resident House Surgeon, as assistant operator to Syme, and also as an
+independent lecturer under the liberal system which gave an opening to
+all who could establish by merit a claim to be heard. He had also begun
+those researches into the early stages of inflammation which, ten years
+later, were to bear such wonderful fruit. It was a full and busy life,
+and the distraction of courtship must have made it impossible for him at
+times to meet all demands; but after 1856 his mind was set at rest and
+his strength doubled by the sympathy which his wife showed in his work,
+and by the help which she was able to render him in writing to his
+dictation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For their honeymoon they took a long journey on the Continent in the
+summer of 1856; but half, even of this rare holiday, was given to
+science, and, after some weeks' enjoyment of the beauties of Italy,
+husband and wife made the tour of German universities, as he was
+desirous to see something, if possible, of the leading surgeons and the
+newest methods. Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, Munich, Frankfort, Heidelberg,
+and Stuttgart were all included in the tour. They were well received,
+and at Vienna the most eminent professor of Pathology in the University
+gave more than three hours of his time to showing his museum to Lister,
+and also invited the young couple to dine at his house. Though he had
+not yet made a name for himself, Lister's earnestness and intelligence
+always made a favourable impression; and as he had taken pains with
+foreign languages in his youth, he was able, now and later in life, to
+address French and German friends, and even public meetings, in their
+native tongue. He came back to find work waiting for him which would tax
+his energies to the full. In October 1856 he was elected Assistant
+Surgeon to the Infirmary, and now, in addition to lecturing, he had to
+conduct public operations himself, whereas he had hitherto only acted as
+Syme's assistant. This was at first a severe trial for his nerves. That
+it affected him differently from most experienced surgeons is shown by
+the fact that he used always, all his life, to perspire freely when
+starting to operate; but he learnt to overcome this nervousness by
+concentrating his attention on his work. He was not a man who had
+religious phrases on his lips; but in letters to his family, quoted by
+Sir Rickman Godlee, he gives us the secret of his confidence and his
+power. 'Yesterday', he says in a letter written to his father on
+February 26, 'I made my d&eacute;but at the hospital in operating before the
+students. I felt very nervous before beginning; but when I had got
+fairly to work,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> this feeling went off entirely, and I performed both
+operations with entire comfort.' A week later, in a letter to his
+sister, he returns to the subject. 'The theatre was again well filled;
+and though I again felt a good deal before the operation, yet I lost all
+consciousness of the presence of the spectators during its performance,
+and did it exactly as if no one had been looking on. Just before the
+operation began I recollected that there was only one Spectator whom it
+was important to consider, one present alike in the operating theatre
+and in the private room; and this consideration gave me increased
+firmness.' Interest in the work for its own sake, forgetfulness of
+himself, these were to be the key-notes of his life-work.</p>
+
+<p>As yet, to a superficial observer, there were not many signs of a
+brilliant career ahead of him. His private practice was small and did
+not grow extensively for many years. The attendance at his earlier
+course of lectures was discouragingly meagre. This would have been more
+discouraging still, had not his dressers, from personal affection for
+him, made a point of attending regularly to swell the number of the
+class. Indeed, in view of the exacting demands made on him by the
+hospital, Lister might have been content to follow the ordinary routine
+of his profession. With his wife at his side and friends close at hand,
+he had every chance of living a useful and happy life. But he still
+found time to conduct experiments and to think for himself. His
+researches were continued along the line which he had opened up in 1855,
+and in 1858 he appeared before an Edinburgh Surgical Society to read a
+paper on Spontaneous Gangrene.</p>
+
+<p>This gave Mrs. Lister an opportunity to show her value. All his life
+Lister was prone to unpunctuality and to being late with preparations
+for his addresses, not because he was indifferent to the convenience of
+others or careless about the quality of his teaching, but because he
+became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> so engrossed in the work of the moment that he could not tear
+himself away from it so long as any improvement seemed possible. This
+same quality made him slow over his hospital rounds and often over
+operations, with the result that his own meal-times were most irregular
+and his assistants often had trouble to stay the pangs of hunger. This
+handicapped him in private practice and in some measure as a lecturer.
+He gave plenty of thought to his subjects, but rarely began to put
+thoughts in writing sufficiently in advance of his engagement. When he
+was in time with his written matter the credit was chiefly due to his
+wife. On the occasion of this paper she wrote for seven hours one day
+and eight hours the next, and her heroic industry saved the situation.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of 1859 Lister decided to be a candidate for the
+Surgical Professorship at Glasgow, which appointment was in the gift of
+the Crown; and in spite of some intrigues to secure the patronage for a
+local man, the post was offered by the Home Secretary, Sir George Lewis,
+to the young Edinburgh surgeon. Syme's opinion and influence no doubt
+counted for much. Lister's appointment dated from January 1860, but it
+was not till a year and a half later that his position in Glasgow was
+assured by his being elected Surgeon to the Royal Infirmary. Before this
+he could preach his principles in the lecture-room, but he had little
+influence on the practice of his students and colleagues. Thanks to the
+reputation which he brought from Edinburgh, his first lecture drew a
+full room, and his class grew year by year till it reached the
+unprecedented figure of 182, and each year the enthusiasm seemed to
+rise. But in the hospital he had an uphill task, as any one will know
+who has studied the history of these institutions in the first half of
+the century.</p>
+
+<p>To-day the modern hospital is an object of general admiration, with its
+high standard of cleanliness and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> efficiency; and few of us would have
+any hesitation if a doctor advised us to go into hospital for an
+operation. Seventy or a hundred years ago the case was very different;
+and when we read the statistics of the early nineteenth century,
+gathered by the surgeons who had known its horrors, it is hard to
+believe that we are not back among the worst abuses of the Middle Ages.
+Such terrible scourges as pyaemia and hospital gangrene were rife in all
+of them. In the chief hospital of Paris, which for centuries claimed
+pre-eminence for its medical faculty, the latter disease raged for 200
+years without intermission: 25 per cent. of those entering its doors
+were found to have died, and the mortality after certain operations was
+more than double this figure. Erichsen, who published in 1874 the
+statistics of deaths after operations, quoted 25 per cent. in London as
+satisfactory, and referred to the 60 per cent. of Paris as not
+surprising. In military practice the number of deaths might reach the
+appalling figure of 80 or 90 per cent. What was so tragic about this
+situation was that it was precisely hospitals, built to be the safeguard
+of the community, which were the most dangerous places in the case of
+wounds and amputations. In 1869 Sir James Simpson, the famous discoverer
+of chloroform, collected statistics of amputations. He took over 2,000
+cases treated in hospitals, and the same number treated outside. In the
+former 855 patients (nearly 43 per cent.) died, as it seemed, from the
+effects of the operation; in the latter only 266 cases (over 13 per
+cent.) ended fatally. He went so far as to condemn altogether the system
+of big hospitals; and under his influence a movement began for breaking
+them up and substituting a system of small huts, which, whether tending
+to security or not, was in other ways inconvenient and very expensive.
+About the same time certain other reforms, obvious as they seem to us
+since the days of Florence Nightingale, were tried in various places,
+tending to more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> careful organization and to greater cleanliness; but
+till the cause of the mischief could be discovered, only varying results
+could be obtained, and no real victory could be won. Hence a radical
+policy like Simpson's met with considerable support. In days when many
+surgeons submitted despairingly to what they regarded as inevitable, it
+was an advantage to have any one boldly advocating a big measure; and
+Simpson had sufficient prestige in Edinburgh and outside to carry many
+along with him. But before 1869 another line of attack had been
+initiated from Glasgow, and Lister was already applying principles which
+were to win the battle with more certainty of permanent success.</p>
+
+<p>Glasgow was no more free from these troubles than other great towns; in
+fact it suffered more than most of them. With its rapid industrial
+development it had already in 1860 a population of 390,000. Its streets
+were narrow, its houses often insanitary. In the haste to make money its
+citizens had little time to think of air and open spaces. The science of
+town-planning was unborn. Its hospital, far from having any special
+advantage of position, was exposed to peculiar dangers. It lay on the
+edge of the old cathedral graveyard, where the victims of cholera had
+received promiscuous pit-burial only ten years before. The uppermost
+tier of a multitude of coffins reached to within a few inches of the
+surface. These horrors have long been swept away; but, when Lister took
+charge of his wards in the Infirmary, they were infected by the
+poisonous air generated so close at hand, and in consequence they
+presented a gruesome appearance. The patients came from streets which
+often were foul with dirt, smoke, and disease, and were admitted to
+gloomy airless wards, where pyaemia or gangrene were firmly established.
+In such an environment certain death seemed to await them.</p>
+
+<p>Though his heart must have sunk within him, Lister set himself bravely
+to the task of fighting these grim<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> adversaries. For two years, indeed,
+he was chiefly occupied with routine work and practical improvements;
+but he continued his speculations, and in 1861 an article on amputations
+which he contributed to the <i>System of Surgery</i>, a large work in four
+volumes published in London, showed that he had not lost his power of
+surveying questions broadly and examining them with a fresh and original
+insight. He was not in danger of letting his mind be swamped with
+details, but could put them in their place and subordinate them to
+principles; and his article is chiefly directed to a philosophical
+survey which would enable his readers to go through the same process of
+education which he had followed out for himself. Sir Hector Cameron, the
+most constant of his Glasgow disciples, once illustrated this
+philosophic spirit from a passage in Cicero contrasting the many
+scientists who 'render themselves familiar with the strange' (not
+realizing that it is strange or needs explanation) with the few who
+'render themselves strange to the familiar'&mdash;who stand away from the
+phenomena to which every one has become too accustomed and examine them
+afresh for themselves. In Lister he recognized the peculiar gift which
+enabled him to rise superior to his subject, and to interpret what was
+to his colleagues a sealed book. In these days, among the too familiar
+scourges of the hospital, his work was perpetually putting questions to
+him; to a man whose mind was open the answer might come at any moment
+and from any quarter.</p>
+
+<p>As a fact, already, far from his own circle and for a long while out of
+his ken, there was working in France the most remarkable scientist of
+the century, Louis Pasteur, who more than once put his scientific
+ability at the disposal of a stricken industry, and in his quiet
+laboratory revived the industrial life of a teeming population. A
+manufacturer who was confronted with difficulties in making
+beetroot-alcohol<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> and was threatened with financial ruin, appealed for
+his help in 1856; and Pasteur spent years on the study of fermentation,
+making countless experiments to test the action of the air in the
+processes of putrefaction, and coming to the conclusion that the oxygen
+of the air was not responsible for them, as was widely believed. He went
+further and reached a positive result. He satisfied himself that
+putrefaction was set up by tiny living organisms carried in the dust of
+the air, and that the process was due to what we now familiarly term
+'germs' or 'microbes'. The existence of these infinitesimal creatures
+was known already to scientists, but their importance was not grasped
+till Pasteur, in the years 1862 to 1864, expounded the results of his
+long course of studies. He himself was no expert in medicine, but his
+discovery was to bear wonderful fruit when it was properly applied to
+the science of health and disease. Lister's study of open wounds, his
+observation of the harm done to the tissues in them when vitality was
+impaired, and of the value of protective scabs when they formed, enabled
+him to see the way and to point it out to others. When in 1865 he first
+read the papers which Pasteur had been publishing, he found the
+principle for which he had so long been searching. With what excitement
+he read them, with what suddenness of conviction he accepted the
+message, we do not know; he has left no record of his feelings at the
+time: but it was the most important moment in his career, and the rest
+of his life was spent in applying these principles to his professional
+work.</p>
+
+<p>With his mind thus fortified by the knowledge of the true source of the
+mischief, realizing that he had to assist in a battle between the deadly
+germs carried in the air and the living tissues trying to defend
+themselves, Lister returned afresh to the study of methods. He knew that
+he had to reckon with germs in the wound itself, if the skin was broken,
+with germs on the hands and instruments of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span> operator, and with germs
+on the dust in the air. He must find some defensive power which was able
+to kill the germs, at least in the first two instances, without
+exercising an irritating effect on the tissues and weakening their
+vitality. The relative importance of these various factors in the
+problem only time and experience could tell him. Carbolic acid had been
+discovered in 1834 and had already been tried by surgeons with varying
+results. At Carlisle it had been used by the town authorities to cope
+with the foul odour of sewage, and Lister visited the town to study its
+operation. In its cruder form carbolic proved only too liable to
+irritate a wound and was difficult to dissolve in water. Lister tried
+solutions of different strengths, and finally arrived at a form of
+carbolic acid which proved to be soluble in oil and to have the
+'antiseptic' force which he desired&mdash;that is, to check the process of
+sepsis or putrefaction inside the wound. He also set himself to devise
+some 'protective' which would enable Nature to do her healing work
+without further interference from without. Animals have the power to
+form quickly a natural scab over a wound, which is impermeable and at
+the same time elastic. The human skin, after a slight wound, in a pure
+atmosphere, may heal quickly; but a serious wound may continue open for
+a long time, discharging 'pus' at intervals, while decomposition is
+slowly lowering the vitality of the patient. Lister made numerous
+experiments with layers of chalk and carbolic oil, with a combination of
+shellac and gutta-percha, with everything of which he could think, to
+imitate the work of nature. His inexhaustible patience stood him in good
+stead in all these practical details. Rivals might speak contemptuously
+of the 'carbolic treatment' and the 'putty method' as if he were the
+vender of a new quack medicine; but at the back of these details was a
+scientific principle, firmly grasped by one man, while all others were
+groping in the dark.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="lister" id="lister"></a><img src="images/lister.jpg" alt="LORD LISTER" />
+<br /><span class="smcap">lord lister</span><br />
+From a photograph by Messrs. Barraud</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span></p>
+<p>During 1866 and 1867 we see from his letters how he set himself to apply
+the new principle first to cases of compound fracture and then to
+abscesses, how closely and anxiously he watched the progress of his
+patients, and how slow he was to claim a victory before his confidence
+was assured. In July 1867, when he was just forty years old, he felt it
+to be his duty to communicate what he had learnt and to put his
+experience at the disposal of his fellow workers. He wrote then to <i>The
+Lancet</i> describing in detail eleven cases of compound fracture under his
+care, in which one patient had died, one had lost a limb, and the other
+nine had been successfully cured. This ratio of success to failure was
+far in advance of the average practice of the time; but, for all that,
+it is not surprising that he met with the common fate which rewards
+pioneers in new fields of study. It is true that other reforms were
+helping to reduce the number of fatal cases. Florence Nightingale had
+led the way, and much had been learnt about hospital management. It was
+possible to maintain that good results had been achieved by other
+methods, and that Lister's proofs were in no way decisive. But there was
+no need for critics to misapprehend the nature of his claims or to
+introduce the personal element and accuse him of plagiarism. Sir James
+Simpson revived the memory of a Frenchman, Lemaire, who had used
+carbolic acid and written about it in 1860, and refused to give Lister
+any credit for his discoveries. As a fact Lister had never heard of
+Lemaire or his work; and, besides, the Frenchman had never known the
+principles on which Lister based his work, nor did he succeed in
+converting others to his practice. How little the personal question need
+be raised between men of the highest character is shown by the relations
+of Darwin and Wallace, who arrived independently and almost
+simultaneously at their theory of the origin of species, Wallace put his
+notes, the fruit of many years of work, at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> the disposal of Darwin; and
+both continued to labour at the establishment of truth, each giving
+generous recognition to the other's part in the work.</p>
+
+<p>Unmoved then by this and other attacks, Lister continued his experiments
+and spent the greatest pains, for years in succession, in improving the
+details of his treatment. It would take too long to narrate his
+struggles with carbolized silk and catgut in the search for the perfect
+ligature, which should be absorbed by the living tissues without setting
+up putrefaction in the wound; or his countless experiments to find a
+dressing which should be antiseptic without bringing any irritating
+substance near the vital spot. These latter finally resulted in the
+choice of the cyanide gauze, which with its delicate shade of heliotrope
+is now a familiar object in hospital and surgery. But one story is of
+special interest because it shows us clearly how Lister, while clinging
+to a principle, was ready to modify the details of treatment by the
+lessons which experience taught him. It was on the advice of others that
+he first introduced a carbolic spray in order to purify the air in the
+neighbourhood of an operation. At first he used a small spray worked by
+hand, but this was, for practical reasons, changed into a foot-spray and
+afterwards into one worked by steam. One objection to this was that the
+steam-engine was a cumbrous bit of apparatus to carry about with him to
+operations; and Lister all his life loved simplicity in his methods.
+Another was that the carbolic solution, falling on the hands of the
+operator, might chill them and impair his skill in handling his
+instruments. Lister himself suffered less in this way than most other
+surgeons; with some men it was a grave handicap. The spectators at a
+demonstration found it inconvenient, and in one instance at least we
+know that the patient was upset by the carbolic vapour reaching her
+eyes. This was no less a person than Queen Victoria, upon whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span> Lister
+was called to operate at Balmoral in 1870. About the use of this
+apparatus, which was an easy mark for ridicule, Lister had doubts for
+some time; but it was not the ridicule which killed it, but his growing
+conviction that it did not afford the security which was claimed for it.
+He was hesitating in 1881; in 1887 he abandoned the use of the spray
+entirely; in 1890 he expressed publicly at Berlin his regret for having
+advocated what had proved to be a needless complication and even a
+source of trouble in conducting operations. In adopting it he had for
+once been ready to listen to the advice of others without his usual
+precaution of first-hand experiments; in abandoning it he showed his
+contempt for merely outward consistency in practice and his willingness
+to admit his own mistakes.</p>
+
+<p>It was at Glasgow that Lister made his initial discoveries and conducted
+his first operations under the new system. It was in the Glasgow
+Infirmary that he worked cures which roused the astonishment of his
+students, however incredulous the older generation might be. He had
+formed a school and was happy in the loyal service and in the enthusiasm
+of those who worked under him, and he had no desire to leave such a
+fruitful field of work. But when in 1869 his father-in-law, owing to
+ill-health, resigned his professorship, and a number of Edinburgh
+students addressed an appeal to Lister to become a candidate for the
+post, he was strongly drawn towards the city where he had married and
+spent such happy years. No doubt too he and his wife wished to be near
+Syme, who lived for fourteen months after his stroke, and to cheer his
+declining days. Lister was elected in August 1869 and moved to Edinburgh
+two months later. For a while he took a furnished house, but early in
+1870 he made his home in Charlotte Square, from which he had easy access
+to the gardens between Princes Street and the Castle, 'a grand place'
+for his daily meditations, as he had it all to himself before breakfast.
+Altogether, Edinburgh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span> was a pleasant change to him, and refreshing; and
+the one man who was likely to stir controversy, Sir James Simpson, died
+six months after Lister's arrival. Among his fellow professors were men
+eminent in many lines, perhaps the most striking figures being old Sir
+Robert Christison of the medical faculty, Geikie the geologist, and
+Blackie the classical scholar. The hospital was still run on
+old-fashioned lines; but the staff were devoted to their work, from the
+head nurse, Mrs. Porter, a great 'character' whose portrait has been
+sketched in verse by Henley,<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> to the youngest student; and they were
+ready to co-operate heartily with the new chief. The hours of work
+suited Lister better than those at Glasgow, where he had begun with an
+early morning visit to the Infirmary and had to find time for a daily
+lecture. Here he limited himself to two lectures a week, visited the
+hospital at midday, and was able to devote a large amount of time to
+bacteriological study, which was his chief interest at this time.</p>
+
+<p>He stayed in Edinburgh eight years, and it was during his time here that
+he saw the interest of all Europe in surgical questions quickened by the
+Franco-German war, and had to realize how incomplete as yet was his
+victory over the forces of destruction. Some enterprising British and
+American doctors, who volunteered for field-service, came to him for
+advice, and he wrote a series of short instructions for their guidance;
+but he soon learnt how difficult it was to carry out his methods in the
+field, where appliances were inadequate and where wounds often got a
+long start before treatment could be applied. The French statistics,
+compiled after the war, are appalling to read: 90 out of 100 amputations
+proved fatal, and the total number of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span> deaths in hospital worked out at
+over 10,000. The Germans were in advance of the French in the
+cleanliness of their methods, and some of their doctors were already
+beginning to accept the antiseptic theory; but it was not till 1872 that
+this principle can be said to have won the day. The hospitals on both
+sides were left with a ghastly heritage of pyaemia and other diseases,
+raging almost unchecked in their wards; but, in the two years after the
+war, two of the most famous professors in German Universities<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> had by
+antiseptic methods obtained such striking results among their patients
+that the superiority of the treatment was evident; and both of them
+generously gave full credit to Lister as their teacher. When he made a
+long tour on the Continent in 1875, finishing up with visits to the
+chief medical schools in Germany, these men were foremost in greeting
+him, and he enjoyed a conspicuous triumph also at Leipzig. Sir Rickman
+Godlee, commenting on the indifference of his countrymen, says that
+Lister's teaching was by them 'accepted as a novelty, when it came back
+to England, refurbished from Germany'. But this was not till after he
+had left Edinburgh, to carry the torch of learning to the south.</p>
+
+<p>In Edinburgh his colleagues, with all their opportunities for learning
+at first hand, seemed strangely indifferent to Lister's presence in
+their midst, even when foreigners began to make pilgrimages to the
+central shrine of antiseptics. The real encouragement which he got came,
+as before, from his pupils, who thronged his lecture-room to the number
+of three or four hundred, with sustained enthusiasm. In some ways it is
+difficult to account for the popularity of his lectures. He made no
+elaborate preparations, but was content to devote a quiet half-hour to
+thinking out the subject in his arm-chair. After this he needed no
+notes, having his ideas and the development of his thought so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span> firmly in
+his grasp that he could follow it out clearly and could hold the
+attention of his audience. His voice, though musical, was not of great
+power. He was often impeded by a slight stammer, especially at the end
+of a session. He was not naturally an eloquent man, and attempted no
+flights of rhetoric. But it seems impossible to deny the possession of
+special ability to a man who consistently drew such large audiences
+throughout a long career; and if it was the matter rather than the
+manner which wove the spell, surely that is just the kind of good
+speaking which Scotsmen and Englishmen have always preferred.</p>
+
+<p>And so it needed an even greater effort than at Glasgow for Lister to
+strike his tent and adventure himself on new ground. It is true that
+London was his early home; London could give him wider fame and enable
+him to make a larger income by private practice; yet it is very doubtful
+whether these motives combined could have induced him to migrate again,
+now that he had reached the age of fifty. But he was a man with a
+mission. Some of his few converts in London held that only his presence
+there could shake the prevailing apathy, and he himself felt that he
+must make the effort in the interests of science.</p>
+
+<p>The professorial chair to which he was invited in 1877 was at King's
+College, which was relatively a small institution; its hospital was not
+up to the Edinburgh standard; the classes which attended his lectures
+were small. Owing to an unfortunate incident he was handicapped at the
+start. When receiving a parting address from 700 of his Edinburgh
+students he made an informal speech in the course of which he compared
+the conditions of surgical teaching then prevailing at Edinburgh and
+London, in terms which were not flattering to the southern metropolis.
+Some comparison was natural in the circumstances; Lister was not
+speaking for publication and had no idea<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span> that a reporter was present.
+But his remarks appeared in print, with the result that might be
+expected. The sting of the criticism lay in its truth, and many London
+surgeons were only too ready to resent anything which might be said by
+the new professor. When he had been living some time in London, Lister
+succeeded in allaying the ill feeling which resulted; but at first, even
+in his own hospital, he was met by coldness and opposition in his
+attempt to introduce new methods. In fact, had he not laid down definite
+conditions in accepting the post, he could never have made his way; but
+he had stipulated for bringing with him some of the men whom he had
+trained, and he was accompanied by four Edinburgh surgeons, the foremost
+of whom were John Stewart, a Canadian, and Watson Cheyne, the famous
+operator of the next generation. Even so he found his orders set at
+naught and his work hampered by a temper which he had never known
+elsewhere. In some cases the sisters entrenched themselves behind the
+Secretary's rules and refused to comply, not only with the requests of
+the new staff, but even with the dictates of common sense and humanity.
+Another trouble arose over the system of London examinations which
+tempted the students to reproduce faithfully the views of others and
+discouraged men from giving time to independent research. Lister's
+method of lecturing was designed to foster the spirit of inquiry, and he
+would not deign to fill his lecture-room by any species of 'cramming'.
+Never did his patience, his hopefulness, and his interest in the cause
+have to submit to greater trials; but the day of victory was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>The most visible sign of it was at the International Medical Congress
+held at Amsterdam in 1879 and attended by representatives of the great
+European nations. One sitting was devoted to the antiseptic system; and
+Lister, after delivering an address, received an ovation so marked that
+none of his fellow-countrymen could fail to see the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span> esteem in which he
+was held abroad. Even in London many of his rivals had by now been
+converted. The most distinguished of them, Sir James Paget, openly
+expressed remorse for his reluctance to accept the antiseptic principle
+earlier, and compared his own record of failures with the successes
+attained by his colleague at St. Bartholomew's Thomas Smith, the one
+eminent London surgeon who had given Listerism a thorough trial. Other
+triumphs followed, such as the visits in 1889 to Oxford and Cambridge to
+receive Honorary Degrees, the offer of a baronetcy in 1883, and the
+conferring on him in 1885 of the Prussian 'Ordre pour le merite'.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a>
+But a chronicle of such external matters is wearisome in itself; and
+before the climax was reached, the current of opinion was, by a strange
+turn of fortune, already setting in another direction.</p>
+
+<p>This was due to the introduction of the so-called aseptic theory so
+widely prevalent to-day, of which the chief prophet in 1885 was
+Professor von Bergmann of Berlin. Into the relative merits of systems,
+on which the learned disagree, it is absurd for laymen to enter; nor is
+it necessary to make such comparisons in order to appreciate the example
+of Lister's life. The new school believe that they have gained by the
+abandonment of carbolic and other antiseptics which may irritate a wound
+and by trusting to the agency of heat for killing all germs. But Lister
+himself took enormous pains to keep his antiseptic as remote as possible
+from the tissues to whose vitality he trusted, and went half-way to meet
+the aseptic doctrine. If he retained a belief in the need for carbolic
+and distrusted the elaborate ritual of the modern hospital, with its
+boiling of everybody and everything connected with an operation, it was
+not either from blindness or from pettiness of mind. As in the case of
+abandoning the spray, it was his love of simplicity which influenced
+him. If the detailed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> precautions of the complete aseptic system are
+found practicable and beneficial in a hospital, they are difficult to
+realize for a country surgeon who has to work in a humbler way, and
+Lister wished his procedure to be within reach of every practitioner who
+needed it.</p>
+
+<p>One more point must be considered before pronouncing Listerism to be
+superseded. In time of war there are occasions when necessity dictates
+the treatment to be followed. Wounded men, picked up on the field of
+battle some hours after they were hit, are not fit subjects for a method
+that needs a clear field of operation. It is then too late for aseptic
+precautions, as the wound may already be teeming with bacteria. Only the
+prompt use of carbolic can stay the ravages of putrefaction; and
+Lister's method, so often disparaged, must have saved the lives of
+thousands during the late War.</p>
+
+<p>In any case there is much common ground between the two schools: each
+can learn from the other, and those professors of asepticism who have
+acknowledged their debt to Lister have been wiser than those who have
+made contention their aim. This was never the spirit in which he
+approached scientific problems.</p>
+
+<p>An earlier controversy, in which his name was involved, was that which
+raged round the practice of vivisection. Here Lister had practically the
+whole of his profession behind him when he boldly supported the claims
+of science to have benefited humanity by the experiments conducted on
+animals and to have done so with a minimum of suffering to the latter.
+And it was well that science had a champion whose reputation for
+gentleness and moderation was so well established. Queen Victoria
+herself showed a lively interest in this fiercely-debated question; and
+in 1871, when Lister was appealed to by Sir Henry Ponsonby, her private
+secretary, to satisfy her doubts on the subject, he wrote an admirable
+reply, calm in tone and lucid in statement,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span> in which he showed how
+unfounded were the charges brought against his profession.</p>
+
+<p>In 1892 his professional career was drawing to a close. In that year he
+received the heartiest recognition that France could give to his work,
+when he went there officially to represent the Royal Society at the
+Pasteur celebration. A great gathering of scientists and others,
+presided over by President Carnot, came together at the Sorbonne to
+honour Pasteur's seventieth birthday. It was a dramatic scene such as
+our neighbours love, when the two illustrious fellow workers embraced
+one another in public, and the audience rose to the occasion. To be
+acclaimed with Pasteur was to Lister a crowning honour; but a year later
+fortune dealt him a blow from which he never recovered. His wife, his
+constant companion and helper, was taken ill suddenly at Rapallo on the
+Italian Riviera, and died in a few days; and Lister's life was sadly
+changed.</p>
+
+<p>He was still considerably before the public for another decade. He did
+much useful work for the Royal Society, of which he became Foreign
+Secretary in 1893 and President from 1895 to 1900. He visited Canada and
+South Africa, received the freedom of Edinburgh in 1898 and of London in
+1907, and in 1897 he received the special honour of a peerage, the only
+one yet conferred on a medical man. He took an active interest in the
+discoveries of Koch and Metchnikoff, preserving to an advanced age the
+capacity for accepting new ideas. He was largely instrumental in
+founding the Institute of Preventive Medicine now established at Chelsea
+and called by his name. But his work as a surgeon was complete before
+death separated him from his truest helper. In 1903 his strength began
+to fail, and for the last nine years of his life, at London or at
+Walmer, he was shut off from general society and lived the life of an
+invalid.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="morris" id="morris"></a><img src="images/morris.jpg" alt="WILLIAM MORRIS" />
+<br /><span class="smcap">william morris</span><br />
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In 1912 he passed away by almost imperceptible degrees,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> in his home
+by the sea, and by his own request was buried in the quiet cemetery of
+West Hampstead where his wife lay. A public service was held in
+Westminster Abbey, and a portrait medallion there preserves the memory
+of his features. The patient toil, the even temper, the noble purpose
+which inspired his life, had achieved their goal&mdash;he was a national hero
+as truly as any statesman or soldier of his generation; and if,
+according to his nature he wished his body to lie in a humble grave, he
+deserved full well to have his name preserved and honoured in our most
+sacred national shrine.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="WILLIAM_MORRIS" id="WILLIAM_MORRIS"></a>WILLIAM MORRIS</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1834-96</p>
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1834.</td><td> Born at Walthamstow, March 24.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1848-51.</td><td> Marlborough College.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1853-5.</td><td> Exeter College, Oxford.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1856.</td><td> Studies architecture under Street.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1857.</td><td> Red Lion Square; influence of D. G. Rossetti.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1858.</td><td> <i>Defence of Guenevere</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1859.</td><td> Marries Miss Jane Burden.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1860-5.</td><td> 'Red House', Upton, Kent.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1861.</td><td> Firm of Art Decorators founded in Queen Square, Bloomsbury. (Dissolved and refounded 1875.)</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1867-8.</td><td> <i>Life and Death of Jason</i>. 1868-70. <i>Earthly Paradise</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1870.</td><td> Tenant of Kelmscott Manor House, on the Upper Thames.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1871-3.</td><td> Visits to Iceland; work on Icelandic Sagas.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1876.</td><td> <i>Sigurd the Volsung</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1878.</td><td> Tenant of Kelmscott House, Hammersmith.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1881.</td><td> Works moved to Merton.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1883-4.</td><td> Active member of Social Democratic Federation.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1884-90.</td><td> Founder and active member of Socialist League.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1891.</td><td> Kelmscott Press founded.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1892-6.</td><td> Preparation and printing of Kelmscott <i>Chaucer</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1896.</td><td> Death at Hammersmith, October 3.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1896.</td><td> Burial at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">WILLIAM MORRIS</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Craftsman and Social Reformer</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>In general it is difficult to account for the birth of an original man
+at a particular place and time. As Carlyle says: 'Priceless Shakespeare
+was the free gift of nature, given altogether silently, received
+altogether silently.' Of his childhood history has almost nothing to
+relate, and what is true of Shakespeare is true in large measure of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>
+Burns, of Shelley, of Keats. Even in an age when records are more
+common, we can only discern a little and can explain less of the silent
+influences at work that begin to make the man. There are few things more
+surprising than that, in an age given up chiefly to industrial
+development, two prosperous middle-class homes should have given birth
+to John Ruskin and William Morris, so alien in temper to all that
+traditionally springs from such a soil. In the case of Morris there is
+nothing known of his ancestry to explain his rich and various gifts.
+From a child he seemed to have found some spring within himself which
+drew him instinctively to all that was beautiful in nature, in art, in
+books. His earliest companions were the Waverley Novels, which he began
+at the age of four and finished at seven; his earliest haunt was Epping
+Forest, where he roamed and dreamed through many of the years of his
+youth.</p>
+
+<p>His father, who was in business in the City of London, as partner in a
+bill-broking firm, lived at different times at Walthamstow and at
+Woodford; and the hills of the forest, in some places covered with thick
+growth of hornbeam or of beech, in others affording a wide view over the
+levels of the lower Thames, impressed themselves so strongly on the
+boy's memory and imagination that this scenery often recurred in the
+setting of tales which he wrote in middle life.</p>
+
+<p>There was no need of external aid to develop these tastes; and Morris
+was fortunate in going to a school which did no violence to them by
+forcing him into other less congenial pursuits. Marlborough College, at
+the time when he went there in 1848, had only been open a few years. The
+games were not organized but left to voluntary effort; and during his
+three or four years at school Morris never took part in cricket or
+football. In the latter game, at any rate, he should have proved a
+notable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span> performer on unorthodox lines, impetuous, forcible, and burly
+as he was. But he found no reason to regret the absence of games, or to
+feel that time hung heavy on his hands. The country satisfied his wants,
+the Druidic stones at Avebury, the green water-meadows of the Kennet,
+the deep glades of Savernake Forest. So strong was the spell of nature,
+that he hardly felt the need for companionship; and, as chance had not
+yet thrown him into close relations with any friend of similar tastes,
+he lived much alone.</p>
+
+<p>It was a different matter at Oxford, to which he proceeded in January
+1853. Among those who matriculated at Exeter College that year was a
+freshman from Birmingham named Edward Burne Jones; and within a few days
+Morris had begun a friendship with him which lasted for his whole life
+and was the source of his greatest happiness. For more than forty years
+their names were associated, and so they will remain for generations to
+come in Exeter College Chapel, where may be seen the great tapestry of
+the Nativity designed by one and executed by the other. Burne-Jones had
+not yet found his vocation as a painter; he came to Oxford like Morris
+with the wish to take Holy Orders. He was of Welsh family with a Celtic
+fervour for learning, and a Celtic instinct for what was beautiful, and
+at King Edward's School he had made friends with several men who came up
+to Pembroke College about the same time. Their friendship was extended
+to his new acquaintance from Marlborough. Here Morris found himself in
+the midst of a small circle who shared his enthusiasm for literature and
+art, and among whom he quickly learned to express those ideas which had
+been stirring his heart in his solitary youth. Through the knowledge
+gained by close observation and a retentive memory, through his
+impetuosity and swift decision, Morris soon became a leader among them.
+Carlyle and Ruskin, Keats and Tennyson,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span> were at this time the most
+potent influences among them; and when Morris was not arguing and
+declaiming in the circle at Pembroke, he was sitting alone with
+Burne-Jones at Exeter reading aloud to him for hours together French
+romances and other mediaeval tales. Young men of to-day, with a wealth
+of books on their shelves and of pictures on their walls, with popular
+reproductions bringing daily to their doors things old and new, can
+little realize the thrill of excitement with which these men discovered
+and enjoyed a single new poem of Tennyson or an early drawing by Millais
+or Rossetti. How they were quickened by ever fresh delight in the beauty
+and strangeness of such things, how they responded to the magic of
+romance and dreamed of a day when they should themselves help in the
+creation of such work, how they started a magazine of their own and
+essayed short flights in prose or verse, can best be read in the volumes
+which Lady Burne-Jones<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> has dedicated to the memory of her husband.
+This period is of capital importance in the life of William Morris, and
+the year 1855 especially was fraught with momentous decisions.</p>
+
+<p>Like Burne-Jones he had gone up to Oxford intending to take Holy Orders
+in the Church of England; but the last three years had taught him that
+his interest lay elsewhere. The spirit of faith, of reverence, of love
+for his fellow men still attracted him to Christianity; but he could not
+subscribe to a body of doctrine or accept the authority of a single
+Church. His ideal shifted gradually. At one time he hoped to found a
+brotherhood which was to combine art with religion and to train
+craftsmen for the service of the Church; but he was more fitted to work
+in the world than in the cloister, and the social aspect of this
+foundation prevailed over the religious. Nor was it mere self-culture to
+which he aspired. The arts as he understood them were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span> one field, and a
+wide field, for enlarging the powers of men and increasing their
+happiness, for continuing all that was most precious in the heritage of
+the past and passing on the torch to the future; in this field there was
+work for many labourers and all might be serving the common good.</p>
+
+<p>His own favourite study was the thirteenth century, when princes and
+merchants, monks and friars, poets and craftsmen had combined to exalt
+the Church and to beautify Western Europe; and he wished to recreate the
+nineteenth century in its spirit. And so while Burne-Jones discovered
+his true gift in the narrower field of painting, Morris began his
+apprenticeship in the master craft of architecture, and passed from one
+art to another till he had covered nearly the whole field of endeavour
+with ever-growing knowledge of principle and restless activity of hand
+and eye. His father had died in 1847; and when Morris came of age he
+inherited a fortune of about &pound;900 a year and was his own master. Before
+the end of 1855 he imparted to his mother his decision about taking
+Orders. The Rubicon was crossed; but on which road he was to reach his
+goal was not settled for many years. Twice he had to retrace his steps
+from a false start and begin a fresh career. The year 1856 saw him still
+working at Oxford, in the office of Street, the architect. Two more
+years (1857-8) saw him labouring at easel pictures under the influence
+of Rossetti, though he also published his first volume of poetry at this
+time. The year 1859 found him married, and for the time absorbed in the
+making of a home, but still feeling his way towards the choice of a
+profession.</p>
+
+<p>Dante Gabriel Rossetti was in some ways the most original man of his
+generation; certainly he was the only individual whose influence was
+ever capable of dominating Morris and drawing him to a course of action
+which he would not have chosen for himself. Rossetti's tragic collapse
+after his wife's death, and the pictures which he painted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span> in his later
+life, have obscured the true portrait of this virile and attractive
+character. Burne-Jones fell completely under his spell, and he tells us
+how for many years his chief anxiety, over each successive work of art
+that he finished, was 'what Gabriel would have thought of it'. So
+decisive was his judgement, so dominating his personality.</p>
+
+<p>Morris's period of hesitation ended in 1861, when the first firm of
+decorators was started among the friends. Of the old Oxford set it
+included Burne-Jones and Faulkner; new elements were introduced by
+Philip Webb the architect and Madox Brown the painter. The leadership in
+ideas might still perhaps belong to Rossetti; but in execution William
+Morris proved himself at once the captain. The actual work which he
+contributed in the first year was more than equal to that produced by
+his six partners, and future years told the same tale.</p>
+
+<p>In the early part of his married life Morris lived in Kent, at Upton,
+some twelve miles from Charing Cross, in a house built for him by his
+friend Webb. The house was of red brick, simple but unconventional in
+character, built to be the home of one who detested stucco and all other
+shams, and wished things to seem what they were. Its decoration was to
+be the work of its owner and his friends.</p>
+
+<p>Here we see Morris in the strength of early manhood and in all the
+exuberance of his rich vigorous nature, surrounded by friends for whom
+he kept open house, in high contentment with life, eager to respond to
+all the claims upon his energy. Here came artists and poets, in the
+pleasant summer days, jesting, dreaming, discussing, indulging in bouts
+of single-stick or game of bowls in the garden, walking through the
+country-side, quoting poets old and new, and scheming to cover the walls
+and cupboards of the rooms with the legends of mediaeval romance.
+Visitors of the conventional aesthetic type would have many a surprise
+and many a shock. The jests often took<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span> the form of practical jokes, of
+which Morris, from his explosive temper, was chosen to be the butt, but
+which in the end he always shared and enjoyed. Rossetti, Burne-Jones,
+and Faulkner would conspire to lay booby traps on the doors for him,
+would insult him with lively caricatures, and with relentless humour
+would send him to 'Coventry' for the duration of a dinner. Or he would
+have a sudden tempestuous outbreak in which chairs would collapse and
+door panels be kicked in and violent expletives would resound through
+the hall. In all, Morris was the central figure, impatient, boisterous,
+with his thick-set figure, unkempt hair, and untidy clothing, but with
+the keenest appreciation and sympathy for any manifestation of beauty in
+literature or in art. But this idyll was short-lived. Ill-health in the
+Burne-Jones family was followed by an illness which befell Morris
+himself; and the demand of the growing business and the need for the
+master to be nearer at hand forced him to leave Upton. The Red House was
+sold in 1865; and first Bloomsbury and later Hammersmith furnished him
+with a home more conveniently placed.</p>
+
+<p>The period of his return to London coincided with the most fruitful
+period of his poetic work. Already at Oxford he had written some pieces
+of verse which had found favour with his friends. He soon found that his
+taste and his talent was for narrative poetry; and in 1856 he made
+acquaintance with his two supreme favourites, Chaucer and Malory. It is
+to them that he owes most in all that he produced in poetry or in prose,
+and notably in the <i>Earthly Paradise</i>, which he published between 1868
+and 1870. This consists of a collection of stories drawn chiefly from
+Greek sources, but supposed to be told by a band of wanderers in the
+fourteenth century. Thus the classic legends are seen through a veil of
+mediaeval romance. He had no wish to step back, in the spirit of a
+modern scholar,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span> across the ages of ignorance or mist, and to pick up
+the classic stones clear-cut and cold as the Greeks left them. To him
+the legends had a continuous history up to the Renaissance; as they were
+retold by Romans, Italians, or Proven&ccedil;als, they were as a plant growing
+in our gardens, still putting out fresh shoots, not an embalmed corpse
+such as later scholars have taught us to exhume and to study in the
+chill atmosphere of our libraries and museums. This mediaevalism of his
+was much misunderstood, both in literature and in art; people would talk
+to him as if he were imitating the windows or tapestries of the Middle
+Ages, whereas what he wanted was to recapture the technical secrets
+which the true craftsmen had known and then to use these methods in a
+live spirit to carry on the work to fresh developments in the future.</p>
+
+<p>If the French tales of the fourteenth century were an inspiration to him
+in his earliest poems, a second influence no less potent was that of the
+Icelandic Sagas. He began to study them in 1869, and a little later,
+with the aid of Professor Magnusson, he was translating some of them
+into English. He made two journeys to Iceland, and was deeply moved by
+the wild grandeur of the scenes in which these heroic tales were set.
+For many successive days he rode across grim solitary wastes with more
+enthusiasm than he could give to the wonted pilgrimages to Florence and
+Venice. When he was once under the spell, only the geysers with their
+suggestion of modern text-books and <i>Mangnall's Questions</i><a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> could
+bore him; all else was magical and entrancing. This enthusiasm bore
+fruit in <i>Sigurd the Volsung</i>, the most powerful of his epic poems,
+written in an old English metre, which Morris, with true feeling for
+craftsmanship, revived and adapted to his theme. His poetry in general,
+less rich than that of Tennyson,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span> less intense than that of Rossetti,
+had certain qualities of its own, and owed its popularity chiefly to his
+gift for telling a story swiftly, naturally and easily, and in such a
+way as to carry his reader along with him.</p>
+
+<p>His fame was growing in London, which was ready enough in the nineteenth
+century to make the most of its poets. In Society, if he had allowed it
+to entertain him, he would have been a picturesque figure, though hardly
+such as was expected by admirers of his poetry and his art. To some his
+dress suggested only the prosperous British workman; to one who knew him
+later he seemed like 'the purser of a Dutch brig' in his blue tweed
+sailor-cut suit. This was his Socialist colleague Mr. Hyndman, who
+describes 'his imposing forehead and clear grey eyes with the powerful
+nose and slightly florid cheeks', and tells us how, when he was talking,
+'every hair of his head and his rough shaggy beard appeared to enter
+into the subject as a living part of himself.' Elsewhere he speaks of
+Morris's 'quick, sharp manner, his impulsive gestures, his hearty
+laughter and vehement anger'. At times Morris could be bluff beyond
+measure. Stopford Brooke, who afterwards became one of his friends,
+recounts his first meeting with Morris in 1867. 'He didn't care for
+parsons, and he glared at me when I said something about good manners.
+Leaning over the table with his eyes set and his fist clenched he
+shouted at me, "I am a boor and the son of a boor".' So ready as he was
+to challenge anything which smacked of conventionality or pretension, he
+was not quite a safe poet to lionize or to ask into mixed company.</p>
+
+<p>But it was less in literature than in art that he influenced his
+generation, and we must return to the history of the firm. From small
+beginnings it had established itself in the favourable esteem of the
+few, and, thanks to exhibitions, its fame was spreading. Though as many
+as twelve branches are mentioned in a single copy of its prospectus,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>
+there was generally one department which for the moment occupied most of
+the creative energy of the chief.</p>
+
+<p>Painted glass is named first on the prospectus, and was one of the
+earlier successes of the firm. As it was employed for churches more
+often than for private houses, it is familiar to many who do not know
+Morris's work in their homes; but it is hardly the most characteristic
+of his activities. For one thing, the material, the 'pot glass', was
+purchased, not made on the premises. Morris's skill lay in selecting the
+best colours available rather than in creating them himself. For
+another, he knew that his own education in figure-drawing was
+incomplete, and he left this to other artists. Most of the figures were
+designed by Burne-Jones, and some of the best-known examples of his
+windows are at St. Philip's, Birmingham, near the artist's birthplace,
+and at St. Margaret's, Rottingdean, where he died.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> But no cartoon,
+by Burne-Jones or any one else, was executed till Morris had supervised
+the colour scheme; and he often designed backgrounds of foliage or
+landscape.</p>
+
+<p>To those people of limited means who cannot afford tapestries and
+embroidery (which follow painted glass on the firm's list), yet who wish
+to beautify their homes, interest centres in the chintzes and
+wall-papers. These show the distinctive gifts by which Morris most
+widely influenced the Victorian traditions. It is not easy to explain
+why one design stirs our curiosity and quickens our delight, while
+another has the opposite effect. Critics can prate about natural and
+conventional art without helping us to understand; but a passage from
+Mr. Clutton-Brock seems worth quoting as simply and clearly phrased.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a>
+'Morris would start', he says, 'with a pattern in his mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span> and from the
+first saw everything as a factor in that pattern. But in these early
+wall-papers he showed a power of pattern-making that has never been
+equalled in modern times. For though everything is subject to the
+pattern, yet the pattern itself expresses a keen delight in the objects
+of which it is composed. So they are like the poems in which the words
+keep a precise and homely sense and yet in their combination make a
+music expressive of their sense.' Beginning with the design of the
+rose-trellis in 1862, Morris laid under contribution many of the most
+familiar flowers and trees. The daisy, the honeysuckle, the willow
+branch, are but a few of the best known: each bears the stamp of his
+inventive fancy and his cunning hand: each flower claims recognition for
+itself, and reveals new charms in its appointed setting. Of these papers
+we hear that Morris himself designed between seventy and eighty, and
+when we add chintzes, tapestry, and other articles we may well be
+astonished at the fertility of his brain.</p>
+
+<p>Even so, much must have depended on his workmen as the firm's operations
+extended.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mackail tells us of the faith which Morris had in the artistic
+powers of the average Englishman, if rightly trained. He was ready to
+take and train the boy whom he found nearest to hand, and he often
+achieved surprising results. His own belief was that a good tradition
+once established in the workshops, by which the workman was allowed to
+develop his intelligence, would of itself produce good work: others
+believed that the successes would have been impossible without the
+unique gifts of the master, one of which was that he could intuitively
+select the right man for each job.</p>
+
+<p>The material as well as the workers needed this selective power. The
+factories of the day had accustomed the public to second-rate material
+and second-rate colour, and Morris<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span> was determined to set a higher
+standard. In 1875 he was absorbed in the production of vegetable dyes,
+which he insisted on having pure and rich in tone. Though madder and
+weld might supply the reds and yellows which he needed, blue was more
+troublesome. For a time he accepted prussian blue, but he knew that
+indigo was the right material, and to indigo he gave days of
+concentrated work, preparing and watching the vats, dipping the wool
+with his own hands (which often bore the stain of work for longer than
+he wished), superintending the minutest detail and refusing to be
+content with anything short of the best. But these two qualities of
+industry and of aiming at a high standard would not have carried him so
+far if he had not added exceptional gifts of nature. With him hand and
+eye worked together as in few craftsmen of any age; and thus he could
+carry his experiments to a successful end, choosing his material, mixing
+his colours, and timing his work with exact felicity. And when he had
+found the right way he had the rare skill to communicate his knowledge
+to others and thus to train them for the work.</p>
+
+<p>Queen Square, Bloomsbury, was the first scene of his labours; but as the
+firm prospered and the demands for their work grew, Morris found the
+premises too small. At one time he had hopes of finding a suitable spot
+near the old cloth-working towns at the foot of the Cotswolds, where
+pure air and clear water were to be found; but the conditions of trade
+made it necessary for him to be nearer to London. In 1881 he bought an
+old silk-weaving mill at Merton near Wimbledon, on the banks of the
+Wandle, and this is still the centre of the work.</p>
+
+<p>To study special industries, or to execute a special commission, he was
+often obliged to make long journeys to the north of England or
+elsewhere; but the routine of his life consisted in daily travelling
+between his house at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span> Hammersmith and the mills at Merton, which was
+more tiresome than it is to-day owing to the absence of direct connexion
+between these districts. But his energy overbore these obstacles; and,
+except when illness prevented him, he remained punctual in his
+attendance to business and in close touch with all his workers. Towards
+them Morris was habitually generous. The weaker men were kept on and
+paid by time, long after they had ceased to produce remunerative work,
+while the more capable were in course of time admitted as profit-sharers
+into the business. Every man who worked under him had to be prepared for
+occasional outbursts of impatient temper, when Morris spoke, we are
+told, rather as a good workman scornful of bad work, than as an employer
+finding fault with his men; but in the long run all were sure to receive
+fair and friendly treatment.</p>
+
+<p>Such was William Morris at his Merton works, a master craftsman worthy
+of the best traditions of the Middle Ages, fit to hold his place with
+the masons of Chartres, the weavers of Bruges, and the wood-carvers of
+Nuremberg. As a manager of a modern industrial firm competing with
+others for profit he was less successful. The purchasing of the best
+material, the succession of costly experiments, the 'scrapping' of all
+imperfect work, meant a heavy drain on the capital. Also the society had
+been hurriedly formed without proper safeguards for fairly recompensing
+the various members according to their work; and when in 1875 it was
+found necessary to reconstitute it, that Morris might legally hold the
+position which he had from the outset won by his exertions, this could
+not be effected without loss, nor without a certain friction between the
+partners. So, however prosperous the business might seem to be through
+its monopoly of certain wares, it was difficult even for a skilful
+financier to make on each year a profit which was in any way
+proportionate to the fame<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span> of the work produced. But in 1865 Morris was
+fortunate in finding a friend ready to undertake the keeping of the
+books, who sympathized with his aims and whose gifts supplemented his
+own; and, for the rest, he had read and digested the work of Ruskin, and
+had learnt from him that the function of the true merchant was to
+produce goods of the best quality, and only secondarily to produce a
+profitable balance-sheet.</p>
+
+<p>How it was that from being the head of an industrial business Morris
+came to be an ardent advocate of Socialism is the central problem of his
+life. The root of the matter lay in his love of art and of the Middle
+Ages. He had studied the centuries productive of the best art known to
+him, and he believed that he understood the conditions under which it
+was produced. The one essential was that the workers found pleasure in
+their work. They were not benumbed by that Division of Labour which set
+the artisan laboriously repeating the same mechanical task; they worked
+at the bidding of no master jealously measuring time, material, and
+price against his competitors; they passed on from one generation to
+another the tradition of work well done for its own sake. He knew there
+was another side to the picture, and that in many ways the freedom of
+the mediaeval craftsman had been curtailed. He did not ask history to
+run backwards, but he felt that the nineteenth century was advancing on
+the wrong line of progress. To him there seemed to be three types of
+social framework. The feudal or Tory type was past and obsolete; for the
+richer classes of to-day had neither the power nor the will to renew it.
+The Whig or Manchester ideal held the field, the rich employer regarding
+his workmen as so many hands capable of producing so much work and so
+much profit, and believing that free bargaining between free men must
+yield the best economic results for all classes, and that beyond
+economic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span> and political liberty the State had no more to give, and a man
+must be left to himself. Against this doctrine emphatic protests had
+been uttered in widely differing forms by Carlyle and Disraeli, by
+Ruskin and Dickens; but it was slow to die.</p>
+
+<p>The third ideal was that of the Socialist; and to Morris this meant that
+the State should appropriate the means of production and should so
+arrange that every worker was assured of the means of livelihood and of
+sufficient leisure to enjoy the fruits of what he had made. He who could
+live so simply himself thought more of the unjust distribution of
+happiness than of wealth, as may be seen in his <i>News from Nowhere</i>,
+where he gives a Utopian picture of England as it was to be after the
+establishment of Socialism. Here rather than in polemical speeches or
+pamphlets can we find the true reflection of his attitude and the way in
+which he thought about reform.</p>
+
+<p>It was not easy for him to embark on such a crusade. In his early
+manhood, except for his volunteering in the war scare of 1859, he had
+taken no part in public life. The first cause which led to his appearing
+at meetings was wrath at the ill-considered restoration of old
+buildings. In 1877, when a society was formed for their protection,
+Morris was one of the leaders, and took his stand by Ruskin, who had
+already stated the principles to be observed. They believed that the
+presentation of nineteenth-century masonry in the guise of mediaeval
+work was a fraud on the public, that it obscured the true lessons of the
+past, and that, under the pretence of reviving the original design, it
+marred the development which had naturally gone forward through the
+centuries. It was from his respect for work and the workman that Morris
+denounced this pedantry, from his love of stones rightly hewn and laid,
+of carving which the artist had executed unconsciously in the spirit of
+his time, and which was now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> being replaced by lifeless imitation to the
+order of a bookish antiquary. Against this he was ready to protest at
+all times, and references to meetings of 'Antiscrape', as he calls the
+society, are frequent in his letters. He also was rigid in declining all
+orders to the firm where his own decorations might seem to disturb the
+relics of the past.</p>
+
+<p>His next step was still more difficult. The plunge of a famous poet and
+artist into agitation, of a capitalist and employer into Socialism,
+provoked much wonder and many indignant protests. His severer critics
+seized on any pamphlet of his in which they could detect logical
+fallacies and scornfully asked whether this was fit work for the author
+of the <i>Earthly Paradise</i>. Many liberal-minded people indeed regretted
+the diversion of his activities, but the question whether he was wasting
+them is one that needs consideration; and to judge him fairly we must
+look at the problem from his side and postulate that Socialism (whether
+he interpreted its theories aright or not) did pursue practical ideals.
+If Aeschylus was more proud of fighting at Marathon than of writing
+tragedies&mdash;if Socrates claimed respect as much for his firmness as a
+juryman as for his philosophic method&mdash;surely Morris might believe that
+his duty to his countrymen called him to leave his study and his
+workshop to take an active part in public affairs. He might be more
+prone to error than those who had trained themselves to political life,
+but he faced the problems honestly and sacrificed his comfort for the
+common good.</p>
+
+<p>Criticism took a still more personal turn in the hands of those who
+pointed out that Morris himself occupied the position of a capitalist
+employer, and who asked him to live up to his creed by divesting himself
+of his property and taking his place in the ranks of the proletariat.
+This argument is dealt with by Mr. Mackail,<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> who describes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span> the steps
+which Morris took to admit his foremen to sharing the profits of the
+business, and defends him against the charge of inconsistency. Morris
+may not have thought out the question in all its aspects, but much of
+the criticism passed upon him was even more illogical and depended on
+far too narrow and illiterate a use of the word Socialism. He knew as
+well as his critics that no new millennium could be introduced by merely
+taking the wealth of the rich and dividing it into equal portions among
+the poor.</p>
+
+<p>However reluctant Morris might be to leave his own work for public
+agitation, he plunged into the Socialist campaign with characteristic
+energy. For two or three years he was constantly devoting his Sundays to
+open-air speech-making, his evenings to thinly-attended meetings in
+stuffy rooms in all the poorer parts of London; and, at the call of
+comrades, he often travelled into the provinces, and even as far as
+Scotland, to lend a hand. And he spent time and money prodigally in
+supporting journals which were to spread the special doctrines of his
+form of Socialism. Nor was it only the indifference and the hostility of
+those outside which he had to meet; quarrels within the party were
+frequent and bitter, though Morris himself, despite his impetuous
+temper, showed a wonderful spirit of brotherliness and conciliation. For
+two years his work lay with the Socialist Democratic Federation, till
+differences of opinion with Mr. Hyndman drove him to resign; in 1885 he
+founded the Socialist League, and for this he toiled, writing, speaking,
+and attending committees, till 1889, when the control was captured by a
+knot of anarchists, in spite of all his efforts. After this he ceased to
+be a 'militant'; but in no way did he abandon his principles or despair
+of the ultimate triumph of the cause. The result of his efforts must
+remain unknown. If the numbers of his audiences were often
+insignificant, and the visible outcome discouraging to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span> degree, yet in
+estimating the value of personal example no outward test can satisfy us.
+He gave of his best with the same thoroughness as in all his crafts, and
+no man can do more. But, looking at the matter from a regard to his
+special gifts and to his personal happiness, we may be glad that his
+active connexion with Socialism ceased in 1889, and that he was granted
+seven years of peace before the end.</p>
+
+<p>These were the years that saw the birth and growth of the 'Kelmscott'
+printing press, so called after his country house. Of illuminated
+manuscripts<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> he had always been fond, but it was only in 1888 that
+his attention was turned to details of typography. The mere study of old
+and new founts did not satisfy him for long; the creative impulse
+demanded that he should design types of his own and produce his own
+books. As in the other arts, his lifelong friend Burne-Jones was called
+in to supply figure drawings for the illustrated books which Morris was
+himself to adorn with decorative borders and initials. Of his many
+schemes, not all came to fruition; but after four years of planning, and
+a year and a half given to the actual process of printing, his
+masterpiece, the Kelmscott edition of Chaucer, was completed, and a copy
+was in his hands a few months before his death.</p>
+
+<p>The last seven years of his life were spent partly at Hammersmith and
+partly at Kelmscott, the old manor house, lying on the banks of the
+Upper Thames, which he had tenanted since 1878. He had never been a
+great traveller, dearly though he loved the north of France with its
+Gothic cathedrals and 'the river bottoms with the endless poplar forests
+and the green green meadows'. His tastes were very individual. Iceland
+made stronger appeals to him than Greece or Rome; and even at Florence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
+and Venice he was longing to return to England and its homely familiar
+scenes. Scotland with its bare hills, 'raw-boned' as he called it, never
+gave him much pleasure; for he liked to see the earth clothed by nature
+and by the hand of man. By the Upper Thames, at the foot of the
+Cotswolds, the buildings of the past were still generally untouched; and
+beyond the orchards and gardens, with their old-world look, lay
+stretches of meadows, diversified by woods and low hills, haunted with
+the song of birds; and he could believe himself still to be in the
+England of Chaucer and Shakespeare. There he would always welcome the
+friends whom he loved and who loved him; but to the world at large he
+was a recluse. His abrupt manner, his Johnsonian utterances, would have
+made him a disconcerting element in Victorian tea-parties. When provoked
+by foolish utterances, he was, no less than Johnson, downright in
+contradiction. There was nothing that he disliked so much as being
+lionized; and there was much to annoy him when he stepped outside his
+own home and circle. His last public speech was made on the abuses of
+public advertisement; and in the last year of his life we hear him
+growling in Ruskinian fashion that he was ever 'born with a sense of
+romance and beauty in this accursed age'.</p>
+
+<p>His life had been a strenuous and exhausting one, but he enjoyed it to
+the last. As he said to Hyndman ten days before the end, 'It has been a
+jolly good world to me when all is said, and I don't wish to leave it
+yet awhile'. At least his latter years had been years of peace. He had
+been freed from the stress of conflict; he had found again the joys of
+youth, and could recapture the old music.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The days have slain the days, and the seasons have gone by<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And brought me the summer again; and here on the grass I lie<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As erst I lay and was glad, ere I meddled with right and wrong.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></p><p>After an illness in 1891 he never had quite the same physical vigour,
+though he continued to employ himself fully for some years in a way
+which would tax the energy of many robust men. In 1895 the vital energy
+was failing, and he was content to relax his labours. In August 1896 he
+was suffering from congestion of the lungs, and in October he died
+peacefully at Hammersmith, attended by the loving care of his wife and
+his oldest friends. The funeral at Kelmscott was remarkable for
+simplicity and beauty, the coffin being borne along the country road in
+a farm wagon strewn with leaves; and he lies in the quiet churchyard
+amid the meadows and orchards which he loved so well.</p>
+
+<p>Among the prophets and poets who took up their parable against the
+worship of material wealth and comfort, he will always have a foremost
+place. The thunder of Carlyle, the fiery eloquence of Ruskin, the
+delicate irony of Matthew Arnold, will find a responsive echo in the
+heart of one reader or another; will expose the false standards of life
+set up in a materialistic age and educate them in the pursuit of what is
+true, what is beautiful, and what is reasonable. But to men who work
+with their hands there must always be something specially inspiring in
+the life and example of one who was a handicraftsman and so much beside.
+And Morris was not content to denounce and to despair. He enjoyed what
+was good in the past and the present, and he preached in a hopeful
+spirit a gospel of yet better things for the future. He was an artist in
+living. Amid all the diversity of his work there was an essential unity
+in his life. The men with whom he worked were the friends whom he
+welcomed in his leisure; the crafts by which he made his wealth were the
+pastimes over which he talked and thought in his home; his dreams for
+the future were framed in the setting of the mediaeval romances which he
+loved from his earliest days. Though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span> he lived often in an atmosphere of
+conflict, and often knew failure, he has left us an example which may
+help to fill the emptiness and to kindle the lukewarmness of many an
+unquiet heart, and may reconcile the discords that mar the lives of too
+many of his countrymen in this age of transition and of doubt.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="green" id="green"></a><img src="images/green.jpg" alt="JOHN RICHARD GREEN" />
+<br /><span class="smcap">john richard green</span><br />
+From a drawing by Frederick Sandys</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="JOHN_RICHARD_GREEN" id="JOHN_RICHARD_GREEN"></a>JOHN RICHARD GREEN</h2>
+
+<p class="center">1837-83</p>
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1837.</td><td> Born at Oxford, December 12.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1845-52.</td><td> Magdalen College School, Oxford.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1852-4.</td><td> With a private tutor.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1855-9.</td><td> Jesus College, Oxford.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1861-3.</td><td> Curate at Goswell Road, E.C.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1863-4.</td><td> Curate at Hoxton.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1864-9.</td><td> Mission Curate and Rector of St. Philip's, Stepney.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1869.</td><td> Abandons parochial work. Librarian at Lambeth Palace.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1867-73.</td><td> Contributor to <i>Saturday Review</i>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1874.</td><td> <i>Short History of the English People</i> published.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1877.</td><td> Marries Miss Alice Stopford.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1877-80.</td><td> Four volumes of larger <i>History of the English People</i> published.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1880-1.</td><td> Winter in Egypt.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1882.</td><td> January, <i>Making of England</i> published.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1883.</td><td> January, <i>Conquest of England</i> finished (published posthumously). Last illness. Death, March 7.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">JOHN RICHARD GREEN</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Historian</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>The eighteenth century did some things with a splendour and a
+completeness which is the despair of later, more restlessly striving
+generations. Barren though it was of poetry and high imagination, it
+gave birth to our most famous works in political economy, in biography,
+and in history; and it has set up for us classic models of imperishable
+fame. But the wisdom of Adam Smith, the shrewd observation of Boswell,
+the learning of Gibbon, did not readily find their way into the
+market-place. Outside of the libraries and the booksellers' rows in
+London and Edinburgh they were in slight demand. Even when the volumes
+of Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson had been added<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span> to the library shelves,
+where Clarendon and Burnet reigned before them, too often they only
+passed to a state of dignified retirement and slumber. No hand disturbed
+them save that of the conscientious housemaid who dusted them in due
+season. They were part of the furnishings indispensable to the elegance
+of a 'gentleman's seat'; and in many cases the guests, unless a Gibbon
+were among them, remained ignorant whether the labels on their backs
+told a truthful tale, or whether they disguised an ingenious box or
+backgammon board, or formed a mere covering to the wall.</p>
+
+<p>The fault was with the public more than with the authors. Those who
+ventured on the quest would find noble eloquence in Clarendon, lively
+narrative in Burnet, critical analysis in Hume; but the indolence of the
+Universities and the ignorance of the general public unfitted them for
+the effort required to value a knowledge of history or to take steps to
+acquire it. It is true that the majestic style of Clarendon was puzzling
+to a generation accustomed to prose of the fashion inaugurated by Dryden
+and Addison; and that Hume and other historians, with all their
+precision and clearness, were wanting in fervour and imagination. But
+the record of English history was so glorious, so full of interest for
+the patriot and for the politician, that it should have spoken for
+itself, and the apathy of the educated classes was not creditable to
+them. Even so Ezekiel found the Israelites of his day, forgetful of
+their past history and its lessons, sunk in torpor and indifference. He
+looked upon the wreckage of his nation, settled in the Babylonian plain;
+in his fervent imagination he saw but a valley of dry bones, and called
+aloud to the four winds that breath should come into them and they
+should live.</p>
+
+<p>In our islands the prophets who wielded the most potent spell came from
+beyond the Border. Walter Scott exercised the wider influence, Carlyle
+kindled the intenser flame.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span> As artists they followed very different
+methods. Scott, like a painter, wielding a vigorous brush full charged
+with human sympathies, set before us a broad canvas in lively colours
+filled with a warm diffused light. Carlyle worked more in the manner of
+an etcher, the mordant acid eating deep into the plate. From the depth
+of his shadows would stand out single figures or groups, in striking
+contrast, riveting the attention and impressing themselves on the
+memory. Scott drew thousands of readers to sympathize with the men and
+women of an earlier day, and to feel the romance that attaches to lost
+causes in Church and State. Carlyle set scores of students striving to
+recreate the great men of the past and by their standards to reject the
+shibboleths of the present. However different were the methods of the
+enchanters, the dry bones had come to life. Mediaeval abbot and
+crusader, cavalier and covenanter, Elizabeth and Cromwell, spoke once
+more with a living voice to ears which were opened to hear.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did the English Universities fail to send forth men who could meet
+the demands of a generation which was waking up to a healthier political
+life. The individual who achieved most in popularizing English history
+was Macaulay, who began to write his famous Essays in 1825, the year
+after he won his fellowship at Trinity, though the world had to wait
+another twenty-five years for his History of the English Revolution.
+Since then Cambridge historians like Acton, or Maitland, have equalled
+or excelled him in learning, though none has won such brilliant success.
+But it was the Oxford School which did most, in the middle of the
+nineteenth century, to clear up the dark places of our national record
+and to present a complete picture of the life of the English people.
+Freeman delved long among the chronicles of Normans and Saxons; Stubbs
+no less laboriously excavated the charters of the Plantagenets; Froude
+hewed his path through the State papers of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span> Tudors; while Gardiner
+patiently unravelled the tangled skein of Stuart misgovernment. John
+Richard Green, one of the youngest of the school, took a wider subject,
+the continuous history of the English people. He was fortunate in
+writing at a time when the public was prepared to find the subject
+interesting, but he himself did wonders in promoting this interest, and
+since then his work has been a lamp to light teachers on the way.</p>
+
+<p>In a twofold way Green may claim to be a child of Oxford. Not only was
+he a member of the University, but he was a native of the town, being
+born in the centre of that ancient city in the year of Queen Victoria's
+accession. His family had been engaged in trade there for two
+generations without making more than a competence; and even before his
+father died in 1852 they were verging on poverty. Of his parents, who
+were kind and affectionate, but not gifted with special talents, there
+is little to be told; the boy was inclined, in after life, to attribute
+any literary taste that he may have inherited to his mother. From his
+earliest days reading was his passion, and he was rarely to be seen
+without a book. Old church architecture and the sound of church bells
+also kindled his childish enthusiasms, and he would hoard his pence to
+purchase the joy of being admitted into a locked-up church. So he was
+fortunate in being sent at the age of eight to Magdalen College School,
+where he had daily access to the old buildings of the College and the
+beautiful walks which had been trodden by the feet of Addison a century
+and a half before. An amusing contrast could be drawn between the
+decorous scholar of the seventeenth century, handsome, grave of mien,
+calmly pacing the gravel walk, while he tasted the delights of classic
+literature, and little 'Johnny Green', a mere shrimp of a boy with
+bright eyes and restless ways, darting here and there, eagerly searching
+for anything new or exciting which he might find, whether in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span> bushes
+or in the pages of some romance which he was carrying.</p>
+
+<p>But, for all his lively curiosity, Green seems to have got little out of
+his lessons at school. The classic languages formed the staple of his
+education, and he never had that power of verbal memory which could
+enable him to retain the rules of the Greek grammar or to handle the
+Latin language with the accuracy of a scholar. He soon gave up trying to
+do so. Instead of aspiring to the mastery of accidence and syntax, he
+aimed rather at securing immunity from the rod. At Magdalen School it
+was still actively in use; but there were certain rules about the number
+of offences which must be committed in a given time to call for its
+application. Green was clever enough to notice this, and to shape his
+course accordingly; and thus his lessons became, from a sporting point
+of view, an unqualified success.</p>
+
+<p>But his real progress in learning was due to his use of the old library
+in his leisure hours. Here he made acquaintance with Marco Polo and
+other books of travel; here he read works on history of various kinds,
+and became prematurely learned in the heresies of the early Church. The
+views which he developed, and perhaps stated too crudely, did not win
+approval. He was snubbed by examiners for his interest in heresiarchs,
+and gravely reproved by Canon Mozley<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> for justifying the execution of
+Charles I. The latter subject had been set for a prize essay; and the
+Canon was fair-minded enough to give the award to the boy whose views he
+disliked, but whose merit he recognized. Partial and imperfect though
+this education was, the years spent under the shadow of Magdalen must
+have had a deep influence on Green; but he tells us little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span> of his
+impressions, and was only half conscious of them at the time. The
+incident which perhaps struck him most was his receiving a prize from
+the hands of the aged Dr. Routh, President of the College, who had seen
+Dr. Johnson in his youth, and lived to be a centenarian and the pride of
+Oxford in early Victorian days.</p>
+
+<p>Green's school life ended in 1852, the year in which his father died. He
+was already at the top of the school; and to win a scholarship at the
+University was now doubly important for him. This he achieved at Jesus
+College, Oxford, in December 1854, after eighteen months spent with a
+private tutor; and, as he was too young to go into residence at once, he
+continued for another year to read by himself. Though he gave closer
+attention to his classics he did not drop his general reading; and it
+was a landmark in his career when at the age of sixteen he made
+acquaintance with Gibbon.</p>
+
+<p>His life as an undergraduate was not very happy and was even less
+successful than his days at school, though the fault did not lie with
+him. Shy and sensitive as he was, he had a sociable disposition and was
+naturally fitted to make friends. But he had come from a solitary life
+at a tutor's to a college where the men were clannish, most of them
+Welshmen, and few of them disposed to look outside their own circle for
+friends. Had Green been as fortunate as William Morris, his life at
+Oxford might have been different; but there was no Welshman at Jesus of
+the calibre of Burne-Jones; and Green lived in almost complete isolation
+till the arrival of Boyd Dawkins in 1857. The latter, who became in
+after years a well-known professor of anthropology, was Green's first
+real friend, and the letters which he wrote to him show how necessary it
+was for Green to have one with whom he could share his interests and
+exchange views freely. Dawkins had the scientific, Green the literary,
+nature and gifts;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span> but they had plenty of common ground and were always
+ready to explore the records of the past, whether they were to be found
+in barrows, in buildings, or in books. If Dawkins was the first friend,
+the first teacher who influenced him was Arthur Stanley, then Canon of
+Christ Church and Professor of Ecclesiastical History. An accident led
+Green into his lecture-room one day; but he was so much delighted with
+the spirit of Stanley's teaching, and the life which he imparted to
+history, that he became a constant member of the class. And when Stanley
+made overtures of friendship, Green welcomed them warmly.</p>
+
+<p>A new influence had come into his life. Not only was his industry, which
+had been feeble and irregular, stimulated at last to real effort; but
+his attitude to religious questions and to the position of the English
+Church was at this time sensibly modified. He had come up to the
+University a High Churchman; like many others at the time of the Oxford
+Movement, he had been led half-way towards Roman Catholicism, stirred by
+the historical claims and the mystic spell of Rome. But from now
+onwards, under the guidance of Stanley and Maurice, he adopted the views
+of what is called the 'Broad Church Party', which suited his moral
+fervour and the liberal character of his social and political opinions.</p>
+
+<p>Despite, however, the stimulus given to him (perhaps too late) by
+Dawkins and Stanley, Green won no distinctions at the University, and
+few men of his day could have guessed that he would ever win distinction
+elsewhere. He took a dislike to the system of history-teaching then in
+vogue, which consisted in demanding of all candidates for the schools a
+knowledge of selected fragments of certain authors, giving them no
+choice or scope in the handling of wider subjects. He refused to enter
+for a class in the one subject in which he could shine, and managed to
+scrape through his examination by combining a variety of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span> uncongenial
+subjects. This was perverse, and he himself recognized it to be so
+afterwards. All the while there was latent in him the talent, and the
+ambition, which might have enabled him to surpass all his
+contemporaries. His one literary achievement of the time was unknown to
+the men of his college, but it is of singular interest in view of what
+he came to achieve later. He was asked by the editor of the <i>Oxford
+Chronicle</i>, an old-established local paper, to write two articles on the
+history of the city of Oxford. To most undergraduates the town seemed a
+mere parasite of the University; to Green it was an elder sister. Many
+years later he complained in one of his letters that the city had been
+stifled by the University, which in its turn had suffered similar
+treatment from the Church. To this task, accordingly, he brought a ready
+enthusiasm and a full mind; and his articles are alive with the essence
+of what, since the days of his childhood, he had observed, learnt, and
+imagined, in the town of his birth. We see the same spirit in a letter
+which he wrote to Dawkins in 1860, telling him how he had given up a day
+to following the Mayor of Oxford when he observed the time-honoured
+custom of beating the bounds of the city. He describes with gusto how he
+trudged along roads, clambered over hedges, and even waded through
+marshes in order to perform the rite with scrupulous thoroughness. But
+it was years before he could find an audience who would appreciate his
+power of handling such a subject, and his University career must, on his
+own evidence, be written down a failure.</p>
+
+<p>When it was over he was confronted with the need for choosing a
+profession. It had strained the resources of his family to give him a
+good education, and now he must fend for himself. To a man of his nature
+and upbringing the choice was not wide. His age and his limited means
+put the Services out of the question; nor was he fitted to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span> embark in
+trade. Medicine would revolt his sensibility, law would chill his
+imagination, and journalism did not yet exist as a profession for men of
+his stamp. In the teaching profession, for which he had such rare gifts,
+he would start handicapped by his low degree. In any case, he had for
+some time cherished the idea of taking Holy Orders. The ministry of the
+Church would give him a congenial field of work and, so he hoped, some
+leisure to continue his favourite studies. Perhaps he had not the same
+strong conviction of a 'call' as many men of his day in the High Church
+or Evangelical parties; but he was, at the time, strongly drawn by the
+example and teaching of Stanley and Maurice, and he soon showed that it
+was not merely for negative reasons or from half-hearted zeal that he
+had made the choice. When urged by Stanley to seek a curacy in West
+London, he deliberately chose the East End of the town because the need
+there was greater and the training in self-sacrifice was sterner; and
+there is no doubt that the popular sympathies, which the reading of
+history had already implanted in him, were nourished and strengthened by
+nine years of work among the poor. The exertion of parish work taxed his
+physical resources, and he was often incapacitated for short periods by
+the lavish way in which he spent himself. Indeed, but for this constant
+drain upon his strength, he might have lived a longer life and left more
+work behind him.</p>
+
+<p>Of the parishes which he served, the last and the most interesting was
+St. Philip's, Stepney, to which he went from Hoxton in 1864. It was a
+parish of 16,000 souls, lying between Whitechapel and Poplar, not far
+from the London Docks. Dreary though the district seems to us
+to-day&mdash;and at times Green was fully conscious of this&mdash;he could
+re-people it in imagination with the men of the past, and find pleasure
+in the noble views on the river and the crowded shipping that passed so
+near its streets. But above all he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span> found a source of interest in the
+living individuals whom he met in his daily round and who needed his
+help; and though he achieved signal success in the pulpit by his power
+of extempore preaching, he himself cared more for the effect of his
+visiting and other social work. Sermons might make an impression for the
+moment; personal sympathy, shown in the moment when it was needed, might
+change the whole current of a life.</p>
+
+<p>For children his affection was unfailing; and for the humours of older
+people he had a wide tolerance and charity. His letters abound with
+references to this side of his work. He tells us of his 'polished' pork
+butcher and his learned parish clerk, and boasts how he won the regard
+of the clerk's Welsh wife by correctly pronouncing the magic name of
+Machynlleth. He gave a great deal of time to his parishioners, to
+consulting his churchwardens, to starting choirs, to managing classes
+and parish expeditions. He could find time to attend a morning police
+court when one of his boys got into difficulties, or to hold a midnight
+service for the outcasts of the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>When cholera broke out in Stepney in 1866, Green visited the sick and
+dying in rooms that others did not dare to enter, and was not afraid to
+help actively in burying those who had died of the disease. At holiday
+gatherings he was the life and soul of the body, 'shocking two prim
+maiden teachers by starting kiss-in-the-ring', and surprising his most
+vigorous helpers by his energy and decision. On such occasions he
+exhausted himself in the task of leadership, and he was no less generous
+in giving financial help to every parish institution that was in need.</p>
+
+<p>What hours he could snatch from these tasks he would spend in the
+Reading Room of the British Museum; but these were all too few. His
+position, within a few miles of the treasure houses of London, and of
+friends who might have shared his studies, must have been tantalizing
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span> a degree. To parish claims also was sacrificed many a chance of a
+precious holiday. We have one letter in which he regretfully abandons
+the project of a tour with Freeman in his beloved Anjou because he finds
+that the only dates open to his companion clash with the festival of the
+patron saint of his church. In another he resists the appeal of Dawkins
+to visit him in Somerset on similar grounds. His friend may become
+abusive, but Green assures him emphatically that it cannot be helped. 'I
+am not a pig,' he writes; 'I am a missionary curate.... I could not come
+to you, because I was hastily summoned to the cure of 5,000
+costermongers and dock labourers.' We are far from the easy standard of
+work too often accepted by 'incumbents' in the opening years of the
+nineteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>Early in his clerical career he had begun to form plans for writing on
+historical subjects, most of which had to be abandoned for one reason or
+another. At one time he was planning with Dawkins a history of Somerset,
+which would have been a forerunner of the County Histories of the
+twentieth century. Dawkins was to do the geology and anthropology; Green
+would contribute the archaeology and history. In many ways they were
+well equipped for the task; but the materials had not been sifted and
+the demands on their time would have been excessive, even if they
+abstained from all other work. Another scheme was for a series of Lives
+of the Archbishops of Canterbury. Green was much attracted by the
+subject. Already he had made a special study of Dunstan and other great
+holders of the See; and he believed that the series would illustrate,
+better than the lives of kings, the growth of certain principles in
+English history. But with other archbishops he found himself out of
+sympathy; and in the end he was not sorry to abandon the idea, when he
+found that Dean Hook was already engaged upon it.</p>
+
+<p>A project still nearer to his heart, which he cherished till<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span> near the
+end of his life, was to write a history of our Angevin kings. For this
+he collected a vast quantity of materials, and it was a task for which
+he was peculiarly fitted. It would be difficult to say whether Fulc
+Nerra, the founder of the dynasty, or Black Angers, the home of the
+race, was more vividly present to him. Grim piles of masonry, stark
+force of character, alike compelled his admiration and he could make
+them live again in print. As it proved, his life was too short to
+realize this ambition and he has only left fragments of what he had to
+tell, though we are fortunate in having other books on parts of the
+subject from his wife and from Miss Norgate, which owed their origin to
+his inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>During his time as a London clergyman Green used to pay occasional
+visits to Dawkins in Somerset; and in 1862, when he went to read a paper
+on Dunstan to a society at Taunton, he renewed acquaintance with his old
+schoolfellow, E. A. Freeman, a notable figure in the county as squire,
+politician, and antiquarian, and already becoming known outside it as a
+historian. The following year, as Freeman's guest, he met Professor
+Stubbs; and about this time he also made friends with James Bryce, 'the
+Holy Roman', as he calls him in later letters.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> The friendship of
+these three men was treasured by Green throughout his life, and it gave
+rise to much interesting correspondence on historical subjects. They
+were the central group of the Oxford School; they reverenced the same
+ideals and were in general sympathy with one another. But this sympathy
+never descended to mere mutual admiration, as with some literary
+coteries. Between Freeman and Green in particular there was kept up a
+running fire of friendly but outspoken criticism, which would have
+strained the tie between men less generous and less devoted to
+historical truth. Freeman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span> was the more arbitrary and dogmatic, Green
+the more sensitive and discriminating. Green bows to Freeman's superior
+knowledge of Norman times, acknowledges him his master, and apologizes
+for hasty criticisms when they give offence; but he boldly rebukes his
+friend for his indifference to the popular movements in Italian cities
+and for his pedantry about Italian names.</p>
+
+<p>And he treads on even more delicate ground when he taxes him with
+indulging too frequently in polemics, urging him to 'come out of the
+arena' and to cease girding at Froude and Kingsley, whose writings
+Freeman loved to abuse. Freeman, on the other hand, grumbles at Green
+for going outside the province of history to write on more frivolous
+subjects, and scolds him for introducing fanciful ideas into his
+narrative of events. The classic instance of this was when Green, after
+describing the capture by the French of the famous Ch&acirc;teau Gaillard in
+Normandy, had the audacity to say, 'from its broken walls we see not
+merely the pleasant vale of Seine, but also the sedgy flats of our own
+Runnymede'. Thereby he meant his readers to learn that John would never
+have granted the Great Charter to the Barons, had he not already
+weakened the royal authority by the loss of C&oelig;ur-de-Lion's great
+fortress beyond the sea, and that to a historian the germs of English
+freedom, won beside the Thames, were to be seen in the wreckage of
+Norman power above the Seine. But Freeman was too matter of fact to
+allow such flights of fancy; and a lively correspondence passed between
+the two friends, each maintaining his own view of what might or might
+not be permitted to the votaries of Clio.</p>
+
+<p>But before this episode Green had been introduced by Freeman to John
+Douglas Cook, founder and editor of the <i>Saturday Review</i>, and had begun
+to contribute to its columns. Naturally it was on historical subjects
+that his pen was most active; but apart from the serious 'leading<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span>
+articles', the <i>Saturday</i> found place for what the staff called
+'Middles', light essays written after the manner of Addison or Steele on
+matters of every-day life. Here Green was often at his best. Freeman
+growled, in his dictatorial fashion, when he found his friend turning
+away from the strait path of historical research to describe the humours
+of his parish, the foibles of district visitors and deaconesses, the
+charms of the school-girl before she expands her wings in the
+drawing-room&mdash;above all (and this last was quoted by the author as his
+best literary achievement) the joys of 'Children by the sea'. But any
+one who turns over the pages of the volume called <i>Stray Studies from
+England and Italy</i>, where some of these articles are reprinted, will
+probably agree with the verdict of the author on their merits. The
+subjects are drawn from all ages and all countries. Historical scenes
+are peopled with the figures of the past, treated in the magical style
+which Green made his own. Dante is seen against the background of
+mediaeval Florence; Tintoret represents the life of Venice at its
+richest, most glorious time. The old buildings of Lambeth make a noble
+setting for the portraits of archbishops, the gentle Warham, the hapless
+Cranmer, the tyrannical Laud. Many of these studies are given to the
+pleasant border-land between history and geography, and to the
+impressions of travel gathered in England or abroad. In one sketch he
+puts into a single sentence all the features of an old English town
+which his quick eye could note, and from which he could 'work out the
+history of the men who lived and died there. In quiet quaintly-named
+streets, in the town mead and the market-place, in the lord's mill
+beside the stream, in the ruffed and furred brasses of its burghers in
+the church, lies the real life of England and Englishmen, the life of
+their home and their trade, their ceaseless, sober struggle with
+oppression, their steady, unwearied battle for self-government.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In another he follows the funeral procession of his Angevin hero Henry
+II from the stately buildings of Chinon 'by the broad bright Vienne
+coming down in great gleaming curves, under the grey escarpments of rock
+pierced here and there with the peculiar cellars or cave-dwellings of
+the country', to his last resting-place in the vaults of Fontevraud.
+Standing beside the monuments on their tombs he notes the striking
+contrast of type and character which Henry offers to his son Richard
+C&oelig;ur-de-Lion. 'Nothing', he says, 'could be less ideal than the narrow
+brow, the large prosaic eyes, the coarse full cheeks, the sensual dogged
+jaw, that combine somehow into a face far higher than its separate
+details, and which is marked by a certain sense of power and command. No
+countenance could be in stronger contrast with his son's, and yet in
+both there is the same look of repulsive isolation from men. Richard's
+is a face of cultivation and refinement, but there is a strange severity
+in the small delicate mouth and in the compact brow of the lion-hearted,
+which realizes the verdict of his day. To an historical student one
+glance at these faces, as they lie here beneath the vault raised by
+their ancestor, the fifth Count Fulc, tells more than pages of history.'
+Our reviews and magazines may abound to-day in such vivid pen-pictures
+of places and men; but it was Green and others of his day who watered
+the dry roots of archaeology and restored it to life.</p>
+
+<p>But from his earliest days as a student Green had looked beyond the
+figures of kings, ministers, and prelates, who had so long filled the
+stage in the volumes of our historians. However clearly they stood out
+in their greatness and in their faults, they were not, and could not be,
+the nation. And when he came to write on a larger scale, the title which
+he chose for his book showed that he was aiming at new ideals.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Short History of the English People</i> is the book by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span> which Green's
+fame will stand or fall, and it occupied him for the best years of his
+life. The true heroes of it are the labourer and the artisan, the friar,
+the printer, and the industrial mechanic&mdash;'not many mighty, not many
+noble'. The true growth of the English nation is seen broad-based on the
+life of the commonalty, and we can study it better in the rude verse of
+Longland, or the parables of Bunyan, than in the formal records of
+battles and dynastic schemes.</p>
+
+<p>The periods into which the book is divided are chosen on other grounds
+than those of the old handbooks, where the accession of a new king or a
+new dynasty is made a landmark; and a different proportion is observed
+in the space given to events or to prominent men. The Wars of the Roses
+are viewed as less important than the Peasants' Revolt; the scholars of
+the New Learning leave scant space for Lambert Simnels and Perkin
+Warbecks. Henry Pelham, one of the last prime ministers to owe his
+position to the king's favour, receives four lines, while forty are
+given to John Howard, a pioneer in the new path of philanthropy. Besides
+social subjects, literature receives generous measure, but even here no
+rigid system is observed. Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare take a
+prominent place in their epochs; Byron, Wordsworth, and Tennyson are
+ignored. This is not because Green had no interest in them or
+undervalued their influence. Far from it. But, as the history of the
+nation became more complex, he found it impossible, within the limits
+prescribed by a <i>Short</i> History, to do justice to everything. He
+believed that the industrialism, which grew up in the Georgian era,
+exercised a wider influence in changing the character of the people than
+the literature of that period; and so he turned his attention to Watt
+and Brindley, and deliberately omitted the poets and painters of that
+day. With his wide sympathies he must have found this rigorous
+compression the hardest of his tasks, and only in part could he
+compensate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span> it later. He never lived long enough to treat, as he wished
+to do, in the fullness of his knowledge, the later periods of English
+history.</p>
+
+<p>In writing this book Green had many discouragements to contend against,
+apart from his continual ill-health. Even his friends spoke doubtfully
+of its method and style, with the exception of his publisher, George
+Macmillan, and of Stopford Brooke, whose own writings breathe the same
+spirit as Green's, and who did equally good work in spreading a real
+love of history and literature among the classes who were beginning to
+read. It was true that Green's book failed to conform to the usual type
+of manual; it was not orderly in arrangement, it was often allusive in
+style, it seemed to select what it pleased and to leave out what
+students were accustomed to learn. But Green's faith in its power to
+reach the audience to whom he appealed was justified by the enthusiasm
+with which the general public received it. This success was largely due
+to the literary style and artistic handling of the subject. Green claims
+himself that on most literary questions he is French in his point of
+view. 'It seems to me', he says, 'that on all points of literary art we
+have to sit at the feet of French Gamaliels'; and in his best work he
+has more in common with Michelet than with our own classic historians.
+But while Michelet had many large volumes in which to expand his
+treatment of picturesque episodes, Green was painfully limited by space.</p>
+
+<p>What he can give us of clear and lively portraiture in a few lines is
+seen in his presentation of the gallant men who laid the foundation of
+our Empire overseas. By a few lines of narrative, and a happy quotation
+from their own words, Green brings out the heroism of their sacrifice or
+their success, the faith which inspired Humphry Gilbert to meet his
+death at sea, the patience which enabled John Smith to achieve the
+tillage of Virginian soil.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Side by side with these masterly vignettes are full-length portraits of
+great rulers such as Alfred, Elizabeth, and Cromwell, and vivid
+descriptions of religious leaders such as Cranmer, Laud, and Wesley.
+Strong though Green's own views on Church and State were, we do not feel
+that he is deserting the province of the historian to lecture us on
+religion or politics. The book is real narrative written in a fair
+spirit, the author rendering justice to the good points of men like
+Laud, whom he detested, and aiming above all at conveying clearly to his
+readers the picture of what he believed to have happened in the past. As
+a narrative it was not without faults. The reviewers at once seized on
+many small mistakes, into which Green had fallen through the uncertainty
+of his memory for names and words. To these Green cheerfully confessed,
+and was thankful that they proved to be so slight. But when other
+critics accused him of superficiality they were in error. On this point
+we have the verdict of Bishop Stubbs, the most learned and conscientious
+historian of the day. 'All Green's work', he says, 'was real and
+original work. Few people beside those who knew him well could see,
+under the charming ease and vivacity of his style, the deep research and
+sustained industry of the laborious student. But it was so; there was no
+department of our national records that he had not studied, and, I think
+I may say, mastered. Hence, I think, the unity of his dramatic scenes
+and the cogency of his historical arguments.'</p>
+
+<p>Green himself was as severe a critic of the book as any one. Writing in
+1877 to his future wife, he says, 'I see the indelible mark of the
+essayist, the "want of long breath", as the French say, the jerkiness,
+the slurring over of the uninteresting parts, above all, the want of
+grasp of the subject as a whole'. On the advice of some of his best
+friends, confirmed by his own judgement, in 1874 he gave up contributing
+to the <i>Saturday Review</i>, in order to free<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span> his style from the character
+imparted to it by writing detached weekly articles. The composing of
+these articles had been a pleasure; the writing of English history was
+to be his life-work, and no divided allegiance was conceivable to him.
+But we may indeed be thankful that he resisted the views of other
+friends who wished to drive him into copying German models. This class
+Green called 'Pragmatic Historians';<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> and, while acknowledging their
+solid contributions to history, he maintains his conviction that there
+is another method and another school worthy of imitation, and that he
+must 'hold to what he thinks true and work it out as he can'.</p>
+
+<p>Green was a rapid reader and a rapid writer. In a letter to Freeman,
+written when he was wintering in Florence in 1872, he admits covering
+the period from the Peasant Revolt to the end of the New Learning
+(1381-1520) in ten days. But he was writing from notes which represented
+years of previous study. In another letter, written in 1876, he
+confesses a tendency to 'wild hitting', and perhaps he was too rapid at
+times in drawing his inferences. 'With me', he says, 'the impulse to try
+to connect things, to find the "why" of things, is irresistible; and
+even if I overdo my political guesses, you or some German will punch my
+head and put things rightly and intelligibly again.' It is this power of
+connecting events and explaining how one movement leads to another which
+makes the stimulating quality of Green's work; and to a nation like the
+English, too little apt to indulge in general ideas, this quality may be
+of more value than the German erudition which tends to overburden the
+intelligence with too great a load of 'facts'. And, after all the
+labours of Carlyle and Froude, of Stubbs and Freeman, and all the
+delving into records and chronicles, who shall say what <i>are</i> facts, and
+what is inference, legitimate or illegitimate, from them?</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span></p>
+<p>Whatever were the shortcomings of the book, which Green in his letters
+to Freeman called by the affectionate names of 'Shorts' and 'Little
+Book', it inaugurated a new method, and won a hearing among readers who
+had hitherto professed no taste for history; and, financially, it proved
+so far a success that Green was relieved from the necessity of
+continuing work that was uncongenial. He had already given up his parish
+in 1869. Ill-health and the advice of his doctor were the deciding
+factors; but there is no doubt that Green was also finding it difficult
+to subscribe to all the doctrines of the Church. He took up the same
+liberal comprehensive attitude to Church questions as he did to
+politics, and opposed any attempt to stifle honest inquiry or to punish
+honest doubt. He was much disturbed by some of the attempts made at this
+time by the more extreme parties in the Church to enforce uniformity.
+Also he felt that the Church was not exercising its proper influence on
+the nation, owing to the prejudice or apathy of the clergy in meeting
+the social movements of the day. If he had found more support, inside
+the diocese, for his social and educational work, the breach might have
+been healed, or at any rate postponed, in the hope of his health
+mending.</p>
+
+<p>Relieved of parish work, he found plentiful occupation in revising his
+old books and in planning new; he showed wonderful zest for travelling
+abroad, and, by choosing carefully the places for his winter sojourn, he
+fought heroically to combat increasing ill-health and to achieve his
+literary ambitions. Thus it was that he made intimate acquaintance with
+San Remo, Mentone, and Capri; and one winter he went as far as Luxor in
+the hope that the Egyptian climate might help him; but in vain. Under
+the guidance of his friend Stopford Brooke he visited for shorter
+periods Venice, Florence, and other Italian towns. He was catholic in
+his sympathies but not over-conscientious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span> in sight-seeing. When Brooke
+left him at Florence, Green was openly glad to relapse into vagrant
+pilgrimage, to put aside his guide-book and to omit the daily visit to
+the Uffizi Gallery. But, on the other hand, he reproached Freeman for
+confining his interests entirely to architecture and emperors while
+ignoring pictures and sculpture, mediaeval guilds, and the relics of old
+civic life. It was at Troyes that Bryce observed him 'darting hither and
+thither through the streets like a dog following a scent'&mdash;and to such
+purpose that after a few hours of research he could write a brilliant
+paper sketching the history of the town as illustrated in its
+monuments&mdash;but in Italy, as in France, he had a wonderful gift for
+discovering all that was most worth knowing about a town, which other
+men passed by and ignored.</p>
+
+<p>Capri, which he first visited at Christmas 1872, was the most successful
+of his winter haunts. The climate, the beauty of the scenery, the
+simplicity of the life, all suited him admirably. On this occasion he
+stayed four months in the island, and he has sung its praises in one of
+the 'Stray Studies'. Within a small compass there is a wonderful variety
+of scene. Green delights in it all, 'in the boldly scarped cliffs, in
+the dense scrub of myrtle and arbutus, in the blue strips of sea that
+seem to have been cunningly let in among the rocks, in the olive yards
+creeping thriftily up the hill sides, in the remains of Roman sculptures
+and mosaics, in the homesteads of grey stone and low domes and Oriental
+roofs'. And he found it an ideal place for literary work, restful and
+remote, 'where one can live unscourged by Kingsley's "wind of God".'
+'The island', he writes, 'is a paradise of silence for those to whom
+silence is a delight. One wanders about in the vineyards without a sound
+save the call of the vinedressers: one lies on the cliff and hears, a
+thousand feet below, the dreary wash of the sea. There is hardly the cry
+of a bird to break the spell; even the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span> girls who meet one with a smile
+on the hillside smile quietly and gravely in the Southern fashion as
+they pass by.' No greater contrast could be found to the conditions
+under which he began his books; and it is not surprising that in this
+haven of peace, with no parish business to break in upon his study, he
+worked more rapidly and confidently&mdash;when his health allowed.</p>
+
+<p>From such retreats he would return refreshed in body and mind to
+continue studying and writing in London and to sketch out new plans for
+the future. One that bore rich fruit was that of a series of Primers,
+dealing shortly with great subjects and commending them to the general
+reader by attractive literary style. They were produced by Macmillan,
+Green acting as editor; and notable volumes were contributed by
+Gladstone on Homer, by Creighton on Rome, and by Stopford Brooke on
+English Literature. Here, again, Green was a pioneer in a path where he
+has had many followers since; and he would have been the first to edit
+an English Historical Review if more support had been forthcoming from
+the public. But for financial reasons he was obliged to abandon the
+scheme, and it did not see the light of day till Creighton launched it
+in 1886.</p>
+
+<p>In 1877 he married and found in his wife just the helper that he needed.
+She too had the historical imagination, the love of research, and the
+power of writing. Husband and wife produced in co-operation a small
+geography of the British Isles, well planned, clear, and pleasant to
+read. But, apart from this, she was content, during the too brief period
+of their married life, to subordinate her activities to helping her
+husband, and her aid was invaluable at the time when he was writing his
+later books. There is no doubt that his marriage prolonged his life. The
+care which his wife took of him, whether in their home in foggy London,
+or in primitive lodgings in beautiful Capri, helped him over his worst
+days; and the new value which he now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span> set on life and its happiness gave
+him redoubled force of will. There were others who helped him in these
+days of perpetual struggle with ill-health. His doctors, Sir Andrew
+Clark and Sir Lauder Brunton, rendered him the devotion of personal
+friends. The historians gathered round him in Kensington Square, the
+home of his later years, and cheered him with good talk. Those who were
+lucky enough to be admitted might hear him at his best, discussing
+historical questions in a circle which included Sir Henry Maine and
+Bishop Stubbs, as well as Lecky, Freeman, and Bryce. He had many other
+interests. Such a man could not be indifferent to contemporary politics.
+His heroes&mdash;and he was an ardent worshipper of heroes&mdash;were Gladstone
+and Garibaldi, and, like many Liberals of the day, he was violent in his
+opposition to Beaconsfield's policy in Eastern Europe. Hatred of
+Napoleonic tyranny killed for a while his sympathy with France, and in
+1870 he sympathized with the German cause&mdash;at least till the rape of the
+two provinces and the sorrows of disillusioned France revived his old
+feeling for the French nation. Over everything he felt keenly and
+expressed himself warmly. As Tennyson said to him at the close of a
+visit to Aldworth, 'You're a jolly, vivid man; you're as vivid as
+lightning'.</p>
+
+<p>Particularly dear to him was the close sympathy of Stopford Brooke and
+that of Humphry Ward, to whose father he had been curate in 1860 and who
+had himself for years learnt to cherish the friendship of Green and to
+seek his counsel. Mrs. Ward has told us how she (then Miss Arnold)
+brought her earliest literary efforts to Green, how kindly was his
+encouragement but how formidable was the standard of excellence which he
+set up. She has also pictured for us 'the thin wasted form seated in the
+corner of the sofa... the eloquent lips... the life flashing from his
+eyes beneath the very shadow of death'. His latter years, lived
+perpetually under this grim shadow, were yet full of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span> cheerfulness and
+of hope. However the body might fail, the active brain was planning and
+the high courage was bracing him to further effort. Between 1877 and
+1880 he published in four volumes a <i>History of the English People</i>,
+which follows the same plan and covers much the same ground as the
+<i>Short History</i>. He was able to revise his views on points where recent
+study threw fresh light and to include subjects which had been crowded
+out for want of space. But the book failed to attract readers to the
+same extent as the <i>Short History</i>. The freshness and buoyancy of the
+earlier sketch could not be recaptured after so long an interval. In the
+last year of his life he began again on the early history of England,
+working at a pace which would have been astonishing even in a man of
+robust health, and he completed in the short period of eleven months the
+brilliant volume called <i>The Making of England</i>. He had thought out the
+subject during many a day and night of pain and had the plan clear in
+his head; but he was indefatigable in revising his work, and would make
+as many as eight or ten drafts of a chapter before it satisfied his
+judgement. His last autumn and winter were occupied with the succeeding
+volume, <i>The Conquest of England</i>, and he left it sufficiently complete
+for his wife to edit and publish a few months after his death.</p>
+
+<p>The end came at Mentone early in 1883. Two years of life had been won,
+as his doctor said, by sheer force of will; but the frail body could no
+longer obey the soul, and nature could bear no more.</p>
+
+<p>If in the twentieth century history is losing its hold on the thought
+and feeling of the rising generation, Green is the last man whom we can
+blame. He gave all his faculties unsparingly to his task&mdash;patience,
+enthusiasm, single-hearted love of truth; and he encouraged others to do
+the same. No man was more free from the pontifical airs of those
+historians who proclaimed history as an academic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span> science to be confined
+within the chilly walls of libraries and colleges. We may apply to his
+work what Mr. G. M. Trevelyan has said of the English historians from
+Clarendon down to recent times; it was 'the means of spreading far and
+wide, throughout all the reading classes, a love and knowledge of
+history, an elevated and critical patriotism, and certain qualities of
+mind and heart'.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> Against the danger which he mentions in his next
+sentence, that we are now being drilled into submission to German
+models, Mr. Trevelyan is himself one of our surest protectors.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CECIL_RHODES" id="CECIL_RHODES"></a>CECIL RHODES</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">1853-1902</p>
+
+
+<table summary="" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
+<tr><td valign="top">1853.</td><td> Born at Bishop's Stortford, July 5.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1870.</td><td> Goes out to Natal.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1871.</td><td> Moves to Kimberley.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1873-81.</td><td> Intermittent visits to Oxford.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1880.</td><td> First De Beers Company started.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1880.</td><td> Member for Barkly West.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1883.</td><td> Commissioner in Bechuanaland.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1885.</td><td> Warren expedition: Bechuanaland annexed by British Government.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1887.</td><td> Acute rivalry between Rhodes and Barnato.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1888.</td><td> Barnato gives way: De Beers Consolidated founded.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1888.</td><td> Lobengula grants concession for mining.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1889.</td><td> British South Africa Chartered Company formed.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1890.</td><td> Prime Minister of Cape Colony.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1890.</td><td> Occupation of Mashonaland.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1893.</td><td> Second Rhodes ministry.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1893.</td><td> War with Lobengula. Matabeleland occupied.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1895.</td><td> 'Drifts' question between Cape and Transvaal Government.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1895.</td><td> Jameson Raid, December 28.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1896.</td><td> January, Rhodes's resignation. Visit to England.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1896.</td><td> Rebellion in Rhodesia.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1897.</td><td> Inquiry into the Raid by Committee of the House of Commons.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1899.</td><td> D.C.L., Oxford.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1899.</td><td> Outbreak of Great Boer War.</td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top">1902.</td><td> Dies at Muizenberg, March 26.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">CECIL RHODES</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Colonist</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>The Rhodes family can be traced back to sturdy English yeoman stock. In
+the eighteenth century they had held land in North London. Cecil's
+father was vicar of Bishop's Stortford, a quiet country town in
+Hertfordshire on the Essex border; he was a man of mark, wealthy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span>
+liberal, and unconventional, with the rare gift of preaching ten-minute
+sermons which were well worth hearing. Of his eldest sons, Herbert went
+to Winchester, Frank to Eton; Cecil, the fifth son, born on July 5,
+1853, was kept at home. He had part of his education at the local
+Grammar School, but perhaps the better part at the Vicarage from his
+father himself. The shrewd Vicar soon saw that his fifth son was not
+fitted for the ordinary routine of professional life at home, and at the
+age of seventeen he was sent out to visit his brother Herbert, who had
+emigrated to Natal. Cecil said good-bye to his native land for the first
+time in 1870, and thus early elected to be a citizen of the Greater
+Britain beyond the seas.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><a name="rhodes" id="rhodes"></a><img src="images/rhodes.jpg" alt="CECIL RHODES" />
+<br /><span class="smcap">cecil rhodes</span><br />
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The brothers had certain points of resemblance, being both original and
+adventurous; but they had marked differences. The elder was a wanderer
+pure and simple, a lover of sport and of novelty. He could follow a new
+track with all the ardour of a pioneer; he could not sit down and
+develop the wealth which he had opened up. The management of the Natal
+cotton farm soon fell into the hands of Cecil, now eighteen years old,
+who noted every detail, and studied his crops, his workmen, and his
+markets, while Herbert was absent in quest of game and adventure. It was
+this spirit which led Herbert westward in 1871, among the earliest of
+the immigrants into the diamond fields: before the end of the year Cecil
+followed and soon took over and developed his brother's claim. It was no
+case of Esau and Jacob; the brothers had great affection for one another
+and fitted in together without jealousy. Each lived his own life and
+followed his own bent. As Kimberley was the first field in which Cecil
+showed his abilities, it is worth while to try to picture the scene. It
+remained a centre of interest to him for thirty years, the scene of many
+troubles and of many triumphs.</p>
+
+<p>'The New Rush', as Kimberley was called in 1872,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span> was a chaos of tents
+and rubbish heaps seen through a haze of dust&mdash;a heterogeneous
+collection of tents, wagons, native kraals and debris heaps, each set
+down with cheerful irresponsibility and indifference to order. The
+funnel of blue clay so productive of diamonds had been found on a bit of
+the bare Griqualand Veld, marked out by no geographical advantages, with
+no charm of woodland or river scenery. Here in the years to come the
+great pits, familiar in modern photographs, were to grow deeper and
+deeper, as the partitions fell in between the small claims, or as the
+more enterprising miners bought up their neighbours' plots. Here the
+debris heaps were to grow higher and higher, as more hundreds of Kaffirs
+were brought in to dig, or new machinery arrived, as the buckets plied
+more rapidly on the network of ropes overhead. In the early 'seventies
+there were few signs of these marvels to be seen by the outward
+eye&mdash;everything was in the rough&mdash;but they were no doubt already
+existing in the brain of 'a tall fair boy, blue eyed and with somewhat
+aquiline features, wearing flannels of the school playing-field,
+somewhat shrunken with strenuous rather than effectual washings, that
+still left the colour of the red veld dust'.</p>
+
+<p>Here Cecil Rhodes lived for the greater part of ten years, finding time
+amid his work for dreams: living, in general, aloof from the men with
+whom he did his daily business, but laying here and there the
+foundations of a friendship which was to bear fruit hereafter. Rudd,<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a>
+of the Matabeleland concessions, came out in 1873; Beit,<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> the partner
+in diamond fields and gold fields, the co-founder of the Chartered
+Company, in 1875; and in 1878 there came out from Edinburgh one whose
+name was to be linked still more closely with that of Rhodes. Leander
+Starr Jameson, a skilful doctor, a cheerful companion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span> gifted with a
+great capacity for self-devotion, and with unshakeable firmness of will,
+was now twenty-five years old. Rhodes and he soon drew closely together
+and for years they were living under one roof. While his casual and
+rather overbearing manners repelled many of his acquaintances, Rhodes
+had a genius for friendship with the few; and it was such men as these
+who shared his work, his pastimes, and his thoughts, and reconciled him
+to spending many years in the unattractive surroundings of the mines.</p>
+
+<p>But his life at this time had other phases. Not the least wonderful
+chapter in it was the series of visits which he paid to Oxford between
+1873 and 1881. The atmosphere of a mining camp does not seem likely to
+draw a man towards academic studies and a University life. But Rhodes,
+who had a great power of absorbing himself in work, had also the power
+of projecting himself beyond the interests of the moment. Seven times he
+found opportunity to tear himself away from the busy work of mining and
+to keep terms at Oxford; and they made a lasting impression upon him. It
+was not the love of book-learning, still less the love of games, which
+drew him there. To many he may have seemed to be spending his time
+unprofitably. He indulged in some rowing and polo, he was master of the
+drag-hounds, he worried his neighbours by nocturnal practising of the
+horn. The examinations in the schools, and the more popular athletic
+contests, knew little of him. But his sojourn in Oxford was a tribute
+paid by the higher side of his mind to education and to the value of
+high thinking as compared with material progress; and no one who knew
+him well in later life could doubt that the traditions of Oxford had
+deeply influenced his mind. On these things he was by nature reticent,
+and was often misjudged.</p>
+
+<p>Between the years 1878 and 1888 must be placed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span> struggle between him
+and his rivals for predominance in Kimberley. It had begun with small
+enterprises, the purchasing of adjoining claims, the undertaking of
+drainage work, the introduction of better machinery. It attracted more
+attention in 1880 with the founding of the first De Beers Company, named
+after a Boer who had owned the land on which the mine lay. It culminated
+in 1887 in the battle with Barnato,<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> his most dangerous competitor,
+when by dexterous purchasing of shares in his rival's company Rhodes
+forced him into a final scheme of amalgamation. In 1888 was founded the
+great corporation of De Beers Consolidated mines. The masterful will of
+Rhodes dictated the terms of the Trust deed, giving very extensive power
+to the Directorate for the using of their funds. He was already laying
+his foundations, though few could then have guessed what imperial work
+was to be done with the money thus obtained. The process of amalgamation
+was not popular in Kimberley. It resulted in closing down many of the
+less profitable claims and in reducing the amount of labour employed.
+But it brought in better machinery and it saved expenses of management.
+Above all, it curtailed the output of diamonds and so kept up the market
+price in Europe and elsewhere. Many people refused to believe that
+Rhodes could have outman&oelig;uvred a man of exceptional financial ability
+without using dishonourable means. But there is no doubt that it was
+masterful character which won the day, that strength of will which
+decides the issue at the critical moment. Many others have been
+prejudiced against him merely from the fact that he spent so much time
+and energy in the pursuit of 'filthy lucre'. We must remember that
+Rhodes himself said: 'What's the earthly use of having ideas if you
+haven't the money to carry them out?' We must also remember that all
+witnesses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span> of his life agree that the ideas were always foremost, the
+money a mere instrument to realize them. The story was told to Edmund
+Garrett by one of Rhodes's old Kimberley associates 'how one day in
+those scheming years, deep in the sordid details of amalgamation, Rhodes
+("always a bit of a crank") suddenly put his hand over a great piece of
+No Man's Africa on the map and said, "Look here: all that British&mdash;that
+is my dream".'<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a></p>
+
+<p>But long before this struggle was over, Rhodes had embarked on new
+courses which were to carry him still farther. His dreams of political
+work began to take shape when Griqualand was created a British province
+in 1880. Two electoral divisions were formed, Kimberley and Barkly West;
+and it was for the latter that Rhodes first took his seat in the Cape
+Parliament in 1880, a seat which he retained till his death. The Prime
+Minister was Sir Gordon Sprigg, a politician with experience but few
+ideas, more skilled in retaining office than in formulating a policy.
+Rhodes was at first reticent about his own projects, and spent his time
+quietly studying commercial questions, examining the problem of the
+native races and making friends among the Boers. If these friendships
+were obscured later by political quarrels, there is no reason to suspect
+their genuineness. His sympathy with the Dutch farmers had begun in
+1872, when he made a long, lonely trek through the Northern Transvaal,
+and it lasted through life. He was interested in farming, he liked
+natural men, and was at home in unconventional surroundings. One of the
+closest observers of his character said that to see the true Rhodes you
+must see him on the veld. So long as the supremacy of the British flag
+was assured, there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span> nothing that he so ardently desired as friendly
+relations between British and Dutch, a real union of the races, a South
+African nation. It was for this that he worked so long with Jan Hofmeyr,
+leader of the Cape Dutch, and earned so many unfair suspicions from the
+short-sighted politicians of Cape Town.</p>
+
+<p>Hofmeyr was a curious man. He had a great understanding of the Dutch
+character and a great power of influencing men; but this was not done by
+parliamentary eloquence. By one satirist he was called 'the captain who
+never appeared on the bridge'; by another he was nicknamed 'the Mole',
+because his activity could only be conjectured from the tracks which he
+left behind him. A third name current in Cape Town, 'the Blind Man,' was
+an ironical tribute to his exceptional astuteness in politics. His organ
+was 'the Afrikander Bond', a society formed partly for agricultural,
+partly for political purposes, a creature which like a chameleon has
+often changed its colour, sometimes working peacefully beside British
+politicians, at other times openly conducting an anti-British agitation.
+He certainly had no enthusiasm for the British flag, but he probably
+realized the freedom which the Colony enjoyed under it, and was clear of
+all disloyalty to the Crown. The policy dearest to the farmers of the
+Afrikander Bond was the protective system for their agricultural
+produce. If Rhodes would support this, he might induce the Dutch to give
+him a free hand in his plans for expansion towards the North; and this
+was needed, because the problem of the North was becoming urgent, and
+Sprigg and his party were blind to its importance.</p>
+
+<p>A glance at the nineteenth-century map will show that the territories of
+the Dutch Republic, lying on the less barren side of the continent,
+tended to block the extension of Cape Colony and Natal towards the
+north, the more so as the Boers from time to time sent out fresh swarms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span>
+westward and encroached on native territory in Bechuanaland. The Germans
+did not annex Namaqualand till 1885, but already their interest in this
+district was becoming evident to close observers. Rhodes's most
+cherished dream had been the development of the high-lying healthy
+inland regions to the north by the British race under the British flag.
+But in those days, when Whitehall was asleep and officials in Cape Town
+were indifferent, Rhodes saw that his best chance was to convert the
+Dutch in the Colony. He hoped to make them realize that, if they
+supported him, the development of the interior might bring trade through
+Cape Town, which otherwise would go eastward through Portuguese
+channels. The building of railways, the settlement of new lands in which
+Dutch and English would share alike, were practical questions which
+might interest them, and Rhodes was quite genuine in his desire to see
+both races going forward together. 'Equal rights for every civilized man
+south of the Zambezi' was his motto, and to this he steadfastly clung.</p>
+
+<p>To describe all the means by which Rhodes worked towards this end would
+be impossible. He worked hard at Kimberley to furnish the sinews of war;
+he used his personal influence and power of persuasion at Cape Town to
+win support from Hofmeyr and others; and he was ready to go to the
+frontier at any moment when there was work to be done. His first
+commission of this sort had been in Basutoland in 1882, when he helped
+the famous General Gordon to pacify native discontent; but the following
+year saw him at work on another frontier more directly affecting his
+programme. The Boers had again been raiding westwards and had started
+two new republics, called Goshen and Stellaland, on the route from
+Kimberley to the north. Rhodes travelled to the scene of action,
+interviewed Mankoroane, the Bechuana chief, and Van Niekerk, the head of
+the new settlement, and by sheer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span> personal magnetism persuaded them both
+to accept British control. When the Cape Parliament refused the
+responsibility, he referred to the Colonial Office in London, and by the
+help of Sir Hercules Robinson, the High Commissioner, he carried his
+point. When the new Governor, who was appointed by the Colonial Office,
+quarrelled with the Boers, it was Rhodes who made up the quarrel, and
+when in 1885 the Transvaal Dutch interfered and provoked our home
+Government into sending out an overpowering force under Sir Charles
+Warren, it was Rhodes once more who acted as the reconciler, and
+effected a settlement between Dutch and British. When the indignant
+Delarey,<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> provoked by English blundering, said ominously that 'blood
+must flow', Rhodes replied, 'No, give me my breakfast, and then we can
+talk about blood'. He stayed with Delarey a week, came to terms on the
+points at issue, and even became godfather to Delarey's grandchild. He
+was never the man to resort to force when persuasion could be employed,
+and he usually won his end by his own means.</p>
+
+<p>While his great work in 1883-5 was on the northern frontier he was
+growing to be a familiar figure among politicians at Cape Town. We have
+an impression of him as he appeared on his entrance into politics. 'He
+was tall, broad-shouldered, with face and figure of somewhat loose
+formation. His hair was auburn, carelessly flung over his forehead, his
+eyes of bluish grey, dreamy but kindly. But the mouth&mdash;aye, that was the
+unruly member of his face&mdash;with deep lines following the curve of the
+moustache, it had a determined, masterful, and sometimes scornful
+expression.... His style of speaking was straight and to the point. He
+was not a hard hitter in debate&mdash;rather a persuader, reasoning and
+pleading in a conversational<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span> way as one more anxious to convince an
+opponent than to expose his weakness. He used little gesture: what there
+was, was most expressive, his hands held behind him, or thrust out,
+sometimes passed over his brow.'<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> Such success as he had in
+Parliament he owed less to art than to nature, less to oratorical gifts
+than to force of character; but this brought him rapidly to the front.
+As early as 1884 he was in the Ministry, and despite his long absences
+over his northern work he was judged to be the only man who could become
+Prime Minister in the parliamentary crisis of 1890. There was, by that
+year, little question that he was the most influential man in South
+Africa. He had a large holding in the Transvaal goldfields, discovered
+in 1886; he was head of the great De Beers Corporation of Kimberley; and
+he was chairman of the newly-created Chartered Company. To many it
+seemed impossible that one man could combine these great financial
+interests with the position of First Minister of the Colony; but at
+least it was clear that the interests of the companies were subordinated
+to national aims, that the money which he obtained from mines was spent
+on imperial ends, and that his political position was never used for the
+promoting of financial objects.</p>
+
+<p>But it is time to return to the development of the north, the greatest
+of his schemes and the one dearest to his heart. The year 1885 had
+secured Bechuanaland to the river Molopo as British territory, while a
+large stretch farther north was under a British protectorate. One danger
+had been avoided. The neck of the bottle was not corked up: a way to the
+interior was now open. The next factor to reckon with was the Matabele
+nation and its chief, Lobengula. They were a Bantu tribe, fond of
+fighting and hunting, an offshoot of the Zulus who fought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span> us in 1881.
+They had a very large country surrounding the Matoppo hills, and
+Lobengula ruled the various districts through 'indunas' or chiefs, who
+had 'impis' or armies of fighting men at their disposal. To the
+north-east of them lay the weaker tribe of the Mashona, who paid tribute
+to Lobengula and whose country was a common hunting-ground for the
+Matabele braves. Over the latter, so long as he did not check too much
+their love of fighting, Lobengula exercised a fairly effective control.
+He himself was a remarkable man, strong in body and mind. Sir Lewis
+Michell describes him as he appeared to English visitors: 'A somewhat
+grotesque costume of four yards of blue calico over his shoulders and a
+string of tigers' tails round his waist could not make his imposing
+figure ridiculous. In early days he was an athlete and a fine shot; and
+though, as years went on, his voracious appetite rendered him
+conspicuously obese, he was every inch a ruler.... Visitors were much
+struck by his capacity for government: very little went on in his wide
+dominions of which he was not instantly and accurately informed.' He was
+an arbitrary ruler, but not cruel to Europeans, of whom a few, like the
+famous hunter Selous, visited his capital from time to time. He clearly
+held the keys to the north, and it was with him that Rhodes had now to
+deal.</p>
+
+<p>The first step was the mission sent out by Rhodes and Beit early in
+1888, headed by their old associate Rudd. He and his two fellow-envoys
+stayed some months with Lobengula watching for favourable moments and
+trying to win his favour. They shifted their quarters when the king did
+so, touring from village to village, plied the king and his indunas with
+offers and arguments, and finally in October they obtained his signature
+to a treaty giving full and unqualified rights to the envoys for working
+minerals in his country. In return they covenanted to give him money,
+rifles, ammunition, and an armed steamboat.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The next step was to get the support of the British authorities in
+London for that political extension which was dearer to Rhodes than the
+richest mines and the biggest dividends. In this he was greatly helped
+by his consistent supporter, Sir Hercules Robinson, who held office in
+Africa for many years, studied men and matters at first hand, and had a
+juster estimate of Rhodes and his value to the Empire than the officials
+in Whitehall. The method of proceeding was by chartered company, the old
+Elizabethan method, which still has its value to-day, as it relieves the
+home Government of the expense of developing new countries, yet reserves
+to it the right to control policy and to enter into the harvest. The
+Company was to build railways and telegraphs, encourage colonization and
+spread trade; the Government was to escape from the diplomatic
+difficulties which might arise with neighbours if it were acting under
+its own name.</p>
+
+<p>The third step was to make a way into the country and to start actual
+work. Lobengula's consent was given conditionally: the first expedition
+was to avoid his capital, Bulawayo, and to go by the south-east to
+Mashonaland. The chief knew how difficult it might prove to hold in his
+impis when, instead of a solitary Selous, some hundreds of Europeans
+began to cross their hunting-grounds. And so it proved. Lobengula had to
+pretend later that he had not consented to their passage, and the
+expedition had to slip through the dangerous zone before they could be
+recalled authoritatively. By May 1890 a column of nearly one thousand
+men was ready to start from Khama's country; and in June their equipment
+was approved by a British officer. On September 11, after a march of
+four hundred miles through trackless country (some of it unknown even to
+Selous, their guide), the British flag was hoisted on the site of the
+modern town of Salisbury. It is a chapter of history well worth reading
+in detail, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span> Rhodes himself could not be there: the heroes of the
+march were Jameson and Selous. The other half of Rhodesia, Matabeleland,
+was not added till a few years later; but British enterprise had now
+found the way and overcome the worst difficulties. 'Occupation Day' is
+still kept as the chief festival of the Colony.</p>
+
+<p>Further extension was inevitable. The Matabele impis would not forgo
+their old habit of raiding amongst the Mashonas. Jameson's complaints
+received only partial satisfaction from Lobengula. He himself did not
+want war, but he failed to control his men, and in September 1893 the
+Chartered Company was driven to fight. They had on the spot about nine
+hundred men and some machine-guns. Against these the Matabele with all
+their bravery could effect little. In two engagements they threw away
+their lives with reckless gallantry, and then they broke and fled.
+Lobengula himself was never heard of again. His rearguard cut up a small
+party of British who were too impetuous in pursuit, but by the end of
+the year the country was at peace. In 1894 Matabeleland was added to the
+territory of the Chartered Company, in 1895 the term 'Rhodesia' came
+into use for postal purposes, and in 1897 it was officially adopted for
+administrative purposes.</p>
+
+<p>The jealousy of the Portuguese, who claimed the 'Hinterland' behind
+their East African colony, though they had never occupied it, caused a
+good deal of ill feeling, and very nearly led to hostilities both in
+Africa and Europe. The Boers formed schemes for raiding the new lands
+before they could be effectively occupied, and had to be headed off. The
+Matabele impis continued for months in a state of excitement; and their
+forays made it far too dangerous for Rhodes or for others to go up there
+for some time. But Rhodes himself said that he had less trouble with
+natives, with Dutch, and with Portuguese, than he had with compatriots
+of his own, who claimed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span> have received concessions from native chiefs
+and intrigued against him in London. But here his peculiar gifts came
+out, his patience, his persuasive power, his readiness to pour out money
+like water for a worthy end. Some he beat, others he bought; and in all
+cases he maintained his position against his rivals. Robinson, Rudd,
+Jameson, Selous, had all done their parts well, and Rhodes gave them
+full credit and generous praise; but the mind and the will that planned
+and carried out the whole movement, and added a province to the British
+Empire, was unquestionably his own.</p>
+
+<p>Rhodes was Prime Minister of Cape Colony from 1890 to 1895; and during
+this time he was obliged to be more often at Cape Town. It was in 1891
+that he first leased the property lying on the eastern slopes of Table
+Mountain where he built 'Groote Schuur', the famous house which he
+bequeathed to the service of the State. Here he gradually acquired 1,500
+acres of land, laying them out with a sure eye to the beauty of the
+surroundings, and to the pleasure of his fellow-citizens. Here he lived
+from time to time, and received all kinds of men with boundless
+hospitality. No one can fully understand him who does not read the
+varying impressions of the friends and guests who sat with him on the
+'stoep', under the trees in his garden, or high up on the mountain side,
+where he had his favourite nooks. The visitors saw what they had eyes to
+see. One would note his foibles, his blunt manner, his slovenly dress,
+his want of skill at billiards, his fondness for special dishes or
+drinks. Another would be impressed by his library with its teak
+panelling, by the books which he read and the questions which he asked,
+by his love for Gibbon and Plutarch, by his interest in Marcus Aurelius
+and other writers on high themes. Others again tell us of his relations
+to his fellow-men, how recklessly generous he was to young and old, to
+British and Dutch, and how his generosity was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span> abused: how his
+acquaintances preyed upon him; how, for all that, he kept his true
+friendships few in number and he held them sacred. In fact, loyalty to
+friends meant more to Rhodes than loyalty to principles. His temper was
+impatient, especially in the last years of physical pain; he often tried
+to take short cuts to his ends, believing that his ends were worthy and
+knowing that life was short. He made many mistakes, but he retrieved
+them nobly. He was in some ways rough-hewn and unpolished, but he was a
+great man.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to put in a short compass the many important questions
+with which he dealt. His policy towards the natives was moderate and
+wise. He wished to educate them and then to trust them; to restrict the
+sale of liquor among them and to open to them the nobler lessons of
+civilization; to give them the vote when they were educated enough to
+use it well, but not before; to apply to them too his motto of 'Equal
+rights for every civilized man south of the Zambezi'. His policy towards
+the Dutch was to establish identity of interest between the two nations
+and so to secure friendly relations with them; to draw them into
+co-operation in agriculture, in railways, in colonization, in export
+trade, in imperial politics. He did his best to win over the Orange Free
+State by a policy of common railways, and even to break down the sullen
+opposition of the Transvaal. But the latter proved impossible. President
+Kruger leant more and more upon Dutch counsellors from Holland; he
+looked more and more to Delagoa Bay and turned his back upon Cape Town:
+and the antagonism became more acute. In 1895 Mr. Chamberlain initiated
+a new era at the Colonial Office. He was actively awake to British
+interests in all parts of the globe; and President Kruger, who had tried
+to check trade with Cape Town by stopping the Cape railway at his
+frontier, and then by closing the 'Drifts' or fords over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span> the Vaal, was
+compelled to give way and to keep to the agreements made with the
+Suzerain State.</p>
+
+<p>A still more serious question was the treatment of the 'Uitlanders' or
+alien European settlers in the Transvaal. Though the Boer rulers took an
+increasingly large share of their earnings, they restricted more and
+more the grant of the franchise. In taxation, in commerce, in education,
+there was no prospect between the Vaal and the Limpopo of 'Equal rights
+for all civilized men' or anything like it. In June 1894 the High
+Commissioner frankly told Kruger that the Uitlanders had 'very real and
+substantial grievances'; in 1895 they were no less substantial, and
+agitation was rife in Johannesburg. On December 28, Jameson at the head
+of an armed column left Pitsani on the borders and rode into the
+Transvaal to support a rising against the Boer Government. The
+Uitlanders were not expecting him; no rising took place, and Jameson's
+small column was surrounded some miles west of Johannesburg,
+outnumbered, and forced to surrender. The Jameson Raid, for which Rhodes
+was generally held responsible, attracted all eyes in Europe as in
+Africa. How President Kruger used his advantage against the Uitlanders,
+among whom Col. Frank Rhodes was a leader, can be read in many books:
+here we need only relate how the event affected the Premier of Cape
+Colony. He resigned office at once and put himself at the disposal of
+the Government. Despite his past record he was judged by the Dutch,
+alike in the Cape and in the Transvaal, to have been the author of the
+Raid, and all chance of his doing further service in reconciling the two
+races was at an end. The beginning of 1895 saw him at the height of his
+ambition. The end of it saw his power shattered beyond repair.</p>
+
+<p>His behaviour in this crisis enables us to know the real man. For a few
+days he kept aloof, unapproachable, overcome by the ruin of his work. He
+made no attempt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span> to conciliate opinion: in moments of bitterness he
+scoffed at the 'unctuous rectitude' of certain politicians who were
+improving the occasion. But he spoke frankly to those who had the right
+to question him. He went to London in February and saw Mr. Chamberlain,
+the Colonial Secretary, and his Directors. He admitted that he was at
+fault. Believing that Kruger would always yield to a show of force, he
+had been responsible for putting troops near the border to exercise
+moral pressure. But neither then nor at any time had he given Jameson
+orders to invade the Transvaal, or to precipitate an armed conflict,
+which he believed to be unnecessary. Such was his consistent statement,
+and he was ready to face, when the time should come, the Parliamentary
+committees appointed by the British and South African Houses to report
+on the Raid. Meanwhile he put all brooding away and looked round for
+some practical work. Fortunately he found it in the most congenial
+sphere. His colony of Rhodesia, to which he had gone straight from
+London, was threatened with disaster from a great native outbreak. The
+causes were various. Rinderpest had spoiled one of the chief native
+industries, and superstition had invented foolish reasons for it; also
+the rumours, which were spreading about the Raid, made the natives
+believe that the British power was shaken. The Mashonas, as well as the
+Matabele, took part in the revolt which began early in April 1896. To
+meet it the colonists mustered their full strength, while General
+Carrington was sent out from home with some regular troops. Several
+engagements in difficult country followed: the enemies' forces were
+quickly broken up, and by the end of July the time for negotiation was
+come.</p>
+
+<p>But the chiefs of the Matabele had retired into their fortresses in the
+Matoppo hills and could not be reached. To send small columns to track
+them down might mean needless loss of life: to keep the forces in the
+field right<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span> through the winter was ruinous to the Company's finances.
+Rhodes offered his own services as negotiator, and they were accepted.
+The man who could carry his point with Jewish financiers and Dutch
+politicians might hope to achieve his ends with the simpler native
+chiefs. But it was a sore trial of patience. He moved his own tent two
+miles away from the British troops to the foot of the hills, sent native
+messengers to the chiefs, and waited. During this time he was not idle:
+he put in a lot of riding and of miscellaneous reading: his mind was
+actively employed in planning roads and dams for irrigation, in scheming
+for the future greatness of the country. It was six weeks before a chief
+responded. Gradually they began to drop in and to hold informal meetings
+round the tent, putting questions, replying to Rhodes's jokes, relapsing
+into fits of silence, oblivious as all savages are of the value of time.
+He would spend hours day after day in this apparently futile way;
+accustoming them to his presence, coaxing them into the right humour. At
+last he persuaded them to meet him in a formal 'indaba', which must have
+been a dramatic scene. Alone he stood facing them, boldly reproaching
+them with their bad faith and cruel acts. They stated their grievances:
+some were admitted: satisfaction was promised. In the end peace was
+proclaimed and the delighted natives greeted him uproariously with the
+title of Lamula 'm Kunzi (Separator of the Fighting Bulls). The
+discussions were not over till the end of October, and it was a month
+later ere Rhodes was able to leave the country and face the Committee in
+London&mdash;a very different gathering in very different surroundings. His
+work during these two months was perhaps the greatest of his life; and
+that he should have been able to concentrate all his powers upon it so
+soon after the shattering blow of the Raid is a great tribute to his
+essential manliness and patriotism.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The two Committees, sitting in London and Cape Town, agreed to censure,
+though in modified terms, Rhodes's conduct over the Raid; but he still
+retained the respect of the bulk of his countrymen, and on his return
+the citizens of Cape Town gave him an enthusiastic welcome. They and he
+were looking ahead as well as behind: they felt that his services were
+still needed for the establishing of a United South Africa under the
+British flag. But in this respect his work was done. The Cape Dutch were
+more and more influenced by their sentiment for the Transvaal, and
+racial feeling ran high. Rhodes severed himself from all his old Dutch
+colleagues and became more of a party leader. Meanwhile Kruger watched
+the breach, assured himself of Dutch support, made no concessions to the
+Uitlanders, repelled all overtures from Mr. Chamberlain, and steered
+straight for war. Rhodes, despite his knowledge of the Dutch, made the
+mistake of believing up to the last moment that Kruger would give way
+and not fight; but, when the war broke out in 1899, he went up to
+Kimberley to take his share of the work and the danger. The siege lasted
+about four months, and Rhodes, though he failed to work harmoniously
+with the military commandant, rendered many services to the town, thanks
+to his wealth, influence, and knowledge of the place. When the town was
+relieved in February 1900, he went to Rhodesia and spent many months
+there. Though he was urged by his followers to return to politics, Cape
+Town saw little of him; when he was not in the north, he was mostly at
+his seaside cottage at Muizenberg, half-way between the capital and the
+Cape of Good Hope. The heart complaint, from which he had suffered
+intermittently all his life, had rapidly grown worse; his last year was
+one of great suffering, and in March 1902 he breathed his last at
+Muizenberg with Jameson and a few of his dearest friends around him. He
+was buried in the place which he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span> had himself chosen amid the Matoppo
+hills. On a bare hill-top seven gigantic boulders keep guard round the
+simple tombstone on which his name is engraved. After the English
+service was over, the natives celebrated in their own fashion the
+passing of the great chief who had already been enshrined in their
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>At Kimberley, at Cape Town, in the Matoppos, his work was done before
+the nineteenth century was finished, and he had earned his rest. The
+complete union of the European races for which he laboured in Parliament
+is yet to come. The vast wealth which he won in Kimberley is fulfilling
+a noble purpose. By his will he founded scholarships at Oxford for
+scholars from the Dominions and Colonies, from the United States and
+from Germany&mdash;his faith in the Anglo-Saxon race being extended to our
+Teutonic kinsmen. He regarded a common education and common ideals as
+the surest cement of Empire. But above all else his name will be
+preserved among his countrymen by the provinces which he added to the
+British dominions. Kimberley and Cape Town have their monuments, their
+memories of his many successes and his few failures: the Matoppos have
+his grave. To us the peace and solitude of the hills where he lies may
+seem to contrast strangely with the stirring activity of his life. But
+solitude will not reign there always, if Rhodes's ideal is fulfilled. It
+was here that he had stood with a friend, looking towards the vast
+horizon northwards, and, in an often-quoted sentence, expressed his
+dream for the future: 'Homes, more homes, that's what I work for!' So
+long as our race produces such bold dreamers, such strenuous workers,
+its future, in Africa and elsewhere, need occasion no doubts or fears.</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2>
+
+
+<p class="i">
+A<br />
+<br />
+Aberdeen, 4th Earl of, <a href="#Page_32">32, </a><a href="#Page_51">51</a>
+<br />
+Acton, Lord, <a href="#Page_5">5, </a><a href="#Page_272">272, </a><a href="#Page_325">325</a>
+<br />
+Adams, Professor J. C., <a href="#Page_277">277</a>
+<br />
+Addison, Joseph, <a href="#Page_137">137, </a><a href="#Page_326">326, </a><a href="#Page_336">336</a>
+<br />
+Afghanistan, <a href="#Page_62">62, </a><a href="#Page_103">103, </a><a href="#Page_107">107</a>
+<br />
+Afrikander Bond, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>
+<br />
+Agram, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>
+<br />
+Agricultural labourers, <a href="#Page_79">79, </a><a href="#Page_117">117</a>
+<br />
+Aldworth, <a href="#Page_171">171, </a><a href="#Page_176">176, </a><a href="#Page_345">345</a>
+<br />
+Alexander III, Tsar, <a href="#Page_266">266, </a><a href="#Page_268">268, </a><a href="#Page_271">271</a>
+<br />
+Alexander, Prince of Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_265">265-6</a><br />
+<br />
+Alexandria, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>
+<br />
+Alfonso XII, King of Spain, <a href="#Page_262">262-4</a><br />
+<br />
+Alsace, <a href="#Page_256">256, </a><a href="#Page_345">345</a><br />
+<br />
+Althorp, Lord (3rd Earl Spencer), <a href="#Page_42">42, </a><a href="#Page_43">43, </a><a href="#Page_83">83</a><br />
+<br />
+American Civil War, <a href="#Page_121">121, </a><a href="#Page_123">123-4</a><br />
+<br />
+Ampthill, Lord, <i>v.</i> Odo Russell, <a href="#Page_248">248, </a><a href="#Page_264">264, </a><a href="#Page_272">272, </a><a href="#Page_273">273, </a><a href="#Page_275">275</a>
+<br />
+Angevin kings, <a href="#Page_334">334, </a><a href="#Page_337">337</a>
+<br />
+Anglesey, Lord, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>
+<br />
+Annandale, <a href="#Page_10">10-13</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16, </a><a href="#Page_29">29</a>
+<br />
+Appomattox, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>
+<br />
+Argyll, 8th Duke of, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>
+<br />
+Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#Page_6">6, </a><a href="#Page_8">8, </a><a href="#Page_194">194, </a><a href="#Page_321">321</a>
+<br />
+Arnold, Dr. Thomas, <a href="#Page_8">8, </a><a href="#Page_24">24</a>
+<br />
+Ashburton, 2nd Lord, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>
+<br />
+Atkin, Joseph, <a href="#Page_235">235, </a> <a href="#Page_242">242-3</a><br />
+<br />
+Auckland, N. Z., <a href="#Page_226">226-7</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237-8</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span><br />
+B<br />
+<br />
+Baden, <a href="#Page_249">249, </a><a href="#Page_256">256</a>
+<br />
+Bagehot, Walter, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>
+<br />
+Baird-Smith, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>
+<br />
+Baluchs, <a href="#Page_62">62-6</a><br />
+<br />
+Bamford, Samuel, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>
+<br />
+Baring, Lady Harriet, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>
+<br />
+Barnack, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>
+<br />
+Barnato, Barney, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>
+<br />
+Barry, Sir Charles, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>
+<br />
+Basutoland, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>
+<br />
+Batum, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>
+<br />
+Bazaine, Marshal, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>
+<br />
+Bechuanaland, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>
+<br />
+de Beers Company, <a href="#Page_352">352, </a><a href="#Page_357">357</a>
+<br />
+Behnes, Charles and Wm., <a href="#Page_199">199</a>
+<br />
+Beit, Alfred, <a href="#Page_350">350, </a><a href="#Page_358">358</a>
+<br />
+Bentham, Jeremy, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>
+<br />
+Bergmann, Professor von, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>
+<br />
+Berlin, <a href="#Page_248">248, </a> <a href="#Page_252">252-3</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263, </a><a href="#Page_293">293;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Treaty of, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Bermuda, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>
+<br />
+Besant, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>
+<br />
+Biarritz, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>
+<br />
+Bideford, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>
+<br />
+Bird, Robert, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>
+<br />
+Birmingham, <a href="#Page_6">6, </a><a href="#Page_126">126, </a><a href="#Page_304">304, </a><a href="#Page_311">311</a>
+<br />
+Bishop's Stortford, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>
+<br />
+Bismarck, <a href="#Page_252">252-9</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264, </a><a href="#Page_273">273</a>
+<br />
+Blackburn, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>
+<br />
+Blackie, Professor, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>
+<br />
+Blomfield, Bishop, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>
+<br />
+Bloomsbury, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>
+<br />
+Boehm, Sir J. E., <a href="#Page_21">21</a>
+<br />
+Bolivar, Simon, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>
+<br />
+Borrow, George, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>
+<br />
+Bright, Jacob, <a href="#Page_111">111-13</a><br />
+<br />
+Bright, John: America, <a href="#Page_123">123;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Anti-Corn-Law League, <a href="#Page_114">114-19</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">education, <a href="#Page_111">111-12</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">family, <a href="#Page_111">111-14</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">foreign policy, <a href="#Page_122">122, </a><a href="#Page_127">127;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ireland, <a href="#Page_121">121, </a><a href="#Page_127">127;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">oratorical style, <a href="#Page_117">117, </a> <a href="#Page_119">119-20</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Parliament, <a href="#Page_85">85, </a><a href="#Page_117">117, </a><a href="#Page_119">119, </a><a href="#Page_121">121, </a><a href="#Page_123">123, </a><a href="#Page_125">125;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">public meetings, <a href="#Page_116">116, </a><a href="#Page_117">117, </a><a href="#Page_125">125;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Quakers, <a href="#Page_111">111, </a><a href="#Page_113">113, </a><a href="#Page_115">115, </a><a href="#Page_117">117, </a><a href="#Page_122">122;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Reform, <a href="#Page_113">113, </a> <a href="#Page_124">124-5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">other references, <a href="#Page_25">25-6</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85, </a><a href="#Page_278">278</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Brindley, James, <a href="#Page_120">120, </a><a href="#Page_338">338</a>
+<br />
+Bront&euml;, Charlotte, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>
+<br />
+Brooke, Stopford, <a href="#Page_162">162, </a><a href="#Page_187">187, </a><a href="#Page_310">310, </a><a href="#Page_339">339, </a> <a href="#Page_342">342-5</a><br />
+<br />
+Brookfield, Rev. W., <a href="#Page_157">157</a>
+<br />
+Brougham, Lord, <a href="#Page_7">7, </a><a href="#Page_40">40, </a><a href="#Page_42">42</a>
+<br />
+Brown, Ford Madox, <a href="#Page_197">197, </a><a href="#Page_307">307</a>
+<br />
+Browning, E. B., <a href="#Page_81">81</a>
+<br />
+Browning, Robert, <a href="#Page_5">5, </a><a href="#Page_9">9, </a><a href="#Page_140">140, </a><a href="#Page_158">158, </a><a href="#Page_165">165, </a><a href="#Page_169">169, </a><a href="#Page_170">170, </a><a href="#Page_175">175, </a><a href="#Page_250">250</a>
+<br />
+Brunton, Sir Lauder, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span><br />
+Bryce, Viscount, <a href="#Page_334">334, </a><a href="#Page_343">343, </a><a href="#Page_345">345</a>
+<br />
+Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_264">264-8</a><br />
+<br />
+Burlington House (Royal Academy), <a href="#Page_198">198, </a><a href="#Page_200">200, </a><a href="#Page_206">206, </a><a href="#Page_217">217</a>
+<br />
+Burne-Jones, Sir E., <a href="#Page_197">197, </a><a href="#Page_205">205, </a><a href="#Page_209">209, </a><a href="#Page_212">212, </a><a href="#Page_217">217, </a><a href="#Page_219">219, </a> <a href="#Page_304">304-8</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311, </a><a href="#Page_319">319, </a><a href="#Page_328">328</a>
+<br />
+Burton, Richard, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>
+<br />
+Byron, Lord, <a href="#Page_33">33, </a><a href="#Page_60">60, </a><a href="#Page_153">153</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+C<br />
+<br />
+Cambridge, <a href="#Page_153">153-4</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179, </a><a href="#Page_190">190, </a><a href="#Page_221">221</a>
+<br />
+Cameron, Sir Hector, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>
+<br />
+Cameron, Julia, <a href="#Page_172">172, </a><a href="#Page_205">205</a>
+<br />
+Campbell, Sir Colin (Lord Clyde), <a href="#Page_69">69, </a><a href="#Page_70">70, </a><a href="#Page_105">105</a>
+<br />
+Canning, Charles, Lord, <a href="#Page_105">105, </a><a href="#Page_122">122</a>
+<br />
+Canning, George, <a href="#Page_32">32, </a><a href="#Page_35">35, </a><a href="#Page_37">37, </a><a href="#Page_38">38</a>
+<br />
+Capri, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>
+<br />
+Carlisle, <a href="#Page_10">10, </a><a href="#Page_290">290</a>
+<br />
+Carlyle, Jane Welsh, <a href="#Page_14">14-19</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22, </a><a href="#Page_25">25, </a><a href="#Page_27">27</a>
+<br />
+Carlyle, John, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>
+<br />
+Carlyle, Thomas: appearance, <a href="#Page_19">19, </a><a href="#Page_212">212;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">books, chief, <a href="#Page_11">11, </a><a href="#Page_20">20, </a><a href="#Page_22">22, </a><a href="#Page_23">23, </a> <a href="#Page_25">25-7</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character, <a href="#Page_16">16, </a><a href="#Page_17">17, </a><a href="#Page_29">29;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">education, <a href="#Page_12">12, </a><a href="#Page_13">13;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">family, <a href="#Page_11">11, </a><a href="#Page_15">15, </a><a href="#Page_29">29;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">friends, <a href="#Page_4">4, </a><a href="#Page_13">13, </a><a href="#Page_18">18, </a><a href="#Page_23">23, </a><a href="#Page_30">30, </a><a href="#Page_140">140, </a><a href="#Page_163">163;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">German literature, <a href="#Page_16">16, </a><a href="#Page_17">17;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">homes, <a href="#Page_6">6, </a><a href="#Page_11">11, </a><a href="#Page_13">13, </a><a href="#Page_15">15, </a><a href="#Page_18">18, </a><a href="#Page_21">21;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">lectures, <a href="#Page_22">22;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">literary style, <a href="#Page_20">20, </a><a href="#Page_29">29, </a><a href="#Page_321">321, </a> <a href="#Page_324">324-5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quoted opinions, <a href="#Page_71">71, </a><a href="#Page_164">164, </a><a href="#Page_189">189, </a><a href="#Page_302">302</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Carnot, President, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>
+<br />
+Carrington, General, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>
+<br />
+Cashel, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>
+<br />
+Castelar, Emilio, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>
+<br />
+Castlereagh, Lord, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>
+<br />
+Cauteretz, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>
+<br />
+Celbridge, <a href="#Page_55">55, </a><a href="#Page_56">56</a>
+<br />
+Cephalonia, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>
+<br />
+Chamberlain, Joseph, <a href="#Page_6">6, </a><a href="#Page_53">53, </a><a href="#Page_362">362, </a><a href="#Page_364">364, </a><a href="#Page_366">366</a>
+<br />
+Chartered Company, <a href="#Page_359">359, </a><a href="#Page_360">360, </a> <a href="#Page_364">364-5</a><br />
+<br />
+Chartists, <a href="#Page_61">61, </a> <a href="#Page_187">187-9</a><br />
+<br />
+Chatham, <a href="#Page_130">130, </a><a href="#Page_144">144</a>
+<br />
+Chelsea, <a href="#Page_21">21, </a><a href="#Page_163">163, </a><a href="#Page_179">179</a>
+<br />
+Chester, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>
+<br />
+Cheyne, Sir Watson, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>
+<br />
+Chili&#257;nw&#257;la, <a href="#Page_69">69, </a><a href="#Page_101">101</a>
+<br />
+Christison, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>
+<br />
+Clare election, <a href="#Page_39">39, </a><a href="#Page_49">49</a>
+<br />
+Clarendon, Edw. Hyde, Earl of, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>
+<br />
+Clarendon, Geo. Villiers, Earl of, <a href="#Page_7">7, </a><a href="#Page_250">250</a>
+<br />
+Clark, Sir Andrew, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>
+<br />
+Clovelly, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>
+<br />
+Cobden, Richard, <a href="#Page_2">2;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Bright, <a href="#Page_114">114-19</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124, </a><a href="#Page_127">127;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Peel, <a href="#Page_48">48, </a><a href="#Page_49">49, </a><a href="#Page_51">51;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Shaftesbury, <a href="#Page_84">84, </a><a href="#Page_87">87</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Coburg, Duchy of, <a href="#Page_249">249, </a><a href="#Page_253">253</a>
+<br />
+Codrington, Rev. R., <a href="#Page_235">235</a>
+<br />
+Coleridge, Rev. Derwent, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>
+<br />
+Coleridge, Rev. Edward, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>
+<br />
+Coleridge, John, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>
+<br />
+Coleridge, S. T., <a href="#Page_13">13, </a><a href="#Page_29">29</a>
+<br />
+Cook, Captain James, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>
+<br />
+Cook, John Douglas, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>
+<br />
+Cooper, Thomas, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>
+<br />
+Corn Laws, <a href="#Page_47">47, </a> <a href="#Page_115">115-20</a><br />
+<br />
+Coru&ntilde;a, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>
+<br />
+Craigenputtock, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>
+<br />
+Creighton, Bishop, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>
+<br />
+Crimean War, <a href="#Page_121">121-3</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167, </a><a href="#Page_251">251</a>
+<br />
+Cromer, Earl of, <a href="#Page_123">123, </a><a href="#Page_272">272</a>
+<br />
+Crotch, W. W., <a href="#Page_136">136, </a><a href="#Page_146">146</a>
+<br />
+Crown Prince of Germany (Frederick III), <a href="#Page_252">252, </a><a href="#Page_258">258</a>
+<br />
+Currency, Reform of, <a href="#Page_36">36-7</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+D<br />
+<br />
+Dabo, Battle of, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>
+<br />
+Dalhousie, Marquis of, <a href="#Page_69">69, </a><a href="#Page_70">70, </a><a href="#Page_100">100, </a><a href="#Page_101">101, </a><a href="#Page_103">103</a>
+<br />
+Dal&#299;p Singh, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>
+<br />
+Dalling, Lord, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>
+<br />
+Darmstadt, Court of, <a href="#Page_255">255-7</a><br />
+<br />
+Darwin, Charles, <a href="#Page_2">2, </a><a href="#Page_4">4, </a><a href="#Page_5">5, </a><a href="#Page_6">6, </a><a href="#Page_152">152, </a><a href="#Page_183">183, </a><a href="#Page_277">277, </a><a href="#Page_279">279, </a><a href="#Page_291">291</a>
+<br />
+Dawkins, Boyd, <a href="#Page_328">328-30</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333-4</a><br />
+<br />
+Delagoa Bay, <a href="#Page_260">260, </a><a href="#Page_362">362</a>
+<br />
+Delane, John Thaddeus, <a href="#Page_8">8, </a><a href="#Page_123">123, </a><a href="#Page_253">253</a>
+<br />
+Delarey, General, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>
+<br />
+Delhi, <a href="#Page_95">95, </a><a href="#Page_99">99, </a> <a href="#Page_103">103-4</a><br />
+<br />
+Derby, Edw. Stanley, 14th Earl of, <a href="#Page_32">32, </a> <a href="#Page_42">42-4</a><br />
+<br />
+Dickens, Charles: appearance, <a href="#Page_132">132-3</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character, <a href="#Page_131">131-3</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141, </a><a href="#Page_146">146;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">friends, <a href="#Page_140">140;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence, <a href="#Page_130">130, </a><a href="#Page_135">135, </a><a href="#Page_147">147;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">journalism, <a href="#Page_132">132, </a><a href="#Page_138">138;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">novels, <a href="#Page_132">132-9</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Poor Law, <a href="#Page_146">146-7</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'purpose', <a href="#Page_130">130, </a><a href="#Page_135">135, </a> <a href="#Page_144">144-8</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">readings, <a href="#Page_142">142-3</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">satire, <a href="#Page_137">137, </a><a href="#Page_145">145, </a><a href="#Page_239">239;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sensation, <a href="#Page_141">141-2</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sentiment, <a href="#Page_136">136;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">travels, <a href="#Page_136">136-8</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">other references, <a href="#Page_4">4, </a><a href="#Page_82">82, </a><a href="#Page_89">89</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span><br />
+Dilke, Sir Charles, <a href="#Page_6">6, </a><a href="#Page_272">272</a>
+<br />
+Disraeli, Benjamin: novels, <a href="#Page_3">3, </a><a href="#Page_34">34;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">personal, <a href="#Page_28">28, </a><a href="#Page_53">53;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">political, <a href="#Page_32">32, </a><a href="#Page_47">47, </a><a href="#Page_50">50, </a><a href="#Page_90">90, </a><a href="#Page_121">121, </a> <a href="#Page_123">123-5</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128, </a><a href="#Page_193">193</a></span><br />
+<br />
+D&ouml;llinger, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>
+<br />
+Durham City, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+E<br />
+<br />
+East India Company, <a href="#Page_68">68, </a><a href="#Page_76">76, </a><a href="#Page_94">94, </a><a href="#Page_105">105</a>
+<br />
+Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_12">12-13</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18, </a><a href="#Page_27">27, </a><a href="#Page_120">120, </a> <a href="#Page_280">280-4</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293-6</a><br />
+<br />
+Edwardes, Sir Herbert, <a href="#Page_101">101, </a><a href="#Page_103">103</a>
+<br />
+Eldon, Lord, <a href="#Page_34">34, </a><a href="#Page_38">38</a>
+<br />
+Elgin, Lord, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>
+<br />
+Elgin Marbles, <a href="#Page_199">199, </a><a href="#Page_210">210</a>
+<br />
+Ellenborough, Lord, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>
+<br />
+Emerson, Ralph Waldo, <a href="#Page_19">19-20</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29, </a><a href="#Page_30">30, </a><a href="#Page_164">164</a>
+<br />
+Epping Forest, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>
+<br />
+Erichsen, Sir J. E., <a href="#Page_286">286</a>
+<br />
+Et&#257;wa, <a href="#Page_98">98, </a><a href="#Page_100">100</a>
+<br />
+Eton, <a href="#Page_219">219, </a><a href="#Page_221">221, </a><a href="#Page_223">223, </a> <a href="#Page_232">232-4</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246, </a><a href="#Page_349">349</a>
+<br />
+Euston station, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>
+<br />
+Eversley, <a href="#Page_180">180-3</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186-7</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191-2</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+F<br />
+<br />
+Factory Acts, <a href="#Page_81">81-6</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>
+<br />
+Fairman, Mr., <a href="#Page_270">270</a>
+<br />
+Farnham, <a href="#Page_58">58, </a><a href="#Page_180">180</a>
+<br />
+Farringford, <a href="#Page_171">171-2</a><br />
+<br />
+Faulkner, C. J., <a href="#Page_307">307-8</a><br />
+<br />
+Feniton, <a href="#Page_222">222, </a><a href="#Page_225">225</a>
+<br />
+Ferdinand, Prince of Bulgaria, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>
+<br />
+Fiji, <a href="#Page_240">240-3</a><br />
+<br />
+FitzGerald, Edward, <a href="#Page_6">6, </a> <a href="#Page_153">153-4</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164, </a><a href="#Page_175">175, </a><a href="#Page_204">204</a>
+<br />
+Fitzgerald, William Vesey, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>
+<br />
+Florence, <a href="#Page_201">201-3</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206, </a><a href="#Page_309">309, </a><a href="#Page_343">343</a>
+<br />
+Fontevraud, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>
+<br />
+Forster, John, <a href="#Page_131">131, </a><a href="#Page_140">140, </a> <a href="#Page_142">142-3</a><br />
+<br />
+Fox, George, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>
+<br />
+Franco-German War, <a href="#Page_256">256, </a><a href="#Page_294">294, </a><a href="#Page_345">345</a>
+<br />
+Frederick the Great, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>
+<br />
+Freeman, Edward A., <a href="#Page_5">5, </a><a href="#Page_325">325, </a> <a href="#Page_334">334-6</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341-3</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>
+<br />
+Froude, James Anthony, <a href="#Page_5">5, </a><a href="#Page_23">23, </a><a href="#Page_28">28, </a><a href="#Page_172">172, </a><a href="#Page_325">325, </a><a href="#Page_335">335</a>
+<br />
+Fry, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+G<br />
+<br />
+Gadshill, <a href="#Page_143">143, </a><a href="#Page_148">148</a>
+<br />
+Gardiner, Professor S. R., <a href="#Page_326">326</a>
+<br />
+Garibaldi, <a href="#Page_60">60, </a><a href="#Page_172">172, </a><a href="#Page_345">345</a>
+<br />
+Garrett, Edmund, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>
+<br />
+Gaskell, Mrs., <a href="#Page_163">163</a>
+<br />
+Geikie, Professor, <a href="#Page_183">183, </a><a href="#Page_294">294</a>
+<br />
+Genoa, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>
+<br />
+George III, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>
+<br />
+George IV, <a href="#Page_37">37, </a><a href="#Page_78">78</a>
+<br />
+Gibbon, Edward, <a href="#Page_14">14, </a><a href="#Page_323">323, </a><a href="#Page_328">328, </a><a href="#Page_361">361</a>
+<br />
+Giers, Monsieur de, <a href="#Page_267">267-9</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>
+<br />
+Gladstone, W. E., <a href="#Page_6">6, </a><a href="#Page_265">265;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Bright, <a href="#Page_120">120, </a><a href="#Page_123">123, </a> <a href="#Page_126">126-8</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Green, <a href="#Page_344">344-5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Morier, <a href="#Page_258">258;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Peel, <a href="#Page_32">32, </a><a href="#Page_47">47, </a> <a href="#Page_51">51-3</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Shaftesbury, <a href="#Page_90">90;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Tennyson, <a href="#Page_152">152, </a><a href="#Page_154">154, </a><a href="#Page_173">173;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and Watts, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Glasgow, <a href="#Page_125">125, </a> <a href="#Page_285">285-7</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>
+<br />
+Godlee, Sir Rickman, <a href="#Page_283">283, </a><a href="#Page_295">295</a>
+<br />
+Goethe, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>
+<br />
+Gordon, General, <a href="#Page_4">4, </a><a href="#Page_66">66, </a><a href="#Page_70">70, </a><a href="#Page_355">355</a>
+<br />
+Gough, Viscount, <a href="#Page_68">68, </a><a href="#Page_69">69, </a><a href="#Page_100">100</a>
+<br />
+Graham, Sir James, <a href="#Page_43">43, </a><a href="#Page_85">85</a>
+<br />
+Granville, Earl, <a href="#Page_259">259, </a><a href="#Page_275">275</a>
+<br />
+Green, John Richard: books, <a href="#Page_336">336-46</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">church views, <a href="#Page_329">329, </a><a href="#Page_342">342;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">conversation, <a href="#Page_345">345;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">education, <a href="#Page_326">326-8</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">essays, <a href="#Page_336">336-7</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">friends, <a href="#Page_187">187, </a> <a href="#Page_328">328-9</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334, </a><a href="#Page_342">342, </a><a href="#Page_345">345;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">historical method, <a href="#Page_336">336-42</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">historical schemes, <a href="#Page_333">333-4</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">parochial work, <a href="#Page_331">331-3</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">travels, <a href="#Page_342">342-3</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Greenbank, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>
+<br />
+Greville, Charles, <a href="#Page_44">44, </a><a href="#Page_46">46</a>
+<br />
+Gr&eacute;vy, President, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>
+<br />
+Grey, Charles, Earl, <a href="#Page_41">41, </a><a href="#Page_42">42</a>
+<br />
+Grey, Sir George, <a href="#Page_5">5, </a><a href="#Page_220">220, </a><a href="#Page_240">240</a>
+<br />
+Griqualand, <a href="#Page_350">350, </a><a href="#Page_353">353</a>
+<br />
+Groote Schuur, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+H<br />
+<br />
+Haddington, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>
+<br />
+Haileybury, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>
+<br />
+Hallam, Arthur, <a href="#Page_154">154, </a> <a href="#Page_156">156-8</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161, </a><a href="#Page_173">173</a>
+<br />
+Hammersmith, <a href="#Page_308">308, </a><a href="#Page_319">319, </a><a href="#Page_321">321</a>
+<br />
+Hardinge, 1st Viscount, <a href="#Page_68">68, </a><a href="#Page_99">99</a>
+<br />
+Hardwick, Philip, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>
+<br />
+Harrow, <a href="#Page_33">33, </a><a href="#Page_75">75, </a><a href="#Page_247">247</a>
+<br />
+Harte, Bret, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>
+<br />
+Haworth, Mr., <a href="#Page_32">32</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span><br />
+Helston, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>
+<br />
+Henley, W. E., <a href="#Page_294">294</a>
+<br />
+Henry II, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>
+<br />
+Herbert, Sidney, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>
+<br />
+Hilton, William, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>
+<br />
+Hodder River, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>
+<br />
+Hofmeyr, Jan, <a href="#Page_354">354-5</a><br />
+<br />
+Holland, 4th Baron, <a href="#Page_201">201-2</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>
+<br />
+Holmes, Oliver Wendell, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>
+<br />
+Hook, Dean, <a href="#Page_178">178, </a><a href="#Page_333">333</a>
+<br />
+Horner, Francis, <a href="#Page_36">36, </a><a href="#Page_37">37</a>
+<br />
+Howard, John, <a href="#Page_3">3, </a><a href="#Page_338">338</a>
+<br />
+Huddlestone, John, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>
+<br />
+Hudson, Sir James, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>
+<br />
+Hughes, Tom, <a href="#Page_182">182, </a><a href="#Page_186">186, </a><a href="#Page_189">189</a>
+<br />
+Humboldt, Alexander von, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>
+<br />
+Huskisson, William, <a href="#Page_36">36, </a><a href="#Page_48">48</a>
+<br />
+Huxley, T. H., <a href="#Page_5">5</a>
+<br />
+Hyder&#257;b&#257;d, <a href="#Page_65">65, </a><a href="#Page_67">67</a>
+<br />
+Hyndman, H. M., <a href="#Page_310">310, </a><a href="#Page_318">318, </a><a href="#Page_320">320</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+I<br />
+<br />
+Iceland, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>
+<br />
+Indian Mutiny, <a href="#Page_69">69, </a> <a href="#Page_103">103-5</a><br />
+<br />
+Ionides family, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>
+<br />
+Irish politics, <a href="#Page_35">35, </a><a href="#Page_38">38, </a><a href="#Page_49">49, </a><a href="#Page_51">51, </a><a href="#Page_119">119, </a> <a href="#Page_121">121-2</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>
+<br />
+Irving, Edward, <a href="#Page_13">13-15</a><br />
+<br />
+Irving, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_169">169, </a><a href="#Page_172">172</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+J<br />
+<br />
+Jackson, General 'Stonewall', <a href="#Page_59">59</a>
+<br />
+Jacob, Colonel, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>
+<br />
+J&#257;landhar, <a href="#Page_99">99-100</a><br />
+<br />
+Jameson, Leander Starr, <a href="#Page_350">350, </a> <a href="#Page_360">360-3</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>
+<br />
+Jeffrey, Francis, Lord, <a href="#Page_18">18, </a><a href="#Page_136">136</a>
+<br />
+Jella&ccedil;i&ccedil;, Baron, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>
+<br />
+Johnson, Samuel, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>
+<br />
+Jomini, Baron, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>
+<br />
+Jowett, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_172">172, </a><a href="#Page_204">204, </a><a href="#Page_247">247, </a><a href="#Page_249">249, </a><a href="#Page_258">258, </a><a href="#Page_273">273</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+K<br />
+<br />
+Kachhi Hills, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>
+<br />
+Karachi, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>
+<br />
+Katkoff, Monsieur, <a href="#Page_267">267, </a><a href="#Page_269">269</a>
+<br />
+Keble, John, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>
+<br />
+Kelmscott, <a href="#Page_319">319, </a><a href="#Page_321">321</a>
+<br />
+Kelmscott Press, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>
+<br />
+Kiel, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>
+<br />
+Kimberley, <a href="#Page_349">349-53</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355, </a><a href="#Page_357">357, </a><a href="#Page_366">366</a>
+<br />
+King's College, <a href="#Page_179">179, </a><a href="#Page_296">296</a>
+<br />
+Kingsley, Charles: character, <a href="#Page_179">179, </a> <a href="#Page_186">186-7</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192-5</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">church views, <a href="#Page_181">181, </a><a href="#Page_193">193;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">history lectures, <a href="#Page_190">190, </a><a href="#Page_335">335;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">novels, <a href="#Page_183">183, </a><a href="#Page_185">185;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">parish work, <a href="#Page_180">180-3</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">poetry, <a href="#Page_184">184;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">physical science, <a href="#Page_183">183-5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">social reform, <a href="#Page_187">187-90</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sport, <a href="#Page_18">18-56</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">travels, <a href="#Page_191">191;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">other references, <a href="#Page_335">335, </a><a href="#Page_343">343</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Kirkcaldy, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>
+<br />
+Knox, John, <a href="#Page_15">15, </a><a href="#Page_93">93</a>
+<br />
+Knox, Rev. James, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>
+<br />
+Koch, Professor, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>
+<br />
+Kruger, President, <a href="#Page_362">362-4</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+L<br />
+<br />
+Lahore, <a href="#Page_68">68, </a><a href="#Page_100">100, </a> <a href="#Page_103">103-4</a><br />
+<br />
+Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_29">29, </a><a href="#Page_165">165</a>
+<br />
+Lambeth, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>
+<br />
+Landor, Walter Savage, <a href="#Page_136">136, </a><a href="#Page_165">165</a>
+<br />
+Larkin, Henry, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>
+<br />
+Laud, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_336">336, </a><a href="#Page_340">340</a>
+<br />
+Lausanne, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>
+<br />
+Lawrence, Alexander, <a href="#Page_93">93, </a><a href="#Page_94">94</a>
+<br />
+Lawrence, Henry, <a href="#Page_59">59, </a><a href="#Page_66">66, </a><a href="#Page_94">94, </a><a href="#Page_100">100, </a> <a href="#Page_101">101-3</a><br />
+<br />
+Lawrence, John: administrative posts, <a href="#Page_96">96, </a> <a href="#Page_98">98-9</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101, </a><a href="#Page_105">105;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">administrative talents, <a href="#Page_97">97, </a><a href="#Page_100">100, </a><a href="#Page_102">102, </a><a href="#Page_106">106;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character, <a href="#Page_97">97, </a><a href="#Page_105">105;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">family, <a href="#Page_93">93-4</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">frontier question, <a href="#Page_107">107;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Indian Mutiny, <a href="#Page_103">103-5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Indian peasantry, <a href="#Page_98">98, </a><a href="#Page_100">100;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">official subordinates, <a href="#Page_102">102-3</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Layard, Sir H. A., <a href="#Page_204">204, </a><a href="#Page_254">254</a>
+<br />
+Lecky, W. E. H., <a href="#Page_345">345</a>
+<br />
+Leighton, Frederic, Lord, <a href="#Page_208">208, </a><a href="#Page_219">219</a>
+<br />
+Lemaire, Monsieur, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>
+<br />
+Lennox, Lady Sarah (Napier), <a href="#Page_55">55, </a><a href="#Page_57">57</a>
+<br />
+Lewis, Sir G. C., <a href="#Page_285">285</a>
+<br />
+Lightfoot, Bishop, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>
+<br />
+Limerick, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>
+<br />
+Limnerslease, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>
+<br />
+Lincoln's Inn, <a href="#Page_198">198, </a><a href="#Page_207">207</a>
+<br />
+Lincolnshire, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>
+<br />
+Lister, Joseph Jackson, <a href="#Page_278">278-9</a><br />
+<br />
+Lister, Joseph: antiseptic method, <a href="#Page_288">288-95</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">aseptic method, <a href="#Page_298">298-9</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">honours, <a href="#Page_295">295, </a><a href="#Page_297">297, </a><a href="#Page_300">300;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">hospitals, <a href="#Page_285">285-7</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">lecturing, <a href="#Page_284">284-5</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295-7</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">operations, <a href="#Page_283">283, </a><a href="#Page_292">292;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">opponents, <a href="#Page_291">291, </a> <a href="#Page_296">296-7</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">research, <a href="#Page_281">281-2</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">teachers, <a href="#Page_280">280-2</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">travels, <a href="#Page_283">283;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">vivisection, <a href="#Page_299">299;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">war, <a href="#Page_294">294, </a><a href="#Page_299">299</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span><br />
+Littledale, Mr., <a href="#Page_269">269</a>
+<br />
+Liverpool, Earl of, <a href="#Page_34">34, </a><a href="#Page_38">38</a>
+<br />
+Livingstone, David, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>
+<br />
+Lobanoff, Prince, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>
+<br />
+Lobengula, <a href="#Page_357">357-60</a><br />
+<br />
+Locker [-Lampson], Frederick, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>
+<br />
+Londonderry, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>
+<br />
+Louis Philippe, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>
+<br />
+Louth, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>
+<br />
+Lowe, Robert, Lord Sherbrooke, <a href="#Page_8">8, </a><a href="#Page_124">124</a>
+<br />
+Loyalty Islands, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>
+<br />
+Lucknow, <a href="#Page_103">103, </a><a href="#Page_105">105, </a><a href="#Page_174">174</a>
+<br />
+Lushington, Edmund, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>
+<br />
+Lycidas, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>
+<br />
+Lyons, Viscount, <a href="#Page_123">123, </a><a href="#Page_273">273</a>
+<br />
+Lyttelton, Sarah, Lady, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>
+<br />
+Lytton, Robert, Earl of, <a href="#Page_108">108, </a><a href="#Page_212">212</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+M<br />
+<br />
+Mablethorpe, <a href="#Page_151">151, </a><a href="#Page_171">171</a>
+<br />
+Macaulay, Lord, <a href="#Page_8">8, </a><a href="#Page_325">325</a>
+<br />
+Mackintosh, Sir James, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>
+<br />
+Maclise, Daniel, <a href="#Page_133">133, </a><a href="#Page_140">140</a>
+<br />
+Macmillan, George, <a href="#Page_339">339, </a><a href="#Page_344">344</a>
+<br />
+Macready, William Charles, <a href="#Page_138">138, </a><a href="#Page_140">140</a>
+<br />
+Magnusson, Professor, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>
+<br />
+Maine, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>
+<br />
+Mainhill, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>
+<br />
+Mallet, Sir Louis, <a href="#Page_255">255, </a><a href="#Page_272">272</a>
+<br />
+Manchester, <a href="#Page_112">112, </a><a href="#Page_116">116, </a><a href="#Page_214">214, </a><a href="#Page_217">217, </a><a href="#Page_315">315</a>
+<br />
+Manning, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>
+<br />
+Marlborough College, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>
+<br />
+Marsden, Samuel, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>
+<br />
+Martin, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>
+<br />
+Matabele, <a href="#Page_357">357-60</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364-5</a><br />
+<br />
+Matoppo Hills, <a href="#Page_364">364, </a><a href="#Page_367">367</a>
+<br />
+Maurice, Rev. F. D., <a href="#Page_187">187, </a><a href="#Page_189">189, </a><a href="#Page_329">329, </a><a href="#Page_331">331</a>
+<br />
+McMurdo, General Sir W. M., <a href="#Page_70">70</a>
+<br />
+Melbourne, Viscount, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>
+<br />
+Mentone, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>
+<br />
+Meredith, George, <a href="#Page_6">6, </a><a href="#Page_26">26</a>
+<br />
+Merivale, Dean, <a href="#Page_154">154-5</a><br />
+<br />
+Merton, Surrey, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>
+<br />
+Metternich, Prince, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>
+<br />
+Miani, <a href="#Page_63">63-4</a><br />
+<br />
+Michel Angelo, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>
+<br />
+Michelet, Jules, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>
+<br />
+Mill, John Stuart, <a href="#Page_2">2, </a><a href="#Page_3">3, </a><a href="#Page_22">22, </a><a href="#Page_25">25, </a><a href="#Page_29">29, </a><a href="#Page_157">157, </a><a href="#Page_193">193, </a><a href="#Page_212">212</a>
+<br />
+Millais, Sir John, <a href="#Page_8">8, </a><a href="#Page_197">197, </a><a href="#Page_212">212, </a><a href="#Page_280">280, </a><a href="#Page_305">305</a>
+<br />
+Milnes, R. Monckton, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>
+<br />
+Milton, <a href="#Page_75">75, </a><a href="#Page_112">112, </a><a href="#Page_120">120, </a><a href="#Page_155">155, </a><a href="#Page_161">161</a>
+<br />
+Moberly, Bishop, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>
+<br />
+Montgomery, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_93">93, </a><a href="#Page_101">101, </a><a href="#Page_103">103</a>
+<br />
+Moore, Sir John, <a href="#Page_57">57, </a><a href="#Page_62">62</a>
+<br />
+Morier, David, <a href="#Page_246">246, </a><a href="#Page_248">248</a>
+<br />
+Morier, Sir Robert: appearance, <a href="#Page_248">248, </a><a href="#Page_251">251;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Austria, <a href="#Page_251">251, </a> <a href="#Page_254">254-5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character, <a href="#Page_251">251, </a> <a href="#Page_272">272-5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">commercial treaties, <a href="#Page_254">254, </a><a href="#Page_260">260;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">diplomatic methods, <a href="#Page_260">260, </a> <a href="#Page_262">262-3</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266, </a> <a href="#Page_273">273-4</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">diplomatic posts, <a href="#Page_245">245, </a><a href="#Page_250">250, </a><a href="#Page_252">252, </a><a href="#Page_255">255, </a><a href="#Page_257">257, </a><a href="#Page_259">259, </a><a href="#Page_261">261, </a><a href="#Page_264">264, </a><a href="#Page_271">271;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">friends, <a href="#Page_204">204, </a> <a href="#Page_247">247-9</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258, </a><a href="#Page_270">270;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Germany, <a href="#Page_248">248-9</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252-8</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Portugal, <a href="#Page_259">259-61</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Russia, <a href="#Page_26">26-71</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Spain, <a href="#Page_261">261-4</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Morley, Viscount, <a href="#Page_2">2, </a><a href="#Page_51">51, </a><a href="#Page_86">86</a>
+<br />
+Morocco, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>
+<br />
+Morris, William: appearance, <a href="#Page_310">310;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character, <a href="#Page_6">6, </a><a href="#Page_307">307, </a><a href="#Page_321">321;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">designing, <a href="#Page_311">311-12</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">dyeing, <a href="#Page_313">313;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">friends, <a href="#Page_304">304, </a><a href="#Page_308">308, </a><a href="#Page_321">321, </a><a href="#Page_328">328;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">homes, <a href="#Page_307">307-8</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">painting, <a href="#Page_306">306;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">poetry, <a href="#Page_159">159, </a><a href="#Page_175">175, </a> <a href="#Page_308">308-9</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">printing, <a href="#Page_319">319;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Socialism, <a href="#Page_315">315-19</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">travels, <a href="#Page_309">309, </a> <a href="#Page_318">318-19</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">workshop, <a href="#Page_313">313-14</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Mota, <a href="#Page_227">227, </a><a href="#Page_230">230, </a><a href="#Page_237">237, </a><a href="#Page_242">242</a>
+<br />
+Mozley, Canon J. B., <a href="#Page_327">327</a>
+<br />
+Muizenberg, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>
+<br />
+M&uuml;ller, Professor Max, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+N<br />
+<br />
+Napier, Charles: campaigns, <a href="#Page_57">57, </a><a href="#Page_58">58, </a> <a href="#Page_63">63-5</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character, <a href="#Page_56">56, </a><a href="#Page_66">66, </a><a href="#Page_70">70;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">military commands, <a href="#Page_59">59, </a><a href="#Page_61">61, </a><a href="#Page_62">62, </a><a href="#Page_68">68;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">military training, <a href="#Page_58">58, </a><a href="#Page_62">62;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">official superiors, <a href="#Page_57">57, </a><a href="#Page_68">68, </a><a href="#Page_70">70, </a><a href="#Page_100">100;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">rank and file, <a href="#Page_66">66-7</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69, </a><a href="#Page_72">72</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Napier, Hon. George, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>
+<br />
+Napier, Sir George, <a href="#Page_54">54, </a><a href="#Page_57">57</a>
+<br />
+Napier, Robert (Lord N. of Magdala), <a href="#Page_103">103, </a><a href="#Page_106">106</a>
+<br />
+Napier, Sir William, <a href="#Page_54">54-5</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57, </a><a href="#Page_70">70, </a><a href="#Page_71">71</a>
+<br />
+Napoleon III, Emperor, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>
+<br />
+Natal, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>
+<br />
+National Gallery, <a href="#Page_53">53, </a><a href="#Page_188">188</a>
+<br />
+Nelidoff, Monsieur de, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>
+<br />
+Neuberg, Joseph, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>
+<br />
+Newbattle, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>
+<br />
+Newman, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_5">5, </a><a href="#Page_194">194</a>
+<br />
+Newton, Sir Charles, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span><br />
+Nicholson, John, <a href="#Page_66">66, </a> <a href="#Page_101">101-2</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>
+<br />
+Nightingale, Florence, <a href="#Page_286">286, </a><a href="#Page_291">291</a>
+<br />
+Norfolk Island, <a href="#Page_237">237, </a><a href="#Page_239">239, </a><a href="#Page_242">242</a>
+<br />
+Nukapu, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+O<br />
+<br />
+Oaklands, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>
+<br />
+O'Connell, Daniel, <a href="#Page_38">38, </a><a href="#Page_39">39, </a><a href="#Page_42">42, </a><a href="#Page_44">44, </a><a href="#Page_49">49</a>
+<br />
+Omarkot, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>
+<br />
+Orleans, Duke of, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>
+<br />
+Oxford, <a href="#Page_12">12-13</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34, </a><a href="#Page_38">38, </a><a href="#Page_40">40, </a><a href="#Page_75">75, </a><a href="#Page_196">196, </a> <a href="#Page_223">223-5</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247, </a><a href="#Page_278">278, </a> <a href="#Page_304">304-6</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325-30</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351, </a><a href="#Page_367">367</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+P<br />
+<br />
+Paget, Sir James, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>
+<br />
+Palgrave, Francis T., <a href="#Page_172">172, </a><a href="#Page_204">204, </a><a href="#Page_247">247</a>
+<br />
+Palmerston, Viscount, <a href="#Page_8">8, </a><a href="#Page_32">32, </a><a href="#Page_42">42, </a><a href="#Page_78">78, </a><a href="#Page_90">90, </a> <a href="#Page_123">123-4</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127, </a><a href="#Page_185">185, </a> <a href="#Page_249">249-50</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>
+<br />
+P&#257;n&#299;pat, <a href="#Page_96">96, </a><a href="#Page_99">99</a>
+<br />
+Panizzi, Sir A.;<a href="#Page_212">212</a>
+<br />
+Parkes, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>
+<br />
+Parnell, Charles Stewart, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>
+<br />
+Pasteur, Louis, <a href="#Page_288">288-9</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>
+<br />
+Patteson, Sir John, <a href="#Page_222">222, </a><a href="#Page_225">225, </a><a href="#Page_233">233</a>
+<br />
+Patteson, John Coleridge:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">centres of work, <a href="#Page_226">226, </a><a href="#Page_230">230, </a><a href="#Page_237">237;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character, <a href="#Page_223">223, </a><a href="#Page_231">231, </a><a href="#Page_233">233, </a> <a href="#Page_235">235-6</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">consecration, <a href="#Page_233">233;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">family, <a href="#Page_222">222, </a><a href="#Page_225">225, </a><a href="#Page_234">234;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">labour trade, <a href="#Page_240">240-1</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">languages, <a href="#Page_224">224, </a><a href="#Page_226">226;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mission methods and principles, <a href="#Page_227">227, </a><a href="#Page_229">229, </a><a href="#Page_234">234, </a> <a href="#Page_238">238-9</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">workers, <a href="#Page_234">234, </a><a href="#Page_238">238</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Pattle family, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>
+<br />
+Pau, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>
+<br />
+Peel, 1st Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_32">32-3</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37, </a><a href="#Page_82">82</a>
+<br />
+Peel, 2nd Sir Robert:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">administrative gifts, <a href="#Page_35">35, </a><a href="#Page_36">36, </a><a href="#Page_52">52;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character, <a href="#Page_33">33, </a><a href="#Page_45">45, </a> <a href="#Page_52">52-3</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80, </a><a href="#Page_90">90;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">constituencies, <a href="#Page_34">34, </a><a href="#Page_38">38, </a><a href="#Page_40">40, </a><a href="#Page_43">43;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">education, <a href="#Page_33">33-4</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">finance, <a href="#Page_36">36;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">free trade, <a href="#Page_47">47-51</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87, </a> <a href="#Page_118">118-19</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ireland, <a href="#Page_35">35, </a> <a href="#Page_38">38-9</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">patronage, <a href="#Page_159">159-60</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">political parties, <a href="#Page_34">34, </a> <a href="#Page_50">50-1</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quoted on Napier, <a href="#Page_72">72;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Reform, <a href="#Page_40">40-1</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Pen-y-gwryd, <a href="#Page_183">183, </a><a href="#Page_186">186</a>
+<br />
+Perry, Father, S.J., <a href="#Page_270">270</a>
+<br />
+Pio Nono, Pope, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>
+<br />
+Pitt, William, <a href="#Page_31">31, </a> <a href="#Page_33">33-8</a><br />
+<br />
+Plutarch, <a href="#Page_56">56, </a><a href="#Page_57">57, </a><a href="#Page_361">361</a>
+<br />
+Pobedon&oacute;stsev, Monsieur, <a href="#Page_267">267, </a><a href="#Page_270">270</a>
+<br />
+Porter, Mrs., <a href="#Page_294">294</a>
+<br />
+Portsmouth, <a href="#Page_70">70, </a><a href="#Page_72">72, </a><a href="#Page_130">130</a>
+<br />
+Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, <a href="#Page_4">4, </a><a href="#Page_197">197</a>
+<br />
+Prince Consort, <a href="#Page_52">52, </a><a href="#Page_85">85, </a><a href="#Page_100">100, </a><a href="#Page_252">252</a>
+<br />
+Prinsep, Mr., <a href="#Page_205">205, </a><a href="#Page_207">207, </a><a href="#Page_210">210</a>
+<br />
+Punjab, <a href="#Page_68">68-9</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102-4</a><br />
+<br />
+Pusey, Canon E. B., <a href="#Page_87">87</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+R<br />
+<br />
+Reade, Charles, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>
+<br />
+Reform Bills, <a href="#Page_40">40-3</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124-5</a><br />
+<br />
+Rhodes, Cecil:<a href="#Page_207">207, </a><a href="#Page_211">211;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Boers, <a href="#Page_353">353-5</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362-4</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character, <a href="#Page_356">356, </a> <a href="#Page_361">361-2</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">friends, <a href="#Page_350">350-1</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">imperial extension, <a href="#Page_4">4, </a><a href="#Page_353">353, </a><a href="#Page_355">355, </a> <a href="#Page_357">357-61</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mines, <a href="#Page_350">350, </a><a href="#Page_352">352;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">native wars, <a href="#Page_360">360, </a> <a href="#Page_364">364-5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Oxford, <a href="#Page_351">351, </a><a href="#Page_367">367;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">political work, <a href="#Page_353">353-6</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Rhodes, Colonel Frank, <a href="#Page_349">349, </a><a href="#Page_363">363</a>
+<br />
+Rhodes, Herbert, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>
+<br />
+Rickards, Charles, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>
+<br />
+Roberts, Earl, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>
+<br />
+Robinson, Sir Hercules (Lord Rosmead), <a href="#Page_356">356, </a><a href="#Page_359">359, </a><a href="#Page_361">361</a>
+<br />
+Rochdale, <a href="#Page_111">111-13</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119, </a> <a href="#Page_127">127-8</a><br />
+<br />
+Rochester, <a href="#Page_135">135, </a> <a href="#Page_143">143-4</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>
+<br />
+Rogers, Samuel, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>
+<br />
+Roggenbach, Herr von, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>
+<br />
+Romero y Robledo, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>
+<br />
+Rome, <a href="#Page_43">43, </a><a href="#Page_79">79, </a><a href="#Page_203">203</a>
+<br />
+Romilly, Sir Samuel, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>
+<br />
+Rose, Sir Hugh, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>
+<br />
+Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, <a href="#Page_154">154, </a><a href="#Page_163">163, </a><a href="#Page_197">197, </a><a href="#Page_205">205, </a><a href="#Page_209">209, </a><a href="#Page_212">212, </a> <a href="#Page_305">305-8</a><br />
+<br />
+Rottingdean, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>
+<br />
+Routh, Dr., <a href="#Page_328">328</a>
+<br />
+Royal Academy, <a href="#Page_198">198, </a><a href="#Page_200">200, </a><a href="#Page_206">206, </a><a href="#Page_217">217</a>
+<br />
+Rubens, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>
+<br />
+Rudd, Charles D., <a href="#Page_350">350, </a><a href="#Page_358">358, </a><a href="#Page_361">361</a>
+<br />
+Rumbold, Sir H., <a href="#Page_272">272</a>
+<br />
+Runnymede, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>
+<br />
+Ruskin, John: art, <a href="#Page_129">129, </a><a href="#Page_204">204, </a><a href="#Page_316">316;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">economics, <a href="#Page_8">8, </a><a href="#Page_30">30, </a><a href="#Page_147">147, </a><a href="#Page_193">193, </a><a href="#Page_315">315;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">general, <a href="#Page_4">4, </a><a href="#Page_6">6, </a><a href="#Page_23">23, </a><a href="#Page_303">303</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Russell, Lord John, <a href="#Page_32">32, </a><a href="#Page_42">42, </a><a href="#Page_44">44, </a><a href="#Page_46">46, </a><a href="#Page_50">50, </a><a href="#Page_118">118, </a> <a href="#Page_123">123-4</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207, </a><a href="#Page_253">253</a>
+<br />
+Russell, Odo, <a href="#Page_248">248, </a><a href="#Page_264">264, </a> <a href="#Page_272">272-3</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+S<br />
+<br />
+Sadler, Michael T., <a href="#Page_82">82</a>
+<br />
+Sagasta, Senor, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>
+<br />
+Salisbury, Marquess of, <a href="#Page_268">268, </a><a href="#Page_275">275</a>
+<br />
+Salisbury, Rhodesia, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>
+<br />
+Santa Cruz, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>
+<br />
+Sarawia, George, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span><br />
+Schiller, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>
+<br />
+Schleswig-Holstein, <a href="#Page_249">249, </a><a href="#Page_254">254</a>
+<br />
+Schools, <a href="#Page_88">88-9</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135-6</a><br />
+<br />
+Scotsbrig, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>
+<br />
+Scott, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_11">11, </a><a href="#Page_78">78, </a><a href="#Page_187">187, </a><a href="#Page_198">198, </a><a href="#Page_303">303, </a> <a href="#Page_324">324-5</a><br />
+<br />
+Scott, Capt. R. F., <a href="#Page_4">4</a>
+<br />
+Selous, Frederick C., <a href="#Page_358">358-61</a><br />
+<br />
+Selwyn, Bishop, <a href="#Page_221">221-30</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233, </a><a href="#Page_238">238</a>
+<br />
+Shaftesbury, 3rd Earl, <a href="#Page_74">74, </a><a href="#Page_79">79</a>
+<br />
+Shaftesbury, 4th Earl: administrative offices, <a href="#Page_76">76, </a><a href="#Page_80">80;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">appearance, <a href="#Page_83">83;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character, <a href="#Page_74">74, </a><a href="#Page_76">76;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Factory Acts, <a href="#Page_83">83-6</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">family, <a href="#Page_74">74, </a> <a href="#Page_77">77-9</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">other philanthropic work, <a href="#Page_77">77, </a> <a href="#Page_87">87-8</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and political leaders, <a href="#Page_46">46, </a> <a href="#Page_85">85-6</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">religious work, <a href="#Page_77">77, </a><a href="#Page_87">87;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">schools, <a href="#Page_88">88-9</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>
+<br />
+Sharpey, William, <a href="#Page_280">280-1</a><br />
+<br />
+Shelley, <a href="#Page_199">199, </a><a href="#Page_303">303</a>
+<br />
+Shepstone, Sir Theophilus, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>
+<br />
+Sikh wars, <a href="#Page_68">68-9</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99-100</a><br />
+<br />
+Simeon, Sir John, <a href="#Page_166">166, </a><a href="#Page_172">172</a>
+<br />
+Simpson, Sir James, <a href="#Page_286">286, </a><a href="#Page_291">291, </a><a href="#Page_294">294</a>
+<br />
+Sind, <a href="#Page_62">62-8</a><br />
+<br />
+Smith, Sir Harry, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>
+<br />
+Smith, R. Bosworth, <a href="#Page_93">93, </a><a href="#Page_97">97</a>
+<br />
+Smith, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>
+<br />
+Somers, Lady, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>
+<br />
+Somersby, <a href="#Page_151">151, </a><a href="#Page_156">156</a>
+<br />
+Southey, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>
+<br />
+Spedding, James, <a href="#Page_154">154, </a><a href="#Page_165">165, </a><a href="#Page_175">175, </a><a href="#Page_204">204</a>
+<br />
+Sprigg, Sir Gordon, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>
+<br />
+Sta&auml;l, Baron de, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>
+<br />
+Stanley, Dean, <a href="#Page_248">248, </a><a href="#Page_329">329, </a><a href="#Page_331">331</a>
+<br />
+Stanley, Edward, <i>v.</i> Derby<br />
+<br />
+Stein, Baron von, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>
+<br />
+Stepney, <a href="#Page_331">331-2</a><br />
+<br />
+Sterling, John, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>
+<br />
+Stevens, Alfred, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>
+<br />
+Stewart, John, M.D., <a href="#Page_297">297</a>
+<br />
+Stockmar, Baron, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>
+<br />
+Stokes, Sir George G., <a href="#Page_277">277</a>
+<br />
+Stratford de Redcliffe, Viscount, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>
+<br />
+Street, George E., <a href="#Page_306">306</a>
+<br />
+Stubbs, Bishop, <a href="#Page_5">5, </a><a href="#Page_325">325, </a><a href="#Page_334">334, </a> <a href="#Page_340">340-1</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>
+<br />
+Syme, James, <a href="#Page_280">280-3</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285, </a><a href="#Page_293">293</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+T<br />
+<br />
+Talleyrand, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>
+<br />
+Tamworth, <a href="#Page_32">32, </a><a href="#Page_43">43</a>
+<br />
+Taylor, Alexander, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>
+<br />
+Taylor, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_165">165, </a><a href="#Page_209">209</a>
+<br />
+Taylor, Tom, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>
+<br />
+Temple, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_247">247, </a><a href="#Page_249">249</a>
+<br />
+Tennyson, Alfred: appearance, <a href="#Page_157">157, </a><a href="#Page_164">164, </a><a href="#Page_212">212;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character, <a href="#Page_155">155, </a><a href="#Page_156">156, </a><a href="#Page_173">173;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">conversation, <a href="#Page_155">155, </a><a href="#Page_164">164, </a><a href="#Page_250">250;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">education, <a href="#Page_152">152-6</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">family, <a href="#Page_153">153, </a><a href="#Page_156">156, </a><a href="#Page_163">163;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">friends, <a href="#Page_23">23, </a><a href="#Page_154">154, </a> <a href="#Page_163">163-5</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172, </a><a href="#Page_205">205, </a><a href="#Page_209">209;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">homes, <a href="#Page_151">151, </a><a href="#Page_171">171;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">poems, dramatic, <a href="#Page_169">169;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">epic, <a href="#Page_166">166-8</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">lyric, <a href="#Page_156">156-7</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159, </a> <a href="#Page_161">161-3</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166, </a><a href="#Page_174">174;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">patriotic, <a href="#Page_174">174;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">political ideas, <a href="#Page_167">167, </a><a href="#Page_175">175;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quoted opinions, <a href="#Page_187">187, </a><a href="#Page_345">345;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">travels, <a href="#Page_173">173;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">other references, <a href="#Page_5">5, </a><a href="#Page_6">6, </a><a href="#Page_208">208, </a><a href="#Page_305">305</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Tennyson, Frederick, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>
+<br />
+Thackeray, W. M., <a href="#Page_5">5, </a><a href="#Page_7">7, </a><a href="#Page_140">140, </a><a href="#Page_154">154, </a><a href="#Page_205">205, </a><a href="#Page_209">209</a>
+<br />
+Thompson, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>
+<br />
+Tilly, Lieutenant, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>
+<br />
+Titian, <a href="#Page_173">173, </a><a href="#Page_213">213, </a><a href="#Page_219">219, </a><a href="#Page_227">227</a>
+<br />
+Tolstoy, Count Dmitri, <a href="#Page_267">267, </a><a href="#Page_269">269</a>
+<br />
+Trevelyan, George Macaulay, <a href="#Page_121">121, </a><a href="#Page_347">347</a>
+<br />
+Troyes, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+U<br />
+<br />
+University College, London, <a href="#Page_278">278-9</a><br />
+<br />
+Upton, Essex, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>
+<br />
+Upton, Kent, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>
+<br />
+Utilitarians, <a href="#Page_2">2, </a><a href="#Page_3">3</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+V<br />
+<br />
+Vere, Aubrey de, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>
+<br />
+Victoria, Queen: official, <a href="#Page_46">46, </a><a href="#Page_50">50, </a><a href="#Page_52">52, </a><a href="#Page_126">126, </a><a href="#Page_174">174, </a><a href="#Page_190">190, </a><a href="#Page_253">253, </a><a href="#Page_257">257;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">personal, <a href="#Page_44">44, </a><a href="#Page_78">78, </a><a href="#Page_85">85, </a><a href="#Page_148">148, </a><a href="#Page_162">162, </a><a href="#Page_175">175</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Vienna, <a href="#Page_250">250, </a><a href="#Page_255">255, </a><a href="#Page_283">283</a>
+<br />
+Villiers, Charles Pelham, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>
+<br />
+Virgil, <a href="#Page_167">167, </a><a href="#Page_173">173</a>
+<br />
+Vischnegradsky, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+W<br />
+<br />
+Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, <a href="#Page_4">4, </a><a href="#Page_220">220</a>
+<br />
+Wallace, Alfred Russel, <a href="#Page_183">183, </a><a href="#Page_291">291</a>
+<br />
+Walmer, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>
+<br />
+Wanostrocht, Nicholas, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>
+<br />
+Ward, Mr. and Mrs. Humphry, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>
+<br />
+Waterloo, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>
+<br />
+Watt, James, <a href="#Page_2">2, </a><a href="#Page_277">277, </a><a href="#Page_338">338</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span><br />
+Watts, George Frederick: Academy, Royal, <a href="#Page_200">200, </a><a href="#Page_217">217;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">appearance, <a href="#Page_199">199, </a><a href="#Page_209">209;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">art&mdash;views on, <a href="#Page_215">215-16</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character, <a href="#Page_200">200, </a><a href="#Page_202">202, </a><a href="#Page_208">208, </a><a href="#Page_218">218;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">education, <a href="#Page_198">198-200</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">exhibitions, <a href="#Page_217">217;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">friends, <a href="#Page_172">172, </a><a href="#Page_201">201, </a> <a href="#Page_204">204-5</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208-9</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">homes, <a href="#Page_205">205, </a><a href="#Page_217">217;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mural decoration, <a href="#Page_202">202, </a> <a href="#Page_206">206-7</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">pictures, allegories, <a href="#Page_214">214, </a><a href="#Page_217">217;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">pictures, myths, <a href="#Page_213">213;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">pictures, portraits, <a href="#Page_93">93, </a> <a href="#Page_207">207-8</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212, </a><a href="#Page_217">217;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sculpture, <a href="#Page_211">211, </a><a href="#Page_219">219;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">travels, <a href="#Page_201">201, </a><a href="#Page_203">203, </a><a href="#Page_210">210, </a><a href="#Page_216">216</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Webb, Philip, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>
+<br />
+Wellesley, Marquis, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>
+<br />
+Wellington, Duke of: military, <a href="#Page_57">57, </a><a href="#Page_68">68, </a> <a href="#Page_71">71-2</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76, </a><a href="#Page_93">93, </a><a href="#Page_187">187;</a><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">personal, <a href="#Page_46">46, </a><a href="#Page_70">70, </a><a href="#Page_78">78, </a><a href="#Page_80">80;</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">political, <a href="#Page_35">35, </a> <a href="#Page_38">38-41</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43, </a><a href="#Page_46">46, </a><a href="#Page_51">51</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Welsh, John, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>
+<br />
+Wesley, John, <a href="#Page_3">3, </a><a href="#Page_92">92, </a><a href="#Page_340">340</a>
+<br />
+West Indies, <a href="#Page_178">178, </a><a href="#Page_191">191</a>
+<br />
+Westminster, <a href="#Page_191">191, </a><a href="#Page_200">200, </a><a href="#Page_203">203</a>
+<br />
+Westminster, Duke of, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>
+<br />
+Westmorland, Earl of, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>
+<br />
+Whistler, J. McN., <a href="#Page_197">197, </a><a href="#Page_215">215</a>
+<br />
+White, Sir William, <a href="#Page_266">266, </a><a href="#Page_272">272, </a> <a href="#Page_274">274-5</a><br />
+<br />
+Whittier, John Greenleaf, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>
+<br />
+Wiggins, Captain, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>
+<br />
+Wilberforce, Bishop Samuel, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>
+<br />
+Wilberforce, William, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>
+<br />
+William I, German Emperor, <a href="#Page_253">253-4</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>
+<br />
+William IV, King, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>
+<br />
+Wimborne St. Giles, <a href="#Page_75">75, </a><a href="#Page_89">89, </a><a href="#Page_90">90</a>
+<br />
+Winchester, <a href="#Page_232">232, </a><a href="#Page_246">246</a>
+<br />
+Windsor, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>
+<br />
+Windt, Harry de, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>
+<br />
+Wolseley, Viscount, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>
+<br />
+Wordsworth, William, <a href="#Page_29">29, </a><a href="#Page_163">163, </a> <a href="#Page_165">165-6</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>
+<br />
+Wotton, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>
+<br />
+Wotton, Dean Nicholas, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>
+<br />
+Wraxall, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>
+<br />
+Wyndham, George, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+Y<br />
+<br />
+Yonge, Charlotte, <a href="#Page_232">232, </a><a href="#Page_240">240, </a><a href="#Page_243">243</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+Z<br />
+<br />
+Zambezi, <a href="#Page_355">355, </a><a href="#Page_362">362</a>
+<br />
+Zionist movement, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>
+</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Farms near Ecclefechan to which his parents moved in 1814
+and 1826.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Emerson, <i>English Traits</i>, 'World's Classics' edition, p.
+8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The most famous course, on Hero-Worship, was delivered in
+May, 1840.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Afterwards Lord and Lady Ashburton.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Froude, <i>Carlyle, Life in London</i>, vol. ii, pp. 100 and
+217.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Walter Bagehot, <i>Biographical Studies</i>, p. 17 (Longmans,
+1907).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Sir James Graham, afterwards Home Secretary under Peel in
+1841.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Since his father's death, in 1830, Peel had been member for
+Tamworth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>Correspondence of Sarah, Lady Lyttelton</i>, by Maud Wyndham
+(Murray, 1912).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> The Right Hon. C. P. Villiers, M.P. for Wolverhampton,
+began to advocate repeal in 1837, four years before Cobden entered
+Parliament.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Morley's <i>Life of Gladstone</i>, vol. i, pp. 297-300 (cf.
+Gladstone's own retirement in 1874).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Ceded to Great Britain in 1815 and given by her in 1864 to
+Greece.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> His first wife, whom he married in 1827, died in 1832. He
+married again in 1835.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> The dual control of British India by the Crown and the
+East India Company lasted from 1778 to 1858.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> To help church work by adding to the number of clergy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> See articles in <i>D.N.B.</i> on Michael Thomas Sadler
+(1780-1835) and on Richard Oastler (1789-1861).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> 'Talukd&#257;r' in the north-west, 'zam&#299;nd&#257;r' in
+Bengal.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> 'Do&#257;b' = land between two rivers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Created Lord Napier of Magdala after storming King
+Theodore's fortress in 1868.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> See G. M. Trevelyan, <i>Life of John Bright</i>, pp. 384-5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> See Fitzmaurice, <i>Life of Lord Granville</i>, vol. i, p.
+540.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <i>Charles Dickens, Social Reformer</i>, by W. W. Crotch
+(Chapman &amp; Hall, 1913), p. 53.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>In Memoriam</i>, c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Lines written in 1837 and published in the <i>Manchester
+Athen&aelig;um Album</i>, 1850.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> The portrait of 1838 by Samuel Laurence, of which the
+original is at Aldworth, speaks for itself.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> <i>Tennyson</i>, by Stopford Brooke (Isbister, 1894).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <i>Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir</i>, by his son, vol. i, p.
+209 (Macmillan &amp; Co.).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> <i>Robert Browning</i>, by Edward Dowden, p. 173 (J. M. Dent &amp;
+Co.).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> See <i>Memoir</i>, by Hallam, Lord Tennyson, vol. i, p. 283
+(Macmillan).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> 'God and the Universe,' from <i>Death of Oenone</i>, &amp;c.
+Macmillan, (1892.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> For a few weeks in 1844 he was curate of Pimperne in
+Dorset.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> See Preface by T. Hughes prefixed to later editions of
+<i>Alton Locke</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Sir Henry Taylor, author of <i>Philip van Artevelde</i> and
+other poems, and a high official of the Colonial Office.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Sir Anthony Panizzi, an Italian political refugee, the
+most famous of librarians. He served the British Museum from 1831 to
+1866.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> '"Hure: t&ecirc;te h&eacute;riss&eacute;e et en d&eacute;sordre"; se dit d'un homme
+qui a les cheveux mal peign&eacute;s, d'un animal, &amp;c.'&mdash;Littr&eacute;.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> His allegorical subjects are in the Tate Gallery; his
+portraits in the National Portrait Gallery.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Life and Episcopate of G. A. Selwyn</i>, by H. W. Tucker, 2
+vols. (Wells Gardner, 1879).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Melanesia, from Greek &#956;&#7953;&#955;&#945;&#962;=black, &#957;&#951;&#963;&#959;&#962;=island.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Bishop Selwyn (Primate), Bishop Abraham of Wellington, and
+Bishop Hobhouse of Nelson.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> This island had lately been colonized by settlers from
+Pitcairn Island, descended from the mutineers of the <i>Bounty</i>, marooned
+in 1789.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Life of John Coleridge Patteson</i>, by Charlotte Yonge, 2
+vols. (Macmillan, 1874).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> The Latin form in which this epigram was originally
+couched&mdash;<i>mentiendi causa</i>&mdash;does away with all ambiguity.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> The ill-fated Emperor Frederick III, who died of cancer in
+1888.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>Memoirs of Sir Robert Morier</i>, 1826-76, by his daughter,
+Lady Rosslyn Wemyss, vol. i, p. 303 (Edward Arnold, 1911).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Sir James Hudson, G.C.B., British minister at Turin during
+the years of Cavour's great ministry; died 1885.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Sir Horace Rumbold, G.C.B., Ambassador at Vienna
+1896-1900; died 1913.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> W. E. Henley, poet and critic, 1849-1903. His poems, 'In
+Hospital' include also a very beautiful sonnet on 'The Chief'&mdash;Lister
+himself, which almost calls up his portrait to one who has once seen it:
+'His brow spreads large and placid.... Soft lines of tranquil
+thought.... His face at once benign and proud and shy.... His wise rare
+smile.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Professor Volkmann of Halle and Professor von Nussbaum of
+Munich.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Restricted to thirty German and thirty foreign members.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones</i>, by G. B.-J., 2 vols.
+(Macmillan, 1904).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Letter quoted in <i>Life of Morris</i>, by J. W. Mackail, vol.
+i, p. 257 (Longmans, Green &amp; Co., 1911).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Other easily accessible examples are in Christ Church
+Cathedral, Oxford, and Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> <i>William Morris</i>, by A. Clutton-Brock (Williams and
+Norgate, 1914).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> <i>Life of Morris</i>, by J. W. Mackail, vol. ii, pp. 133-9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Mr. Hyndman (<i>Story of an Adventurous Life</i>, p. 355)
+describes a visit to the Bodleian Library at Oxford with Morris, and how
+'quickly, carefully, and surely' he dated the illuminated manuscripts.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> Rev. J. B. Mozley, 1813-78. Canon of Worcester and Regius
+Professor of Divinity at Oxford: a Tractarian; author of essays on
+Strafford, Laud, &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> The first edition of Bryce's <i>Holy Roman Empire</i> was
+published in 1862.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Pragmatic: 'treating facts of history with reference to
+their practical lessons.' <i>Concise Oxford Dictionary.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> <i>Clio and other Essays</i>, by G. M. Trevelyan, p. 4
+(Longmans, Green &amp; Co., 1913).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> C. D. Rudd (1844-96), educated at Harrow and Cambridge.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Alfred Beit, born at Hamburg, 1853; died in London, 1906.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Barney Barnato, born in Houndsditch, 1852; died at sea,
+1897.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> Perhaps the best character sketch of Rhodes is that
+printed as an appendix to Sir E. T. Cook's <i>Life of Edmund Garrett</i>
+(Edward Arnold, 1909). Garrett's career as journalist and politician in
+South Africa was terminated by illness in 1899.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> General Jacobus Delarey, one of the most successful
+commanders in the Great Boer War of 1899-1902.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> <i>Cecil Rhodes: a Monograph and a Reminiscence</i>, by Sir
+Thomas Fuller (Longmans &amp; Co., 1910)</p></div>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Victorian Worthies, by George Henry Blore
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Victorian Worthies
+       Sixteen Biographies
+
+
+Author: George Henry Blore
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 26, 2006  [eBook #20196]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTORIAN WORTHIES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Chuck Greif, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/c/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 20196-h.htm or 20196-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/1/9/20196/20196-h/20196-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/1/9/20196/20196-h.zip)
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      The reader will encounter the use of [=a] as an attempt to
+      preserve the author's use of a lower case "a" with macron
+      and [=i] as lower case "i" with macron.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VICTORIAN WORTHIES
+
+Sixteen Biographies
+
+by
+
+G. H. BLORE
+
+Assistant Master at Winchester College
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+'We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on
+Great Men, their manner of appearance in our world's
+business, how they shaped themselves in the world's
+history, what ideas men formed of them, what work they
+did;--on Heroes, namely, and on their reception and
+performance.'--CARLYLE.
+
+
+
+Humphrey Milford
+Oxford University Press
+London Edinburgh Glasgow New York Toronto
+Melbourne Cape Town Bombay Calcutta
+1920
+Printed in England
+at the Oxford University Press
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+INTRODUCTION: THE VICTORIAN ERA
+1. THOMAS CARLYLE. Prophet
+2. SIR ROBERT PEEL. Statesman
+3. SIR CHARLES NAPIER. Soldier
+4. THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY. Philanthropist
+5. LORD LAWRENCE. Administrator
+6. JOHN BRIGHT. Tribune
+7. CHARLES DICKENS. Novelist and Social Reformer
+8. LORD TENNYSON. Poet
+9. CHARLES KINGSLEY. Parish Priest
+10. GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS. Artist
+11. BISHOP PATTESON. Missionary
+12. SIR ROBERT MORIER. Diplomatist
+13. LORD LISTER. Surgeon
+14. WILLIAM MORRIS. Craftsman
+15. JOHN RICHARD GREEN. Historian
+16. CECIL RHODES. Colonist
+INDEX
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Some excuse seems to be needed for venturing at this time to publish
+biographical sketches of the men of the Victorian era. Several have been
+written by men, like Lord Morley and Lord Bryce, having first-hand
+knowledge of their subjects, others by the best critics of the next
+generation, such as Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Clutton-Brock. With their
+critical ability I am not able to compete; but they often postulate a
+knowledge of facts which the average reader has forgotten or has never
+known. Having written these sketches primarily for boys at school I am
+not ashamed to state well-known facts, nor have I wished to avoid the
+obvious.
+
+Nor do these sketches aim at obtaining a sensation by the shattering of
+idols. I have been content to accept the verdicts passed by their
+contemporaries on these great servants of the public, verdicts which, in
+general, seem likely to stand the test of time. Boys will come soon
+enough on books where criticism has fuller play, and revise the
+judgements of the past. Such a revision is salutary, when it is not
+unfair or bitter in tone.
+
+At a time when the subject called 'civics' is being more widely
+introduced into schools, it seems useful to present the facts of
+individual lives, instances chosen from different professions, as a
+supplement to the study of principles and institutions. There is a
+spirit of public service which is best interpreted through concrete
+examples. If teachers will, from their own knowledge, fill in these
+outlines and give life to these portraits, the younger generation may
+find it not uninteresting to 'praise famous men and our fathers that
+begat us'.
+
+It seems hardly necessary in a book of this kind to give an imposing
+list of authorities consulted. In some cases I should find it difficult
+to trace the essay or memoir from which a statement is drawn; but in the
+main I have depended on the standard Lives of the various men portrayed,
+from Froude's _Carlyle_ and Forster's _Dickens_ to Mackail's _Morris_
+and Michell's _Rhodes_. And, needless to say, I have found the
+_Dictionary of National Biography_ most valuable. If boys were not
+frightened from the shelves by its bulk, it would render my work
+superfluous; but, though I often recommend it to them, I find few signs
+that they consult it as often as they should. It may seem that no due
+proportion has been observed in the length of the different sketches;
+but it must be remembered that, while short Lives of Napier and Lawrence
+have been written by well-known authors, it is more difficult for a boy
+to satisfy his curiosity about Lister, Patteson, or Green; and of Morier
+no complete life has yet been published.
+
+I am indebted to Mr. Emery Walker for assistance in the selection of the
+portraits.
+
+Three of my friends have been kind enough to read parts of the book and
+to give me advice: the Rev. A. T. P. Williams and Mr. C. E. Robinson, my
+colleagues here, and Mr. Nowell Smith, Head Master of Sherborne. I owe
+much also to the good judgement of Mr. Milford's reader. If I venture to
+thank them for their help, they are in no way responsible for my
+mistakes. Writing in the intervals of school-mastering I have no doubt
+been guilty of many, and I shall be grateful if any reader will take the
+trouble to inform me of those which he detects.
+
+G.H.B.
+
+WINCHESTER,
+
+_April 1920._
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF PORTRAITS
+
+
+Thomas Carlyle
+  From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Sir Robert Peel
+  From the painting by J. LINNELL in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Sir Charles Napier
+  From the drawing by EDWIN WILLIAMS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Lord Shaftesbury
+  From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Lord Lawrence
+  From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+John Bright
+  From the painting by W. W. OULESS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Charles Dickens
+  From the painting by DANIEL MACLISE in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Alfred, Lord Tennyson
+  From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+Charles Kingsley
+  From a drawing by W. S. HUNT in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+George Frederick Watts
+  From a painting by himself in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+John Coleridge Patteson
+  From a drawing by WILLIAM RICHMOND.
+  (_By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._)
+
+Sir Robert Morier
+  From a drawing by WILLIAM RICHMOND.
+  (_By kind permission of Mr. Edward Arnold._)
+
+Lord Lister
+  From a photograph by MESSRS. BARRAUD.
+
+William Morris
+  From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+John Richard Green
+  From a drawing by FREDERICK SANDYS.
+  (_By kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._)
+
+Cecil Rhodes
+  From the painting by G. F. WATTS in the National Portrait Gallery.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+THE VICTORIAN ERA
+
+
+We like to fancy, when critics are not at our elbow, that each Age in
+our history has a character and a physiognomy of its own. The sixteenth
+century speaks to us of change and adventure in every form, of ships and
+statecraft, of discovery and desecration, of masterful sovereigns and
+unscrupulous ministers. We evoke the memory of Henry VIII and Elizabeth,
+of Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, of Drake and Raleigh, while the gentler
+virtues of Thomas More and Philip Sidney seem but rare flowers by the
+wayside.
+
+The glory of the seventeenth century shines out amid the clash of arms,
+in battles fought for noble principles, in the lives and deaths of
+Falkland and Hampden, of Blake, Montrose, and Cromwell. If its nobility
+is dimmed as we pass from the world of Shakespeare and Milton to that of
+Dryden and Defoe, yet there is sufficient unity in its central theme to
+justify the enthusiasm of those who praise it as the heroic age of
+English history.
+
+Less justice, perhaps, is done when we characterize the eighteenth
+century as that of elegance and wit; when, heedless of the great names
+of Chatham, Wolfe, and Clive, we fill the forefront of our picture with
+clubs and coffee-houses, with the graces of Chesterfield and Horace
+Walpole, the beauties of Gainsborough and Romney, or the masterpieces of
+Sheraton and Adam. But each generalization, as we make it, seems more
+imperfect and unfair; and partly because Carlyle abused it so
+unmercifully, this century has in the last fifty years received ample
+justice from many of our ablest writers.
+
+Difficult indeed then it must seem to give adequate expression to the
+life of a century like the nineteenth, so swift, so restless, so
+many-sided, so full of familiar personages, and of conflicts which have
+hardly yet receded to a distance where the historian can judge them
+aright. The rich luxuriance of movements and of individual characters
+chokes our path; it is a labyrinth in which one may well lose one's way
+and fail to see the wood for the trees.
+
+The scientist would be protesting (all this time) that this is a very
+superficial aspect of the matter. He would recast our framework for us
+and teach us to follow out the course of our history through the
+development of mathematics, physics, and biology, to pass from Newton to
+Harvey, and from Watt to Darwin, and in the relation of these sciences
+to one another to find the clue to man's steady progress.
+
+The tale thus told is indeed wonderful to read and worthy of the
+telling; but, to appreciate it fully, it needs a wider and deeper
+knowledge than many possess. And it tends to leave out one side of our
+human nature. There are many whose sympathies will always be drawn
+rather to the influence of man upon man than to the extension of man's
+power over nature, to the development of character rather than of
+knowledge. To-day literature must approach science, her all-powerful
+sister, with humility, and crave indulgence for those who still wish to
+follow in the track where Plutarch led the way, to read of human
+infirmity as well as of human power, not to scorn anecdotes or even
+comparisons which illustrate the qualities by which service can be
+rendered to the State.
+
+To return to the nineteenth century, some would find a guiding thread in
+the progress of the Utilitarian School, which based its teaching on the
+idea of pursuing the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the
+school which produced philosophers like Bentham and J. S. Mill, and
+politicians like Cobden and Morley. It was congenial to the English
+mind to follow a line which seemed to lead with certainty to practical
+results; and the industrial revolutions caused men at this time to look,
+perhaps too much, to the material conditions of well-being. Along with
+the discoveries that revolutionized industry, the eighteenth century had
+bequeathed something more precious than material wealth. John Wesley,
+the strongest personal influence of its latter half, had stirred the
+spirit of conscious philanthropy and the desire to apply Christian
+principles to the service of all mankind. Howard, Wilberforce, and
+others directed this spirit into definite channels, and many of their
+followers tinged with a warm religious glow the principles which, even
+in agnostics like Mill, lent consistent nobility to a life of service.
+The efforts which these men made, alone or banded into societies, to
+enlarge the liberties of Englishmen and to distribute more fairly the
+good things of life among them, were productive of much benefit to the
+age.
+
+Under such leadership indeed as that of Bentham and Wilberforce, the
+Victorian Age might have been expected to follow a steady course of
+beneficence which would have drawn all the nobler spirits of the new
+generation into its main current. Clear, logical, and persuasive, the
+Utilitarians seemed likely to command success in Parliament, in the
+pulpit, and in the press. But the criterion of happiness, however widely
+diffused (and that it had not gone far in 1837 Disraeli's _Sybil_ will
+attest), was not enough to satisfy the ardent idealism that blazed in
+the breasts of men stirred by revolutions and the new birth of Christian
+zeal. In contrast to the ordered pursuit of reform, the spirit of which
+the Utilitarians hoped to embody in societies and Acts of Parliament,
+were the rebellious impulses of men filled with a prophetic spirit,
+walking in obedience to an inward voice, eager to cry aloud their
+message to a generation wrapped in prosperity and self-contentment. They
+formed no single school and followed no single line. In a few cases we
+may observe the relation of master and pupil, as between Carlyle and
+Ruskin; in more we can see a small band of friends like the
+Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the leaders of the Oxford Movement, or the
+scientific circle of Darwin and Hooker, working in fellowship for a
+common end. But individuality is their note. They sprang often from
+surroundings most alien to their genius; they wandered far from the
+courses which their birth seemed to prescribe; the spirit caught them
+and they went forth to the fray.
+
+The time in which they grew up was calculated to mould characters of
+strength. Self-control and self-denial had been needed in the protracted
+wars with France. Self-reliance had been learnt in the hard school of
+adversity. Imagination was quickened by the heroism of the struggle
+which had ended in the final victory of our arms. And to the generations
+born in the early days of the nineteenth century lay open fields wider
+than were offered to human activity in any other age of the world's
+history. Now at last the full fruits of sixteenth-century discovery were
+to be reaped. It was possible for Gordon, by the personal ascendancy
+which he owed to his single-minded faith, to create legends and to work
+miracles in Asia and in Africa; for Richard Burton to gain an intimate
+knowledge of Islam in its holiest shrines; for Livingstone, Hannington,
+and other martyrs to the Faith to breathe their last in the tropics; for
+Franklin, dying, as Scott died nearly seventy years later, in the cause
+of Science, to hallow the polar regions for the Anglo-Saxon race.
+Darkest Africa was to remain impenetrable yet awhile. Only towards the
+end of the century, when Stanley's work was finished, could Rhodes and
+Kitchener conspire to clasp hands across its deserts and its swamps: but
+on the other side of the globe a new island-empire had been already
+created by the energy of Wakefield, and developed by the wisdom of
+Parkes and Grey. In distant lands, on stricken fields less famous but no
+less perilous, Wellington's men were applying the lessons which they had
+learnt in the Peninsula. On distant seas Nelson's ships were carrying
+explorers equipped for the more peaceful task of scientific observation.
+In this century the highest mountains, the deepest seas, the widest
+stretches of desert were to reveal their secrets to the adventurers who
+held the whole world for their playground or field of conquest.
+
+And not only in the great expansion of empire abroad but in the growth
+of knowledge at home and the application of it to civil life, there was
+a field to employ all the vigour of a race capable of rising to its
+opportunities. There is no need to remind this generation of such names
+as Stephenson and Herschel, Darwin and Huxley, Faraday and Kelvin; they
+are in no danger of being forgotten to-day. The men of letters take
+relatively a less conspicuous place in the evolution of the Age; but the
+force which they put into their writings, the wealth of their material,
+the variety of their lives, and the contrasts of their work, endow the
+annals of the nineteenth century with an absorbing interest. While
+Tennyson for the most part stayed in his English homes, singing the
+beauties of his native land, Browning was a sojourner in Italian palaces
+and villas, studying men of many races and many times, exploring the
+subtleties of the human heart. The pen of Dickens portrayed all classes
+of society except, perhaps, that which Thackeray made his peculiar
+field. The historians, too, furnish singular contrasts: the vehement
+pugnacity of Freeman is a foil to the serene studiousness of Acton; the
+erratic career of Froude to the concentration of Stubbs. The influence
+exercised on their contemporaries by recluses such as Newman or Darwin
+may be compared with the more worldly activities of Huxley and Samuel
+Wilberforce. Often we see equally diverse elements in following the
+course of a single life. In Matthew Arnold we wonder at the poet of
+'The Strayed Reveller' coexisting with the zealous inspector of schools;
+in William Morris we find it hard to reconcile the creative craftsman
+with the fervent apostle of social discontent. Perhaps the most notable
+case of this diversity is the long pilgrimage of Gladstone which led him
+from the camp of the 'stern, unbending Tories' to the leadership of
+Radicals and Home Rulers. There is an interest in tracing through these
+metamorphoses the essential unity of a man's character. On the other
+hand, one cannot but admire the steadfastness with which Darwin and
+Lister, Tennyson and Watts, pursued the even tenor of their way.
+
+Again we may notice the strange irony of fortune which drew Carlyle from
+his native moorlands to spend fifty years in a London suburb, while his
+disciple Ruskin, born and bred in London, and finding fit audience in
+the universities of the South, closed his long life in seclusion amid
+the Cumbrian fells. So two statesmen, who were at one time very closely
+allied, present a similarly striking contrast in the manner of their
+lives. Till the age of forty Joseph Chamberlain limited himself to
+municipal work in Birmingham, and yet he rose in later life to imperial
+views wider than any statesman's of his day. Charles Dilke, on the other
+hand, could be an expert on 'Greater Britain' at thirty and yet devote
+his old age to elaborating the details of Local Government and framing
+programmes of social reform for the working classes of our towns.
+Accidents these may be, but they lend to Victorian biography the charm
+of a fanciful arabesque or mosaic of varied pattern and hue.
+
+Eccentrics, too, there were in fact among the literary men of the day,
+even as there are in the fiction of Dickens, of Peacock, of George
+Meredith. There was Borrow, who, as an old man, was tramping solitarily
+in the fields of Norfolk, as earlier he wandered alone in wild Wales or
+wilder Spain. There was FitzGerald, who remained all his life constant
+to one corner of East Anglia, and who yet, by the precious thread of his
+correspondence, maintained contact with the great world of Victorian
+letters to which he belonged.
+
+Some wandered as far afield as Asia or the South Seas; some buried
+themselves in the secluded courts of Oxford and Cambridge and became
+mythical figures in academic lore. Not many were to be found within hail
+of London or Edinburgh in these forceful days. Brougham, the most
+omniscient of reviewers, with the most ill-balanced of minds, belongs
+more properly to the preceding age, though he lived to 1868; and it is
+from this age that the novelists probably drew their eccentric types.
+But between eccentricity and vigorous originality who shall draw the
+dividing line?
+
+Men like these it is hard to label and to classify. Their individuality
+is so patent that any general statement is at once open to attack. The
+most that we can do is to indicate one or two points in which the true
+Victorians had a certain resemblance to one another, and were unlike
+their successors of our own day. They were more evidently in earnest,
+less conscious of themselves, more indifferent to ridicule, more
+absorbed in their work. To many of them full work and the cares of
+office seemed a necessity of life. It was a typical Victorian who, after
+sixteen years of public service, writing a family letter, says, 'I feel
+that the interest of business and the excitement of responsibility are
+indispensable to me, and I believe that I am never happier than when I
+have more to think of and to do than I can manage in a given period'.
+Idleness and insouciance had few temptations for them, cynicism was
+abhorrent to them. Even Thackeray was perpetually 'caught out' when he
+assumed the cynic's pose. Charlotte Bronte, most loyal of his admirers
+and critics, speaks of the 'deep feelings for his kind' which he
+cherished in his large heart, and again of the 'sentiment, jealously
+hidden but genuine, which extracts the venom from that formidable
+Thackeray'. Large-hearted and generous to one another, they were ready
+to face adventure, eager to fight for an ideal, however impracticable it
+seemed. This was as true of Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, and all
+the _genus irritabile vatum_, as of the politicians and the men of
+action. They made many mistakes; they were combative, often difficult to
+deal with. Some of them were deficient in judgement, others in the
+saving gift of humour; but they were rarely petty or ungenerous, or
+failed from faint-heartedness or indecision. Vehemence and impatience
+can do harm to the best causes, and the lives of men like the Napiers
+and the Lawrences, like Thomas Arnold and Charles Kingsley, like John
+Bright and Robert Lowe, are marred by conflicts which might have been
+avoided by more studied gentleness or more philosophic calm. But the
+time seemed short in which they could redress the evils which offended
+them. They saw around them a world which seemed to be lapped in comfort
+or swathed in the dead wrappings of the past, and would not listen to
+reasoned appeals; and it would be futile to deny that, by lifting their
+voices to a pitch which offends fastidious critics, Carlyle and Ruskin
+did sometimes obtain a hearing and kindle a passion which Matthew Arnold
+could never stir by his scholarly exhortations to 'sweetness and light'.
+
+But it would be a mistake to infer from such clamour and contention that
+the Victorians did not enjoy their fair share of happiness in this
+world. The opposite would be nearer the truth: happiness was given to
+them in good, even in overflowing measure. Any one familiar with
+Trevelyan's biography of Macaulay will remember with what fullness and
+intensity he enjoyed his life; and the same fact is noted by Dr. Mozley
+in his Essay on that most representative Victorian, Thomas Arnold. The
+lives of Delane, the famous editor of _The Times_, of the statesman
+Palmerston, of the painter Millais, and of many other men in many
+professions, might be quoted to support this view. In some cases this
+was due to their strong family affections, in others to their genius for
+friendship. A good conscience, a good temper, a good digestion, are all
+factors of importance. But perhaps the best insurance against moodiness
+and melancholy was that strenuous activity which made them forget
+themselves, that energetic will-power which was the driving force in so
+many movements of the day.
+
+How many of the changes of last century were due to general tendencies,
+how far the single will of this man or that has seriously affected its
+history, it is impossible to estimate. To many it seems that the role of
+the individual is played out. The spirit of the coming era is that of
+organized fellowship and associated effort. The State is to prescribe
+for all, and the units are, somehow, to be marshalled into their places
+by a higher collective will. Under the shadow of socialism the more
+ambitious may be tempted to quit the field of public service at home and
+to look to enterprises abroad--to resign poor England to a mechanical
+bureaucracy, a soulless uniformity where one man is as good as another.
+But it is difficult to believe that society can dispense with leaders,
+or afford to forget the lessons which may be learnt from the study of
+such noble lives. The Victorians had a robuster faith. Their faith and
+their achievements may help to banish such doubts to-day. As one of the
+few survivors of that Victorian era has lately said: 'Only those whose
+minds are numbed by the suspicion that all times are tolerably alike,
+and men and women much of a muchness, will deny that it was a generation
+of intrepid efforts forward.' Some fell in mid-combat: some survived to
+witness the eventual victory of their cause. For all might be claimed
+the funeral honours which Browning claimed for his Grammarian. They
+aimed high; they 'threw themselves on God': the mountain-tops are their
+appropriate resting-place.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS CARLYLE
+
+1795-1881
+
+1795. Born at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, December 4.
+1809. Enters Edinburgh University.
+1814-18. Schoolmaster at Annan and Kirkcaldy. Friendship with Edward
+      Irving.
+1819-21. Reading law and literature at Edinburgh and Mainhill.
+1821. First meeting with Jane Welsh at Haddington.
+1822-3. Tutorship in Buller family.
+1824-5. German literature, Goethe, _Life of Schiller_.
+1826. October 17, marriage; residence at Comely Bank, Edinburgh.
+1827. Jeffrey's friendship; articles for _Edinburgh Review_.
+1828-34. Craigenputtock, with intervals in London and Edinburgh;
+      poverty; solitude; profound study; _Sartor Resartus_ written;
+      reading for _French  Revolution_.
+1834. Cheyne Row, Chelsea, permanent home.
+1834. Begins to read for, 1841 to write, _Cromwell_.
+1834-6. _French Revolution_ written; finished January 12, 1837.
+1837-40. Four courses of lectures in London. (German literature, _Heroes_.)
+1844. Changes plan of, 1845 finishes writing, _Cromwell_.
+1846-51. Studies Ireland and modern questions; _Latter-Day Pamphlets_, 1849.
+1851. Choice of Frederick the Great of Prussia for next subject.
+1857. Two vols. printed; 1865, rest finished and published.
+1865. Lord Rector of Edinburgh University.
+1866. Death of Mrs. Carlyle, April 21.
+1867-9. Prepares Memorials of his wife; friendship with Froude.
+1870. Loses the use of his right hand.
+1874. Refuses offer of Baronetcy or G.C.B.
+1881. Death at Chelsea, February 5; burial at Ecclefechan.
+
+THOMAS CARLYLE
+
+PROPHET
+
+
+North-west of Carlisle (from which town the Carlyle family in all
+probability first took their name), a little way along the border, the
+river Annan comes down its green valley from the lowland hills to lose
+itself in the wide sands of the Solway Firth. At the foot of these hills
+is the village of Ecclefechan, some eight miles inland. Here in the wide
+irregular street, down the side of which flows a little beck, stands the
+grey cottage, built by the stonemason James Carlyle, where he lived with
+his second wife, Margaret Aitken; and here on December 4, 1795, the
+eldest of nine children, their son Thomas was born. There is little to
+redeem the place from insignificance; the houses are mostly mean, the
+position of the village is tame and commonplace. But if a visitor will
+mount the hills that lie to the north, turn southward and look over the
+wide expanse of land and water to the Cumbrian mountains, then, should
+he be fortunate enough to see the landscape in stormy and unsettled
+weather, he may realize why the land was so dear to its most famous son
+that he could return to it from year to year throughout his life and
+could there at all times soothe his most unquiet moods. Through all his
+years in London he remained a lowland Scot and was most at home in
+Annandale. With this district his fame is still bound up, as that of
+Walter Scott with the Tweed, or that of Wordsworth with the Lakes.
+
+In this humble household Thomas Carlyle first learnt what is meant by
+work, by truthfulness, and by reverence, lessons which he never forgot.
+He learnt to revere authority, to revere worth, and to revere something
+yet higher and more mysterious--the Unseen. In _Sartor Resartus_ he
+describes how his hero was impressed by his parents' observance of
+religious duties. 'The highest whom I knew on earth I here saw bowed
+down with awe unspeakable before a Higher in Heaven; such things
+especially in infancy, reach inwards to the very core of your being.'
+His father was a man of unusual force of character and gifted with a
+wonderful power of speech, flashing out in picturesque metaphor, in
+biting satire, in humorous comment upon life. He had, too, the Scotch
+genius for valuing education; and it was he who decided that Tom, whose
+character he had observed, should have every chance that schooling could
+give him. His mother was a most affectionate, single-hearted, and
+religious woman; labouring for her family, content with her lot, her
+trust for her son unfailing, her only fear for him lest in his new
+learning he might fall away from the old Biblical faith which she held
+so firmly herself.
+
+Reading with his father or mother, lending a hand at housework when
+needed, nourishing himself on the simple oatmeal and milk which
+throughout life remained his favourite food, submitting himself
+instinctively to the stern discipline of the home, he passed, happily on
+the whole, through his childhood and soon outstripped his comrades in
+the village school. His success there led to his going in his tenth year
+to the grammar school at Annan; and before he reached his fourteenth
+year he trudged off on foot to Edinburgh to begin his studies at the
+university.
+
+Instead of young men caught up by express trains and deposited, by the
+aid of cabmen and porters, in a few hours in the sheltered courts of
+Oxford and Cambridge, we must imagine a party of boys, of fourteen or
+fifteen years old, trudging on foot twenty miles a day for five days
+across bleak country, sleeping at rough inns, and on their arrival
+searching for an attic in some bleak tenement in a noisy street. Here
+they were to live almost entirely on the baskets of home produce sent
+through the carriers at intervals by their thrifty parents. It was and
+is a Spartan discipline, and it turns out men who have shown their grit
+and independence in all lands where the British flag is flown.
+
+The earliest successes which Carlyle won, both at Annan and at
+Edinburgh, were in mathematics. His classical studies received little
+help from his professors, and his literary gifts were developed mostly
+by his own reading, and stimulated from time to time by talks with
+fellow students. Perhaps it was for his ultimate good that he was not
+brought under influences which might have guided him into more
+methodical courses and tamed his rugged originality. The universities
+cannot often be proved to have fostered kindly their poets and original
+men of letters; at least we may say that Edinburgh was a more kindly
+Alma Mater to Carlyle than Oxford and Cambridge proved to Shelley and
+Byron. His native genius, and the qualities which he inherited from his
+parents, were not starved in alien soil, but put out vigorous growth.
+From such letters to his friends as have survived, we can see what a
+power Carlyle had already developed of forcibly expressing his ideas and
+establishing an influence over others.
+
+He left the university at the age of nineteen, and the next twelve years
+of his life were of a most unsettled character. He made nearly as many
+false starts in life as Goldsmith or Coleridge, though he redeemed them
+nobly by his persistence in after years. In 1814 his family still
+regarded the ministry as his vocation, and Carlyle was himself quite
+undecided about it. To promote this idea the profession of schoolmaster
+was taken up for the time. He continued in it for more than six years,
+first at Annan and then at Kirkcaldy; but he was soon finding it
+uncongenial and rebelling against it. A few years later he tried reading
+law with no greater contentment; and in order to support himself he was
+reduced to teaching private pupils. The chief friend of this period was
+Edward Irving, the gifted preacher who afterwards, in London, came to
+tragic shipwreck. He was a native of Annan, five years older than
+Carlyle, and he had spent some time in preaching and preparing for the
+ministry. He was one of the few people who profoundly influenced
+Carlyle's life. At Kirkcaldy he was his constant companion, shared his
+tastes, lent him books, and kindled his powers of insight and judgement
+in many a country walk. Carlyle has left us records of this time in his
+_Reminiscences_, how he read the twelve volumes of Irving's _Gibbon_ in
+twelve days, how he tramped through the Trossachs on foot, how in summer
+twilights he paced the long stretches of sand at Irving's side.
+
+It was Irving who in 1822 commended him to the Buller family, with whom
+he continued as tutor for two years. Charles Buller, the eldest son, was
+a boy of rare gifts and promise, worthy of such a teacher; and but for
+his untimely death in 1848 he might have won a foremost place in
+politics. The family proved valuable friends to Carlyle in after-life,
+besides enabling him at this time to live in comfort, with leisure for
+his own studies and some spare money to help his family. But for this
+aid, his brother Alexander would have fared ill with the farming, and
+John could never have afforded the training for the medical profession.
+
+Again, it was Irving who first took him to Haddington in 1821 and
+introduced him to Jane Baillie Welsh, his future wife. Irving's
+sincerity and sympathy, his earnest enthusiasm joined with the power of
+genuine laughter (always to Carlyle a mark of a true rich nature), made
+him through all these years a thoroughly congenial companion. He really
+understood Carlyle as few outside his family did, and he never grew
+impatient at Carlyle's difficulty in settling to a profession. 'Your
+mind,' he wrote, 'unfortunately for its present peace, has taken in so
+wide a range of study as to be almost incapable of professional
+trammels; and it has nourished so uncommon and so unyielding a
+character, as first unfits you for, and then disgusts you with, any
+accommodations which for so cultivated and so fertile a mind would
+easily procure favour and patronage.' Well might Carlyle in later days
+find a hero in tough old Samuel Johnson, whose sufferings were due to
+similar causes. The other source which kept the fire in him aglow
+through these difficult years was the confidence and affection of his
+whole family, and the welcome which he always found at home.
+Disappointed though they were at his failure, as yet, to settle to a
+profession and to earn a steady income, for all that 'Tom' was to be a
+great man; and when he could find time to spend some months at Mainhill,
+or later at Scotsbrig,[1] a room could always be found for him, hours of
+peace and solitude could be enjoyed, the most wholesome food, and the
+most cordial affection, were there rendered as loyal ungrudging tribute.
+But new ties were soon to be knit and a new chapter to be opened in his
+life.
+
+[Note 1: Farms near Ecclefechan to which his parents moved in 1814
+and 1826.]
+
+John Welsh of Haddington, who died before Carlyle met his future wife,
+was a surgeon and a man of remarkable gifts; and his daughter could
+trace her descent to such famous Scotsmen as Wallace and John Knox. Her
+own mental powers were great, and her vivacity and charming manners
+caused her to shine in society wherever she was. She had an unquestioned
+supremacy among the ladies of Haddington and many had been the suitors
+for her hand. When Irving had given her lessons there, love had sprung
+up between tutor and pupil, but this budding romance ended tragically in
+1822. Before meeting her he had been engaged to another lady; and when a
+new appointment gave him a sure income, he was held to his bond and was
+forced to crush down his passion and to take farewell of Miss Welsh. At
+what date Carlyle conceived the hope of making her his wife it is
+difficult to say. Her beauty and wit seem to have done their work
+quickly in his case; but she was not one to give her affections readily,
+for all the intellectual sympathy which united them. In 1823 she was
+contemplating marriage, but had made no promise; in 1824 she had
+accepted the idea of marrying him, but in 1825 she still scouted the
+conditions in which he proposed to live. His position was precarious,
+his projects visionary, and his immediate desire was to settle on a
+lonely farm, where he could devote himself to study, if she would do the
+household drudgery. Because his mother whom he loved and honoured was
+content to lead this life, he seemed to think that his wife could do the
+same; but her nature and her rearing were not those of the Carlyles and
+their Annandale neighbours. It involved a complete renunciation of the
+comforts of life and the social position which she enjoyed; and much
+though she admired his talents and enjoyed his company, she was not in
+that passion of love which could lift her to such heights of
+self-sacrifice.
+
+By this time we can begin to discern in his letters the outline of his
+character--his passionate absorption in study, his moodiness, his fits
+of despondency, his intense irritability; his incapacity to master his
+own tongue and temper. In happy moments he shows great tenderness of
+feeling for those whom he loves or pities; but this alternates with
+inconsiderate clamour and loud complaints deafening the ears of all
+about him, provoked often by slight and even imaginary grievances. It is
+the artistic nature run riot, and that in one who preached silence and
+stoicism as the chief virtues--an inconsistency which has amused and
+disgusted generations of readers. It was impossible for him to do his
+work with the regular method, the equable temper, of a Southey or a
+Scott. In dealing with history he must image the past to himself most
+vividly before he could expound his subject; and that effort and strain
+cost him sleepless nights and days of concentrated thought. Nor was he
+an easier companion when his work was finished and he could take his
+ease. Then life seemed empty and profitless; and in its emptiness his
+voice echoed all the louder. The ill was within him, and outward
+circumstances were powerless to affect his nature.
+
+At this time he was chiefly occupied in reading German literature and
+spreading the knowledge of it among his countrymen. After Coleridge he
+was the first of our literary men to appreciate the poets and mystics of
+Germany, and he did more even than Coleridge to make Englishmen familiar
+with them. He acquired at this time a knowledge of French and Italian
+literature too; but the philosophy of Kant and the writings of Goethe
+and Schiller roused him to greater enthusiasm. From Kant he learnt that
+the guiding principle of conduct was not happiness, but the 'categorical
+imperative' of duty; from Goethe he drew such hopefulness as gleams
+occasionally through his despondent utterances on the progress of the
+human race. He translated Goethe's novel, _Wilhelm Meister_, in 1823,
+and followed it up with the _Life of Schiller_. There was no
+considerable sale for either of these books till his lectures in London
+and his established fame roused a demand for all he had written. In
+these days he was practising for the profession of a man of letters, and
+was largely influenced by personal ambition and the desire to earn an
+income which would make him independent; he was not yet fired with a
+mission, or kindled to white heat.
+
+His long courtship was rewarded in October 1826. When the marriage took
+place the bride was twenty-five years old and the bridegroom thirty. Men
+of letters have not the reputation of making ideal husbands, and the
+qualities to which this is due were possessed by Carlyle in exaggerated
+measure. It was a perilous enterprise for any one to live with him, most
+of all for such a woman, delicately bred, nervous, and highly strung.
+She was aware of this, and was prepared for a large measure of
+self-denial; but she could not have foreseen how severe she would find
+the trial. The morbid sensitiveness of Carlyle to his own pains and
+troubles, so often imaginary, joined with his inconsiderate blindness to
+his wife's real sufferings, led to many heart-burnings. If she
+contributed to them, in some degree, by her wilfulness, jealous temper,
+and sharpness of tongue, ill-health and solitude may well excuse her.
+
+His own confessions, made after her death, are coloured by sorrow and
+deep affection: no doubt he paints his own conduct in hues darker than
+the truth demands. Shallow critics have sneered at the picture of the
+philosopher whose life was so much at variance with his creed, and too
+much has, perhaps, been written about the subject. If reference must be
+made to such a well-worn tale, it is best to let Carlyle's own account
+stand as he wished it to stand. His moral worth has been vindicated in a
+hundred ways, not least by his humility and honesty about himself, and
+can bear the test of time.
+
+For the first two years of married life Carlyle's scheme of living on a
+farm was kept at bay by his wife, and their home was at Edinburgh.
+Carlyle refers to this as the happiest period of his life, though he did
+not refrain from loud laments upon occasions. The good genius of the
+household was Jeffrey, the famous editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, who
+was distantly related to Mrs. Carlyle. He made friends with the
+newly-married pair, opened a path for them into the society of the
+capital, and enabled Carlyle to spread the knowledge of German authors
+in the _Review_ and to make his bow before a wider public. The prospects
+of the little household seemed brighter, but, by generously making over
+all her money to her mother, his wife had crippled its resources; and
+Carlyle was of so difficult a humour that neither Jeffrey nor any one
+else could guide his steps for long. Living was precarious; society made
+demands even on a modest household, and in 1828 he at length had his way
+and persuaded his wife to remove to Craigenputtock. It was in the
+loneliness of the moors that Carlyle was to come to his full stature and
+to develop his astonishing genius.
+
+Craigenputtock was a farm belonging to his wife's family, lying seventy
+feet above the sea, sixteen miles from Dumfries, among desolate moors
+and bogs, and fully six miles from the nearest village. 'The house is
+gaunt and hungry-looking. It stands with the scanty fields attached as
+an island in a sea of morass. The landscape is unredeemed either by
+grace or grandeur, mere undulating hills of grass and heather with peat
+bogs in the hollows between them.' So Froude describes the home where
+the Carlyles were to spend six years, the wife in domestic labours, in
+solitude, in growing ill-health, the husband in omnivorous reading, in
+digesting the knowledge that he gathered, in transmuting it and marking
+it with the peculiar stamp of his genius. There was no true
+companionship over the work. As the moorland gave the fresh air and
+stillness required, so the wife might nourish the physical frame with
+wholesome digestible food and save him from external cares; the rest
+must be done by lonely communing with himself. He needed no Fleet Street
+taverns or literary salons to encourage him. Goethe, with whom he
+exchanged letters and compliments at times, said with rare insight that
+he 'had in himself an originating principle of conviction, out of which
+he could develop the force that lay in him unassisted by other men'.
+
+Few were the interruptions from without. His fame was not yet
+established. In any case pilgrims would have to undertake a very rough
+journey, and the fashion of such pilgrimages had hardly begun. But in
+1833 from distant America came one disciple, afterwards to be known as
+the famous author Ralph Waldo Emerson; and he has left us in his
+_English Traits_ a vivid record of his impression of two or three famous
+men of letters whom he saw. He describes Carlyle as 'tall and gaunt,
+with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary
+powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent
+with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming
+humour, which floated everything he looked upon'.[2]
+
+[Note 2: Emerson, _English Traits_, 'World's Classics' edition, p.
+8.]
+
+Much of his time was given to reading about the French Revolution, which
+was to be the subject of his greatest literary triumph. But the
+characteristic work of this period is _Sartor Resartus_ ('The tailor
+patched anew'), in which Carlyle, under a thin German disguise, reveals
+himself to the world, with his views on the customs and ways of society
+and his contempt for all the pretensions and absurdities which they
+involved. In many places it is extravagant and fantastic, as when 'the
+most remarkable incident in modern history' proves to be George Fox the
+Quaker making a suit of leather to render himself independent of
+tailors; in others it rises to the highest pitch of poetry, as in the
+sympathetic lament over the hardships of manual labour. 'Venerable to me
+is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a
+cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet.
+Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with
+its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. O,
+but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity
+as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so
+bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert
+our Conscript on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so
+marred.' It is through such passages that Carlyle has won his way to the
+hearts of many who care little for history, or for German literature.
+
+The book evidently contains much that is autobiographical, and helps us
+to understand Carlyle's childhood and youth; but it is so mixed up with
+fantasy and humour that it is difficult to separate fiction from fact.
+Its chief aim seems to be the overthrow of cant, the ridiculing of
+empty conventions, and the preaching of sincerity and independence. But
+not yet was Carlyle's generation prepared to listen to such sermons.
+Jeffrey was bewildered by the tone and offended at the style; publisher
+after publisher refused it; and when at length it was launched upon the
+world piecemeal in _Fraser's Magazine_, the reading public either
+ignored it or abused it in the roundest terms. During all this time
+Carlyle was anxiously looking for some surer means of livelihood, and
+had not yet decided that literature was to be his profession. He had
+hopes at different times of professorships in Edinburgh and St. Andrews,
+and of the editorship of various reviews; but these all came to nothing.
+For some posts he was not suited; for others his application could find
+no support. He even thought of going to America, where Emerson and other
+admirers would have welcomed him. But the disappointments in Scotland
+decided him to make one more effort in London before accepting defeat,
+and in 1834 he found a house at Chelsea and prepared to quit his
+hermitage among the moors.
+
+Cheyne Row, Chelsea, was to be his new home, a quiet street running
+northward from the riverside in a quarter of London not then invaded by
+industrialism. The house, No. 24, with its little garden, has been made
+into a Carlyle museum, and may still be seen on the east side of the
+street facing a few survivors of the sturdy old pollarded lime-trees
+standing there 'like giants in Tawtie wigs'. His bust, by Boehm, is in
+the garden on the Embankment not a hundred yards away. With this
+district are connected other names famous in literature and art, but its
+presiding genius is the 'Sage of Chelsea', who spent the last
+forty-seven years of his life in it; and there, in a double-walled room,
+in spite of trivial disturbances from without, in spite of far more
+serious fits of dejection and discontent within, he composed his three
+greatest historical books. At the outset his prospects were not bright,
+and at the end of 1834 he confessed 'it is now twenty-three months
+since I earned a penny by the craft of literature'. There was need of
+much faith; and it was fortunate for him that he had at his side one who
+believed in his genius and who was well qualified to judge. He must have
+been thinking of this when he wrote of Mahomet in _Heroes_ and of the
+prophet's gratitude to his first wife Kadijah: 'She believed in me when
+none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one friend and she
+was that!' In the same place he quoted the German writer Novalis: 'It is
+certain my conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will
+believe in it.'
+
+So fortified, he worked through the days of poverty and gloom, with
+groans and outbursts of fury, kindling to white heat as he imaged to
+himself the men and events of the French Revolution, and throwing them
+on to paper in lurid pictures of flame. One terrible misadventure
+chilled his spirit in 1835, when the manuscript of the first volume was
+lent to J. S. Mill, and was accidentally burnt; but, after a short fit
+of despair, he set manfully to work to repair the loss, and the new
+version was finished in January, 1837. This book marked an epoch in the
+writing of history. Hitherto few had realized what potent force there
+was in the original documents lying stored in libraries and record
+offices. They were 'live shells' buried in the dust of a neglected
+magazine; and in the hands of Carlyle they came to life again and worked
+havoc among the traditional judgements of history. This book was also
+the turning point in his career. Dickens, Thackeray, and others hailed
+it with enthusiasm; gradually it made its way with the public at large;
+and as in the following years Carlyle, prompted by some friends, gave
+successful courses of lectures,[3] his position among men of letters
+became assured, and he had no more need to worry over money. Living in
+London he became known to a wider circle, and his marvellous powers of
+conversation brought visitors and invitations in larger measure than he
+desired. The new friends whom he valued most were Mr. and Lady Harriet
+Baring,[4] and he was often their guest in London, in Surrey, in
+Scotland, and later at The Grange in Hampshire. But he remained faithful
+to his older and more humble friends, while he also made himself
+accessible to young men of letters who seemed anxious to learn, and who
+did not offend one or other of his many prejudices. Such were Sterling,
+Ruskin, Tennyson, and James Anthony Froude.
+
+[Note 3: The most famous course, on Hero-Worship, was delivered in
+May, 1840.]
+
+[Note 4: Afterwards Lord and Lady Ashburton.]
+
+Despite these successes Carlyle's letters at this time are full of the
+usual discontents. London life and society stimulated him for the time,
+but he paid dearly for it. Late dinners and prolonged bouts of talk, in
+which he put forth all his powers, were followed by dyspepsia and
+lassitude next day; and the neighbours, who kept dogs or cocks which
+were accused of disturbing his slumbers, were the mark for many plaints
+and lamentations. He could not in any circumstances be entirely happy.
+Work was so exciting with the imagination on fire, that it kept him
+awake at night; idleness was still more fatal in its effects. And so,
+after a few years of relative calm, in 1839 we find his active brain
+struggling to create a true picture of Oliver Cromwell and to expound
+the meaning of the Great Civil War.
+
+It was to be no easy task. For nearly five years he was to wrestle with
+the subject, trying in vain to give it adequate shape and form, and then
+to scrap the labours of years and to start again on a new plan; but in
+the end he was to win another signal victory. While the _French
+Revolution_ may be the higher artistic triumph, _Cromwell_ is more
+important for one who wishes to understand the life-work of Carlyle and
+all for which he stood. The emptiness of political theories and
+institutions, the enduring value of character, are lessons which no one
+has preached more forcibly. In his opinion the success of the English
+revolution, the blow to tyranny and misgovernment in Church and State,
+was not due to eloquent members of the Long Parliament, but to plain
+God-fearing men, who, if they quoted scripture, did so not from
+hypocrisy but because it was the language in which they habitually
+thought. Nor could they build up a new England till they had found a
+leader. It was the ages which had faith to recognize their worthiest man
+and to accept his guidance which had achieved great things in the world,
+not those which prated of democracy and progress. To make his
+countrymen, in this age of fluent political talk, see the true moral
+quality of the men of the seventeenth century--this it was which
+occupied seven years of Carlyle's life and filled his thoughts. It was
+indeed a labour of Hercules. Much of the material was lost beyond
+repair, much buried in voluminous folios and State papers, much obscured
+by the cant and prejudice of eighteenth-century authors. To recall the
+past, Carlyle needed such help as geography would give him, and he spent
+many days in visiting Dunbar, Worcester, and other sites. To Naseby he
+went in 1842, in company with Dr. Arnold, and 'plucked two gowans and a
+cowslip from the burial heaps of the slain'. A more important task was
+to recover authentic utterances of Cromwell and his fellow workers, and
+to put these in the place of the second-hand judgements of political
+partisans; and this involved laborious researches in libraries. Above
+all, he had to interpret these records in a new spirit, exercising true
+insight and sympathy, to put life into the dry bones and to present his
+readers with the living image of a man. He combined in unique fashion
+the laborious research of a student with the moral fervour of a prophet.
+
+Despite the strain of these labours Carlyle showed few signs of his
+fifty years. The family were of tough stock; and the years which he had
+spent in moorland air had increased the capital of health on which he
+could draw. The flight of time was chiefly marked by his growing
+antipathy to the political movements of the day, and by a growing
+despondency about the future. People might buy his books; but he looked
+in vain for evidence that they paid heed to the lessons which he
+preached. The year of revolutions, 1848, followed by the setting up of
+the French Empire and the collapse of the Roman Republic, produced
+nothing but disappointment, and he became louder and more bitter in his
+judgements on democracy. 1849 saw the birth of the _Latter-Day
+Pamphlets_ in which he outraged Mill and the Radicals by his scornful
+words about Negro Emancipation, and by the savage delight with which he
+shattered their idols. He loved to expose what seemed to him the
+sophistries involved in the conventional praise of liberty. Of old the
+mediaeval serf or the negro slave had some one who was responsible for
+him, some one interested in his physical well-being. The new conditions
+too often meant nothing but liberty to starve, liberty to be idle,
+liberty to slip back into the worst indulgences, while those who might
+have governed stood by regardless and lent no help. Such from an extreme
+point of view appeared the policy of _laisser-faire_; and he was neither
+moderate nor impartial in stating his case. 'An idle white gentleman is
+not pleasant to me;... but what say you to an idle black gentleman, with
+his rum bottle in his hand,... no breeches on his body, pumpkin at
+discretion, and the fruitfullest region of the earth going back to
+jungle round him?' In a similar vein he dealt with stump oratory, prison
+reform, and other subjects, tilting in reckless fashion at the shields
+of the reforming Radicals of the day; nor was he less outspoken when he
+met in person the champions of these views. A letter to his wife in 1847
+tells of a visit to the Brights at Rochdale; how 'John and I discorded
+in our views not a little', and how 'I shook peaceable Brightdom as with
+a passing earthquake'. From books he could learn: to human teachers he
+proved refractory. Had he been more willing to listen to others, his
+judgements on contemporary events might have been more valuable. All his
+life he was, as George Meredith says, 'Titanic rather than Olympian, a
+heaver of rocks, not a shaper'; and this fever of denunciation grew with
+advancing years. But with these spurts of volcanic energy alternate
+moods of the deepest depression. His journal for 1850 says, 'This seems
+really the Nadir of my fortunes; and in hope, desire, or outlook, so far
+as common mortals reckon such, I never was more bankrupt. Lonely, shut
+up within my contemptible and yet _not_ deliberately ignoble self,
+perhaps there never was, in modern literary or other history, a more
+solitary soul, _capable_ of any friendship or honest relation to
+others.' By this time he was feeling the need of another task, and in
+1851 he chose Frederick the Great of Prussia for the subject of his next
+book.
+
+To this generation apology seems to be needed for an English author who
+lavishes so much admiration on Prussian men and institutions. But
+Carlyle, whose chief heroes had been men of intense religious
+convictions, like Luther, Knox, and Cromwell, could find no hero after
+his heart in English history subsequent to the Civil War. Eloquent Pitts
+and Burkes, jobbing Walpoles and Pelhams, were to him types of
+politicians who had brought England to her present plight. German
+literature had always kept its influence over him and had directed his
+attention to German history; Frederick, without religion as he was,
+seemed at any rate sincere, recognized facts, and showed practical
+capacity for ruling (essential elements in the Carlylean hero), and the
+subject would be new to his readers. The labour involved was stupendous;
+it was to fill his life and the lives of his helpers for thirteen
+years. Of these helpers the chief credit is due to Joseph Neuberg, who
+piloted him over German railways, libraries, and battle-fields in the
+search for picturesque detail, and to Henry Larkin, who toiled in London
+to trace references in scores of authors, and who finally crowned the
+work by laborious indexing, which made Carlyle's labyrinth accessible to
+his readers. There were masses of material hidden away and unsifted;
+and, as in the case of Cromwell, only a man of original genius could
+penetrate this inert mass with shafts of light and make the past live
+again. The task grew as he continued his researches. He groped his way
+back to the beginning of the Hohenzollerns, and sketched the portraits
+of the old Electors in a style unequalled for vividness and humour. He
+drew a full-length portrait of Frederick William, most famous of
+drill-sergeants, and he studied the campaigns of his son with a
+thoroughness which has been a model to soldiers and civilians ever
+since. We have the record of two tours which he made in Germany to view
+the scene of operations;[5] and it is amazing how exact a picture he
+could bring away from a short visit to each separate battle-field. His
+diligence, accuracy, and wide grasp of the subject satisfied the
+severest judges; and the book won him a success as complete and enduring
+in Germany as in England and America.
+
+[Note 5: Froude, _Carlyle, Life in London_, vol. ii, pp. 100 and
+217.]
+
+When this was finished, Carlyle was on the verge of seventy and his work
+was done; though the evening of his life was long, his strength was
+exhausted. His wife lived just long enough to see the seal set upon his
+fame, and to hear of his election to be Lord Rector of Edinburgh
+University. But in April 1866, while he was in Scotland for his
+installation, which she was too weak to attend, he heard the news of her
+sudden death from heart failure in London; and after this he was a
+broken man. By reading her journal he learnt, too late, how much his
+own inconsiderate temper had added to her trials, and his remorse was
+bitter and lasting. He shut himself off from all his friends except
+Froude, who was to be his literary executor, and gave himself to
+collecting and annotating the memorials which she had left. Each letter
+is followed by some words of tender recollection or some cry of
+self-reproach. He has erected to her the most singular of literary
+monuments, morbid perhaps, but inspired by a feeling which was in his
+case natural and sincere.
+
+About 1870 he began to lose the use of his right hand and he found it
+impossible to compose by dictation. Of the last years of his life there
+is little to narrate. The offer of a baronetcy or the G.C.B. from Mr.
+Disraeli in 1874 pleased him for the moment, but he resolutely refused
+external honours. He took daily walks with Froude, daily drives when he
+became too weak to go on foot. Towards the end the Bible and Shakespeare
+were his most habitual reading. He had long ceased to be a member of any
+church, but his belief in God and in God's working in history was the
+very foundation of his being, and the lessons of the Bible were to him
+inexhaustible and ever new. Death came to him peacefully in February,
+1881; and as he had expressed a definite wish, he was buried at
+Ecclefechan, though a public funeral in the Abbey was offered and its
+acceptance would have met with the approval of his countrymen.
+
+The very wealth of records makes it difficult to judge his character
+fairly. Few men have so laid bare the thoughts and feelings of their
+hearts. It is easy to blame the unmanly laments which he utters over his
+health, his solitude, and his sufferings, real or imaginary; few
+imaginative writers have the every-day virtues. His egotism, too, is
+difficult to defend. If, as he himself admits, he invariably took an
+undue share of talk, often in fact monopolizing it, wherever he was, we
+must remember that the brilliance of his gifts was admitted by all;
+less pardonable is his habit of disparaging other men, and especially
+other men of letters. His pen-pictures of Mill, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
+and others, are wonderfully vivid but too often sour in flavour; his
+sketch of Charles Lamb is an outrage on that generous and kindly soul.
+Too often he was unconscious of the pain given by such random words.
+When he was brought to book, he was honourable enough to recant. Fearing
+on one occasion to have offended even the serene loyalty of Emerson, he
+cries out protestingly, 'Has not the man Emerson, from old years, been a
+Human Friend to me? Can I ever forget, or think otherwise than lovingly
+of the man Emerson?'
+
+But whatever offence Carlyle committed with his ungovernable tongue or
+pen, he had rare virtues in conduct. His generosity was as unassuming as
+it was persistent; and it began at home. Long before he was free from
+anxieties about money for himself, he was helping two of his brothers to
+make a career, one in agriculture, and the other in medicine. In his
+latter days he regularly gave away large sums in such a way that no one
+knew the source from which they came. His letters show a deep tenderness
+of affection for his mother, his wife, and others of the family; and the
+humble Annandale home was always in his thoughts. His charity embraced
+even those whose claim on him was but indirect. When his wife was dead,
+he could remember to celebrate her birthday by sending a present to her
+old nurse. He was scrupulous in money-dealing and frugal in all matters
+of personal comfort; in his innermost thoughts he was always
+pure-hearted and sincere; for nothing on earth would he traffic in his
+independence or in adherence to the truth.
+
+His style has not largely influenced other historians; and this is as
+well, since imitations of it easily fall into mere obscurity and
+extravagance. But his historical method has been of great value, the
+patient study of original authorities, the copious references quoted,
+the careful indexing, all being proof how anxious he was that the
+subject should be presented clearly and veraciously, rather than that
+the books should shine as literary performances. How far the principles
+which he valued and taught have spread it is difficult to say. Party
+politicians still appeal to the sacred name of liberty without inquiring
+what true liberty means; publicists still speak as if the material gains
+of modern life, cheap food and machine-made products, meant nothing but
+advance in the history of the human race; but there are others who look
+to the spiritual factors and wish to enlarge the bounds of political
+economy.
+
+The writings of Carlyle, and of Ruskin, on whom fell the prophet's
+mantle, certainly made their influence felt in later books devoted to
+that once 'dismal' science. Few can be quite indifferent to the man or
+to his message. Those who demand moderation, clearness, and Attic
+simplicity, will be repelled by his extravagances or by his mysticism.
+Others will be attracted by his glowing imagination and by his fiery
+eloquence, and will reserve for him a foremost place in their
+affections. These will echo the words which Emerson was heard to say on
+his death-bed, when his eyes fell on a portrait of the familiar rugged
+features, '_That_ is the man, my man'.
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT PEEL
+
+From the painting by J. Linnell in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+
+
+
+SIR ROBERT PEEL
+
+1788-1850
+
+1788. Born near Bury, Lancashire, July 5.
+1801-4. Harrow School.
+1805. Christ Church, Oxford.
+1809. M.P. for Cashel, Ireland.
+1811. Under-Secretary for the Colonies.
+1812-18. Chief Secretary for Ireland.
+1817. M.P. for Oxford University.
+1819. President of Bullion Committee.
+1820. Marriage to Julia, daughter of General Sir John Floyd.
+1822-7. Home Secretary in Lord Liverpool's Government.
+1827. Canning's short ministry and death.
+1828-30. Home Secretary and leader in Commons under the Duke of Wellington.
+1829. Catholic Emancipation carried.
+1832. Lord Grey's Reform Bill carried.
+1834-5. Prime Minister; Tamworth manifesto.
+1839. 'Bedchamber Plot': Peel fails to form ministry.
+1841-6. Prime Minister a second time.
+1844. Peel's Bank Act.
+1846. Corn Laws repealed. Peel, defeated on Irish Coercion Bill, resigns.
+1850. Accident, June 29, and death, July 2.
+
+SIR ROBERT PEEL
+
+STATESMAN
+
+
+In the years that lay between the Treaty of Utrecht and the close of the
+Napoleonic wars British politics were largely dominated by Walpole and
+the two Pitts: their great figures only stand out in stronger relief
+because their place was filled for a time by such weak ministers as
+Newcastle and Bute, as Grafton and North. In the nineteenth century
+there were many gifted statesmen who held the position of first
+minister of the Crown. Disraeli and Palmerston by shrewdness and force
+of character, Canning and Derby by brilliant oratorical gifts, Russell
+and Aberdeen by earnest devotion to public service, were all commanding
+figures in their day, whose claims to the chieftainship of a party and
+of a government were generally admitted. Gladstone, the most versatile
+genius of them all, had abilities second to none; but his place in
+history will for long be a subject of acute controversy. He stands too
+close to our own time to be fairly judged. Of the others no one had the
+same combination of gifts as Sir Robert Peel, no one had in the same
+measure that particular knowledge, judgement, and ability which
+characterize the _statesman_. His career was the most fruitful, his work
+the most enduring: he has left his mark in English history to a degree
+which no one of his rivals can equal.
+
+The Peel family can be traced back to the misty days of Danish inroads.
+Its original home in England is disputed between Yorkshire and
+Lancashire; but as early as the days of Elizabeth the branch from which
+our statesman was descended is certainly to be found at Blackburn, and
+its members lived for generations as sturdy yeomen of that district. The
+first of them known to strike out an independent line was his
+grandfather, Robert Peel, who with his brother-in-law, Mr. Haworth,
+started the first firm for calico-printing in Lancashire about the year
+1760, ceasing the practice of sending the material to be printed in
+France. This grandfather was a type of the men who were making the new
+England, leading the way in the creation of industries that were to
+transform the North and Midlands. The business prospered and he moved
+from Blackburn to Burton-on-Trent, where he built three new mills. His
+third son, named Robert, was also gifted with resource. Beginning as a
+member of the family firm, he soon came to be its chief director, and
+added another branch at Tamworth, where later he built the house of
+Drayton Manor, the family seat in the nineteenth century. He was a Tory
+and a staunch follower of the younger Pitt, who rewarded his services
+with a baronetcy in 1800. He too was a typical man of his age and class,
+an age of material progress and expansion, a class full of
+self-confidence and animated by a spirit of stubborn resistance to
+so-called un-English ideas. His eldest son, the third Robert and the
+second baronet, is our subject. It is impossible to grasp the springs of
+his conduct unless we know what traditions he inherited from his
+forbears.
+
+Peel's education was begun at home with a specific purpose. Though his
+father had every reason to be satisfied with his own success, for his
+son he cherished a yet higher ambition and one which he did not conceal.
+He said openly that he intended him to be Prime Minister of his country.
+The knowledge of this provoked many jests among the boy's friends and
+caused him no slight embarrassment. It conspired with the shyness and
+reserve, which were innate in him, to win him from the outset a
+reputation for pride and aloofness. If he had not been forced to mix
+with those of his own age, and if he had not resolutely set himself to
+overcome this feeling, he might have grown into a student and a recluse.
+Both at school and college he did 'attend to his book': at Harrow he
+roused the greatest hopes. His brilliant schoolfellow, Lord Byron, while
+claiming to excel him in general information and history, admits that
+Peel was greatly his superior as a scholar. The working of their minds,
+now and afterwards, was curiously different. Bagehot[6] illustrates the
+contrast by a striking metaphor: Byron's mind, he says, worked by
+momentary eruptions of volcanic force from within and then relapsed into
+inactivity. Peel on the other hand steadily accumulated knowledge and
+opinions, his mind receiving impressions from outward experience like
+the alluvial soil deposited by a river in its course. But this is to
+anticipate. At Oxford Peel was the first man to win a 'Double First'
+(i.e. a first class both in classics and mathematics), in which
+distinction Gladstone alone, among our Prime Ministers, equalled him.
+But he also found time during the term to indulge in cricket, in rowing,
+and in riding, while in the vacation he developed a more marked taste
+for shooting, and thus freed himself from the charge of being a mere
+bookworm. He was good-looking, rather a dandy in his dress, stiff in his
+manner, regular in his habits, conforming to the Oxford standards of
+excellence and as yet showing few signs of independence of character.
+
+[Note 6: Walter Bagehot, _Biographical Studies_, p. 17 (Longmans,
+1907).]
+
+Peel went into Parliament early, after the fashion of the day. He was
+twenty-one when, in 1809, a seat was offered him at Cashel in Ireland.
+The system of 'rotten boroughs' had many faults--our text-books of
+history do not spare it--but it may claim to have offered an easy way
+into Parliament for some men of brilliant talents. Peel's family
+connexions and his own training marked out the path for him. It was
+difficult for the young Oxford prizeman not to follow Lord Chancellor
+Eldon, that stout survival of the high old Tories: it was impossible for
+his father's son not to sit behind the successors of Pitt. We shall see
+how far his own reasoning powers and clear vision led him from this
+path; but the early influences were never quite effaced. His first
+patron was Lord Liverpool, to whom he became private secretary in the
+following year. This nobleman, described by Disraeli in a famous passage
+as an 'arch-mediocrity' was Prime Minister for fifteen years. He owed
+his long tenure of office largely to the tolerance with which he allowed
+his abler lieutenants to usurp his power: perhaps he owed it still more
+to the victories which Wellington was then winning abroad and which
+secured the confidence of the country; but at least he seems to have
+been a good judge of men. In 1811 he promoted Peel to be
+Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and in 1812 to be Chief Secretary for
+Ireland. His abilities must have made a great impression to win him such
+promotion: he must have had plenty of self-confidence to undertake such
+duties, for he was only twenty-four years old. We are accustomed to-day
+to under-secretaries of forty or forty-five; but we must remember that
+the younger Pitt led the House of Commons at twenty-four and was Prime
+Minister at twenty-five.
+
+At Dublin Castle Peel was not expected to deal with the great political
+questions which convulsed Parliament at different periods of the
+century. He had to administer the law. It was routine work of a tedious
+and difficult kind; it involved the close study of facts--not in order
+to make a showy speech or to win a case for the moment, but in order to
+frame practical measures which would stand the test of time. Peel
+eschewed the usual recreations of Dublin society, and flung himself into
+his work whole-heartedly. In Roman history we see how Caesar was trained
+in the details of administration as quaestor, aedile, praetor, consul,
+while Pompeius passed in a lordly progress from one high command to
+another; how Caesar voluntarily exiled himself from Rome for ten years
+to conquer and develop Gaul, while Cicero bewailed himself over a few
+months' absence from the Forum. Of these three famous men only one
+proved himself able to guide the ship of state in stormy waters. Analogy
+must not be too closely pressed; but we see that, while Canning for all
+his ability established no durable influence, and his oratory burnt
+itself out after a brief blaze, while Wellington's fame paled year after
+year from his inability to control the course of civil strife, Peel's
+light burnt brighter every decade, as he rose from office to office and
+faced one difficult situation after another with coolness and success.
+He stayed at his post in Dublin for six years: he worked at the details
+of his office--education, agriculture, and police--and brought in many
+practical reforms. His beneficial activity is still better seen in the
+years 1821 to 1827 when he was Home Secretary. To-day he is chiefly
+remembered as the eponymous hero of our police; but in many other ways
+his tenure of the latter office is a landmark in departmental work. It
+may be that he originated little himself: that Romilly was the pioneer
+in the humanizing of law, that Horner taught him the doctrines of sound
+finance, that Huskisson led the way in freeing trade from the shackles
+with which it had been bound. But Peel in all these cases lent generous
+support and made their cause his own. He had a cool head and a warm
+heart, a knowledge of Parliament and an influence in Parliament already
+unrivalled. He saw what could be done, and how it could be done, and so
+he was able to push through successfully the reforms which his
+colleagues initiated. The value of his work in this sphere has never
+been seriously contested.
+
+The point on which Peel's enemies fastened in judging his career was the
+number of times that he changed his convictions, abandoned his party,
+and carried through a measure which he himself had formerly opposed. To
+understand his claim to be called a great statesman it is particularly
+necessary to study these changes.
+
+The first instance was the Reform of the Currency. Early in the French
+wars the London banks had been in difficulties. The Government was
+forced to borrow large sums from the Bank of England in order to give
+subsidies to our allies, and was unable to pay its debts. The Bank could
+not at the same time meet the demands of the Government and the claims
+of its private customers. Since a panic might at any moment cause an
+unprecedented run on its reserves, Pitt suspended cash payments till six
+months after the conclusion of peace. The Bank was thus allowed to
+circulate notes without being obliged to pay full cash value for them
+immediately on demand, and the purchasing power of these notes tended to
+vary far more than that of a metal currency. Also foreigners refused to
+accept a pound note in the place of a pound sterling; foreign payments
+had to be made in specie, and the gold was rapidly drained abroad. When
+the war was over, Horner and other economists began to draw attention to
+the bad effect of this on foreign trade and to the varying price of
+commodities at home, due to the want of a fixed currency. As Pitt had
+allowed the system of inconvertible paper, the Tories generally
+applauded and were ready to perpetuate it. The elder Sir Robert Peel had
+been always a firm supporter of these views and his son began by
+accepting them. He continued to acquiesce in them till his attention was
+definitely turned to the subject. In 1819 he was asked to be a member of
+a committee of very eminent men, including Canning and Mackintosh, which
+was to investigate the question, and he was elected chairman of it. But,
+though his verdict was taken for granted by his party, his mind was so
+constituted that he could not shut it against evidence. He listened to
+arguments, and judged them fairly; and, being by nature unable to palter
+with the truth, once he was convinced of it, he threw in all his weight
+with the reformers and reported in favour of a return to cash payments.
+History has vindicated his judgement, and he himself crowned his
+financial work by the famous Bank Act of 1844, passed when he was Prime
+Minister.
+
+The second question on which Peel's conduct surprised his colleagues was
+that of Catholic Emancipation. Since 1793 Roman Catholic electors had
+the parliamentary vote; but, since no Roman Catholic could sit in
+Parliament, they had hitherto been content to cast their votes for the
+more tolerant of the Protestant candidates. Pitt had failed to induce
+George III to grant the Catholics civil equality, and George IV, despite
+his liberal professions, took up the same attitude as his father on
+succeeding to the throne. But the majority of the Whigs, and some even
+of the Tories, such as Castlereagh and Canning, were prepared to make
+concessions; and since 1820 the Irish agitation led by O'Connell had
+been gaining in strength. Peel had several reasons for being on the
+other side. His early training by his father, his friendship with Eldon
+and Wellington, his attachment to the Established Church, all had
+influence upon him. He saw clearly that Disestablishment would follow
+closely in Ireland on the granting of the Catholic demands; and since
+1817, when he became Member for Oxford University, he felt bound to
+resist this. In taking this line he was no better and no worse than any
+other Tory member of the day; and in later times many politicians have
+allowed their traditions and prejudices to blind them to the existence
+of an Irish problem.
+
+For all that, Peel ought earlier to have recognized the facts, to have
+looked ahead and formed a policy. As Chief Secretary for Ireland he had
+unrivalled opportunities for studying the whole question; but he did not
+let it penetrate beneath the surface of his mind. He had continued to
+bring up the same arguments on the few occasions when he spoke at
+Westminster, and had buried himself in administrative work. He seems to
+have hoped that he could evade it. If the Whigs got a majority and
+introduced an Emancipation Bill, he would have satisfied his
+constituents by formally opposing the measure and would not have gone
+beyond this. As he saw it gradually coming, he satisfied his own
+conscience by retiring from Lord Liverpool's Government and by refusing
+to join Canning, when he became Prime Minister in 1827. As a private
+member he would only be responsible for his own vote, and would not feel
+that he was settling the question for others. But Canning died after
+holding office only a month, and a Government was formed by Wellington
+in which Peel returned to office as Home Secretary and became leader of
+the House of Commons. Now he had to pay the penalty for his lack of
+foresight, and to deal with the tide of feeling which had been rising
+for some years on both sides of the Irish Channel. At least he could see
+facts which were before his eyes.
+
+In 1828, before he had been twelve months in office, his decision was
+aided by a definite event. A by-election had to be fought in Clare, Mr.
+Fitzgerald seeking re-election on joining the Government. Against him
+came forward no less a person than Daniel O'Connell himself, the most
+eloquent and most popular of the Catholic leaders; and, although under
+the existing laws his candidature was void, he received an overwhelming
+majority. The bewilderment of the Tories was ludicrous. Fitzgerald
+himself wrote, 'The proceedings of yesterday were those of madmen; but
+the country is mad.' Peel took a careful view of the situation and
+decided on his course. He certainly laid himself open to the charge of
+giving way before a breach of the law, and the charge was pressed by the
+angry Tories. But his judgement was clearly based on a complete survey
+of all the facts. A single event was the candle which lit up the scene,
+but by the light of it he surveyed the whole room. He still held to his
+view about the dangers of Disestablishment ahead, but he maintained that
+a crisis had arisen involving graver dangers at the moment, and that the
+statesman must choose the lesser of two evils. There is no doubt that
+the situation was critical. The Duke of Wellington and Lord Anglesey (a
+Waterloo veteran, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) both had fears of
+mutiny in the army; and civil war was to be expected, if O'Connell was
+not admitted to the House of Commons. Peel's personal consistency was
+one matter; the public welfare was another and a weightier. His first
+idea was to retire from office and to lend unofficial support to a
+measure which he could not advocate in principle. But the only hope of
+breaking down the old Tory opposition lay in the influence of the Tory
+ministers; no Whig Government could prevail in the temper of that time;
+and Wellington appealed in the strongest terms to Peel to remain in
+office and to lead the House. Peel yielded from motives of public policy
+and made himself responsible for a measure of Catholic Emancipation,
+which he had been pledged to resist.
+
+It was a surrender--an undisguised surrender--and Peel did not, as on
+the Bullion Committee, profess to have changed his mind. But it was an
+honest surrender carried out in the light of day; and, before Parliament
+met, Peel announced his decision to resign his seat at Oxford and to
+give his constituents the chance of expressing their opinion of his
+conduct. The verdict was not long in doubt: the University, which in
+1865 rejected another of its brilliant sons, gave a majority of one
+hundred and forty-six against him, and his political connexion with
+Oxford was severed. The verdict of posterity has been more liberal. The
+chief fault laid to Peel's charge is that he should for so many years
+have ignored all signs of the danger which was approaching, and not have
+made up his mind in time. He could see the crisis clearly, when it came,
+and could put the national interest above everything else: he could not
+look far enough ahead.
+
+It was a similar want of foresight that led to the fall of the Tory
+Government in 1830. The Reform movement, so long delayed by the great
+wars, had been gathering force again. Events in France, where Charles X
+was driven from the throne and Louis Philippe proclaimed as
+Citizen-king, gave it additional impetus. The famous lawyer Brougham was
+thundering against the Government in Parliament, while throughout the
+country the platforms from which Radical orators declaimed were
+surrounded by eager throngs. The history of the movement cannot be told
+here. Its chief actors were the Whigs, who on Wellington's resignation
+formed a Government under Earl Grey at the end of 1830. Peel was
+fighting a losing fight and he did not show his usual judgement or cool
+temper. He opposed the Reform Bill to the last: he was haranguing
+violently against it when Black Rod arrived to summon the Commons to the
+presence of the King. William IV came down in person, at the instance of
+the Whig ministers, to dissolve Parliament and so to stay all
+proceedings by which, in the as yet unreformed Parliament, the Bill
+might have been defeated. In the General Election of 1831 the Whigs
+carried all before them, and in July, when Lord Grey carried the second
+reading, he could command a majority of 136. Even then it took three
+months of stubborn fighting to vanquish the Tory opposition in the House
+of Commons. When the Peers rejected the Bill, the question was raised
+whether a Tory Government could be formed; but Peel, however he might
+dislike the Bill, could recognize facts, and his refusal to co-operate
+in defying public opinion was decisive. Lord Grey returned to office
+fortified by the King's promise to make any number of new peers, if
+required; and the influence of Wellington was effective in dissuading
+the Upper House from further futile resistance. Again Peel had shown his
+good sense in accepting the situation. So far as he was concerned, there
+was no talk of repeal. He explicitly said that he regarded the question
+as 'finally and irrevocably disposed of', and he set to work to adapt
+his policy to the new situation.
+
+It might well seem a desperate one for the Tories. Here were three
+hundred new members, most of whom had just received their seats from the
+Whigs against the direct opposition of their rivals. Gratitude and
+self-interest impelled them to support the Whig party; and its leaders,
+who had for nearly fifty years been out in the cold shade of opposition,
+might count on a long spell of power, especially as the Canningites,
+stronger in talents than in numbers, joined them at this juncture.
+Brougham had gone to the House of Lords, but three future Prime
+Ministers--Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), Lord John Russell, and
+Palmerston--were in the House of Commons serving under Lord Althorp,
+who, though gifted with no oratorical talent, by his good sense and
+still more by his high character, commanded general respect. On the
+other side there was only one figure of the first rank, and that was
+Peel. Till 1832 he had not grown to his full stature: the Reformed
+Parliament gave him his chance and drew forth all his powers. It
+represented a new force in politics. No longer were the members sent to
+Westminster by a few great land-holders, by the small market towns, and
+by the agricultural labourers. The great industrial districts,
+Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the Midlands, were there in the persons of
+well-to-do citizens, experienced in business and serious in temper; and
+Peel, who was himself sprung from a notable family of this kind, was
+eminently the man to lead these classes and to win their confidence. It
+was also a gain to him to stand alone. His judgement was ripened, his
+confidence firm; and he could dominate his party, while the able and
+ambitious leaders on the other side too often clashed with one another.
+Above all, in the years 1832 to 1834, he showed that he had patience.
+Instead of snatching at occasions to ally himself with O'Connell, who
+was in opposition to every Government, and to embarrass the Whigs in a
+factious party-spirit, he showed a marked respect for principle. He
+supported or opposed the Whig bills purely on their merits, and
+gradually trained his party to be ready for the inevitable reaction when
+it should come.
+
+By 1834 the tendencies to disruption in the victorious party were
+clearly showing themselves. First Stanley, on grounds of policy, and
+then Lord Grey, for personal reasons never quite cleared up, resigned
+office. Soon after, Lord Althorp left the House of Commons on
+succeeding to his father's earldom, and a little later Melbourne, the
+new Premier, was unexpectedly dismissed by the King. At the time Peel,
+expecting no immediate crisis, was abroad, in Rome; and we have
+interesting details of his slow journey home to meet the urgent call of
+Wellington, who was carrying on the administration provisionally. The
+changes of the last few years were shown by the fact that the Tories
+felt bound to choose their Premier from the Lower House. It was
+Wellington who recommended Peel for the place which, under the old
+conditions, he might have been expected to take himself. On his return,
+Peel accepted the task of forming a ministry, and, conscious of the
+numerical weakness of his own party, he made overtures to some of the
+Whigs. But Stanley and Graham[7] refused to join him, and he had to fall
+back on the Tories of Wellington's last Government. Before going to the
+country he laid down his principles in the famous Tamworth Manifesto.[8]
+This manifesto is important for its acceptance of the changes
+permanently made by the Reform Bill, and for the clear exposition of his
+attitude towards the important Church questions which were imminent. It
+is an excellent document for any one to study who wishes to understand
+the evolution of the old Tories into the modern Conservative party.
+
+[Note 7: Sir James Graham, afterwards Home Secretary under Peel in
+1841.]
+
+[Note 8: Since his father's death, in 1830, Peel had been member for
+Tamworth.]
+
+Peel's first administration was not destined to last long. The Liberal
+wave was not spent, and the Tories had little to hope for, at this
+moment, from a General Election. As so often happened afterwards, when
+the two English parties were evenly balanced, the Irish votes turned the
+scale. Peel had been forced into this position by the King: his own
+judgement would have led him to wait some years. He fought dexterously
+for four months, helped in some measure by Stanley, who had left the
+Whigs when they threatened the Established Church in Ireland; but it was
+this question which in the end upset him. Lord John Russell, in alliance
+with O'Connell, proposed the disendowment of that Church and defeated
+Peel by thirty-three votes. It was a question of principle, though it
+was raised in a factious way, and subsequent history showed that the
+mover, after his tactical victory of the moment, could not effect any
+practical solution. Peel was driven to resign. But in this short period,
+so far from losing credit, he had won the confidence of his party and
+the respect of his opponents; he had put some useful measures on the
+Statute Book; and he had shown the country that a new spirit, practical
+and enlightened, was growing up in the Tory party, and that there was a
+minister capable of utilizing it for the general good.
+
+In the Greville papers and other literature of the time we get many
+references to the predominant place which he held in the esteem of the
+House of Commons. An entry in Greville's journal for February 1834 shows
+Peel's unique power. 'No matter how unruly the House, how impatient or
+fatigued, the moment he rises, all is silence, and he is sure of being
+heard with profound attention and respect.' Lady Lyttelton,[9] who met
+him later at Windsor, shows us another aspect. His readiness and
+presence of mind come out in the most trivial matters. When Queen
+Victoria suddenly, one evening, issued her command that all who could
+dance were to dance, the more elderly guests were much embarrassed. Such
+an order was not to Peel's taste. 'He was, in fact, to a close observer,
+evidently both shy and cross'; but he was 'much the best figure of all,
+so mincing with his legs and feet, his countenance full of the funniest
+attempt to look unconcerned and "matter of course".' Another time when
+games were improvised in the royal circle, Lady Lyttelton was 'much
+struck with the quickness and watchful cautious characteristic sagacity
+which Sir Robert showed in learning and playing a new round game'. And
+to the ladies-in-waiting he commended himself by his quiet courtesy.
+'Sir Robert Peel', we read, 'was in his most conversable mood and so
+very agreeable. I never enjoyed an evening more.'
+
+[Note 9: _Correspondence of Sarah, Lady Lyttelton_, by Maud Wyndham
+(Murray, 1912).]
+
+Perhaps the best description to show how personally he impressed his
+contemporaries at this time is given by Lord Dalling and Bulwer in his
+memoir. Sir Robert Peel, he tells us, was 'tall and powerfully built,
+his body somewhat bulky for his limbs, his head small and well-formed,
+his features regular. His countenance was not what would be generally
+called expressive, but it was capable of taking the expression he wished
+to give it, humour, sarcasm, persuasion, and command, being its
+alternate characteristics. The character of the man was seen more... in
+the whole person than in the face. He did not stoop, but he bent rather
+forwards; his mode of walking was peculiar, and rather like that of a
+cat, but of a cat that was well acquainted with the ground it was moving
+over; the step showed no doubt or apprehension, it could hardly be
+called stealthy, but it glided on firmly and cautiously, without haste,
+or swagger, or unevenness.... The oftener you heard him speak, the more
+his speaking gained upon you.... He never seemed occupied with himself.
+His effort was evidently directed to convince you, not that he was
+_eloquent_, but that he was _right_.... He seemed rather to aim at
+gaining the doubtful, than mortifying or crushing the hostile.' These
+qualities appealed especially to the practical men of business whom the
+Reform Bill had brought into politics. They were suited to the temper of
+the day, and his speaking won the favour of the best judges in the
+House of Commons. Though he disappointed ardent crusaders like Lord
+Shaftesbury by his apparent coldness and calculating caution, he
+impressed his fellow members as pre-eminently honest and as anxious to
+advance in the most effective manner those causes which his judgement
+approved. He was not the man to lead a forlorn hope, but rather the
+sagacious commander who directed his troops through a practicable
+breach.
+
+He was to be in opposition for another six years; but during these years
+the Whigs were in constant difficulties, and, as Greville notes, it was
+often obvious that Peel was leading the House from the front Opposition
+bench. Had he imitated Russell's conduct in 1834 and devoted his chief
+energies to overthrowing the Whigs, he could have found many an
+occasion. Sedition in Canada and Jamaica, rivalry with France in the
+Levant and with Russia in the Farther East, financial troubles and
+deficits, the spread of Chartist doctrine, all combined to embarrass a
+Government which had no single will and no concentrated resolution. The
+accession of Queen Victoria, in 1837, made no change for the moment. But
+Wellington's famous remark that the Tories would have no chance with a
+Queen because Peel had no manners and he had no small talk, is only
+quoted now because of the falsity of the prediction; both politicians
+soon came to form a better estimate of her judgement and public spirit.
+It was some years before this could be fairly tested. The Tories, while
+improving their position, failed to gain an absolute majority in the
+elections, and Peel's want of tact in insisting on the Queen changing
+all the ladies of her household delayed his triumph from 1839 to 1841.
+Meanwhile he spent his energies in training his party and organizing
+their resources. He studied measures and he studied men, and he
+gradually gathered round him a body of loyal followers who believed in
+their chief and were ready to help him in administrative reform when
+the time should come. Among his most devoted adherents was Mr.
+Gladstone, at this time more famous as a churchman than as a financier;
+and even Mr. Disraeli, for all his eccentricities, accepted Peel's
+leadership without question. Few could then foresee the very different
+careers that lay before his two brilliant lieutenants.
+
+By 1841 the power of the Whigs was spent. A vote of want of confidence
+was carried by Peel, the King dissolved Parliament, and the Tories came
+back with a majority of ninety in the new House of Commons. Now begins
+the most famous part of Peel's career, that associated with the Repeal
+of the Corn Laws, the third of his so-called 'betrayals' of his party.
+No action of his has been so variously criticized, none caused such
+bitterness in political circles. There is no space here to discuss the
+value of Protection or the wisdom of the Anti-Corn-Law League, still
+less the merits or demerits of a fixed duty as opposed to a
+'sliding-scale'. We are concerned with Peel's conduct and must try to
+answer the questions--What were Peel's earlier views on the subject?
+What caused him to change these views? Was this change effected
+honestly, or was he guilty of abandoning his party in order to retain
+office himself?
+
+The Corn Laws, introduced in 1670, re-enacted in 1815, forbade any one
+to import corn into England till the price of home-grown corn had
+reached eighty shillings a quarter. It is easy to attack a system based
+on rigid figures applied to conditions varying widely in every century;
+but the idea was that the English farmer should be given a decisive
+advantage over his foreign rivals, and only when the price rose to a
+prohibitive point might the interest of the consumer be allowed to
+outweigh that of the producer. The revival of the old law in 1815 met
+with strong opposition. England had greatly changed; the agricultural
+area had not been widely increased, but there were many more millions of
+mouths to feed, thanks to the growth of population in the industrial
+districts. But while in 1815 the House of Commons represented almost
+exclusively the land-owning and corn-growing classes, between 1815 and
+1840 opposition to their policy had lately been growing and had been
+organized, outside Parliament, by the famous league of which Richard
+Cobden was the leading spirit. Peel, though he had been brought up by
+his father a strong Protectionist and Tory, had been largely influenced
+by Huskisson, the most remarkable President of the Board of Trade that
+this country has ever seen, and had shown on many occasions that he
+grasped the principle of Free Trade as well as any statesman of the day.
+The Whigs had left the finances of the country in a very bad state, and
+Peel had to take sweeping measures to restore credit. From 1842 to 1845
+he brought in Budgets of a Free Trade character, designed to encourage
+commerce by remitting taxation, especially on raw material; and he made
+up the loss thus incurred by the Treasury, by imposing an income-tax. To
+this policy there were two exceptions, the Corn Laws and the Sugar
+Duties. On the latter he felt that England, since she had abolished
+slave-owning, had a duty to her colonies to see that they did not suffer
+by the competition of sugar produced by slave labour elsewhere. On the
+former he held that England ought, so far as possible, to produce its
+own food and to be self-sufficing; and as a practical man he recognized
+that it was too much to expect of the agricultural interest, so strongly
+represented in both Houses of Parliament, to pronounce what seemed to be
+its death-warrant. But through these years he came more and more to see
+that the interest of a class must give way to the interest of the
+nation; and his clear intellect was from time to time shaken by the
+arguments of the Anti-Corn-Law League and its orators. In 1845 he was
+probably expecting that he would tide over this Parliament, thanks to
+his Budgets and to good harvests, and that at a general election he
+would be able to declare for a change of fiscal policy without going
+back on his pledges to the party. Meanwhile his general attitude had
+been noted by shrewd observers. Cobden himself in a speech delivered at
+Birmingham said, 'There can be no doubt that Sir Robert Peel is at heart
+as good a Free Trader as I am. He has told us so in the House of Commons
+again and again.'
+
+Among the causes which influenced Peel at the moment two are specially
+noteworthy as reminding us of the way in which his opinion was changed
+over Catholic Emancipation. Severe critics say that, to retain office,
+he surrendered to the agitation of Cobden, as he had surrendered to that
+of O'Connell. Undoubtedly the increasing size and success of Cobden's
+meetings, which were on a scale unknown before in political agitation,
+did cause Peel to consider fully what he had only half considered
+before: it did help to force open a door in his mind, and to break down
+a water-tight compartment. But Peel's mind, once opened, saw far more
+than an agitation and a transfer of votes: it looked at the merits of
+the question and surveyed the interest of the whole country. He had seen
+that the fall of a Protestant Church was less serious than the loss of
+Ireland: he now saw that a shock to the agricultural interest was less
+serious than general starvation in the country. And as with the Clare
+election, so with the Irish potato famine in 1845: a definite event
+arrested his attention and clamoured for instant decision. Peel was as
+humane a man as has ever presided over the destinies of this country,
+and the picture of Ireland's sufferings was brought forcibly before his
+imagination by the reports presented to him and by his own knowledge of
+the country. His personal consistency could not be put in the balance
+against national distress.
+
+That the manner in which he made the change did give great offence to
+his followers, there is no room to doubt. Peel was naturally reserved in
+manner and in his Cabinet he occupied a position of such unquestioned
+superiority that he had no need of advice to make up his mind, and was
+apt to keep matters in his own hand. Whether he was preparing to consult
+his colleagues or not, the Irish potato famine forced his hand before he
+had done so. When in November 1845 he made suddenly in the Cabinet a
+definite proposal to suspend the duties on corn, only three members
+supported him. Year after year Peel had opposed the motion brought in by
+Mr. Villiers[10] for repeal: only those who had been studying the
+situation as closely as Peel and with as clear a vision--and they were
+few--could understand this sudden declaration of a change of policy.
+After holding four Cabinet councils in one week, winning over some
+waverers, but still failing to get a unanimous vote, he expressed a wish
+to resign. But the Whigs, owing to personal disagreements, could not
+form a ministry and Queen Victoria asked Peel to retain office: it was
+evident that he alone could carry through the measure which he believed
+to be so urgent, and he steeled himself to face the breach with his own
+party. As Lord John Russell had already pledged the Whigs to repeal, the
+issue was no longer in doubt; but Peel was not to win the victory
+without heavy cost. Disraeli, who had been offended at not being given a
+place in the ministry in 1841, came forward, rallied the agricultural
+interest, and attacked his leader in a series of bitter speeches,
+opening old sores, and charging him with having for the second time
+broken his pledges and betrayed his party. The Protectionists could not
+defeat the Government. In the Commons the Whig votes ensured a
+majority: in the Lords the influence of Wellington triumphed over the
+resistance of the more obstinate landowners. The Bill passed its third
+reading by ninety-eight votes.
+
+[Note 10: The Right Hon. C. P. Villiers, M.P. for Wolverhampton,
+began to advocate repeal in 1837, four years before Cobden entered
+Parliament.]
+
+But Peel knew how uncertain was his position in view of the hostility
+aroused. At this very time the Irish question was acute, as a Coercion
+Bill was under consideration, and this gave his enemies their chance.
+The Protectionist Tories made an unprincipled alliance for the moment
+with the Irish members; and on the very day when the Repeal of the Corn
+Laws passed the House of Lords, the ministry was defeated in the
+Commons. The moment of his fall, when Disraeli and the Protectionists
+were loudest in their exultation, was the moment of his triumph. It is
+the climax of his career. In the long debate on Repeal he had refused to
+notice personal attacks: he now rose superior to all personal rancour.
+In defeat he bore himself with dignity, and in his last speech as
+minister he praised Cobden in very generous terms, giving him the chief
+credit for the benefits which the Bill conferred upon his
+fellow-countrymen. This speech gave offence to his late colleagues,
+Aberdeen, Sidney Herbert, and Gladstone, and was interpreted as being
+designed to mark clearly Peel's breach with the Conservative party. The
+whole episode is illustrated in an interesting way in the _Life of
+Gladstone_. Lord Morley[11] reports a long conversation between the two
+friends and colleagues, where Peel declares his intention to act in
+future as a private member and to abstain from party politics.
+Gladstone, while fully allowing that Peel had earned the right to retire
+after such labours ('you have been Prime Minister in a sense in which no
+other man has been since Mr. Pitt's time'), pointed out how impossible
+it would be for him to carry out his intentions. His personal
+ascendancy in Parliament was too great: men must look to him as a
+leader. But Peel evidently was at the end of his strength, and had been
+suffering acutely from pains in the head, due to an old shooting
+accident but intensified by recent hard work. For the moment repose was
+essential.
+
+[Note 11: Morley's _Life of Gladstone_, vol. i, pp. 297-300 (cf.
+Gladstone's own retirement in 1874).]
+
+It was Gladstone, Peel's disciple and true successor, who seven years
+later paid the following tribute to his memory: 'It is easy', he said,
+'to enumerate many characteristics of the greatness of Sir Robert Peel.
+It is easy to speak of his ability, of his sagacity, of his
+indefatigable industry. But there was something yet more admirable...
+and that was his sense of public virtue;... when he had to choose
+between personal ease and enjoyment, or again, on the other hand,
+between political power and distinction, and what he knew to be the
+welfare of the nation, his choice was made at once. When his choice was
+made, no man ever saw him hesitate, no man ever saw him hold back from
+that which was necessary to give it effect.' Though his own political
+views changed, Gladstone always paid tribute to the moral influence
+which Peel had exercised in political life, purifying its practices and
+ennobling its traditions.
+
+For the last four years of his life he was in opposition, but he held a
+place of dignity and independence which few fallen ministers have ever
+enjoyed. He was the trusted friend and adviser of Queen Victoria and the
+Prince Consort; he was often consulted in grave matters by the chiefs of
+the Government; his speeches both in the House and in the country
+carried greater weight than those of any minister. Despite the
+bitterness of the Protectionists he seemed still to have a great future
+before him, and in any national emergency the country would unfailingly
+have called him to the helm. But on July 29, 1850, when he was just
+reaching the age of sixty-two, he had a fall from his horse which
+caused very grave injuries, and he only survived three days.
+
+The interest of Peel's life is almost absorbed by public questions. He
+was not picturesque like Disraeli; he did not, like Gladstone, live long
+enough to be in his lifetime a mythical figure; the public did not
+cherish anecdotes about his sayings or doings, nor did he lend himself
+to the art of the caricaturist. He was an English gentleman to the
+backbone, in his tastes, in his conduct, in his nature. His married life
+was entirely happy, he had a few devoted friends, he avoided general
+society; he had a genuine fondness for shooting and country life, he was
+a judicious patron of art, and his collection of Dutch pictures form
+to-day a very precious part of our National Gallery. Just because of his
+aloofness, his gravity, the concentration of his energies, he is the
+best example that we can study if we want to know how an English
+statesman should train himself to do work of lasting value and how he
+should bear himself in the hour of trial. Within little more than half a
+century three famous politicians, Peel, Gladstone, and Chamberlain, have
+split their parties in two by an abrupt change of policy, and their
+conduct has been bitterly criticized by those to whom the traditions of
+party are dear. It is the glory of British politics that these
+traditions remained honourable so long, and no one of these statesmen
+broke with them lightly or without regret. For all that, let us be
+thankful that from time to time statesmen do arise who are capable of
+responding to a still higher call, of following their own individual
+consciences and of looking only to what, so far as they can judge, is
+the highest interest of the nation.
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES JAMES NAPIER
+
+1782-1853
+
+1782. Born in London, August 10.
+1794. Commission in 33rd Regiment.
+1800. At Shorncliffe with Sir John Moore.
+1809. Wounded and prisoner at Coruna.
+1810-11. Peninsula War: Busaco, Fuentes d'Onoro, &c. Lieut.-Colonel, 1811.
+1812-13. Bermuda and American War.
+1815-17. Military College at Farnham.
+1820. Corfu.
+1822-30. Cephalonia.
+1835. Living quietly in France and England.
+1837. Major-General.
+1838. K.C.B.
+1839. Command in North of England. Chartist agitation.
+1841. Command in India at Poona.
+1842-7. War and organization in Sind.
+1849-50. Commander-in-Chief in India.
+1853. Died at Oaklands, near Portsmouth, August 29.
+
+SIR CHARLES NAPIER, G.C.B.
+
+SOLDIER
+
+
+The famous Napier brothers, Charles, George, and William, came of no
+mean parentage. Their father, Colonel the Hon. George Napier, of a
+distinguished Scotch family, was remarkable alike for physical strength
+and mental ability. In the fervour of his admiration his son Charles
+relates how he could 'take a pewter quart and squeeze it flat in his
+hand like a bit of paper'. In height 6 feet 3 inches, in person very
+handsome, he won the admiration of others besides his sons. He had
+served in the American war, but his later years were passed in
+organizing work, and he showed conspicuous honesty and ability in
+dealing with Irish military accounts. One of his reforms was the
+abolition of all fees in his office, by which he reduced his own salary
+from L20,000 to L600 per annum, emulating the more famous act of the
+elder Pitt as Paymaster-general half a century before. Their mother,
+Lady Sarah Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond, had been a reigning
+toast in 1760. She had even been courted by George III, and might have
+been handed down to history as the mother of princes. In her old age she
+was more proud to be the mother of heroes; and her letters still exist,
+written in the period of the great wars, to show how a British mother
+could combine the Spartan ideal with the tenderest personal affection.
+
+[Illustration: SIR CHARLES NAPIER
+
+From the drawing by Edwin Williams in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+Their father's appointment involved residence in Ireland from 1785
+onwards, and the boys passed their early years at Celbridge in the
+neighbourhood of Dublin. Here they were far from the usual amusements
+and society of the time, but they were fortunate in their home circle
+and in the character of their servants, and they learnt to cherish the
+ancient legends of Ireland and to pick up everything that could feed
+their innate love of adventure and romance. Close to their doors lived
+an old woman named Molly Dunne, who claimed to be one hundred and
+thirty-five years of age, and who was ready to fill the children's ears
+with tales of past tragedies whenever they came to see her. Sir William
+Napier tells us how she was 'tall, gaunt, and with high sharp
+lineaments, her eyes fixed in their huge orbs, and her tongue
+discoursing of bloody times: she was wondrous for the young and fearful
+for the aged'.
+
+Instead of class feeling and narrow interests the boys developed early a
+great sympathy for the poor, and a capacity for judging people
+independently of rank. Charles Napier himself, born in Whitehall, was
+three years old when they moved to Ireland. He was a sickly child, the
+one short member of a tall family, but equal to any of them in courage
+and resolution. His heroism in endurance of pain was put to a severe
+test when he broke his leg at the age of seventeen. It was twice badly
+set. He was threatened first by the entire loss of it, next with the
+prospect of a crooked leg, but he bore cheerfully the most excruciating
+torture in having it straightened by a series of painful experiments,
+and in no long time he recovered his activity. In the army he showed his
+strength of will by rigid abstinence from drinking and gambling, no easy
+feat in those days; and he learned by his father's example to control
+all extravagance and to live contentedly on a small allowance. His
+earliest enthusiasm among books was for Plutarch's _Lives_, the
+favourite reading of so many great commanders. He had many outdoor
+tastes: riding, fishing, and shooting, and he was soon familiar with the
+country-side. There was no need of classes or prizes to stimulate his
+reading, no need of organized games to provide an outlet for his
+energies or to fill his leisure time.
+
+The confidence that his father had in the training of his sons is best
+shown by the early age at which he put them in responsible positions.
+Charles actually received a commission in the 33rd Regiment at the age
+of twelve, but he did not see service till he was seventeen. Meanwhile
+the young ensign continued his schooling from his father's house at
+Celbridge, to which he and his brother returned every evening, sometimes
+in the most unconventional manner. Celbridge, like other Irish villages,
+had its pigs. The Irish pig is longer in the leg and more active than
+his English cousin, and the Napier boys would be seen careering along at
+a headlong pace on these strange mounts, with a cheering company of
+village boys behind them. They were Protestants among older Roman
+Catholic comrades, but they soon became the leaders in the school, and
+Charles, despite his youth and small stature, was chosen to command a
+school volunteer corps at the age of fourteen. At seventeen he joined
+his regiment at Limerick, and for six or seven years he led the life of
+a soldier in various garrison towns of southern England, fretting at
+inaction, learning what he could, and welcoming any chance of increased
+work and danger. At this time his enthusiasm for soldiering was very
+variable. In a letter written in 1803 he makes fun of the routine of his
+profession, as he was set to practise it, and ends up, 'Such is the
+difference between a hero of the present time and the idea of one formed
+from reading Plutarch! Yet people wonder I don't like the army!'
+
+But this was a passing mood. When stirring events were taking place, no
+one was more full of ardour, and when he came under such a general as
+Sir John Moore he expressed himself in a very different tone. In 1805
+Moore was commanding at Hythe, and Charles Napier's letters are aglow
+with enthusiasm for the great qualities which he showed as an
+administrator and army reformer. Like Wolseley seventy or eighty years
+later, Moore had the gift of finding the best among his subalterns and
+training them in his own excellences. After his own father there was no
+one who had so much influence as Moore in the making of Charles Napier.
+In 1808 he sailed for the Peninsula with the rank of major, commanding
+the 50th Regiment in the colonel's absence; he took an active part in
+Moore's famous retreat at Coruna, and in the battle was taken prisoner
+after conduct of the greatest gallantry in leading his regiment under
+fire. Two months later he was released and again went to the front. In
+1810 and 1811 he and his brothers George and William were fighting under
+Wellington, and were all so frequently wounded that the family fortunes
+became a subject of common talk. On more than one occasion Wellington
+himself wrote to Lady Sarah to inform her of the gallantry and
+misfortunes of her sons. At Busaco Charles had his jaw broken and was
+forced to retire into hospital at Lisbon. In his haste to rejoin the
+army, which he did when only half convalescent, he accomplished the feat
+of riding ninety miles on one horse in a single day; and in the course
+of his ride met two of his brothers being carried down, wounded, to the
+base. But in 1811 promotion withdrew Charles Napier from the Peninsula.
+A short command in Guernsey was followed by another in Bermuda, which
+involved him in the American war. He had little taste for warfare with
+men of the same race as himself, and was heartily glad to exchange back
+to the 50th in 1813, and to return to England. He started out as a
+volunteer to share in the campaign of Waterloo, but all was over before
+he could join the army in Flanders, and this part of his soldiering
+career ended quietly. He had received far more wounds than honours, and
+might well have been discouraged in the pursuit of his profession.
+
+But here we can put to the test how far Napier's expressions of distaste
+for the service affected his conduct. He chafed at the inactivity of
+peace; but instead of abandoning the army for some more profitable
+career, he used his enforced leisure to prepare for further service and
+to extend his knowledge of political and military history. He spent the
+greater part of three years at the Military College, then established at
+Farnham, varying his professional studies with sallies into the domain
+of politics, and as a result he developed marked Radical views which he
+held through life. His note-books show a splendid grasp of principles
+and a close attention to facts; they range from the enforcing of the
+death penalty for marauding to the details of cavalry-kit. His Spartan
+regime became famous in later years; even now he prescribed a strict
+rule, 'a cloak, a pair of shoes, two flannel shirts, and a piece of
+soap--these, wrapped up in an oil-skin, must go in the right holster,
+and a pistol in the left.' He took no opinions at second hand, but
+studied the best authorities and thought for himself; he was as thorough
+in self-education as the famous Confederate general 'Stonewall' Jackson,
+who every evening sat for an hour, facing a blank wall and reviewing in
+his mind the subjects which he had read during the day.
+
+No opportunity for reaping the fruit of these studies and exercising his
+great gifts was given him till May 1819. Then he was appointed to the
+post of inspecting-officer in the Ionian Islands;[12] and in 1822 he was
+appointed Military Resident in Cephalonia, the largest of these islands,
+a pile of rugged limestone hills, scantily supplied with water, and
+ruined by years of neglect and the oppression of Turkish pashas. So
+began what was certainly the happiest, and perhaps the most fruitful,
+period in Charles Napier's life. It was not strictly military work, but,
+without the authority which his military rank gave him and without the
+despotic methods of martial law, little could have been achieved in the
+disordered state of the country. The whole episode is a good example of
+how a well-trained soldier of original mind can, when left to himself,
+impress his character on a semi-civilized people, and may be compared
+with the work of Sir Harry Smith in South Africa, or Sir Henry Lawrence
+in the Punjab. The practical reforms which he initiated in law, in
+commerce, in agriculture, are too numerous to mention. 'Expect no
+letters from me', he writes to his mother, 'save about roads. No going
+home for me: it would be wrong to leave a place where so much good is
+being done.... My market-place is roofed. My pedestal is a tremendous
+job, but two months more will finish that also. My roads will not be
+finished by me.' And again, 'I take no rest myself and give nobody else
+any.' To his superiors he showed himself somewhat impracticable in
+temper, and he was certainly exacting to his subordinates, though
+generous in his praise of those who helped him. He was compassionate to
+the poor and vigorous in his dealings with the privileged classes; and
+he gave the islanders an entirely new conception of justice. When he
+quitted the island after six years of office he left behind him two new
+market-places, one and a half miles of pier, one hundred miles of road
+largely blasted out of solid rock, spacious streets, a girls' school,
+and many other improvements; and he put into the natives a spirit of
+endeavour which outlived his term of office. One sign of the latter was
+that, after his departure, some peasants yearly transmitted to him the
+profits of a small piece of land which he had left uncared for, without
+disclosing the names of those whose labours had earned it.
+
+[Note 12: Ceded to Great Britain in 1815 and given by her in 1864 to
+Greece.]
+
+During this period, in visits to Corinth and the Morea, he worked out
+strategic plans for keeping the Turks out of Greece. He also made
+friends with Lord Byron, who came out in 1823 to help the Greek patriots
+and to meet his death in the swamps of Missolonghi. Byron conceived the
+greatest admiration for Napier's talents and believed him to be capable
+of liberating Greece, if he were given a free hand. But this was not to
+be. Reasons of State and petty rivalries barred the way to the
+appointment of a British general, though it might have set the name of
+Napier in history beside those of Bolivar and Garibaldi; for he would
+have identified himself heart and soul with such a cause, and, in the
+opinion of many good judges, would have triumphed over the difficulties
+of the situation.
+
+From 1830 to 1839 there is little to narrate. The gifts which might have
+been devoted to commanding a regiment, to training young officers, or to
+ruling a distant province, were too lightly rated by the Government, and
+he spent his time quietly in England and France educating his two
+daughters,[13] interesting himself in politics, and continuing to learn.
+It was the political crisis in England which called him back to active
+life. The readjustment of the labour market to meet the use of
+machinery, and the occurrence of a series of bad harvests had caused
+widespread discontent, and the Chartist movement was at its height in
+1839. Labourers and factory owners were alarmed; the Government was
+besieged with petitions for military protection at a hundred points, and
+all the elements of a dangerous explosion were gathered together. At
+this critical time Charles Napier was offered the command of the troops
+in the northern district, and amply did he vindicate the choice. By the
+most careful preparation beforehand, by the most consummate coolness in
+the moment of danger, he rode the storm. He saw the danger of billeting
+small detachments of troops in isolated positions; he concentrated them
+at the important points. He interviewed alarmed magistrates, and he
+attended, in person and unarmed, a large gathering of Chartists. To all
+he spoke calmly but resolutely. He made it clear to the rich that he
+would not order a shot to be fired while peaceful measures were
+possible; he made it equally clear to the Chartists that he would
+suppress disorder, if it arose, promptly and mercilessly. With only four
+thousand troops under his command to control all the industrial
+districts of the north, Newcastle and Manchester, Sheffield and
+Nottingham, he did his work effectually without a shot being fired. 'Ars
+est celare artem': and just because of his success, few observers
+realized from how great a danger the community had been preserved.
+
+[Note 13: His first wife, whom he married in 1827, died in 1832. He
+married again in 1835.]
+
+Thus he had proved his versatile talents in regimental service in the
+Peninsula, in the reclamation of an eastern island from barbarism, and
+in the control of disorder at home. It was not till he had reached the
+age of sixty that he was to prove these gifts in the highest sphere, in
+the handling of an army in the field and in the direction of a campaign.
+But the offer of a command in India roused his indomitable spirit, the
+more so as trouble was threatening on the north-west frontier. An
+ill-judged interference in Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n had in 1841 caused the
+massacre near K[=a]bul of one British force: other contingents were
+besieged in Jal[=a]l[=a]b[=a]d and Ghazni, and were in danger of a
+similar fate, and the prestige of British arms was at its lowest in the
+valley of the Indus. Lord Ellenborough, the new Viceroy, turned to
+Charles Napier for advice, and in April 1842 he was given the command in
+Upper and Lower Sind, the districts comprising the lower Indus valley.
+It was his first experience of India and his first command in war. He
+was sixty years old and he had not faced an enemy's army in the field
+since the age of twenty-five. As he said, 'I go to command in Sind with
+no orders, no instructions, no precise line of policy given! How many
+men are in Sind? How many soldiers to command? No one knows!... They
+tell me I must form and model the staff of the army altogether! Feeling
+myself but an apprentice in Indian matters, I yet look in vain for a
+master.' But the years of study and preparation had not been in vain,
+and responsibility never failed to call out his best qualities. It was
+not many months before British officers and soldiers, Baluch chiefs and
+Sindian peasants owned him as a master--such a master of the arts of war
+and peace as had not been seen on the Indus since the days of Alexander
+the Great.
+
+First, like a true pupil of Sir John Moore, he set to work thoroughly to
+drill his army. He experimented in person with British muskets and
+Mar[=a]th[=a] matchlocks, and reassured his soldiers on the superiority
+of the former. He experimented with rockets to test their efficiency;
+and, with his usual luck in the matter of wounds, he had the calf of
+his leg badly torn by one that burst. He would put his hand to any
+labour and his life to any risk, if so he might stir the activity of
+others and promote the cause. He convinced himself, by studying the
+question at first hand, that the Baluch Am[=i]rs, who ruled the country,
+were not only aliens but oppressors of the native peasantry, not only
+ill-disposed to British policy, but actively plotting with the
+hill-tribes beyond the Indus, and at the right moment he struck.
+
+The danger of the situation lay in the great extent of the country, in
+the difficulty of marching in such heat amid the sand, and in the
+possibility of the Am[=i]rs escaping from his grasp and taking refuge in
+fortresses in the heart of the desert, believed to be inaccessible. His
+first notable exploit was a march northwards one hundred miles into the
+desert to capture Im[=a]mghar; his last, crowning a memorable sixteen
+days, was a similar descent upon Omarkot, which lay one hundred miles
+eastward beyond M[=i]rpur. These raids involved the organization of a
+camel corps, the carrying of water across the desert, and the greatest
+hardships for the troops, all of which Charles Napier shared
+uncomplainingly in person. Under his leadership British regiments and
+Bombay sepoys alike did wonders. Who could complain for himself when he
+saw the spare frame of the old general, his health undermined by fever
+and watches, his hooked nose and flashing eye turned this way and that,
+riding daily at their head, prepared to stint himself of all but the
+barest necessaries and to share every peril? He had begun the campaign
+in January; the crowning success was won on April 6. Between these dates
+he fought two pitched battles at Mi[=a]ni and Dabo, and completely broke
+the power of the Am[=i]rs.
+
+Mi[=a]ni (February 17, 1843) was the most glorious day in his life. With
+2,400 troops, of whom barely 500 were Europeans, he attacked an army
+variously estimated between 20,000 and 40,000. Drawn up in a position,
+which they had themselves chosen, on the raised bank of a dry river bed,
+the Baluch[=i] seemed to have every advantage on their side. But the
+British troops, advancing in echelon from the right, led by the 22nd
+Regiment, and developing an effective musketry fire, fought their way up
+to the outer slope of the steep bank and held it for three hours. Here
+the 22nd, with the two regiments of Bombay sepoys on their left,
+trusting chiefly to the bayonet, but firing occasional volleys, resisted
+the onslaught of Baluch[=i] swordsmen in overwhelming numbers. During
+nearly all this time the two lines were less than twenty yards apart,
+and Napier was conspicuous on horseback riding coolly along the front of
+the British line. The matchlocks, with which many of the Baluch[=i] were
+armed, seem to have been ineffective; their national weapon was the
+sword. The tribesmen were grand fighters but badly led. They attacked in
+detachments with no concerted action. For all that, the British line
+frequently staggered under the weight of their courageous rushes, and
+irregular firing went on across the narrow gap. Napier says, 'I expected
+death as much from our own men as from the enemy, and I was much singed
+by our fire--my whiskers twice or thrice so, and my face peppered by
+fellows who, in their fear, fired over all heads but mine, and nearly
+scattered my brains'. Not even Scarlett at Balaclava had a more
+miraculous escape. This exposure of his own person to risk was not due
+to mere recklessness. In his days at the Royal Military College he had
+carefully considered the occasions when a commander must expose himself
+to get the best out of his men; and from Coruna to Dabo he acted
+consistently on his principles. Early in the battle he had cleverly
+disposed his troops so as to neutralize in some measure the vast
+numerical superiority of the enemy; his few guns were well placed and
+well served. At a critical moment he ordered a charge of cavalry which
+broke the right of their position and threatened their camp; but the
+issue had to be decided by hard fighting, and all depended on the morale
+which was to carry the troops through such a punishing day.
+
+The second battle was fought a month later at Dabo, near
+Hyder[=a]b[=a]d. The most redoubtable of the Am[=i]rs, Sher Muhammad,
+known as 'the Lion of M[=i]rpur', had been gathering a force of his own
+and was only a few miles distant from Mi[=a]ni when that battle was
+fought. Napier could have attacked him at once; but, to avoid bloodshed,
+he was ready to negotiate. 'The Lion' only used the respite to collect
+more troops, and was soon defying the British with a force of 25,000
+men, full of ardour despite their recent defeat. Indeed Napier
+encouraged their confidence by spreading rumours of the terror
+prevailing in his own camp. He did not wish to exhaust his men
+needlessly by long marches in tropical heat; so he played a waiting
+game, gathering reinforcements and trusting that the enemy would soon
+give him a chance of fighting. This chance came on March 24, and with a
+force of 5,000 men and 19 guns Napier took another three hours to win
+his second battle and to drive Sher Muhammad from his position with the
+loss of 5,000 killed. The British losses were relatively trifling,
+amounting to 270, of whom 147 belonged to the sorely tried 22nd
+Regiment. They were all full of confidence and fought splendidly under
+the general's eye. 'The Lion' himself escaped northwards, and two months
+of hard marching and clever strategy were needed to prevent him stirring
+up trouble among the tribesmen. The climate took toll of the British
+troops and even the general was for a time prostrated by sunstroke; but
+the operations were successful and the last nucleus of an army was
+broken up by Colonel Jacob on June 15. Sher Muhammad ended his days
+ignominiously at Lahore, then the capital of the Sikhs, having outlived
+his fame and sunk into idleness and debauchery.
+
+Thus in June 1843 the general could write in his diary: 'We have taught
+the Baluch that neither his sun nor his desert nor his jungles nor his
+nullahs can stop us. He will never face us more.' But Charles Napier's
+own work was far from being finished. He had to bind together the
+different elements in the province, to reconcile chieftain and peasant
+Baluch, Hindu, and Sindian, to living together in amity and submitting
+to British rule; and he had to set up a framework of military and
+civilian officers to carry on the work. He held firmly the principle
+that military rule must be temporary. For the moment it was more
+effective; but it was his business to prepare the new province for
+regular civil government as soon as was feasible. He showed his
+ingenuity in the personal interviews which he had with the chieftains;
+and the ascendancy which he won by his character was marked. Perhaps his
+qualities were such as could be more easily appreciated by orientals
+than by his own countrymen, for he was impetuous, self-reliant, and
+autocratic in no common degree. He was only one of a number of great
+Englishmen of this century whose direct personal contact with Eastern
+princes was worth scores of diplomatic letters and paper constitutions.
+Such men were Henry Lawrence, John Nicholson, and Charles Gordon; in
+them the power of Great Britain was incarnate in such a form as to
+strike the imagination and leave an ineffaceable impression. Many of the
+Am[=i]rs wished to swear allegiance to a governor present in the flesh
+rather than to the distant queen beyond the sea, so strongly were they
+impressed by Napier's personal character.
+
+He did not forget his own countrymen, least of all that valued friend
+'Thomas Atkins' and his comrade the sepoy. By the erection of spacious
+barracks he made the soldier's life more pleasant and his health more
+secure; and in a hundred other ways he showed his care and affection for
+them. In return few British generals have been so loved by the rank and
+file. He also gave much thought to material progress, to strengthening
+the fortress of Hyder[=a]b[=a]d, to developing the harbour at
+Kar[=a]chi, and, above all, to enriching the peasants by irrigation
+schemes. It was the story of Cephalonia on a bigger scale; but Napier
+was now twenty years older, overwhelmed with work, and he could give
+less attention to details. He did his best to find subordinates after
+his own heart, men who would 'scorn delights and live laborious days'.
+'Does he wear varnished boots?' was a typical question that he put to a
+friend in Bombay, when a new engineer was commended to him. His own
+rewards were meagre. The Grand Cross of the Bath and the colonelcy of
+his favourite regiment, the 22nd, were all the recognition given for a
+campaign whose difficulties were minimized at home because he had
+mastered them so triumphantly.
+
+Two other achievements belong to the period of his government of Sind.
+The campaign against the tribes of the Kachhi Hills, to the north-west
+of his province, rendered necessary by continued marauding, shows all
+his old mastery of organization. Any one who has glanced into Indian
+history knows the danger of these raids and the bitter experience which
+our Indian army has gained in them. In less than two months
+(January-March 1845) Napier had led five thousand men safely over
+burning deserts and through most difficult mountain country, had by
+careful strategy driven the marauders into a corner, forcing them to
+surrender with trifling loss, and had made an impression on the hill
+chieftains which lasted for many a year. This work, though slighted by
+the directors of the Company, received enthusiastic praise from such
+good judges of war as Lord Hardinge and the Duke of Wellington. The
+second emergency arose when the first Sikh war broke out in the Punjab.
+Napier felt so confident in the loyalty of his newly-pacified province
+that within six weeks he drew together an army of 15,000 men, and took
+post at Rohri, ready to co-operate against the Sikhs from the south,
+while Lord Hardinge advanced from the east. Before he could arrive, the
+decisive battle had been fought, and all he was asked to do was to
+assist in a council of war at Lahore. The mistakes made in the campaign
+had been numerous. No one saw them more clearly than Napier, and no one
+foretold more accurately the troubles which were to follow. For all
+that, he wrote in generous admiration of Lord Hardinge the Viceroy and
+Lord Gough the Commander-in-Chief at a time when criticism and personal
+bitterness were prevalent in many quarters.
+
+After this he returned to Sind with health shattered and a longing for
+rest. He continued to work with vigour, but his mind was set on
+resignation; and the bad relations which had for years existed between
+him and the directors embittered his last months. No doubt he was
+impatient and self-willed, inclined to take short cuts through the
+system of dual control[14] and to justify them by his own single-hearted
+zeal for the good of the country. But the directors had eyes for all the
+slight irregularities, which are inevitable in the work of an original
+man, and failed entirely to estimate the priceless services that he
+rendered to British rule. In July 1847 he resigned and returned to
+Europe; but even now the end was not come. 'The tragedy must be re-acted
+a year or two hence,' he had written in March 1846, seeing clearly that
+the Sikhs had not been reconciled to British rule. In February 1849 the
+directors were forced by the national voice to send him out to take
+supreme military command and to retrieve the disasters with which the
+second Sikh war began. They were very reluctant to do so, and Napier
+himself had little wish for further exertions in so thankless a service.
+But the Duke of Wellington himself appealed to him, the nation spoke
+through all its organs, and he could not put his own wishes in the scale
+against the demands of public service.
+
+[Note 14: The dual control of British India by the Crown and the
+East India Company lasted from 1778 to 1858.]
+
+He made all speed and reached Calcutta early in May, but he found no
+enemy to fight. The issue had been decided by Lord Gough and the hard
+fighting of Chili[=a]nw[=a]la. He had been cheated by fortune, as in
+1815, and he never knew the joy of battle again. He was accustomed to
+settle everything as a dictator; he found it difficult to act as part of
+an administrative machine. He was unfamiliar with the routine of Indian
+official life, and he was now growing old; he was impatient of forms,
+impetuous in his likes and dislikes, outspoken in praise and
+condemnation. His relations with the masterful Viceroy, Lord Dalhousie,
+were soon clouded; and though he delighted in the friendship of Colin
+Campbell and many other able soldiers, he was too old to adapt himself
+to new men and new measures. In 1850 the rumblings of the storm, which
+was to break seven years later, could already be heard, and Napier had
+much anxiety over the mutinous spirit rising in the sepoy regiments. He
+did his best to go to the bottom of the trouble and to establish
+confidence and friendly relations between British and natives, but he
+had not time enough to achieve permanent results, and he was often
+fettered by the regulations of the political service. His predictions
+were as striking now as in the first Sikh war; but he was not content to
+predict and to sit idle. He was unwearied in working for the reform of
+barracks, though his plans were often spoiled by the careless execution
+of others. He was urgent for a better tone among regimental officers
+and for more consideration on their part towards their soldiers. If more
+men in high position had similarly exerted themselves, the mutiny would
+have been less widespread and less fatal. His resignation was due to a
+dispute with Lord Dalhousie about the sepoys' pay. Napier acted _ultra
+vires_ in suspending on his own responsibility an order of the
+Government, because he believed the situation to be critical, while the
+Viceroy refused to regard this as justified. His departure, in December
+1850, was the signal for an outburst of feeling among officers,
+soldiers, and all who knew him. His return by way of Sind was a
+triumphal progress.
+
+He had two years to live when he set foot again in England, and most of
+this was spent at Oaklands near Portsmouth. His health had been ruined
+in the public service; but he continued to take a keen interest in
+passing events and to write on military subjects to Colin Campbell and
+other friends. At the same time he devoted much of his time to his
+neighbours and his farm. In 1852 he attended as pall-bearer at the Duke
+of Wellington's funeral; his own was not far distant. His brother, Sir
+William, describes the last scene thus: 'On the morning of August 29th
+1853, at 5 o'clock, he expired like a soldier on a naked camp bedstead,
+the windows of the room open and the fresh air of Heaven blowing on his
+manly face--as the last breath escaped, Montagu McMurdo (his
+son-in-law), with a sudden inspiration, snatched the old colours of the
+22nd Regiment, the colour that had been borne at Mi[=a]ni and
+Hyder[=a]b[=a]d, and waved them over the dying hero. Thus Charles Napier
+passed from the world.'
+
+He was a man who roused enthusiastic devotion and provoked strong
+resentment. Like Gordon, he was a man who could rule others, but could
+not be ruled; and his official career left many heart-burnings behind.
+His equally passionate brother, Sir William, who wrote his life, took
+up the feud as a legacy and pursued it in print for many years. It is
+regrettable that such men cannot work without friction; but in all
+things it was devotion to the public service, and not personal ambition,
+that carried Charles Napier to such extremes. From his youth he had
+trained himself to such a pitch of self-denial and ascetic rigour that
+he could not make allowance for the frailties of the average man. His
+keen eye and swift brain made him too impatient of the shortcomings of
+conscientious officials. He was ready to work fifteen hours a day when
+the need came; he was able to pierce into the heart of a matter while
+others would be puzzling round the fringes of it. Rarely in his long and
+laborious career did an emergency arise capable of bringing out all his
+gifts; and his greatest exploits were performed on scenes unfamiliar to
+the mass of his fellow countrymen. But a few opinions can be given to
+show that he was rated at his full value by the foremost men of the day.
+
+Perhaps the most striking testimony comes from one who never saw him; it
+was written three years after his death, when his brother's biography
+appeared. It was Carlyle, the biographer of Cromwell and Frederick the
+Great, the most famous man of letters of the day, who wrote in 1856:
+'The fine and noble qualities of the man are very recognizable to me;
+his piercing, subtle intellect turned all to the practical, giving him
+just insight into men and into things; his inexhaustible, adroit
+contrivances; his fiery valour; sharp promptitude to seize the good
+moment that will not return. A lynx-eyed, fiery man, with the spirit of
+an old knight in him; more of a hero than any modern I have seen for a
+long time.' A second tribute comes from one who had known him as an
+officer and was a supreme judge of military genius. Wellington was not
+given to extravagant words, but on many occasions he expressed himself
+in the warmest terms about Napier's talents and services. In 1844,
+speaking of the Sind campaign in the House of Lords, he said: 'My Lords,
+I must say that, after giving the fullest consideration to these
+operations, I have never known any instance of an officer who has shown
+in a higher degree that he possesses all the qualities and
+qualifications necessary to enable him to conduct great operations.' In
+the House of Commons at the same time Sir Robert Peel--the ablest
+administrative statesman of that generation, who had read for himself
+some of Napier's masterly dispatches--said: 'No one ever doubted Sir
+Charles Napier's military powers; but in his other character he does
+surprise me--he is possessed of extraordinary talent for civil
+administration.' Again, he speaks of him as 'one of three brothers who
+have engrafted on the stem of an ancient and honourable lineage that
+personal nobility which is derived from unblemished private character,
+from the highest sense of personal honour, and from repeated proofs of
+valour in the field, which have made their name conspicuous in the
+records of their country'.
+
+Indifferent as Charles Napier was to ordinary praise or blame, he would
+have appreciated the words of such men, especially when they associated
+him with his brothers; but perhaps he would have been more pleased to
+know how many thousands of his humble fellow countrymen walked to his
+informal funeral at Portsmouth, and to know that the majority of those
+who subscribed to his statue in Trafalgar Square were private soldiers
+in the army that he had served and loved.
+
+[Illustration: LORD SHAFTESBURY
+
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+
+
+
+ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER
+
+SEVENTH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY
+
+1801-85
+
+
+1801. Born in Grosvenor Square, London, April 28.
+1811. His father succeeds to the earldom. He himself becomes Lord Ashley.
+1813-17. Harrow.
+1819-22. Christ Church, Oxford.
+1826. M.P. for Woodstock.
+1828. Commissioner of India Board of Control.
+1829. Chairman of Commission for Lunatic Asylums.
+1830. Marries Emily, daughter of fifth Earl Cowper.
+1832. Takes up the cause of the Ten Hours Bill or Factory Act.
+1833. M.P. for Dorset.
+1836. Founds Church Pastoral Aid Society.
+1839. Founds Indigent Blind Visiting Society.
+1840. Takes up cause of Boy Chimney-sweepers.
+1842. Mines and Collieries Bill carried.
+1843. Joins the Ragged School movement.
+1847. Ten Hours Bill finally carried.
+1847. M.P. for Bath.
+1848. Public Health Act. Chairman of Board of Health.
+1851. President of British and Foreign Bible Society.
+1851. Succeeds to the earldom.
+1855. Lord Palmerston twice offers him a seat in the Cabinet.
+1872. Death of Lady Shaftesbury.
+1884. Receives the Freedom of the City of London.
+1885. Dies at Folkestone, October 1.
+
+LORD SHAFTESBURY
+
+PHILANTHROPIST
+
+
+The word 'Philanthropist' has suffered the same fate as many other words
+in our language. It has become hackneyed and corrupted; it has taken a
+professional taint; it has almost become a byword. We are apt to think
+of the philanthropist as an excitable, contentious creature, at the
+mercy of every fad, an ultra-radical in politics, craving for notoriety,
+filled with self-confidence, and meddling with other people's business.
+Anthony Ashley Cooper, the greatest philanthropist of the nineteenth
+century, was of a different type. By temper he was strongly
+conservative. He always loved best to be among his own family; he was
+fond of his home, fond of the old associations of his house. To come out
+into public life, to take his place in Parliament or on the platform, to
+be mixed up in the wrangling of politics was naturally distasteful to
+him. It continually needed a strong effort for him to overcome this
+distaste and to act up to his sense of duty. It is only when we remember
+this that we can do justice to his lifelong activity, and to the high
+principles which bore him up through so many efforts and so many
+disappointments. For himself he would submit to injustice and be still:
+for his fellow countrymen and for his religion he would renew the battle
+to the last day of his life.
+
+His childhood was not happy. His parents had little sympathy with
+children, his father being absorbed in the cares of public life, his
+mother given up to society pleasures. He had three sisters older than
+himself, but no brother or companion, and he was left largely to
+himself. At the age of seven he went to a preparatory school, where he
+was made miserable by the many abuses which flourished there; and it was
+not till he went to Harrow at the age of twelve that he began to enjoy
+life. He had few of the indulgences which we associate with the early
+days of those who are born heirs to high position. But, thus thrown back
+on himself, the boy nurtured strong attachments, for the old housekeeper
+who first showed him tenderness at home, for the school where he had
+learnt to be happy, and for the Dorset home, which was to be throughout
+his life the pole-star of his affections. The village of Wimborne St.
+Giles lies some eight miles north of Wimborne, in Dorset, on the edge of
+Cranborne Forest, one of the most beautiful and unspoiled regions in the
+south of England, which 'as late as 1818 contained twelve thousand deer
+and as many as six lodges, each of which had its walk and its ranger'.
+Here he wandered freely in his holidays for many years, giving as yet
+little promise of an exceptional career; here you may find in outlying
+cottages those who still treasure his memory and keep his biography
+among the few books that adorn their shelves.
+
+From Harrow, Lord Ashley went at the age of sixteen to read for two
+years with a clergyman in Derbyshire; in 1819 he went to Christ Church,
+Oxford, and three years later succeeded in taking a first class in
+classics. He had good abilities and a great power of concentration.
+These were to bear fruit one day in the gathering of statistics, in the
+marshalling of evidence, and in the presentation of a case which needed
+the most lucid and most laborious advocacy.
+
+He came down from Oxford in 1822, but did not go into Parliament till
+1826, and for the intervening years there is little to chronicle. In
+those days it was usual enough for a young nobleman to take up politics
+when he was barely of age, but Lord Ashley needed some other motive than
+the custom of the day. It is characteristic of his whole life that he
+responded to a call when there was a need, but was never in a hurry to
+put himself forward or to aim at high position. We have a few of his own
+notes from this time which show the extent of his reading, and still
+more, the depth of his reflections. As with Milton, who spent over five
+years at Cambridge and then five more in study and retirement at Horton,
+the long years of self-education were profitable and left their mark on
+his life. His first strong religious impulse he himself dates back to
+his school-days at Harrow, when (as is now recorded in a mural tablet
+on the spot) in walking up the street one day he was shocked by the
+indignities of a pauper funeral. The drunken bearers, staggering up the
+hill and swearing over the coffin, so appalled him that the sight
+remained branded on his memory and he determined to devote his life to
+the service of the poor. But one such shock would have achieved little,
+if the decision had not been strengthened by years of thought and
+resolution. His tendency to self-criticism is seen in the entry in his
+diary for April, 1826 (his twenty-fifth birthday). He blames himself for
+indulging in dreams and for having performed so little; but he himself
+admits that the visions were all of a noble character, and we know what
+abundant fruit they produced in the sixty years of active effort which
+were to follow. The man who a year later could write sincerely in his
+diary, 'Immortality has ceased to be a longing with me. I desire to be
+useful in my generation,' had been little harmed by a few years of
+dreaming dreams, and had little need to be afraid of having made a false
+start in life.
+
+When he entered the House of Commons as member for Woodstock in 1826,
+Lord Ashley had strong Conservative instincts, a fervid belief in the
+British constitution, and an unbounded admiration for the Duke of
+Wellington, whose Peninsula victories had fired his enthusiasm at
+Harrow. It was to his wing of the Conservative party that Ashley
+attached himself; and it was the duke who, succeeding to the premiership
+on the premature death of Canning, gave him his first office, a post on
+the India Board of Control. The East India Company with its board of
+directors (abolished in 1858) still ruled India, but was since 1778
+subject in many ways to the control of the British Parliament, and the
+board to which Lord Ashley now belonged exercised some of the functions
+since committed to the Secretary of State for India. He set himself
+conscientiously to study the interests of India, but over the work of
+his department he had little chance of winning distinction. In fact his
+first prominent speech was on the Reform of Lunatic Asylums, not an easy
+subject for a new member to handle. He was diffident in manner and
+almost inaudible. Without the kindly encouragement of friends he might
+have despaired of future success; but his sincerity in the cause was
+worth more than many a brilliant speech. The Bill was carried, a new
+board was constituted, and of this Lord Ashley became chairman in 1829,
+and continued to hold the office till his death fifty-six years later.
+This was the first of the burdens that he took upon himself without
+thought of reward, and so is worthy of special mention, though it never
+won the fame of his factory legislation. But it shows the character of
+the man, how ready he was to step into a post which meant work without
+remuneration, drudgery without fame, prejudice and opposition from all
+whose interests were concerned in maintaining the abuses of the past.
+
+It was this spirit which led him in 1836 to take up the Church Pastoral
+Aid Society,[15] in 1839 to found the Indigent Blind Visiting Society,
+in 1840 to champion the cause of chimney-sweeps, and in all these cases
+to continue his support for fifty years or more. We are accustomed
+to-day to 'presidents' and 'patrons' and a whole broadsheet of
+complimentary titles, to which noblemen give their names and often give
+little else. Lord Ashley understood such an office differently. He was
+regular in attendance at meetings, generous in giving money, unflinching
+in his advocacy of the cause. We shall see this more fully in dealing
+with the two most famous crusades associated with his name.
+
+[Note 15: To help church work by adding to the number of clergy.]
+
+Though these growing labours began early to occupy his time, we find the
+record of his life diversified by other claims and other interests. In
+1830 he married Emily, daughter of Lord Cowper, who bore him several
+children, and who shared all his interests with the fullest sympathy;
+and henceforth his greatest joys and his deepest sorrows were always
+associated with his family life. At home his first hobby was astronomy.
+At the age of twenty-eight he was ardently devoted to it and would spend
+all his leisure on it for weeks together, till graver duties absorbed
+his time. But he was no recluse, and all through his life he found
+pleasure in the society of his friends and in paying them visits in
+their homes. Many of his early visits were paid to the Iron Duke at
+Strathfieldsaye; in later life no one entertained him more often than
+Lord Palmerston, with whom he was connected by marriage. He was the
+friend and often the guest of Queen Victoria, and in his twenty-eighth
+year he is even found as a guest at the festive board of George IV.
+'Such a round of laughing and pleasure I never enjoyed: if there be a
+hospitable gentleman on earth it is His Majesty.' And at all times he
+was ready to mix freely and on terms of social equality with all who
+shared his sympathies, dukes and dustmen, Cabinet ministers and
+costermongers.
+
+In the holiday season he delighted to travel. In his journals he sets
+down the impressions which he felt among the pictures and churches of
+Italy, and in the mountains of Germany and Switzerland; he loves to
+record the friendliness of the greetings which he met among the
+peasantry of various lands. When he talked to them no one could fail to
+see that he was genuinely interested in them, that he wanted to know
+their joys and their sorrows, and to enrich his own knowledge by
+anything that the humblest could tell him. Still more did he delight in
+Scotland, where he had many friends. He was of the generation
+immediately under the spell of the 'Wizard of the North', and the whole
+country was seen through a veil of romantic and historical association.
+There he went nearly every year, to Edinburgh, to Roslin, to Inveraray,
+to the Trossachs, and to a hundred other places--and if his heart was
+stirred with the glories of the past, his eye was quick to 'catch the
+manners living as they rise'. As he commented caustically at Rome on
+'the church lighted up and decorated like a ball-room--the bishop with a
+stout train of canons, listening to the music precisely like an opera',
+so at Newbattle he criticizes the coldness of the kirk, 'all is silent
+save the minister, who discharges the whole ceremony and labours under
+the weight of his own tautologies'. His bringing up had been in the
+Anglican church; he was devoted to her liturgy, her congregational
+worship, her moderation and simplicity combined with reverence and
+warmth. Although these travels were but interludes in his busy life,
+they show that it was not for want of other tastes and interests of his
+own that his life was dedicated to laborious service. He was very human
+himself, and there were few aspects of humanity which did not attract
+him.
+
+With his father relations were very difficult. As his interest in social
+questions grew, his attention was naturally turned on the poor nearest
+to his own doors, the agricultural labourers of Dorset. Even in those
+days of low wages Dorset was a notorious example quoted on many a
+Radical platform: the wages of the farm labourers were frequently as low
+as seven shillings a week, and the conditions in which they had often to
+bring up a large family of children were deplorable. If Lord Ashley had
+not himself felt the shame of their poverty, their bad housing and their
+other hardships, there were plenty of opponents ready to force them on
+his notice in revenge for his having exposed their own sores. He was
+made responsible for abuses which he could not remedy. While his father,
+a resolute Tory of the old type, still lived, the son was unable to
+stir. He sedulously tried to avoid all bitterness; but he could not,
+when publicly challenged, avoid stating his own views about fair wages
+and fair conditions of living, and his father took offence. For years it
+was impossible for the son to come under his father's roof. When the old
+earl died in 1851, his son lost no time in proving his sincerity as a
+reformer; but meanwhile he had to go into the fray against the
+manufacturers with his arms tied behind his back and submit to taunts
+which he little deserved. That he could carry on this struggle for so
+many years, without embittering the issues, and without open exposure of
+the family quarrel, shows the strength of character which he had gained
+by years of religious discipline and self-control.
+
+Politics proper played but a small part in his career. The politicians
+found early that he was not of the 'available' type--that he would not
+lend himself to party policy or compromise on any matter which seemed to
+him of national interest. Such political posts as were offered to him
+were largely held out as a bait to silence him, and to prevent his
+bringing forward embarrassing measures which might split the party.
+Ashley himself found how much easier it was for him to follow a single
+course when he was an independent member. Reluctantly in 1834 he
+accepted a post at the Board of Admiralty and worked earnestly in his
+department; but this ministry only lasted for one year, and he never
+held office again, though he was often pressed to do so. He was attached
+to Wellington; but for Peel, now become the Tory leader, he had little
+love. The two men were very dissimilar in character; and though at times
+Ashley had friendly communications with Peel, yet in his diary Ashley
+often complains bitterly of his want of enthusiasm, of what he regarded
+as Peel's opportunism and subservience to party policy. The one had an
+instinct for what was practical and knew exactly how far he could
+combine interests to carry a measure; the other was all on fire for the
+cause and ready to push it forward against all obstacles, at all costs.
+Ashley, it is true, had to work through Parliament to attain his chief
+ends, and many a bitter moment he had to endure in striving towards the
+goal. But if he was not an adroit or successful politician, he
+gradually, as the struggle went on, by earnestness and force of
+character, made for himself in the House a place apart, a place of rare
+dignity and influence; and with the force of public opinion behind him
+he was able to triumph over ministers and parties.
+
+It was in 1832 that he first had his attention drawn to the conditions
+of labour in factories. He never claimed to be the pioneer of the
+movement, but he was early in the field. The inventions of the latter
+part of the eighteenth century had transformed the north of England. The
+demand for labour had given rise to appalling abuses, especially in the
+matter of child labour. From London workhouses and elsewhere children
+were poured into the labour market, and by the 'Apprentice System' were
+bound to serve their masters for long periods and for long hours
+together. A pretence of voluntary contract was kept up, but fraud and
+deception were rife in the system and its results were tragic. Mrs.
+Browning's famous poem, 'The Cry of the Children,' gives a more vivid
+picture of the children's sufferings than many pages of prose. At the
+same time we have plenty of first-hand evidence from the great towns of
+the misery which went along with the wonderful development of national
+wealth. Speaking in 1873 Lord Shaftesbury said, 'Well can I recollect in
+the earlier periods of the Factory movement waiting at the factory gates
+to see the children come out, and a set of dejected cadaverous creatures
+they were. In Bradford especially the proofs of long and cruel toil were
+most remarkable. The cripples and distorted forms might be numbered by
+hundreds perhaps by thousands. A friend of mine collected together a
+vast number for me; the sight was most piteous, the deformities
+incredible.' And an eye-witness in Bolton reports in 1792: 'Anything
+like the squalid misery, the slow, mouldering, putrefying death by which
+the weak and feeble are perishing here, it never befell my eyes to
+behold, nor my imagination to conceive.' Some measures of relief were
+carried by the elder Sir Robert Peel, himself a cotton-spinner; but
+public opinion was slow to move and was not roused till 1830, when Mr.
+Sadler,[16] member for Newark, led the first fight for a 'Ten Hours
+Bill'. When Sadler was unseated in 1832, Lord Ashley offered his help,
+and so embarked on the greatest of his works performed in the public
+service. He had the support of a few of the noblest men in England,
+including Robert Southey and Charles Dickens; but he had against him the
+vast body of well-to-do people in the country, and inside Parliament
+many of the most progressive and influential politicians. The factory
+owners were inspired at once by interest and conviction; the political
+economy of the day taught them that all restrictions on labour were
+harmful to the progress of industry and to the prosperity of the
+country, while the figures in their ledgers taught them what was the
+most economical method of running their own mills.
+
+[Note 16: See articles in _D.N.B._ on Michael Thomas Sadler
+(1780-1835) and on Richard Oastler (1789-1861).]
+
+Already it was clear that Lord Ashley was no mere sentimentalist out for
+a momentary sensation. At all times he gave the credit for starting the
+work to Sadler and his associates; and from the outset he urged his
+followers to fix on a limited measure first, to concentrate attention on
+the work of children and young persons, and to avoid general questions
+involving conflicts between capital and labour. Also he took endless
+pains to acquaint himself at first hand with the facts. 'In factories,'
+he said afterwards, 'I examined the mills, the machinery, the homes, and
+saw the workers and their work in all its details. In collieries I went
+down into the pits. In London I went into lodging-houses and thieves'
+haunts, and every filthy place. It gave me a power I could not otherwise
+have had.' And this was years before 'slumming' became fashionable and
+figured in the pages of _Punch_; it was no distraction caught up for a
+week or a month, but a labour of fifty years! We have an account of him
+as he appeared at this period of his life: 'above the medium height,
+about 5 feet 6 inches, with a slender and extremely graceful figure...
+curling dark hair in thick masses, fine brow, features delicately cut,
+the nose perhaps a trifle too prominent,... light blue eyes deeply set
+with projecting eyelids, his mouth small and compressed.' His whole face
+and appearance seems to have had a sculpturesque effect and to have
+suggested the calm and composure of marble. But under this marble
+exterior there was burning a flame of sympathy for the poor, a fire of
+indignation against the system which oppressed them.
+
+In 1833 some progress was made. Lord Althorp, the Whig leader in the
+Commons, under pressure from Lord Ashley, carried a bill dealing indeed
+with some of the worst abuses in factories, but applying only to some of
+the great textile industries. That it still left much to be done can be
+seen from studying the details of the measure. Children under eleven
+years of age were not to work more than nine hours a day, and young
+persons under nineteen not more than twelve hours a day. Adults might
+still work all day and half the night if the temptation of misery at
+home and extra wages to be earned was too strong for them. It seems
+difficult now to believe that this was a great step forward, yet for the
+moment Ashley found that he could do no more and must accept what the
+politicians gave him. In 1840, however, he started a fresh campaign on
+behalf of children not employed in these factories, who were not
+included in the Act of 1833, and who, not being concentrated in the
+great centres of industry, escaped the attention of the general public.
+He obtained a Royal Commission to investigate mines and other works, and
+to report upon their condition. The Blue Book was published in 1842 and
+created a sensation unparalleled of its kind. Men read with horror the
+stories of the mines, of children employed underground for twelve or
+fourteen hours a day, crouching in low passages, monotonously opening
+and shutting the trap-doors as the trollies passed to and fro. Alone
+each child sat in pitchy darkness, unable to stir for more than a few
+paces, unable to sleep for fear of punishment with the strap in case of
+neglect, and often surrounded with vermin. Women were employed crawling
+on hands and knees along these passages, stripped to the waist, stooping
+under the low roofs, and even so chafing and wounding their backs, as
+they hauled the coal along the underground rails, or carrying in baskets
+on their backs, up steps and ladders, loads which varied in weight from
+a half to one and a half hundredweights. The physical health, the mental
+education, and the moral character of these poor creatures suffered
+equally under such a system; and well might those responsible for the
+existence of such abuses fear to let the Report be published. But copies
+of it first reached members of Parliament, then the public at large
+learnt the burden of the tale, and Lord Ashley might now hope for enough
+support from outside to break down the opposition in the House of
+Commons and the delays of parliamentary procedure.
+
+'The Mines and Collieries Bill' was brought in before the impression
+could fade, and on June 7, 1842, Ashley made one of the greatest of his
+speeches and drove home powerfully the effect of the Report. His mastery
+of facts was clear enough to satisfy the most dispassionate politician;
+his sincerity disarmed Richard Cobden, the champion of the Lancashire
+manufacturers and brought about a reconciliation between them; his
+eloquence stirred the hearts of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort,
+and drew from the latter words of glowing admiration and promises of
+support. In August the bill finally passed the House of Lords, and a
+second great blow had been struck. Practices which were poisoning at the
+source the lives of the younger generation were forbidden by law; above
+all, it was expressly laid down that, after a few years, no woman or
+girl should be employed in mines at all. The influence which such a law
+had on the family life in the mining districts was incalculable; the
+women were rescued from servitude in the mines and restored to their
+natural place at home.
+
+There was still much to do. In 1844 the factory question was again
+brought to the front by the demands of the working classes, and again
+Ashley was ready to champion their cause, and to propose that the
+working day should now be limited to eight hours for children, and to
+ten hours for grown men. In Parliament there was long and weary fighting
+over the details. The Tory Government did not wish to oppose the bill
+directly. Neither party had really faced the question or made up its
+mind. Expediency rather than justice was in the minds of the official
+politicians.
+
+Such a straightforward champion as Lord Ashley was a source of
+embarrassment to these gentlemen, to be met by evasion rather than
+direct opposition. The radical John Bright, a strong opponent of State
+interference and equally straightforward in his methods, made a personal
+attack on Lord Ashley. He referred to the Dorset labourers, as if Ashley
+was indifferent to abuses nearer home, and left no one in doubt of his
+opinions. At the same time, Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, did
+all in his power to defeat Ashley's bill by bringing forward alternative
+proposals, which he knew would be unacceptable to the workers. In face
+of such opposition most men would have given way. Ashley, who had been a
+consistent Tory all his life, was bitterly aggrieved at the treatment
+which his bill met with from his official leaders. He persevered in his
+efforts, relying on support from outside; but in Parliament the
+Government triumphed to the extent of defeating the Ten Hours Bill in
+March 1844 and again in April 1846. Still, the small majority (ten) by
+which this last division was decided showed in which direction the
+current was flowing, and when a few months later the Tories were ousted
+from office, the Whigs took up the bill officially, and in June 1847
+Lord Ashley, though himself out of Parliament for the moment, had the
+satisfaction of seeing the bill become the law of the land.
+
+There was great rejoicing in the manufacturing districts, and Lord
+Ashley was the hero of the day. The working classes had no direct
+representative in Parliament in those days: without his constant efforts
+neither party would have given a fair hearing to their cause. He had
+argued with politicians without giving away principles; he had stirred
+the industrial districts without rousing class hatred; he had been
+defeated time after time without giving up the struggle. Much has been
+added since then to the laws restricting the conditions of labour till,
+in the often quoted words of Lord Morley, the biographer of Cobden, we
+have 'a complete, minute, and voluminous code for the protection of
+labour... an immense host of inspectors, certifying surgeons and other
+authorities whose business it is to "speed and post o'er land and ocean"
+in restless guardianship of every kind of labour'. But these were the
+heroic days of the struggle for factory legislation, and also of the
+struggle for cheap food for the people. Reviewing these great events
+many years later the Duke of Argyll said, 'During that period two great
+discoveries have been made in the science of Government: the one is the
+immense advantage of abolishing restrictions on trade, the other is the
+absolute necessity of imposing restrictions on labour'. While Sir Robert
+Peel might with some justice contest with Cobden the honour of
+establishing the first principle, few will challenge Lord Ashley's right
+to the honour of securing the second.
+
+Of the many religious and political causes which he undertook during and
+after this time, of the Zionist movement to repatriate the Jews, of the
+establishing of a Protestant bishopric at Jerusalem, of his attacks on
+the war with Sind and the opium trade with China, of his championship of
+the Nestorian Christians against the Turk, of his leadership of the
+great Bible Society, there is not space to speak. The mere list gives an
+idea of the width of his interests and the warmth of his sympathy.
+
+Some of these questions were highly contentious; and Lord Ashley, who
+was a fervent Evangelical, was less than fair to churchmen of other
+schools. To Dr. Pusey himself he could write a kindly and courteous
+letter; but on the platform, or in correspondence with friends, he could
+denounce 'Puseyites' in the roundest terms. One cannot expect that a man
+of his character will avoid all mistakes. It was a time when feeling ran
+high on religious questions, and he was a declared partisan; but at
+least we may say that the public good, judged from the highest point,
+was his objective; there was no room for self-seeking in his heart. Nor
+did this wide extension of his activity mean neglect of his earlier
+crusades. On the contrary, he continued to work for the good of the
+classes to whom his Factory Bills had been so beneficial. Not content
+with prohibiting what was harmful, he went on to positive measures of
+good; restriction of hours was followed by sanitation, and this again by
+education, and by this he was led to what was perhaps the second most
+famous work of his life.
+
+In 1843 his attention had already been drawn to the question of
+educating the neglected children, and he was making acquaintance at
+first hand with the work of the Ragged Schools, at that time few in
+number and poorly supported. He visited repeatedly the Field Lane
+School, in a district near Holborn notoriously frequented by the
+criminal classes, and soon the cause, at which he was to work
+unsparingly for forty years, began to move forward. He went among the
+poor with no thought of condescension. Simple as he was by nature, he
+possessed in perfection the art of speaking to children, and he was soon
+full of practical schemes for helping them. Sanitary reform was not
+neglected in his zeal for religion, and emigration was to be promoted as
+well as better housing at home; for, till the material conditions of
+life were improved, he knew that it was idle to hope for much moral
+reform. 'Plain living and high thinking' is an excellent ideal for those
+whose circumstances put them out of reach of anxiety over daily bread;
+it is a difficult gospel to preach to those who are living in
+destitution and misery.
+
+The character of his work soon won confidence even in the most unlikely
+quarters. In June 1848 he received a round-robin signed by forty of the
+most notorious thieves in London, asking him to come and meet them in
+person at a place appointed; and on his going there he found a mob of
+nearly four hundred men, all living by dishonesty and crime, who
+listened readily and even eagerly to his brotherly words.
+
+Several of them came forward in turn and made candid avowal of their
+respective difficulties and vices, and of the conditions of their lives.
+He found that they were tired of their own way of life, and were ready
+to make a fresh start; and in the course of the next few months he was
+able, thanks to the generosity of a rich friend, to arrange for the
+majority of them to emigrate to another country or to find new openings
+away from their old haunts.
+
+But, apart from such special occasions, the work of the schools went
+steadily forward. In seven years, more than a hundred such schools were
+opened, and Lord Shaftesbury was unfailing in his attendance whenever he
+could help forward the cause. His advice to the managers to 'keep the
+schools in the mire and the gutter' sounds curious; but he was afraid
+that, as they throve, boys of more prosperous classes would come in and
+drive out those for whom they were specially founded. 'So long', he
+said, 'as the mire and gutter exist, so long as this class exists, you
+must keep the school adapted to their wants, their feelings, their
+tastes and their level.' And any of us familiar with the novels of
+Charles Dickens and Walter Besant will know that such boys still existed
+unprovided for in large numbers in 1850 and for many years after.
+
+Thus the years went by. He succeeded to the earldom on his father's
+death in 1851. His heart was wrung by the early deaths of two of his
+children and by the loss of his wife in 1872. In his home he had his
+full share of the joys and sorrows of life, but his interest in his work
+never failed. If new tasks were taken up, it was not at the expense of
+the old; the fresh demand on his unwearied energies was met with the
+same spirit. At an advanced age he opened a new and attractive chapter
+in his life by his friendly meetings with the London costermongers. He
+gave prizes for the best-kept donkey, he attended the judging in person,
+he received in return a present of a donkey which was long cherished at
+Wimborne St. Giles. It is impossible to deal fully with his life in each
+decade; one page from his journal for 1882 shows what he could still do
+at the age of eighty-one, and will be the best proof of his persistence
+in well-doing. He began the day with a visit to Greenhithe to inspect
+the training ships for poor boys, at midday he came back to Grosvenor
+Square to attend a committee meeting of the Bible Society at his home,
+he then went to a public banquet in honour of his godson, and he
+finished with a concert at Buckingham Palace, thus keeping up his
+friendly relations with all classes in the realm. To the very last, in
+his eighty-fifth year, he continued to attend a few meetings and to
+visit the scenes of his former labours; and on October 1, 1885, full of
+years and full of honours, he died quietly at Folkestone, where he had
+gone for the sake of his health.
+
+In this sketch attention has been drawn to his labours rather than to
+his honours. He might have had plenty of the latter if he had wished. He
+received the Freedom of the City of London and of other great towns.
+Twice he was offered the Garter, and he only accepted the second offer
+on Lord Palmerston's urgent request that he should treat it as a tribute
+to the importance of social work. Three times he was offered a seat in
+the Cabinet, but he refused each time, because official position would
+fetter his special work. He kept aloof from party politics, and was only
+roused when great principles were at stake. Few of the leading
+politicians satisfied him. Peel seemed too cautious, Gladstone too
+subtle, Disraeli too insincere. It was the simplicity and kindliness of
+his relative Palmerston that won his heart, rather than confidence in
+his policy at home or abroad. The House of Commons suited him better
+than the colder atmosphere of the House of Lords; but in neither did he
+rise to speak without diffidence and fear. It is a great testimony to
+the force of his conviction that he won as many successes in Parliament
+as he did. But the means through which he effected his chief work were
+committees, platform meetings, and above all personal visits to scenes
+of distress.
+
+The nation would gladly have given him the last tribute of burial in
+Westminster Abbey, but he had expressed a clear wish to be laid among
+his own people at Wimborne St. Giles, and the funeral was as simple as
+he had wished it to be. His name in London is rather incongruously
+associated with a fountain in Piccadilly Circus, and with a street full
+of theatres, made by the clearing of the slums where he had worked: the
+intention was good, the result is unfortunate. More truly than in any
+sculpture or buildings his memorial is to be found in the altered lives
+of thousands of his fellow citizens, in the happy looks of the children,
+and in the pleasant homes and healthy workshops which have transformed
+the face of industrial England.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN LAWRENCE
+
+1811-79
+
+1811. Born at Richmond, Yorkshire, March 4.
+1823. School at Londonderry.
+1827. Haileybury I.C.S. College.
+1829. Goes out to India as a member of Civil Service.
+1831. Delhi.
+1834. P[=a]n[=i]pat.
+1836. Et[=a]wa.
+1840-2. Furlough and marriage to Harriette Hamilton.
+1844. Collector and Magistrate of Delhi and P[=a]n[=i]pat.
+1845. First Sikh War.
+1846. Governor of J[=a]landhar Do[=a]b.
+1848. Second Sikh War.
+1849. Lord Dalhousie annexes Punjab. Henry and John Lawrence members
+      of Punjab Board.
+1852-3. New Constitution. John Lawrence, Chief Commissioner of Punjab.
+1856. Oudh annexed. Henry Lawrence first Governor.
+1857. Indian Mutiny. Death of Henry Lawrence at Lucknow (July). Punjab
+      secured. Delhi retaken (September).
+1858-9. Baronetcy; G.C.B. Return to England.
+1864. Governor-General of India. Irrigation. Famine relief.
+1869. Return to England. Peerage.
+1870. Chairman of London School Board.
+1876. Failure of eyesight.
+1879. Death in London, June 27.
+
+JOHN LAWRENCE
+
+INDIAN ADMINISTRATOR
+
+
+The north of Ireland and its Scoto-Irish stock has given birth to some
+of the toughest human material that our British Isles have produced. Of
+this stock was John Wesley, who at the age of eighty-five attributed his
+good health to rising every day at four and preaching every day at
+five. Of this was Arthur Wellesley, who never knew defeat and 'never
+lost a British gun'. Of this was Alexander Lawrence, sole survivor among
+the officers of the storming party at Seringapatam, who lived to rear
+seven stout sons, five of whom went out to service in India, two at
+least to win imperishable fame. His wife, a Miss Knox, came also from
+across the sea; and, if the evidence fails to prove Mr. Bosworth Smith's
+statement that she was akin to the great Reformer, she herself was a
+woman of strong character and great administrative talent. When we
+remember John Lawrence's parentage, we need not be surprised at the
+character which he bore, nor at the evidence of it to be seen in the
+grand rugged features portrayed by Watts in the picture in the National
+Portrait Gallery.
+
+[Illustration: LORD LAWRENCE
+
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+Of these parents John Laird Mair Lawrence was the fourth surviving son,
+one boy, the eldest, having died in infancy. He owed the accident of his
+birth in an English town to his father's regiment being quartered at the
+time in Yorkshire, his first schooling at Bristol to his father's
+residence at Clifton; but when he was twelve years old, he followed his
+elder brothers to Londonderry, where his maternal uncle, the Rev. James
+Knox, was Headmaster of the Free Grammar School, situated within the
+walls of that famous Protestant fortress. It was a rough school, of
+which the Lawrence brothers cherished few kindly recollections. It is
+difficult to ascertain what they learnt there: perhaps the grim
+survivals of the past, town-walls, bastions, and guns, made the deepest
+impression upon them. John's chief friend at school was Robert
+Montgomery, whom, many years later, he welcomed as a sympathetic
+fellow-worker in India; and the two boys continued their education
+together at Wraxall in Wiltshire, to which they were transferred in
+1825. Here John spent two years, working at his books by fits and
+starts, and finding an outlet for his energy in climbing, kite-flying,
+and other unconventional amusements, and then his turn came to profit by
+the goodwill of a family friend, who was an influential man and a
+director of the East India Company. To this man, John Huddlestone by
+name, his brothers Alexander and George owed their commissions in the
+Indian cavalry, while Henry had elected for the artillery. John hoped
+for a similar favour, but was offered, in its place, a post in the
+Indian Civil Service. This was a cruel disappointment to him as he had
+set his heart on the army. In fact he was only reconciled to the
+prospect by the influence of his eldest sister Letitia, who held a
+unique place as the family counsellor now and throughout her life.
+
+When he sailed first for India at the age of eighteen, John Lawrence had
+done little to give promise of future distinction. He had strong
+attachments to his mother and sister; outside the family circle he was
+not eager to make new friends. In his work and in his escapades he
+showed an independent spirit, and seemed to care little what others
+thought of him; even at Haileybury, at that time a training-school for
+the service of the East India Company, he was most irregular in his
+studies, though he carried off several prizes; and he seems to have
+impressed his fellows rather as an uncouth person who preferred mooning
+about the college, or rambling alone through the country-side, to
+spending his days in the pursuits which they esteemed.
+
+When the time came for John Lawrence to take up his work, his brother
+Henry, his senior by five years, was also going out to India to rejoin
+his company of artillery, and the brothers sailed together. John had to
+spend ten weary months in Calcutta learning languages, and was very
+unhappy there. Ill-health was one cause; another was his distaste for
+strangers' society and his longing for home; it was only the definite
+prospect of work which rescued him from despondency. He applied for a
+post at Delhi; and, as soon as this was granted, he was all eagerness to
+leave Calcutta. But he had used the time well in one respect: he had
+acquired the power of speaking Persian with ease and fluency, and this
+stood him in good stead in his dealings with the princes and the
+peasants of the northern races, whose history he was to influence in the
+coming years.
+
+Delhi has been to many Englishmen besides John Lawrence a city of
+absorbing interest. It had even then a long history behind it, and its
+history, as we in the twentieth century know, is by no means finished
+yet. It stands on the Jumna, the greatest tributary of the Ganges, at a
+point where the roads from the north-west reach the vast fertile basin
+of these rivers, full in the path of an invader. Many races had swept
+down on it from the mountain passes before the English soldiery appeared
+from the south-east; its mosques, its palaces, its gates, recall the
+memory of many princes and conquerors. At the time of Lawrence's arrival
+it was still the home of the heir of Akbar and Aurangzeb, the last of
+the great Mughals. The dynasty had been left in 1804, after the wars of
+Lord Wellesley, shorn of its power, but not robbed of its dignity or
+riches. As a result it had degenerated into an abuse of the first order,
+since all the scoundrels of the district infested the palace and preyed
+upon its owner, who had no work to occupy him, no call of duty to rouse
+him from sloth and sensuality. The town was filled with a turbulent
+population of many different tribes, and the work of the European
+officials was exacting and difficult. But at the same time it gave
+unique opportunities for an able man to learn the complexity of the
+Indian problem; and the knowledge which John Lawrence acquired there
+proved of incalculable value to him when he was called to higher posts.
+
+At Delhi he was working as an assistant to the Resident, one of a staff
+of four or five, with no independent authority. But in 1834 he was given
+temporary charge of the district of P[=a]n[=i]pat, fifty miles to the
+north, and it is here that we begin to get some measure of the man and
+his abilities. The place was the scene of more than one famous battle in
+the past; armies of Mughals and Persians and Mar[=a]th[=i]s had swept
+across its plains. Its present inhabitants were J[=a]ts, a race widely
+extended through the eastern Punjab and the western part of the province
+of Agra. Originally invaders from the north, they espoused the religions
+of those around them, some Brahman, some Muhammadan, some Sikh, and
+settled down as thrifty industrious peasants; though inclined to
+peaceful pursuits, they still preserved some strength of character and
+were the kind of people among whom Lawrence might hope to enjoy his
+work. The duties of the magistrate are generally divided into judicial
+and financial. But, as an old Indian official more exhaustively stated
+it: 'Everything which is done by the executive government is done by the
+Collector in one or another of his capacities--publican, auctioneer,
+sheriff, road-maker, timber-dealer, recruiting sergeant, slayer of wild
+beasts, bookseller, cattle-breeder, postmaster, vaccinator, discounter
+of bills, and registrar.' It is difficult to see how one can bring all
+these departments under two headings; it is still more difficult to see
+how such diverse demands can possibly be met by a single official,
+especially by one little over twenty years of age coming from a distant
+country. No stay-at-home fitting himself snugly into a niche in the
+well-manned offices of Whitehall can expect to see his powers develop so
+rapidly or so rapidly collapse (whichever be his fate) as these solitary
+outposts of our empire, bearing, Atlas-like, a whole world on their
+shoulders.
+
+With John Lawrence, fortunately, there was no question of collapse till
+many years of overwork broke down his physical strength. He grappled
+with the task like a giant, passing long days in his office or in the
+saddle, looking into everything for himself, laying up stores of
+knowledge about land tenure and agriculture, training his judgement to
+deal with the still more difficult problem of the workings of the
+Oriental mind. He had no friends or colleagues of his own at hand; and
+when the day's work was done he would spend his evenings holding an
+informal durbar outside his tent, chatting with all and sundry of the
+natives who happened to be there. The peoples of India are familiar with
+pomp and outward show such as we do not see in the more prosaic west;
+but they also know a man when they see one. And this young man with the
+strongly-marked features, curt speech, and masterful manner, sitting
+there alone in shirt-sleeves and old trousers as he listened to their
+tales, was an embodiment of the British rule which they learnt to
+respect--if not to love--for the solid benefits which it conferred upon
+them. He had an element of hardness in him; by many he was thought to be
+unduly harsh at different periods of his life; but he spared no trouble
+to learn the truth, he was inflexibly just in his decisions, and his
+reputation spread rapidly throughout the district. In cases of genuine
+need he could be extremely kind and generous; but he did not lavish
+these qualities on the first comer, nor did he wear his heart upon his
+sleeve. His informal ways and unconventional dress were a bugbear to
+some critics; his old waywardness and love of adventure was still alive
+in him, and he thoroughly enjoyed the more irregular sides of his work.
+Mr. Bosworth Smith has preserved some capital stories of the crimes with
+which he had to deal, and how the young collector took an active part in
+arresting the criminals--stories which some years later the future
+Viceroy dictated to his wife.
+
+But, after two years thus spent in constant activity and ever-growing
+mastery of his work, he had to come down in rank; the post was filled by
+a permanent official, and John Lawrence returned to the Delhi staff as
+an assistant.
+
+He soon received other 'acting appointments' in the neighbourhood of
+Delhi, one of which at Et[=a]wa gave him valuable experience in dealing
+with the difficult revenue question. The Government was in the habit of
+collecting the land tax from the 'ryot' or peasant through a class of
+middle-men called 'talukd[=a]rs',[17] who had existed under the native
+princes for a long time. Borrowing perhaps from western ideas, the
+English had regarded the latter as landowners and the peasants as mere
+tenants; this had often caused grave injustice to the latter, and the
+officials now desired to revise the settlement in order to put all
+classes on a fair footing. In this department Robert Bird was supreme,
+and under his direction John Lawrence and others set themselves to
+measure out areas, to record the nature of the various soils, and to
+assess rents at a moderate rate. Still this was dull work compared to
+the planning of practical improvements and the conviction of dangerous
+criminals; and as, towards the end of 1839, Lawrence was struck down by
+a bad attack of fever, he was not sorry to be ordered home on long leave
+and to revisit his native land. He had been strenuously at work for ten
+years on end and he had well earned a holiday.
+
+[Note 17: 'Talukd[=a]r' in the north-west, 'zam[=i]nd[=a]r' in
+Bengal.]
+
+His father was now dead, and his favourite sister married, but of his
+mother he was for many years the chief support, contributing liberally
+of his own funds and giving his time and judgement to managing what the
+brothers put together for that purpose. In 1840 he was travelling both
+in Scotland and Ireland; and it was near Londonderry that he met his
+future wife, daughter of the Rev. Richard Hamilton, who, besides being
+rector of his parish, was an active justice of the peace. He met her
+again in the following summer, and they were married on August 26, 1841.
+Their life together was a tale of unbroken happiness, which was only
+ended by his death. A long tour on the Continent was followed by a
+severe illness, which threatened to forbid all prospect of work in
+India. However, by the end of that summer he had recovered his health
+enough to contemplate returning, and in October, 1842, he set sail to
+spend another sixteen years in labouring in India.
+
+In 1843 he resumed work at Delhi, holding temporary posts till the end
+of 1844, when he became in his own right Collector and Magistrate of
+Delhi and P[=a]n[=i]pat. This time his position, besides involving much
+familiar work, threw him in the way of events of wider interest. Lord
+Hardinge, the Governor-General, on his way to the first Sikh war, came
+to Delhi, and was much impressed with Lawrence's ability; and when he
+annexed the Do[=a]b[18] of J[=a]landhar and wanted a governor for it, he
+could find no one more suitable than the young magistrate, who had so
+swiftly collected 4,000 carts and sent them up laden with supplies on
+the eve of the battle of Sobraon.
+
+[Note 18: 'Do[=a]b' = land between two rivers.]
+
+This was a great step in advance and carried John Lawrence ahead of many
+of his seniors; but it was promotion that was fully justified by events.
+He was not wanting in self-confidence, and the tone of some of his
+letters to the Secretary at head-quarters might seem boastful, had not
+his whole career shown that he could more than make good his promise.
+'So far as I am concerned as supervisor,' he says, 'I could easily
+manage double the extent of country'; and then, comparing his district
+with another, he continues: 'I only ask you to wait six months, and then
+contrast the civil management of the two charges.' As a fact, during the
+three years that he held this post, he was often acting as deputy for
+his brother Henry at Lahore, during his illness or absence, and this
+alone clears him of the charge of idle boasting. J[=a]landhar was
+comparatively a simple job for him, whatever it might be for others; he
+was able to apply his knowledge of assessment and taxation gained at
+Et[=a]wa, and need only satisfy himself. At Lahore, on the other hand,
+he had to consider the very strong views held by his brother about the
+respect due to the vested rights of the chiefs; and he studiously set
+himself to deal with matters in the way in which his brother would have
+done. The Sirdars or Sikh chieftains had inherited traditions of corrupt
+and oppressive rule; but the chivalrous Henry Lawrence always looked at
+the noble side of native character; and, as by his personal gifts he was
+able to inspire devotion, so he could draw out what was good in those
+who came under his influence. The cooler and more practical John looked
+at both sides, at the traditions, good and evil, which came to them from
+their forefathers, and he considered carefully how these chiefs would
+act when not under his immediate influence. Above all, he looked to the
+prosperity and happiness of the millions of peasants out of sight, who
+toiled laboriously to get a living from the land.
+
+The second Sikh war, which broke out in 1848, can only be treated here
+so far as it affected the fortunes of the Lawrences. Lord Gough's
+strategical blunders, redeemed by splendid courage, give it great
+military interest; but it was the new Viceroy, Lord Dalhousie, who
+decided the fate of the Punjab. He was a very able, hard-working Scotch
+nobleman, who devoted himself to his work in India for eight years with
+such self-sacrifice that he returned home in 1856 already doomed to an
+early death. But he was masterful and self-confident to a degree; and
+against his imperious will the impulsive forces of Charles Napier and
+Henry Lawrence broke like waves on a granite coast. He was not blind to
+their exceptional gifts, but to him the wide knowledge, coolness, and
+judgement of John Lawrence made a greater appeal; and when, after the
+victory of Chili[=a]nw[=a]la and the submission of the Sikh army in
+1849, he annexed the Punjab, he decided to rule it by a Board and not by
+a single governor, and to direct the diverse talents of the brothers to
+a common end. He could not dispense with Henry's influence among the
+Sikh chieftains, and John's knowledge of civil government was of equal
+value.
+
+Each would to a certain extent have his department, but a vast number of
+questions would have to be decided jointly by the Board, of which the
+third member, from 1850, was their old schoolfellow and friend Robert
+Montgomery. The friction which resulted was often intolerable. Without
+the least personal animosity, the brothers were forced into frequent
+conflicts of opinion; each was convinced of the justice of his attitude
+and most unwilling to sacrifice the interests of those in whom he was
+especially interested. After three years of the strain, Lord Dalhousie
+decided that it was time to put the country under a single ruler. For
+the honour of being first Chief Commissioner of the Punjab he chose the
+younger brother; and Sir Henry was given the post of Agent in
+R[=a]jput[=a]na, from which he was promoted in 1857 to be the first
+Governor of Oudh.
+
+It was a tragic parting. The ablest men in the Punjab, like John
+Nicholson and Herbert Edwardes, regarded Sir Henry as a father, and many
+felt that it would be impossible to continue their work without him. No
+Englishman in India made such an impression by personal influence on
+both Europeans and Asiatics. As a well-known English statesman said:
+'His character was far above his career, distinguished as that career
+was.' But there is little doubt, now, that for the development of the
+new province Lord Dalhousie made the right choice. And there is no
+higher proof of the magnanimity of John Lawrence than the way in which
+he won the respect, and retained the services, of the most ardent
+supporters of his brother. His dealings with Nicholson alone would fill
+a chapter; few lessons are more instructive than the way in which he
+controlled the waywardness of this heroic but self-willed officer, while
+giving full scope to his singular abilities.
+
+The tale of John Lawrence's government of the Punjab is in some measure
+a repetition of his work at P[=a]n[=i]pat and Delhi. It had the same
+variety, it was carried out with the same thoroughness; but on this vast
+field it was impossible for him to see everything for himself. While
+directing the policy, he had to work largely through others and to leave
+many important decisions to his subordinates. The quality of the Punjab
+officials--of men who owed their inspiration to Henry Lawrence, or to
+John, or to both of them--was proved in many fields of government during
+the next thirty years. Soldiers on the frontier passes, judges and
+revenue officers on the plains, all worked with a will and contributed
+of their best. The Punjab is from many points of view the most
+interesting province in India. Its motley population, chiefly
+Musalm[=a]ns, but including Sikhs and other Hindus; its extremes of heat
+and cold, of rich alluvial soil and barren deserts; its vast
+water-supplies, largely running to waste; its great frontier ramparts
+with the historic passes--each of these gave rise to its own special
+problems. It is impossible to deal with so complex a subject here; all
+that we can do is to indicate a few sides of the work by which John
+Lawrence had so developed the provinces within the short period of eight
+years that it was able to bear the strain of the Mutiny, and to prove a
+source of strength and not of weakness. He put the right men in the
+right places and supported them with all his power. He broke up the old
+Sikh army, and reorganized the forces in such a way as to weaken tribal
+feeling and make it less easy for them to combine against us. He so
+administered justice that the natives came to know that an English
+official's word was as good as his bond. And, with the aid of Robert
+Napier and others, he so helped forward irrigation as to redeem the
+waste places and develop the latent wealth of the country. In all these
+years he had little recognition or reward. His chief, Lord Dalhousie,
+valued his work and induced the Government to make him K.C.B. in 1856;
+but to the general public at home he was still unknown.
+
+In 1857 the crisis came. The greased cartridges were an immediate cause;
+there were others in the background. The sepoy regiments were too
+largely recruited from one race, the Poorbeas of the North-west
+Province, and they were too numerous in proportion to the Europeans;
+vanity, greed, superstition, fear, all influenced their minds.
+Fortunately, they produced no leader of ability; and, where the British
+officials were prompt and firm, the sparks of rebellion were swiftly
+stamped out; Montgomery at Lahore, Edwardes at Pesh[=a]war, and many
+others, did their part nobly and disarmed whole regiments without
+bloodshed. But at Meerut and Cawnpore there was hesitation; rebellion
+raised its head, encouragement was given to a hundred local discontents,
+little rills flowed together from all directions, and finally two great
+streams of rebellion surged round Delhi and Lucknow. The latter, where
+Henry Lawrence met a hero's death in July, does not here concern us; but
+the reduction of Delhi was chiefly the work of John Lawrence, and its
+effect on the history of the Mutiny was profound.
+
+He might well have been afraid for the Punjab, won by conquest from the
+most military race in India only eight years before, lying on the
+borders of our old enemy Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n, garrisoned by 11,000
+Europeans and about 50,000 native troops. It might seem a sufficient
+achievement to preserve his province to British rule, with rebellion
+raging all around and making inroads far within its borders. But as soon
+as he had secured the vital points in his own province (Mult[=a]n,
+Pesh[=a]war, Lahore), John Lawrence devoted himself to a single task, to
+recover Delhi, directing against it every man and gun, and all the
+stores that the Punjab could spare. Many of his subordinates, brave men
+though they were, were alarmed to see the Punjab so denuded and exposed
+to risks; but we now see the strength of character and determination of
+the man who swayed the fortunes of the north. He knew the importance of
+Delhi, of its geographical position and its imperial traditions; and he
+felt sure that no more vital blow could be struck at the Mutiny than to
+win back the city. The effort might seem hopeless; the military
+commanders might hesitate; the small force encamped on the historic
+ridge to the west of the town might seem to be besieged rather than
+besiegers. But continuous waves of energy from the Punjab reinforced
+them. One day it was 'the Guides', marching 580 miles in twenty-two
+days, or some other European regiment hastening from some hotbed of
+fanaticism where it could ill be spared; another day it was a train of
+siege artillery, skilfully piloted across rivers and past ambushes;
+lastly, it was the famous moving column led by John Nicholson in person
+which restored the fortunes of the day. Through June, July, August, and
+half of September, the operations dragged wearily on; but thanks to the
+exertions of Baird Smith and Alexander Taylor, the chief engineers, an
+assault was at last judged to be feasible. After days of street
+fighting, the British secured control of the whole city on September
+20th, and Nicholson, who was fatally wounded in the assault, lived long
+enough to hear the tale of victory. Without aid from England this great
+triumph had been won by the resources of the Punjab; and great was the
+moral effect of the news, as it spread through the bazaars.
+
+This success did not exhaust Lawrence's energy. For months after, he
+continued to help Sir Colin Campbell in his operations against Lucknow,
+and to correspond with the Viceroy, Lord Canning, and others about the
+needs of the time. More perhaps than any one else, he laboured to check
+savage reprisals and needless brutality, and thereby incurred much odium
+with the more reckless and ignorant officers, who, coming out after the
+most critical hour, talked loudly about punishment and revenge. He was
+as cool in victory as he had been firm in the hour of disaster, and
+never ceased to look ahead to rebuilding the shaken edifice on sounder
+foundations when the danger should be past. It was only in the autumn of
+1858, when the ship of State was again in smooth water, that he began to
+think of a holiday for himself. He had worked continuously for sixteen
+years; his health was not so strong as of old, and he could not safely
+continue at his post. He received a Baronetcy and the Grand Cross of the
+Bath from the Crown, while the Company recognized his great services by
+conferring on him a pension of L2,000 a year.
+
+From these heroic scenes it is difficult to pass to the humdrum life in
+England, the receptions at Windsor, the parties in London, and the
+discussions on the Indian Council. He himself (though not indifferent to
+honourable recognition of his work) found far more pleasure in the quiet
+days passed in the home circle, the games of croquet on his lawn, and
+the occasional travels in Scotland and Ireland. Four years of repose
+were none too long, for other demands were soon to be made upon him.
+When Lord Elgin died suddenly in 1863, John Lawrence received the offer
+of the highest post under the Crown, and, before the end of the year, he
+was sailing for Calcutta as Governor-General of India.
+
+In some ways he was able to fill the place without great effort. He had
+never been a respecter of persons; he had been quite indifferent
+whether his decisions were approved by those about him, and had always
+learnt to walk alone with a single eye to the public good. Also, he had
+such vast store of knowledge of the land and its inhabitants as no
+Viceroy before him for many decades. But the ceremonial fatigued him;
+and the tradition of working 'in Council', as the Viceroy must, was
+embarrassing to one who could always form a decision alone and had
+learnt to trust his own judgement.
+
+Many of Lawrence's best friends and most trusted colleagues had left
+India, and he had, seated at his Council board, others who did not share
+his views, and who opposed the measures that he advocated. Especially
+was this true of the distinguished soldier Sir Hugh Rose; and Lawrence
+had to endure the same strain as in 1850, in the days of the Punjab
+board. But he was able to do great service to the country in many ways,
+and especially to the agricultural classes by pushing forward large
+schemes of irrigation. Finance was one of his strong points, and any
+expenditure which would be reproductive was sure of his support owing to
+his care for the peasants and his love of a sound budget. The period of
+his Viceroyalty was what is generally called uneventful--that is, it was
+chiefly given up to such schemes as promoted peace and prosperity, and
+did not witness any extension of our dominions. Even when Robert
+Napier's[19] expedition went to Abyssinia, few people in England
+realized that it was organized in India and paid for by India; and the
+credit for its success was given elsewhere.
+
+[Note 19: Created Lord Napier of Magdala after storming King
+Theodore's fortress in 1868.]
+
+But it is necessary to refer to one great subject of controversy, which
+was prominent all through Lawrence's career and with which his name is
+associated. This is the 'Frontier Policy' and the treatment of
+Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n, on which two distinct schools of thought emerged.
+One school, ever jealous of the Russian advance, maintained that our
+Indian Government should establish agencies in Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n with or
+without the consent of the Am[=i]r; that it should interfere, if need
+be, to secure the throne for a prince who was attached to us; that
+British troops should be stationed beyond the Indus, where they could
+make their influence felt beyond our borders. The other maintained that
+our best policy was to keep within our natural boundaries, and in this
+respect the Indus with its fringe of desert was second only to the high
+mountain chains; that we should recognize the wild love of independence
+which the Afgh[=a]ns felt, that we should undertake no obligations
+towards the Am[=i]r except to observe the boundaries between him and us.
+If the Russians threatened our territories through Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n,
+the natives would help us from hatred of the invaders; but if we began
+to establish agents and troops in their towns, we should ourselves
+become to them the hated enemy.
+
+One school said that the Afgh[=a]ns respected strength and would support
+us, if we seemed capable of a vigorous policy. The other replied that
+they resented foreign intrusion and would oppose Great Britain or
+Russia, if either attempted it. One said that we ought to have a
+resident in K[=a]bul and Kandah[=a]r, the other said that it was a pity
+that we had ever occupied Pesh[=a]war, in its exposed valley at the foot
+of the Khyber Pass, and that Attock, where the Indus was bridged, was
+the ideal frontier post.
+
+No one doubted that Lawrence would be found on the side of the less
+showy and less costly policy; and he kept unswervingly true to his
+ideal. The verdict of history must not be claimed too confidently in a
+land which has seen so many races come and go. At least it may be said
+that the men who advocated advance were unable to make it good. Few
+chapters in our history are more tragic than the Afgh[=a]n Wars of
+1838-42 and 1878-80, though the last was redeemed by General Roberts's
+great achievements. Our present policy is in accord with this verdict.
+There is to-day no British agency at K[=a]bul or Kandah[=a]r; and the
+loyalty of the Am[=i]rs, during some forty years of faithful adherence
+on our part to this policy, have been sufficiently firm to justify
+Lawrence's opposition to the Forward Policy. To-day it seems easy to
+vindicate his wisdom; but in 1878, when the Conservative Government
+kindled the war fever and allowed Lord Lytton to initiate a new
+adventure, it was not easy to stem the tide, and Lawrence came in for
+much abuse and unpopularity in maintaining the other view.
+
+But long before this happened he had returned to England. His term of
+office was over early in 1869, and his work in India was finished. His
+last years at home were quiet, but not inactive. In 1870 he was invited
+to become the first chairman of the new School Board for London, and he
+held this office three years. Board work was always uncongenial to him,
+and the subject was, of course, unfamiliar; but he gave his best efforts
+to the cause and did other voluntary work in London. This came to an end
+in 1876, when his eyesight failed, and for nearly two years he had much
+suffering and was in danger of total blindness for a time. A second
+operation saved him from this, and in 1878 he put forth his strength in
+writing and speaking vigorously, but without success, against Lord
+Lytton's Afgh[=a]n War. In June, 1879, he was stricken with sudden
+illness, and died a week later in his seventieth year. It was hardly to
+be expected that one who had spent himself so freely, amid such stirring
+events, should live beyond the Psalmist's span of life.
+
+He had started at the bottom of the official ladder; by his own efforts
+he had won his way to the top; and his career will always be a notable
+example to those young Englishmen who cross the sea to serve the Empire
+in our great Dependency with its 300 million inhabitants. How the
+relations between India and Great Britain will develop--how long the
+connexion will last may be debated by politicians and authors; it is in
+careers like that of John Lawrence (and there were many such in the
+nineteenth century) that the noblest fruit of the connexion may be
+seen.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN BRIGHT
+
+1811-89
+
+
+1811. Born at Greenbank, Rochdale, November 16.
+1827. Leaves school. Enters his father's mill.
+1839. Marries Elizabeth Priestman (died 1841).
+1841. Joins Cobden in constitutional agitation for Repeal of Corn Laws.
+1843. Enters Parliament as Member for Durham.
+1846. Corn Laws repealed.
+1847. Marries Margaret Leatham (died 1878).
+1847. Member for Manchester.
+1854-5. Opposes Crimean War.
+1856-7. Long illness.
+1857. Unseated for Manchester. Member for Birmingham.
+1861. Supports the North in American Civil War.
+1868. President of Board of Trade in Gladstone's first Government.
+1870. Second long illness.
+1880. Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster in Gladstone's second Government.
+1882. Resigns office over bombardment of Alexandria.
+1886. Opposes Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill.
+1889. Dies at Rochdale, March 29.
+
+JOHN BRIGHT
+
+TRIBUNE
+
+
+The word 'tribune' comes to us from the early days of the Roman
+Republic; and even in Rome the tribunate was unlike all other
+magistracies. The holder had no outward signs of office, no satellites
+to execute his commands, no definite department to administer like the
+consul or the praetor. It was his first function to protest on behalf of
+the poorer citizens against the violent exercise of authority, and, on
+certain occasions, to thwart the action of other magistrates. He was to
+be the champion of the weak and helpless against the privileged orders;
+and his power depended on his courage, his eloquence, and the
+prestige of his office. England has no office of the sort in her
+constitutional armoury; but the word 'tribune' expresses, better than
+any other title, the position occupied in our political life by many of
+the men who have been the conspicuous champions of liberty, and few
+would contest the claim of John Bright to a foremost place among them.
+He, too, stood forth to vindicate the rights of the _plebs_; he, too,
+resisted the will of governments; and in no common measure did he give
+evidence, through forty years of public life, of the possession of the
+highest eloquence and the highest courage.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN BRIGHT
+
+From the painting by W. W. Ouless in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+His early life gave little promise of a great career. He was born in
+1811, the son of Jacob Bright, of Rochdale, who had risen by his own
+efforts to the ownership of a small cotton-mill in Lancashire, a man of
+simple benevolence and genuine piety, and a member of the Society of
+Friends--a society more familiar to us under the name of Quakers, though
+this name is not employed by them in speaking of themselves.
+
+The boy left home early, and between the ages of eight and fifteen he
+was successively a pupil at five Quaker schools in the north of England.
+Here he enjoyed little comfort, and none of the aristocratic seclusion
+in which most statesmen have been reared at Eton and Harrow. He rubbed
+shoulders with boys of various degrees of rank and wealth, and learnt to
+be simple, true, and serious-minded; but he was in no way remarkable at
+this age. We hear little of his recreations, and still less of his
+reading; the school which pleased him most and did him most good was the
+one which he attended last, lying among the moors on the borders of
+Lancashire and Yorkshire. In the river Hodder he learnt to swim; still
+more he learnt to fish, and it was fishing which remained his favourite
+outdoor pastime throughout his life.
+
+When school-days were over--at the age of fifteen--there was no question
+of the University: a rigorous life awaited him and he began at once to
+work in his father's business. The mill stood close beside his father's
+house at Greenbank near Rochdale, some ten miles northward from
+Manchester, and had been built in 1809 by Jacob Bright, out of a capital
+lent to him by two members of the Society of Friends. Here he received
+bales of new cotton by canal or from carriers, span it in his mill, and
+gave out the warp and weft thus manufactured to handloom weavers, whom
+he paid by the piece to weave it in the weaving chamber at the top of
+their own houses. He then sold the fully manufactured article in
+Manchester or elsewhere. In such surroundings, many a clever boy has
+developed into a hard-headed prosperous business man; material interests
+have cased in his soul, and he has been content to limit his thoughts to
+buying and selling, to the affairs of his factory and his town, and he
+has heard no call to other fields of work. But John Bright's education
+in books and in life was only just beginning, and though it may be
+regrettable that he missed the leisured freedom of university life, we
+must own that he really made good the loss by his own effort (and that
+without neglecting the work of the mill), and thereby did much to
+strengthen the independence of his character.
+
+In the mill he was the earliest riser, and often spent hours before
+breakfast at his books. History and poetry were his favourite reading,
+and periodicals dealing with social and political questions; his taste
+was severe and had the happiest effect in chastening his oratorical
+style. To him, as to the earnest Puritans of the seventeenth century,
+the Bible and Milton were a peculiar joy; no other stories were so
+moving, no other music so thrilling to the ear. In his family there was
+no want of good talk. His mother, who died in 1830, was a woman of great
+gifts, who helped largely in developing the minds of her children.
+After her death John continued to live with his sisters, who were clever
+and original in mind, becoming the leader in the home circle, where
+views were freely exchanged on the questions of the day.
+
+The Society of Friends was adverse to political discussion, as
+interfering with the religious life. But the Brights could not be kept
+from such a field of interest; and during these years theirs, like many
+other quiet homes, was stirred by the excitement roused by the fortunes
+of the Reform Bill.
+
+The mill, too, did much to educate him. In the Rochdale factory there
+was no marked separation as at Manchester between rich and poor. Master
+and men lived side by side, knew one another's family history and
+fortunes, and fraternized over their joys and sorrows. Even in those
+days of backward education 'Old Jacob' made himself responsible for the
+schooling of his workmen's children; his son, too, made personal friends
+among those working under him and kept them throughout his life. Outside
+the mill Rochdale offered opportunities which he readily took. In 1833
+he became one of the founders and first president of a debating society,
+and he began early to address Bible meetings and to lecture on
+temperance in his native town, moved by no conscious idea of learning to
+speak in public, but by the simple desire to be useful in good work. In
+such holidays as he took he was eager to travel abroad and to learn more
+of the outside world, and before he started at the age of twenty-four on
+his longest travels (a nine months' journey to Palestine and the eastern
+Mediterranean) he had, by individual effort, fitted himself to hold his
+own with the best students of the universities in width of outlook and
+capacity for mastering a subject. Like them, he had his limitations and
+his prejudices; but however we may admire wide toleration in itself,
+depth and intensity of feeling are often of more value to a man in
+enabling him to influence his fellows.
+
+The year of Queen Victoria's accession may be counted a landmark in the
+life of this great Victorian. Then for the first time he met Richard
+Cobden, who was destined to extend his labours and to share his glory;
+and in the following year he began to co-operate actively in the Free
+Trade cause, attending meetings in the Rochdale district and gradually
+developing his power of speaking. It was about this time that he came to
+know his first wife, Elizabeth Priestman, of the Society of Friends, in
+Newcastle-on-Tyne, a woman of refined nature and rare gifts, whom he was
+to marry in 1839 and to lose in 1841. Then it was that he built the
+house 'One Ash', facing the same common as the house in which he was
+born. Here he lived many years, and here he died in the fullness of
+time, a Lancashire man, content to dwell among his own people, in his
+native town, and to forgo the grandeur of a country house. It was from
+here that he was called in the decisive hour of his life to take part in
+a national work with which his name will ever be associated. At the
+moment when Bright was prostrated with grief at his wife's death Cobden
+appeared on the scene and made his historic appeal. He urged his friend
+to put aside his private grief, to remember the miseries of so many
+other homes, miseries due directly to the Corn Laws, to put his shoulder
+to the wheel, and never to rest till they were repealed.
+
+Cobden had been less happy than Bright in his schooling. His father's
+misfortune led to his spending five years at a Yorkshire school of the
+worst type, and seven more as clerk in the warehouse of an unsympathetic
+uncle. Like Bright, he had early to take the lead in his own family;
+also, like Bright, he had to educate himself; but he had a far harder
+struggle, and the enterprise which he showed in commerce in early
+manhood would have left him the possessor of a vast fortune, had he not
+preferred to devote his energies to public causes. The two men were by
+nature well suited to complement one another. If Cobden was the more
+ingenious in explaining an argument, Bright was more forcible in
+asserting a principle. If Cobden could, above all other men, convince
+the intellects of his hearers, Bright could, as few other speakers,
+kindle their spirits for a fray. His figure on a platform was striking.
+His manly expressive face, with broad brow, straight nose, and square
+chin, was essentially English in type. Though in the course of his
+political career he discarded the distinctive Quaker dress, he never
+discarded the Quaker simplicity. His costume was plain, his style of
+speaking severe, his bearing dignified and restrained. Only when his
+indignation was kindled at injustice was he swept far away from the
+calmness of Quaker tradition.
+
+The Corn Laws were a sequel to the Napoleonic wars and to the insecurity
+of foreign trade which these caused. While war lasted it had inflated
+prices, and brought to English growers of corn a period of extraordinary
+prosperity. When peace came, to escape from a sudden fall in prices, the
+landed proprietors, who formed a majority of the House of Commons, had
+fixed by Act of Parliament the conditions under which corn might be
+imported from abroad. This measure was to perpetuate by law, in time of
+peace, the artificial conditions from which the people had unavoidably
+suffered by the accident of war. The legislators paid no heed to the
+growth of population, which was enormous, or to the distress of the
+working classes, who needed time to adjust themselves to the rapid
+changes in industry. Even the middle classes suffered, and the poor
+could only meet such trouble by 'clemming' or self-starvation. A noble
+duke, speaking in all good faith, advised them to 'try a pinch of curry
+powder in hot water', as making the pangs of hunger less intolerable.
+He met with little thanks for his advice from the sufferers, who
+demanded a radical cure. Parliament as a whole showed few signs of
+wishing to probe the question more deeply, and shut its eyes to the
+evidence of distress, whether shown in peaceful petitions or in
+disorderly riots. Many of the members were personally humane men and
+good landlords; but there were no powerful newspapers to enlighten them,
+and they knew little of the state of the manufacturing districts.
+
+The cause had now found its appropriate champions. We in this day are
+familiar with appeals to the great mass of the people: we know the story
+of Midlothian campaigns and Belfast reviews; we hear the distant thunder
+from Liverpool, Manchester, or Birmingham, when the great men of
+Parliament go down from London to thrill vast audiences in the
+provincial towns. But the agitation of the Anti-Corn-Law League was a
+new thing. It was initiated by men unknown outside the Manchester
+district; few of the thousands to whom it was directed possessed the
+vote; and yet it wrought one of the greatest changes of the nineteenth
+century, a change of which the influence is perhaps not yet spent. In
+this campaign, Cobden and Bright were, without doubt, the leading
+spirits.
+
+The movement filled five years of Bright's life. His hopes and fears
+might alternate--at one moment he was stirred to exultation over
+success, at another to regrets at the break-up of his home life, at
+another to bitter complaints and hatred of the landed interest--but his
+exertions never relaxed. As he was so often absent, the business at
+Rochdale had to be entrusted to his brother. Whenever he could be there,
+Bright was at his home with his little motherless daughter; but his
+efforts on the platform were more and more appreciated each year, and
+the campaign made heavy demands upon him.
+
+At the opening of the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, on the site of the
+'Peterloo' riots, he won a signal triumph. The vast audience was
+enthusiastic: several of them also were discriminating in their praise.
+One lady said that the chief charm of Mr. Bright was in the simplicity
+of his manner, the total absence of anything like showing off; another
+that she should never attend another meeting if he were announced to
+speak, as she could not bear the excitement. Simplicity and profound
+emotion were the secrets of his influence. The London Opera House saw
+similar scenes once a month, from 1843 till the end of the struggle.
+Villages and towns, and all classes of society, were instructed in the
+principles of the League and induced to help forward the cause. Not only
+did the wealthy factory owner, conscious as he was of the loss which the
+high price of food inflicted on the manufacturing interest, contribute
+his thousands; the factory hand too contributed his mite to further the
+welfare of his class. Even farmers were led to take a new view of the
+needs of agriculture, and the country labourer was made to see that his
+advantage lay in the success of the League. It was a farm-hand who put
+the matter in a nutshell at one of the meetings: 'I be protected,' he
+said, 'and I be starving.'
+
+In 1843 Bright joined his leader in Parliament as member for Durham
+city, though his Quaker relatives disapproved of the idea that one of
+their society should so far enter the world and take part in its
+conflicts. In the House of Commons he met with scant popularity but with
+general respect. He was no mob orator of the conventional type. The
+simplicity and good taste of his speeches satisfied the best judges. He
+expressed sentiments hateful to his hearers in such a way that they
+might dislike the speech, but could not despise the speaker. Even when
+he boldly attacked the Game Laws in an assembly of landowners, the House
+listened to him respectfully, and the spokesman of the Government
+thanked him for the tone and temper of his speech, admitting that he had
+made out a strong case. But it was in the country and on the platform
+that the chief efforts of Cobden and Bright were made, and their chief
+successes won.
+
+In 1845 they had an unexpected but most influential ally. Nature herself
+took a hand in the game. From 1842 to 1844 the bad effects of the Corn
+Laws were mitigated by good harvests and by the wise measures of Peel in
+freeing trade from various restrictions. But in 1845 first the corn, and
+then the potato crop, failed calamitously. Peel's conscience had been
+uneasy for years: he had been studying economics, and his conclusions
+did not square with the orthodox Tory creed. So when the Whig leader,
+Lord John Russell, ventured to express himself openly for Free Trade in
+his famous Edinburgh letter of November 28, Peel at last saw some chance
+of converting his party. It has already been told in this book how at
+length he succeeded in his aims, how he broke up his party but saved the
+country, and how in the hour of mingled triumph and defeat he generously
+gave to Cobden the chief credit for success. Whigs and Tories might
+taunt one another with desertion of principles, or might claim that
+their respective leaders collaborated at the end; certainly the question
+would never have been put before the Cabinet or the House of Commons as
+a Government measure but for the untiring efforts of the two Tribunes.
+History can show few greater triumphs of Government by moral suasion and
+the art of speech. Throughout, violence had been eschewed, even though
+men were starving, and appeals had been made solely to the justice and
+expediency of their case. Nothing illustrates better the sincerity and
+disinterestedness of John Bright than his conduct in these last decisive
+months. The tide was flowing with him; the opposition was reduced to a
+shadow. He might have enjoyed the luxury of applause from Radicals,
+Whigs, and the more advanced Tories, and won easy victories over a
+hostile minority. But the cause was now in the safe hands of Peel, whose
+honesty they respected and whose generalship they trusted; so Cobden and
+Bright were content to stand aside and watch. Instead of carping at his
+tardy conversion, Bright wrote in generous praise of Peel's speech: 'I
+never listened', he said, 'to any human being speaking in public with so
+much delight.' His heart was in the cause and not in his own
+advancement. When he did rise to speak, it was to vindicate Peel's
+honour and his statesmanship.
+
+A few months later this honourable alliance came to an abrupt end.
+Bright was forced, by the same incorruptible sense of right and by the
+absence of all respect of persons, to oppose Peel in the crisis of his
+fate. The Government brought in an Irish Coercion Bill, which was
+naturally opposed by the Whigs. The Protectionist Tories saw their
+chance of taking revenge on Peel for repealing the Corn Laws and made
+common cause with their enemies; and from very different motives, Bright
+went into the same lobby. His conscience forbade him to support any
+coercive measure. No Prime Minister could please him as much as Peel;
+but no surrender, no mere evasion of responsibilities was possible in
+the case of a measure of which he disapproved. So firm was the bed-rock
+of principle on which Bright's political conduct was based; and it was
+to this uncompromising sincerity above all that he owed the triumphs of
+his oratory.
+
+His method as an orator is full of interest.[20] In his youth he had
+begun by writing out and learning his speeches in full; but, before he
+quitted Rochdale for a wider theatre, he had discarded this rather
+mechanical method, and trusted more freely to his growing powers. He
+still made careful preparation for his speeches. He tells us how he
+often composed them in bed, as Carlyle's 'rugged Brindley' wrestled in
+bed with the difficulties of his canal-schemes, the silence and the dim
+light favouring the birth of ideas. He prepared words as well as ideas;
+but he only committed to memory enough to be a guide to him in marking
+the order and development of his thoughts, and filled up the original
+outline according to the inspiration of the moment. A few sentences,
+where the balance of words was carefully studied; a few figures of
+speech, where his imagination had taken flight into the realm of poetry;
+a few notable illustrations from history or contemporary politics, with
+details of names and figures,--these would be found among the notes
+which he wrote on detached slips of paper and dropped successively into
+his hat as each milestone was attained. As compared with his illustrious
+rival Gladstone, he was very sparing of gesture, depending partly on
+facial expression, still more on the modulations of his voice, to give
+life to the words which he uttered. His reading had formed his diction,
+his constant speaking had taught him readiness, and his study of great
+questions at close quarters and his meditation on them supplied him with
+the facts and the conclusions which he wished to put forward; but the
+fire which kindled this material to white heat was the passion for great
+principles which glowed in his heart. He himself in 1868, in returning
+thanks for the gift of the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh, quoted with
+obvious sincerity a sentence from his favourite Milton: 'True eloquence
+I find to be none but the serious and hearty love of Truth.'
+
+[Note 20: See G. M. Trevelyan, _Life of John Bright_, pp. 384-5.]
+
+Bright's public life was in the main a tale of devotion to two great
+causes, the Repeal of the Corn Laws, consummated in 1846, and the
+extension of the Franchise, which was not realized till twenty years
+later. But he found time to examine other questions and to utter shrewd
+opinions on the government of India and of Ireland, and to influence
+English sentiment on the Crimean War and the War of Secession in the
+United States. In advance of his time, he wished to develop
+cotton-growing in India and so to prevent the great industry of his own
+district being dependent on America alone. He attacked the existing
+board of directors and preferred immediate control by the Crown; and,
+while wishing to preserve the Viceroy's supremacy over the whole, he
+spoke in favour of admitting Indians to a larger share in the government
+of the various provinces. Many of the best judges of to-day are now
+working towards the same end, but at the time he met with little
+support. It is interesting to find that both on India and on Ireland
+similar views were put forward by men so different as John Bright and
+Benjamin Disraeli. Mr. Trevelyan has preserved the memory of several
+episodes in which they were connected with one another and of attempts
+which Disraeli made to win Bright's support and co-operation. Bright
+could cultivate friendships with politicians of very different schools
+without being induced to deviate by a hair's breadth from the cause
+which his principles dictated, and he could treat his friends, at times,
+with refreshing frankness. When Disraeli warmly admired one of his
+greatest speeches and expressed the wish that he himself could emulate
+it, the outspoken Quaker replied: 'Well, you might have made it, if you
+had been honest.'
+
+It was the young Disraeli who, as early as 1846, had attributed the
+Irish troubles to 'a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and
+an alien church'. It was Bright who never hesitated, when opportunity
+arose, to work for the Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland and for
+the security of Irish tenants in their holdings. A succession of
+measures, carried by Liberals and Conservatives from Gladstone to
+George Wyndham, have made us familiar with the idea of land purchase in
+Ireland; but Bright had been there as early as 1849 and had learnt for
+himself. Though at the end of his life he was a stubborn opponent of
+Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, he had long ago won the gratitude of Ireland
+as no other Englishman of his day, and his name has been preserved there
+in affectionate remembrance.
+
+In 1854, the year of the Crimean War, Bright reached the zenith of his
+oratorical power, and at the same time touched the nadir of his
+popularity. Public opinion was setting strongly against Russia. In
+stemming the tide of war the so-called 'Manchester school' had a
+difficult task, and was severely criticized. The idea of the 'balance of
+power' made little appeal to Bright; and as a Quaker he was reluctant to
+see England interfering in a quarrel which did not seem to concern her.
+The satirists indeed scoffed unfairly at the doctrine of 'Peace at any
+price'; for Bright was content to put aside the principle and to argue
+the case on pure political expediency. But his attacks on the wars of
+the last century were too often couched in an offensive tone with
+personal references to the peerages won in them, and he spoke at times
+too bitterly of the diplomatic profession and especially of our
+ambassador at Constantinople. Nothing shows so clearly the danger of the
+imperfect education which was forced on Bright by necessity, and which
+he had done so much to remedy, as his attitude to foreign and imperial
+politics. In his home he had too readily imbibed the crude notion that
+our Empire existed to provide careers for the needy cadets of
+aristocratic families, and that our foreign policy was inspired by
+self-seeking officials who cared little for moral principles or for the
+lives of their fellow countrymen. A few months spent with Lord Canning
+at Calcutta, or with the Lawrences at Lahore, frequent intercourse with
+men of the calibre of Lord Lyons or Lord Cromer, would have enlightened
+him on the subject and prevented him from uttering the unwarranted
+imputations which he did. Yet in his great parliamentary speeches of
+1854 he rose high above all pettiness and made a deep impression on a
+hostile house. Damaging though his speech of December 22 was to the
+Government, no minister attempted to reply. Palmerston, Russell, and
+Gladstone, with all their power, were unequal to the task. Disraeli told
+Bright that a few more such speeches 'would break up the Government';
+and Delane, the famous editor of _The Times_, wrote that 'Cobden and
+Bright would be our ministers but for their principle of peace at any
+price'.
+
+But Bright was not thinking of office or of breaking up Governments: he
+was thinking of the practical end in view. His next great speech was on
+February 23, 1855, when a faint hope of peace appeared. It was most
+conciliatory in tone, and was a solemn appeal to Palmerston to use his
+influence in ending the war. This was known as 'the Angel of Death'
+speech, from a famous passage which occurs in it. At the end he was
+'overloaded with compliments', but the minister, who was hampered by
+Russian intrigues with Napoleon, seemed deaf to all appeals, and Bright
+again returned to the attack. Till the last days of the war, he
+continued to raise his voice on behalf of peace; but his exertions had
+told on his strength, and for the greater part of two years he had to
+abandon public life and devote himself to recovering his health.
+
+Six years later he was to prove that 'peace at any price' was no fair
+description of his attitude. The Southern States of America seceded on
+the question of State rights and the institution of slavery, and the
+Federal Government declared war on them as rebels. This time it was not
+a war for the balance of power, but one fought to vindicate a moral
+principle, and Bright was strongly in favour of fighting it to a
+finish. For different reasons most of our countrymen favoured the South,
+but he appealed for British sympathy for the other side, on the ground
+that no true Briton could abet slavery. He was the most prominent
+supporter of the North, for long the only prominent one, but he
+gradually made converts and did much to wipe away the reproach which
+attached to the name of Englishmen in America, when the North triumphed
+in the end. The war ended in 1865 with the surrender of General Lee at
+Appomattox, and Bright wrote in his journal, 'This great triumph of the
+Republic is the event of our age'.
+
+But long before 1865 the question of Reform and of the extension of the
+franchise had been revived. Gladstone might speak in favour of the
+principle in 1864; Russell might introduce a Reform Bill in 1866; a year
+later Disraeli might 'dish the Whigs'; and Whig and Tory might wrangle
+over the question who were the friends of the 'working man', but Bright
+had made his position clear to his friends in 1846. He began a popular
+movement in 1849 and for the next fifteen years of his life it was the
+object dearest to his heart. He was not afraid to walk alone. When his
+old fellow worker, Cobden, refused his aid, on the ground that he was
+not convinced of the need for extending the franchise, Bright himself
+assumed the lead and bore the brunt of the battle. Till 1865 his main
+obstacle was Palmerston, who since he took the helm in the worst days of
+the Crimean War and conducted the ship of State into harbour, occupied
+an impregnable position. Palmerston was dear to 'the man in the street',
+shared his prejudices and understood his humours; and nothing could make
+him into a serious Democrat or reformer. Even after Palmerston's death,
+Bright's chief opponent was to be found in the Whig ranks, in Robert
+Lowe, who was a master of parliamentary eloquence and who managed, in
+1866, to wreck Lord John Russell's Reform Bill in the House. But Bright
+had his revenge in the country. Such meetings as ensued in the great
+provincial towns had not been seen for twenty years: the middle class
+and the artisans were fused as in the great Repeal struggle of 1846. At
+Glasgow as many as 150,000 men paraded outside the town, and no hall
+could contain the thousands who wished to hear the great Tribune. He
+claimed that eighty-four per cent. of his countrymen were still excluded
+from the vote, and he bluntly asserted that the existing House of
+Commons did not represent 'the intelligence and the justice of the
+nation, but the prejudices, the privileges, and the selfishness, of a
+class'.
+
+But however blind many of this class might still be to the signs of the
+times, they found an astute leader in Disraeli, who had few principles
+and could trim his sails to any wind. The Tory Reform Bill, which he put
+forward in February 1867, came out a very different Bill in July, after
+discussion in the Cabinet, which led to the resignation of three
+ministers, and after debates in the House of Commons, where it was
+roughly handled. The principle of household suffrage was conceded, and
+another million voters were added to the electorate. Disraeli had made a
+greater change of front than any which he could attribute to Peel, and
+that without conviction, for reasons of party expediency. The real
+triumph belonged to Bright. 'The Bill adopted', he writes, 'is the
+precise franchise I recommended in 1858.' He had not only roused the
+country by his platform speeches, he had carefully watched the Bill in
+all its stages through the House, and gradually transformed it till it
+satisfied the aspirations of the people. He had been content to work
+with Disraeli so long as he could further the cause of Reform; and he
+only quarrelled with that statesman finally when, in 1878, he revived
+the anti-Russian policy of Palmerston.
+
+During this strenuous time his domestic life was happy and tranquil.
+After the death of his first wife he had remained a widower for six
+years, and in 1847 he had married Margaret Leatham, who bore him seven
+children and shared his joys and sorrows in no ordinary measure for
+thirty years. Whenever politics took him away from his Rochdale home, he
+wrote constantly to her, and his letters throw most valuable light on
+his inmost feelings. She died in 1878, and after this his life was
+pitched in a different key. The outer world might suppose that high
+political office was crowning his career, but his enthusiasm and his
+power were ebbing and his physical health failed him more than once. He
+was as affectionate to his children, as friendly to his neighbours, as
+true to his principles; but the old fire was gone.
+
+The outward events of his life from 1867 to 1889 must be passed over
+lightly. Against his own wishes he was persuaded by Gladstone to join
+the Cabinet in 1868 and again in 1880. His name was a tower of strength
+to the Government with the newly-enfranchised electors, but he himself
+had little taste for the routine of office. At Birmingham, for which he
+had sat since 1857, he compared himself to the Shunammite woman who
+refused the offer of advancement at court, and replied to the prophet,
+'I dwell among mine own people'. But events were too strong for him: he
+was drawn first to Westminster to share in the government of the
+country, and then to Osborne to visit the Queen. Both the Queen and he
+were nervous at the prospect, but the interview passed off happily.[21]
+Family affections and sorrows were a bond between them, and he talked to
+her with his usual frankness and simplicity. Even the difficult question
+of costume was settled by a compromise, and the usual gold-braided
+livery was replaced by a sober suit of black. Ministerial work in
+London might have proved irksome to him; but his colleagues in the
+Cabinet were indulgent, and no excessive demands were made upon his
+strength. It was recognized that Bright was no longer in the fighting
+line. In 1870 he was incapacitated by a second long illness, and he had
+little share in the measures carried through Parliament for Irish land
+purchase and national education.
+
+[Note 21: See Fitzmaurice, _Life of Lord Granville_, vol. i, p.
+540.]
+
+His official career was finally closed in 1882, when the bombardment of
+Alexandria seemed to open a new and aggressive chapter in our Eastern
+policy. Bright was true to his old principles and resigned office.
+
+He severed himself still more from the official Liberals in 1886, when
+he refused to follow Gladstone into the Home Rule camp. He disliked the
+methods of Parnell, the obstruction in Parliament, and the campaign of
+lawlessness in Ireland. His own victories had not been won so, and he
+had a great respect for the traditions of the House. He also believed
+that the Home Rule Bill would vitally weaken the unity of the realm. But
+no personal bitterness entered into his relations with his old
+colleagues: he did not attack Gladstone, as he had attacked Palmerston
+in 1855. From his death-bed he sent a cordial message to his old chief,
+and received an answer full of high courtesy and affection.
+
+His illness lasted several months. From the autumn of 1888 he lay at One
+Ash, weak but not suffering acutely; and on March 27, 1889, he quietly
+passed away. His old friend Cobden had preceded him more than twenty
+years, having died in 1865, and had been buried at his birthplace in
+Sussex, where he had made himself a peaceful home in later life. Bright
+proved himself equally faithful to the home of his earliest years. He
+was laid to rest in the small burying-ground in front of the Friends'
+meeting-house where he had worshipped as a child. In his long career he
+had served noble causes, and scaled the heights of fame, and the crowds
+at his funeral testified to the love which his neighbours bore him. He
+had never willingly been absent for long from his native town. His life,
+compared with that of Disraeli or Gladstone, seems almost bleak in its
+simplicity, varied as it was by so few excursions into other fields. But
+two strong passions enriched it with warmth and glow, his family
+affections and his zeal for the common good. These filled his heart, and
+he was content that it should be so.
+
+    Type of the wise who soar but never roam,
+    True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home.
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS
+
+From the painting by Daniel Maclise in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES DICKENS
+
+1812-1870
+
+1812. Born at Landport, Portsmouth, February 7.
+1816. Parents move to Chatham; 1821, to London.
+1822. Father bankrupt and in prison. Charles in blacking warehouse.
+1827. Charles enters lawyer's office.
+1831. Reporters' Gallery in Parliament.
+1836. Marries Catherine Hogarth. Publishes _Sketches by Boz_.
+1837. _Pickwick Papers._ 1838. _Nicholas Nickleby._
+1842. First American journey. 1843. _Martin Chuzzlewit._
+1844-5. Eleven months' residence in Italy, chiefly at Genoa.
+1846. Editor of _Daily News_ for a few weeks.
+1846-7. Six months at Lausanne; three months at Paris. _Dombey and Son._
+1849-50. _David Copperfield._
+1850. Editor of weekly periodical, _Household Words_.
+1851-2. Manager of theatrical performances. 1852. _Bleak House._
+1853. Italian tour: Rome, Naples, and Venice.
+1856. Purchase of Gadshill House, near Rochester.
+1858. Beginning of public readings.
+1859. _Tale of Two Cities_ appears in _All the Year Round_.
+1860. Gadshill becomes his home instead of London.
+1867. Second American journey. Public readings in America.
+1869. April, collapse at Chester. Readings stopped.
+1870. Dies at Gadshill, June 9.
+
+CHARLES DICKENS
+
+NOVELIST AND SOCIAL REFORMER
+
+
+In these days when critics so often repeat the cry of 'art for art's
+sake' and denounce Ruskin for bringing moral canons into his judgements
+of pictures or buildings, it is dangerous to couple these two titles
+together, and to label Dickens as anything but a novelist pure and
+simple. And indeed, all would admit that the creator of Sam Weller and
+Sarah Gamp will live when the crusade against 'Bumbledom' and its
+abuses is forgotten and the need for such a crusade seems incredible.
+But when so many recent critics have done justice to his gifts as a
+creative artist, this aspect of his work runs no danger of being
+forgotten. Moreover, when we are considering Dickens as a Victorian
+worthy and as a representative man of his age, it is desirable to bring
+out those qualities which he shared with so many of his great
+contemporaries. Above all, we must remember that Dickens himself would
+be the last man to be ashamed of having written 'with a purpose', or to
+think that the fact should be concealed as a blemish in his art. There
+was nothing in which he felt more genuine pride than in the thought that
+his talents thus employed had brought public opinion to realize the need
+for many practical reforms in our social condition. If these old abuses
+have mostly passed away, we may be thankful indeed; but we cannot feel
+sure that in the future fresh abuses will not arise with which the
+example of Dickens may inspire others to wage war. His was a strenuous
+life; he never spared himself nor stinted his efforts in any cause for
+which he was fighting; and if he did not win complete victory in his
+lifetime, he created the spirit in which victory was to be won.
+
+Charles Dickens was born in 1812, the second child of a large family,
+his father being at the time a Navy clerk employed at Portsmouth. Of his
+birthplace in Commercial Road Portsmouth is justifiably proud; but we
+must think of him rather as a Kentishman and a Londoner, since he never
+lived in Hampshire after his fourth year. The earliest years which left
+a distinct impress on his mind were those passed at Chatham, to which
+his father moved in 1816. This town and its neighbouring cathedral city
+of Rochester, with their narrow old streets, their riverside and
+dockyard, took firm hold of his memory and imagination. To-day no places
+speak more intimately of him to the readers of his books. Here he passed
+five years of happy childhood till his father's work took the family to
+London and his father's improvidence plunged them into misfortune.
+
+For those who know Wilkins Micawber it is needless to describe the
+failings of Mr. Dickens; for others we may be content to say that he was
+kindhearted, sanguine and improvident, quite incapable of the steady
+industry needed to support a growing family. When his debts overwhelmed
+him and he was carried off to the Marshalsea prison, Charles was only
+ten years old, but already he took the lead in the house. On him fell
+the duty of pacifying creditors at the door, and of making visits to the
+pawn-broker to meet the daily needs of the household. His initiation
+into life was a hard one and it began cruelly soon. If he was active and
+enterprising beyond his years, with his nervous high-strung temperament
+he was capable of suffering acutely; and this capacity was now to be
+sorely tried. For a year or more of his life this proud sensitive child
+had to spend long hours in the cellars of a warehouse, with rough
+uneducated companions, occupied in pasting labels on pots of
+boot-blacking. This situation was all that the influence of his family
+could procure for him; and into this he was thrust at the age of ten
+with no ray of hope, no expectation of release. His shiftless parents
+seemed to acquiesce in this drudgery as an opening for their cleverest
+son; and instead of their helping and comforting him in his sorrow, it
+was he who gave his Sundays to visiting them in prison and to offering
+them such consolation as he could. The iron burnt deep into his soul.
+Long after, in fact till the day when the district was rebuilt and
+changed out of knowledge, he owned that he could not bear to revisit the
+scene; so painful were his recollections, so vivid his sense of
+degradation. Twenty-five years later he narrated the facts to his friend
+and biographer John Forster in a private conversation; and he only
+recurred to the subject once more when under the disguise of a novel he
+told the story of the childhood of David Copperfield. By shifting the
+horror from the realm of fact to that of fiction, perhaps he lifted the
+weight of it from the secret recesses of his heart.
+
+When his father's debts were relieved, the child regained his freedom
+from servitude, but even then his schooling was desultory and
+ineffective. Well might the elder Dickens, in a burst of candour, say to
+a stranger who asked him about his son's education, 'Why indeed, sir,
+ha! ha! he may be said to have educated himself.'
+
+At the age of fifteen Charles embarked again on his career as a
+wage-earner. At first he was taken into a lawyer's office, where he
+filled a position somewhat between that of office-boy and clerk, and two
+years later he was qualifying himself by the study of shorthand for the
+profession of a parliamentary reporter, which his father was then
+following. He entered 'the Gallery' in 1831, first representing the
+_True Sun_ and later the well-known _Morning Chronicle_; and at
+intervals he enlarged his experiences by journeys into the provinces to
+report political meetings. Thus it was that he familiarized himself with
+the mail coaches, the wayside hostelries, and the rich variety of types
+that were to be found there; with London in most of its phases he was
+already at home. So, when in 1834 he made his first attempts at writing
+in periodical literature, although he was only twenty-two years old, he
+had a wealth of first-hand experiences quite outside the range of the
+man who is just finishing his leisurely passage through a public school
+and university: of schools and offices, of parliaments and prisons, of
+the street and of the high road, he had been a diligent and observant
+critic; for many years he had practised the maxim of Pope: 'The proper
+study of mankind is Man.'
+
+Friends sprang up wherever he went. His open face, his sparkling eye,
+his humorous tongue, his ready sympathy, were a passport to the
+goodwill of those whom he met; few could resist the appeal. Many readers
+will be familiar with the early portrait by Maclise; but his friends
+tell us how little that did justice to the lively play of feature, 'the
+spirited air and carriage' which were indescribable. On the top of a
+mail coach, on a fresh morning, they must have won the favour of his
+fellow travellers more easily than Alfred Jingle won the hearts of the
+Pickwickians. And beneath the radiant cheerfulness of his manner, the
+quick flash of observation and of speech, there was in him an element of
+hard persistence and determination which would carry him far. If the
+years of poverty and neglect had failed to chill his hopes and break his
+spirit, there was no fear that he would tire in the pursuit of his
+ambition when fortune began to smile upon him. He had touched life on
+many sides. He had kept his warmth of sympathy, his buoyancy, his
+capacity for rising superior to ill-fortune; and the years of adversity
+had only deepened his feeling for all that were oppressed. He had much
+to learn about the craft of letters; but he already had the first
+essential of an author--he had something to say.
+
+The year 1836 is a definite landmark in the life of Dickens. In this
+year he married; in this year he gave up the practice of parliamentary
+reporting, published the _Sketches by Boz_, and began the writing of
+_The Pickwick Papers_. This immortal work achieved wide popularity at
+once. Criticism cannot hope to do justice to the greatness of Sam
+Weller, to the humours of Dingley Dell and Eatanswill, to the adventures
+of the hero in back gardens or in prison, on coaches or in wheelbarrows.
+Every one must read them in the original for himself. In this book
+Dickens reached at once the height of his success in making his fellow
+countrymen laugh with him at their own foibles. If in the art of
+constructing a story, in the depiction of character, in deepening the
+interest by the alternation of happiness and misfortune, he was to go
+far beyond his initial triumph,--still with many Dickensians, who love
+him chiefly for his liveliness of observation and broad humour, Pickwick
+remains the prime favourite.
+
+The effect of this success on the fortunes of the author was immediate
+and lasting. Henceforth he could live in a comfortable house and look
+forward to a family life in which his children should be free from all
+risk of repeating his own experience. He could afford himself the
+pleasures and the society which he needed, and he became the centre of a
+circle of friends who appreciated his talents and encouraged him in his
+career. His relations with his publishers, though not without incident,
+were generally of the most cordial kind. If Dickens had the
+self-confidence to estimate his own powers highly, and the shrewd
+instinct to know when he was getting less than his fair share in a
+bargain, yet in a difference of opinion he was capable of seeing the
+other side, and he was loyal in the observance of all agreements.
+
+The five years which followed were so crowded with various activities
+that it is difficult to date the events exactly, especially when he was
+producing novels in monthly or weekly numbers. Generally he had more
+than one story on the stocks. Thus in 1837, before _Pickwick_ was
+finished, _Oliver Twist_ was begun, and it was not itself complete
+before the earlier numbers of _Nicholas Nickleby_ were appearing. In the
+same way _The Old Curiosity Shop_ and _Barnaby Rudge_, which may be
+dated 1840 and 1841, overlapped one another in the planning of the
+stories, if not in the execution of the weekly parts. There is no period
+of Dickens's life which enables us better to observe his intense mental
+activity, and at the same time the variety of his creations. Here we
+have the luxuriant humour of Mrs. Nickleby and the Crummles family side
+by side with the tragedy of Bill Sikes and the pathos of Little Nell.
+Here also we can see the gradual development of constructive power in
+the handling of the story. But for our purpose it is more significant to
+notice that we here find Dickens's pen enlisted in the service of the
+noblest cause for which he fought, the redemption from misery and
+slavery of the children of his native land. Lord Shaftesbury's life has
+told us what their sufferings were and how the machinery of Government
+was slowly forced to do its part; and Dickens would be the last to
+detract from the fame of that great philanthropist, whose efforts on
+many occasions he supported and praised. But there were wide circles
+which no philanthropist could reach, hearts which no arguments or
+statistics could rouse; men and women who attended no meetings and read
+no pamphlets but who eagerly devoured anything that was written by the
+author of _The Pickwick Papers_. To them Smike and Little Nell made a
+personal and irresistible appeal; they could not remain insensible to
+the cruelty of Dotheboys Hall and to the depravity of Fagin's school;
+and if these books did not themselves recruit active workers to improve
+the conditions of child life, at least society became permeated with a
+temper which was favourable to the efforts of the reformers.
+
+As far back as the days of his childhood at Rochester Dickens had been
+indignant at what he had casually heard of the Yorkshire schools; and
+his year of drudgery in London had made him realize, in other cases
+beside his own, the degradation that followed from the neglect of
+children. On undertaking to handle this subject in _Nicholas Nickleby_,
+he journeyed to Yorkshire to gather evidence at first hand for his
+picture of Dotheboys Hall. And for many years afterwards he continued to
+correspond with active workers on the subject of Ragged Schools and on
+the means of uplifting children out of the conditions which were so
+fruitful a source of crime. He discovered for himself how easily
+miscreants like Fagin could find recruits in the slums of London, and
+how impossible it was to bring up aright boys who were bred in these
+neglected homes. Even where efforts had been begun, the machinery was
+quite inadequate, the teachers few, the schoolrooms cheerless and
+ill-equipped. Mr. Crotch[22] has preserved a letter of 1843 in which
+Dickens makes the practical offer of providing funds for a washing-place
+in one school where the children seemed to be suffering from inattention
+to the elementary needs. His heart warmed towards individual cases and
+he faced them in practical fashion; he was not one of those reformers
+who utter benevolent sentiments on the platform and go no further.
+
+[Note 22: _Charles Dickens, Social Reformer_, by W. W. Crotch
+(Chapman & Hall, 1913), p. 53.]
+
+Critics have had much to say about Dickens's treatment of child
+characters in his novels; the words 'sentimental' and 'mawkish' have
+been hurled at scenes like the death of Paul Dombey and Little Nell and
+at the more lurid episodes in _Oliver Twist_. But Dickens was a pioneer
+in his treatment of children in fiction; and if he did smite resounding
+blows which jar upon critical ears, at least he opened a rich vein of
+literature where many have followed him. He wrote not for the critics
+but for the great popular audience whom he had created, comprising all
+ages and classes, and world-wide in extent. The best answer to such
+criticism is to be found in the poem which Bret Harte dedicated to his
+memory in 1870, which beautifully describes how the pathos of his
+child-heroine could move the hearts of rough working men far away in the
+Sierras of the West. Nor did this same character of Little Nell fail to
+win special praise from literary critics so fastidious as Landor and
+Francis Jeffrey.
+
+In 1842 he embarked on his first voyage to America. Till then he had
+travelled little outside his native land, and this expedition was
+definitely intended to bear fruit. Before starting he made a bargain
+with his publishers to produce a book on his return. The _American
+Notes_ thus published, dealing largely with institutions and with the
+notable 'sights' of the country, have not retained a prominent place
+among his works; with _Martin Chuzzlewit_ and its picture of American
+manners it is different. This stands alone among his writings in having
+left a permanent heritage of ill-will. Reasons in abundance can be found
+for the bitterness caused. He portrayed the conceit, the self-interest,
+the disregard for the feelings of others which the less-educated
+American showed to foreigners in a visible and often offensive guise;
+and the portraits were so life-like that no arrow fails to hit the mark.
+The American people were young; they had made great strides in material
+prosperity, they had not been taught to submit to the lash by satirists
+like Swift or more kindly mentors like Addison. Their own Oliver Wendell
+Holmes had not yet begun to chastise them with gentle irony. So they
+were aghast at Dickens's audacity, and indignant at what seemed an
+outrage on their hospitality, and few stopped to ask what elements of
+truth were to be found in the offending book. No doubt it was one-sided
+and unfair; Dickens, like most tourists, had been confronted by the
+louder and more aggressive members of the community and had not time to
+judge the whole. In large measure he recanted in subsequent writings;
+and on his second visit the more generous Americans showed how little
+rancour they bore. But the portraits of Jefferson Brick and Elijah
+Pogram will live; with Pecksniff, 'Sairey' Gamp, and other immortals
+they bear the hall-mark of Dickens's creative genius.
+
+To America he did not go again for twenty-five years; but, as he grew
+older, he seemed to feel increasing need for change and variety in his
+mode of life. In 1844 he went for nearly twelve months to Italy, making
+his head-quarters at Genoa; and in 1846 he repeated the experiment at
+Lausanne on the lake of Geneva. Later, between 1853 and 1856, he spent a
+large part of three summers in a villa near Boulogne. Though he desired
+the change for reasons connected with his work, and though in each case
+he formed friendly connexions with his neighbours, it cannot be said
+that his books show the influence of either country. His genius was
+British to the core and he remained an Englishman wherever he went. He
+complained when abroad that he missed the stimulus of London, where the
+lighted streets, through which he walked at night, caused his
+imagination to work with intensified force. But even in Genoa he proved
+capable of writing _The Chimes_, which is as markedly English in temper
+as anything which he wrote.
+
+The same spirit of restlessness comes out in his ventures into other
+fields of activity at home. At one time he assumed the editorship of a
+London newspaper; but a few weeks showed that he was incapable of
+editorial drudgery and he resigned. His taste for acting played a larger
+part in his life; and in 1851 and other years he put an enormous amount
+of energy into organizing public theatrical performances with his
+friends in London. He always loved the theatre. Macready was one of his
+innermost circle, and he had other friends on the stage. Indeed there
+were moments in his life when it seemed that the genius of the novelist
+might be lost to the world, which would have found but a sorry
+equivalent in one more actor of talent on the stage, however brilliant
+that talent was. But the main current of his life went on in London with
+diligent application to the book or books in hand; or at Broadstairs,
+where Dickens made holiday in true English fashion with his children by
+the sea.
+
+In the years following the American voyage the chief landmarks were the
+production of _Dombey and Son_ (begun in 1846) and _David Copperfield_
+(begun in 1849). From many points of view they may be regarded as his
+masterpieces, where his art is best seen in depicting character and
+constructing a story, though the infectious gaiety of the earlier novels
+may at times be missed. Dickens's insight into human nature had ripened,
+and he had learnt to group his lesser figures and episodes more
+skilfully round the central plot. And _David Copperfield_ has the
+peculiar interest which attaches to those works where we seem to read
+the story of the author's own life. Evidently we have memories here of
+his childhood, of his school-days and his apprenticeship to work, and of
+the first gleams of success which met him in life. It is generally
+assumed that the book throws light on his own family relations; but it
+would be rash to argue confidently about this, as the inventive impulse
+was so strong in him. At least we may say that it is the book most
+necessary for a student who wishes to understand Dickens himself and his
+outlook on the world.
+
+Also _David Copperfield_ may be regarded as the central point and the
+culmination of Dickens's career as a novelist. Before it, and again
+after it, he had a spell of about fifteen years' steady work at novel
+writing, and no one would question that the first spell was productive
+of the better work. _Bleak House_, _Hard Times_, _Little Dorrit_, _Our
+Mutual Friend_ all show evidence of greater effort and are less happy in
+their effect. No man could live the life that Dickens had lived for
+fifteen years and not show some signs of exhaustion; the wonder is that
+his creative power continued at all. He was capable of brilliant
+successes yet. _The Tale of Two Cities_ is among the most thrilling of
+his stories, while _Edwin Drood_ and parts of _Great Expectations_ show
+as fine imagination and character drawing as anything which he wrote
+before 1850; but there is no injustice in drawing a broad distinction
+between the two parts of his career.
+
+His home during the most fertile period of his activity was in
+Devonshire Terrace, near Regent's Park, a house with a garden of
+considerable size. Here he was within reach of his best friends, who
+were drawn from all the liberal professions represented in London. First
+among them stands John Forster, lawyer, journalist, and author, his
+adviser and subsequently his biographer, the friend of Robert Browning,
+a man with a genius for friendship, unselfish, loyal, discreet and wise
+in counsel. Next came the artists Maclise and Clarkson Stanfield, the
+actor Macready, Talfourd, lawyer and poet, Douglas Jerrold and Mark
+Lemon, the two famous contributors to _Punch_, and some fellow
+novelists, of whom Harrison Ainsworth was conspicuous in the earlier
+group and Wilkie Collins in later years. Less frequent visitors were
+Carlyle, Thackeray, and Bulwer Lytton, but they too were proud to
+welcome Dickens among their friends. With some of these he would walk,
+ride, or dine, go to the theatre or travel in the provinces and in
+foreign countries. His biographer loves to recall the Dickens Dinners,
+organized to celebrate the issue of a new book, when songs and speeches
+were added to good cheer and when 'we all in the greatest good-humour
+glorified each other'. Dickens always retained the English taste for a
+good dinner and was frankly fond of applause, and there was no element
+of exclusive priggishness about the cordial admiration which these
+friends felt for one another and their peculiar enthusiasm for Dickens
+and his books. Around him the enthusiasm gathered, and few men have
+better deserved it.
+
+When he was writing he needed quiet and worked with complete
+concentration; and when he had earned some leisure he loved to spend it
+in violent physical exercise. He would suddenly call on Forster to come
+out for a long ride on horseback to occupy the middle of the day; and
+his diligent friend, unable to resist the lure of such company, would
+throw his own work to the winds and come. Till near the end of his life
+Dickens clung to these habits, thinking nothing of a walk of from twenty
+to thirty miles; and there seems reason to believe that by constant
+over-exertion he sapped his strength and shortened his life. But
+lameness in one foot, the result of an illness early in 1865,
+handicapped him severely at times; and in the same year he sustained a
+rude shock in a railway accident where his nerves were upset by what he
+witnessed in helping the injured. He ought to have acquired the wisdom
+of the middle-aged man, and to have taken things more easily, but with
+him it was impossible to be doing nothing; physical and mental activity
+succeeded one another and often went together with a high state of
+nervous tension.
+
+This love of excitement sometimes took forms which modern taste would
+call excessive and unwholesome. His attendance at the public execution
+of the Mannings in 1849, his going so often to the Morgue in Paris, his
+visit to America to 'the exact site where Professor Webster did that
+amazing murder', may seem legitimate for one who had to study crime
+among the other departments of life; but at times he revels in gruesome
+details in a way which jars on our feeling, and betrays too theatrical a
+love of sensation. However, no one could say that Dickens is generally
+morbid, in view of the sound and hearty appreciation which he had for
+all that is wholesome and genial in life.
+
+In many ways the latter part of his life shows a less even tenor, a less
+steady development. Though he was so domestic in his tastes and devoted
+to his children, his relations with his wife became more and more
+difficult owing to incompatibility of temperament; and from 1858 they
+found it desirable to live apart. This no doubt added to his
+restlessness and the craving for excitement, which showed itself in the
+ardour with which he took up the idea of public readings. These readings
+are only less famous than his writings, so prodigious was their success.
+His great dramatic gifts, enlisted in the service of his own creations,
+made an irresistible appeal to the public, and till the day of his
+collapse, ten years later, their popularity showed no sign of waning.
+The amount of money which he earned thereby was amazing; the American
+tour alone gave him a net profit of L20,000; and he expected to make as
+much more in two seasons in England. But he paid dearly for these
+triumphs, being often in trouble with his voice, suffering from fits of
+sleeplessness, aggravating the pain in his foot, and affecting his
+heart. In spite, then, of the success of the readings, his faithful
+friends like Forster would gladly have seen him abandon a practice which
+could add little to his future fame, while it threatened to shorten his
+life. But, however arduous the task which he set himself, when the
+moment came Dickens could brace himself to meet the demands and satisfy
+the high expectations of his audience. His nerves seemed to harden, his
+voice to gain strength; his spirit flashed out undimmed, and he won
+triumph after triumph, in quiet cathedral cities, in great industrial
+towns, in the more fatiguing climate of America and before the huge
+audiences of Philadelphia and New York. He began his programme with a
+few chosen pieces from _Pickwick_ and the Christmas Books, and with
+selected characters like Paul Dombey and Mrs. Gamp; he added Dotheboys
+Hall and the story of David Copperfield in brief; in his last series,
+against the advice of Forster, he worked up the more sensational
+passages from _Oliver Twist_. His object, he says, was 'to leave behind
+me the recollection of something very passionate and dramatic, done with
+simple means, if the act would justify the theme'. It was because the
+art of reading was unduly strained that Forster protested, and his
+judgement is confirmed by Dickens's boast (perhaps humorously
+exaggerated) that 'at Clifton we had a contagion of fainting, and yet
+the place was not hot--a dozen to twenty ladies taken out stiff and
+rigid at various times'. The physical effects of this fresh strain soon
+appeared. After a month his doctor ordered him to cease reading; and,
+though he resumed it after a few days' rest, in April 1869 he had a
+worse attack of giddiness and was obliged to abandon it permanently. The
+history of these readings illustrates the character of Dickens perhaps
+better than any other episode in his later life.
+
+But the same restless energy is visible even in his life at Gadshill,
+which was his home from 1860 to 1870. The house lies on the London road
+a few miles west of Rochester, and can easily be seen to-day, almost
+unaltered, by the passer-by. It had caught his fancy in his childhood
+before the age of ten when he was walking with his father, and his
+father had promised that, if he would only work hard enough, he might
+one day live in it. The associations of the place with the Falstaff
+scenes in _Henry IV_ had also endeared it to him; and so, when in 1855
+he heard that it was for sale, he jumped at the opportunity. For some
+years after purchasing it he let it to tenants, but from 1860 he made it
+his permanent abode. It has no architectural features to charm the eye;
+with its many changes and additions made for comfort, its bow-windows
+and the plantations in the garden, it is a typical Victorian home. Here
+Dickens could live at ease, surrounded by his children, his dogs, his
+books, his souvenirs of his friends, and the Kentish scenery which he
+loved. To the north lay the flat marshlands of the lower Thames, to the
+south and west lay rolling hills crowned with woodlands, with hop
+gardens on the lower slopes; to the east lay the valley of the Medway
+with the quaint old streets of Rochester and the bustling dockyard of
+Chatham. All that makes the familiar beauty and richness of English
+landscape was here, above all the charm of associations. So many names
+preserved memories of his books. To Rochester the Pickwickians had
+driven on their first search for knowledge; to Cobham Mr. Winkle had
+fled, and at the 'Leather Bottle' his friends had found him; in the
+marshlands Joe Gargery and Pip had watched for the escaped convict; in
+the old gateway by the cathedral Jasper had entertained Edwin Drood on
+the eve of his disappearance; along that very high-road over which
+Dickens's windows looked the child David Copperfield had tramped in his
+journey from London to Dover.
+
+Meanwhile, though his creative vein may have been less fertile than of
+old, his efforts for the good of his fellow men were no less continuous
+and sincere. His first books had aimed at killing by ridicule certain
+social institutions which had sunk into abuses. The pictures of
+parliamentary elections, of schools, of workhouses, had not only created
+a hearty laugh, but they had disposed the public to listen to the
+reformers and to realize the need for reform. As he grew older he went
+deeper into the evil, and he also blended his reforming purpose better
+with his story. The characters of Mr. Dombey and the Chuzzlewits are not
+mere incidents in the tale, nor are they monstrosities which call forth
+immediate astonishment and horror. But in each case the ingrained
+selfishness which spreads misery through a family is the very mainspring
+of the story; and the dramatic power by which Dickens makes it reveal
+itself in action has something Shakespearian in it. Here there is still
+a balance between the different elements, the human interest and the
+moral lesson, and as works of art they are on a higher plane than _Hard
+Times_, where the purpose is too clearly shown. Still if we wish to
+understand this side of Dickens's work, it is just such a book as _Hard
+Times_ that we must study.
+
+It deals with the relation of classes to one another in an industrial
+district, and especially with the faults of the class that rose to power
+with the development of manufacturing. Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby,
+the well-meaning pedant and the offensive parvenu, preach the same
+gospel. Political economy, as they understand it, is to rule life, and
+this dismal science is not concerned with human well-being and
+happiness, but only with the profit and loss on commercial undertakings.
+Hard facts then are to be the staple of education; memory and accurate
+calculation are to be cultivated; the imagination is to be driven out.
+In depicting the manner of this education Dickens rather overshoots the
+mark. The visit of Mr. Gradgrind to Mr. M'Choakumchild's school (when
+the sharp-witted Bitzer defines the horse according to the scientific
+handbook, while poor Cissy, who has only an affection for horses,
+indulges in fancies and collapses in disgrace) is too evident a
+caricature. But the effects of this kind of teaching are painted with a
+powerful hand, and we see the faculty for joy blighted almost in the
+cradle. And the lesson is enforced not only by the working man and his
+family but by Gradgrind's own daughter, who pitilessly convicts her
+father of having stifled every generous impulse in her and of having
+sacrificed her on the altar of fancied self-interest.
+
+Side by side with the dismal Mr. Gradgrind is the poor master of the
+strolling circus, Mr. Sleary, with his truer philosophy of life. He can
+see the real need that men have for amusement and for brightness in
+their lives; and, though he lives under the shadow of bankruptcy, he can
+hold his head up and preach the gospel of happiness. This was a cause
+which never failed to win the enthusiastic advocacy of Dickens. He
+fought, as men still have to fight to-day, against those Pharisees who
+prescribe for the working classes how they should spend their weekly day
+of freedom; he supported the opening on Sunday of parks, museums, and
+galleries; whole-heartedly he loved the theatre and the circus, and he
+wished as many as possible to share those delights. In defiance of 'Mrs.
+Grundy' he ventured to maintain that the words 'music-hall' and
+'public-house', rightly understood, should be held in honour. It is one
+thing to hate drunkenness and indecency; it is quite another to assume
+that these must be found in the poor man's place of recreation, and this
+roused him to anger. To him 'public-house' meant a place of fellowship,
+and 'music-hall' a place of song and mirth; and if some critics complain
+of an excess of material good-cheer in his picture of life, Dickens is
+certainly here in sympathy with the bulk of his fellow-countrymen.
+
+Another cause in which Dickens was always ready to lead a crusade was
+the amendment of the Poor Law. This will remind us of the early days of
+Oliver Twist, of such a friendless outcast as Jo in _Bleak House_, of
+the struggle of Betty Higden in _Our Mutual Friend_ and her
+determination never to be given up to 'the Parish'. But, even more than
+the famous novels, the casual writings of Dickens in his own magazines
+and elsewhere throw light on his activities in this cause and on the
+researches which he made into the working of the system. Mr. Crotch
+describes visits which he paid to the workhouses in Wapping and
+Whitechapel, quoting his comments on the 'Foul Ward' in one, on the old
+men's ward in the other, and on the torpor of despair which settled down
+on these poor wrecks of humanity. Could such a system, he asked himself,
+be wise which robbed men not of liberty alone but of all hope for the
+future, which left them no single point of interest except the
+statistics of their fellows who had gone before them and who had been
+finally liberated by death? A still more striking passage, just because
+Dickens here shows unusual restraint and moderation in his language,
+tells us of the five women whom he saw sleeping all night outside the
+workhouse through no fault of any official, but simply because there was
+no room for them inside and because society had nothing to offer, no
+form of 'relief' which could touch these unfortunates. Many will be
+familiar with passages in Ruskin, where he denounces similar tragedies
+due to our inhuman disregard of what is happening at our doors.
+
+Though the most valuable part of his work was the effective appeal to
+the hearts of his brother men, Dickens had the practical wisdom to
+suggest definite remedies in some cases. He saw that the districts in
+the East End of London, even with a heavy poor rate, failed to supply
+adequate relief for their waifs and strays, while the wealthy
+inhabitants of the West End, having few paupers, paid on their riches a
+rate that was negligible, and he boldly suggested the equalization of
+rates. All London should jointly share the burden of maintaining those
+for whose welfare they were responsible and should pay shares
+proportioned to their wealth. This wise reform was not carried into
+effect till some thirty or forty years later; but the principle is now
+generally accepted. Though in this case, as in his famous attack on the
+Court of Chancery in _Bleak House_, Dickens failed in obtaining any
+immediate effect, it is unquestionable that he influenced the minds of
+thousands and changed the temper in which they looked at the problem of
+the poor. In this nothing that he wrote was more powerful than the
+series of Christmas Books, in which his imagination, with the power of a
+Rembrandt, threw on to a smaller canvas the lights and shades of London
+life, the grim background of mean streets, and the cheerful virtues
+which throw a glamour over their humble homes. His advocacy of these
+social causes came to be known far and wide and contributed a second
+element to the popularity won by his novels; long before his death
+Dickens stood on a pinnacle alone, loved by the vast reading public
+among those who toil in our towns and villages, and wherever English is
+read and understood. He was not only their entertainer, but their friend
+and brother; he had been through his days of sorrow and suffering and he
+had kept that vast fund of cheerfulness which overflowed into his books
+and gladdened the lives of so many thousands. When he died in 1870 after
+a year of intermittent illness, following on his breakdown over the
+public readings, there was naturally a widespread desire that he should
+be buried in Westminster Abbey, as a great Englishman and a true
+representative of his age. During life he had expressed his desire for a
+private funeral, unheralded in the press, and he had thought of two or
+three quiet churches in the neighbourhood of Rochester and Gadshill.
+These particular graveyards were found to be already closed, and the
+family consented to a compromise by which their father should be buried
+in the Abbey at an early hour when no strangers would be aware of it.
+After his body was laid to rest, the people were admitted to pay their
+homage; the universality and the sincerity of their feelings was shown
+in a wonderful way. Among men of letters he had reigned in the hearts of
+the people, as Queen Victoria reigned among our sovereigns. In the
+annals of her reign his name will outlive those of soldiers, of
+prelates, and of politicians.
+
+The causes for which he fought have not all been won yet. Officialdom
+still dawdles over the work of the State, hearts are still broken by the
+law's delays, the path of crime still lies too easily open to the young.
+Vast progress has been made; a humane spirit is to be found in the
+working of our Government, and a truer knowledge of social problems is
+spreading among all classes. But the world cannot afford to relegate
+Charles Dickens to oblivion, and shows no desire to do so; his books are
+and will be a wellspring of cheerfulness, of faith in human nature, and
+of true Christian charity from which all will do well to drink.
+
+
+
+
+ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+1809-92
+
+1809. Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, August 6.
+1816-20. At school at Louth.
+1820-7. Educated at home.
+1827. _Poems by Two Brothers_, Charles and Alfred.
+1828-31. Trinity College, Cambridge.
+1830-2. Early volumes of poetry published.
+1833. Death of Arthur Hallam at Vienna.
+1837. High Beech, Essex.
+1840. Tunbridge Wells.
+1842. Collected poems, including 'Morte d'Arthur' and 'English Idyls'.
+1846. Cheltenham.
+1847. _The Princess_.
+1850. _In Memoriam_, printed and given to friends before March; published
+      June. Marriage, June. Poet Laureate, November.
+1852. 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.'
+1853. Becomes tenant--1856, owner--of Farringford, Isle of Wight.
+1855. _Maud_.
+1859. First four 'Idylls of the King' published.
+1864. _Enoch Arden_.
+1869. Second home at Aldworth, near Haslemere.
+1875-84. _Plays_ (1875 'Queen Mary', 1876 'Harold', 1884 'Becket').
+1880. _Ballads and other Poems_ ('The Revenge', &c.).
+1884. Created a Peer of the realm.
+1892. October 6, death at Aldworth. October 12, funeral at
+      Westminster Abbey.
+
+TENNYSON
+
+POET
+
+
+The Victorians, as a whole, were a generation of fighters. They battled
+against Nature's forces, subduing floods and mountain barriers,
+pestilence and the worst extremes of heat and cold; they also went forth
+into the market-place and battled with their fellow men for laws, for
+tariffs, for empire. Their triumphs, like those of the Romans, are
+mostly to be seen in the practical sphere. But there were others of that
+day who chose the contemplative life of the recluse, and who yet, by
+high imaginings, contributed in no less degree to enrich the fame of
+their age; and among these the first name is that of Alfred Tennyson,
+the most representative of Victorian poets.
+
+[Illustration: ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
+
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+His early environment may be said to have marked him out for such a
+life. He was born in one of the remotest districts of a rural county.
+The village of Somersby lies in a hollow among the Lincolnshire wolds,
+twenty miles east of Lincoln, midway between the small towns of Spilsby,
+Horncastle, and Louth. There are no railways to disturb its peace; no
+high roads or broad rivers to bring trade to its doors. The 'cold
+rivulet' that rises just above the village flows down some twenty miles
+to lose itself in the sea near Skegness; in the valley the alders sigh
+and the aspens quiver, while around are rolling hills covered by long
+fields of corn broken by occasional spinneys. It is not a country to
+draw tourists for its own sake; but Tennyson knew, as few other poets
+know, the charm that human association lends to the simplest English
+landscape, and he cherished the memory of these scenes long after he had
+gone to live among the richer beauties of the south. From the garners of
+memory he drew the familiar features of this homely land showing that he
+had forgotten
+
+    No grey old grange, or lonely fold,
+        Or low morass and whispering reed,
+        Or simple stile from mead to mead,
+    Or sheepwalk up the winding wold.[23]
+
+[Note 23: _In Memoriam_, c.]
+
+There are days when the wolds seem dreary and monotonous; but if change
+is wanted, a long walk or an easy drive will take us from Somersby, as
+it often took the Tennyson brothers, to the coast at Mablethorpe, where
+the long rollers of the North Sea beat upon the sandhills that guard
+the flat stretches of the marshland. Here the poet as a child used to
+lie upon the beach, his imagination conjuring up Homeric pictures of the
+Grecian fleet besieging Troy; and if, on his last visit before leaving
+Lincolnshire, he found the spell broken, he could still describe vividly
+what he saw with the less fanciful vision of manhood.
+
+    Grey sandbanks, and pale sunsets, dreary wind,
+      Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea![24]
+
+[Note 24: Lines written in 1837 and published in the _Manchester
+Athenaeum Album_, 1850.]
+
+These wide expanses of sea, sand, and sky figure many times in his
+poetry and furnish a background for the more tragic scenes in the
+_Idylls of the King_.
+
+Nor does the vicarage spoil the harmony of the scene, an old-fashioned
+low rambling house, to which a loftier hall adjoining, with its Gothic
+windows, lends a touch of distinction. The garden with one towering
+sycamore and the wych-elms, that threw long shadows on the lawn, opened
+on to the parson's field, where on summer mornings could be heard the
+sweep of the scythe in the dewy grass. Here Tennyson's father had been
+rector for some years when his fourth child Alfred was born in August
+1809, the year which also saw the birth of Darwin and Gladstone. The
+family was a large one; there were eight sons and four daughters, the
+last of whom was still alive in 1916. Alfred's education was as
+irregular as a poet's could need to be, consisting of a few years'
+attendance at Louth Grammar School, where he suffered from the rod and
+other abuses of the past, and of a larger number spent in studying
+literature at home under his father's guidance. These left him a liberal
+amount of leisure which he devoted to reading at large and roaming the
+country-side. His father was a man of mental cultivation far beyond the
+average, well fitted to expand the mind of a boy of literary tastes and
+to lead him on at a pace suited to his abilities. He had suffered from
+disappointments which had thrown a shadow over his life, having been
+disinherited capriciously by his father, who was a wealthy man and a
+member of Parliament. The inheritance passed to the second brother, who
+took the name of Tennyson d'Eyncourt; and though the Rector resented the
+injustice of the act, he did not allow it to embitter the relations
+between his own children and their cousins. His character was of the
+stern, dominating order, and both his parishioners and his children
+stood in awe of him; but the gentle nature of their mother made amends.
+She is described by Edward FitzGerald, the poet's friend, as 'one of the
+most innocent and tender-hearted ladies I ever met, devoted to husband
+and children'. In her youth she had been a noted beauty, and in her old
+age was not too unworldly to remember that she had received twenty-five
+proposals of marriage. It was from her that the family derived their
+beauty of feature, while in their strength of intellect they resembled
+rather their father. One of Alfred's earliest literary passions was a
+love of Byron, and he remembered in after life how as a child he had
+carved on a rock the woful tidings that his hero was dead. In this
+period he was already writing poetry himself, though he did not publish
+his first volume till after he had gone up to Cambridge.
+
+From this home life, filled with leisurely reading, rambling, and
+dreaming, he was sent in 1828 to join his brother Frederick at Trinity
+College, Cambridge, and he came into residence in February of that year.
+Cambridge has been called the poets' University. Here in early days came
+Spenser and Milton, Dryden and Gray; and--in the generation preceding
+Tennyson--Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron had followed in their steps.
+However little we can trace directly the development of the poetic gift
+to local influence, at least we can say that Tennyson gained greatly by
+the time he spent within its walls. He came up an unknown man without
+family connexions to help him, and without the hall-mark of any famous
+school upon him. Shy and retiring by nature as he was, he might easily
+have failed to win his way to notice. But there was something in his
+appearance, in his manner, and in the personality that lay behind, which
+never failed to impress observers, and gradually he attached to himself
+the most brilliant undergraduates of his time and became a leader among
+them. Thackeray and FitzGerald were in residence; but it was not till
+later that he came to know them well, and we hear more of Spedding (the
+editor of Bacon), of Alford and Merivale (deans of Canterbury and Ely),
+of Trench (Archbishop of Dublin), of Lushington, who married one of his
+sisters, and of Arthur Hallam, who was engaged to another sister at the
+time of his early death. Hallam came from Eton, where his greatest
+friend had been W. E. Gladstone, and he had not been long at Cambridge
+before he was led by kindred tastes and kindred nature into close
+friendship with Tennyson. In the judgement of all who knew him, a career
+of the highest usefulness and distinction was assured to him. His
+intellectual force and his high aspirations would have shone in the
+public service; and at least they won him thus early the affection of
+the noblest among his compeers, and a fame that is almost unique in
+English literature.
+
+Much has been written about the society which these young men formed and
+which they called 'the Apostles'. The name has been thought to suggest a
+certain complacency and mutual admiration. But enough letters and
+personal recollections of their talk have been preserved to show how
+simple and unaffected the members were in their intercourse with one
+another. They had their enthusiasms, but they had also their jests.
+Their humour was not perhaps the boisterous fun of William Morris and
+Rossetti, but it was lively and buoyant enough to banish all suspicion
+of priggishness. Just because their enthusiasm was for the best in
+literature and art, Tennyson was quickly at home among them. Already he
+had learnt at home to love Shakespeare and Milton, Coleridge and Keats,
+and no effort was required, in this circle of friends, to keep his
+reading upon this high level. _Lycidas_ was always a special favourite
+of Tennyson's, and appreciation of it seemed to him a sure 'touchstone
+of poetic taste'. In conversation he did not tend to declaim or
+monopolize the talk. He was noted rather for short sayings and for
+criticisms tersely expressed. He had his moods, contemplative, genial or
+gay; but all his utterances were marked by independence of thought, and
+his silence could be richer than the speech of other men. But for
+display he had no liking. In fact, so reluctant was he to face an
+audience of strangers, that when in 1829 it was his duty to recite his
+prize poem in the senate-house, he obtained leave for Merivale to read
+it on his behalf. On the other hand, he was ready enough to impart to
+his real friends the poems that he wrote from time to time, and he would
+pass pleasant hours with them reciting old ballads and reading aloud the
+plays of Shakespeare. His sonorous voice, his imagination, and his
+feeling for all the niceties of rhythm made his reading unusually
+impressive, as we know from the testimony of many who heard him.
+
+The course of his education is, in fact, more truly to be found in this
+free companionship than in the lecture room or the examination hall. His
+opinion of the teaching which he received from the Dons was formed and
+expressed in a sonnet of 1830, though he refrained from publishing it
+for half a century. He addresses them as 'you that do profess to teach
+and teach us nothing, feeding not the heart'--and complains of their
+indifference to the movements of their own age and to the needs of their
+pupils. For, despite the ferment which was spreading in the realms of
+theology, of politics, and of natural science, the Dons still taught
+their classics in the dry pedantic manner of the past, and refused to
+face the problems of the nineteenth century. For Tennyson, whose mind
+was already capacious and deep, these problems had a constant
+attraction, and he had to fall back upon solitary musings and on talks
+with Hallam and other friends. Partly perhaps because he missed the more
+rigorous training of the schools, we have to wait another ten years
+before we see marks of his deeper thinking in his work. He was but
+groping and feeling his way. In the 'Poems, chiefly Lyrical' which he
+produced in 1830, rich images abound, play of fancy and beauty of
+expression; but there are few signs of the power of thought which he was
+to show in later volumes.
+
+After three years thus spent, by no means unfruitfully, though it was
+only by his prize poem of 'Timbuctoo' that he won public honours, he was
+called away from Cambridge by family troubles and returned to Somersby
+in February 1831. His father had broken down in health, and a month
+later he died, suddenly and peacefully, in his arm-chair. After the
+rector's death an arrangement was made that the family should continue
+to inhabit the Rectory; and Tennyson, who was now his mother's chief
+help and stay, settled down to a studious life at home, varied by
+occasional visits to London. The habit of seclusion was already forming.
+He was much given to solitary walking and to spending his evening in an
+attic reading by himself. But this was not due to moroseness or
+selfishness, as we can see from his intercourse with family and friends.
+He would willingly give hours to reading aloud to his mother, or sit
+listening happily while his sisters played music. From this time indeed
+he seems to have taken his father's place in the home; and with Hallam
+and other friends he continued on the same affectionate terms. He had
+not Dickens's buoyant temper and love of company, nor did he indulge in
+the splenetic outbursts of Carlyle. He could, when it was needed, find
+time to fulfil the humblest duties and then return with contentment to
+his solitude. But his thoughts seemed naturally to lift him above the
+level of others, and he was most truly himself when he was alone. Apart
+from his eyesight, which began to trouble him at this time, he was
+enjoying good health, which he maintained by a steady regime of physical
+exercise. His strength and his good looks were alike remarkable.[25] As
+his friend Brookfield laughingly said, 'It was not fair that he should
+be Hercules as well as Apollo'.
+
+Another volume of verse appeared in 1832; and its appearance seems to
+have been due rather to the urgent persuasion of his friends than to his
+own eagerness to appear in print. Though J. S. Mill and a few other
+critics wrote with good judgement and praised the book, it met with a
+cold reception in most places, and the _Quarterly Review_, regardless of
+its blunder over Keats, spoke of it in most contemptuous terms. All can
+recognize to-day how unfair this was to the merits of a volume which
+contained the 'Lotos-Eaters', 'Oenone', and the 'Lady of Shalott'; but
+the effect of the harsh verdict on the poet, always sensitive about the
+reception of his work, was unfortunate to a degree. For a time it seemed
+likely to chill his ardour and stifle his poetic gifts at the very age
+when they ought to be bearing fruit. He writes of himself at this time
+as 'moping like an owl in an ivy bush, or as that one sparrow which the
+Hebrew mentioneth as sitting on the house-top'; and, despite his
+friendship with Hallam, which was closer than ever since the latter's
+engagement to his sister Emily, he had thoughts of settling abroad in
+France or Italy, since he found, or fancied that he found, in England
+too unsympathetic an atmosphere.
+
+[Note 25: The portrait of 1838 by Samuel Laurence, of which the
+original is at Aldworth, speaks for itself.]
+
+Such a decision would have been disastrous. Residence abroad might suit
+the robust, many-sided genius of Robert Browning with his gift for
+interpreting the thoughts of other nations and other times; it would
+have been fatal to Tennyson, whose affections were rooted in his native
+soil, and who had a special call to speak to Englishmen of English
+scenes and English life.
+
+The following year brought him a still severer shock in the loss of his
+beloved friend, Arthur Hallam, who was taken ill at Vienna and died
+there a few days later, to the deep sorrow of all who knew him. Many
+besides Tennyson have borne witness to his character and gifts; thanks
+to their tribute, and above all to the verses of _In Memoriam_, though
+his life was all too short to realize the promise of his youth, his name
+will be preserved. The gradual growth of Tennyson's elegy can be
+discerned from the letters of his friends, to whom from time to time he
+read some of the stanzas which he had completed. Even in the first
+winter after Hallam's death, he wrote a few lines in the manuscript book
+which he kept by him for the purpose during the next fifteen years, and
+which he was within an ace of losing in 1850, just when the poem was
+completed and ready for publication. As a statesman turns from his
+private sorrow to devote himself to a public cause, so the poet's
+instinct was to find comfort in the practice of his art. Under the
+stress of feelings aroused by this event and under the influence of a
+wider reading, his mind was maturing. We hear of a steady discipline of
+mental work, of hours given methodically to Italian and German, to
+theology and history, to chemistry, botany, and other branches of
+science. Above all, he pondered now, as he did later so constantly, on
+the mystery of death and life after death. Outwardly this seems the most
+uneventful period of his career; but, in their effect on his mind and
+work, these years were very far from being wasted. When next, in 1842,
+he emerges from seclusion to offer his verses to the public, he had
+enlarged the range of his subjects and deepened his powers of thought.
+We see less richness in the images, less freedom in the play of fancy,
+but there is a firmer grip of character, a surer handling of the
+problems affecting the life of man. Underground was flowing the hidden
+stream of _In Memoriam_, unknown save to the few; only in part were the
+fruits of this period to be seen in the two volumes containing 'English
+Idyls' and other new poems, along with a selection of earlier lyrics now
+revised and reprinted.
+
+The distinctive quality of the book is given by the word Idyl, which was
+to be so closely connected with Tennyson's fame. Here he is working in a
+small compass, but he breaks fresh ground in describing scenes of
+English village life, and shows that he has used his gifts of
+observation to good purpose. Better than the slight sketches of
+character, of girls and their lovers, of farmers and their children, are
+the landscapes in which they are set; and many will remember the
+charming passages in which he describes the morning songs of birds in a
+garden, or the twinkling of evening lights in the still waters of a
+harbour. More original and more full of lyrical fervour was 'Locksley
+Hall', where he expresses many thoughts that were stirring the younger
+spirits of his day. Perhaps the most perfect workmanship, in a volume
+where much calls for admiration, is to be found in 'Ulysses', which the
+poet's friend Monckton Milnes gave to Sir Robert Peel to read, in order
+to convince him that Tennyson's work merited official recognition. His
+treatment of the hero is as far from the classical spirit as anything
+which William Morris wrote. He preserves little of the directness or
+fierce temper of the early epic. Rather does his Ulysses think and speak
+like some bold adventurer of the Renaissance, with the combination of
+ardent curiosity and reflective thought which was the mark of that age.
+Even so Tennyson himself, as he passed from youth to middle life, and
+from that to old age, was ever trying to achieve one more 'work of noble
+note', and yearning
+
+    To follow knowledge like a sinking star
+    Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
+
+But between this and the production of his next volume comes the most
+unhappy period in the poet's career, when his friends for a time
+despaired of his future and even of his life. At the marriage of his
+brother Charles in 1836, Tennyson had fallen in love with the bride's
+sister, Emily Sellwood; and in the course of the next three or four
+years they became informally engaged to one another. But his prospects
+of earning enough money to support a wife seemed so remote that in 1840
+her family insisted on breaking off the engagement, and the lovers
+ceased to write to one another. Even the volumes of 1842, while winning
+high favour with cultivated readers, and stirring enthusiasm at the
+Universities, failed to attract the larger public and to make a success
+in the market. So when he sustained a further blow in the loss of his
+small fortune owing to an unwise investment, his health gave way and he
+fell into a dark mood of hypochondria. His star seemed to be sinking,
+just as he was winning his way to fame. Thanks to medical attention,
+aided by his own natural strength and the affections of his friends, he
+was already rallying in 1845, when Peel conferred on him the timely
+honour of a pension; and he was able not only to continue working at _In
+Memoriam_, but also to produce in 1847 _The Princess_, which gives clear
+evidence of renewed cheerfulness and vigour. Dealing as it does, half
+humorously, with the question of woman's education and her claim to a
+higher place in the scheme of life, it illustrates the interest which
+Tennyson, despite his seclusion, felt in social questions of the day.
+From this point of view it may be linked with _Locksley Hall_ and
+_Maud_; but in _The Princess_ the treatment is half humorous and the
+setting is more artificial. Tennyson's lyrical power is seen at its best
+in the magical songs which occur in the course of the story or
+interposed between the different scenes. They have deservedly won a
+place in all anthologies. His facility in the handling of blank verse is
+also remarkable. Lovers of Milton may regret the massive grandeur of an
+earlier style; but, as in every art, so in poetry, we pay for advance in
+technical accomplishment, in suppleness and melodious phrasing, by the
+loss of other qualities which are difficult to recapture.
+
+Meanwhile _In Memoriam_ was approaching completion; and this the most
+central and characteristic of his poems illustrates, more truly than a
+narrative of outward events, the phases through which Tennyson had been
+passing. Desultory though the method of its production be, and loose
+'the texture of its fabric', there is a certain sequence of thought
+running through the cantos. We see how from the first poignancy of
+grief, when he can only brood passively over his friend's death, he was
+led to questioning the basis of his faith, shaken as it was by the
+claims of physical science--how from those doubts of his own, he was led
+to think of the universal trouble of the world--how at length by
+throwing himself into the hopes and aspiration of humanity he attained
+to victory and was able to put away his personal grief, believing that
+his friend's soul was still working with him in the universe for the
+good of all. At intervals, during the three years mirrored in the poem,
+we get definite notes of time. We see how the poet is affected each year
+as the winter and the spring come round, and how the succeeding
+anniversaries of Hallam's death stir the old pain in varying degree. But
+we must not suppose that each section was composed at the time
+represented in this scheme. Seventeen years went to the perfecting of
+the work; it is impossible to tell when each canto was first outlined
+and how often it was re-written; and we must be content with general
+notions of its development. The poet's memory was fully charged. As he
+could recall so vividly the Lincolnshire landscape when he was living in
+the south, so he could portray the emotions of the past though he had
+entered on a new period of life fraught with a different spirit.
+
+Thus many elements go to make up the whole, and readers of _In Memoriam_
+can choose what suits their mood. To some, who wish to compare the
+problems of different ages, chief interest will attach to that section
+where the active mind wakes up to the conflict between science and
+faith. It was a difficult age for poets and believers. The preceding
+generation had for a time been swept far from their bearings by the
+tornado of the French Revolution. Some of them found an early grave
+while still upholding the flag; others had won back to harbour when
+their youth was past and ended their days in calm--if not
+stagnant--waters. But the advance of scientific discoveries and the
+scientific spirit sapped the defences of faith in more methodical
+fashion, and Tennyson's mind was only too open to all the evidence of
+natural law and the stern lessons of the struggle for life. To
+understand the influence of Tennyson on his age it is necessary to
+inquire how he reconciled religion with science; but this is too large a
+subject for a biographical sketch, and valuable studies have been
+written which deal with it more or less fully, by Stopford Brooke[26]
+and many others.
+
+[Note 26: _Tennyson_, by Stopford Brooke (Isbister, 1894).]
+
+To Queen Victoria, and to others who had been stricken in their home
+affections, the human interest outweighed all others; the sorrow of
+those who gave little thought to systems of philosophy or religion was
+instinctively comforted by the note of faith in a future life and by
+the haunting melodies in which it found expression.
+
+Many were content to return again and again to those passages where the
+beauty of nature is depicted in stanzas of wonderful felicity. No such
+gift of observation had yet ministered to their delight. Readers of Mrs.
+Gaskell will be reminded of the old farmer in _Cranford_ revelling in
+the new knowledge which he has gained of the colour of ash-buds in
+March. So too we are taught to look afresh at larch woods in spring and
+beech woods in autumn, at the cedar in the garden and the yew tree in
+the churchyard. We are vividly conscious of the summer's breeze which
+tumbles the pears in the orchard, and the winter's storm when the
+leafless ribs of the wood clang and gride. As the perfect stanza lingers
+in our memory, our eyes are opened and we are taught to observe the
+marvels of nature for ourselves. Here, more than anywhere else, is he
+the true successor of Wordsworth, the Wordsworth of the daisy, the
+daffodil, and the lesser celandine, though following a method of his
+own--at once a disciple and a master.
+
+But other influences than those of nature were coming into his life. In
+1837 the Tennyson family had been compelled to leave Somersby; and the
+poet, recluse though he was, showed that he could rouse himself to meet
+a practical emergency with good sense. He took charge of all
+arrangements and transplanted his mother successively to new homes in
+Essex and Kent. This brought him nearer to London and enlarged
+considerably his circle of friends. The list of men of letters who
+welcomed him there is a long one, from Samuel Rogers to the Rossettis,
+and includes poets, novelists, historians, scholars, and scientists. The
+most interesting, to him and to us, was Carlyle, then living at Chelsea,
+who had published his _French Revolution_ in 1837, and had thereby
+become notable among literary men. Carlyle's judgements on the poet and
+his poems have often been quoted. At first he was more than contemptuous
+over the latter, and exhorted Tennyson to leave verse and rhyme and
+apply himself to prose. But familiar converse, in which both men spoke
+their opinions without reserve, soon enlightened 'the sage', and he
+delighted in his new friend. Long after, in 1879, he confessed that
+'Alfred always from the beginning took a grip at the right side of every
+question'. He could not fail to appreciate the man when he saw him in
+the flesh, and it is he who has left us the most striking picture of
+Tennyson's appearance in middle life. In 1842 he wrote to Emerson:
+'Alfred is one of the few... figures who are and remain beautiful to
+me;--a true human soul... one of the finest-looking men in the world. A
+great shock of rough dusty-dark hair, bright-laughing hazel eyes,
+massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate, of sallow-brown
+complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose,
+free-and-easy;--smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical
+metallic,--fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie
+between; speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in
+these late decades, such company over a pipe!' Not only were pipes
+smoked at home, but walks were taken in the London streets at night,
+with much free converse, in which art both were masters, but of which
+Carlyle, no doubt, had the larger share. Tennyson was a master of the
+art of silence, which Carlyle could praise but never practice; but when
+he spoke his remarks rarely failed to strike the bell.
+
+Another comrade worthy of special notice was FitzGerald, famous to-day
+as the translator of Omar Khayyam, and also as the man whom two great
+authors, Tennyson and Thackeray, named as their most cherished friend.
+He was living a hermit's life in Suffolk, dividing his day between his
+yacht, his garden, and his books; and writing, when he was in the
+humour, those gossipy letters which have placed him as a classic with
+Cowper and Lamb. From time to time he would come to London for a visit
+to a picture gallery or an evening with his friends; and for many years
+he never failed to write once a year for news of the poet, whose books
+he might criticize capriciously, but whose image was always fresh in his
+affectionate heart. Of his old Cambridge circle Tennyson honoured, above
+all others, 'his domeship' James Spedding, of the massive rounded head,
+of the rare judgement in literature, of the unselfish and faithful
+discharge of all the duties which he could take upon himself. Great as
+was his edition of Bacon, he was by the common consent of his friends
+far greater than anything which he achieved, and his memory is most
+worthily preserved in the letters of Tennyson, and of others who knew
+him. In London he was present at gatherings where Landor and Leigh Hunt
+represented the elder generation of poets; but he was more familiar with
+his contemporaries Henry Taylor and Aubrey de Vere. It is the latter who
+gives us an interesting account of two meetings between Wordsworth and
+his successor in the Laureateship.[27] The occasions when Tennyson and
+Browning met one another and read their poetry aloud were also cherished
+in the memory of those friends who were fortunate enough to be
+present.[28] Differing as they did in temperament and in tastes, they
+were rivals in generosity to one another and indeed to all their
+brethren who wielded the pen of the writer. To meet such choice spirits
+Tennyson would leave for a while his precious solitude and his books.
+London could not be his home, but it became a place of pleasant meetings
+and of friendships in which he found inspiration and help.
+
+[Note 27: _Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir_, by his son, vol. i, p.
+209 (Macmillan & Co.).]
+
+[Note 28: _Robert Browning_, by Edward Dowden, p. 173 (J. M. Dent &
+Co.).]
+
+Thus it was that Tennyson spent the quiet years of meditation and study
+before he achieved his full renown. This was no such sensational event
+as Byron's meteoric appearance in 1812; but one year, 1850, is a clear
+landmark in his career. This was the date of the publication of _In
+Memoriam_ and of his appointment, on the death of Wordsworth, to the
+office of Poet Laureate. This year saw the end of his struggle with
+ill-fortune and the end of his long courtship. In June he was married,
+at Shiplake on the Thames, to Emily Sellwood. Henceforth his happiness
+was assured and he knew no more the restlessness and melancholy which
+had clouded his enjoyment of life. His course was clear, and for forty
+years his position was hardly questioned in all lands where the English
+tongue was spoken. Noble companies of worshippers might worthily swear
+allegiance to Thackeray and Browning; but by the voice of the people
+Dickens and Tennyson were enthroned supreme.
+
+To deal with all the volumes of poetry that Tennyson published between
+1850 and his death would be impossible within the limits of these pages.
+In some cases he reverted to themes which he had treated before and he
+preserved for many years the same skill in craftsmanship. But in _Maud_,
+in _The Idylls of the King_, and in the historical dramas,
+unquestionably, he broke new ground.
+
+Partly on account of the scheme of the poem, partly for the views
+expressed on questions of the day, _Maud_ provoked more hostile
+criticism than anything which he wrote; yet it seems to have been the
+poet's favourite work. The story of its composition is curious. It was
+suggested by a short lyric which Tennyson had printed privately in 1837
+beginning with the words 'Oh, that 'twere possible after long grief'.
+His friend, Sir John Simeon, urged him to write a poem which would lead
+up to and explain it; and the poet, adopting the idea, used _Maud_ as a
+vehicle for much which he was feeling in the disillusionment of middle
+life. The form of a monodrama was unfamiliar to the public and has
+difficulties of its own. Tennyson has combined action, proceeding
+somewhat spasmodically, with a skilful study of character, showing us
+the exaggerated sensibility of a nature which under the successive
+influence of misanthropy, hope, love, and tragic disappointment, may
+easily pass beyond the border-land of insanity. In the scene where love
+is triumphant, Tennyson touches the highest point of lyrical passion;
+but there are jarring notes introduced in the satirical descriptions of
+Maud's brother and of the rival who aspires to her hand. And in the
+later cantos where, after the fatal quarrel, the hero is driven to moody
+thoughts and dark presages of woe, there are passages which seem to be
+charged with the doctrine that England was being corrupted by long peace
+and needed the purifying discipline of war. For this the poet was taken
+to task by his critics; and, though it is unfair in dramatic work to
+attribute to an author the words of his characters, Tennyson found it
+difficult to clear himself of suspicion, the more so that the Crimean
+War inspired at this time some of his most popular martial ballads and
+songs.
+
+_The Idylls of the King_ had a different fate and achieved instant
+popularity. The first four were published in 1859 and within a few
+months 10,000 copies were sold. Tennyson's original design, formed early
+in life, had been to build a single epic on the Arthurian theme, which
+seemed to him to give scope, like Virgil's _Aeneid_, for patriotic
+treatment. 'The greatest of all poetical subjects' he called it, and it
+haunted his mind perpetually. But if Virgil found such a task difficult
+nineteen hundred years before, it was doubly difficult for Tennyson to
+satisfy his generation, with scientific historians raking the ash heaps
+of the past, and pedants demanding local colour. In shaping his poem to
+meet the requirements of history he was in danger of losing that breadth
+of treatment which is essential for epic poetry. He fell back on the
+device of selecting episodes, each a complete picture in itself, and
+grouping them round a single hero. The story is placed in the twilight
+between the Roman withdrawal and the conquests of the Saxons, when the
+lamp of history was glimmering most faintly. In these troublous times a
+king is miraculously sent to be a bulwark to the people against the
+inroads of their foes. He founds an order of Knighthood bound by vows to
+fight for all just and noble causes, and upholds for a time victoriously
+the standard of chivalry within his realm, till through the entrance of
+sin and treachery the spell is broken and the heathen overrun the land.
+After his last battle, in the far west of our island, the king passes
+away to the supernatural world from which he came. This last episode had
+been handled many years before, and the 'Morte d'Arthur', which had
+appeared in the volume of 1842, was incorporated into the 'Passing of
+Arthur' to close the series of Idylls.
+
+With what admixture of allegory this story was set out it is hard to
+say--Tennyson himself could not in later years be induced to define his
+purpose--but it seems certain that many of the characters are intended
+to symbolize higher and lower qualities. According to some
+interpretations King Arthur stands for the power of conscience and Queen
+Guinevere for the heart. Galahad represents purity, Bors rough honesty,
+Percivale humility, and Merlin the power of the intellect, which is too
+easily beguiled by treachery. So the whole story is moralized by the
+entrance, through Guinevere and Lancelot, of sin; by the gradual fading,
+through the lightness of one or the treachery of another, of the
+brightness of chivalry; and by the final ruin which shatters the fair
+ideal.
+
+But there is no need to darken counsel by questions about history or
+allegory, if we wish, first and last, to enjoy poetry, for its own sake.
+Here, as in Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, forth go noble knights with
+gentle maidens through the enchanted scenes of fairyland; for their
+order and its vows they are ready to dare all. Lawlessness is tamed and
+cruelty is punished, and no perilous quest presents itself but there is
+a champion ready to follow it to the end. And if severe critics tell us
+that they find no true gift of story-telling here, let us go for a
+verdict to the young. They may not be good judges of style, or safe
+interpreters of shades of thought, but they know when a story carries
+them away; and the _Idylls of the King_, like the Waverley Novels, have
+captured the heart of many a lover of literature who has not yet learnt
+to question his instinct or to weigh his treasures in the scales of
+criticism. And older readers may find themselves kindled to enthusiasm
+by reflective passages rich in high aspiration, or charmed by
+descriptions of nature as beautiful as anything which Tennyson wrote.
+
+In the historical plays, which occupied a large part of his attention
+between 1874 and 1879, Tennyson undertook a yet harder task. He chose
+periods when national issues of high importance were at stake, such as
+the conflict between the Church and the Crown, between the domination of
+the priest and the claim of the individual to freedom of belief. He put
+aside all exuberance of fancy and diction as unsuited to tragedy; he
+handled his theme with dignity and at times with force, and attained a
+literary success to which Browning and other good judges bore testimony.
+Of Becket in particular he made a sympathetic figure, which, in the
+skilful hands of Henry Irving, won considerable favour upon the stage.
+But the times were out of joint for the poetic drama, and he had not the
+rich imagination of Shakespeare, nor the power to create living men and
+women who compel our hearts to pity, to horror, or to delight. For the
+absence of this no studious reading of history, no fine sentiment, no
+noble cadences, can make amends, and it seems doubtful whether future
+ages will regard the plays as anything but a literary curiosity.
+
+On the other hand, nothing which he wrote has touched the human heart
+more genuinely than the poems of peasant life, some of them written in
+the broadest Lincolnshire dialect, which Tennyson produced during the
+years in which he was engaged on the Idylls and the plays. 'The
+Grandmother', 'The Northern Cobbler', and the two poems on the
+Lincolnshire farmers of following generations, were as popular as
+anything which the Victorian Age produced, and seem likely to keep their
+pre-eminence. The two latter illustrate, by their origin, Tennyson's
+power of seizing on a single impression, and building on it a work of
+creative genius. It was enough for him to hear the anecdote of the dying
+farmer's words, 'God A'mighty little knows what he's about in taking me!
+And Squire will be mad'; and he conceived the character of the man, and
+his absorption in the farm where he had lived and worked and around
+which he grouped his conceptions of religion and duty. The later type of
+farmer was evoked similarly by a quotation in the dialect of his county:
+'When I canters my herse along the ramper, I 'ears "proputty, proputty,
+proputty"'; and again Tennyson achieved a triumph of characterization.
+It is here perhaps that he comes nearest to the achievements of his
+great rival Browning in the field of dramatic lyrics.
+
+Apart from the writing and publication of his poems, we cannot divide
+Tennyson's later life into definite sections. By 1850 his habits had
+been formed, his friendships established, his fame assured; such
+landmarks as are furnished by the birth of his children, by his
+journeyings abroad, by the homes in which he settled, point to no
+essential change in the current of his life. Of the perfect happiness
+which marriage brought to him, of the charm and dignity which enabled
+Mrs. Tennyson to hold her place worthily at his side, many witnesses
+have spoken. Two sons were born to him, one of whom died in 1886, while
+the other, named after his lost friend, lived to write the Memoir which
+will always be the chief authority for our knowledge of the man. His
+homes soon became household words--so great was the spell which Tennyson
+cast over the hearts of his readers. Farringford, at the western end of
+the Isle of Wight, was first tenanted by him in 1853, and was bought in
+1856. Here the poet enjoyed perfect quiet, a genial climate and the
+proximity of the sea, for which his love never failed. It was a very
+different coast to the bleak sandhills and wide flats of Mablethorpe.
+Above Freshwater the noble line of the Downs rises and falls as it runs
+westward to the Needles, where it plunges abruptly into the sea; and
+here on the springy turf, a tall romantic figure in wide-brimmed hat and
+flowing cloak, the poet would often walk. But Farringford, lying low in
+the shelter of the hills, proved too hot in summer; Freshwater was
+discovered by tourists too often inquisitive about the great; and so,
+after ten or twelve years, he was searching for another home, some
+remoter fastness set on higher ground. This he discovered on the borders
+of Surrey and Sussex near Haslemere, where Black Down rises to a height
+of 900 feet above the sea and commands a wide prospect over the blue
+expanse of the weald. Here he found copses and commons haunted by the
+song of birds, here he raised plantations close at hand to shelter him
+from the rude northern winds, and here he built the stately house of
+Aldworth where, some thirty years later, he was to die.
+
+To both houses came frequent guests. For, shy as he was of paying
+visits, he loved to see in his own house men and women who could talk to
+him as equals--nor was he always averse to those of reverent temper, so
+they were careful not to jar on his fastidious tastes. In some ways it
+was a pity that he did not come to closer quarters with the rougher
+forces that were fermenting in the industrial districts. It might have
+helped him to a better understanding of the classes that were pushing to
+the front, who were to influence so profoundly the England of the
+morrow. But the strain of kindly sympathy in Tennyson's nature can be
+seen at its best in his intercourse with cottagers, sailors, and other
+humble folk who lived near his doors. The stories which his son tells us
+show how the poet was able to obtain an insight into their minds and to
+write poems like 'The Grandmother' with artistic truth. And no visitor
+received a heartier welcome at Farringford than Garibaldi, who was at
+once peasant and sailor, and who remained so none the less when he had
+become a hero of European fame. To Englishmen of nearly every cultured
+profession Tennyson's hospitality was freely extended--we need only
+instance Professor Tyndall, Dean Bradley, James Anthony Froude, Aubrey
+de Vere, G. F. Watts, Henry Irving, Hubert Parry, Lord Dufferin, and
+that most constant of friends, Benjamin Jowett, pre-eminent among the
+Oxford celebrities of the day. Among his immediate neighbours he
+conceived a peculiar affection for Sir John Simeon, whose death in 1870
+called forth the stanzas 'In the Garden at Swainston'; and no one was
+more at home at Farringford than Julia Cameron, famous among early
+photographers, who has left us some of the best likenesses of the poet
+in middle and later life.
+
+Tennyson was not familiar with foreign countries to the same degree as
+Browning, nor was he ever a great traveller. When he went abroad he
+needed the help of some loyal friend, like Francis Palgrave or Frederick
+Locker, to safeguard him against pitfalls, and to shield him from
+annoyance. When he was too old to stand the fatigue of railway
+journeys, he was willing to be taken for a cruise on a friend's yacht;
+and thus he visited many parts of Scotland and the harbours of
+Scandinavia. Amid new surroundings he was not always easy to please; bad
+food or smelly streets would call forth loud protests and upset him for
+a day; but his friends found it worth their while to risk some anxiety
+in order to enjoy his keen observation and the originality of his talk.
+Wherever he went he took with him his stored wisdom on Homer, Dante, and
+the 'Di maiores' of literature; and when Gladstone, too, happened to be
+one of the party on board ship, the talk must have been well worth
+hearing. As in his youth, so now, Tennyson's mind moved most naturally
+on a lofty plane and he was most at home with the great poets of the
+past; and with the exception of a few poems like 'All along the valley',
+where the torrents at Cauteretz reminded him of an early visit with
+Hallam to the Pyrenees, we can trace little evidence in his poetry of
+the journeys which he made. But we can see from his letters that he was
+kindled by the beauty of Italian cities and their treasures. In every
+picture-gallery which he visited he showed his preference for Titian and
+the rich colour of the Venetian painters. He refused to be bound by the
+conventional English taste for Alpine scenery, and broke out into abuse
+of the discoloured water in the Grindelwald glacier--'a filthy thing,
+and looking as if a thousand London seasons had passed over it'. In all
+places, among all people, he said what he thought and felt, with
+independence and conviction.
+
+One incident connecting him with Italy is worthy of mention as showing
+that the poet, who 'from out the northern island' came at times to visit
+them, was known and esteemed by the people of Italy. When the Mantuans
+celebrated in 1885 the nineteenth centenary of the death of Virgil, the
+classic poet to whom Tennyson owed most, they asked him to write an
+ode, and nobly he rose to the occasion, attaining a felicity of phrase
+which is hardly excelled in the choicest lines of Virgil himself. But it
+is as the laureate of his own country that he is of primary interest,
+and it is time to inquire how he fulfilled the functions of his office,
+and how he rendered that office of value to the State.
+
+When he was first appointed, Queen Victoria had let him know that he was
+to be excused from the obligation of writing complimentary verse to
+celebrate the doings of the court. Of his own accord he composed
+occasional odes for the marriages of her sons, and showed some of his
+practised skill in dignifying such themes; but it is not here that he
+found his work as laureate. He achieved greater success in the poems
+which he wrote to honour the exploits of our army and navy, in the past
+or the present. In his ballad of 'The Revenge', in his Balaclava poems,
+in the 'Siege of Lucknow', he struck a heroic note which found a ready
+echo in the hearts of soldiers and sailors and those who love the
+services. Above all, in the great ode on the death of the Duke of
+Wellington he has stirred all the chords of national feeling as no other
+laureate before him, and has enriched our literature with a jewel which
+is beyond price.
+
+The Arthurian epic failed to achieve its national aim, and the
+historical dramas, though inspired by great principles which have helped
+to shape our history, never touched those large circles to which as
+laureate he should appeal. Some might judge that his function was best
+fulfilled in the lyrics to be found scattered throughout his work which
+praise the slow, ordered progress of English liberties. Passages from
+_Maud_ or _In Memoriam_ will occur to many readers, still more the three
+lyrics generally printed together at the end of the 1842 poems,
+beginning with the well-known tines, 'Of old sat Freedom on the
+heights', 'Love thou thy land', and 'You ask me why though ill at ease'.
+Here we listen to the voice of English Liberalism uttered in very
+different tones from those of Byron and Shelley, expressing the mind of
+one who recoiled from French Revolutions and had little sympathy with
+their aims of universal equality. In this he represented very truly that
+Victorian movement which was guided by Cobden and Mill, by Peel and
+Gladstone, which conferred such practical benefits upon the England of
+their day; but it is hardly the temper that we expect of an ardent poet,
+at any rate in the days of his youth. The burning passion of Carlyle,
+Ruskin, or William Morris, however tempered by other feelings, called
+forth a heartier response in the breast of the toiling multitudes.
+
+It may be that the claim of Tennyson to popular sovereignty will, in the
+end, rest chiefly on the pleasure which he gave to many thousands of his
+fellow-countrymen, a pleasure to be renewed and found again in English
+scenes, and in thoughts which coloured grey lives and warmed cold
+hearts, which shed the ray of faith on those who could accept no creeds
+and who yet yearned for some hope of an after-life to cheer their
+declining days. That he gave this pleasure is certain--to men and women
+of all classes from Samuel Bamford,[29] the Durham weaver, who saved his
+pence to buy the precious volumes of the 'thirties, to Queen Victoria on
+her throne, who in the reading of _In Memoriam_ found one of her chief
+consolations in the hour of widowhood.
+
+[Note 29: See _Memoir_, by Hallam, Lord Tennyson, vol. i, p. 283
+(Macmillan).]
+
+It was given to Tennyson to live a long life, and to know more joy than
+sorrow--to be gladdened by the homage of two hemispheres, to lament the
+loss of his old friends who went before him (Spedding in 1881,
+FitzGerald in 1883, Robert Browning in 1889), to write his most famous
+lyric 'Crossing the Bar' at the age of 80, and to be soothed and
+strengthened to the end by the presence of his wife. For some weeks in
+the autumn of 1892 he lay in growing weakness at Aldworth taking
+farewell of the sights and sounds that he had loved so long. To him now
+it had come to hear with dying ears 'the earliest pipe of half-awakened
+birds' and to see with dying eyes 'the casement slowly grow a glimmering
+square'. Early on October 5 he had an access of energy, and called to
+have the blinds drawn up--'I want', he said, 'to see the sky and the
+light'. The next day he died, and a week later a country wagon bore the
+coffin to Haslemere. Thence it passed to Westminster, where his dust was
+to be laid beside that of Browning, among the great men who had gone
+before. In what mood he faced death we can learn from his own words:
+
+  Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the limit of thy human state,
+  Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is great,
+  Nor the myriad world, His shadow, nor the silent Opener of the Gate![30]
+
+[Note 30: 'God and the Universe,' from _Death of Oenone_, &c.
+Macmillan, (1892.)]
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES KINGSLEY
+
+From a drawing by W. S. Hunt in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES KINGSLEY
+
+1819-75
+
+1819. Born at Holne on Dartmoor, June 12.
+1830-6. Father rector of Clovelly.
+1832. Grammar School at Helston, Cornwall.
+1836. Father rector of St. Luke's, Chelsea. C. K. to King's College,
+      London.
+1838-42. Magdalene College, Cambridge.
+1842. Ordained at Farnham. Curate of Eversley.
+1844. Marriage to Fanny Grenfell. Friendship with F. D. Maurice.
+1844. Rector of Eversley.
+1848. Chartist riots. 'Parson Lot' pamphlets.
+1850. _Alton Locke_ published.
+1855. _Westward Ho!_ published.
+1857. _Two Years Ago_ published.
+1859. Chaplain to the Queen.
+1860. Professor of Modern History at Cambridge.
+1864. Tour in the south of France.
+1869. Canon of Chester.
+1870. Tour to the West Indies.
+1873. Canon of Westminster.
+1874. Tour to California.
+1875. Death at Eversley, January 23.
+
+CHARLES KINGSLEY
+
+PARISH PRIEST
+
+
+If Charles Kingsley had been born in Scandinavia a thousand years
+earlier, one more valiant Viking would have sailed westward from the
+deep fiords of his native home to risk his fortunes in a new world, one
+who by his courage, his foresight, and his leadership of men was well
+fitted to be captain of his bark. The lover of the open-air life, the
+searcher after knowledge, the fighter that he was, he would have been in
+his element, foremost in the fray, most eager in the quest. But it was
+given to him to live in quieter times, to graft on the old Norse stock
+the graces of modern culture and the virtues of a Christian; and in a
+peaceful parish of rural England he found full scope for his gifts.
+There he taught his own and succeeding generations how full and
+beneficent the life of a parish priest can be. Our villages and towns
+produced many notable types of rector in the nineteenth century, Keble,
+Hawker, Hook, Robertson, Dolling, and scores of others; but none touched
+life at more points, none became so truly national a figure as Charles
+Kingsley in his Eversley home.
+
+His father was of an old squire family; like his son he was a clergyman,
+a naturalist, and a sportsman. His mother, a Miss Lucas, came from
+Barbados; and while she wrote poetry with feeling and skill, she had
+also a practical gift of management. His father's calling involved
+several changes of residence. Those which had most influence on his son
+were his removal in 1824 to Barnack, on the edge of the fens, still
+untamed and full of wild life, and in 1830 to Clovelly in North Devon.
+More than thirty years later, when asked to fill up the usual questions
+in a lady's album, he wrote that his favourite scenery was 'wide flats
+and open sea'. He was precocious as a child and perpetrated poems and
+sermons at the age of four; but very early he developed a habit of
+observation and a healthy interest in things outside himself. Such a
+nature could not be indifferent to the beauty of Clovelly, to the coming
+and going of its fishermen, and to the romance and danger of their
+lives. The steep village-street nestling among the woods, the little
+harbour sheltered by the sandstone cliffs, the wide view over the blue
+water, won his lifelong affection.
+
+His parents talked of sending him to Eton or Rugby, but in the end they
+decided to put him with Derwent Coleridge, the poet's son, at the
+Grammar School of Helston. Here he had the scenery which he loved, and
+masters who developed his strong bent towards natural science; and here
+he laid the foundations of his knowledge of botany, which remained all
+his life his favourite recreation. He was an eager reader, but not a
+close student of books; fond of outdoor life, but not skilled in
+athletic games; capable of much effort and much endurance, but rather
+irregular in his spurts of energy. A more methodical training might have
+saved him some mistakes, but it might also have taken the edge off that
+fresh enthusiasm which made intercourse with him at all times seem like
+a breath of moorland air. Here he developed an independence of mind and
+a fearlessness of opinion which is rarely to be found in the atmosphere
+of a big public school.
+
+At the age of seventeen, when his father was appointed to St. Luke's,
+Chelsea, he left Helston and spent two years attending lectures at
+King's College, London, and preparing for Cambridge. These were by no
+means among his happier years. He disliked London and he rebelled
+against the dullness of life in a vicarage overrun with district
+visitors and mothers' meetings. His father, a strong evangelical,
+objected to various forms of public amusement, and Charles, though loyal
+and affectionate to his parents, fretted to find no outlet for his
+energies. He made a few friends and devoured many books, but his chief
+delight was to get away from town to old west-country haunts. Nor was
+his life at Cambridge entirely happy. His excitability was great: his
+self-control was not yet developed. Rowing did not exhaust his physical
+energy, which broke out from time to time in midnight fishing raids and
+walks from Cambridge to London. He wasted so much of his time that he
+nearly imperilled his chance of taking a good degree, and might perhaps
+count himself lucky when, thanks to a heroic effort at the eleventh
+hour, his excellent abilities won him a first class in classics. At
+this time he was terribly shaken by religious doubts. But in one of his
+vacations in 1839 he met Fanny Grenfell, his future wife, and soon he
+was on such a footing that he could open to her his inmost thoughts. It
+was she who helped him in his wavering decision to take Holy Orders;
+and, when he went down in 1842, he set himself to read seriously and
+thoroughly for Ordination. Early in 1844 he was admitted to deacon's
+orders at Farnham.
+
+His first office marked out his path through life. With a short interval
+between his holding the curacy and the rectory of Eversley,[31] he had
+his home for thirty-three years at this Hampshire village so intimately
+connected with his name. Eversley lies on the borders of Berkshire and
+Hampshire, in the diocese of Winchester, near the famous house of
+Bramshill, on the edge of the sandy fir-covered waste which stretches
+across Surrey. To understand the charm of its rough commons and
+self-sown woods one must read Kingsley's _Prose Idylls_, especially the
+sketch called 'My Winter Garden'. There he served for a year as curate,
+living in bachelor quarters on the green, learning to love the place and
+its people: there, when Sir John Cope offered him the living in 1844, he
+returned a married man to live in the Rectory House beside the church,
+which may still be seen little altered to-day. A breakdown from
+overwork, an illness of his wife's, a higher appointment in the Church,
+might be the cause of his passing a few weeks or even months away; but
+year in, year out, he gave of his very best to Eversley for thirty-three
+years, and to it he returned from his journeys with all the more ardour
+to resume his work among his own people. The church was dilapidated, the
+Rectory was badly drained, the parish had been neglected by an absentee
+rector. For long periods together Kingsley was too poor to afford a
+curate: when he had one, the luxury was paid for by extra labour in
+taking private pupils. He had disappointments and anxieties, but his
+courage never faltered. He concentrated his energies on steady progress
+in things material and moral, and whatever his hand found to do, he did
+it with his might.
+
+[Note 31: For a few weeks in 1844 he was curate of Pimperne in
+Dorset.]
+
+The church and its services called for instant attention. The Holy
+Communion had been celebrated only three times a year; the other
+services were few and irregular; on Sundays the church was empty and the
+alehouse was full. The building was badly kept, the churchyard let out
+for grazing, the whole place destitute of reverence. What the service
+came to be under the new Rector we can read on the testimony of many
+visitors. The intensity of his devotion at all times, the inspiration
+which the great festivals of the Church particularly roused in him,
+changed all this rapidly. He did all he could to draw his parishioners
+to church; but he had no rigid Puritanical views about the Sabbath. A
+Staff-College officer, who frequently visited him on Sundays, tells us
+of 'the genial, happy, unreserved intercourse of those Sunday afternoons
+spent at the Rectory, and how the villagers were free to play their
+cricket--"Paason he do'ant objec'--not 'e--as loik as not, 'e'll come
+and look on".' All his life he supported the movement for opening
+museums to the public on Sundays, and this at a time when few of the
+clergy were bold enough to speak on his side. The Church was not his
+only organ for teaching. He started schools and informal classes. In
+winter he would sometimes give up his leisure to such work every evening
+of the week. The Rectory, for all its books and bottles, its
+fishing-rods and curious specimens, was not a mere refuge for his own
+work and his own hobbies, but a centre of light and warmth where all his
+parishioners might come and find a welcome. He was one of the first to
+start 'Penny Readings' in his parish, to lighten the monotony of winter
+evenings with music, poetry, stories, and lectures; and though his
+parish was so wide and scattered, he tried to rally support for a
+village reading-room, and kept it alive for some years.
+
+His afternoons were regularly given to parish visiting, except when
+there were other definite calls upon his time. He soon came to know
+every man, woman, and child in his parish. His sympathies were so wide
+that he could make himself at home with every one, with none more so
+than the gipsies and poachers, who shared his intimate knowledge of the
+neighbouring heaths and of the practices, lawful and unlawful, by which
+they could be made to supply food. He would listen to their stories,
+sympathize with their troubles and speak frankly in return. There was no
+condescension. One of his pupils speaks of 'the simple, delicate, deep
+respect for the poor', which could be seen in his manner and his talk
+among the cottagers. He could be severe enough when severity was needed,
+as when he compelled a cruel farmer to kill 'a miserable horse which was
+rotting alive in front of his house'; and he could deal no less
+drastically with hypocrisy. When a professional beggar fell on his knees
+at the Rectory gate and pretended to pray, he was at once ejected by the
+Rector with every mark of indignation and contumely. But the weak and
+suffering always made a special appeal to him. Though it was easy to vex
+and exasperate him, he could always put away his own troubles in
+presence of his own children or of any who needed his help. He had that
+intense power of sympathy which enabled him to understand and reach the
+heart.
+
+From a letter to his greatest friend, Tom Hughes, written in 1851, we
+get a glimpse of a day in his life--'a sorter kinder sample day'. He was
+up at five to see a dying man and stayed with him till eight. He then
+went out for air and exercise, fished all the morning and killed eight
+fish. He went back to his invalid at three. Later he spent three hours
+attending a meeting convoked by his Archdeacon about Sunday schools, and
+at 10.30 he was back in his study writing to his friends.
+
+But though he himself calls this a 'sample day', it does no justice to
+one form of his activities. Most days in the year he would put away all
+thought of fishing, shut himself up in his study morning and evening,
+and devote himself to reading and writing. Great care was taken over his
+weekly sermons. Monday was, if possible, given to rest; but from Tuesday
+till Friday evening they took up the chief share of his thoughts. And
+then there were the books that he wrote, novels, pamphlets, history
+lectures, scientific essays, on which he largely depended to support his
+wife and family. Besides this he kept up an extensive correspondence
+with friends and acquaintances. Many wrote to consult him about
+political and religious questions; from many he was himself trying to
+draw information on the phenomena of the science which he was trying to
+study at the time. Among the latter were Geikie, Lyell, Wallace, and
+Darwin himself, giants among scientific men, to whom he wrote with
+genuine humility, even when his name was a household word throughout
+England. His books can sometimes be associated with visits to definite
+places which supplied him with material. It is not difficult to connect
+_Westward Ho!_ with his winter at Bideford in 1854, and _Two Years Ago_
+with his Pen-y-gwryd fishing in 1856. Memories of _Hereward the Wake_ go
+back to his early childhood in the Fens, of _Alton Locke_ to his
+undergraduate days at Cambridge. But he had not the time for the
+laborious search after 'local colour' with which we are familiar to-day.
+The bulk of the work was done in his study at Eversley, executed
+rapidly, some of it too rapidly; but the subjects were those of which
+his mind was full, and the thoughts must have been pursued in many a
+quiet hour on the heathery commons or beside the streams of his own
+neighbourhood.
+
+About his books, his own judgement agreed with that of his friends.
+'What you say about my "Ergon" being poetry is quite true. I could not
+write _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and I can write poetry:... there is no denying
+it: I do feel a different being when I get into metre: I feel like an
+otter in the water instead of an otter ashore.' The value of his novels
+is in their spirit rather than in their artistic form or truth; but it
+is foolish to disparage their worth, since they have exercised so marked
+an influence on the characters and lives of so many Englishmen,
+especially our soldiers and sailors, inspiring them to higher courage
+and more unselfish virtue. Perhaps the best example of his prose is the
+_Prose Idylls_, sketches of fen-land, trout streams, and moors, which
+combine his gifts so happily, his observation of natural objects, and
+the poetic imagination with which he transfuses these objects and brings
+them near to the heart of man. There were very few men who could draw
+such joy from familiar English landscapes, and could communicate it to
+others. The cult of sport, of science, and of beauty has here become one
+and has found its true high priest. In poetry his more ambitious efforts
+were _The Saint's Tragedy_, a drama in blank verse on the story of St.
+Elizabeth of Hungary, and _Andromeda_, a revival of the old Greek legend
+in the old hexameter measure. But what are most sure to live are his
+lyrics, 'Airlie Beacon', 'The Three Fishers', 'The Sands of Dee', with
+their simplicity and true note of song.
+
+The combination of this poetic gift with a strong interest in science
+and a wide knowledge of it is most unusual; but there can be no
+mistaking the genuine feeling which Charles Kingsley had for the latter.
+It took one very practical form in his zeal for sanitation. In 1854 when
+the public, so irrational in its moments of excitement, was calling for
+a national fast-day on account of the spread of cholera, he heartily
+supported Lord Palmerston, who refused to grant it. He held it impious
+and wrong to attribute to a special visitation from God what was due to
+the blindness, laziness, and selfishness of our governing classes. His
+article in _Fraser's Magazine_ entitled 'Who causes pestilence?' roused
+much criticism: it said things that comfortable people did not like to
+hear, and said them frankly; it was far in advance of the public opinion
+of that time, but its truth no one would dispute to-day. And what his
+pen did for the nation, his example did for the parish. He drained
+unwholesome pools in his own garden, and he persuaded his neighbours to
+do the same. He taught them daily lessons about the value of fresh air
+and clean water: no details were too dull and wearisome in the cause. To
+many people his novels, like those of Dickens and Charles Reade, are
+spoilt by the advocacy of social reforms. The novel with a purpose was
+characteristic of the early Victorian Age, and both in _Alton Locke_ and
+in _Two Years Ago_ he makes little disguise of the zeal with which he
+preaches sanitary reform. Of the more attractive sciences, which he
+pursued with equal intensity, there is little room to speak. Botany was
+his first love and it remained first to the end. Zoology at times ran it
+close, and his letters from seaside places are full of the names of
+marine creatures which he stored in tanks and examined with his
+microscope. A dull day on the coast was inconceivable to him. Geology,
+too, thrilled him with its wonders, and was the subject of many letters.
+
+Side by side with his hobby of natural history went his love of sport:
+it was impossible for him to separate the one from the other. Fishing
+was his chief delight; he pursued it with equal keenness in the chalk
+streams of Hampshire, in the salmon rivers of Ireland, in the desolate
+tarns on the Welsh mountains. In the visitors' book of the inn at
+Pen-y-gwryd, Tom Hughes, Tom Taylor, and he left alternate quatrains of
+doggerel to celebrate their stay, written _currente calamo_, as the
+spirit prompted them. This is Charles Kingsley's first quatrain:
+
+    I came to Pen-y-gwryd in frantic hopes of slaying
+    Grilse, salmon, three-pound red-fleshed trout
+          and what else there's no saying:
+    But bitter cold and lashing rain and black nor'-eastern skies, sir,
+    Drove me from fish to botany, a sadder man and wiser.
+
+Each had his disappointment through the weather, which each expressed in
+verse; but it took more than bad weather to damp the spirits of three
+such ardent open-air enthusiasts. Hunting was another favourite sport,
+though he rarely indulged himself in this luxury, and only when he could
+do so without much expense. But whenever a friend gave him a mount,
+Kingsley was ready to follow the Berkshire hounds, and with his
+knowledge of the country he was able to hold his own with the best.
+
+Let us try to imagine him then as he walked about the lanes and commons
+of Eversley in middle life, a spare upright figure, above the middle
+height, with alert step, informal but not slovenly in dress, with no
+white tie or special mark of his profession. His head was one to attract
+notice anywhere with the grand hawk-like nose, firm mouth, and flashing
+eye. The deep lines furrowed between the brows gave his face an almost
+stern expression which his cheery conversation soon belied. He might be
+carrying a fishing-rod or a bottle of medicine for a sick parishioner,
+or sometimes both: his faithful Dandie Dinmont would be in attendance
+and perhaps one of his children walking at his side. His walk would be
+swift and eager, with his eye wandering restlessly around to observe all
+that he passed: 'it seemed as if no bird or beast or insect, scarcely a
+cloud in the sky, passed by him unnoticed, unwelcomed.' So too with
+humanity--in breadth of sympathy he resembled 'the Shirra', who became
+known to every wayfarer between Teviot and Tweed. Gipsy boy, farm-hand,
+old grandmother, each would be sure of a greeting and a few words of
+talk when they met the Rector on his rounds. In society he might at
+times be too impetuous or insistent, when questions were stirred in
+which he was deeply interested. Tennyson tells us how he 'walked hard up
+and down the study for hours, smoking furiously and affirming that
+tobacco was the only thing that kept his nerves quiet'. Green compares
+him to a restless animal, and Stopford Brooke speaks of his
+quick-rushing walk, his keen face like a sword, and his body thinned out
+to a lath, and complains that he 'often screams when he ought to speak'.
+But this excitability was soothed by the country, and in his own parish
+he was at his best. He would never have been so beloved by his
+parishioners, if they had not found him willing to listen as well as to
+advise and to instruct.
+
+His first venture into public life met with less general favour. The
+year 1848 saw many upheavals in Europe. On the Continent thrones
+tottered and fell, republics started up for a moment and faded away. In
+England it was the year of the Chartist riots, and political and social
+problems gave plenty of matter for thought. Monster meetings were held
+in London, which were not free from disorder. The wealthier classes and
+the Government were alarmed, troops were brought up to London and the
+Duke of Wellington put in command. Events seemed to point to outbreaks
+of violence and the starting of a class-war. Frederick Denison Maurice,
+whom above all men living Kingsley revered, was the leader of a group of
+men who were greatly stirred by the movement. They saw that more than
+political reform and political charters were needed; and, while full of
+sympathy for the working classes, they were not minded to say smooth
+things and prophesy Utopias in which they had no belief. Filled with the
+desire to help his fellow-men, indignant at abuses which he had seen
+with his own eyes, Kingsley came at once to their side. He went to
+London to see for himself, attended meetings, wrote pamphlets, and
+seemed to be promoting agitation. The tone in which he wrote can best be
+seen by a few words from the pamphlet addressed to the 'Workmen of
+England', which was posted up in London. 'The Charter is not bad, if the
+men who use it are not bad. But will the Charter make you free? Will it
+free you from slavery to ten-pound bribes? Slavery to gin and beer?
+Slavery to every spouter who flatters your self-conceit and stirs up
+bitterness and headlong rage in you? That I guess is real slavery, to be
+a slave to one's own stomach, one's pocket, one's own temper.' This is
+hardly the tone of the agitator as known to us to-day. With his friends
+Kingsley brought out a periodical, _Politics for the People_, in which
+he wrote in the same tone. 'My only quarrel with the Charter is that it
+does not go far enough in reform.... I think you have fallen into the
+same mistake as the rich of whom you complain, I mean the mistake of
+fancying that legislative reform is social reform, or that men's hearts
+can be changed by Act of Parliament.' He did not limit himself to
+denouncing such errors. He encouraged the working man to educate himself
+and to find rational pleasures in life, contributing papers on the
+National Gallery and bringing out the human interest of the pictures.
+'Parson Lot', the _nom de guerre_ which Kingsley adopted, became widely
+known for warm-hearted exhortations, for practical and sagacious
+counsels.
+
+Two years later he published _Alton Locke_, describing the life of a
+young tailor whose mind and whose fortunes are profoundly influenced by
+the Chartist movement. From a literary point of view it is far from
+being his best work; and the critics agreed to belittle it at the time
+and to pass it over with apology at his death. But it received a warm
+welcome from others. While it roused the imagination of many young men
+and set them thinking, the veteran Carlyle could speak of 'the snatches
+of excellent poetical description, occasional sunbursts of noble
+insight, everywhere a certain wild intensity which holds the reader fast
+as by a spell'.
+
+Should any one ask why a rector of a country parish mixed himself up in
+London agitation, many answers could be given. His help was sought by
+Maurice, who worked among the London poor. Many of the questions at
+issue affected also the agricultural labourer. Only one who was giving
+his life to serve the poor could effectively expose the mistakes of
+their champions. The upper classes, squires and merchants and
+politicians, had shut their eyes and missed their chances. So when the
+ship is on fire, no one blames the chaplain or the ship's doctor for
+lending a hand with the buckets.[32]
+
+[Note 32: See Preface by T. Hughes prefixed to later editions of
+_Alton Locke_.]
+
+That his efforts in London met with success can be seen from many
+sources besides the popularity of _Alton Locke_. He wrote a pamphlet
+entitled 'Cheap Clothes and Nasty', denouncing the sweaters' shops and
+supporting the co-operative movement, which was beginning to arise out
+of the ashes of Chartism. Of this pamphlet a friend told him that he saw
+three copies on the table in the Guards' Club, and that he heard that
+captains in the Guards were going to the co-operative shop in Castle
+Street and buying coats there. A success of a different kind and one
+more valued by Kingsley himself was the conversion of Thomas Cooper, the
+popular writer in Socialist magazines, who preached atheistical
+doctrines weekly to many thousand working men. Kingsley found him to be
+sincerely honest, spent infinite time in writing him friendly letters,
+discussing their differences of opinion, and some years later had the
+joy of inducing him to become an active preacher of the Gospel. But most
+of the well-to-do people, including the clergy, were prejudiced against
+Kingsley by his Radical views. On one occasion he had to face a painful
+scene in a London church, when the vicar who had invited him to preach
+rose after the sermon and formally protested against the views to which
+his congregation had been listening. Bishop Blomfield at first sided
+with the vicar; but in the end he did full justice to the sincerity and
+charity of Kingsley's views and sanctioned his continuing to preach in
+the Diocese.
+
+It was his literary successes which helped most to break down the
+prejudice existing against him in society. _Hypatia_, published in 1853,
+had a mixed reception; but _Westward Ho!_ appearing two years later, was
+universally popular. His eloquence in the pulpit was becoming known to a
+wider circle, largely owing to officers who came over from Aldershot and
+Sandhurst to hear him; and early in 1859 he was asked to preach before
+the Queen and Prince Consort. His appointment as chaplain to the Queen
+followed before the year was out; and this made a great difference in
+his position and prospects. What he valued equally was the hearty
+friendship which he formed with the Prince Consort. They had the same
+tastes, the same interests, the same serious outlook on life. A year
+later came a still higher distinction when Kingsley was appointed
+Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. His history lectures, it is
+generally agreed, are not of permanent value as a contribution to the
+knowledge of the subject. With his parish work and other interests he
+had no time for profound study. But his eloquence and descriptive powers
+were such as to attract a large class of students, and many can still
+read with pleasure his lectures on _The Roman and the Teuton_, in which
+he was fired by the moral lessons involved in the decay of the Roman
+empire and the coming of the vigorous young northern races. Apart from
+his lectures he had made his mark in Cambridge by the friendly relations
+which he established with many of the undergraduates and the personal
+influence which he exercised. But he knew better than any one else his
+shortcomings as an historian, the preparation of his lectures gave him
+great anxiety and labour, and in 1869 he resigned the office.
+
+The next honour which fell to him was a canonry at Chester, and in 1873,
+less than two years before his death, he exchanged it for a stall at
+Westminster. These historic cities with their old buildings and
+associations attracted him very strongly: preaching in the Abbey was
+even dangerously exciting to a man of his temperament. But while he gave
+his services generously during his months of office, as at Chester in
+founding a Natural History Society, he never deserted his old work and
+his old parish. Eversley continued to be his home, and during the
+greater part of each year to engross his thoughts.
+
+Literature, science, and sport were, as we have seen, the three
+interests which absorbed his leisure hours. A fourth, partaking in some
+measure of all three, was travel, a hobby which the strenuous pursuit of
+duty rarely permitted him to indulge. Ill-health or a complete breakdown
+sometimes sent him away perforce, and it is to this that he chiefly owed
+his knowledge of other climes. He has left us some fascinating pictures
+of the south of France, the rocks of Biarritz, the terrace at Pau, the
+blue waters of the Mediterranean, and the golden arches of the Pont du
+Gard; but the voyages that thrilled him most were those that he took to
+America, when he sailed the Spanish main in the track of Drake and
+Raleigh and Richard Grenville. The first journey in 1870 was to the West
+Indies; the second and longer one took him to New York and Quebec, and
+across the continent to the Yosemite and San Francisco. This was in
+1874, the last year of his life, and he was received everywhere with the
+utmost respect and goodwill. His name was now famous on both sides of
+the Atlantic, and the voice of opposition was stilled. The public had
+changed its attitude to him, but he himself was unchanged. He had the
+same readiness to gather up new knowledge, and to get into friendly
+touch with every kind of man, the same reluctance to talk about himself.
+Only the yearning towards the unseen was growing stronger. The poet
+Whittier, who met him at Boston, found him unwilling to talk about his
+own books or even about the new cities which he was visiting, but
+longing for counsel from his brother poet on the high themes of a future
+life and the final destiny of the human race.
+
+While he was in California he was taken ill with pleurisy; and when he
+came back to England he had so serious a relapse in the autumn that he
+could hardly perform his duties at Westminster. He had never wished for
+long life, his strength was exhausted, the ardent soul had worn out its
+sheath. A dangerous illness of his wife's, threatening to leave him
+solitary, hastened the end. For her sake he fought a while against the
+pneumonia which set in, but the effort was in vain, and on January 23,
+in his own room at Eversley, he met his death contented and serene.
+Twenty years before he had said, 'God forgive me if I am wrong, but I
+look forward to it with an intense and reverent curiosity'.
+
+These words of his sum up some of his most marked characteristics. Of
+his 'curiosity' there is no need to say more: all his life he was
+pursuing eager researches into rocks, flowers, animals, and his
+fellow-men. 'Intensity' has been picked out by many of his friends as
+the word which, more than any other, expresses the peculiar quality of
+his nature. This does not mean a weak excitability. His letters to J. S.
+Mill on the women-suffrage movement show that this hysterical element,
+which was often to be found in the women supporting it, was what most he
+feared. He himself defines it well--'my blessed habit of intensity. I go
+at what I am about as if there was nothing else in the world for the
+time being.' This quality, which many great men put into their work,
+Kingsley put both into his work and into his play-time. Critics will say
+that he paid for it: it is easy to quote the familiar line: 'Neque
+semper arcum tendit Apollo.' But Horace is not the poet to whom Charles
+Kingsley would go for counsel: he would only say that he got full value
+in both, and that he never regretted the bargain.
+
+But it would be no less true to say that 'Reverence' is the key-note of
+his character. This fact was impressed on all who saw him take the
+services in his parish church, and it was an exaltation of reverence
+which uplifted his congregation and stamped itself on their memories. It
+is seen, too, in his political views. The Radical Parson, the upholder
+of Chartism, was in many ways a strong Tory. He had a great belief in
+the land-owning classes, and an admiration for what remained of the
+Feudal System. He believed that the old relation between squire and
+villagers, if each did his duty, worked far better than the modern
+pretence of Equality and Independence. Like Disraeli, like Ruskin, and
+like many other men of high imagination, he distrusted the Manchester
+School and the policy that in the labour market each class should be
+left to fend for itself. Radical as he was, he defended the House of
+Lords and the hereditary system. So, too, in Church questions, though he
+was an anti-Tractarian, he had a great reverence for the Athanasian
+Creed and in general was a High Churchman. He had none of the fads which
+we associate with the Radical party. Total abstinence he condemned as a
+rigid rule, though there was no man more severe in his attitude to
+drunkenness. He believed that God's gifts were for man's enjoyment, and
+he set his face against asceticism. He trained his own body to vigorous
+manhood and he had remarkable self-control; and he wished to help each
+man to do this for himself and not to be driven to it by what he
+considered a false system. Logically it may be easy to find
+contradictions in the views which he expressed at different times; but
+his life shows an essential unity in aim and practice.
+
+It has been the fashion to label Charles Kingsley and his teaching with
+the nickname of 'Muscular Christianity', a name which he detested and
+disclaimed. It implied that he and his school were of the full-blooded
+robust order of men, who had no sympathy for weakness, and no message
+for those who could not follow the same strenuous course as themselves.
+As a fact Kingsley had his full share of bodily illnesses and suffered
+at all times from a highly-wrought nervous organization; when pain to
+others was involved, he was as tender and sympathetic as a woman. He was
+a born fighter, too reckless in attack, as we see in his famous dispute
+with Cardinal Newman about the honesty of the Tractarians. But he was
+not bitter or resentful. He owned himself that in this case he had met a
+better logician than himself: later he expressed his admiration for
+Newman's poem, 'The Dream of Gerontius', and in his letters he praises
+the tone in which the Tractarians write--'a solemn and gentle
+earnestness which is most beautiful and which I wish I may ever attain'.
+The point which Matthew Arnold singles out in estimating his character
+is the width of his sympathies. 'I think', he says, 'he was the most
+generous man I have ever known, the most forward to praise what he
+thought good, the most willing to admire, the most incapable of being
+made ill-natured or even indifferent by having to support ill-natured
+attacks himself. Among men of letters I know nothing so rare as this.'
+To the gibe about 'Muscular Christianity' Kingsley had his own answer.
+He said that with his tastes and gifts he had a special power of
+appealing to the wild rough natures which were more at home in the
+country than the town, who were too self-forgetful, and too heedless of
+the need for culture and for making use of their opportunities. Jacob,
+the man of intellect, had many spiritual guides, and the poor outcast,
+Esau, was too often overlooked. As he said, 'The one idea of my life was
+to tell Esau that he has a birthright as well as Jacob'. When he was
+laid to his rest in Eversley churchyard, there were many mourners who
+represented the cultured classes of the day; but what gave its special
+character to the occasion was the presence of keepers and poachers, of
+gipsies, country rustics, and huntsmen, the Esaus of the Hampshire
+village, which was the fit resting-place for one who above all was the
+ideal of a parish priest.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS
+
+1817-1904
+
+1817. Born in London, February 23.
+1827. Begins to frequent the studio of William Behnes.
+1835. Enters Royal Academy Schools.
+1837. Working in his own studio. 'Wounded Heron' and two portraits
+      in Royal Academy exhibition.
+1842. Success in Parliament House competition: 'Caractacus' cartoon.
+1843-7. Living with Lord and Lady Holland at Florence.
+1847. Success in second competition: 'Alfred' cartoon.
+1848. Early allegorical pictures.
+1850. Friendship with the Prinseps. Little Holland House.
+1851. National series of portraits begun.
+1852. Begins Lincoln's Inn Hall fresco: finished 1859.
+1856. With Sir Charles Newton to Halicarnassus.
+1865. Correspondence with Charles Rickards of Manchester.
+1867. Elected A.R.A. and R.A. in same year. Portraits. Carlyle. W.
+      Morris.
+1872. New home at Freshwater, Isle of Wight. 'The Briary.'
+      Little Holland House sold.
+1877. Grosvenor Gallery opened. 1881. Watts exhibition there
+      (200 pictures).
+1882. D.C.L., Oxford; LL.D., Cambridge.
+1886. November; marries Miss Fraser Tytler. Winter in Egypt.
+1890. New home at Limnerslease, Compton.
+1895. National Portrait Gallery opened.
+1896. New Gallery exhibition (155 pictures).
+1897. Gift of pictures to new Tate Gallery.
+1902. Order of Merit.
+1904. Death at Compton, July 1.
+
+GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS
+
+ARTIST
+
+
+The great age of British art was past before Queen Victoria began her
+long and memorable reign. Reynolds and Gainsborough had died in the
+last years of the eighteenth century, Romney and Hoppner in the first
+decade of the nineteenth; Lawrence, the last of the Georgian
+portrait-painters, did not live beyond 1830. Of the landscapists Crome
+died in 1821 and Constable in 1837. Turner, the one survivor of the
+Giants, had done three-quarters of his work before 1837 and can hardly
+be reckoned as a Victorian worthy.
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS
+
+From a painting by himself in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+In the reign of Queen Victoria many thousands of trivial anecdotic
+pictures were bought and sold, were reproduced in Art Annuals and
+Christmas Numbers and won the favour of rich amateurs and provincial
+aldermen--so much so that Victorian art has been a favourite target for
+the shafts of critics formed in the school of Whistler and the later
+Impressionists. But however just some of their strictures may be, it is
+foolish to condemn an age wholesale or to shut our eyes to the great
+achievements of those artists who, rising above the general level,
+dignified the calling of the painter just when the painters were most
+rare. These men formed no single movement progressing in a uniform
+direction. The study of pure landscape is best seen in the water-colour
+draughtsmen, Cotman, Cox, and de Wint; of landscape as a setting for the
+life of the people, in Fred Walker and George Mason. Among
+figure-painters the 'Pre-Raphaelites', Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and
+Millais, with their forerunner Madox Brown, are the first to win
+attention by their earnestness, their romantic imagination, and their
+intense feeling for beauty: in these qualities Burne-Jones carried on
+their work and retained the allegiance of a cultured few to the very end
+of the century. Two solitary figures are more difficult to class, Alfred
+Stevens and Watts. Each learnt fruitful lessons from prolonged study of
+the great art of the past; yet each preserves a marked originality in
+his work. More than any other artists of their age they realized the
+unity of art and the dependence of one branch upon another. Painting
+should go hand in hand with sculpture, and both minister to
+architecture. So the world might hope once more to see public buildings
+nobly planned and no less nobly decorated, as in the past it saw the
+completion of the Parthenon and the churches of mediaeval Italy. It was
+unfortunate that they received so little encouragement from the public,
+and that their example had so narrow an influence. St. Paul's can show
+its Wellington monument, Lincoln's Inn its fresco; but year after year
+subject-pictures continued to be painted on an ambitious scale, which
+after a few months' exhibition on the walls of Burlington House passed
+to their tomb in provincial museums, or reappeared as ghosts in the
+sale-room only to fetch a derisory price and to illustrate the fickle
+vagaries in the public taste.
+
+In the early life of George Frederick Watts, who was born in a quiet
+street in West Marylebone, there are few incidents to narrate, there is
+little brightness to enliven the tale. His father, a maker of musical
+instruments, was poor; his mother died early; his home-life was
+overshadowed by his own ill-health and the uncertain moods of other
+members of the family. His education was casual and consisted mostly of
+reading books under the guidance of his father, who had little solid
+learning, but refined tastes and an inventive disposition. In his
+Sundays at home, where the Sabbatarian rule limited his reading, he
+became familiar with the stories of the Old Testament; he discovered for
+himself the Waverley Novels and Pope's translation of the _Iliad_; and
+he began from early years to use his pencil with the eager and
+persistent enthusiasm which marks the artist born.
+
+For a rich artistic nature it was a starved life, but he made the most
+of such chances as came in his way. He was barely ten years old when he
+found his way to the studio of a sculptor named William Behnes, a man
+of Hanoverian extraction, an indifferent sculptor but possessed of a
+real talent for drawing; and from his more intellectual brother, Charles
+Behnes, he learnt to widen his interest in literature. In this halting
+and irregular process of education he received help, some years later,
+from another friend of foreign birth, Nicholas Wanostrocht, a Belgian,
+who under the assumed name of 'Felix' became a leading authority on the
+game of cricket. Wanostrocht was a cultivated man of very wide tastes,
+and it was largely through his encouragement that Watts gave to the
+study of the French and Italian languages, and to music, what little
+time he could spare from his professional work. London was to render him
+greater services than this. Thanks to his visits to the British Museum,
+he had, while still in his teens, come under a mightier spell. Though
+few Englishmen had yet learnt to value their treasures, the Elgin
+Marbles had been resting there for twenty years. But now, two years
+before Queen Victoria's accession, there might be seen, standing rapt in
+admiration before the works of Phidias, a boy of slender figure with
+high forehead, delicately moulded features, and disordered hair, one
+who, as we can see from the earliest portrait which Mrs. Watts has
+preserved in her biography, had something of the unearthly beauty of the
+young Shelley. He was physically frail, marked off from ordinary men by
+a grace that won its way quickly to the hearts of all who were
+susceptible to spiritual charm. Untaught though he was, he had the eye
+to see for himself the grandeur of these relics of Greece, and
+throughout his life they remained one of the guiding influences in his
+development, one of the standards which he set up before himself, though
+all too conscious that he could not hope to reach that height. We see
+their influence in his treatment of drapery, of horses, of the human
+figure, in his idealization of types, in the flowing lines of his
+compositions, and in the grouping of his masses. Compared to the hours
+which he spent in the British Museum, the lessons in the Royal Academy
+schools seem unimportant. He attended classes there for some months in
+1835, but the teaching was poor and its results disappointing. William
+Hilton, R.A., who then occupied the post of Keeper, gave him some kind
+words of encouragement, but in general he came and went unnoticed, and
+he soon returned to his solitary self-training in his own studio. If we
+know little of his teaching in art, we know still less of his personal
+life during the time when he was laying the foundations of his success
+by study and self-discipline. Early rising was an art which he acquired
+early, and maintained throughout life; long after he felt the spur of
+necessity, even after the age of 80, he could rise at four when there
+was work to be done; and, living as he did on the simplest diet, he
+often achieved his best results at an hour when other men were still
+finishing their slumbers. His shyness and sensitiveness, combined with
+precarious health and weak physique, would seem to equip him but poorly
+in the struggle for life; but his steady persistence, his high
+conception of duty, his faith in his art, joined to that power which he
+had of winning friends among the noblest men and women of his day, were
+to carry him triumphantly through to the end.
+
+The career of Watts as a public man began in 1843 when he had reached
+the age of 26. The British Government, not often guilty of fostering art
+or literature, may claim at least the credit for having drawn him out of
+his seclusion at the very moment when his genius was ripening to bear
+fruit. In 1834 the Palace of Westminster, so long the home of the Houses
+of Parliament, had been burnt to the ground. The present buildings were
+begun by Sir Charles Barry in 1840, and, with a view to decorating them
+with wall-paintings, the Board of Works wisely offered prizes for
+cartoons, hoping thereby to attract the best talent of the country. In
+June 1843 they had to judge between 140 designs by various competitors,
+and to award prizes varying in value from L300 to L100. Of the three
+first prizes one fell to Watts, hitherto unknown beyond the narrow
+circle of his friends, for a design displaying 'Caractacus led in
+triumph through the streets of Rome'. This cartoon, however, was not
+employed for its original purpose: it fell into the hands of an
+enterprising, if inartistic, dealer, who cut it up and sold such
+fragments as he judged to be of value in the state of the picture market
+at the time. What was far more important was the encouragement given to
+the artist by such a success at a critical time of his life, and the
+opportunity which the money furnished him to travel abroad and enrich
+his experiences before his style was formed. He had long wished to visit
+Italy; and, after spending a few weeks in France, he made his leisurely
+way (at a pace incredible to us to-day) to Florence and its picture
+galleries. On the steamer between Marseilles and Leghorn he was
+fortunate in making friends with a Colonel Ellice and his wife, and a
+few weeks later they introduced him to Lord Holland, the British
+Minister at Florence.
+
+The story goes that Watts went to be the guest of Lord and Lady Holland
+for four days and remained there for four years--a story which is a
+tribute to the discernment of the latter and not a satire upon Watts,
+who was the last man in the world to take advantage of hospitality or to
+thrust himself into other people's houses. No doubt it is not to be
+taken too literally, but at least it is so far true that he very quickly
+became intimate with his host and hostess and found a home where he
+could pursue his art under ideal conditions. The value and the danger of
+patronage have been often discussed. Democracy may provide a discipline
+for artists and men of letters which is often salutary in testing the
+sincerity of their devotion to art and literature; but, in such a stern
+school, men of genius may easily founder and miss their way.
+
+However that may be, Watts found just the haven which was needed for a
+nature like his. So far he had known but little appreciation, and had
+lived with few who were his peers. Now he was cheered by the favour of
+men and women who had known the best and whose favour was well worth the
+winning. But he kept his independence of spirit. He lived in a palace,
+but his diet was as sparing as that of a hermit. He feasted his eyes on
+the great works of the Renaissance, but he preserved his originality,
+and continued to work, with fervour and enhanced enthusiasm, on the
+lines which he had already marked out for himself. He did not copy with
+the hand, but he drank in new lessons with the eyes and dreamed new
+dreams with the spirit.
+
+The Hollands had two houses, one in the centre of the city, the other,
+the Villa Medicea di Careggi, lying on the edge of the hills some two or
+three miles to the north. This latter had been a favourite residence of
+the first Cosimo; here Lorenzo had died, turning his face to the wall,
+unshriven by Savonarola; and here Watts decorated an open _loggia_ in
+fresco, to bear witness to its latest connexion with the patronage of
+Art. Between the two houses he passed laborious but tranquil days,
+studying, planning, training his hand to mastery, but enjoying in his
+leisure all that such a home could give him of varied entertainment.
+Music and dancing, literature and good company, all had their charms for
+him, though none of them could beguile him into neglecting his work.
+Fortune had tried him with her frowns and with her smiles; under
+temptations of both sorts he remained but more faithful to his calling.
+
+His health gave cause for anxiety from time to time, but he delighted in
+the sunshine and the genial climate of the South, and in general he was
+well enough to enjoy what Florence could give him of beautiful form and
+colour, and even to travel farther afield. One year he pushed as far as
+Naples, stopping on the way for a hurried glance at Rome. On this
+memorable day the Sistine chapel and its paintings were kept to the
+last; and Watts, high though his expectations were, was overwhelmed at
+what he saw. 'Michelangelo', he said, 'stands for Italy, as Shakespeare
+does for England.' So the four years went by till in 1847 this halcyon
+period came to an end. The Royal Commission of Fine Arts was offering
+prizes for fresco-painting, and Watts felt that he must put his growing
+powers to the test and utilize what he had learnt. This time he chose
+for his subject 'Alfred inciting the English to resist the Danes by
+sea'. He was busy at work in the early months of 1847 making many
+sketches in pencil for the figures, and by April he was on his way home,
+bringing with him the 'Alfred' almost finished and five other canvases
+in various stages of completion. The picture was placed in Westminster
+Hall for competition in June, and soon after he was announced to be the
+winner of one of the three L500 prizes. When the Commissioners decided
+to purchase his picture for the nation, he refused to take more than
+L200 for it, though he might easily have obtained a far higher price.
+This is one of the earliest instances in which he displayed that signal
+generosity which marked his whole career.
+
+During the next three years his life was rather desultory. He was hoping
+to return to Italy and did not find it easy to settle down in London. He
+changed his studio two or three times. He planned various works, but
+felt chilled at the absence of any clear encouragement from new patrons
+or from the general public. His success in 1847 had not been followed
+by any commissions for the sort of work he loved: interest in the
+decoration of public buildings was still spasmodic and too rare.
+
+He made the acquaintance of Mr. Ruskin; but, friendly though they were
+in their personal relations, they did not see eye to eye in artistic
+matters. Ruskin seemed to lay too much emphasis on points of secondary
+importance, and to fail in judging the work of Michelangelo and the
+greatest masters. So Watts thought, and many years later, in
+conversation with Jowett, declared, chary though he was of criticizing
+his friends. To-day there is little doubt whose judgement was the truer,
+even had Ruskin not weakened his position by so often contradicting
+himself. Besides Ruskin, Watts was beginning to make other friends, and
+was a member of the Cosmopolitan Club, which counted among its members
+Sir Robert Morier, Sir Henry Layard, FitzGerald, Palgrave, and Spedding.
+The large painting of the 'Story from Boccaccio', which now hangs in the
+Watts room of the Tate Gallery, hung for many years on the walls of this
+club and was presented to the nation in 1902. How frequently Watts
+attended the club or other social gatherings at this time we do not
+know. His name figures little in the biographies and memoirs of
+Londoners, and he himself would not have wished the record of his daily
+life to be preserved. His modesty in all personal matters is
+uncontested, and even if his subsequent offer of his pictures to the
+nation smacks somewhat of presumption, his motive was something other
+than conceit. His portraits were an historical record of the worthiest
+men of his own time: his allegories were of value, so he felt, not for
+their technical accomplishments, but for the high moral lessons which
+they tried to convey. The artist himself was at ease only in retirement
+and privacy. Yet complete isolation was not good for him. Ill-health
+still dogged his steps, and the dejection which came over him in the
+years 1849 and 1850 is to be seen in the gloomiest pictures which he
+ever painted. Their titles and subjects alike recall the more tragic
+poems of Thomas Hood. But the eclipse was not to last for long, and in
+1850 Watts owed his recovery to a happy chance encounter with friends
+who were to give him a new haven of refuge and gladden his life for
+thirty years to come.
+
+A high Indian official, James Pattle, had been the father of five
+daughters who were famous for their beauty, and from their tastes and
+character were particularly fitted to be the friends of artists and
+poets. If Lady Somers was the most beautiful of the sisters and Mrs.
+Cameron the most artistic, their elder sister Mrs. Prinsep proved to be
+Watts's surest friend. Her husband, Thoby Prinsep, was a member of the
+India Council in Whitehall, a large-hearted man, full of knowledge and
+full of kindliness. Mrs. Prinsep herself was mistress of the domestic
+arts in no common degree, from skilful cookery to the holding of a
+literary _salon_. She and her husband realized what friendship could do
+for a nature like that of Watts, and they provided him with an ideal
+home, where he was nursed back to health, relieved of care, and cheered
+by constant sympathy and affection. It was Watts who discovered this
+home for them in a quiet corner of London, that has not yet lost all its
+charm. Behind Holland House and adjoining its park was a smaller
+property with a rambling old-fashioned house, built in the days when
+London was still far away. At Little Holland House the Prinseps lived
+for a quarter of a century. Here the sisters came and went freely with
+their children who were growing up around them. Here were gatherings of
+their friends, among whom Tennyson, Thackeray, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones
+might be met from time to time; and here Watts remained a constant
+inmate, giving regular hours to his work, enjoying their society in his
+leisure, a special favourite with the children, who admitted him to
+their confidence and called him by pet names. There was no lionizing, no
+striving after brilliance; all work that was genuine and of high
+intention received due honour, and Watts could hope here to carry to
+fruition the noble visions which he had seen since the days of his
+youth.
+
+These visions had little to do with the exhibitions of Burlington House,
+the winning of titles, or the acquisition of worldly wealth. Watts
+cherished the old Greek conception of willing service to the community.
+And he was alive to the special needs of an age when men were struggling
+for gain, and when 'progress' was measured by material riches. To him,
+if to few others, it seemed tragic that, in the wonderful development of
+industrial Britain, art, which had spoken so eloquently to citizens of
+Periclean Athens and to Florence in the Medicean age, should remain
+without expression or sign of life. For a moment our Government had
+seemed to hear the call, and the stimulus of the Westminster
+competitions had been of value; but the interest died away all too
+quickly, and the attention of the general public was never fully roused.
+If the latter could be won, Watts was only too willing to give the time
+and the knowledge which he had acquired. The building of the great
+railway stations in London seemed to offer a chance, and Watts
+approached the directors of the North Western Company with a humble
+petition. All that he asked for was wall space and the payment of his
+expenses in material. Had his request been granted, Euston might have
+enjoyed pre-eminence among railway stations, and passengers for the
+north might have passed through, or waited in, a National Gallery of
+their own. But the Railway Director's mind is slow to move; inventions
+leave him cold, and imagination is not to be weighed in the scale
+against dividends and quick returns. The Company declined the offer on
+the ground of expense, while their architect is said to have been
+seriously alarmed at the idea of any one tampering with his building.
+
+Another proposal met with a heartier response. The men of law proved
+more generous than the men of commerce. The new Hall at Lincoln's Inn
+was being built by Mr. Philip Hardwick, in the Tudor style. Benchers and
+architect alike cordially welcomed Watts's offer to decorate a blank
+wall with fresco. The work could only be carried on during the legal
+vacations, and it proved a long business owing to the difficulties of
+the process and to the interruptions caused by the artist's ill-health.
+Watts planned it in 1852, began work in 1853, and did not put the
+finishing touch till 1859. The subject was a group of famous lawgivers,
+in which the chief figures were Moses, Mahomet, Justinian, Charlemagne,
+and Alfred, and it stands to-day as the chief witness to his powers as a
+designer on a grand scale.
+
+Before this he had already dedicated to national service his gift of
+portrait-painting. The head of Lord John Russell, painted in 1851, is
+one of the earliest portraits known to have been painted with this
+intention, though it is impossible to fix with accuracy the date when
+such a scheme took shape. In 1899, with the same patriotic intention, he
+was at work on a painting of Cecil Rhodes. In this half-century of
+activity he might have made large sums of money, if he had responded to
+the urgent demands of those men and women who were willing to pay high
+prices for the privilege of sitting to him; but few of them attained
+their object. His earlier achievements were limited to a few families
+from whom he had received help and encouragement when he was unknown.
+First among these to be remembered are the various generations of that
+family whose name is still preserved at South Kensington in the Ionides
+collection of pictures. Next came the Hollands, of whom he painted many
+portraits at Florence; and a third circle, naturally enough, was that
+of the Prinseps. In general he was most unwilling to undertake, as a
+mere matter of business, commissions from individuals unknown to him. He
+found portrait-painting most exhausting in its demands upon him. He
+threw his whole soul into the work, straining to see and to reproduce
+all that was most noble in his sitters. His nervous temperament made him
+anxious at starting, while his high standard of excellence made him
+often dissatisfied with what he had accomplished. Even when he was
+painting Tennyson, a personal friend, he was miserable at the thought of
+the responsibility which he had undertaken; and in 1879 he gave up a
+commission to paint Gladstone, feeling that he was not realizing his
+aim. So far as mere money was concerned, he would have preferred to
+leave this branch of his profession, the most lucrative of all, perhaps
+the most suited to his gifts, severely on one side, and to confine
+himself to the allegorical subjects which he felt to be independent of
+external claims.
+
+In the years after 1850, when he was first living at Little Holland
+House, Watts formed some of the friendships with brother artists which
+added so much pleasure to his life. Foremost among these friends was
+Frederic Leighton, the most famous President whom the Royal Academy has
+known since the days of Reynolds, a man of many accomplishments,
+linguist, orator, and organizer, as well as sculptor and painter, the
+very variety of whose gifts have perhaps prevented him from obtaining
+proper recognition for the things which he did really well. The worldly
+success which he won brought him under the fire of criticism as no other
+artist of the time; but, apart from his merits as a draughtsman and a
+sculptor he was a man of singularly generous temper, a staunch friend
+and a champion of good causes. These qualities, and his sincere
+admiration for all noble work, endeared him to Watts; and, at one time,
+Leighton paid daily visits to his studio to exchange views and to see
+his friend's work in progress.
+
+For a while Rossetti frequented the circle, but this wayward spirit
+drifted into other paths, and the chief service which he did to Watts
+was to introduce to him Edward Burne-Jones, most refined of artists and
+most lovable of men. The latter's work commanded Watts's highest
+admiration, and his friendship was valued to the end. To many lovers of
+painting these two remain the embodiment of all that is purest and
+loftiest in Victorian art; and though their treatment of classic
+subjects and of allegory were so different their pictures were often
+hung side by side in exhibitions and their names were coupled together
+in the current talk of the time. Burne-Jones was markedly Celtic in his
+love of beautiful pattern, in the ghostly refinement of his figures, in
+the elaborate fancifulness of his imagery. Watts had more of the
+full-blooded Englishman in his nature, and his art was simpler, grander,
+more universal. If we may compare them with the great men of the
+Renaissance, Burne-Jones recalled the grace of Botticelli, Watts the
+richness and power of Veronese or of Titian.
+
+Those who went to Little Holland House and saw the circle of the
+Prinseps adorned by these artists, and by such writers as Tennyson,
+Henry Taylor,[33] and Thackeray, had a singular impression of harmony
+between the men and their surroundings; and if they had been asked who
+best expressed the spirit of these gatherings, they would probably have
+pointed to the 'Signor', as Watts came to be called among his intimate
+friends--to the slight figure with the small delicately-shaped head, who
+seemed to recall the atmosphere of Florence in the Middle Ages, when art
+was at once a craft and a religion. But few who saw the grace and
+old-fashioned courtesy with which he moved among young and old would
+have guessed what fire and persistency were in him, that he would
+outlive all his generation, and be still wielding a vigorous brush in
+the early years of the century to come.
+
+[Note 33: Sir Henry Taylor, author of _Philip van Artevelde_ and
+other poems, and a high official of the Colonial Office.]
+
+One interlude in this busy yet tranquil life came in 1856 when he was
+asked to accompany Sir Charles Newton's party to the coast of Asia
+Minor. Newton was to explore the ruins of Halicarnassus on behalf of the
+British Government, and a man-of-war was placed at his disposal. The
+opportunity of seeing Grecian lands in this leisurely fashion was too
+good to be missed, and Watts spent eight happy months on board. He
+showed his power of adapting himself to a new situation, made friends
+with the sailors, and sang 'Tom Bowling' at their Christmas concert.
+Incidentally he visited Constantinople, as it was necessary to get a
+'firman' from the Porte, was commended to the famous ambassador Lord
+Stratford de Redcliffe and painted two portraits of him, one of which is
+in the National Portrait Gallery to-day. He also enjoyed a cruise
+through the Greek Islands, where the scenery with its rich colour and
+bold pure outlines was specially calculated to charm him. He painted few
+landscapes in his long career, but both in Italy and in Greece it was
+the distant views of mountain peaks that led him to give expression to
+his delight in the beauty of Nature.
+
+A different kind of distraction was obtained after his return by
+occasional visits to Esher, where he was the guest of Mrs. Sanderson,
+sister of Mr. Prinsep, and where he spent many a happy day riding to
+hounds. For games he had no training, and little inclination, though he
+loved in his old age to watch and encourage the village cricket in
+Surrey; but riding gave him great pleasure. His love for the horse may
+in part be due to this pastime, in part to his early study of the
+Parthenon frieze with its famous procession of horsemen. Certainly this
+animal plays a notable part in his work. Two great equestrian statues
+occupied him for many years. 'Hugh Lupus', the ancestor of the
+Grosvenors, was cast in bronze in 1884 and set up at Eaton Hall in the
+Duke of Westminster's park. 'Physical Energy' was the name given to a
+similar figure conceived on broader and more ideal lines. At this Watts
+continued to work till the year of his death, though he parted with the
+first version in response to Lord Grey's appeal when it was wanted to
+adorn the monument to Cecil Rhodes. Its original destination was the
+tomb in the Matoppo hills; but it was proved impracticable to convey
+such a colossal work, without injury, over the rough country surrounding
+them; and it was set up at Cape Town. The statue has become better known
+to the English public since a second version has been set up in
+Kensington Gardens. The rider, bestriding a powerful horse, has flung
+himself back and is gazing eagerly into the distance, shading with
+uplifted hand his eyes against the fierce sunlight which dazzles them.
+The allegory is not hard to interpret, though the tame landscape of a
+London park frames it less fitly than a wide stretch of wild and
+solitary veld.
+
+Horses of many different kinds figure in his pictures. In one, whose
+subject is taken from the Apocalypse, we see the war-horse, his neck
+'clothed with thunder'; in another his head is bowed, the lines
+harmonizing with the mood of his master, Sir Galahad. 'The Midday Rest',
+unheroic in theme but grand in treatment, shows us two massive dray
+horses, which were lent to him as models by Messrs. Barclay and Perkins,
+while 'A patient life of unrewarded toil' renders sympathetically the
+weakness of the veteran discharged after years of service, waiting
+patiently for the end. One instance of a more imaginative kind shows us
+'Neptune's Horses' as the painter dimly discerned them, with arched
+necks and flowing manes, rising and leaping in the crest of the wave.
+
+His portraits of great men generally took the form of half-lengths with
+the simplest backgrounds. His subjects were of all kinds--Tennyson and
+Browning, Rossetti and Burne-Jones, Gladstone, Mill, Motley, Joachim,
+Thiers, and Anthony Panizzi.[34] His object was a national one, and the
+foreigners admitted to the company were usually closely connected with
+England. Sometimes the pose of the body and the hands helps the
+conception, as in Lord Lytton and Cardinal Manning; more often Watts
+trusts to the simple mass of the head or to the character revealed by
+the features in repose. No finer examples for contrast can be given than
+the portraits of the two friends, Burne-Jones and William Morris,
+painted in 1870. In the former we see the spirit of the dreamer, in the
+latter the splendid vitality and force of the craftsman, who was
+impetuous in action as he was rich in invention. The room at the
+National Portrait Gallery where this collection is hung speaks
+eloquently to us of the Victorian Age and the varied genius of its
+greatest men; and in some cases we have the additional interest of being
+able to compare portraits of the same men painted by Watts and by other
+artists. Well known is the contrast in the case of Carlyle. Millais has
+painted a picturesque old man whose talk might be racy and his temper
+uncertain; but the soul of the seer, tormented by conflicts and yet
+clinging to an inner faith, is revealed only by the hands of Watts.
+Again Millais gives us the noble features, the extravagant 'hure'[35] of
+the Tennyson whom his contemporaries saw, alive, glowing with force;
+Watts has exalted this conception to a higher level and has portrayed
+the thinker whom the world will honour many centuries hence. Some will
+perhaps prefer the more objective treatment; and it is certain that
+Watts's ambition led him into difficult paths. Striving to represent the
+soul of his sitter, he was conscious at times that he failed--that he
+could not see or realize what he was searching for. More than once he
+abandoned a commission when he felt this uncertainty in himself. But
+when the accord between artist and sitter was perfect, he achieved a
+triumph of idealization, combined with a firm grasp on reality, such as
+few artists since Giorgione and the young Titian have been able to
+achieve.
+
+[Note 34: Sir Anthony Panizzi, an Italian political refugee, the
+most famous of librarians. He served the British Museum from 1831 to
+1866.]
+
+[Note 35: '"Hure: tete herissee et en desordre"; se dit d'un homme
+qui a les cheveux mal peignes, d'un animal, &c.'--Littre.]
+
+Apart from portraits there was a rich variety in the subjects which the
+painter handled, some drawn from Bible stories, some from Greek legends
+or mediaeval tales, some for which we can find no source save in his own
+imagination. He dealt with the myths in a way natural to a man who owed
+more to Greek art and to his own musings than to the close study of
+Greek literature. His pictures of the infancy of Jupiter, of the
+deserted Ariadne, of the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, have no
+elaborate realism in detail. The Royal Academy walls showed, in those
+days, plenty of marble halls, theatres, temples, and classic groves,
+reproduced with soulless pedantry. Watts gave us heroic figures, with
+strong masses and flowing lines, simply grouped and charged with
+emotion--the yearning love of Diana for Endymion, the patient
+resignation of Ariadne, the passionate regret of Orpheus, the cruel
+bestiality of the Minotaur. Some will find a deeper interest, a grander
+style, in the designs which he made for the story of our first parents
+in the Book of Genesis. Remorse has rarely been expressed so powerfully
+as in the averted figure of Eve after the Fall, or of Cain bowed under
+the curse, shut out from contact with all creation. In one of his
+masterpieces Watts drew his motive from the Gospel story. The picture
+entitled 'For he had great possessions' shows us the young ruler who has
+come to Christ and has failed in the supreme moment. His back, his bowed
+neck and averted head, with the gesture of indecision in his right hand,
+tell their tale with consummate eloquence.
+
+In his more famous allegories the same is true; by simple means an
+impression of great power is conveyed. The popularity of 'Love and
+Death' and its companion picture shows how little the allegory needs
+explanation. These themes were first handled between 1860 and 1870; but
+the pictures roused such widespread admiration that the painter made
+several replicas of them. Versions are now to be found in the Dominions
+and in New York, as well as in London and Manchester. Photographs have
+extended their renown and they are so familiar to-day that there is no
+need to describe them. Another masterpiece dealing with the subject of
+Death is the 'Sic transit', where the shrouded figure of the dead
+warrior is impressive in its solemnity and stillness. 'Dawn' and 'Hope'
+show what different notes Watts could strike in his treatment of the
+female form. At the other extreme is 'Mammon', the sordid power which
+preys on life and crushes his victims with the weight of his relentless
+hand. The power of conscience is shown in a more mystic figure called
+'The Dweller in the Innermost'. Judgement figures in more than one
+notable design, the most familiar being that which now hangs in St.
+Paul's Cathedral with the title of 'Time, Death, and Judgement'. Its
+position there shows how little we can draw the line between the
+different classes of subjects as they were handled by Watts. A courtier
+like Rubens could, after painting with gusto a rout of Satyrs, put on a
+cloak of decorum to suit the pageantry of a court, or even simulate
+fervour to portray the ecstasy of a saint. He is clearly acting a part,
+but in Watts the character of the man is always seen. Whether his
+subjects are drawn from the Bible or from pagan myths, they are all
+treated in the same temper of reverence and purity.
+
+It is impossible to avoid the question of didactic art in writing of
+these pictures, though such a wide question, debated for half a century,
+can receive no adequate treatment here. We must frankly allow that Watts
+was 'preaching sermons in paint', nor would he have repudiated the
+charge, however loud to-day are the protests of those who preach the
+doctrine of 'art for art's sake'. But the latter, while stating many
+principles of which the British public need to be reminded, seem to go
+beyond their rights. It is, of course, permissible for students of art
+to object to technical points of handling--Watts himself was among the
+first to deplore his own failures due to want of executive ability; it
+is open to them to debate the part which morality may have in art, and
+to express their preference for those artists who handle all subjects
+impartially and conceive all to be worthy of treatment, if truth of
+drawing or lighting be achieved. But when they make Watts's ethical
+intention the reason for depreciating him as an artist they are on more
+uncertain ground. There is no final authority in these questions. Ruskin
+was too dogmatic in the middle years of his life and only provoked a
+more violent reaction. Twenty years later the admirers of Whistler and
+Manet were equally intolerant, and assumed doctrines which may hold the
+field to-day but are certain to be questioned to-morrow.
+
+Watts was most reluctant to enter into controversy and had no ambition
+to found a school; in fact so far was he from imposing his views on
+others, that he scarcely ever took pupils, and was content to urge young
+artists to follow their own line and to be sincere. But he could at
+times be drawn into putting some of his views on paper, and in 1893 he
+wrote down a statement of the relative importance which he attached to
+the qualities which make a painter. Among these Imagination stands
+first, Intellectual idea next to it. After this follow Dignity of form,
+Harmony of lines, and Colour. Finally, in the sixth place comes Realism,
+the idol of so many of the end of the century, both in literature and
+art.
+
+Some years earlier, in meeting criticism, Watts had said, 'I admit my
+want of dexterity with the brush, in some cases a very serious defect,'
+but at the same time he refused to accept the authority of those 'who
+deny that art should have any intellectual intention'. In general, he
+pleaded that art has a very wide range over subject and treatment; but
+he did not set himself up as a reformer in art, nor inflict dogmas on
+the public gratuitously. He found that some of his more abstract themes
+needed handling in shadowy and suggestive fashion: if this gave the
+impression of fumbling, or displayed some weakness in technique, even so
+perhaps the conception reaches us in a way that could not be attained by
+dexterity of brushwork. As he himself said, 'there were things that
+could only be done in art at the sacrifice of some other things'; but
+the points which Watts was ready to sacrifice are what the realists
+conceive to be indispensable, and his aims were not as theirs. But his
+life was very little troubled by controversy; and he would not have
+wished his own work to be a subject for it.
+
+External circumstances also had little power to alter the even tenor of
+his way. Late in life, at the age of 69, he married Miss Fraser Tytler,
+a friend of some fifteen years' standing, who was herself an artist, and
+who shared all his tastes. After the marriage he and his wife spent a
+long winter in the East, sailing up the Nile in leisurely fashion,
+enjoying the monuments of ancient Egypt and the colours of the desert.
+It was a time of great happiness, and was followed by seventeen years
+of a serene old age, divided between his London house in Melbury Road
+and his new home in Surrey. Staying with friends in Surrey, Watts had
+made acquaintance with the beautiful country lying south of the Hog's
+Back; and in 1889 he chose a site at Compton, where he decided to build
+a house. To this he gave the name of Limnerslease. Thanks to the
+generosity of Mrs. Watts, who has built a gallery and hung some of his
+choicest pictures there, Compton has become one of the three shrines to
+which lovers of his work resort.[36]
+
+[Note 36: His allegorical subjects are in the Tate Gallery; his
+portraits in the National Portrait Gallery.]
+
+But for many years he met with little recognition from the world at
+large. It was only at the age of 50 that he received official honours
+from the Royal Academy, though the success of his cartoons had marked
+him out among his contemporaries twenty-five years earlier. About 1865
+his pictures won the enthusiastic admiration of Mr. Charles Rickards,
+who continued to be the most constant of his patrons, and gave to his
+admiration the most practical form. Not only did he purchase from year
+to year such pictures as Watts was willing to sell, but twenty years
+later he organized an exhibition of Watts's work at Manchester, which
+did much to spread his fame in the North. In London Watts came to his
+own more fully when the Grosvenor Gallery was opened in 1877. Here the
+Directors were at pains to attract the best painters of the day and to
+hang their pictures in such a way that their artistic qualities had full
+effect. No one gained more from this than Watts and Burne-Jones; and to
+a select but growing circle of admirers the interest of the annual
+exhibitions began and ended with the work of these two kindred spirits.
+The Directors also arranged in 1881 for a special exhibition devoted to
+the works of Watts alone, when, thanks to the generosity of lenders, 200
+of his pictures did justice to his sixty years of unwearied effort.
+This winter established his fame, and England now recognized him as one
+of her greatest sons. But when his friends tried to organize a dinner to
+be held at the Gallery in his honour, he got wind of the plot, and with
+his usual fastidious reserve begged to be spared such an ordeal. The
+_elite_ of London society, men famous in politics, literature, and other
+departments of public life, were only too anxious to honour him; but he
+could not endure to be the centre of public attention. To him art was
+everything, the artist nothing. Throughout his life he attended few
+banquets, mounted fewer platforms, and only wished to be left to enjoy
+his work, his leisure, and the society of his intimate friends.
+
+His interest in the progress of his age was profound, though it did not
+often take shape in visible form. He believed that the world might be
+better, and was not minded to acquiesce in the established order of
+things. He sympathized with the Salvation Army; he was a strong
+supporter of women's education; he was ardent for redressing the balance
+of riches and poverty, and for recognizing the heroism of those who,
+labouring under such grim disadvantages, yet played a heroic part in
+life. The latter he showed in practical form. In 1887 he had wished to
+celebrate the Queen's Jubilee by erecting a shrine in which to preserve
+the records of acts of self-sacrifice performed by the humblest members
+of the community. The scheme failed at the time to win support; but in
+1899, largely through his help, a memorial building arose in the
+churchyard of St. Botolph, near Aldersgate, better known as the
+'Postmen's Park'.
+
+In private life his kindliness and courtesy won the hearts of all who
+came near him, young and old, rich and poor. He was tolerant towards
+those who differed from him in opinion: he steadily believed the best of
+other men in passing judgement on them. No mean thought, no malicious
+word, no petty quarrel marred the purity of his life. He had lost his
+best friends: Leighton in 1896, Burne-Jones three years later; but he
+enjoyed the devotion of his wife and the tranquillity of his home. Twice
+he refused the offer of a Baronetcy. The only honour which he accepted
+was the Order of Merit, which carried no title in society and was
+reserved for intellectual eminence and public service. At the age of 80
+he presented to Eton College his picture of Sir Galahad, a fit emblem of
+his own lifelong quest. His last days of active work were spent on the
+second version of the great statue of 'Physical Energy', which had
+occupied him so long, and in which he ever found something new to
+express as he dreamed of the days to come and the future conquests of
+mankind. In 1904 his strength gradually failed him, and on July 1 he
+died in his Surrey home. Like his great exemplar Titian, whom he
+resembled in outward appearance and in much of the quality of his
+painting, he outlived his own generation and was yet learning, as one of
+the young, when death took him in the 88th year of his life.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON
+
+1827-71
+
+1827. Born in London, April 1.
+1838-45. At school at Eton.
+1841. Selwyn goes out to New Zealand as Bishop.
+1845-9. Undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford.
+1850-1. Visits Germany.
+1852-3. Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
+1853. Curate at Alphington, near Ottery.
+1854. Accepted by Bishop Selwyn for mission work.
+1855. Sails for New Zealand, March. Head-quarters at Auckland.
+1856. First cruise to Melanesia.
+1860. First prolonged stay (3 months) in Mota.
+1861. Consecrated first Bishop of Melanesia, February.
+1864. Visit to Australia to win support for Mission (repeated 1855).
+      Serious attack on his party by natives of Sta. Cruz.
+1867. Removal of head-quarters to Norfolk Island.
+1868. Selwyn goes home to become Bishop of Lichfield.
+1869. Exploitation of native labour becomes acute.
+1870. Severe illness: convalescence at Auckland.
+1871. Last stay at Mota. Cruise to Sta. Cruz. Death at Nukapu,
+      September 20.
+
+JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON
+
+MISSIONARY
+
+
+New Zealand, discovered by Captain Cook in 1769, lay derelict for half a
+century, and like others of our Colonies it came very near to passing
+under the rule of France. From this it was saved in 1840 by the
+foresight and energy of Gibbon Wakefield, who forced the hand of our
+reluctant Government; and its steady progress was secured by the
+sagacity of Sir George Grey, one of our greatest empire-builders in
+Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. Thanks to them and to others,
+there has arisen in the Southern Pacific a state which, more than any
+other, seems to resemble the mother country with its sea-girt islands,
+its temperate climate, its mountains and its plains. A population almost
+entirely British, living in these conditions, might be expected to
+repeat the history of their ancestors. In politics and social questions
+its sons show the same independence of spirit and even greater
+enterprise.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON
+
+From a drawing by William Richmond]
+
+The names of two other men deserve recognition here for the part they
+played in the history of these islands. In 1814, before they became a
+British possession, Samuel Marsden came from Australia to carry the
+Gospel to their inhabitants, and formed settlements in the Northern
+districts, in days when the lives of settlers were in constant peril
+from the Maoris. But nothing could daunt his courage; and whenever they
+came into personal contact with him, these childlike savages felt his
+power and responded to his influence, and he was able to lay a good
+foundation. In 1841 the English Church sent out George Augustus Selwyn
+as first Missionary Bishop of New Zealand, giving him a wide province
+and no less wide discretion. He was the pioneer who, from his base in
+New Zealand, was to spread Christian and British influences even farther
+afield in the vast stretches of the Pacific Ocean.
+
+Selwyn was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, and these
+famous foundations have never sent forth a man better fitted to render
+services to his country. In a small sphere, as curate of Windsor, he had
+already, by his energy, patience, and practical sagacity, achieved
+remarkable results; and it was providential that, in the strength of
+early manhood, he was selected for a responsible post which afforded
+scope for the exercise of his powers. In the old country he might have
+been hampered by routine and tradition; in a new land he could mark out
+his own path. The constitution of the New Zealand Church became a model
+for other dioceses and other lands, and his wisdom has stood the test of
+time.
+
+What sort of man he was can best be shown by quoting a story from his
+biography.[37] When the Maori War broke out he joined the troops as
+chaplain and shared their perils in the field. Against the enterprising
+native fighters these were not slight, especially as the British troops
+were few and badly led. He was travelling without escort over routes
+infested by Maoris, refusing to have any special care taken of his own
+person, and his chief security lay in rapid motion. Yet twice he
+dismounted on the way, at peril of his life, once under an impulse of
+humanity, once from sheer public spirit. The first time it was to pull
+into the shade a drunken soldier asleep on duty and in danger of
+sunstroke; the second to fill up the ruts in a sandy road, where it
+seemed possible that the transport wagons which were following might be
+upset. Many other incidents could be quoted which show his
+unconventional ways and his habitual disregard for his own comfort,
+dignity, or safety. In New Zealand he found plenty of people to
+appreciate these qualities in a bishop.
+
+[Note 37: _Life and Episcopate of G. A. Selwyn_, by H. W. Tucker, 2
+vols. (Wells Gardner, 1879).]
+
+Though Selwyn was the master and perhaps the greater man, yet a peculiar
+fame has attached to his disciple John Coleridge Patteson, owing to the
+sweetness of his disposition, the singleness of his aim, and the
+consummation of his work by a martyr's death. Born in London in 1827, he
+was more truly a son of Devon, to which he was attached by many links.
+His mother's brother, Justice Coleridge, and many other relatives, lived
+close round the old town of Ottery St. Mary; and his father, an able
+lawyer who was raised to the Bench in 1830, bought an estate at Feniton
+and came to live in the same district before the boy was fifteen years
+old. It was at Ottery, where the name of Coleridge was so familiar,
+that the earliest school-days of 'Coley' Patteson were passed; but
+before he was eleven years old he was sent to the boarding-house of
+another Coleridge, his uncle, who was a master at Eton. Here he spent
+seven happy years working in rather desultory fashion, so that he had
+his share of success and failure. His chief distinctions were won at
+cricket, where he rose to be captain of the XI; but with all whose good
+opinion was worth having he won favour by his cheerful, frank,
+independent spirit. If he was idle at one time, at another he could
+develop plenty of energy; if he was one of the most popular boys in the
+school, he was not afraid to risk his popularity by protesting strongly
+against moral laxity or abuses which others tolerated. It is well to
+remember this, which is attested by his school-fellows, when reading his
+letters, in which at times he blames himself for caring too much for the
+good opinion of others.
+
+His interest in the distant seas where he was to win fame was first
+aroused in 1841. Bishop Selwyn was a friend of his family, and coming to
+say good-bye to the Pattesons before sailing for New Zealand, he said,
+half sportively, to the boy's mother, 'Will you give me "Coley"?' This
+idea was not pursued at the time; but the name of Selwyn was kept before
+him in his school-days, as the Bishop had left many friends at Eton and
+Windsor, and Edward Coleridge employed his nephew to copy out Selwyn's
+letters from his diocese in order to enlist the sympathy of a wider
+audience. But this connexion dropped out of sight for many years and
+seems to have had little influence on Patteson's life at Oxford, where
+he spent four years at Balliol. He went up in 1845 as a commoner, and
+this fact caused him some disquietude. He felt that he ought to have won
+a scholarship, and, conscious of his failure, he took to more steady
+reading. He was also practising self-discipline, giving up his cricket
+to secure more hours for study. He did not scorn the game. He was as
+fond as ever of Eton, and of his school memories. But his life was
+shaping in another direction, and the new interests, deepening in
+strength, inevitably crowded out the old.
+
+After taking his degree he made a tour of the great cities of Italy and
+wrote enthusiastically of the famous pictures in her galleries. He also
+paid more than one visit to Germany, and when he had gained a fair
+knowledge of the German language, he went on to the more difficult task
+of learning Hebrew and Arabic. This pursuit was due partly to his
+growing interest in Biblical study, partly to the delight he took in his
+own linguistic powers. He had an ear of great delicacy; he caught up
+sounds as by instinct; and his retentive memory fixed the impression.
+Later he applied the reasoning of the philologist, classified and
+tabulated his results, and thus was able, when drawn into fields
+unexplored by science, to do original work and to produce results of
+great value to other students. But he was not the man to make a display
+of his power; in fact he apologizes, when writing to his father from
+Dresden, for making a secret of his pursuit, regarding it rather as a
+matter of self-indulgence which needed excuse. Bishop Selwyn could have
+told him that he need have no such fears, and that in developing his
+linguistic gifts he was going exactly the right way to fit himself for
+service in Melanesia.
+
+Patteson's appointment to a fellowship at Merton College, which involved
+residence in Oxford for a year, brought no great change into his life.
+Rather he used what leisure he had for strengthening his knowledge of
+the subjects which seemed to him to matter, especially the
+interpretation of the Bible. He returned to Greek and Latin, which he
+had neglected at school, and found a new interest in them. History and
+geography filled up what time he could spare from his chief studies.
+Resuming his cricket for a while, he mixed in the life of the
+undergraduates and made friends among them. At College meetings, for all
+his innate conservatism, he found himself on the side of the reformers
+in questions affecting the University; but he had not time to make his
+influence felt. At the end of the year he was ordained and took a curacy
+at Alphington, a hamlet between Feniton and Ottery. His mother had died
+in 1842, and his object was to be near his father, who was growing
+infirm and found his chief pleasure in 'Coley's' presence and talk. His
+interest in foreign missions was alive again, but at this time his first
+duty seemed to be to his family; and in a parish endeared to him by old
+associations he quickly won the affection of his flock. He was happy in
+the work and his parishioners hoped to keep him for many years; but this
+was not to be. In 1854 Bishop Selwyn and his wife were in England
+pleading for support for their Church, and their visit to Feniton
+brought matters to a crisis. Patteson was thrilled at the idea of seeing
+his hero again, and he at once seized the opportunity for serving under
+him. There was no need for the Bishop to urge him; rather he had to
+assure himself that he could fairly accept the offer. To the young man
+there was no thought of sacrifice; that fell to the father's lot, and he
+bore it nobly. His first words to the Bishop were, 'I can't let him go';
+but a moment later he repented and cried, 'God forbid that I should stop
+him'; and at parting he faced the consequences unflinchingly. 'Mind!' he
+said, 'I give him wholly, not with any thought of seeing him again.'
+
+In the following March, the young curate, leaving his home and his
+parish where he was almost idolized, where he was never to be seen
+again, set his face towards the South Seas. Once the offer had been made
+and accepted, he felt no more excitement. It was not the spiritual
+exaltation of a moment, but a deliberate applying of the lessons which
+he had been learning year by year. He had put his hand to the plough and
+would not look back.
+
+The first things which he set himself to learn, on board ship, were the
+Maori language and the art of navigation. The first he studied with a
+native teacher, the second he learnt from the Bishop, and he proved an
+apt pupil in both. In a few months he became qualified to act as master
+of the Mission ship, and the speaking of a new language was to him only
+a matter of weeks. His earliest letters show how quickly he came to
+understand the natives. He was ready to meet any and every demand made
+upon him, and to fulfil duties as different from one another as those of
+teacher, skipper, and storekeeper. His head-quarters, during his early
+months in New Zealand, were either on board ship or else at St. John's
+College, five miles from Auckland. But, before he had completed a year,
+he was called to accompany the Bishop on his tour to the Islands and to
+make acquaintance with the scene of his future labours.
+
+Bishop Selwyn had wisely limited his mission to those islands which the
+Gospel had not reached. The counsels of St. Paul and his own sagacity
+warned him against exposing his Church to the danger of jealous rivalry.
+So long as Christ was preached in an island or group of islands, he was
+content; he would leave them to the ministry of those who were first in
+the field. Many of the Polynesian groups had been visited by French and
+English missionaries and stations had been established in Samoa, Tahiti,
+and elsewhere; but north of New Zealand there was a large tract of the
+Pacific, including the New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands, where the
+natives had never heard the Gospel message. These groups were known
+collectively as Melanesia, a name hardly justified by facts,[38] as the
+inhabitants were by no means uniform in colour. If the Solomon
+Islanders had almost black skins, those who lived in the Banks Islands,
+which Patteson came to know so well, were of a warm brown hue such as
+may be seen in India or even in the south of Europe. Writing in the very
+last month of his life, Patteson tells his sisters how the colour of the
+people in Mota 'is just what Titian and the Venetian painters delighted
+in, the colour of their own weather-beaten boatmen'.
+
+[Note 38: Melanesia, from Greek [Greek: melas]=black, [Greek:
+nesos]=island.]
+
+Selwyn had visited these islands intermittently since 1849, and had
+thought out a plan for spreading Christianity among them. With only a
+small staff of helpers and many other demands on his time, he could not
+hope to get into direct contact with a large population, so widely
+scattered. His work must be done through natives selected by himself,
+and these must be trained while they were young and open to impressions,
+while their character was still in the making. So every year he brought
+back with him from his cruise a certain number of Melanesian boys to
+spend the warmer months of the New Zealand year under the charge of the
+missionaries, and restored them to their homes at the beginning of the
+next cruise. At Auckland, with its soldiers, sailors, and merchants, the
+boys became familiar with other sides of European life beyond the walls
+of the Mission School; and their interest was stimulated by a close view
+of the strength to be drawn from European civilization. By this system
+Selwyn hoped that they on their return would spread among the islanders
+a certain knowledge of European ways, and that their relatives, seeing
+how the boys had been kindly treated, would feel confidence in the
+missionaries and would give them a hearing. This policy commended itself
+to Patteson by its practical efficacy; and though he modified it in
+details, he remained all his life a convinced adherent of the principle.
+Slow progress through a few pupils, selected when young, and carefully
+taught, was worth more than mere numbers, though too often in
+Missionary reports success is gauged by figures and statistics.
+
+These cruises furnished the adventurous part of the life. Readers of
+Stevenson and Conrad can picture to themselves to-day the colour, the
+mystery, and the magic of the South Seas. Patteson, with his reserved
+nature and his dread of seeming to throw a false glamour over his
+practical duties, wrote but sparingly of such sights; but he was by no
+means insensitive to natural beauty and his letters give glimpses of
+coral reefs and lagoons, of palms and coco-nut trees, of creepers 100
+feet long trailing over lofty crags to the clear water below.
+
+He enjoyed being on board ship, with his books at hand and some leisure
+to read them, with the Bishop at his side to counsel him, and generally
+some of his pupils to need his help. They had many delightful days when
+they received friendly greeting on the islands and found that they were
+making real progress among the natives. But the elements of discomfort,
+disappointment, and danger were rarely absent for long. For a large part
+of each voyage they had some forty or fifty Melanesian boys on board, on
+their way to school or returning to their homes. The schooner built for
+the purpose was as airy and convenient as it could be made; yet there
+was little space for privacy. The natives were constitutionally weak;
+and when illness broke out, no trained nurses were at hand and Patteson
+would give up his own quarters to the sick and spend hours at their
+bedsides. Sometimes they found, on revisiting an island, that their old
+scholars had fallen away and that they had to begin again from the
+start. Sometimes they had to abstain from landing at all, because the
+behaviour of the natives was menacing, or because news had reached the
+Mission of some recent quarrel which had roused bitter feeling. The
+traditions of the Melanesians inclined them to go on the war-path only
+too readily, and both Selwyn and Patteson had an instinctive perception
+of the native temperament and its danger.
+
+However lightly Patteson might treat these perils in his letters home,
+there was never complete security. To reassure his sisters he tells them
+of 81 landings and only two arrows fired at them in one cruise; and yet
+one poisoned arrow might be the cause of death accompanied by
+indescribable agony. Even when a landing had been effected and friendly
+trading and talk had given confidence to the visitors, it might be that
+an arrow was discharged at them by some irresponsible native as they
+made for their boats.
+
+These voyages needed unconventional qualities in the missioner; few of
+the subscribers in quiet English parishes had an idea how the Melanesian
+islanders made their first acquaintance with their Bishop. When the boat
+came near the shore, the Bishop, arrayed in some of his oldest clothes,
+would jump into the sea and swim to land, sometimes being roughly
+handled by the breakers which guarded the coral bank. It was desirable
+not to expose their precious boat to the cupidity of the natives or to
+the risk of it being dashed to pieces in the surf, so the Bishop risked
+his own person instead. He would then with all possible coolness walk
+into a gathering of savages, catch up any familiar words which seemed to
+occur in the new dialect, or, failing any linguistic help, try to convey
+his peaceful intentions by gesture or facial expression. When an island
+had been visited before, there was less reason to be on guard; but
+sometimes the Bishop had to break to relatives the sad news that one of
+the boys committed to his care had fallen a victim to the more rigorous
+climate of New Zealand or to one of the diseases to which these tribes
+were so liable. Then it was only the personal ascendancy won by previous
+visits that could secure him against a violent impulse to revenge.
+
+All practical measures were tried to establish friendly relations with
+the islanders; and when people at home might fancy the Bishop preaching
+impressively to a decorous circle of listeners, he was really engaged in
+lively talk and barter, receiving yams and other articles of food in
+return for the produce of Birmingham and Sheffield, axe-heads which he
+presented to the old, and fish-hooks with which he won the favour of the
+young. But such brief visits as could be made at a score of islands in a
+busy tour did not carry matters far, and the memory of a visit would be
+growing dim before another chance came of renewing intercourse with the
+same tribe. Selwyn felt it was most desirable that he should have
+sufficient staff to leave a missionary here and there to spend unbroken
+winter months in a single station, where he could reach more of the
+people and exercise a more continuous influence upon them. Patteson's
+first experience of this was in 1858, when he spent three months at Lifu
+in the Loyalty Islands, a group which was later to be annexed by the
+French.
+
+A sojourn which was to bear more permanent fruit was that which he made
+at Mota in 1860. This was one of the Banks Islands lying north of the
+New Hebrides, in 14 deg. South Latitude. The inhabitants of this group
+showed unusual capacity for learning from the missionaries, and
+sufficient stability of character to promise lasting success for the
+work carried on among them. Mota, owing to the line of cliffs which
+formed its coast, was a difficult place for landing; so it escaped the
+visits of white traders who could not emulate the swimming feats of
+Selwyn and Patteson, and was free from many of the troubles which such
+visitors brought with them. Once the island was reached, it proved to be
+one of the most attractive, with rich soil, plenty of water, and a
+kindly docile population. Here, on a site duly purchased for the
+mission, under the shade of a gigantic banyan tree, on a slope where
+bread-fruit and coco-nuts (and, later, pine-apples and other
+importations) flourished, the first habitation was built, with a boarded
+floor, walls of bamboo canes, and a roof of coco-nut leaves woven
+together after the native fashion so as to be waterproof. Here, in the
+next ten years, Patteson was to spend many happy weeks, taking school,
+reading and writing when the curiosity of the natives left him any
+peace, but in general patiently conversing with all and sundry who came
+up, with the twofold object of gathering knowledge of their dialect and
+making friends with individuals. While he showed instinctive tact in
+knowing how far it was wise to go in opposing the native way of life, he
+was willing to face risks whenever real progress could be made. After he
+had been some days in Mota a special initiation in a degrading rite was
+held outside the village. Patteson exercised all his influence to
+prevent one of his converts from being drawn in; and when an old man
+came up and terrorized his pupils by planting a symbolic tree outside
+the Mission hut, Patteson argued with him at length and persuaded him to
+withdraw his threatening symbol. But apart from idolatry, from
+internecine warfare, and from such horrors as cannibalism, prevalent in
+many islands, he was studious not to attack old traditions. He wanted a
+good Melanesian standard of conduct, not a feeble imitation of European
+culture. He was prepared to build upon the foundation which time had
+already prepared and not to invert the order of nature.
+
+In writing home of his life in the island Patteson regularly depreciates
+his own hardships, saying how unworthy he feels himself to be ranked
+with the pioneers in African work. But the discomforts must often have
+been considerable to a man naturally fastidious and brought up as he had
+been.
+
+Food was most monotonous. Meat was out of the question except where the
+missioners themselves imported live stock and kept a farm of their own;
+variety of fruit depended also on their own exertions. The staple diet
+was the yam, a tuber reaching at times in good soil a weight far in
+excess of the potato. This was supplied readily by the natives in return
+for European goods, and could be cooked in different ways; but after
+many weeks' sojourn it was apt to pall. Also the climate was relaxing,
+and apt sooner or later to tell injuriously on Europeans working there.
+Dirt, disease, and danger can be faced cheerfully when a man is in good
+health himself; but a solitary European suffering from ill-health in
+such conditions is indeed put to an heroic test. Perhaps the greatest
+discomfort of all was the perpetual living in public. The natives became
+so fond of Patteson that they flocked round him at all times. His
+reading was interrupted by a stream of questions; when writing he would
+find boys standing close to his elbow, following his every movement with
+attention. The mere writing of letters seems to have been a relief to
+him, though they could not be answered for so long. His journal, into
+which he poured freely all his hopes and fears, all his daily anxieties
+over the Mission, was destined for his family. But he had other
+correspondents to whom he wrote more or less regularly, especially at
+Eton and Winchester. At Eton his uncle was one of his most ardent
+supporters and much of the money which supported the Mission funds came
+to Patteson through the Eton Association. Near Winchester was living his
+cousin Charlotte Yonge, the well-known authoress, who afterwards wrote
+his Life, and through her he established friendly communications with
+Keble at Hursley and Bishop Moberly, then Head Master of Winchester
+College. To them he could write sympathetically of Church questions at
+home, in which he maintained his interest.
+
+During the summer months also, spent near Auckland, Patteson suffered
+from the want of privacy. At Kohimarana, a small bay facing the entrance
+to the harbour, to which the school was moved in 1859, he had a tiny
+room of his own, ten feet square; but the door stood open all day long
+in fine weather, and he was seldom alone. And when there was sickness
+among the boys, his own bedroom was sure to be given up to an invalid.
+But these demands upon his time and comfort he never grudged, while he
+talks with vexation, and even with asperity, of the people from the town
+who came out to pay calls and to satisfy their curiosity with a sight of
+his school. His real friends were few and were partners in his work. The
+two chief among them were unquestionably Bishop Selwyn, too rarely seen
+owing to the many claims upon him, and Sir Richard Martin, who had been
+Chief Justice of the Colony. The latter shared Patteson's taste for
+philology, and had a wide knowledge of Melanesian dialects.
+
+By the middle of 1860, when Patteson had been five years at work, he
+became aware that the question of his consecration could not be long
+delayed. New Zealand was taxing the Primate's strength and he wished to
+constitute Melanesia a separate diocese. He believed that in Patteson,
+with his single-minded zeal and special gifts, he had found the ideal
+man for the post, and in February 1861 the consecration took place. The
+three bishops who laid hands upon him were, like the Bishop-elect,
+Etonians;[39] and thus Eton has played a very special part in founding
+the Melanesian Church. What Patteson thought and felt on this solemn
+occasion may be seen from the letters which he wrote to his father. The
+old judge, still living with his daughters at Feniton, had been stricken
+with a fatal disease, and in the last months of his life he rejoiced to
+know that his son was counted worthy of his high calling. He died in
+June 1861 and the news reached his son when cruising at sea a few months
+later. They had kept up a close correspondence all these years, which he
+now continued with his sisters; nothing shows better his simple
+affectionate nature. They are filled mostly with details of his mission
+life. It was this of which his sisters wanted to hear, and it was this
+which filled almost entirely his thoughts: though he loved his family
+and his home, he had put aside all idea of a voyage to England as
+incompatible with the call to work. To the Mission he gave his time, his
+strength, his money. Eton supplied him with regular subscriptions,
+Australia responded to appeals which he made in person and which
+furnished the only occasions of his leaving the diocese; but, without
+his devotion of the income coming from his Merton fellowship and from
+his family inheritance, it would have been impossible for him to carry
+on the work in the islands.
+
+[Note 39: Bishop Selwyn (Primate), Bishop Abraham of Wellington, and
+Bishop Hobhouse of Nelson.]
+
+In his letters written just about the time of his consecration there are
+abundant references to the qualities which he desired to see in
+Englishmen who should offer to serve with him. He did not want young men
+carried away by violent excitement for the moment, eager to make what
+they called the sacrifice of their lives. The conventional phrases about
+'sacrifices' he disliked as much as he did the sensational appeals to
+which the public had been habituated in missionary meetings. He asked
+for men of common sense, men who would take trouble over learning
+languages, men cheerful and healthy in their outlook, 'gentlemen' who
+could rise above distinctions of class and colour and treat Melanesians
+as they treated their own friends. Above all, he wanted men who would
+whole-heartedly accept the system devised by Selwyn, and approved by
+himself. He could not have the harmony of the Mission upset by people
+who were eager to originate methods before they had served their
+apprenticeship. If he could not get the right recruits from England, he
+says more than once, he would rather depend on the materials existing
+on the spot: young men from New Zealand would adapt themselves better to
+the life and he himself would try to remedy any defects in their
+education. Ultimately he hoped that by careful education and training he
+would draw his most efficient help from his converts in the islands, and
+to train them he spared no pains through the remaining ten years of his
+service.
+
+His way of life was not greatly altered by his consecration. He
+continued to divide his year between New Zealand and his ocean cruise.
+He had no body of clergy to space out over his vast diocese or to meet
+the urgent demands of the islands. In 1863 he received two valuable
+recruits--one the Rev. R. Codrington, a Fellow of Wadham College,
+Oxford, who shared the Bishop's literary tastes and proved a valued
+counsellor; the other a naval man, Lieut. Tilly, who volunteered to take
+charge of the new schooner called the _Southern Cross_, just sent out to
+him from England. Till then his staff consisted of three men in holy
+orders and two younger men who were to be ordained later. One of these,
+Joseph Atkin, a native of Auckland, proved himself of unique value to
+the Mission before he was called to share his leader's death. But the
+Bishop still took upon himself the most dangerous work, the landing at
+villages where the English were unknown or where the goodwill of the
+natives seemed to be doubtful. This he accepted as a matter of course,
+remarking casually in his letters that the others are not good enough
+swimmers to take his place. But caution was necessary long after the
+time when friendship had begun. In the interval between visits anything
+might have happened to render the natives suspicious or revengeful; and
+it is evident that, month after month, the Bishop carried his life in
+his hand.
+
+The secret of his power can be found in his letters, which are quite
+free from heroics. His religion was based on faith, simple and sincere;
+and he never hesitated to put it into practice. From the Bible, and
+especially from the New Testament, he learned the central lessons, the
+love of God and the love of man. Nothing was allowed to come between him
+and his duty; and to it he devoted the faculties which he had trained.
+His instinct often stood him in good stead, bidding him to practise
+caution and to keep at a distance from treacherous snares; but there
+were times when he felt that, to advance his work, he must show absolute
+confidence in the natives whatever he suspected, and move freely among
+them. In such cases he seemed to rise superior to all nervousness or
+fear. At one time he would find his path back to the boat cut off by
+natives who did not themselves know whether they intended violence or
+not. At another he would sit quietly alone in a circle of gigantic
+Tikopians, some of whom, as he writes, were clutching at his 'little
+weak arms and shoulders'. 'Yet it is not', he continued, 'a sense of
+fear, but simply of powerlessness.' No amount of experience could render
+him safe when he was perpetually trying to open new fields for mission
+work and when his converts themselves were so liable to unaccountable
+waves of feeling.
+
+This was proved by his terrible experience at Santa Cruz. He had visited
+these islands (which lie north of the New Hebrides) successfully in
+1862, landing at seven places and seeing over a thousand natives, and he
+had no reason to expect a different reception when he revisited it in
+1864. But on this occasion, after he had swum to land three times and
+walked freely to and fro among the people, a crowd came down to the
+water and began shooting at those in the boat from fifteen yards away,
+while others attacked in canoes. Before the boat could be pulled out of
+reach, three of its occupants were hit with poisoned arrows, and a few
+days later two of them showed signs of tetanus, which was almost
+invariably the result of such wounds. They were young natives of
+Norfolk Island, for whom the Bishop had conceived a special affection,
+and their deaths, which were painful to witness, were a very bitter
+grief to him. The reason for the attack remained unknown. The traditions
+of Melanesia in the matter of blood-feuds were like those of most savage
+nations; and under the spur of fear or revenge the islanders were
+capable of directing their anger blindly against their truest friends.
+
+The most notable development in the first year of Patteson's episcopate
+was the forming of a solid centre of work in the Banks Islands. Every
+year, while the Mission ship was cruising, some member of the Mission,
+often the Bishop himself, would be working steadily in Mota for a
+succession of months. For visitors there was not much to see. At the
+beginning, hours were given up to desultory talking with the natives,
+but perseverance was rewarded. Those who came to talk would return to
+take lessons, and some impression was gradually made even on the older
+men attached to their idolatrous rites. Many years after Patteson's
+death it was still the most civilized of the islands with a population
+almost entirely Christian.
+
+A greater change was effected in 1867 when the Bishop boldly cut adrift
+from New Zealand and made his base for summer work at Norfolk Island,
+lying 800 miles north-east of Sydney.[40] The advantages which it
+possessed over Auckland were two. Firstly, it was so many hundred miles
+nearer the centre of the Mission work; secondly, it had a climate much
+more akin to that of the Melanesian islands and it would be possible to
+keep pupils here for a longer spell without running such risks to their
+health. Another point, which to many would seem a drawback, but to
+Patteson was an additional advantage, was the absence of all
+distraction. At Auckland the clergy implored him to preach, society
+importuned him to take part in its gatherings; and if he would not come
+to the town, they pursued him to his retreat. He was always busy and
+grudged the loss of his time. A contemporary tells us that he worked
+from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. and later; and besides his philological
+interests, he needed time for his own study of the Bible. In the former
+he was a pioneer and had to mark out his own path; in the latter he
+welcomed the guidance of the best scholars whenever he could procure
+their books. He spoke with delight of his first acquaintance with
+Lightfoot's edition of St. Paul's Epistles; he wrote home for such new
+books as would be useful to him, and he read Hebrew daily whenever he
+could find time. Into this part of his life he put more conscientious
+effort the older he grew, and was always trying to learn. It may have
+seemed to many a dull routine to be followed year after year by a man
+who might have filled high place and moved in brilliant society at home;
+but from his letters it is clear that he was satisfied with his life and
+that no thought of regret assailed him.
+
+[Note 40: This island had lately been colonized by settlers from
+Pitcairn Island, descended from the mutineers of the _Bounty_, marooned
+in 1789.]
+
+The year 1868 brought a severe loss when Bishop Selwyn was called home
+to take charge of the Diocese of Lichfield. It was he who had drawn
+Patteson to the South Seas: his presence had been an abiding strength to
+the younger man, however rare their meetings; and Patteson felt his
+departure as he had felt nothing since his father's death. But he went
+on unfalteringly with his work, ever ready to look hopefully into the
+future. At the moment he was intensely interested in the ordination of
+his first native clergyman, George Sarawia, who had now been a pupil for
+nine years and had shown sufficient progress in knowledge and strength
+of character to justify the step. Eager though he was to enrol helpers
+for the work, Patteson was scrupulously careful to ensure the fitness of
+his clergy, and to lay hands hastily on no man. In little matters also
+he was careful and methodical. His scholars in Norfolk Island were
+expected to be punctual, his helpers to be content with the simple life
+which contented him. All were to give their work freely; between black
+and white there was to be equality; no service was to be considered
+degrading. He did not wish to hurry his converts into outward observance
+of European ways. More important than the wearing of clothes was the
+true respect for the sanctity of marriage; far above the question of
+Sunday observance was the teaching of the love of God.
+
+Foreign missions have come in for plenty of criticism. It is sometimes
+said that our missionaries have occasioned strife leading to
+intervention and annexation by the British Government, and have exposed
+us abroad to the charge of covetousness and hypocrisy. But there are few
+instances in which this charge can be maintained, least of all in
+Australasian waters. A more serious charge, often made in India, is that
+missioners destroy the sanctions of morality by undermining the
+traditional beliefs of the natives, and that the convert is neither a
+good Asiatic nor a passable European. This depends on the methods
+employed. It may be true in some cases. Patteson fully realized the
+danger, as we can see from his words, and built carefully on the
+foundation of native character. He took away no stone till he could
+replace it by better material. He was never content merely to destroy.
+
+Another set of critics are roused by the extravagance of some missionary
+meetings and societies: their taste is offended or (we are bound to
+admit) their sense of humour roused. It was time for Dickens to wield
+this weapon when he heard Chadbands pouring forth their oily platitudes
+and saw Mrs. Jellybys neglecting their own children to clothe the
+offspring of 'Borrioboola Gha'. Such folly caught the critic's eye when
+the steady benevolence of others, unnoticed, was effecting work which
+had a good influence equally at home and abroad. Against the fanciful
+picture of Mrs. Jellyby let us put the life-story of Charlotte Yonge,
+who, while discharging every duty to her family and her village, in a
+way which won their lasting affection, was able to put aside large sums
+from the earnings of her pen to supply the needs of the Melanesian
+Mission.
+
+Let us remember, too, that much of the bitterest criticism has come from
+those who have a direct interest in suppressing missions, who have made
+large profits in remote places by procedure which will not bear the
+light of day. Patteson would have been content to justify his work by
+his Master's bidding as quoted in the Gospel. His friends would have
+been content to claim that the actual working of the Mission should be
+examined. If outside testimony to the value of his work is wanted, one
+good instance will refute a large amount of idle calumny. Sir George
+Grey, no sentimentalist but the most practical ruler of New Zealand,
+gave his own money to get three native boys, chosen by himself, educated
+at Patteson's school, and was fully satisfied with the result.
+
+But this simple regular life was soon to be perturbed by new
+complications, which rose from the European settlers in Fiji. As their
+plantations increased, the need for labour became urgent and the
+Melanesian islands were drawn upon to supply it. In many ways Patteson
+felt that it was good for the Melanesians to be trained to agricultural
+work; but the trouble was that they were being deceived over the
+conditions of the undertaking. Open kidnapping and the revival of
+anything like a slave trade could hardly be practised under the British
+flag at this time; nor indeed did the Fiji settlers, in most cases, wish
+to do anything unfair or brutal. It was to be a matter of contracts,
+voluntarily signed by the workmen; but the Melanesian was not educated
+up to the point where he could appreciate what a contract meant. When
+they did begin to understand, many were unwilling to sign for a period
+long enough to be useful; many more grew quickly tired of the work,
+changed their mind and broke their engagements. As the trade grew, some
+islands were entirely depopulated, and it became necessary to visit
+others, where the natives refused to engage themselves. The trade was in
+jeopardy; but the captains of merchant vessels, who found it very
+lucrative, were determined that the supply of hands should not run
+short. So when they met with no volunteers, they used to cajole the
+islanders on board ship under pretence of trade and then kidnap them;
+when this procedure led to affrays, they were not slow to shoot. The
+confidence of the native in European justice was shaken, and the work of
+years was undone. Security on both sides was gone, and the missionary,
+who had been sure of a welcome for ten years, might find himself in face
+of a population burning with the desire to revenge themselves on the
+first white man who came within their reach.
+
+Patteson did all that he could, in co-operation with the local
+officials, to regulate the trade. There was no case for a crusade
+against the Fiji planters, who were doing good work in a humane way and
+were ignorant of the misdeeds practised in Melanesia. The best method
+was to forbid unauthorized vessels to pursue the trade and to put the
+authorized vessels under supervision; but, to effect this in an outlying
+part of the vast British Empire, it was necessary to educate opinion and
+to work through Whitehall. This he set himself to do; but meanwhile he
+was so distressed to find the islanders slipping out of his reach, that
+in the last months of his life he was planning a campaign in Fiji, where
+he intended to visit several of the plantations in turn and to carry to
+the expatriated workers the Gospel which he had hoped to preach to them
+in their homes.
+
+But before he could redress this wrong he was himself destined to fall
+a victim to the spirit of hostility evoked. His best work was already
+done when in 1870 he had a prolonged illness, and was forced to spend
+some months at Auckland for convalescence. In the judgement of his
+friends his exertions had aged him considerably, and the climate had
+contributed to break down his strength. Though he was back at work again
+before the end of the summer he was far more subject to weariness. His
+manner became peaceful and dreamy, and his companions found that it was
+difficult to rouse him in the ordinary interchange of talk. His thoughts
+recurred more often to the past; he would write of Devonshire and its
+charms in spring, read over familiar passages in Wordsworth, or fall
+into quiet meditation, yet he would not unbuckle his armour or think of
+leaving the Mission in order to take a holiday in England.
+
+In April 1871, when the time came for him to leave Norfolk Island for
+his annual cruise, his energy revived. He spent seven weeks at Mota,
+leaving it towards the end of August to sail for the Santa Cruz group.
+On September 20, as he came in sight of the coral reef of Nukapu, he was
+speaking to his scholars of the death of St. Stephen. Next morning he
+had the boat lowered and put off for shore accompanied by Mr. Atkin and
+three natives. He knew that feeling had lately become embittered in this
+district over the Labour trade, but the thought of danger did not shake
+his resolution. To show his confidence and disarm suspicion he entered
+one of the canoes, alone with the islanders, landed on the beach and
+disappeared among the crowd. Half an hour later, for no apparent reason,
+an attack was started by men in canoes on the boat lying close off the
+shore; and before the rowers could pull out of range, Joseph Atkin and
+two of the natives had been wounded by poisoned arrows which, some days
+later, set up tetanus with fatal effect. They reached the ship; but
+after a few hours, when their wounds had been treated, Mr. Atkin
+insisted on taking the boat in again to learn the Bishop's fate. This
+time no attack was made upon them; but a canoe was towed out part of the
+way and then left to drift towards the boat. In it was the dead body of
+the Bishop tied up in a native mat. How he died no one ever knew, but
+his face was calm and no anguish seems to have troubled him in the hour
+of death. 'The placid smile was still on the face: there was a palm leaf
+fastened over the breast, and, when the mat was opened, there were five
+wounds, no more. The strange mysterious beauty, as it may be called, of
+the circumstances almost make one feel as if this were the legend of a
+martyr of the Primitive Church.'[41]
+
+Miss Yonge, from whom these lines are quoted, goes on to show that the
+five wounds, of which the first probably proved fatal, while the other
+four were deliberately inflicted afterwards, were to be explained by
+native custom. In the long leaflets of the palm five knots had been
+tied. Five men in Fiji were known to have been stolen from this island,
+and there can be little doubt that the relatives were exacting, in
+native fashion, their vengeance from the first European victim who fell
+into their power. The Bishop would have been the first to make allowance
+for their superstitious error and to lay the blame in the right quarter.
+His surviving comrades knew this, and in reporting the tragedy they sent
+a special petition that the Colonial Office would not order a
+bombardment of the island. Unfortunately, when a ship was sent on a
+mission of inquiry, the natives themselves began hostilities and
+bloodshed ensued. But at last the Bishop had by his death secured what
+he was labouring in his life to effect. The Imperial Parliament was
+stirred to examine the Labour trade in the Pacific and regulations were
+enforced which put an end to the abuse.
+
+[Note 41: _Life of John Coleridge Patteson_, by Charlotte Yonge, 2
+vols. (Macmillan, 1874).]
+
+'Quae caret ora cruore nostro?' The Roman poet puts this question in his
+horror at the wide extension of the civil wars which stained with Roman
+blood all the seas known to the world of his day.
+
+Great Britain has its martyrs in a nobler warfare yet more widely
+spread. Not all have fallen by the weapons of war. Nature has claimed
+many victims through disease or the rigour of unknown climes. The death
+of some is a mystery to this day. India, the Soudan, South and West
+Africa, the Arctic and Antarctic regions, speak eloquently to the men of
+our race of the spirit which carried them so far afield in the
+nineteenth century. Thanks to its first bishop, the Church of Melanesia
+shares their fame, opening its history with a glorious chapter enriched
+by heroism, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom.
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT MORIER
+
+From a drawing by William Richmond]
+
+
+
+
+SIR ROBERT D. B. MORIER, G.C.B., P.C.
+
+1826-93
+
+
+1826. Born at Paris, March 31.
+1832-9. Childhood in Switzerland.
+1839-44. With private tutors.
+1845-9. Balliol College, Oxford.
+1850. Clerk in Education Office.
+1853. Attache at Vienna Embassy.
+1858. Attache at Berlin.
+1861. Marriage with Alice, daughter of General Jonathan Peel.
+1865. Commissioner at Vienna. Commercial Treaty. C.B. Charge
+d'Affaires at Frankfort.
+1866-71. Charge d'Affaires at Darmstadt.
+1870. Tour in Alsace to test national feeling.
+1871. Charge d'Affaires at Stuttgart.
+1872-6. Charge d'Affaires at Munich.
+1875. Danger of second Franco-German War.
+1876. Minister at Lisbon.
+1881. Minister at Madrid. 1882. K.C.B.
+1884. Bismarck vetoes Morier as Ambassador to Berlin.
+1885-93. Ambassador at St. Petersburg.
+1886. Bulgaria, Batum, and Black Sea troubles.
+1887. G.C.B. 1889. D.C.L., Oxford.
+1891. Appointed Ambassador at Rome: retained at St. Petersburg.
+1893. Death at Montreux. Funeral at Batchworth.
+
+ROBERT MORIER
+
+DIPLOMATIST
+
+
+Diplomacy as a profession is a product of modern history. As Europe
+emerged from the Middle Ages, the dividing walls between State and State
+were broken down, and Governments found it necessary to have trained
+agents resident at foreign courts to conduct the questions of growing
+importance which arose between them. Churchmen were at first best
+qualified to undertake such duties, and Nicholas Wotton, Dean of
+Canterbury, who enjoyed the confidence of four Tudor sovereigns, came to
+be as much at home in France or in the Netherlands as he was in his own
+Deanery. It was his great nephew Sir Henry (who began his days as a
+scholar at Winchester, and ended them as Provost at Eton) who did his
+profession a notable disservice by indulging his humour at Augsburg when
+acting as envoy for James I, defining the diplomatist as 'one who was
+sent to lie abroad for his country'.[42] Since then many a politician
+and writer has let fly his shafts at diplomacy, and fervent democrats
+have come to regard diplomats as veritable children of the devil. But
+this prejudice is chiefly due to ignorance, and can easily be cured by a
+patient study of history. In the nineteenth century, in particular,
+English diplomacy can point to a noble roll of ambassadors, who worked
+for European peace as well as for the triumph of liberal causes, and
+none has a higher claim to such praise than Sir Robert Morier, the
+subject of this sketch.
+
+[Note 42: The Latin form in which this epigram was originally
+couched--_mentiendi causa_--does away with all ambiguity.]
+
+The traditions of his family marked out his path in life. We can trace
+their origin to connexions in the Consular service at Smyrna, where
+Isaac Morier met and married Clara van Lennep in the latter half of the
+eighteenth century. Swiss grandfather and Dutch grandmother became
+naturalized subjects of the British Crown and brought up four sons to
+win distinction in its service. Of these the third, David, married a
+daughter of Robert Burnet Jones--a descendant of the famous Bishop
+Burnet, and himself a servant of the Crown--and held important
+diplomatic appointments for over thirty years at Paris and Berne. So it
+was that his only son Robert David Burnet Morier was born in France,
+spent much of his childhood in Switzerland, and acquired early in life
+a remarkable facility in speaking foreign languages. To his schooling
+in England he seems to have owed little of positive value. His father
+and uncles had been sent to Harrow; but perhaps it was as well that the
+son did not, in this, follow in his father's footsteps. However much he
+neglected his studies with two easy-going tutors, he preserved his
+freshness and originality and ran no danger of being drilled into a
+type. If he had as a boy undue self-confidence, no one was better fitted
+to correct it than his mother, a woman of wide sympathies and strong
+intellectual force. The letters which passed between them display, on
+his part, mature powers of expression at an early age, and show the
+generous, affectionate nature of both; and till her death in 1855 she
+remained his chief confidante and counsellor. In trying to matriculate
+at Balliol College he met with a momentary check, due to the casual
+nature of his education; but, after retrieving this, he rapidly made
+good his deficiency in Greek and Latin, and ended by taking a creditable
+degree. His time at Oxford, apart from reading, was well spent. He made
+special friends with two of the younger dons: Temple, afterwards
+Archbishop of Canterbury, and Jowett, the future Master of Balliol. The
+former was carried by rugged force and sheer ability to the highest
+position in the Church; the latter won a peculiar place, in Oxford and
+in the world outside, by his gifts of judging character and stimulating
+intellectual interest. Morier became his favourite pupil and lifelong
+friend. F. T. Palgrave, the friend of both, tells us how 'Morier went up
+to Balliol a lax and imperfectly educated fellow; but Jowett, seeing his
+great natural capacity, took him in the Long Vacation of 1848 and
+practically "converted" him to the doctrine of work. This was the
+turning-point in Morier's life.' Together the two friends spent many a
+holiday in Germany, Scotland, and elsewhere, and must have presented a
+strange contrast to one another: Jowett, small, frail, quiet and
+precise in manner, Morier big in every way, exuberant and full of
+vitality. It was with Jowett and Stanley (afterwards Dean of
+Westminster) that Morier went to Paris in 1848, eager to study the
+Revolutionary spirit in its most lively manifestations. Stanley
+describes him as 'a Balliol undergraduate of gigantic size, who speaks
+French better than English, is to wear a blouse, and to go about
+disguised to the clubs'.
+
+He took his degree in November 1849, and a month later he was visiting
+Dresden and Berlin, making German friends and initiating himself in
+German politics and German ways of thought. Though his British
+patriotism was fervid and sustained, he was capable of understanding men
+of other nations and recognizing their merits; and in knowledge of
+Germany he acquired a position among Englishmen of his day rivalled only
+by Odo Russell, afterwards Ambassador at Berlin. Morier's father had for
+many years represented Great Britain in Switzerland and could guide him
+both by precept and by example. Free intercourse with the most liberal
+minds in Oxford had developed the lessons which he had learnt at home.
+But his own energy and application effected more than anything. He was
+not satisfied till he had mastered a problem; and books, places, and
+people were laid under contribution unsparingly. He started on his tour
+carrying letters of introduction to some of the famous men in Germany,
+including the great traveller and scientist, Alexander von Humboldt. Of
+a younger generation was the philologist Max Mueller, who was a frequent
+companion of Morier in Berlin, and gave up his time to nursing him back
+to health when he was taken ill with quinsy. He found friends in all
+professions, but chiefly among politicians. A typical instance is von
+Roggenbach, who rose to be Premier of Baden in the years 1861 to 1865,
+when the destinies of Germany were in the melting-pot. Baden was in
+some ways the leading state in South Germany at that time, combining
+liberal ideals with a fervent advocacy of national union, and the views
+of Roggenbach on political questions attracted Morier's warmest
+sympathy. Another state in which Morier felt genuinely at home was the
+Duchy of Coburg, from which Prince Albert had come to wed our own Queen
+Victoria. The Prince's brother, the reigning Duke, treated Morier as a
+personal friend; and here, too, he found Baron Stockmar, a Nestor among
+German Liberals, who had spent his political life in trying to promote
+goodwill between England and Germany. He received Morier into his family
+circle and adopted him as the heir to his policy. This intimacy led to
+further results; and, thanks in part to Morier's subsequent friendship
+with the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, generous ideals and a
+liberal spirit were to be found surviving in a few places even after
+1870, though Bismarck had poisoned the minds of a whole generation by
+the material successes which he achieved.
+
+In 1849 the doors of the Foreign Office were closed to Morier. The
+Secretary of State, Lord Palmerston, had treated his father unfairly, as
+he thought, some years before, and Morier would ask no favours of him.
+He continued his education, keeping in close touch with Jowett and
+Temple, and, when he saw a chance of studying politics at first hand, he
+eagerly availed himself of it. The troubles of Schleswig-Holstein, too
+intricate to be explained briefly, had been brewing for some time. In
+1850, the dispute, to which Prussia, Denmark, and the German Diet were
+all parties, came to a head. The Duchies were overrun by Prussian
+troops, while the Danish Navy held the sea. Morier rushed off to see for
+himself what was happening, and spent some interesting days at Kiel,
+talking to those who could instruct him, and forming his own judgement.
+This was adverse to the wisdom of the Copenhagen Radicals, who were
+trying to assert by force their supremacy over a German population. In
+the circumstances, as Prussia gave way to the wishes of other powers, no
+satisfactory decision could be reached; but ten years later the issue
+was in the ruthless hands of Bismarck, and was settled by 'blood and
+iron'.
+
+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 making acquaintance with the chief figures in the diplomatic world.
+He enjoyed talks with Baron Jellacic, who had saved the monarchy in
+1848, and with Prince Metternich, whose political career ended in that
+year of revolutions and who was now only a figure in society. After the
+Crimean War Morier obtained permission to make a tour through South-east
+Hungary and to study for himself the mixture of Slavonic, Magyar, and
+Teutonic races inhabiting that district. He followed this up by another
+tour of three months, which carried him from Agram southwards into
+Bosnia and Herzegovina, having prepared for it by working ten to twelve
+hours a day for some weeks at the language of the southern Slavs.
+Incidentally he enjoyed some hunting expeditions with Turkish pashas,
+and obtained some insight into the weakness of the British consular
+system. All his life he believed strongly in the value of such tours to
+obtain first-hand information; and thirty years later, as Ambassador, he
+encouraged his secretaries to familiarize themselves with the outlying
+districts of the Russian empire.
+
+In 1858, at the age of thirty-two, Morier passed from Vienna to Berlin.
+It was the year in which the Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of
+Queen Victoria, married the Crown Prince of Prussia.[43] Her father, the
+Prince Consort, was very anxious that Morier should be at hand to advise
+the young couple, and the appointment to Berlin was his work. Then it
+was that Morier became involved in the struggle between Bismarck and the
+Liberal influences in Germany, which had no stronger rallying-point than
+the Coburg Court. This conflict only showed itself later, and at first
+the young English attache must have seemed a sufficiently unimportant
+person; but before 1862 Bismarck, coming home to Berlin from the St.
+Petersburg Embassy, and discerning the nature of Morier's character, had
+declared that it was desirable to remove such an influence from the path
+of his party, who were determined to bring Liberal Germany under the
+yoke of a Prussia which had no sympathy for democratic ideals.
+
+[Note 43: The ill-fated Emperor Frederick III, who died of cancer in
+1888.]
+
+For the moment the ship of State was hanging in the wind; light currents
+of air were perceptible; sails were filling in one parliamentary boat or
+another; but the chief movement was to be seen not in parliamentary
+circles but in the excellent civil service, which preserved that honesty
+and efficiency which it had acquired in the days of Stein. There were
+marked tendencies towards Liberalism and towards unification in
+different parts of Germany; and, if the Liberal party could have
+produced one man of firmness and decision, these forces might have
+triumphed over the reactionary Prussian clique. In this conflict Morier
+was bound to be a passionate sympathiser with the parties which included
+so many of his personal friends and which advocated principles so dear
+to his heart. With the triumph of his friends, too, were associated the
+prospects of a good understanding between England and Germany, for which
+Morier himself was labouring; and he was accused of having meddled
+indiscreetly with local politics. When King William broke with the
+Liberals over the Army Bill, caution was doubly necessary. Bismarck
+became Minister in 1862, and, great man though he was, he was capable of
+any pettiness when he had once declared war on an opponent. From that
+time the policy of working for an Anglo-Prussian _entente_ was a losing
+game, not only because Bismarck detested the parliamentarism which he
+associated with England, but also because, on our side too, extremists
+were stirring up ill-feeling. In his letters Morier makes frequent
+reference to the 'John Bullishness' of _The Times_. When this journal,
+to which European importance attached during the editorship of Delane,
+was not openly flouting Prussia, it was displaying reckless ignorance of
+a people who were making the most solid contributions to learning and
+raising themselves by steady industry from the losses due to centuries
+of Continental warfare.
+
+From time to time he paid visits to friends at Dresden, at Baden, and
+elsewhere. One year he was sent to Naples on a special mission, another
+year he was summoned to attend on Queen Victoria, who was visiting
+Coburg. In 1859 he is lamenting the monotony of existence at Berlin,
+which he calls 'a Dutch mud canal of a life, without even the tulip beds
+on the banks'. But when later in that year Lord John Russell, who knew
+and appreciated his talents, became Foreign Secretary and called on him
+for frequent reports on important subjects, Morier found solace in work.
+He was only too willing to put his wide knowledge of the country in
+which he was serving at the disposal of his superiors at home. He wrote
+with equal ability on political, agrarian, and financial subjects. That
+he could take into account the personal factor is shown by the long
+letter which he wrote in 1861 to Sir Henry Layard, then Political
+Under-Secretary of State.[44] It contained a masterly analysis of the
+character and upbringing of King William, showing how his intellectual
+narrowness had hampered Liberal Governments, while his professional
+training in the army had made him a most efficient instrument in
+promoting the aims of Junker politicians and ministers of war.
+
+[Note 44: _Memoirs of Sir Robert Morier_, 1826-76, by his daughter,
+Lady Rosslyn Wemyss, vol. i, p. 303 (Edward Arnold, 1911).]
+
+On Schleswig-Holstein, above all, Morier exerted himself to convey a
+right view of the question to those who guided opinion in London,
+whether newspaper editors or responsible ministers. He appealed to the
+same principle which had won support for the Lombards against Austria.
+The inhabitants of the disputed Duchies were for the most part Germans,
+and the Danish Government had done violence to their national sentiment.
+If England could have extended its sympathy to its northern kinsmen in
+time, the question might have been settled peacefully before 1862, and
+Bismarck could never have availed himself of such a lever to overthrow
+his Liberal opponents. As it was, Prussia ignored the Danish sympathies
+displayed abroad, especially in the English press, went her own way and
+invaded the Duchies, dragging in her train Austria, her confederate and
+her dupe. Palmerston, who controlled our foreign policy at the time,
+waited till the last moment, blustered, found himself impotent to move
+without French support, and left Denmark smarting with a sense of
+betrayal which lasted till 1914. By such bungling Morier knew that we
+were incurring enmity on both sides and lowering our reputation for
+courage as well as for statesmanship.
+
+In 1865 he was chosen as one of the Special Commissioners to negotiate a
+treaty of commerce between Great Britain and Austria. He had always
+been a Free-trader, and he was convinced that such economic agreements
+could do much to improve the world and to strengthen the bonds of peace.
+So he was ready and willing to do hard work in this sphere, and finding
+a congenial colleague in Sir Louis Mallet, one of the best economists of
+the day, he spent some months at Vienna in fruitful activity and won the
+good opinion of all associated with him. For his services he received
+the C.B. and high commendation from London.
+
+This same year brought promotion in rank, though for long it was
+uncertain where he would go. In August he accepted the offer of First
+Secretary to the Legation in Japan, most reluctantly, because he saw his
+peculiar knowledge of Germany would be wasted there. Ten days later this
+offer was changed for a similar position at the Court of Greece, which
+was equally uncongenial; but at the end of the year the Foreign Office
+decided that he would be most useful in the field which he had chosen
+for himself, and after a few months at Frankfort he was sent in the year
+1866 as charge d'affaires to the Grand Ducal Court of Hesse-Darmstadt.
+
+From these posts he was destined to be a spectator of the two great
+conflicts by which Bismarck established the union of North Germany and
+its primacy in Europe. Morier detested the means by which this end was
+achieved, but he had consistently maintained that this union ought to
+be, and could only be, achieved by Prussia, and he remained true to his
+beliefs. It is a great tribute to his intellectual force that he was
+able to control his personal sympathies and antipathies, and to judge
+passing events with reference to the past and the future. He had liked
+the statesmen whom he had met at Vienna, and he recognized their good
+faith in the difficult negotiations of 1865. But for the good of Europe,
+he thought the Austrian Government should now look eastwards. It could
+not do double work at Vienna and at Frankfort. The impotence of the
+Frankfort Diet could be cured only by the North Germans, and the
+aspirations of good patriots, from Baden to the Baltic, had been for
+long directed towards Prussia. But it was no easy task to make people in
+England realize the justice of this view or the certainty that Prussia
+was strong enough to carry through the work. Led by _The Times_, the
+British Press had grown accustomed to use a contemptuous tone towards
+Prussia; and when in the decisive hour this could no longer be
+maintained, and British sentiment, as is its nature, declared for
+Austria as the beaten side, this sentiment was attributed at Berlin to
+the basest envy. Relations between the two peoples steadily grew worse
+during these years, despite the efforts of Morier and other friends of
+peace.
+
+The Franco-German war brought even greater bitterness between Prussia
+and Great Britain. The neutrality, which the latter power observed, was
+misunderstood in both camps; and the position of a British diplomat
+abroad became really unpleasant. Morier in particular, as a marked man,
+knew that he was subject to spying and misrepresentation, but this did
+not deter him from doing his duty and more than his duty. He took
+measures to safeguard those dependent on him, in case Hesse came into
+the theatre of war. He organized medical aid for the wounded on both
+sides. He took a journey in September into Alsace and Lorraine to
+ascertain the feeling of the inhabitants, that he might give the best
+possible advice to his Government if the cession of these districts
+became a European question. He came to the conclusion that Alsace was
+not a homogeneous unit--that language, religion, and sentiment varied in
+different districts, and that it was desirable to work for a compromise.
+But Bismarck was determined in 1870, as in 1866, that the settlement
+should remain in his own hands and that no European congress should
+spoil his plans. Morier found that he was being talked of at Berlin as
+'the enemy of Prussia', and atrocious calumnies were circulated. One of
+these was revived some years later when Bismarck wished to discredit
+him, and Bismarckian journals accused him of having betrayed to Marshal
+Bazaine military secrets which he discovered in Hesse. Morier obtained
+from the Marshal a letter which clearly refuted the charge, and he gave
+it the widest publicity. The plot recoiled on its author, and Morier was
+spoken of in France as 'le grand ambassadeur qui a roule Bismarck'. Yet
+all the while, with his wife a strong partisan of France, with six
+cousins fighting in the French Army, with his friends in England only
+too ready to quarrel with him for his supposed pro-German sentiments, he
+was appealing for fair judgement, for reason, for a wise policy which
+should soften the bitterness of the settlement between victors and
+vanquished. Facts must be recognized, he pleaded, and the French claim
+for peculiar consideration and their traditional _amour propre_ must not
+be allowed to prolong the miseries of war. At the same time Morier did
+not close his eyes to the danger arising from the overwhelming victories
+of the German armies. No one saw more clearly the deterioration which
+was taking place in German character, or depicted it in more trenchant
+terms. But it was his business to work for the future and not to let
+sentiment bring fresh disasters upon Europe.
+
+Apart from this critical period, life at Darmstadt bored him
+considerably. His presence there was valued highly by Queen Victoria,
+one of whose daughters had married the Grand Duke; but Morier felt
+himself to be in a backwater, far from the main stream of European
+politics, and society there was dull. So he welcomed in 1871 his
+transference first to Stuttgart, and a few months later to Munich, the
+capital of the second state in the new Empire and a great centre of
+literary culture. Here lived Dr. Doellinger, historian and divine, a man
+suspected at Rome for his liberal Catholicism even before his definite
+severance from the Roman Church, but honoured everywhere else for the
+width and depth of his knowledge. With him Morier enjoyed many
+conversations on Church councils and other subjects which interested
+them both; and in 1874, lured by the prospect of such society, Gladstone
+paid him a visit of ten days. Morier did not admire Gladstone's conduct
+of foreign policy, but he was open-minded enough to recognize his great
+gifts and to enjoy his company, and he writes home with enthusiasm about
+his conversational powers. A still more welcome visitor in 1873 was
+Jowett, his old Oxford friend, who never lost his place in Morier's
+affections.
+
+Among these delights he retained his vigilance in political matters, and
+there was often need for it, since the German Government was now
+developing that habit of 'rattling its sword', and threatening its
+neighbours with war, which disquieted Europe for another forty years.
+The worst crisis came in 1875, when Morier heard on good authority that
+the military clique at Berlin were gaining ground, and seemed likely to
+persuade the Emperor William to force on a second war, expressly to
+prevent France recovering its strength. In general the credit for
+checking this sinister move is given to the Tsar; but English influences
+played a large part in the matter. Morier managed to catch the Crown
+Prince on his way south to Italy and had a long talk with him in the
+railway train. The Crown Prince was known to be a true lover of peace,
+but capable of being hoodwinked by Bismarck; once convinced that the
+danger was real (and he trusted Morier as he trusted no German in his
+entourage), he returned to Berlin and threw all his weight into the
+scale of peace. Queen Victoria also wrote from London; and, in face of a
+possible coalition against them, the Germans decided that it was wisest
+to abstain from all aggression.
+
+A new period opened in his life when he left German courts, never to
+return officially, and became the responsible head of Her Majesty's
+Legation at the Portuguese Court. His five years spent at Lisbon cannot
+be counted as one of his most fruitful periods, despite 'the large
+settlement of African affairs', which Lord Granville tells us that
+Morier had suggested to his predecessors in Whitehall. For the big
+schemes which he planned he could get no continuous backing at home,
+either in political or commercial circles. For the petty routine England
+hardly needed a man of such outstanding ability. Of necessity his work
+consisted often in tedious investigation of claims advanced by
+individual Englishmen, whether they were suffering from money losses or
+from summary procedure at the hands of the Portuguese police. Of the
+diplomatic questions which arose many proved to be shadowy and unreal.
+Something could be done, even in remote Portugal, to improve
+Anglo-Russian relations by a minister who had friends in so many
+European capitals. The politics of Pio Nono and the Papal Curia often
+find an echo in his correspondence. Here, too, as elsewhere, the
+intrigues of Germany had to be watched, though Morier was sensible
+enough to discriminate between the deliberate policy of Bismarck and the
+manoeuvres of those whom he 'allowed to do what they liked and say what
+they liked--or rather to do what they thought _he_ would like done, and
+say what they thought _he_ would like said--and then suddenly sent them
+about their business to ponder in poverty and disgrace on the mutability
+of human affairs'. In a passage like this Morier's letters show that he
+could distinguish between a lion and his jackals, between 'policy' and
+'intrigue'.
+
+Had it not been for Germany and German suggestions, Portuguese
+politicians would perhaps have been free from the fears which loomed
+darkest on their horizon--the fears of an 'Iberian policy' which Spain
+was supposed to be pursuing. In reality the leading men at Madrid knew
+that they had little to gain by letting loose the superior Spanish army
+against Portugal and trying to form the whole peninsula into a single
+state. Morier, at any rate, made it clear that England would throw the
+whole weight of her power against such treatment of her oldest ally. But
+alarmist politicians were perpetually harping on this string, and
+Morier, in a letter written in 1876, compares them to 'children telling
+ghost-stories to one another who have got frightened at the sound of
+their own voices, and mistake the rattling of a mouse behind the
+wainscot for the tramping of legions on the march'.
+
+To Morier it seemed that the important part of his work concerned South
+Africa, in which, at the time, Portugal and Great Britain were the
+European powers most interested. It was in 1877 that Sir Theophilus
+Shepstone annexed the Transvaal, and many people, in Europe and Africa,
+were talking as if this must lead to the expropriation of the Portuguese
+at Delagoa Bay. Morier himself was as far as possible from the
+imperialism which would ride rough-shod over a weaker neighbour. In
+fact, he pleaded strongly for British approval of the pride which
+Portugal felt in her traditions and of her desire to cling to what she
+had preserved from the past. Once break this down, he said, and we
+should see Portuguese dominions put up for auction, and England might
+not always prove to be the highest bidder. Friendly co-operation, joint
+development of railways, and commercial treaties commended themselves
+better to his judgement, and he was prepared to spend a large part even
+of his holidays in England in working out the details of such treaties.
+He studied the people among whom he was, and did his best to lead them
+gently towards reforms, whether of the slave-trade or other abuses, on
+lines which could win their sympathy. He appealed to his own Foreign
+Office to abstain from too many lectures, and to make the most of cases
+in which the Portuguese showed promise of better things. 'This diet of
+cold gruel', he says in 1878, 'must be occasionally supplemented by a
+cup of generous wine, or all intimacy must die out.' Again in 1880, he
+asks for a K.C.M.G. to be awarded to a Governor-General of Mozambique,
+who had done his best to observe English wishes in checking the
+slave-trade. 'Perpetual admonition', he says, 'and no sugar plums is bad
+policy'--a maxim too often neglected when our philanthropy outruns our
+discretion.
+
+When Morier was promoted in 1881 to Madrid, he used the same tact and
+geniality to lighten the burden of his task. No seasoned diplomatist
+took the politics of Madrid too seriously. Though the political stage
+was bigger, it was often filled by actors as petty and grasping as those
+of Lisbon. The distribution to their own friends of the 'loaves and
+fishes' was, as Morier says, the one steady aim of all aspirants to
+power; and measures of reform, much needed in education, in commerce, in
+law, were doomed to sterility by the factiousness of the men who should
+have carried them out. In the absence of principles Morier had to study
+the strife of parties, and his correspondence gives us lively pictures
+of the eloquent Castelar, the champion of a visionary Republic, the
+harsh, domineering Romero y Robledo, at once the mainstay and the terror
+of his Conservative colleagues, and the cold, egotistic Liberal leader
+Sagasta, whose shrewdness in the manipulation of votes had always to be
+reckoned with. The constitution given in 1876 had entirely failed to
+establish Parliament on a democratic basis. For this the bureaucracy was
+responsible. The Home Office abused its powers shamelessly, and by the
+votes of its functionaries, and of those who hoped to receive its
+favours, it could always secure a big majority for the Government of
+the moment. For the three years which Morier spent at Madrid, he
+recounts surprising instances of the reversal of electoral verdicts
+within a short space of time.
+
+The King was popular and deserved to be so, for his personal qualities
+of courage, intelligence, and public spirit; but his position was never
+secure. There was a bad tradition by which at intervals the army
+asserted its power and upset the constitution. Some intriguing general
+issued a _pronunciamiento_, the troops revolted, and the Central
+Government at Madrid, having no effective force and no moral ascendancy,
+gave way. Parliament had little stability. Cabinets rose and vanished
+again; the same eloquent but empty speeches were made, and the same
+abuses remained unchanged.
+
+But before now a spark from Spain had set the Continent ablaze. The past
+had bequeathed some questions which, awkwardly handled, might cause
+explosions elsewhere, and it was well to know the character of those who
+had the key to the powder magazine. More than once Morier was approached
+on the delicate question of the admission of Spain to the council of the
+Great Powers. In Egypt, where so many foreign interests were involved,
+and where Great Britain suffered, in the 'eighties, from so many
+diplomatic intrigues, Spain might easily find an opening for her
+ambitions. She might advance the plea that the Suez Canal was the direct
+route to her colonies in the Philippines. Germany, for ulterior ends,
+was encouraging Spanish pretensions; but, to the British, Spain with its
+illiberal spirit scarcely seemed likely to prove a helpful
+fellow-worker. Morier had to try to convince Spanish ministers that
+Great Britain was their truer friend while refusing them what they asked
+for; and in such interviews he had to know his men and to touch the
+right chord in appealing to their prejudices or their patriotism. The
+English tenure of Gibraltar was also a perpetual offence to Spanish
+pride. Irresponsible journalists loved to expatiate on it when they had
+no more spicy subject to handle. On this, as on all questions affecting
+prestige only, Morier was tactful and patient. When they should come
+within the range of practical politics, he could take a different tone.
+But he knew that more serious dangers were arising in Morocco, where the
+weakness of the Sultan's rule was tempting European powers to intervene,
+and he laboured to maintain peace and goodwill not only between his own
+country and Spain, but also between Spain and France. The common
+accusation that the English are not 'good Europeans' was pre-eminently
+untrue in his case. He realized that the interests of all were bound up
+together, and used his influence, which soon became considerable, to
+remove all occasions of bitterness in the European family, being fully
+aware that at Berlin there was another active intelligence working by
+hidden channels to keep open every festering sore.
+
+Morier was fertile in expedients when ministers consulted him, as we see
+notably on the occasion of King Alfonso's tour in 1883. Before the King
+started, the newspapers had been writing of it as a 'visit to Berlin',
+though it was intended to be a compliment to the heads of various
+states. To allay the sensitiveness of the French, Morier suggested to
+the Foreign Secretary that the King should make a point of visiting
+France first; but, owing to the ineptitude of President Grevy, this
+suggestion was rendered impracticable. When the King did visit Paris,
+after a sojourn at Berlin, where he received the usual compliment of
+being made titular colonel of a Prussian regiment, a terrible scene
+ensued by which Morier's sagacity was justified. The King was greeted
+with cries of 'a bas le Colonel d'Uhlans', and was hissed as he passed
+along the streets; only his personal tact and restraint saved the two
+Governments from an undignified squabble. He was able to give a lesson
+in deportment to his hosts and also to satisfy the resentful pride of
+his fellow-countrymen. The whole episode shows how individuals can
+control events when the masses can only become excited; kings and
+diplomats may still be the best mechanics to handle the complicated
+machinery on which peace or war depends. Alfonso XII died in November
+1885, soon after Morier's departure for another post, but not before he
+had testified to the high esteem in which our Minister had been held in
+Spain.
+
+From Madrid he might have passed to Berlin. The British Government had
+only one man fit to replace Lord Ampthill (Lord Odo Russell), who died
+in 1884. Inquiries were made in Berlin whether it was possible to employ
+Morier's great knowledge at the centre of European gravity, but Bismarck
+made it quite clear that such an appointment would be displeasing to his
+sovereign. It was believed by a friend and admirer of both men that, if
+Bismarck and Morier could have come to know one another, mutual respect
+and liking would have followed; but magnanimity towards an old enemy, or
+one whom he had ever believed to be such, was not a Bismarckian trait,
+and it is more probable that all Morier's efforts would have been
+thwarted by misrepresentation and malignity.
+
+Instead he was sent to St. Petersburg, where he took up his duties as
+Ambassador in November 1885. Here he had to deal with bigger problems.
+The affray at Penjdeh, when the Russians attacked an Afgh[=a]n outpost
+and forcibly occupied the ground, had, after convulsing Europe, been
+settled by Mr. Gladstone's Government. Feeling did not subside for some
+years, but for the moment Asiatic questions were not so serious as the
+conflict of interests in the Balkan peninsula. The principality of
+Bulgaria created by the Congress of Berlin was the focus of the 'Eastern
+question'--that is, the question whether Russia, Austria, or a united
+Europe led by the Western powers, was to preside over the dissolution of
+Turkey. Bulgaria certainly owed its existence to Russian bayonets; in
+her cause Russian lives had been freely given; and this formed a real
+bond between the two nations, more lasting than the effect of Mr.
+Gladstone's speeches, to which English sentimentalists attached such
+importance. But the Bulgarians have often shown an obstinate tendency to
+go their own way, and their politicians were loath to be kept in Russian
+leading-strings. Their last act, in 1885, had been to annex the Turkish
+province of Eastern Roumelia without asking the consent of the Tsar. At
+the moment they could safely flout the Sultan of Turkey, their nominal
+suzerain; but diplomatists doubted whether they could, with equal
+safety, ignore the Treaty of Berlin and the wishes of their Russian
+protector. The path was full of pitfalls. The Austrian Government was on
+the watch to embarrass its great Slavonic rival; English statesmen were
+too anxious to humour Liberal sentiment as expressed at popular
+meetings; Russian agents on the spot committed indiscretions; Russian
+opinion at home suspected that Bulgaria was receiving encouragement
+elsewhere, and the air was full of rumours of war.
+
+Across this unquiet stage may be seen to pass, in the lively letters
+which Morier sent home, the figures of potential and actual princes of
+Bulgaria, of whom only two deserve mention to-day. The first, Alexander
+of Battenberg, member of a family which enjoyed Queen Victoria's special
+favour, had been put forward at the Berlin Congress, and justified his
+choice in 1885 by repelling the Serbian Army and winning a victory at
+Slivnitza. He had won the attachment of his subjects but had incurred
+the hatred of the Tsar, and the tone of his speeches in 1886 offended
+Russian sentiment. Two years after Slivnitza, in face of intrigues and
+violence, he abandoned the contest and abdicated. The second is
+Ferdinand of Coburg, whose tortuous career, begun in 1887, only ended
+with the collapse of the Central Powers in 1918. He was put forward by
+Austria and supported by Stambuloff, the dictatorial chief of the
+Bulgarian ministry. For years the Russian Government refused to
+recognize him, and it was not till 1896 that he came to heel, at the
+bidding of Prince Lobanoff, and made public submission to the Tsar. But,
+first and last, he was only an astute adventurer of no little vanity and
+of colossal egotism, and such sympathies as he had for others beside
+himself went to Austria-Hungary, where he owned landed property, and had
+served in the army. He was also displeasing to orthodox Russia as a
+Roman Catholic, and in Morier's letters we see clearly the mistrust and
+contempt which Russians felt for him.
+
+With an autocrat like Alexander III, secretive and obstinate, these
+personal questions became very serious. Ambitious generals might
+anticipate his wishes, Russian regiments might be on the march before
+the Ministers knew anything, and Europe might awake to find itself over
+the edge of the precipice.
+
+Morier's own attitude can best be judged from the letters which he
+exchanged with Sir William White, our able ambassador to the Porte, who
+was frankly anti-Russian in his views. At first he put his trust in
+strict observance of the Treaty of Berlin, and wished that Prince
+Alexander would consent to restore the _status quo ante_ (i.e. before
+the change in Eastern Roumelia); but although a stout upholder of
+treaties, he admitted as a second basis for settlement 'les voeux des
+populations', on which the modern practice of plebiscites is founded.
+The peasants of Eastern Roumelia were clearly glad to transfer their
+allegiance from the Sultan to the Prince. Also the successes achieved by
+Prince Alexander in so soon welding together Bulgaria and Eastern
+Roumelia had to be recognized as altering the situation. In fact,
+Morier's position was nearer to that of 1919 than to the old traditions
+in vogue a century earlier, and would commend itself to most English
+Liberals. But, as an ambassador paid to watch over British interests, he
+was guided by expediency rather than by sentiment. These interests, he
+was convinced, were more vitally affected in Central Asia than in the
+Balkans. He believed that, if British statesmen would recognize Russia's
+peculiar position in Bulgaria, the advance of Russian outposts towards
+India might be stayed, and the two great powers might work together all
+along the line. But, to effect this, national jealousies must be allayed
+and an understanding established. Morier had to interpret at St.
+Petersburg speeches of English politicians, which often sounded more
+offensive there than in London: he also had to watch and report to
+London the unofficial doings and sayings of the aggressive Pan-Slavist
+party, who might at any moment undermine the Ministry.
+
+Foreign policy was in the hands of de Giers, an enlightened, pacific
+minister, who lacked, however, the courage to face his master's
+prejudices and had little authority over many of his own subordinates.
+De Nelidoff, at Constantinople, dared even to make himself the centre of
+diplomatic intrigue directed against the policy of his chief. Still less
+was de Giers able to control the strong Pan-Slavist influences which
+ruled in the Church, the Home Office, and the Press. Morier gives
+interesting portraits of Pobedonostsev, the bigoted procurator of the
+Holy Synod, of Tolstoy the reactionary Minister of the Interior, of
+Katkoff the truculent editor of the _Moscow Gazette_. These were the
+most notable of the men who flouted the authority, thwarted the work,
+and undermined the position of the Tsar's nominal adviser, and often
+they carried the day in determining the attitude of the Tsar himself.
+Yet Morier was bound by his own honesty and by the traditions of
+British diplomacy to do business with de Giers alone, to receive the
+assurances of one who was being betrayed by his own ambassadors, to make
+his protests to one who could not effectively remedy the grievances. His
+difficulty was increased by de Giers's manner--'when getting on to
+slippery ground he has a remarkable power of speaking only half
+intelligibly and swallowing a large proportion of his words'. Morier was
+often conscious that he was building on sand; but in quiet weather it
+was possible to stem the flood for a while even with dikes of sand.
+Perhaps a little later the tide of Balkan troubles might be setting in
+another direction and the danger might be past. In Russia, where so much
+was incalculable, it was wise to make the most of such help as presented
+itself. Meanwhile the Russian Ambassador in London, Baron de Staael,
+co-operated as loyally with Lord Salisbury as Morier with de Giers; and
+thanks to their diplomatic skill, rough places were smoothed away and
+bases of agreement were found. In the course of 1887, the smouldering
+fires of Anglo-Russian antagonism died down, and Russia adopted a
+waiting attitude in Bulgaria.
+
+But this happy result was not attained till after Asiatic problems had
+given rise to serious alarms. The worst moment was in July 1886, when
+the Tsar suddenly proclaimed, contrary to the Treaty of Berlin, that the
+port of Batum was closed to foreign trade. His point of view was
+characteristic. His father had, autocratically, expressed in 1878 his
+intention to open the port; this had been done, and it had proved in
+practice a failure; as a purely administrative act, he (Alexander III)
+now declared the port closed, _et tout etait dit_. But naturally foreign
+merchants resented the injury to their trade, and insisted on the
+sanctity of treaties. The Berlin Government, as usual, left to Great
+Britain all the odium incurred in making a protest, and the other
+Continental powers were equally silent. Morier asserted the British
+case so strongly that he roused even de Giers to vehemence; but when he
+saw that protests would avail nothing, he advised his Government to cut
+the loss and to avoid further bitterness. He reminded them that Russia
+had given way in Bulgaria, where the British point of view had
+prevailed, and that they must not expect her to submit to a second
+diplomatic defeat. Besides, a quarrel between Russia and Great Britain
+would only benefit a third party, ready enough to avail himself of it.
+Harmony was preserved, but the risk of a breach had been very great, and
+feeling was not improved by Russian activity at Sebastopol, where the
+Pan-Slavists were acclaiming the new birth of the Black Sea fleet. The
+death of Katkoff in 1887, and of Tolstoy in 1889, with the advent of
+more Liberal ministers, strengthened de Giers's hands; and during his
+later years, though he often needed great vigilance and tact, Morier was
+not troubled by any crisis so severe.
+
+The Grand Cross of the Bath, which he received in 1887, was a fitting
+reward for the services he had rendered to England and to Europe in this
+anxious time. He never lost heart or despaired of a peaceful solution.
+
+At bottom, as he often repeats, Russia was not ready for big
+adventures--was, in fact, still suffering from lassitude after the war
+of 1878, 'like an electric eel which, having in one great shock given
+off all its electricity, burrows in the mud to refill its battery,
+desiring nothing less than to come again too soon into contact with
+organic tissue'.
+
+Apart from _la haute politique_ and the conflicts between governments,
+Morier's own compatriots were giving him plenty to do. A few instances
+will illustrate the variety of the applications which reached the
+Embassy. Captain Beaufort requests a special permit to visit Kars and
+its famous fortifications. Mr. Littledale asks for a Russian guide to
+help him in an ascent of Mount Ararat. Father Perry, S.J. (the Jesuits
+were specially obnoxious to the Holy Synod), wishes to observe a solar
+eclipse only visible in Russia. Another traveller, Mr. Fairman, is
+summarily arrested near Rovno where the Tsar's visit is making the
+police unduly brisk for the moment. Morier procures him a prompt
+apology; but, not content with this, the Englishman now thinks himself
+entitled to a personal audience with the Tsar and the gift of some
+decoration to compensate him, which suggestion draws a curt reply from
+the much-vexed ambassador. But he was always ready to help a genuine
+explorer, whether it was Mr. de Windt in Trans-Caucasia or Captain
+Wiggins in the Kara Sea. To the latter, in his efforts to establish
+trade between Great Britain and Siberia by the Yenisei river, Morier
+lent most valuable aid, and he is proud to report the concessions which
+he won for our merchants in a new field of commerce.
+
+Meanwhile he found occasion to cultivate friendships with Russians and
+foreign diplomats of all kinds. Of the more important he sends home
+interesting sketches to his superiors in Whitehall, Vischnegradsky, the
+'wizard of finance', who raised the value of the rouble 30 per cent.,
+became one of his intimate friends. When that ambiguous figure, Witte,
+his rival and successor, tried to discredit him, Morier vindicated with
+warmth the honesty and patriotism of his friend. Baron Jomini of the
+Foreign Office was of a different kind, witty, volatile, audaciously
+outspoken, more like a character in Thackeray's novels. Pobedonostsev,
+the Procurator of the Holy Synod, remained 'somewhat of an enigma'--as
+we can easily believe when we hear that this bigoted Churchman, the
+terror of the Jews, had been a friend of Dean Stanley, and was still
+fond of English literature and English theology.
+
+Still more amusing are the stories which he tells of foreign visitors of
+high station--of the Duke of Orleans playing truant without the
+knowledge of his parents and being snubbed by his Grand Ducal
+relatives; of Dal[=i]p Singh touring the provinces with a disreputable
+entourage and trying to make trouble for the British at Moscow; of the
+Prince of Montenegro and his beautiful daughters, whom Morier heartily
+admires--'tall and massive, strong-limbed and comely, the true type of
+the mothers of heroes in the Homeric sense'.
+
+With the Court his relations were excellent. His intimacy with members
+of our own royal family helped him, and his geniality and
+unconventional, natural manner won favour with the Romanoffs, who
+retained in their high station a great deal of simplicity. More than
+once Morier seized an opportunity for an act of special courtesy to the
+Tsar; and Alexander appreciated this from a man whose character was too
+well known for him to be suspected of obsequiousness.
+
+But the life in St. Petersburg was not all pleasure, even when
+diplomatic waters were quiet. The work was hard, the climate was very
+exacting with its extremes of temperature, and epidemics were rife. In
+November 1889 he reports the appearance of 'Siberian Catarrh, more
+usually described under the general name of Influenza', which was
+working havoc in girls' schools and guardsmen's barracks, and had laid
+low simultaneously Emperor, Empress, and half the imperial family.
+Morier himself became increasingly liable to attacks of ill-health, and
+found difficulty in discharging his duties regularly. It required a keen
+sense of duty for him to stay at his post; and when in December 1891 he
+was appointed to the Embassy at Rome, he was very willing to go. But
+public interest stood in the way. He had made for himself an exceptional
+place at St. Petersburg. No one could be found to replace him
+adequately, and the Tsar expressed a desire that his departure should be
+postponed. He consented to stay on, and the next two years of work in
+that climate, together with the death in 1891 of his only son, broke
+his spirit and his strength. Too late he went in search of health, first
+to the Crimea and then to Switzerland. Death came to him as the winter
+of 1893 was approaching, when he was at Montreux on the Lake of Geneva,
+close to the home of his ancestors.
+
+The impression which he made on his friends and colleagues is clear and
+consistent, and the ignorance of the general public about men of his
+profession justifies a few quotations. Sir Louis Mallet brackets him
+with Sir James Hudson[45] and Lord Cromer as 'the most admirable trio of
+public servants he had known'. Sir William White speaks of him and Odo
+Russell as 'two giants of the diplomatic service'. Lord Acton, who knew
+Europe as well as any Foreign Minister, and weighed his words, refers to
+him in 1884 as 'our only strong diplomatist', and again 'as a strong
+man, resolute, ready, well-informed and with some amount of real
+resource'. More than one Foreign Secretary has borne testimony to the
+value of Morier's dispatches; and Sir Charles Dilke, who, without
+holding the portfolio himself, often shaped our foreign policy and was
+an expert in European questions, is still more emphatic about his
+intellectual powers, though he thinks that Morier's imperious temper
+made him 'impossible in a small place'. Sir Horace Rumbold,[46] in his
+_Recollections_, has many references to him, especially as he was in
+earlier years. He speaks of Morier's 'prodigious fund of spirits that
+made him the most entertaining, but not always the safest, of
+companions'; 'of his imperious, not over-tolerant disposition'; 'of the
+curious compound that he was of the thoughtless, thriftless Bohemian and
+the cool, calculating man of the world'; of his 'exceptionally powerful
+brain and unflagging industry'. Elsewhere he recalls Morier's journeys
+among the Southern Slavs, in which he opened up a new field of
+knowledge, and adds, 'since then he has made himself a thorough master
+of German politics, and is, I believe, one of the few men whom Prince
+Bismarck fears and correspondingly detests'.
+
+[Note 45: Sir James Hudson, G.C.B., British minister at Turin during
+the years of Cavour's great ministry; died 1885.]
+
+[Note 46: Sir Horace Rumbold, G.C.B., Ambassador at Vienna
+1896-1900; died 1913.]
+
+Jowett's testimony may perhaps be discounted as that of an intimate
+friend; yet he was no flatterer, and as he often criticized Morier
+severely, it is of interest to read his deliberate verdict, given in
+1873, that 'if he devoted his whole mind to it, he could prevent a war
+in Europe'. Four years earlier Jowett had been told by a diplomatist
+whom he respected, 'Morier is the first man in our profession'.
+
+By those who still remember him, Morier is described as a diplomatist of
+'the old school'. His noble presence, his courtly manner, and the
+dignity which he observed on all ceremonial occasions, would have
+qualified him to adorn the court of Maria Theresa or Louis Quatorze.
+This dignity he could put off when the need for it was past. Among his
+friends his manner was vivacious, his talk racy, his criticism free. He
+was of the old school, too, in being self-confident and independent, and
+in believing that he would do his best work if there were no telegraph
+to bring frequent instructions from Whitehall. But he had not the
+natural urbanity of Odo Russell, nor the invariable discretion of Lord
+Lyons. He had hard work to discipline his imperious temper, and by no
+means always succeeded in masking his own feelings. Perhaps too high a
+value has been set on impenetrable reserve by those who have modelled
+themselves on Talleyrand. By their very candour and openness some
+British diplomatists have gained an advantage over rivals who confound
+timidity with reserve, and have won a peculiar position of trust at
+foreign courts. In dealing with de Giers, Morier at any rate found no
+need to mumble or swallow his words. He was sure of himself and of his
+honourable intentions. On one occasion, after reading to that minister
+the exact words of the dispatch which he was sending to London, he
+stated his policy to him categorically. 'I always went', he said, 'upon
+the principle, whenever it could be done, of clearing the ground of all
+possible misunderstandings at the earliest date.' Probably we shall
+never see the end of 'secret diplomacy', whether under Tory, Liberal, or
+Labour governments; but this is not the tone of one who loves secrecy
+for its own sake.
+
+In many ways Morier combined the qualities of the old and the new
+schools. Though personally a favourite with kings and queens, he was
+fully alive to the changes in the Europe of the nineteenth century,
+where, along with courts and cabinets, other more unruly forces were at
+work. His visit to Paris in 1848 showed his early interest in popular
+movements, and he maintained a catholic width of view in later life. He
+knew men of all sorts and kept himself acquainted with unofficial
+currents of opinion. He could talk freely to journalists or to
+merchants, could put them at their ease and get the information which he
+wanted. His comprehensiveness was remarkable. The strife of politicians
+in the foreground did not blur the distant landscape. In Russia, behind
+Balkan intrigues and Black Sea troubles he could see the cloud of danger
+overhanging the Pamirs. In Spain or Portugal he was watching and
+forecasting the possibilities of the white races in Africa. So his
+dispatches, varied and vivacious as they were, proved of the greatest
+value to Foreign Secretaries at home, and furnish excellent reading
+to-day.
+
+In these dispatches a few Gallicisms occur; and in writing to an old
+friend like Sir William White he uses a free mixture of French and
+English with other ingredients for seasoning. But in general the
+literary style is admirable. He has a rare command of language, a most
+inventive use of metaphor, a felicitous touch in sketching a character
+or an incident. Towards those working under him he was exacting, setting
+up a high standard of industry, but he was generous in his praise and
+very ready to take up the cudgels for them when they needed support. In
+commending one of them, he selects for special praise 'his old-fashioned
+conscientiousness about public work and his subordination of private
+comfort'. He inherited this tradition from his own family and his
+faithfulness to it cost him his life.
+
+Above all, we feel in reading these letters and memoranda that here is a
+man whose aim is truth rather than effect--not thinking of commending a
+programme to thousands of half-informed readers or hearers, in order to
+win their votes, but giving counsel to his peers, Odo Russell or Sir
+William White, Lord Granville or Lord Salisbury, on events and
+tendencies which affect the grave issues of peace and war and the lives
+of thousands of his fellow-countrymen. This generation has learnt how
+unsafe it is to treat these in a parliamentary atmosphere where men
+force themselves to believe what they wish and close their eyes to what
+is uncomfortable. While human nature remains the same, democracy cannot
+afford to deprive itself of such counsel or to belittle such a
+profession.
+
+
+
+
+JOSEPH LISTER
+
+1827-1912
+
+
+1827. Born at West Ham, April 5.
+1844-52. University College, London.
+1851. Acting House Surgeon under Erichsen.
+1852. First research work published.
+1853. Goes to Edinburgh. House Surgeon under Syme.
+1855. Assistant Surgeon and Lecturer at Edinburgh Infirmary.
+1856. Marries Agnes Syme.
+1860. Appointed Professor of Clinical Surgery at Glasgow.
+1865. Makes acquaintance with Pasteur's work.
+1866-7. Antiseptic treatment of compound fractures and abscesses.
+1867. Papers on antiseptic method in the _Lancet_.
+1869. Appointed Professor of Surgery at Edinburgh.
+1872-5. Conversion of leading scientists in Germany to Antisepticism.
+1875. Lister's triumphal reception in Germany.
+1877. Accepts professorship at King's College, London.
+1879. Medical congress at Amsterdam. Acceptance of Lister's
+      methods by Paget and others in London.
+1882. von Bergmann develops Asepticism in Berlin.
+1883. Lister created a Baronet.
+1891. British Institute of Preventive Medicine incorporated.
+1892. Lister attends Pasteur celebration in Paris.
+1893. Death of Lady Lister.
+1895-1900. President of Royal Society.
+1897. Created a Peer.
+1902. Order of Merit.
+1907. Freedom of City of London: last public appearance.
+1912. Dies at Walmer, February 10.
+
+JOSEPH LISTER
+
+SURGEON
+
+
+In a corner of the north transept of Westminster Abbey, almost lost
+among the colossal statues of our prime ministers, our judges, and our
+soldiers, will be found a small group of memorials preserving the
+illustrious names of Darwin, Lister, Stokes, Adams, and Watt, and
+reminding us of the great place which Science has taken in the progress
+of the last century. Watt, thanks partly to his successors, may be said
+to have changed the face of this earth more than any other inhabitant of
+our isles; but he is of the eighteenth century, and between those who
+developed his inventions it is not easy to choose a single
+representative of the age. Stokes and Adams command the admiration of
+all students of mathematics who can appreciate their genius, but their
+work makes little appeal to the average man. In Darwin's case no one
+would dispute his claim to represent worthily the scientists of the age,
+and his life is a noble object for study, single-hearted as he was in
+his devotion to truth, persistent as were his efforts in the face of
+prolonged ill-health. No better instance could be found to show that the
+highest intellectual genius may be found united with the most endearing
+qualities of character. Kindly and genial in his home, warmly attached
+to his friends, devoid of all jealousy of his fellow scientists, he
+lived to see his name honoured throughout the civilized world; and many
+who are incapable of appreciating his originality of mind can find an
+inspiring example in the record of his life. There is no need to make
+comparisons either of fame, of mental power, or of character; but the
+choice of Lister may be justified by the fact that his science, the
+science of Health and Disease, is one of absorbing interest to all men,
+and that with his career is bound up the history of a movement fraught
+with grave issues of life and death from which few families have been
+exempt.
+
+About these issues bitter controversies have raged; but it is to the
+lesser men that the bitterness is due. By his family traditions, as well
+as by his natural disposition, Lister was a man of peace; and though he
+left the Society of Friends at the time of his marriage, he retained a
+respect for their views which accorded well with his own nature. When
+he had to speak or write on behalf of what he believed to be the truth,
+it was from no motive of self-assertion or combativeness. He had the
+calm contemplative mind of the student, whereas Bright, the Quaker
+tribune, the champion of Repeal, had all the fervour of the man of
+action. Lister's family had been Quakers since the beginning of the
+eighteenth century; and at this time too they moved from Yorkshire to
+London, where his grandfather and father were engaged in business as
+wine merchants. But Joseph Jackson Lister, who married in 1818, and
+became in 1827 the father of the famous surgeon, was much more than a
+merchant. He had taught himself the science of optics, had made
+improvements in the microscope, and had won his way within the sacred
+portals of the Royal Society. Letters have been preserved which show us
+how keen his interest in science always remained, and with what full
+appreciation he entered into the researches which his son was making as
+professor at Glasgow in the middle of the century. A father like this
+was not likely to grudge money on the boy's education; but for the
+Friends many avenues to knowledge were still closed, including the
+Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He had to be content to go
+successively to Quaker schools at Hitchin and Tottenham, and from the
+latter to proceed, at the age of seventeen, to University College,
+London, which was non-sectarian. There the teaching was good, the
+atmosphere favourable to industry, and Lister was not conscious of
+hardship in missing the delights of youth that fell to his more
+fortunate contemporaries.
+
+His father lived in a comfortable house at Upton, some six miles east of
+London Bridge, in a district now completely swamped by the growth of the
+vast borough of West Ham. He kept up close relations with other Quaker
+families living in the neighbourhood, especially the Gurneys of
+Plashets. In their circle the most striking figure was Elizabeth Fry,
+who from 1813 to her death in 1843 devoted herself unsparingly to the
+cause of prison reform. From his home the father continued to exercise a
+strong influence over his son, who was industrious and serious beyond
+his years.
+
+From his father Lister learned as a boy to delight in the use of the
+microscope. He learned also to use his own power of observation, and to
+make hand and eye work together to minister to his studies. The power of
+drawing, which the future surgeon thus early developed, stood him in
+good stead later in life; and it is interesting to contrast his
+enjoyment of it with the laments made by his great contemporary Darwin,
+who felt keenly what he lost through his inability to use a pencil and
+to preserve the record of what he saw in nature or in the laboratory.
+Lister's school-days were over when he was seventeen years old and there
+is nothing remarkable to tell of them; but his period at University
+College was unusually prolonged. He was a student there for seven years
+and continued an eighth year, after he had taken his degree, as Acting
+House Surgeon. In 1848, half-way through his time, a physical breakdown
+was brought on by overwork, just as he was finishing his general
+studies; but a long holiday enabled him to recover his strength, and
+before the end of the year he had begun the course of medical studies
+which was to be his life-work.
+
+At school his record had been good but not brilliant, nor did he come
+quickly to the front in London. His mind was not of the sort which can
+be forced to produce untimely fruit in the hot-house of examinations.
+But his education was both extensive and thorough; it formed an
+excellent general training for the mind and a good basis for the special
+studies in which he was later to distinguish himself. He had been at
+University College for two years before he gained his first medal; but
+by 1850 he had made his name as the best man of his year, capable of
+upholding the credit of his College against any rival in the
+metropolis. Among his fellow students the best known in later years was
+Sir Henry Thompson, whose portrait by Millais hangs in our National
+Gallery. Among his professors one stands out pre-eminent, alike for his
+character and for his influence on Lister's life. This was William
+Sharpey, Professor of Physiology, an original man with a keen eye for
+originality in others. In days when most English professors were content
+with a narrow empirical training, he had trudged with his knapsack over
+half Europe in quest of knowledge, had studied in France, Switzerland,
+Italy, and Austria, and had made himself acquainted at first hand with
+the best that was taught in their schools. He was a first-rate lecturer,
+clear and simple, and took much pains to get to know his pupils. When
+Lister had held for a short time the post of Acting House Surgeon at
+University College Hospital, and needed to make definite plans for his
+career, it was Sharpey who advised him to go north for a while and
+attend some classes in Edinburgh before deciding on his course. Thus it
+was Sharpey who introduced him to Scotland and to Syme.
+
+Before we speak of the latter, a few words must be given to the year
+1851, when Lister completed his studentship and became for a time an
+active member of the hospital staff. This year was important as
+introducing him to the practice of his art under the direction of
+Erichsen, an Anglo-Dane and one of the foremost surgeons in London. It
+also led to a change in his way of living, to his being thrown into
+closer relations with men of his own age, and to his taking a more
+lively part in social gatherings. What we hear of the essays that he
+wrote at school, what we can read of his early letters, all harmonizes
+with our conception of a Quaker upbringing. There is a staid primness
+about him, which contrasts strangely with the pictures of medical
+students presented to us in the pages of Dickens. Capable though he was
+of enjoying a holiday, or of expanding among congenial associates,
+Lister was not quick to make friends. He was apt to keep too much to
+himself; and he seems to have inspired respect and even a certain awe
+among men of his own age. In his youth men noticed the same grave mien,
+steadfast eyes, and lofty intellectual forehead which are conspicuous in
+his later portraits. He was steady in conduct, serious in manner,
+precise in his way of expressing himself; and while these qualities
+helped him in the mental application which was so necessary if he was to
+profit by his student days, he needed a little shaking up in order to
+adapt himself to the ways of other men in the sphere of active life.
+This was given him by the constant activities of the hospital, and by
+the demands which the various societies made upon him; but he did not
+allow them to interfere with his own researches, for which he could find
+time when others were overwhelmed by the routine of their daily tasks.
+
+His first bit of original research is of special interest because it
+connects him with his father's work. He made special observations with
+the microscope of the muscular tissue of the iris of the eye,
+illustrated his paper by delicate drawings of his own, and published it
+in the leading microscopical journal. This and a subsequent paper on the
+phenomena of 'Goose-skin' attracted some attention among physiologists
+at home and abroad, and brought him into friendly relations with a
+German professor of world-wide reputation. They also gave great
+satisfaction to his father and to his favourite teacher Sharpey.
+
+But Lister's development henceforth was to take place on Scottish
+ground, and his visit to Edinburgh in 1853 shaped the whole course of
+his career. James Syme, under whose influence he thus came, was the most
+original and brilliant surgeon then living in the British Isles, perhaps
+in all Europe. His merits as a lecturer were somewhat overshadowed by
+his extraordinary skill as an operator; but he was a remarkable man in
+all ways, and the fact that Lister was admitted, first to his
+lecture-room and operating theatre, and then to his home, was without
+doubt the happiest accident in his life.
+
+The atmosphere of Edinburgh with its large enthusiastic classes in the
+hospitals, its cultivated and intellectual society outside, supplied
+just what was wanted to foster the genius of a young man on the
+threshold of his career. In London, centres of culture were too widely
+diffused, indifference and apathy too prevalent, conservatism in
+principles and methods too strongly entrenched. In his new home in the
+north Lister could watch the boldest operator in his own profession, and
+could daily meet men scarcely less distinguished in other sciences, and
+as a visitor to Syme's house he was from time to time thrown among able
+men following widely different lines in life. Above all, here he met one
+who was peculiarly qualified to be his helper; and three years later, at
+the age of twenty-nine, he was married to Agnes Syme, the daughter of
+his chief, to whom he had been attracted, as can be seen from the
+letters which passed between Edinburgh and Upton, soon after his arrival
+in the north. Before this event, he had already made his mark as
+Resident House Surgeon, as assistant operator to Syme, and also as an
+independent lecturer under the liberal system which gave an opening to
+all who could establish by merit a claim to be heard. He had also begun
+those researches into the early stages of inflammation which, ten years
+later, were to bear such wonderful fruit. It was a full and busy life,
+and the distraction of courtship must have made it impossible for him at
+times to meet all demands; but after 1856 his mind was set at rest and
+his strength doubled by the sympathy which his wife showed in his work,
+and by the help which she was able to render him in writing to his
+dictation.
+
+For their honeymoon they took a long journey on the Continent in the
+summer of 1856; but half, even of this rare holiday, was given to
+science, and, after some weeks' enjoyment of the beauties of Italy,
+husband and wife made the tour of German universities, as he was
+desirous to see something, if possible, of the leading surgeons and the
+newest methods. Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, Munich, Frankfort, Heidelberg,
+and Stuttgart were all included in the tour. They were well received,
+and at Vienna the most eminent professor of Pathology in the University
+gave more than three hours of his time to showing his museum to Lister,
+and also invited the young couple to dine at his house. Though he had
+not yet made a name for himself, Lister's earnestness and intelligence
+always made a favourable impression; and as he had taken pains with
+foreign languages in his youth, he was able, now and later in life, to
+address French and German friends, and even public meetings, in their
+native tongue. He came back to find work waiting for him which would tax
+his energies to the full. In October 1856 he was elected Assistant
+Surgeon to the Infirmary, and now, in addition to lecturing, he had to
+conduct public operations himself, whereas he had hitherto only acted as
+Syme's assistant. This was at first a severe trial for his nerves. That
+it affected him differently from most experienced surgeons is shown by
+the fact that he used always, all his life, to perspire freely when
+starting to operate; but he learnt to overcome this nervousness by
+concentrating his attention on his work. He was not a man who had
+religious phrases on his lips; but in letters to his family, quoted by
+Sir Rickman Godlee, he gives us the secret of his confidence and his
+power. 'Yesterday', he says in a letter written to his father on
+February 26, 'I made my debut at the hospital in operating before the
+students. I felt very nervous before beginning; but when I had got
+fairly to work, this feeling went off entirely, and I performed both
+operations with entire comfort.' A week later, in a letter to his
+sister, he returns to the subject. 'The theatre was again well filled;
+and though I again felt a good deal before the operation, yet I lost all
+consciousness of the presence of the spectators during its performance,
+and did it exactly as if no one had been looking on. Just before the
+operation began I recollected that there was only one Spectator whom it
+was important to consider, one present alike in the operating theatre
+and in the private room; and this consideration gave me increased
+firmness.' Interest in the work for its own sake, forgetfulness of
+himself, these were to be the key-notes of his life-work.
+
+As yet, to a superficial observer, there were not many signs of a
+brilliant career ahead of him. His private practice was small and did
+not grow extensively for many years. The attendance at his earlier
+course of lectures was discouragingly meagre. This would have been more
+discouraging still, had not his dressers, from personal affection for
+him, made a point of attending regularly to swell the number of the
+class. Indeed, in view of the exacting demands made on him by the
+hospital, Lister might have been content to follow the ordinary routine
+of his profession. With his wife at his side and friends close at hand,
+he had every chance of living a useful and happy life. But he still
+found time to conduct experiments and to think for himself. His
+researches were continued along the line which he had opened up in 1855,
+and in 1858 he appeared before an Edinburgh Surgical Society to read a
+paper on Spontaneous Gangrene.
+
+This gave Mrs. Lister an opportunity to show her value. All his life
+Lister was prone to unpunctuality and to being late with preparations
+for his addresses, not because he was indifferent to the convenience of
+others or careless about the quality of his teaching, but because he
+became so engrossed in the work of the moment that he could not tear
+himself away from it so long as any improvement seemed possible. This
+same quality made him slow over his hospital rounds and often over
+operations, with the result that his own meal-times were most irregular
+and his assistants often had trouble to stay the pangs of hunger. This
+handicapped him in private practice and in some measure as a lecturer.
+He gave plenty of thought to his subjects, but rarely began to put
+thoughts in writing sufficiently in advance of his engagement. When he
+was in time with his written matter the credit was chiefly due to his
+wife. On the occasion of this paper she wrote for seven hours one day
+and eight hours the next, and her heroic industry saved the situation.
+
+Towards the end of 1859 Lister decided to be a candidate for the
+Surgical Professorship at Glasgow, which appointment was in the gift of
+the Crown; and in spite of some intrigues to secure the patronage for a
+local man, the post was offered by the Home Secretary, Sir George Lewis,
+to the young Edinburgh surgeon. Syme's opinion and influence no doubt
+counted for much. Lister's appointment dated from January 1860, but it
+was not till a year and a half later that his position in Glasgow was
+assured by his being elected Surgeon to the Royal Infirmary. Before this
+he could preach his principles in the lecture-room, but he had little
+influence on the practice of his students and colleagues. Thanks to the
+reputation which he brought from Edinburgh, his first lecture drew a
+full room, and his class grew year by year till it reached the
+unprecedented figure of 182, and each year the enthusiasm seemed to
+rise. But in the hospital he had an uphill task, as any one will know
+who has studied the history of these institutions in the first half of
+the century.
+
+To-day the modern hospital is an object of general admiration, with its
+high standard of cleanliness and efficiency; and few of us would have
+any hesitation if a doctor advised us to go into hospital for an
+operation. Seventy or a hundred years ago the case was very different;
+and when we read the statistics of the early nineteenth century,
+gathered by the surgeons who had known its horrors, it is hard to
+believe that we are not back among the worst abuses of the Middle Ages.
+Such terrible scourges as pyaemia and hospital gangrene were rife in all
+of them. In the chief hospital of Paris, which for centuries claimed
+pre-eminence for its medical faculty, the latter disease raged for 200
+years without intermission: 25 per cent. of those entering its doors
+were found to have died, and the mortality after certain operations was
+more than double this figure. Erichsen, who published in 1874 the
+statistics of deaths after operations, quoted 25 per cent. in London as
+satisfactory, and referred to the 60 per cent. of Paris as not
+surprising. In military practice the number of deaths might reach the
+appalling figure of 80 or 90 per cent. What was so tragic about this
+situation was that it was precisely hospitals, built to be the safeguard
+of the community, which were the most dangerous places in the case of
+wounds and amputations. In 1869 Sir James Simpson, the famous discoverer
+of chloroform, collected statistics of amputations. He took over 2,000
+cases treated in hospitals, and the same number treated outside. In the
+former 855 patients (nearly 43 per cent.) died, as it seemed, from the
+effects of the operation; in the latter only 266 cases (over 13 per
+cent.) ended fatally. He went so far as to condemn altogether the system
+of big hospitals; and under his influence a movement began for breaking
+them up and substituting a system of small huts, which, whether tending
+to security or not, was in other ways inconvenient and very expensive.
+About the same time certain other reforms, obvious as they seem to us
+since the days of Florence Nightingale, were tried in various places,
+tending to more careful organization and to greater cleanliness; but
+till the cause of the mischief could be discovered, only varying results
+could be obtained, and no real victory could be won. Hence a radical
+policy like Simpson's met with considerable support. In days when many
+surgeons submitted despairingly to what they regarded as inevitable, it
+was an advantage to have any one boldly advocating a big measure; and
+Simpson had sufficient prestige in Edinburgh and outside to carry many
+along with him. But before 1869 another line of attack had been
+initiated from Glasgow, and Lister was already applying principles which
+were to win the battle with more certainty of permanent success.
+
+Glasgow was no more free from these troubles than other great towns; in
+fact it suffered more than most of them. With its rapid industrial
+development it had already in 1860 a population of 390,000. Its streets
+were narrow, its houses often insanitary. In the haste to make money its
+citizens had little time to think of air and open spaces. The science of
+town-planning was unborn. Its hospital, far from having any special
+advantage of position, was exposed to peculiar dangers. It lay on the
+edge of the old cathedral graveyard, where the victims of cholera had
+received promiscuous pit-burial only ten years before. The uppermost
+tier of a multitude of coffins reached to within a few inches of the
+surface. These horrors have long been swept away; but, when Lister took
+charge of his wards in the Infirmary, they were infected by the
+poisonous air generated so close at hand, and in consequence they
+presented a gruesome appearance. The patients came from streets which
+often were foul with dirt, smoke, and disease, and were admitted to
+gloomy airless wards, where pyaemia or gangrene were firmly established.
+In such an environment certain death seemed to await them.
+
+Though his heart must have sunk within him, Lister set himself bravely
+to the task of fighting these grim adversaries. For two years, indeed,
+he was chiefly occupied with routine work and practical improvements;
+but he continued his speculations, and in 1861 an article on amputations
+which he contributed to the _System of Surgery_, a large work in four
+volumes published in London, showed that he had not lost his power of
+surveying questions broadly and examining them with a fresh and original
+insight. He was not in danger of letting his mind be swamped with
+details, but could put them in their place and subordinate them to
+principles; and his article is chiefly directed to a philosophical
+survey which would enable his readers to go through the same process of
+education which he had followed out for himself. Sir Hector Cameron, the
+most constant of his Glasgow disciples, once illustrated this
+philosophic spirit from a passage in Cicero contrasting the many
+scientists who 'render themselves familiar with the strange' (not
+realizing that it is strange or needs explanation) with the few who
+'render themselves strange to the familiar'--who stand away from the
+phenomena to which every one has become too accustomed and examine them
+afresh for themselves. In Lister he recognized the peculiar gift which
+enabled him to rise superior to his subject, and to interpret what was
+to his colleagues a sealed book. In these days, among the too familiar
+scourges of the hospital, his work was perpetually putting questions to
+him; to a man whose mind was open the answer might come at any moment
+and from any quarter.
+
+As a fact, already, far from his own circle and for a long while out of
+his ken, there was working in France the most remarkable scientist of
+the century, Louis Pasteur, who more than once put his scientific
+ability at the disposal of a stricken industry, and in his quiet
+laboratory revived the industrial life of a teeming population. A
+manufacturer who was confronted with difficulties in making
+beetroot-alcohol and was threatened with financial ruin, appealed for
+his help in 1856; and Pasteur spent years on the study of fermentation,
+making countless experiments to test the action of the air in the
+processes of putrefaction, and coming to the conclusion that the oxygen
+of the air was not responsible for them, as was widely believed. He went
+further and reached a positive result. He satisfied himself that
+putrefaction was set up by tiny living organisms carried in the dust of
+the air, and that the process was due to what we now familiarly term
+'germs' or 'microbes'. The existence of these infinitesimal creatures
+was known already to scientists, but their importance was not grasped
+till Pasteur, in the years 1862 to 1864, expounded the results of his
+long course of studies. He himself was no expert in medicine, but his
+discovery was to bear wonderful fruit when it was properly applied to
+the science of health and disease. Lister's study of open wounds, his
+observation of the harm done to the tissues in them when vitality was
+impaired, and of the value of protective scabs when they formed, enabled
+him to see the way and to point it out to others. When in 1865 he first
+read the papers which Pasteur had been publishing, he found the
+principle for which he had so long been searching. With what excitement
+he read them, with what suddenness of conviction he accepted the
+message, we do not know; he has left no record of his feelings at the
+time: but it was the most important moment in his career, and the rest
+of his life was spent in applying these principles to his professional
+work.
+
+With his mind thus fortified by the knowledge of the true source of the
+mischief, realizing that he had to assist in a battle between the deadly
+germs carried in the air and the living tissues trying to defend
+themselves, Lister returned afresh to the study of methods. He knew that
+he had to reckon with germs in the wound itself, if the skin was broken,
+with germs on the hands and instruments of the operator, and with germs
+on the dust in the air. He must find some defensive power which was able
+to kill the germs, at least in the first two instances, without
+exercising an irritating effect on the tissues and weakening their
+vitality. The relative importance of these various factors in the
+problem only time and experience could tell him. Carbolic acid had been
+discovered in 1834 and had already been tried by surgeons with varying
+results. At Carlisle it had been used by the town authorities to cope
+with the foul odour of sewage, and Lister visited the town to study its
+operation. In its cruder form carbolic proved only too liable to
+irritate a wound and was difficult to dissolve in water. Lister tried
+solutions of different strengths, and finally arrived at a form of
+carbolic acid which proved to be soluble in oil and to have the
+'antiseptic' force which he desired--that is, to check the process of
+sepsis or putrefaction inside the wound. He also set himself to devise
+some 'protective' which would enable Nature to do her healing work
+without further interference from without. Animals have the power to
+form quickly a natural scab over a wound, which is impermeable and at
+the same time elastic. The human skin, after a slight wound, in a pure
+atmosphere, may heal quickly; but a serious wound may continue open for
+a long time, discharging 'pus' at intervals, while decomposition is
+slowly lowering the vitality of the patient. Lister made numerous
+experiments with layers of chalk and carbolic oil, with a combination of
+shellac and gutta-percha, with everything of which he could think, to
+imitate the work of nature. His inexhaustible patience stood him in good
+stead in all these practical details. Rivals might speak contemptuously
+of the 'carbolic treatment' and the 'putty method' as if he were the
+vender of a new quack medicine; but at the back of these details was a
+scientific principle, firmly grasped by one man, while all others were
+groping in the dark.
+
+[Illustration: LORD LISTER
+
+From a photograph by Messrs. Barraud]
+
+During 1866 and 1867 we see from his letters how he set himself to apply
+the new principle first to cases of compound fracture and then to
+abscesses, how closely and anxiously he watched the progress of his
+patients, and how slow he was to claim a victory before his confidence
+was assured. In July 1867, when he was just forty years old, he felt it
+to be his duty to communicate what he had learnt and to put his
+experience at the disposal of his fellow workers. He wrote then to _The
+Lancet_ describing in detail eleven cases of compound fracture under his
+care, in which one patient had died, one had lost a limb, and the other
+nine had been successfully cured. This ratio of success to failure was
+far in advance of the average practice of the time; but, for all that,
+it is not surprising that he met with the common fate which rewards
+pioneers in new fields of study. It is true that other reforms were
+helping to reduce the number of fatal cases. Florence Nightingale had
+led the way, and much had been learnt about hospital management. It was
+possible to maintain that good results had been achieved by other
+methods, and that Lister's proofs were in no way decisive. But there was
+no need for critics to misapprehend the nature of his claims or to
+introduce the personal element and accuse him of plagiarism. Sir James
+Simpson revived the memory of a Frenchman, Lemaire, who had used
+carbolic acid and written about it in 1860, and refused to give Lister
+any credit for his discoveries. As a fact Lister had never heard of
+Lemaire or his work; and, besides, the Frenchman had never known the
+principles on which Lister based his work, nor did he succeed in
+converting others to his practice. How little the personal question need
+be raised between men of the highest character is shown by the relations
+of Darwin and Wallace, who arrived independently and almost
+simultaneously at their theory of the origin of species, Wallace put his
+notes, the fruit of many years of work, at the disposal of Darwin; and
+both continued to labour at the establishment of truth, each giving
+generous recognition to the other's part in the work.
+
+Unmoved then by this and other attacks, Lister continued his experiments
+and spent the greatest pains, for years in succession, in improving the
+details of his treatment. It would take too long to narrate his
+struggles with carbolized silk and catgut in the search for the perfect
+ligature, which should be absorbed by the living tissues without setting
+up putrefaction in the wound; or his countless experiments to find a
+dressing which should be antiseptic without bringing any irritating
+substance near the vital spot. These latter finally resulted in the
+choice of the cyanide gauze, which with its delicate shade of heliotrope
+is now a familiar object in hospital and surgery. But one story is of
+special interest because it shows us clearly how Lister, while clinging
+to a principle, was ready to modify the details of treatment by the
+lessons which experience taught him. It was on the advice of others that
+he first introduced a carbolic spray in order to purify the air in the
+neighbourhood of an operation. At first he used a small spray worked by
+hand, but this was, for practical reasons, changed into a foot-spray and
+afterwards into one worked by steam. One objection to this was that the
+steam-engine was a cumbrous bit of apparatus to carry about with him to
+operations; and Lister all his life loved simplicity in his methods.
+Another was that the carbolic solution, falling on the hands of the
+operator, might chill them and impair his skill in handling his
+instruments. Lister himself suffered less in this way than most other
+surgeons; with some men it was a grave handicap. The spectators at a
+demonstration found it inconvenient, and in one instance at least we
+know that the patient was upset by the carbolic vapour reaching her
+eyes. This was no less a person than Queen Victoria, upon whom Lister
+was called to operate at Balmoral in 1870. About the use of this
+apparatus, which was an easy mark for ridicule, Lister had doubts for
+some time; but it was not the ridicule which killed it, but his growing
+conviction that it did not afford the security which was claimed for it.
+He was hesitating in 1881; in 1887 he abandoned the use of the spray
+entirely; in 1890 he expressed publicly at Berlin his regret for having
+advocated what had proved to be a needless complication and even a
+source of trouble in conducting operations. In adopting it he had for
+once been ready to listen to the advice of others without his usual
+precaution of first-hand experiments; in abandoning it he showed his
+contempt for merely outward consistency in practice and his willingness
+to admit his own mistakes.
+
+It was at Glasgow that Lister made his initial discoveries and conducted
+his first operations under the new system. It was in the Glasgow
+Infirmary that he worked cures which roused the astonishment of his
+students, however incredulous the older generation might be. He had
+formed a school and was happy in the loyal service and in the enthusiasm
+of those who worked under him, and he had no desire to leave such a
+fruitful field of work. But when in 1869 his father-in-law, owing to
+ill-health, resigned his professorship, and a number of Edinburgh
+students addressed an appeal to Lister to become a candidate for the
+post, he was strongly drawn towards the city where he had married and
+spent such happy years. No doubt too he and his wife wished to be near
+Syme, who lived for fourteen months after his stroke, and to cheer his
+declining days. Lister was elected in August 1869 and moved to Edinburgh
+two months later. For a while he took a furnished house, but early in
+1870 he made his home in Charlotte Square, from which he had easy access
+to the gardens between Princes Street and the Castle, 'a grand place'
+for his daily meditations, as he had it all to himself before breakfast.
+Altogether, Edinburgh was a pleasant change to him, and refreshing; and
+the one man who was likely to stir controversy, Sir James Simpson, died
+six months after Lister's arrival. Among his fellow professors were men
+eminent in many lines, perhaps the most striking figures being old Sir
+Robert Christison of the medical faculty, Geikie the geologist, and
+Blackie the classical scholar. The hospital was still run on
+old-fashioned lines; but the staff were devoted to their work, from the
+head nurse, Mrs. Porter, a great 'character' whose portrait has been
+sketched in verse by Henley,[47] to the youngest student; and they were
+ready to co-operate heartily with the new chief. The hours of work
+suited Lister better than those at Glasgow, where he had begun with an
+early morning visit to the Infirmary and had to find time for a daily
+lecture. Here he limited himself to two lectures a week, visited the
+hospital at midday, and was able to devote a large amount of time to
+bacteriological study, which was his chief interest at this time.
+
+[Note 47: W. E. Henley, poet and critic, 1849-1903. His poems, 'In
+Hospital' include also a very beautiful sonnet on 'The Chief'--Lister
+himself, which almost calls up his portrait to one who has once seen it:
+'His brow spreads large and placid.... Soft lines of tranquil
+thought.... His face at once benign and proud and shy.... His wise rare
+smile.']
+
+He stayed in Edinburgh eight years, and it was during his time here that
+he saw the interest of all Europe in surgical questions quickened by the
+Franco-German war, and had to realize how incomplete as yet was his
+victory over the forces of destruction. Some enterprising British and
+American doctors, who volunteered for field-service, came to him for
+advice, and he wrote a series of short instructions for their guidance;
+but he soon learnt how difficult it was to carry out his methods in the
+field, where appliances were inadequate and where wounds often got a
+long start before treatment could be applied. The French statistics,
+compiled after the war, are appalling to read: 90 out of 100 amputations
+proved fatal, and the total number of deaths in hospital worked out at
+over 10,000. The Germans were in advance of the French in the
+cleanliness of their methods, and some of their doctors were already
+beginning to accept the antiseptic theory; but it was not till 1872 that
+this principle can be said to have won the day. The hospitals on both
+sides were left with a ghastly heritage of pyaemia and other diseases,
+raging almost unchecked in their wards; but, in the two years after the
+war, two of the most famous professors in German Universities[48] had by
+antiseptic methods obtained such striking results among their patients
+that the superiority of the treatment was evident; and both of them
+generously gave full credit to Lister as their teacher. When he made a
+long tour on the Continent in 1875, finishing up with visits to the
+chief medical schools in Germany, these men were foremost in greeting
+him, and he enjoyed a conspicuous triumph also at Leipzig. Sir Rickman
+Godlee, commenting on the indifference of his countrymen, says that
+Lister's teaching was by them 'accepted as a novelty, when it came back
+to England, refurbished from Germany'. But this was not till after he
+had left Edinburgh, to carry the torch of learning to the south.
+
+[Note 48: Professor Volkmann of Halle and Professor von Nussbaum of
+Munich.]
+
+In Edinburgh his colleagues, with all their opportunities for learning
+at first hand, seemed strangely indifferent to Lister's presence in
+their midst, even when foreigners began to make pilgrimages to the
+central shrine of antiseptics. The real encouragement which he got came,
+as before, from his pupils, who thronged his lecture-room to the number
+of three or four hundred, with sustained enthusiasm. In some ways it is
+difficult to account for the popularity of his lectures. He made no
+elaborate preparations, but was content to devote a quiet half-hour to
+thinking out the subject in his arm-chair. After this he needed no
+notes, having his ideas and the development of his thought so firmly in
+his grasp that he could follow it out clearly and could hold the
+attention of his audience. His voice, though musical, was not of great
+power. He was often impeded by a slight stammer, especially at the end
+of a session. He was not naturally an eloquent man, and attempted no
+flights of rhetoric. But it seems impossible to deny the possession of
+special ability to a man who consistently drew such large audiences
+throughout a long career; and if it was the matter rather than the
+manner which wove the spell, surely that is just the kind of good
+speaking which Scotsmen and Englishmen have always preferred.
+
+And so it needed an even greater effort than at Glasgow for Lister to
+strike his tent and adventure himself on new ground. It is true that
+London was his early home; London could give him wider fame and enable
+him to make a larger income by private practice; yet it is very doubtful
+whether these motives combined could have induced him to migrate again,
+now that he had reached the age of fifty. But he was a man with a
+mission. Some of his few converts in London held that only his presence
+there could shake the prevailing apathy, and he himself felt that he
+must make the effort in the interests of science.
+
+The professorial chair to which he was invited in 1877 was at King's
+College, which was relatively a small institution; its hospital was not
+up to the Edinburgh standard; the classes which attended his lectures
+were small. Owing to an unfortunate incident he was handicapped at the
+start. When receiving a parting address from 700 of his Edinburgh
+students he made an informal speech in the course of which he compared
+the conditions of surgical teaching then prevailing at Edinburgh and
+London, in terms which were not flattering to the southern metropolis.
+Some comparison was natural in the circumstances; Lister was not
+speaking for publication and had no idea that a reporter was present.
+But his remarks appeared in print, with the result that might be
+expected. The sting of the criticism lay in its truth, and many London
+surgeons were only too ready to resent anything which might be said by
+the new professor. When he had been living some time in London, Lister
+succeeded in allaying the ill feeling which resulted; but at first, even
+in his own hospital, he was met by coldness and opposition in his
+attempt to introduce new methods. In fact, had he not laid down definite
+conditions in accepting the post, he could never have made his way; but
+he had stipulated for bringing with him some of the men whom he had
+trained, and he was accompanied by four Edinburgh surgeons, the foremost
+of whom were John Stewart, a Canadian, and Watson Cheyne, the famous
+operator of the next generation. Even so he found his orders set at
+naught and his work hampered by a temper which he had never known
+elsewhere. In some cases the sisters entrenched themselves behind the
+Secretary's rules and refused to comply, not only with the requests of
+the new staff, but even with the dictates of common sense and humanity.
+Another trouble arose over the system of London examinations which
+tempted the students to reproduce faithfully the views of others and
+discouraged men from giving time to independent research. Lister's
+method of lecturing was designed to foster the spirit of inquiry, and he
+would not deign to fill his lecture-room by any species of 'cramming'.
+Never did his patience, his hopefulness, and his interest in the cause
+have to submit to greater trials; but the day of victory was at hand.
+
+The most visible sign of it was at the International Medical Congress
+held at Amsterdam in 1879 and attended by representatives of the great
+European nations. One sitting was devoted to the antiseptic system; and
+Lister, after delivering an address, received an ovation so marked that
+none of his fellow-countrymen could fail to see the esteem in which he
+was held abroad. Even in London many of his rivals had by now been
+converted. The most distinguished of them, Sir James Paget, openly
+expressed remorse for his reluctance to accept the antiseptic principle
+earlier, and compared his own record of failures with the successes
+attained by his colleague at St. Bartholomew's Thomas Smith, the one
+eminent London surgeon who had given Listerism a thorough trial. Other
+triumphs followed, such as the visits in 1889 to Oxford and Cambridge to
+receive Honorary Degrees, the offer of a baronetcy in 1883, and the
+conferring on him in 1885 of the Prussian 'Ordre pour le merite'.[49]
+But a chronicle of such external matters is wearisome in itself; and
+before the climax was reached, the current of opinion was, by a strange
+turn of fortune, already setting in another direction.
+
+[Note 49: Restricted to thirty German and thirty foreign members.]
+
+This was due to the introduction of the so-called aseptic theory so
+widely prevalent to-day, of which the chief prophet in 1885 was
+Professor von Bergmann of Berlin. Into the relative merits of systems,
+on which the learned disagree, it is absurd for laymen to enter; nor is
+it necessary to make such comparisons in order to appreciate the example
+of Lister's life. The new school believe that they have gained by the
+abandonment of carbolic and other antiseptics which may irritate a wound
+and by trusting to the agency of heat for killing all germs. But Lister
+himself took enormous pains to keep his antiseptic as remote as possible
+from the tissues to whose vitality he trusted, and went half-way to meet
+the aseptic doctrine. If he retained a belief in the need for carbolic
+and distrusted the elaborate ritual of the modern hospital, with its
+boiling of everybody and everything connected with an operation, it was
+not either from blindness or from pettiness of mind. As in the case of
+abandoning the spray, it was his love of simplicity which influenced
+him. If the detailed precautions of the complete aseptic system are
+found practicable and beneficial in a hospital, they are difficult to
+realize for a country surgeon who has to work in a humbler way, and
+Lister wished his procedure to be within reach of every practitioner who
+needed it.
+
+One more point must be considered before pronouncing Listerism to be
+superseded. In time of war there are occasions when necessity dictates
+the treatment to be followed. Wounded men, picked up on the field of
+battle some hours after they were hit, are not fit subjects for a method
+that needs a clear field of operation. It is then too late for aseptic
+precautions, as the wound may already be teeming with bacteria. Only the
+prompt use of carbolic can stay the ravages of putrefaction; and
+Lister's method, so often disparaged, must have saved the lives of
+thousands during the late War.
+
+In any case there is much common ground between the two schools: each
+can learn from the other, and those professors of asepticism who have
+acknowledged their debt to Lister have been wiser than those who have
+made contention their aim. This was never the spirit in which he
+approached scientific problems.
+
+An earlier controversy, in which his name was involved, was that which
+raged round the practice of vivisection. Here Lister had practically the
+whole of his profession behind him when he boldly supported the claims
+of science to have benefited humanity by the experiments conducted on
+animals and to have done so with a minimum of suffering to the latter.
+And it was well that science had a champion whose reputation for
+gentleness and moderation was so well established. Queen Victoria
+herself showed a lively interest in this fiercely-debated question; and
+in 1871, when Lister was appealed to by Sir Henry Ponsonby, her private
+secretary, to satisfy her doubts on the subject, he wrote an admirable
+reply, calm in tone and lucid in statement, in which he showed how
+unfounded were the charges brought against his profession.
+
+In 1892 his professional career was drawing to a close. In that year he
+received the heartiest recognition that France could give to his work,
+when he went there officially to represent the Royal Society at the
+Pasteur celebration. A great gathering of scientists and others,
+presided over by President Carnot, came together at the Sorbonne to
+honour Pasteur's seventieth birthday. It was a dramatic scene such as
+our neighbours love, when the two illustrious fellow workers embraced
+one another in public, and the audience rose to the occasion. To be
+acclaimed with Pasteur was to Lister a crowning honour; but a year later
+fortune dealt him a blow from which he never recovered. His wife, his
+constant companion and helper, was taken ill suddenly at Rapallo on the
+Italian Riviera, and died in a few days; and Lister's life was sadly
+changed.
+
+He was still considerably before the public for another decade. He did
+much useful work for the Royal Society, of which he became Foreign
+Secretary in 1893 and President from 1895 to 1900. He visited Canada and
+South Africa, received the freedom of Edinburgh in 1898 and of London in
+1907, and in 1897 he received the special honour of a peerage, the only
+one yet conferred on a medical man. He took an active interest in the
+discoveries of Koch and Metchnikoff, preserving to an advanced age the
+capacity for accepting new ideas. He was largely instrumental in
+founding the Institute of Preventive Medicine now established at Chelsea
+and called by his name. But his work as a surgeon was complete before
+death separated him from his truest helper. In 1903 his strength began
+to fail, and for the last nine years of his life, at London or at
+Walmer, he was shut off from general society and lived the life of an
+invalid.
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+In 1912 he passed away by almost imperceptible degrees, in his home
+by the sea, and by his own request was buried in the quiet cemetery of
+West Hampstead where his wife lay. A public service was held in
+Westminster Abbey, and a portrait medallion there preserves the memory
+of his features. The patient toil, the even temper, the noble purpose
+which inspired his life, had achieved their goal--he was a national hero
+as truly as any statesman or soldier of his generation; and if,
+according to his nature he wished his body to lie in a humble grave, he
+deserved full well to have his name preserved and honoured in our most
+sacred national shrine.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+1834-96
+
+
+1834. Born at Walthamstow, March 24.
+1848-51. Marlborough College.
+1853-5. Exeter College, Oxford.
+1856. Studies architecture under Street.
+1857. Red Lion Square; influence of D. G. Rossetti.
+1858. _Defence of Guenevere_.
+1859. Marries Miss Jane Burden.
+1860-5. 'Red House', Upton, Kent.
+1861. Firm of Art Decorators founded in Queen Square, Bloomsbury.
+(Dissolved and refounded 1875.)
+1867-8. _Life and Death of Jason_. 1868-70. _Earthly Paradise_.
+1870. Tenant of Kelmscott Manor House, on the Upper Thames.
+1871-3. Visits to Iceland; work on Icelandic Sagas.
+1876. _Sigurd the Volsung_.
+1878. Tenant of Kelmscott House, Hammersmith.
+1881. Works moved to Merton.
+1883-4. Active member of Social Democratic Federation.
+1884-90. Founder and active member of Socialist League.
+1891. Kelmscott Press founded.
+1892-6. Preparation and printing of Kelmscott _Chaucer_.
+1896. Death at Hammersmith, October 3.
+1896. Burial at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire.
+
+WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+CRAFTSMAN AND SOCIAL REFORMER
+
+
+In general it is difficult to account for the birth of an original man
+at a particular place and time. As Carlyle says: 'Priceless Shakespeare
+was the free gift of nature, given altogether silently, received
+altogether silently.' Of his childhood history has almost nothing to
+relate, and what is true of Shakespeare is true in large measure of
+Burns, of Shelley, of Keats. Even in an age when records are more
+common, we can only discern a little and can explain less of the silent
+influences at work that begin to make the man. There are few things more
+surprising than that, in an age given up chiefly to industrial
+development, two prosperous middle-class homes should have given birth
+to John Ruskin and William Morris, so alien in temper to all that
+traditionally springs from such a soil. In the case of Morris there is
+nothing known of his ancestry to explain his rich and various gifts.
+From a child he seemed to have found some spring within himself which
+drew him instinctively to all that was beautiful in nature, in art, in
+books. His earliest companions were the Waverley Novels, which he began
+at the age of four and finished at seven; his earliest haunt was Epping
+Forest, where he roamed and dreamed through many of the years of his
+youth.
+
+His father, who was in business in the City of London, as partner in a
+bill-broking firm, lived at different times at Walthamstow and at
+Woodford; and the hills of the forest, in some places covered with thick
+growth of hornbeam or of beech, in others affording a wide view over the
+levels of the lower Thames, impressed themselves so strongly on the
+boy's memory and imagination that this scenery often recurred in the
+setting of tales which he wrote in middle life.
+
+There was no need of external aid to develop these tastes; and Morris
+was fortunate in going to a school which did no violence to them by
+forcing him into other less congenial pursuits. Marlborough College, at
+the time when he went there in 1848, had only been open a few years. The
+games were not organized but left to voluntary effort; and during his
+three or four years at school Morris never took part in cricket or
+football. In the latter game, at any rate, he should have proved a
+notable performer on unorthodox lines, impetuous, forcible, and burly
+as he was. But he found no reason to regret the absence of games, or to
+feel that time hung heavy on his hands. The country satisfied his wants,
+the Druidic stones at Avebury, the green water-meadows of the Kennet,
+the deep glades of Savernake Forest. So strong was the spell of nature,
+that he hardly felt the need for companionship; and, as chance had not
+yet thrown him into close relations with any friend of similar tastes,
+he lived much alone.
+
+It was a different matter at Oxford, to which he proceeded in January
+1853. Among those who matriculated at Exeter College that year was a
+freshman from Birmingham named Edward Burne Jones; and within a few days
+Morris had begun a friendship with him which lasted for his whole life
+and was the source of his greatest happiness. For more than forty years
+their names were associated, and so they will remain for generations to
+come in Exeter College Chapel, where may be seen the great tapestry of
+the Nativity designed by one and executed by the other. Burne-Jones had
+not yet found his vocation as a painter; he came to Oxford like Morris
+with the wish to take Holy Orders. He was of Welsh family with a Celtic
+fervour for learning, and a Celtic instinct for what was beautiful, and
+at King Edward's School he had made friends with several men who came up
+to Pembroke College about the same time. Their friendship was extended
+to his new acquaintance from Marlborough. Here Morris found himself in
+the midst of a small circle who shared his enthusiasm for literature and
+art, and among whom he quickly learned to express those ideas which had
+been stirring his heart in his solitary youth. Through the knowledge
+gained by close observation and a retentive memory, through his
+impetuosity and swift decision, Morris soon became a leader among them.
+Carlyle and Ruskin, Keats and Tennyson, were at this time the most
+potent influences among them; and when Morris was not arguing and
+declaiming in the circle at Pembroke, he was sitting alone with
+Burne-Jones at Exeter reading aloud to him for hours together French
+romances and other mediaeval tales. Young men of to-day, with a wealth
+of books on their shelves and of pictures on their walls, with popular
+reproductions bringing daily to their doors things old and new, can
+little realize the thrill of excitement with which these men discovered
+and enjoyed a single new poem of Tennyson or an early drawing by Millais
+or Rossetti. How they were quickened by ever fresh delight in the beauty
+and strangeness of such things, how they responded to the magic of
+romance and dreamed of a day when they should themselves help in the
+creation of such work, how they started a magazine of their own and
+essayed short flights in prose or verse, can best be read in the volumes
+which Lady Burne-Jones[50] has dedicated to the memory of her husband.
+This period is of capital importance in the life of William Morris, and
+the year 1855 especially was fraught with momentous decisions.
+
+[Note 50: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_, by G. B.-J., 2 vols.
+(Macmillan, 1904).]
+
+Like Burne-Jones he had gone up to Oxford intending to take Holy Orders
+in the Church of England; but the last three years had taught him that
+his interest lay elsewhere. The spirit of faith, of reverence, of love
+for his fellow men still attracted him to Christianity; but he could not
+subscribe to a body of doctrine or accept the authority of a single
+Church. His ideal shifted gradually. At one time he hoped to found a
+brotherhood which was to combine art with religion and to train
+craftsmen for the service of the Church; but he was more fitted to work
+in the world than in the cloister, and the social aspect of this
+foundation prevailed over the religious. Nor was it mere self-culture to
+which he aspired. The arts as he understood them were one field, and a
+wide field, for enlarging the powers of men and increasing their
+happiness, for continuing all that was most precious in the heritage of
+the past and passing on the torch to the future; in this field there was
+work for many labourers and all might be serving the common good.
+
+His own favourite study was the thirteenth century, when princes and
+merchants, monks and friars, poets and craftsmen had combined to exalt
+the Church and to beautify Western Europe; and he wished to recreate the
+nineteenth century in its spirit. And so while Burne-Jones discovered
+his true gift in the narrower field of painting, Morris began his
+apprenticeship in the master craft of architecture, and passed from one
+art to another till he had covered nearly the whole field of endeavour
+with ever-growing knowledge of principle and restless activity of hand
+and eye. His father had died in 1847; and when Morris came of age he
+inherited a fortune of about L900 a year and was his own master. Before
+the end of 1855 he imparted to his mother his decision about taking
+Orders. The Rubicon was crossed; but on which road he was to reach his
+goal was not settled for many years. Twice he had to retrace his steps
+from a false start and begin a fresh career. The year 1856 saw him still
+working at Oxford, in the office of Street, the architect. Two more
+years (1857-8) saw him labouring at easel pictures under the influence
+of Rossetti, though he also published his first volume of poetry at this
+time. The year 1859 found him married, and for the time absorbed in the
+making of a home, but still feeling his way towards the choice of a
+profession.
+
+Dante Gabriel Rossetti was in some ways the most original man of his
+generation; certainly he was the only individual whose influence was
+ever capable of dominating Morris and drawing him to a course of action
+which he would not have chosen for himself. Rossetti's tragic collapse
+after his wife's death, and the pictures which he painted in his later
+life, have obscured the true portrait of this virile and attractive
+character. Burne-Jones fell completely under his spell, and he tells us
+how for many years his chief anxiety, over each successive work of art
+that he finished, was 'what Gabriel would have thought of it'. So
+decisive was his judgement, so dominating his personality.
+
+Morris's period of hesitation ended in 1861, when the first firm of
+decorators was started among the friends. Of the old Oxford set it
+included Burne-Jones and Faulkner; new elements were introduced by
+Philip Webb the architect and Madox Brown the painter. The leadership in
+ideas might still perhaps belong to Rossetti; but in execution William
+Morris proved himself at once the captain. The actual work which he
+contributed in the first year was more than equal to that produced by
+his six partners, and future years told the same tale.
+
+In the early part of his married life Morris lived in Kent, at Upton,
+some twelve miles from Charing Cross, in a house built for him by his
+friend Webb. The house was of red brick, simple but unconventional in
+character, built to be the home of one who detested stucco and all other
+shams, and wished things to seem what they were. Its decoration was to
+be the work of its owner and his friends.
+
+Here we see Morris in the strength of early manhood and in all the
+exuberance of his rich vigorous nature, surrounded by friends for whom
+he kept open house, in high contentment with life, eager to respond to
+all the claims upon his energy. Here came artists and poets, in the
+pleasant summer days, jesting, dreaming, discussing, indulging in bouts
+of single-stick or game of bowls in the garden, walking through the
+country-side, quoting poets old and new, and scheming to cover the walls
+and cupboards of the rooms with the legends of mediaeval romance.
+Visitors of the conventional aesthetic type would have many a surprise
+and many a shock. The jests often took the form of practical jokes, of
+which Morris, from his explosive temper, was chosen to be the butt, but
+which in the end he always shared and enjoyed. Rossetti, Burne-Jones,
+and Faulkner would conspire to lay booby traps on the doors for him,
+would insult him with lively caricatures, and with relentless humour
+would send him to 'Coventry' for the duration of a dinner. Or he would
+have a sudden tempestuous outbreak in which chairs would collapse and
+door panels be kicked in and violent expletives would resound through
+the hall. In all, Morris was the central figure, impatient, boisterous,
+with his thick-set figure, unkempt hair, and untidy clothing, but with
+the keenest appreciation and sympathy for any manifestation of beauty in
+literature or in art. But this idyll was short-lived. Ill-health in the
+Burne-Jones family was followed by an illness which befell Morris
+himself; and the demand of the growing business and the need for the
+master to be nearer at hand forced him to leave Upton. The Red House was
+sold in 1865; and first Bloomsbury and later Hammersmith furnished him
+with a home more conveniently placed.
+
+The period of his return to London coincided with the most fruitful
+period of his poetic work. Already at Oxford he had written some pieces
+of verse which had found favour with his friends. He soon found that his
+taste and his talent was for narrative poetry; and in 1856 he made
+acquaintance with his two supreme favourites, Chaucer and Malory. It is
+to them that he owes most in all that he produced in poetry or in prose,
+and notably in the _Earthly Paradise_, which he published between 1868
+and 1870. This consists of a collection of stories drawn chiefly from
+Greek sources, but supposed to be told by a band of wanderers in the
+fourteenth century. Thus the classic legends are seen through a veil of
+mediaeval romance. He had no wish to step back, in the spirit of a
+modern scholar, across the ages of ignorance or mist, and to pick up
+the classic stones clear-cut and cold as the Greeks left them. To him
+the legends had a continuous history up to the Renaissance; as they were
+retold by Romans, Italians, or Provencals, they were as a plant growing
+in our gardens, still putting out fresh shoots, not an embalmed corpse
+such as later scholars have taught us to exhume and to study in the
+chill atmosphere of our libraries and museums. This mediaevalism of his
+was much misunderstood, both in literature and in art; people would talk
+to him as if he were imitating the windows or tapestries of the Middle
+Ages, whereas what he wanted was to recapture the technical secrets
+which the true craftsmen had known and then to use these methods in a
+live spirit to carry on the work to fresh developments in the future.
+
+If the French tales of the fourteenth century were an inspiration to him
+in his earliest poems, a second influence no less potent was that of the
+Icelandic Sagas. He began to study them in 1869, and a little later,
+with the aid of Professor Magnusson, he was translating some of them
+into English. He made two journeys to Iceland, and was deeply moved by
+the wild grandeur of the scenes in which these heroic tales were set.
+For many successive days he rode across grim solitary wastes with more
+enthusiasm than he could give to the wonted pilgrimages to Florence and
+Venice. When he was once under the spell, only the geysers with their
+suggestion of modern text-books and _Mangnall's Questions_[51] could
+bore him; all else was magical and entrancing. This enthusiasm bore
+fruit in _Sigurd the Volsung_, the most powerful of his epic poems,
+written in an old English metre, which Morris, with true feeling for
+craftsmanship, revived and adapted to his theme. His poetry in general,
+less rich than that of Tennyson, less intense than that of Rossetti,
+had certain qualities of its own, and owed its popularity chiefly to his
+gift for telling a story swiftly, naturally and easily, and in such a
+way as to carry his reader along with him.
+
+[Note 51: Letter quoted in _Life of Morris_, by J. W. Mackail, vol.
+i, p. 257 (Longmans, Green & Co., 1911).]
+
+His fame was growing in London, which was ready enough in the nineteenth
+century to make the most of its poets. In Society, if he had allowed it
+to entertain him, he would have been a picturesque figure, though hardly
+such as was expected by admirers of his poetry and his art. To some his
+dress suggested only the prosperous British workman; to one who knew him
+later he seemed like 'the purser of a Dutch brig' in his blue tweed
+sailor-cut suit. This was his Socialist colleague Mr. Hyndman, who
+describes 'his imposing forehead and clear grey eyes with the powerful
+nose and slightly florid cheeks', and tells us how, when he was talking,
+'every hair of his head and his rough shaggy beard appeared to enter
+into the subject as a living part of himself.' Elsewhere he speaks of
+Morris's 'quick, sharp manner, his impulsive gestures, his hearty
+laughter and vehement anger'. At times Morris could be bluff beyond
+measure. Stopford Brooke, who afterwards became one of his friends,
+recounts his first meeting with Morris in 1867. 'He didn't care for
+parsons, and he glared at me when I said something about good manners.
+Leaning over the table with his eyes set and his fist clenched he
+shouted at me, "I am a boor and the son of a boor".' So ready as he was
+to challenge anything which smacked of conventionality or pretension, he
+was not quite a safe poet to lionize or to ask into mixed company.
+
+But it was less in literature than in art that he influenced his
+generation, and we must return to the history of the firm. From small
+beginnings it had established itself in the favourable esteem of the
+few, and, thanks to exhibitions, its fame was spreading. Though as many
+as twelve branches are mentioned in a single copy of its prospectus,
+there was generally one department which for the moment occupied most of
+the creative energy of the chief.
+
+Painted glass is named first on the prospectus, and was one of the
+earlier successes of the firm. As it was employed for churches more
+often than for private houses, it is familiar to many who do not know
+Morris's work in their homes; but it is hardly the most characteristic
+of his activities. For one thing, the material, the 'pot glass', was
+purchased, not made on the premises. Morris's skill lay in selecting the
+best colours available rather than in creating them himself. For
+another, he knew that his own education in figure-drawing was
+incomplete, and he left this to other artists. Most of the figures were
+designed by Burne-Jones, and some of the best-known examples of his
+windows are at St. Philip's, Birmingham, near the artist's birthplace,
+and at St. Margaret's, Rottingdean, where he died.[52] But no cartoon,
+by Burne-Jones or any one else, was executed till Morris had supervised
+the colour scheme; and he often designed backgrounds of foliage or
+landscape.
+
+[Note 52: Other easily accessible examples are in Christ Church
+Cathedral, Oxford, and Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge.]
+
+To those people of limited means who cannot afford tapestries and
+embroidery (which follow painted glass on the firm's list), yet who wish
+to beautify their homes, interest centres in the chintzes and
+wall-papers. These show the distinctive gifts by which Morris most
+widely influenced the Victorian traditions. It is not easy to explain
+why one design stirs our curiosity and quickens our delight, while
+another has the opposite effect. Critics can prate about natural and
+conventional art without helping us to understand; but a passage from
+Mr. Clutton-Brock seems worth quoting as simply and clearly phrased.[53]
+'Morris would start', he says, 'with a pattern in his mind and from the
+first saw everything as a factor in that pattern. But in these early
+wall-papers he showed a power of pattern-making that has never been
+equalled in modern times. For though everything is subject to the
+pattern, yet the pattern itself expresses a keen delight in the objects
+of which it is composed. So they are like the poems in which the words
+keep a precise and homely sense and yet in their combination make a
+music expressive of their sense.' Beginning with the design of the
+rose-trellis in 1862, Morris laid under contribution many of the most
+familiar flowers and trees. The daisy, the honeysuckle, the willow
+branch, are but a few of the best known: each bears the stamp of his
+inventive fancy and his cunning hand: each flower claims recognition for
+itself, and reveals new charms in its appointed setting. Of these papers
+we hear that Morris himself designed between seventy and eighty, and
+when we add chintzes, tapestry, and other articles we may well be
+astonished at the fertility of his brain.
+
+[Note 53: _William Morris_, by A. Clutton-Brock (Williams and
+Norgate, 1914).]
+
+Even so, much must have depended on his workmen as the firm's operations
+extended.
+
+Mr. Mackail tells us of the faith which Morris had in the artistic
+powers of the average Englishman, if rightly trained. He was ready to
+take and train the boy whom he found nearest to hand, and he often
+achieved surprising results. His own belief was that a good tradition
+once established in the workshops, by which the workman was allowed to
+develop his intelligence, would of itself produce good work: others
+believed that the successes would have been impossible without the
+unique gifts of the master, one of which was that he could intuitively
+select the right man for each job.
+
+The material as well as the workers needed this selective power. The
+factories of the day had accustomed the public to second-rate material
+and second-rate colour, and Morris was determined to set a higher
+standard. In 1875 he was absorbed in the production of vegetable dyes,
+which he insisted on having pure and rich in tone. Though madder and
+weld might supply the reds and yellows which he needed, blue was more
+troublesome. For a time he accepted prussian blue, but he knew that
+indigo was the right material, and to indigo he gave days of
+concentrated work, preparing and watching the vats, dipping the wool
+with his own hands (which often bore the stain of work for longer than
+he wished), superintending the minutest detail and refusing to be
+content with anything short of the best. But these two qualities of
+industry and of aiming at a high standard would not have carried him so
+far if he had not added exceptional gifts of nature. With him hand and
+eye worked together as in few craftsmen of any age; and thus he could
+carry his experiments to a successful end, choosing his material, mixing
+his colours, and timing his work with exact felicity. And when he had
+found the right way he had the rare skill to communicate his knowledge
+to others and thus to train them for the work.
+
+Queen Square, Bloomsbury, was the first scene of his labours; but as the
+firm prospered and the demands for their work grew, Morris found the
+premises too small. At one time he had hopes of finding a suitable spot
+near the old cloth-working towns at the foot of the Cotswolds, where
+pure air and clear water were to be found; but the conditions of trade
+made it necessary for him to be nearer to London. In 1881 he bought an
+old silk-weaving mill at Merton near Wimbledon, on the banks of the
+Wandle, and this is still the centre of the work.
+
+To study special industries, or to execute a special commission, he was
+often obliged to make long journeys to the north of England or
+elsewhere; but the routine of his life consisted in daily travelling
+between his house at Hammersmith and the mills at Merton, which was
+more tiresome than it is to-day owing to the absence of direct connexion
+between these districts. But his energy overbore these obstacles; and,
+except when illness prevented him, he remained punctual in his
+attendance to business and in close touch with all his workers. Towards
+them Morris was habitually generous. The weaker men were kept on and
+paid by time, long after they had ceased to produce remunerative work,
+while the more capable were in course of time admitted as profit-sharers
+into the business. Every man who worked under him had to be prepared for
+occasional outbursts of impatient temper, when Morris spoke, we are
+told, rather as a good workman scornful of bad work, than as an employer
+finding fault with his men; but in the long run all were sure to receive
+fair and friendly treatment.
+
+Such was William Morris at his Merton works, a master craftsman worthy
+of the best traditions of the Middle Ages, fit to hold his place with
+the masons of Chartres, the weavers of Bruges, and the wood-carvers of
+Nuremberg. As a manager of a modern industrial firm competing with
+others for profit he was less successful. The purchasing of the best
+material, the succession of costly experiments, the 'scrapping' of all
+imperfect work, meant a heavy drain on the capital. Also the society had
+been hurriedly formed without proper safeguards for fairly recompensing
+the various members according to their work; and when in 1875 it was
+found necessary to reconstitute it, that Morris might legally hold the
+position which he had from the outset won by his exertions, this could
+not be effected without loss, nor without a certain friction between the
+partners. So, however prosperous the business might seem to be through
+its monopoly of certain wares, it was difficult even for a skilful
+financier to make on each year a profit which was in any way
+proportionate to the fame of the work produced. But in 1865 Morris was
+fortunate in finding a friend ready to undertake the keeping of the
+books, who sympathized with his aims and whose gifts supplemented his
+own; and, for the rest, he had read and digested the work of Ruskin, and
+had learnt from him that the function of the true merchant was to
+produce goods of the best quality, and only secondarily to produce a
+profitable balance-sheet.
+
+How it was that from being the head of an industrial business Morris
+came to be an ardent advocate of Socialism is the central problem of his
+life. The root of the matter lay in his love of art and of the Middle
+Ages. He had studied the centuries productive of the best art known to
+him, and he believed that he understood the conditions under which it
+was produced. The one essential was that the workers found pleasure in
+their work. They were not benumbed by that Division of Labour which set
+the artisan laboriously repeating the same mechanical task; they worked
+at the bidding of no master jealously measuring time, material, and
+price against his competitors; they passed on from one generation to
+another the tradition of work well done for its own sake. He knew there
+was another side to the picture, and that in many ways the freedom of
+the mediaeval craftsman had been curtailed. He did not ask history to
+run backwards, but he felt that the nineteenth century was advancing on
+the wrong line of progress. To him there seemed to be three types of
+social framework. The feudal or Tory type was past and obsolete; for the
+richer classes of to-day had neither the power nor the will to renew it.
+The Whig or Manchester ideal held the field, the rich employer regarding
+his workmen as so many hands capable of producing so much work and so
+much profit, and believing that free bargaining between free men must
+yield the best economic results for all classes, and that beyond
+economic and political liberty the State had no more to give, and a man
+must be left to himself. Against this doctrine emphatic protests had
+been uttered in widely differing forms by Carlyle and Disraeli, by
+Ruskin and Dickens; but it was slow to die.
+
+The third ideal was that of the Socialist; and to Morris this meant that
+the State should appropriate the means of production and should so
+arrange that every worker was assured of the means of livelihood and of
+sufficient leisure to enjoy the fruits of what he had made. He who could
+live so simply himself thought more of the unjust distribution of
+happiness than of wealth, as may be seen in his _News from Nowhere_,
+where he gives a Utopian picture of England as it was to be after the
+establishment of Socialism. Here rather than in polemical speeches or
+pamphlets can we find the true reflection of his attitude and the way in
+which he thought about reform.
+
+It was not easy for him to embark on such a crusade. In his early
+manhood, except for his volunteering in the war scare of 1859, he had
+taken no part in public life. The first cause which led to his appearing
+at meetings was wrath at the ill-considered restoration of old
+buildings. In 1877, when a society was formed for their protection,
+Morris was one of the leaders, and took his stand by Ruskin, who had
+already stated the principles to be observed. They believed that the
+presentation of nineteenth-century masonry in the guise of mediaeval
+work was a fraud on the public, that it obscured the true lessons of the
+past, and that, under the pretence of reviving the original design, it
+marred the development which had naturally gone forward through the
+centuries. It was from his respect for work and the workman that Morris
+denounced this pedantry, from his love of stones rightly hewn and laid,
+of carving which the artist had executed unconsciously in the spirit of
+his time, and which was now being replaced by lifeless imitation to the
+order of a bookish antiquary. Against this he was ready to protest at
+all times, and references to meetings of 'Antiscrape', as he calls the
+society, are frequent in his letters. He also was rigid in declining all
+orders to the firm where his own decorations might seem to disturb the
+relics of the past.
+
+His next step was still more difficult. The plunge of a famous poet and
+artist into agitation, of a capitalist and employer into Socialism,
+provoked much wonder and many indignant protests. His severer critics
+seized on any pamphlet of his in which they could detect logical
+fallacies and scornfully asked whether this was fit work for the author
+of the _Earthly Paradise_. Many liberal-minded people indeed regretted
+the diversion of his activities, but the question whether he was wasting
+them is one that needs consideration; and to judge him fairly we must
+look at the problem from his side and postulate that Socialism (whether
+he interpreted its theories aright or not) did pursue practical ideals.
+If Aeschylus was more proud of fighting at Marathon than of writing
+tragedies--if Socrates claimed respect as much for his firmness as a
+juryman as for his philosophic method--surely Morris might believe that
+his duty to his countrymen called him to leave his study and his
+workshop to take an active part in public affairs. He might be more
+prone to error than those who had trained themselves to political life,
+but he faced the problems honestly and sacrificed his comfort for the
+common good.
+
+Criticism took a still more personal turn in the hands of those who
+pointed out that Morris himself occupied the position of a capitalist
+employer, and who asked him to live up to his creed by divesting himself
+of his property and taking his place in the ranks of the proletariat.
+This argument is dealt with by Mr. Mackail,[54] who describes the steps
+which Morris took to admit his foremen to sharing the profits of the
+business, and defends him against the charge of inconsistency. Morris
+may not have thought out the question in all its aspects, but much of
+the criticism passed upon him was even more illogical and depended on
+far too narrow and illiterate a use of the word Socialism. He knew as
+well as his critics that no new millennium could be introduced by merely
+taking the wealth of the rich and dividing it into equal portions among
+the poor.
+
+[Note 54: _Life of Morris_, by J. W. Mackail, vol. ii, pp. 133-9.]
+
+However reluctant Morris might be to leave his own work for public
+agitation, he plunged into the Socialist campaign with characteristic
+energy. For two or three years he was constantly devoting his Sundays to
+open-air speech-making, his evenings to thinly-attended meetings in
+stuffy rooms in all the poorer parts of London; and, at the call of
+comrades, he often travelled into the provinces, and even as far as
+Scotland, to lend a hand. And he spent time and money prodigally in
+supporting journals which were to spread the special doctrines of his
+form of Socialism. Nor was it only the indifference and the hostility of
+those outside which he had to meet; quarrels within the party were
+frequent and bitter, though Morris himself, despite his impetuous
+temper, showed a wonderful spirit of brotherliness and conciliation. For
+two years his work lay with the Socialist Democratic Federation, till
+differences of opinion with Mr. Hyndman drove him to resign; in 1885 he
+founded the Socialist League, and for this he toiled, writing, speaking,
+and attending committees, till 1889, when the control was captured by a
+knot of anarchists, in spite of all his efforts. After this he ceased to
+be a 'militant'; but in no way did he abandon his principles or despair
+of the ultimate triumph of the cause. The result of his efforts must
+remain unknown. If the numbers of his audiences were often
+insignificant, and the visible outcome discouraging to a degree, yet in
+estimating the value of personal example no outward test can satisfy us.
+He gave of his best with the same thoroughness as in all his crafts, and
+no man can do more. But, looking at the matter from a regard to his
+special gifts and to his personal happiness, we may be glad that his
+active connexion with Socialism ceased in 1889, and that he was granted
+seven years of peace before the end.
+
+These were the years that saw the birth and growth of the 'Kelmscott'
+printing press, so called after his country house. Of illuminated
+manuscripts[55] he had always been fond, but it was only in 1888 that
+his attention was turned to details of typography. The mere study of old
+and new founts did not satisfy him for long; the creative impulse
+demanded that he should design types of his own and produce his own
+books. As in the other arts, his lifelong friend Burne-Jones was called
+in to supply figure drawings for the illustrated books which Morris was
+himself to adorn with decorative borders and initials. Of his many
+schemes, not all came to fruition; but after four years of planning, and
+a year and a half given to the actual process of printing, his
+masterpiece, the Kelmscott edition of Chaucer, was completed, and a copy
+was in his hands a few months before his death.
+
+[Note 55: Mr. Hyndman (_Story of an Adventurous Life_, p. 355)
+describes a visit to the Bodleian Library at Oxford with Morris, and how
+'quickly, carefully, and surely' he dated the illuminated manuscripts.]
+
+The last seven years of his life were spent partly at Hammersmith and
+partly at Kelmscott, the old manor house, lying on the banks of the
+Upper Thames, which he had tenanted since 1878. He had never been a
+great traveller, dearly though he loved the north of France with its
+Gothic cathedrals and 'the river bottoms with the endless poplar forests
+and the green green meadows'. His tastes were very individual. Iceland
+made stronger appeals to him than Greece or Rome; and even at Florence
+and Venice he was longing to return to England and its homely familiar
+scenes. Scotland with its bare hills, 'raw-boned' as he called it, never
+gave him much pleasure; for he liked to see the earth clothed by nature
+and by the hand of man. By the Upper Thames, at the foot of the
+Cotswolds, the buildings of the past were still generally untouched; and
+beyond the orchards and gardens, with their old-world look, lay
+stretches of meadows, diversified by woods and low hills, haunted with
+the song of birds; and he could believe himself still to be in the
+England of Chaucer and Shakespeare. There he would always welcome the
+friends whom he loved and who loved him; but to the world at large he
+was a recluse. His abrupt manner, his Johnsonian utterances, would have
+made him a disconcerting element in Victorian tea-parties. When provoked
+by foolish utterances, he was, no less than Johnson, downright in
+contradiction. There was nothing that he disliked so much as being
+lionized; and there was much to annoy him when he stepped outside his
+own home and circle. His last public speech was made on the abuses of
+public advertisement; and in the last year of his life we hear him
+growling in Ruskinian fashion that he was ever 'born with a sense of
+romance and beauty in this accursed age'.
+
+His life had been a strenuous and exhausting one, but he enjoyed it to
+the last. As he said to Hyndman ten days before the end, 'It has been a
+jolly good world to me when all is said, and I don't wish to leave it
+yet awhile'. At least his latter years had been years of peace. He had
+been freed from the stress of conflict; he had found again the joys of
+youth, and could recapture the old music.
+
+    The days have slain the days, and the seasons have gone by
+    And brought me the summer again; and here on the grass I lie
+    As erst I lay and was glad, ere I meddled with right and wrong.
+
+After an illness in 1891 he never had quite the same physical vigour,
+though he continued to employ himself fully for some years in a way
+which would tax the energy of many robust men. In 1895 the vital energy
+was failing, and he was content to relax his labours. In August 1896 he
+was suffering from congestion of the lungs, and in October he died
+peacefully at Hammersmith, attended by the loving care of his wife and
+his oldest friends. The funeral at Kelmscott was remarkable for
+simplicity and beauty, the coffin being borne along the country road in
+a farm wagon strewn with leaves; and he lies in the quiet churchyard
+amid the meadows and orchards which he loved so well.
+
+Among the prophets and poets who took up their parable against the
+worship of material wealth and comfort, he will always have a foremost
+place. The thunder of Carlyle, the fiery eloquence of Ruskin, the
+delicate irony of Matthew Arnold, will find a responsive echo in the
+heart of one reader or another; will expose the false standards of life
+set up in a materialistic age and educate them in the pursuit of what is
+true, what is beautiful, and what is reasonable. But to men who work
+with their hands there must always be something specially inspiring in
+the life and example of one who was a handicraftsman and so much beside.
+And Morris was not content to denounce and to despair. He enjoyed what
+was good in the past and the present, and he preached in a hopeful
+spirit a gospel of yet better things for the future. He was an artist in
+living. Amid all the diversity of his work there was an essential unity
+in his life. The men with whom he worked were the friends whom he
+welcomed in his leisure; the crafts by which he made his wealth were the
+pastimes over which he talked and thought in his home; his dreams for
+the future were framed in the setting of the mediaeval romances which he
+loved from his earliest days. Though he lived often in an atmosphere of
+conflict, and often knew failure, he has left us an example which may
+help to fill the emptiness and to kindle the lukewarmness of many an
+unquiet heart, and may reconcile the discords that mar the lives of too
+many of his countrymen in this age of transition and of doubt.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN RICHARD GREEN
+
+From a drawing by Frederick Sandys]
+
+
+
+
+JOHN RICHARD GREEN
+
+1837-83
+
+1837. Born at Oxford, December 12.
+1845-52. Magdalen College School, Oxford.
+1852-4. With a private tutor.
+1855-9. Jesus College, Oxford.
+1861-3. Curate at Goswell Road, E.C.
+1863-4. Curate at Hoxton.
+1864-9. Mission Curate and Rector of St. Philip's, Stepney.
+1869. Abandons parochial work. Librarian at Lambeth Palace.
+1867-73. Contributor to _Saturday Review_.
+1874. _Short History of the English People_ published.
+1877. Marries Miss Alice Stopford.
+1877-80. Four volumes of larger _History of the English People_ published.
+1880-1. Winter in Egypt.
+1882. January, _Making of England_ published.
+1883. January, _Conquest of England_ finished (published posthumously).
+      Last illness. Death, March 7.
+
+JOHN RICHARD GREEN
+
+HISTORIAN
+
+
+The eighteenth century did some things with a splendour and a
+completeness which is the despair of later, more restlessly striving
+generations. Barren though it was of poetry and high imagination, it
+gave birth to our most famous works in political economy, in biography,
+and in history; and it has set up for us classic models of imperishable
+fame. But the wisdom of Adam Smith, the shrewd observation of Boswell,
+the learning of Gibbon, did not readily find their way into the
+market-place. Outside of the libraries and the booksellers' rows in
+London and Edinburgh they were in slight demand. Even when the volumes
+of Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson had been added to the library shelves,
+where Clarendon and Burnet reigned before them, too often they only
+passed to a state of dignified retirement and slumber. No hand disturbed
+them save that of the conscientious housemaid who dusted them in due
+season. They were part of the furnishings indispensable to the elegance
+of a 'gentleman's seat'; and in many cases the guests, unless a Gibbon
+were among them, remained ignorant whether the labels on their backs
+told a truthful tale, or whether they disguised an ingenious box or
+backgammon board, or formed a mere covering to the wall.
+
+The fault was with the public more than with the authors. Those who
+ventured on the quest would find noble eloquence in Clarendon, lively
+narrative in Burnet, critical analysis in Hume; but the indolence of the
+Universities and the ignorance of the general public unfitted them for
+the effort required to value a knowledge of history or to take steps to
+acquire it. It is true that the majestic style of Clarendon was puzzling
+to a generation accustomed to prose of the fashion inaugurated by Dryden
+and Addison; and that Hume and other historians, with all their
+precision and clearness, were wanting in fervour and imagination. But
+the record of English history was so glorious, so full of interest for
+the patriot and for the politician, that it should have spoken for
+itself, and the apathy of the educated classes was not creditable to
+them. Even so Ezekiel found the Israelites of his day, forgetful of
+their past history and its lessons, sunk in torpor and indifference. He
+looked upon the wreckage of his nation, settled in the Babylonian plain;
+in his fervent imagination he saw but a valley of dry bones, and called
+aloud to the four winds that breath should come into them and they
+should live.
+
+In our islands the prophets who wielded the most potent spell came from
+beyond the Border. Walter Scott exercised the wider influence, Carlyle
+kindled the intenser flame. As artists they followed very different
+methods. Scott, like a painter, wielding a vigorous brush full charged
+with human sympathies, set before us a broad canvas in lively colours
+filled with a warm diffused light. Carlyle worked more in the manner of
+an etcher, the mordant acid eating deep into the plate. From the depth
+of his shadows would stand out single figures or groups, in striking
+contrast, riveting the attention and impressing themselves on the
+memory. Scott drew thousands of readers to sympathize with the men and
+women of an earlier day, and to feel the romance that attaches to lost
+causes in Church and State. Carlyle set scores of students striving to
+recreate the great men of the past and by their standards to reject the
+shibboleths of the present. However different were the methods of the
+enchanters, the dry bones had come to life. Mediaeval abbot and
+crusader, cavalier and covenanter, Elizabeth and Cromwell, spoke once
+more with a living voice to ears which were opened to hear.
+
+Nor did the English Universities fail to send forth men who could meet
+the demands of a generation which was waking up to a healthier political
+life. The individual who achieved most in popularizing English history
+was Macaulay, who began to write his famous Essays in 1825, the year
+after he won his fellowship at Trinity, though the world had to wait
+another twenty-five years for his History of the English Revolution.
+Since then Cambridge historians like Acton, or Maitland, have equalled
+or excelled him in learning, though none has won such brilliant success.
+But it was the Oxford School which did most, in the middle of the
+nineteenth century, to clear up the dark places of our national record
+and to present a complete picture of the life of the English people.
+Freeman delved long among the chronicles of Normans and Saxons; Stubbs
+no less laboriously excavated the charters of the Plantagenets; Froude
+hewed his path through the State papers of the Tudors; while Gardiner
+patiently unravelled the tangled skein of Stuart misgovernment. John
+Richard Green, one of the youngest of the school, took a wider subject,
+the continuous history of the English people. He was fortunate in
+writing at a time when the public was prepared to find the subject
+interesting, but he himself did wonders in promoting this interest, and
+since then his work has been a lamp to light teachers on the way.
+
+In a twofold way Green may claim to be a child of Oxford. Not only was
+he a member of the University, but he was a native of the town, being
+born in the centre of that ancient city in the year of Queen Victoria's
+accession. His family had been engaged in trade there for two
+generations without making more than a competence; and even before his
+father died in 1852 they were verging on poverty. Of his parents, who
+were kind and affectionate, but not gifted with special talents, there
+is little to be told; the boy was inclined, in after life, to attribute
+any literary taste that he may have inherited to his mother. From his
+earliest days reading was his passion, and he was rarely to be seen
+without a book. Old church architecture and the sound of church bells
+also kindled his childish enthusiasms, and he would hoard his pence to
+purchase the joy of being admitted into a locked-up church. So he was
+fortunate in being sent at the age of eight to Magdalen College School,
+where he had daily access to the old buildings of the College and the
+beautiful walks which had been trodden by the feet of Addison a century
+and a half before. An amusing contrast could be drawn between the
+decorous scholar of the seventeenth century, handsome, grave of mien,
+calmly pacing the gravel walk, while he tasted the delights of classic
+literature, and little 'Johnny Green', a mere shrimp of a boy with
+bright eyes and restless ways, darting here and there, eagerly searching
+for anything new or exciting which he might find, whether in the bushes
+or in the pages of some romance which he was carrying.
+
+But, for all his lively curiosity, Green seems to have got little out of
+his lessons at school. The classic languages formed the staple of his
+education, and he never had that power of verbal memory which could
+enable him to retain the rules of the Greek grammar or to handle the
+Latin language with the accuracy of a scholar. He soon gave up trying to
+do so. Instead of aspiring to the mastery of accidence and syntax, he
+aimed rather at securing immunity from the rod. At Magdalen School it
+was still actively in use; but there were certain rules about the number
+of offences which must be committed in a given time to call for its
+application. Green was clever enough to notice this, and to shape his
+course accordingly; and thus his lessons became, from a sporting point
+of view, an unqualified success.
+
+But his real progress in learning was due to his use of the old library
+in his leisure hours. Here he made acquaintance with Marco Polo and
+other books of travel; here he read works on history of various kinds,
+and became prematurely learned in the heresies of the early Church. The
+views which he developed, and perhaps stated too crudely, did not win
+approval. He was snubbed by examiners for his interest in heresiarchs,
+and gravely reproved by Canon Mozley[56] for justifying the execution of
+Charles I. The latter subject had been set for a prize essay; and the
+Canon was fair-minded enough to give the award to the boy whose views he
+disliked, but whose merit he recognized. Partial and imperfect though
+this education was, the years spent under the shadow of Magdalen must
+have had a deep influence on Green; but he tells us little of his
+impressions, and was only half conscious of them at the time. The
+incident which perhaps struck him most was his receiving a prize from
+the hands of the aged Dr. Routh, President of the College, who had seen
+Dr. Johnson in his youth, and lived to be a centenarian and the pride of
+Oxford in early Victorian days.
+
+[Note 56: Rev. J. B. Mozley, 1813-78. Canon of Worcester and Regius
+Professor of Divinity at Oxford: a Tractarian; author of essays on
+Strafford, Laud, &c.]
+
+Green's school life ended in 1852, the year in which his father died. He
+was already at the top of the school; and to win a scholarship at the
+University was now doubly important for him. This he achieved at Jesus
+College, Oxford, in December 1854, after eighteen months spent with a
+private tutor; and, as he was too young to go into residence at once, he
+continued for another year to read by himself. Though he gave closer
+attention to his classics he did not drop his general reading; and it
+was a landmark in his career when at the age of sixteen he made
+acquaintance with Gibbon.
+
+His life as an undergraduate was not very happy and was even less
+successful than his days at school, though the fault did not lie with
+him. Shy and sensitive as he was, he had a sociable disposition and was
+naturally fitted to make friends. But he had come from a solitary life
+at a tutor's to a college where the men were clannish, most of them
+Welshmen, and few of them disposed to look outside their own circle for
+friends. Had Green been as fortunate as William Morris, his life at
+Oxford might have been different; but there was no Welshman at Jesus of
+the calibre of Burne-Jones; and Green lived in almost complete isolation
+till the arrival of Boyd Dawkins in 1857. The latter, who became in
+after years a well-known professor of anthropology, was Green's first
+real friend, and the letters which he wrote to him show how necessary it
+was for Green to have one with whom he could share his interests and
+exchange views freely. Dawkins had the scientific, Green the literary,
+nature and gifts; but they had plenty of common ground and were always
+ready to explore the records of the past, whether they were to be found
+in barrows, in buildings, or in books. If Dawkins was the first friend,
+the first teacher who influenced him was Arthur Stanley, then Canon of
+Christ Church and Professor of Ecclesiastical History. An accident led
+Green into his lecture-room one day; but he was so much delighted with
+the spirit of Stanley's teaching, and the life which he imparted to
+history, that he became a constant member of the class. And when Stanley
+made overtures of friendship, Green welcomed them warmly.
+
+A new influence had come into his life. Not only was his industry, which
+had been feeble and irregular, stimulated at last to real effort; but
+his attitude to religious questions and to the position of the English
+Church was at this time sensibly modified. He had come up to the
+University a High Churchman; like many others at the time of the Oxford
+Movement, he had been led half-way towards Roman Catholicism, stirred by
+the historical claims and the mystic spell of Rome. But from now
+onwards, under the guidance of Stanley and Maurice, he adopted the views
+of what is called the 'Broad Church Party', which suited his moral
+fervour and the liberal character of his social and political opinions.
+
+Despite, however, the stimulus given to him (perhaps too late) by
+Dawkins and Stanley, Green won no distinctions at the University, and
+few men of his day could have guessed that he would ever win distinction
+elsewhere. He took a dislike to the system of history-teaching then in
+vogue, which consisted in demanding of all candidates for the schools a
+knowledge of selected fragments of certain authors, giving them no
+choice or scope in the handling of wider subjects. He refused to enter
+for a class in the one subject in which he could shine, and managed to
+scrape through his examination by combining a variety of uncongenial
+subjects. This was perverse, and he himself recognized it to be so
+afterwards. All the while there was latent in him the talent, and the
+ambition, which might have enabled him to surpass all his
+contemporaries. His one literary achievement of the time was unknown to
+the men of his college, but it is of singular interest in view of what
+he came to achieve later. He was asked by the editor of the _Oxford
+Chronicle_, an old-established local paper, to write two articles on the
+history of the city of Oxford. To most undergraduates the town seemed a
+mere parasite of the University; to Green it was an elder sister. Many
+years later he complained in one of his letters that the city had been
+stifled by the University, which in its turn had suffered similar
+treatment from the Church. To this task, accordingly, he brought a ready
+enthusiasm and a full mind; and his articles are alive with the essence
+of what, since the days of his childhood, he had observed, learnt, and
+imagined, in the town of his birth. We see the same spirit in a letter
+which he wrote to Dawkins in 1860, telling him how he had given up a day
+to following the Mayor of Oxford when he observed the time-honoured
+custom of beating the bounds of the city. He describes with gusto how he
+trudged along roads, clambered over hedges, and even waded through
+marshes in order to perform the rite with scrupulous thoroughness. But
+it was years before he could find an audience who would appreciate his
+power of handling such a subject, and his University career must, on his
+own evidence, be written down a failure.
+
+When it was over he was confronted with the need for choosing a
+profession. It had strained the resources of his family to give him a
+good education, and now he must fend for himself. To a man of his nature
+and upbringing the choice was not wide. His age and his limited means
+put the Services out of the question; nor was he fitted to embark in
+trade. Medicine would revolt his sensibility, law would chill his
+imagination, and journalism did not yet exist as a profession for men of
+his stamp. In the teaching profession, for which he had such rare gifts,
+he would start handicapped by his low degree. In any case, he had for
+some time cherished the idea of taking Holy Orders. The ministry of the
+Church would give him a congenial field of work and, so he hoped, some
+leisure to continue his favourite studies. Perhaps he had not the same
+strong conviction of a 'call' as many men of his day in the High Church
+or Evangelical parties; but he was, at the time, strongly drawn by the
+example and teaching of Stanley and Maurice, and he soon showed that it
+was not merely for negative reasons or from half-hearted zeal that he
+had made the choice. When urged by Stanley to seek a curacy in West
+London, he deliberately chose the East End of the town because the need
+there was greater and the training in self-sacrifice was sterner; and
+there is no doubt that the popular sympathies, which the reading of
+history had already implanted in him, were nourished and strengthened by
+nine years of work among the poor. The exertion of parish work taxed his
+physical resources, and he was often incapacitated for short periods by
+the lavish way in which he spent himself. Indeed, but for this constant
+drain upon his strength, he might have lived a longer life and left more
+work behind him.
+
+Of the parishes which he served, the last and the most interesting was
+St. Philip's, Stepney, to which he went from Hoxton in 1864. It was a
+parish of 16,000 souls, lying between Whitechapel and Poplar, not far
+from the London Docks. Dreary though the district seems to us
+to-day--and at times Green was fully conscious of this--he could
+re-people it in imagination with the men of the past, and find pleasure
+in the noble views on the river and the crowded shipping that passed so
+near its streets. But above all he found a source of interest in the
+living individuals whom he met in his daily round and who needed his
+help; and though he achieved signal success in the pulpit by his power
+of extempore preaching, he himself cared more for the effect of his
+visiting and other social work. Sermons might make an impression for the
+moment; personal sympathy, shown in the moment when it was needed, might
+change the whole current of a life.
+
+For children his affection was unfailing; and for the humours of older
+people he had a wide tolerance and charity. His letters abound with
+references to this side of his work. He tells us of his 'polished' pork
+butcher and his learned parish clerk, and boasts how he won the regard
+of the clerk's Welsh wife by correctly pronouncing the magic name of
+Machynlleth. He gave a great deal of time to his parishioners, to
+consulting his churchwardens, to starting choirs, to managing classes
+and parish expeditions. He could find time to attend a morning police
+court when one of his boys got into difficulties, or to hold a midnight
+service for the outcasts of the pavement.
+
+When cholera broke out in Stepney in 1866, Green visited the sick and
+dying in rooms that others did not dare to enter, and was not afraid to
+help actively in burying those who had died of the disease. At holiday
+gatherings he was the life and soul of the body, 'shocking two prim
+maiden teachers by starting kiss-in-the-ring', and surprising his most
+vigorous helpers by his energy and decision. On such occasions he
+exhausted himself in the task of leadership, and he was no less generous
+in giving financial help to every parish institution that was in need.
+
+What hours he could snatch from these tasks he would spend in the
+Reading Room of the British Museum; but these were all too few. His
+position, within a few miles of the treasure houses of London, and of
+friends who might have shared his studies, must have been tantalizing
+to a degree. To parish claims also was sacrificed many a chance of a
+precious holiday. We have one letter in which he regretfully abandons
+the project of a tour with Freeman in his beloved Anjou because he finds
+that the only dates open to his companion clash with the festival of the
+patron saint of his church. In another he resists the appeal of Dawkins
+to visit him in Somerset on similar grounds. His friend may become
+abusive, but Green assures him emphatically that it cannot be helped. 'I
+am not a pig,' he writes; 'I am a missionary curate.... I could not come
+to you, because I was hastily summoned to the cure of 5,000
+costermongers and dock labourers.' We are far from the easy standard of
+work too often accepted by 'incumbents' in the opening years of the
+nineteenth century.
+
+Early in his clerical career he had begun to form plans for writing on
+historical subjects, most of which had to be abandoned for one reason or
+another. At one time he was planning with Dawkins a history of Somerset,
+which would have been a forerunner of the County Histories of the
+twentieth century. Dawkins was to do the geology and anthropology; Green
+would contribute the archaeology and history. In many ways they were
+well equipped for the task; but the materials had not been sifted and
+the demands on their time would have been excessive, even if they
+abstained from all other work. Another scheme was for a series of Lives
+of the Archbishops of Canterbury. Green was much attracted by the
+subject. Already he had made a special study of Dunstan and other great
+holders of the See; and he believed that the series would illustrate,
+better than the lives of kings, the growth of certain principles in
+English history. But with other archbishops he found himself out of
+sympathy; and in the end he was not sorry to abandon the idea, when he
+found that Dean Hook was already engaged upon it.
+
+A project still nearer to his heart, which he cherished till near the
+end of his life, was to write a history of our Angevin kings. For this
+he collected a vast quantity of materials, and it was a task for which
+he was peculiarly fitted. It would be difficult to say whether Fulc
+Nerra, the founder of the dynasty, or Black Angers, the home of the
+race, was more vividly present to him. Grim piles of masonry, stark
+force of character, alike compelled his admiration and he could make
+them live again in print. As it proved, his life was too short to
+realize this ambition and he has only left fragments of what he had to
+tell, though we are fortunate in having other books on parts of the
+subject from his wife and from Miss Norgate, which owed their origin to
+his inspiration.
+
+During his time as a London clergyman Green used to pay occasional
+visits to Dawkins in Somerset; and in 1862, when he went to read a paper
+on Dunstan to a society at Taunton, he renewed acquaintance with his old
+schoolfellow, E. A. Freeman, a notable figure in the county as squire,
+politician, and antiquarian, and already becoming known outside it as a
+historian. The following year, as Freeman's guest, he met Professor
+Stubbs; and about this time he also made friends with James Bryce, 'the
+Holy Roman', as he calls him in later letters.[57] The friendship of
+these three men was treasured by Green throughout his life, and it gave
+rise to much interesting correspondence on historical subjects. They
+were the central group of the Oxford School; they reverenced the same
+ideals and were in general sympathy with one another. But this sympathy
+never descended to mere mutual admiration, as with some literary
+coteries. Between Freeman and Green in particular there was kept up a
+running fire of friendly but outspoken criticism, which would have
+strained the tie between men less generous and less devoted to
+historical truth. Freeman was the more arbitrary and dogmatic, Green
+the more sensitive and discriminating. Green bows to Freeman's superior
+knowledge of Norman times, acknowledges him his master, and apologizes
+for hasty criticisms when they give offence; but he boldly rebukes his
+friend for his indifference to the popular movements in Italian cities
+and for his pedantry about Italian names.
+
+[Note 57: The first edition of Bryce's _Holy Roman Empire_ was
+published in 1862.]
+
+And he treads on even more delicate ground when he taxes him with
+indulging too frequently in polemics, urging him to 'come out of the
+arena' and to cease girding at Froude and Kingsley, whose writings
+Freeman loved to abuse. Freeman, on the other hand, grumbles at Green
+for going outside the province of history to write on more frivolous
+subjects, and scolds him for introducing fanciful ideas into his
+narrative of events. The classic instance of this was when Green, after
+describing the capture by the French of the famous Chateau Gaillard in
+Normandy, had the audacity to say, 'from its broken walls we see not
+merely the pleasant vale of Seine, but also the sedgy flats of our own
+Runnymede'. Thereby he meant his readers to learn that John would never
+have granted the Great Charter to the Barons, had he not already
+weakened the royal authority by the loss of Coeur-de-Lion's great
+fortress beyond the sea, and that to a historian the germs of English
+freedom, won beside the Thames, were to be seen in the wreckage of
+Norman power above the Seine. But Freeman was too matter of fact to
+allow such flights of fancy; and a lively correspondence passed between
+the two friends, each maintaining his own view of what might or might
+not be permitted to the votaries of Clio.
+
+But before this episode Green had been introduced by Freeman to John
+Douglas Cook, founder and editor of the _Saturday Review_, and had begun
+to contribute to its columns. Naturally it was on historical subjects
+that his pen was most active; but apart from the serious 'leading
+articles', the _Saturday_ found place for what the staff called
+'Middles', light essays written after the manner of Addison or Steele on
+matters of every-day life. Here Green was often at his best. Freeman
+growled, in his dictatorial fashion, when he found his friend turning
+away from the strait path of historical research to describe the humours
+of his parish, the foibles of district visitors and deaconesses, the
+charms of the school-girl before she expands her wings in the
+drawing-room--above all (and this last was quoted by the author as his
+best literary achievement) the joys of 'Children by the sea'. But any
+one who turns over the pages of the volume called _Stray Studies from
+England and Italy_, where some of these articles are reprinted, will
+probably agree with the verdict of the author on their merits. The
+subjects are drawn from all ages and all countries. Historical scenes
+are peopled with the figures of the past, treated in the magical style
+which Green made his own. Dante is seen against the background of
+mediaeval Florence; Tintoret represents the life of Venice at its
+richest, most glorious time. The old buildings of Lambeth make a noble
+setting for the portraits of archbishops, the gentle Warham, the hapless
+Cranmer, the tyrannical Laud. Many of these studies are given to the
+pleasant border-land between history and geography, and to the
+impressions of travel gathered in England or abroad. In one sketch he
+puts into a single sentence all the features of an old English town
+which his quick eye could note, and from which he could 'work out the
+history of the men who lived and died there. In quiet quaintly-named
+streets, in the town mead and the market-place, in the lord's mill
+beside the stream, in the ruffed and furred brasses of its burghers in
+the church, lies the real life of England and Englishmen, the life of
+their home and their trade, their ceaseless, sober struggle with
+oppression, their steady, unwearied battle for self-government.'
+
+In another he follows the funeral procession of his Angevin hero Henry
+II from the stately buildings of Chinon 'by the broad bright Vienne
+coming down in great gleaming curves, under the grey escarpments of rock
+pierced here and there with the peculiar cellars or cave-dwellings of
+the country', to his last resting-place in the vaults of Fontevraud.
+Standing beside the monuments on their tombs he notes the striking
+contrast of type and character which Henry offers to his son Richard
+Coeur-de-Lion. 'Nothing', he says, 'could be less ideal than the narrow
+brow, the large prosaic eyes, the coarse full cheeks, the sensual dogged
+jaw, that combine somehow into a face far higher than its separate
+details, and which is marked by a certain sense of power and command. No
+countenance could be in stronger contrast with his son's, and yet in
+both there is the same look of repulsive isolation from men. Richard's
+is a face of cultivation and refinement, but there is a strange severity
+in the small delicate mouth and in the compact brow of the lion-hearted,
+which realizes the verdict of his day. To an historical student one
+glance at these faces, as they lie here beneath the vault raised by
+their ancestor, the fifth Count Fulc, tells more than pages of history.'
+Our reviews and magazines may abound to-day in such vivid pen-pictures
+of places and men; but it was Green and others of his day who watered
+the dry roots of archaeology and restored it to life.
+
+But from his earliest days as a student Green had looked beyond the
+figures of kings, ministers, and prelates, who had so long filled the
+stage in the volumes of our historians. However clearly they stood out
+in their greatness and in their faults, they were not, and could not be,
+the nation. And when he came to write on a larger scale, the title which
+he chose for his book showed that he was aiming at new ideals.
+
+The _Short History of the English People_ is the book by which Green's
+fame will stand or fall, and it occupied him for the best years of his
+life. The true heroes of it are the labourer and the artisan, the friar,
+the printer, and the industrial mechanic--'not many mighty, not many
+noble'. The true growth of the English nation is seen broad-based on the
+life of the commonalty, and we can study it better in the rude verse of
+Longland, or the parables of Bunyan, than in the formal records of
+battles and dynastic schemes.
+
+The periods into which the book is divided are chosen on other grounds
+than those of the old handbooks, where the accession of a new king or a
+new dynasty is made a landmark; and a different proportion is observed
+in the space given to events or to prominent men. The Wars of the Roses
+are viewed as less important than the Peasants' Revolt; the scholars of
+the New Learning leave scant space for Lambert Simnels and Perkin
+Warbecks. Henry Pelham, one of the last prime ministers to owe his
+position to the king's favour, receives four lines, while forty are
+given to John Howard, a pioneer in the new path of philanthropy. Besides
+social subjects, literature receives generous measure, but even here no
+rigid system is observed. Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare take a
+prominent place in their epochs; Byron, Wordsworth, and Tennyson are
+ignored. This is not because Green had no interest in them or
+undervalued their influence. Far from it. But, as the history of the
+nation became more complex, he found it impossible, within the limits
+prescribed by a _Short_ History, to do justice to everything. He
+believed that the industrialism, which grew up in the Georgian era,
+exercised a wider influence in changing the character of the people than
+the literature of that period; and so he turned his attention to Watt
+and Brindley, and deliberately omitted the poets and painters of that
+day. With his wide sympathies he must have found this rigorous
+compression the hardest of his tasks, and only in part could he
+compensate it later. He never lived long enough to treat, as he wished
+to do, in the fullness of his knowledge, the later periods of English
+history.
+
+In writing this book Green had many discouragements to contend against,
+apart from his continual ill-health. Even his friends spoke doubtfully
+of its method and style, with the exception of his publisher, George
+Macmillan, and of Stopford Brooke, whose own writings breathe the same
+spirit as Green's, and who did equally good work in spreading a real
+love of history and literature among the classes who were beginning to
+read. It was true that Green's book failed to conform to the usual type
+of manual; it was not orderly in arrangement, it was often allusive in
+style, it seemed to select what it pleased and to leave out what
+students were accustomed to learn. But Green's faith in its power to
+reach the audience to whom he appealed was justified by the enthusiasm
+with which the general public received it. This success was largely due
+to the literary style and artistic handling of the subject. Green claims
+himself that on most literary questions he is French in his point of
+view. 'It seems to me', he says, 'that on all points of literary art we
+have to sit at the feet of French Gamaliels'; and in his best work he
+has more in common with Michelet than with our own classic historians.
+But while Michelet had many large volumes in which to expand his
+treatment of picturesque episodes, Green was painfully limited by space.
+
+What he can give us of clear and lively portraiture in a few lines is
+seen in his presentation of the gallant men who laid the foundation of
+our Empire overseas. By a few lines of narrative, and a happy quotation
+from their own words, Green brings out the heroism of their sacrifice or
+their success, the faith which inspired Humphry Gilbert to meet his
+death at sea, the patience which enabled John Smith to achieve the
+tillage of Virginian soil.
+
+Side by side with these masterly vignettes are full-length portraits of
+great rulers such as Alfred, Elizabeth, and Cromwell, and vivid
+descriptions of religious leaders such as Cranmer, Laud, and Wesley.
+Strong though Green's own views on Church and State were, we do not feel
+that he is deserting the province of the historian to lecture us on
+religion or politics. The book is real narrative written in a fair
+spirit, the author rendering justice to the good points of men like
+Laud, whom he detested, and aiming above all at conveying clearly to his
+readers the picture of what he believed to have happened in the past. As
+a narrative it was not without faults. The reviewers at once seized on
+many small mistakes, into which Green had fallen through the uncertainty
+of his memory for names and words. To these Green cheerfully confessed,
+and was thankful that they proved to be so slight. But when other
+critics accused him of superficiality they were in error. On this point
+we have the verdict of Bishop Stubbs, the most learned and conscientious
+historian of the day. 'All Green's work', he says, 'was real and
+original work. Few people beside those who knew him well could see,
+under the charming ease and vivacity of his style, the deep research and
+sustained industry of the laborious student. But it was so; there was no
+department of our national records that he had not studied, and, I think
+I may say, mastered. Hence, I think, the unity of his dramatic scenes
+and the cogency of his historical arguments.'
+
+Green himself was as severe a critic of the book as any one. Writing in
+1877 to his future wife, he says, 'I see the indelible mark of the
+essayist, the "want of long breath", as the French say, the jerkiness,
+the slurring over of the uninteresting parts, above all, the want of
+grasp of the subject as a whole'. On the advice of some of his best
+friends, confirmed by his own judgement, in 1874 he gave up contributing
+to the _Saturday Review_, in order to free his style from the character
+imparted to it by writing detached weekly articles. The composing of
+these articles had been a pleasure; the writing of English history was
+to be his life-work, and no divided allegiance was conceivable to him.
+But we may indeed be thankful that he resisted the views of other
+friends who wished to drive him into copying German models. This class
+Green called 'Pragmatic Historians';[58] and, while acknowledging their
+solid contributions to history, he maintains his conviction that there
+is another method and another school worthy of imitation, and that he
+must 'hold to what he thinks true and work it out as he can'.
+
+Green was a rapid reader and a rapid writer. In a letter to Freeman,
+written when he was wintering in Florence in 1872, he admits covering
+the period from the Peasant Revolt to the end of the New Learning
+(1381-1520) in ten days. But he was writing from notes which represented
+years of previous study. In another letter, written in 1876, he
+confesses a tendency to 'wild hitting', and perhaps he was too rapid at
+times in drawing his inferences. 'With me', he says, 'the impulse to try
+to connect things, to find the "why" of things, is irresistible; and
+even if I overdo my political guesses, you or some German will punch my
+head and put things rightly and intelligibly again.' It is this power of
+connecting events and explaining how one movement leads to another which
+makes the stimulating quality of Green's work; and to a nation like the
+English, too little apt to indulge in general ideas, this quality may be
+of more value than the German erudition which tends to overburden the
+intelligence with too great a load of 'facts'. And, after all the
+labours of Carlyle and Froude, of Stubbs and Freeman, and all the
+delving into records and chronicles, who shall say what _are_ facts, and
+what is inference, legitimate or illegitimate, from them?
+
+[Note 58: Pragmatic: 'treating facts of history with reference to
+their practical lessons.' _Concise Oxford Dictionary._]
+
+Whatever were the shortcomings of the book, which Green in his letters
+to Freeman called by the affectionate names of 'Shorts' and 'Little
+Book', it inaugurated a new method, and won a hearing among readers who
+had hitherto professed no taste for history; and, financially, it proved
+so far a success that Green was relieved from the necessity of
+continuing work that was uncongenial. He had already given up his parish
+in 1869. Ill-health and the advice of his doctor were the deciding
+factors; but there is no doubt that Green was also finding it difficult
+to subscribe to all the doctrines of the Church. He took up the same
+liberal comprehensive attitude to Church questions as he did to
+politics, and opposed any attempt to stifle honest inquiry or to punish
+honest doubt. He was much disturbed by some of the attempts made at this
+time by the more extreme parties in the Church to enforce uniformity.
+Also he felt that the Church was not exercising its proper influence on
+the nation, owing to the prejudice or apathy of the clergy in meeting
+the social movements of the day. If he had found more support, inside
+the diocese, for his social and educational work, the breach might have
+been healed, or at any rate postponed, in the hope of his health
+mending.
+
+Relieved of parish work, he found plentiful occupation in revising his
+old books and in planning new; he showed wonderful zest for travelling
+abroad, and, by choosing carefully the places for his winter sojourn, he
+fought heroically to combat increasing ill-health and to achieve his
+literary ambitions. Thus it was that he made intimate acquaintance with
+San Remo, Mentone, and Capri; and one winter he went as far as Luxor in
+the hope that the Egyptian climate might help him; but in vain. Under
+the guidance of his friend Stopford Brooke he visited for shorter
+periods Venice, Florence, and other Italian towns. He was catholic in
+his sympathies but not over-conscientious in sight-seeing. When Brooke
+left him at Florence, Green was openly glad to relapse into vagrant
+pilgrimage, to put aside his guide-book and to omit the daily visit to
+the Uffizi Gallery. But, on the other hand, he reproached Freeman for
+confining his interests entirely to architecture and emperors while
+ignoring pictures and sculpture, mediaeval guilds, and the relics of old
+civic life. It was at Troyes that Bryce observed him 'darting hither and
+thither through the streets like a dog following a scent'--and to such
+purpose that after a few hours of research he could write a brilliant
+paper sketching the history of the town as illustrated in its
+monuments--but in Italy, as in France, he had a wonderful gift for
+discovering all that was most worth knowing about a town, which other
+men passed by and ignored.
+
+Capri, which he first visited at Christmas 1872, was the most successful
+of his winter haunts. The climate, the beauty of the scenery, the
+simplicity of the life, all suited him admirably. On this occasion he
+stayed four months in the island, and he has sung its praises in one of
+the 'Stray Studies'. Within a small compass there is a wonderful variety
+of scene. Green delights in it all, 'in the boldly scarped cliffs, in
+the dense scrub of myrtle and arbutus, in the blue strips of sea that
+seem to have been cunningly let in among the rocks, in the olive yards
+creeping thriftily up the hill sides, in the remains of Roman sculptures
+and mosaics, in the homesteads of grey stone and low domes and Oriental
+roofs'. And he found it an ideal place for literary work, restful and
+remote, 'where one can live unscourged by Kingsley's "wind of God".'
+'The island', he writes, 'is a paradise of silence for those to whom
+silence is a delight. One wanders about in the vineyards without a sound
+save the call of the vinedressers: one lies on the cliff and hears, a
+thousand feet below, the dreary wash of the sea. There is hardly the cry
+of a bird to break the spell; even the girls who meet one with a smile
+on the hillside smile quietly and gravely in the Southern fashion as
+they pass by.' No greater contrast could be found to the conditions
+under which he began his books; and it is not surprising that in this
+haven of peace, with no parish business to break in upon his study, he
+worked more rapidly and confidently--when his health allowed.
+
+From such retreats he would return refreshed in body and mind to
+continue studying and writing in London and to sketch out new plans for
+the future. One that bore rich fruit was that of a series of Primers,
+dealing shortly with great subjects and commending them to the general
+reader by attractive literary style. They were produced by Macmillan,
+Green acting as editor; and notable volumes were contributed by
+Gladstone on Homer, by Creighton on Rome, and by Stopford Brooke on
+English Literature. Here, again, Green was a pioneer in a path where he
+has had many followers since; and he would have been the first to edit
+an English Historical Review if more support had been forthcoming from
+the public. But for financial reasons he was obliged to abandon the
+scheme, and it did not see the light of day till Creighton launched it
+in 1886.
+
+In 1877 he married and found in his wife just the helper that he needed.
+She too had the historical imagination, the love of research, and the
+power of writing. Husband and wife produced in co-operation a small
+geography of the British Isles, well planned, clear, and pleasant to
+read. But, apart from this, she was content, during the too brief period
+of their married life, to subordinate her activities to helping her
+husband, and her aid was invaluable at the time when he was writing his
+later books. There is no doubt that his marriage prolonged his life. The
+care which his wife took of him, whether in their home in foggy London,
+or in primitive lodgings in beautiful Capri, helped him over his worst
+days; and the new value which he now set on life and its happiness gave
+him redoubled force of will. There were others who helped him in these
+days of perpetual struggle with ill-health. His doctors, Sir Andrew
+Clark and Sir Lauder Brunton, rendered him the devotion of personal
+friends. The historians gathered round him in Kensington Square, the
+home of his later years, and cheered him with good talk. Those who were
+lucky enough to be admitted might hear him at his best, discussing
+historical questions in a circle which included Sir Henry Maine and
+Bishop Stubbs, as well as Lecky, Freeman, and Bryce. He had many other
+interests. Such a man could not be indifferent to contemporary politics.
+His heroes--and he was an ardent worshipper of heroes--were Gladstone
+and Garibaldi, and, like many Liberals of the day, he was violent in his
+opposition to Beaconsfield's policy in Eastern Europe. Hatred of
+Napoleonic tyranny killed for a while his sympathy with France, and in
+1870 he sympathized with the German cause--at least till the rape of the
+two provinces and the sorrows of disillusioned France revived his old
+feeling for the French nation. Over everything he felt keenly and
+expressed himself warmly. As Tennyson said to him at the close of a
+visit to Aldworth, 'You're a jolly, vivid man; you're as vivid as
+lightning'.
+
+Particularly dear to him was the close sympathy of Stopford Brooke and
+that of Humphry Ward, to whose father he had been curate in 1860 and who
+had himself for years learnt to cherish the friendship of Green and to
+seek his counsel. Mrs. Ward has told us how she (then Miss Arnold)
+brought her earliest literary efforts to Green, how kindly was his
+encouragement but how formidable was the standard of excellence which he
+set up. She has also pictured for us 'the thin wasted form seated in the
+corner of the sofa... the eloquent lips... the life flashing from his
+eyes beneath the very shadow of death'. His latter years, lived
+perpetually under this grim shadow, were yet full of cheerfulness and
+of hope. However the body might fail, the active brain was planning and
+the high courage was bracing him to further effort. Between 1877 and
+1880 he published in four volumes a _History of the English People_,
+which follows the same plan and covers much the same ground as the
+_Short History_. He was able to revise his views on points where recent
+study threw fresh light and to include subjects which had been crowded
+out for want of space. But the book failed to attract readers to the
+same extent as the _Short History_. The freshness and buoyancy of the
+earlier sketch could not be recaptured after so long an interval. In the
+last year of his life he began again on the early history of England,
+working at a pace which would have been astonishing even in a man of
+robust health, and he completed in the short period of eleven months the
+brilliant volume called _The Making of England_. He had thought out the
+subject during many a day and night of pain and had the plan clear in
+his head; but he was indefatigable in revising his work, and would make
+as many as eight or ten drafts of a chapter before it satisfied his
+judgement. His last autumn and winter were occupied with the succeeding
+volume, _The Conquest of England_, and he left it sufficiently complete
+for his wife to edit and publish a few months after his death.
+
+The end came at Mentone early in 1883. Two years of life had been won,
+as his doctor said, by sheer force of will; but the frail body could no
+longer obey the soul, and nature could bear no more.
+
+If in the twentieth century history is losing its hold on the thought
+and feeling of the rising generation, Green is the last man whom we can
+blame. He gave all his faculties unsparingly to his task--patience,
+enthusiasm, single-hearted love of truth; and he encouraged others to do
+the same. No man was more free from the pontifical airs of those
+historians who proclaimed history as an academic science to be confined
+within the chilly walls of libraries and colleges. We may apply to his
+work what Mr. G. M. Trevelyan has said of the English historians from
+Clarendon down to recent times; it was 'the means of spreading far and
+wide, throughout all the reading classes, a love and knowledge of
+history, an elevated and critical patriotism, and certain qualities of
+mind and heart'.[59] Against the danger which he mentions in his next
+sentence, that we are now being drilled into submission to German
+models, Mr. Trevelyan is himself one of our surest protectors.
+
+[Note 59: _Clio and other Essays_, by G. M. Trevelyan, p. 4
+(Longmans, Green & Co., 1913).]
+
+
+
+
+CECIL RHODES
+
+1853-1902
+
+1853. Born at Bishop's Stortford, July 5.
+1870. Goes out to Natal.
+1871. Moves to Kimberley.
+1873-81. Intermittent visits to Oxford.
+1880. First De Beers Company started.
+1880. Member for Barkly West.
+1883. Commissioner in Bechuanaland.
+1885. Warren expedition: Bechuanaland annexed by British Government.
+1887. Acute rivalry between Rhodes and Barnato.
+1888. Barnato gives way: De Beers Consolidated founded.
+1888. Lobengula grants concession for mining.
+1889. British South Africa Chartered Company formed.
+1890. Prime Minister of Cape Colony.
+1890. Occupation of Mashonaland.
+1893. Second Rhodes ministry.
+1893. War with Lobengula. Matabeleland occupied.
+1895. 'Drifts' question between Cape and Transvaal Government.
+1895. Jameson Raid, December 28.
+1896. January, Rhodes's resignation. Visit to England.
+1896. Rebellion in Rhodesia.
+1897. Inquiry into the Raid by Committee of the House of Commons.
+1899. D.C.L., Oxford.
+1899. Outbreak of Great Boer War.
+1902. Dies at Muizenberg, March 26.
+
+CECIL RHODES
+
+COLONIST
+
+
+The Rhodes family can be traced back to sturdy English yeoman stock. In
+the eighteenth century they had held land in North London. Cecil's
+father was vicar of Bishop's Stortford, a quiet country town in
+Hertfordshire on the Essex border; he was a man of mark, wealthy,
+liberal, and unconventional, with the rare gift of preaching ten-minute
+sermons which were well worth hearing. Of his eldest sons, Herbert went
+to Winchester, Frank to Eton; Cecil, the fifth son, born on July 5,
+1853, was kept at home. He had part of his education at the local
+Grammar School, but perhaps the better part at the Vicarage from his
+father himself. The shrewd Vicar soon saw that his fifth son was not
+fitted for the ordinary routine of professional life at home, and at the
+age of seventeen he was sent out to visit his brother Herbert, who had
+emigrated to Natal. Cecil said good-bye to his native land for the first
+time in 1870, and thus early elected to be a citizen of the Greater
+Britain beyond the seas.
+
+[Illustration: CECIL RHODES
+
+From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]
+
+The brothers had certain points of resemblance, being both original and
+adventurous; but they had marked differences. The elder was a wanderer
+pure and simple, a lover of sport and of novelty. He could follow a new
+track with all the ardour of a pioneer; he could not sit down and
+develop the wealth which he had opened up. The management of the Natal
+cotton farm soon fell into the hands of Cecil, now eighteen years old,
+who noted every detail, and studied his crops, his workmen, and his
+markets, while Herbert was absent in quest of game and adventure. It was
+this spirit which led Herbert westward in 1871, among the earliest of
+the immigrants into the diamond fields: before the end of the year Cecil
+followed and soon took over and developed his brother's claim. It was no
+case of Esau and Jacob; the brothers had great affection for one another
+and fitted in together without jealousy. Each lived his own life and
+followed his own bent. As Kimberley was the first field in which Cecil
+showed his abilities, it is worth while to try to picture the scene. It
+remained a centre of interest to him for thirty years, the scene of many
+troubles and of many triumphs.
+
+'The New Rush', as Kimberley was called in 1872, was a chaos of tents
+and rubbish heaps seen through a haze of dust--a heterogeneous
+collection of tents, wagons, native kraals and debris heaps, each set
+down with cheerful irresponsibility and indifference to order. The
+funnel of blue clay so productive of diamonds had been found on a bit of
+the bare Griqualand Veld, marked out by no geographical advantages, with
+no charm of woodland or river scenery. Here in the years to come the
+great pits, familiar in modern photographs, were to grow deeper and
+deeper, as the partitions fell in between the small claims, or as the
+more enterprising miners bought up their neighbours' plots. Here the
+debris heaps were to grow higher and higher, as more hundreds of Kaffirs
+were brought in to dig, or new machinery arrived, as the buckets plied
+more rapidly on the network of ropes overhead. In the early 'seventies
+there were few signs of these marvels to be seen by the outward
+eye--everything was in the rough--but they were no doubt already
+existing in the brain of 'a tall fair boy, blue eyed and with somewhat
+aquiline features, wearing flannels of the school playing-field,
+somewhat shrunken with strenuous rather than effectual washings, that
+still left the colour of the red veld dust'.
+
+Here Cecil Rhodes lived for the greater part of ten years, finding time
+amid his work for dreams: living, in general, aloof from the men with
+whom he did his daily business, but laying here and there the
+foundations of a friendship which was to bear fruit hereafter. Rudd,[60]
+of the Matabeleland concessions, came out in 1873; Beit,[61] the partner
+in diamond fields and gold fields, the co-founder of the Chartered
+Company, in 1875; and in 1878 there came out from Edinburgh one whose
+name was to be linked still more closely with that of Rhodes. Leander
+Starr Jameson, a skilful doctor, a cheerful companion, gifted with a
+great capacity for self-devotion, and with unshakeable firmness of will,
+was now twenty-five years old. Rhodes and he soon drew closely together
+and for years they were living under one roof. While his casual and
+rather overbearing manners repelled many of his acquaintances, Rhodes
+had a genius for friendship with the few; and it was such men as these
+who shared his work, his pastimes, and his thoughts, and reconciled him
+to spending many years in the unattractive surroundings of the mines.
+
+[Note 60: C. D. Rudd (1844-96), educated at Harrow and Cambridge.]
+
+[Note 61: Alfred Beit, born at Hamburg, 1853; died in London, 1906.]
+
+But his life at this time had other phases. Not the least wonderful
+chapter in it was the series of visits which he paid to Oxford between
+1873 and 1881. The atmosphere of a mining camp does not seem likely to
+draw a man towards academic studies and a University life. But Rhodes,
+who had a great power of absorbing himself in work, had also the power
+of projecting himself beyond the interests of the moment. Seven times he
+found opportunity to tear himself away from the busy work of mining and
+to keep terms at Oxford; and they made a lasting impression upon him. It
+was not the love of book-learning, still less the love of games, which
+drew him there. To many he may have seemed to be spending his time
+unprofitably. He indulged in some rowing and polo, he was master of the
+drag-hounds, he worried his neighbours by nocturnal practising of the
+horn. The examinations in the schools, and the more popular athletic
+contests, knew little of him. But his sojourn in Oxford was a tribute
+paid by the higher side of his mind to education and to the value of
+high thinking as compared with material progress; and no one who knew
+him well in later life could doubt that the traditions of Oxford had
+deeply influenced his mind. On these things he was by nature reticent,
+and was often misjudged.
+
+Between the years 1878 and 1888 must be placed the struggle between him
+and his rivals for predominance in Kimberley. It had begun with small
+enterprises, the purchasing of adjoining claims, the undertaking of
+drainage work, the introduction of better machinery. It attracted more
+attention in 1880 with the founding of the first De Beers Company, named
+after a Boer who had owned the land on which the mine lay. It culminated
+in 1887 in the battle with Barnato,[62] his most dangerous competitor,
+when by dexterous purchasing of shares in his rival's company Rhodes
+forced him into a final scheme of amalgamation. In 1888 was founded the
+great corporation of De Beers Consolidated mines. The masterful will of
+Rhodes dictated the terms of the Trust deed, giving very extensive power
+to the Directorate for the using of their funds. He was already laying
+his foundations, though few could then have guessed what imperial work
+was to be done with the money thus obtained. The process of amalgamation
+was not popular in Kimberley. It resulted in closing down many of the
+less profitable claims and in reducing the amount of labour employed.
+But it brought in better machinery and it saved expenses of management.
+Above all, it curtailed the output of diamonds and so kept up the market
+price in Europe and elsewhere. Many people refused to believe that
+Rhodes could have outmanoeuvred a man of exceptional financial ability
+without using dishonourable means. But there is no doubt that it was
+masterful character which won the day, that strength of will which
+decides the issue at the critical moment. Many others have been
+prejudiced against him merely from the fact that he spent so much time
+and energy in the pursuit of 'filthy lucre'. We must remember that
+Rhodes himself said: 'What's the earthly use of having ideas if you
+haven't the money to carry them out?' We must also remember that all
+witnesses of his life agree that the ideas were always foremost, the
+money a mere instrument to realize them. The story was told to Edmund
+Garrett by one of Rhodes's old Kimberley associates 'how one day in
+those scheming years, deep in the sordid details of amalgamation, Rhodes
+("always a bit of a crank") suddenly put his hand over a great piece of
+No Man's Africa on the map and said, "Look here: all that British--that
+is my dream".'[63]
+
+[Note 62: Barney Barnato, born in Houndsditch, 1852; died at sea,
+1897.]
+
+[Note 63: Perhaps the best character sketch of Rhodes is that
+printed as an appendix to Sir E. T. Cook's _Life of Edmund Garrett_
+(Edward Arnold, 1909). Garrett's career as journalist and politician in
+South Africa was terminated by illness in 1899.]
+
+But long before this struggle was over, Rhodes had embarked on new
+courses which were to carry him still farther. His dreams of political
+work began to take shape when Griqualand was created a British province
+in 1880. Two electoral divisions were formed, Kimberley and Barkly West;
+and it was for the latter that Rhodes first took his seat in the Cape
+Parliament in 1880, a seat which he retained till his death. The Prime
+Minister was Sir Gordon Sprigg, a politician with experience but few
+ideas, more skilled in retaining office than in formulating a policy.
+Rhodes was at first reticent about his own projects, and spent his time
+quietly studying commercial questions, examining the problem of the
+native races and making friends among the Boers. If these friendships
+were obscured later by political quarrels, there is no reason to suspect
+their genuineness. His sympathy with the Dutch farmers had begun in
+1872, when he made a long, lonely trek through the Northern Transvaal,
+and it lasted through life. He was interested in farming, he liked
+natural men, and was at home in unconventional surroundings. One of the
+closest observers of his character said that to see the true Rhodes you
+must see him on the veld. So long as the supremacy of the British flag
+was assured, there was nothing that he so ardently desired as friendly
+relations between British and Dutch, a real union of the races, a South
+African nation. It was for this that he worked so long with Jan Hofmeyr,
+leader of the Cape Dutch, and earned so many unfair suspicions from the
+short-sighted politicians of Cape Town.
+
+Hofmeyr was a curious man. He had a great understanding of the Dutch
+character and a great power of influencing men; but this was not done by
+parliamentary eloquence. By one satirist he was called 'the captain who
+never appeared on the bridge'; by another he was nicknamed 'the Mole',
+because his activity could only be conjectured from the tracks which he
+left behind him. A third name current in Cape Town, 'the Blind Man,' was
+an ironical tribute to his exceptional astuteness in politics. His organ
+was 'the Afrikander Bond', a society formed partly for agricultural,
+partly for political purposes, a creature which like a chameleon has
+often changed its colour, sometimes working peacefully beside British
+politicians, at other times openly conducting an anti-British agitation.
+He certainly had no enthusiasm for the British flag, but he probably
+realized the freedom which the Colony enjoyed under it, and was clear of
+all disloyalty to the Crown. The policy dearest to the farmers of the
+Afrikander Bond was the protective system for their agricultural
+produce. If Rhodes would support this, he might induce the Dutch to give
+him a free hand in his plans for expansion towards the North; and this
+was needed, because the problem of the North was becoming urgent, and
+Sprigg and his party were blind to its importance.
+
+A glance at the nineteenth-century map will show that the territories of
+the Dutch Republic, lying on the less barren side of the continent,
+tended to block the extension of Cape Colony and Natal towards the
+north, the more so as the Boers from time to time sent out fresh swarms
+westward and encroached on native territory in Bechuanaland. The Germans
+did not annex Namaqualand till 1885, but already their interest in this
+district was becoming evident to close observers. Rhodes's most
+cherished dream had been the development of the high-lying healthy
+inland regions to the north by the British race under the British flag.
+But in those days, when Whitehall was asleep and officials in Cape Town
+were indifferent, Rhodes saw that his best chance was to convert the
+Dutch in the Colony. He hoped to make them realize that, if they
+supported him, the development of the interior might bring trade through
+Cape Town, which otherwise would go eastward through Portuguese
+channels. The building of railways, the settlement of new lands in which
+Dutch and English would share alike, were practical questions which
+might interest them, and Rhodes was quite genuine in his desire to see
+both races going forward together. 'Equal rights for every civilized man
+south of the Zambezi' was his motto, and to this he steadfastly clung.
+
+To describe all the means by which Rhodes worked towards this end would
+be impossible. He worked hard at Kimberley to furnish the sinews of war;
+he used his personal influence and power of persuasion at Cape Town to
+win support from Hofmeyr and others; and he was ready to go to the
+frontier at any moment when there was work to be done. His first
+commission of this sort had been in Basutoland in 1882, when he helped
+the famous General Gordon to pacify native discontent; but the following
+year saw him at work on another frontier more directly affecting his
+programme. The Boers had again been raiding westwards and had started
+two new republics, called Goshen and Stellaland, on the route from
+Kimberley to the north. Rhodes travelled to the scene of action,
+interviewed Mankoroane, the Bechuana chief, and Van Niekerk, the head of
+the new settlement, and by sheer personal magnetism persuaded them both
+to accept British control. When the Cape Parliament refused the
+responsibility, he referred to the Colonial Office in London, and by the
+help of Sir Hercules Robinson, the High Commissioner, he carried his
+point. When the new Governor, who was appointed by the Colonial Office,
+quarrelled with the Boers, it was Rhodes who made up the quarrel, and
+when in 1885 the Transvaal Dutch interfered and provoked our home
+Government into sending out an overpowering force under Sir Charles
+Warren, it was Rhodes once more who acted as the reconciler, and
+effected a settlement between Dutch and British. When the indignant
+Delarey,[64] provoked by English blundering, said ominously that 'blood
+must flow', Rhodes replied, 'No, give me my breakfast, and then we can
+talk about blood'. He stayed with Delarey a week, came to terms on the
+points at issue, and even became godfather to Delarey's grandchild. He
+was never the man to resort to force when persuasion could be employed,
+and he usually won his end by his own means.
+
+[Note 64: General Jacobus Delarey, one of the most successful
+commanders in the Great Boer War of 1899-1902.]
+
+While his great work in 1883-5 was on the northern frontier he was
+growing to be a familiar figure among politicians at Cape Town. We have
+an impression of him as he appeared on his entrance into politics. 'He
+was tall, broad-shouldered, with face and figure of somewhat loose
+formation. His hair was auburn, carelessly flung over his forehead, his
+eyes of bluish grey, dreamy but kindly. But the mouth--aye, that was the
+unruly member of his face--with deep lines following the curve of the
+moustache, it had a determined, masterful, and sometimes scornful
+expression.... His style of speaking was straight and to the point. He
+was not a hard hitter in debate--rather a persuader, reasoning and
+pleading in a conversational way as one more anxious to convince an
+opponent than to expose his weakness. He used little gesture: what there
+was, was most expressive, his hands held behind him, or thrust out,
+sometimes passed over his brow.'[65] Such success as he had in
+Parliament he owed less to art than to nature, less to oratorical gifts
+than to force of character; but this brought him rapidly to the front.
+As early as 1884 he was in the Ministry, and despite his long absences
+over his northern work he was judged to be the only man who could become
+Prime Minister in the parliamentary crisis of 1890. There was, by that
+year, little question that he was the most influential man in South
+Africa. He had a large holding in the Transvaal goldfields, discovered
+in 1886; he was head of the great De Beers Corporation of Kimberley; and
+he was chairman of the newly-created Chartered Company. To many it
+seemed impossible that one man could combine these great financial
+interests with the position of First Minister of the Colony; but at
+least it was clear that the interests of the companies were subordinated
+to national aims, that the money which he obtained from mines was spent
+on imperial ends, and that his political position was never used for the
+promoting of financial objects.
+
+[Note 65: _Cecil Rhodes: a Monograph and a Reminiscence_, by Sir
+Thomas Fuller (Longmans & Co., 1910)]
+
+But it is time to return to the development of the north, the greatest
+of his schemes and the one dearest to his heart. The year 1885 had
+secured Bechuanaland to the river Molopo as British territory, while a
+large stretch farther north was under a British protectorate. One danger
+had been avoided. The neck of the bottle was not corked up: a way to the
+interior was now open. The next factor to reckon with was the Matabele
+nation and its chief, Lobengula. They were a Bantu tribe, fond of
+fighting and hunting, an offshoot of the Zulus who fought us in 1881.
+They had a very large country surrounding the Matoppo hills, and
+Lobengula ruled the various districts through 'indunas' or chiefs, who
+had 'impis' or armies of fighting men at their disposal. To the
+north-east of them lay the weaker tribe of the Mashona, who paid tribute
+to Lobengula and whose country was a common hunting-ground for the
+Matabele braves. Over the latter, so long as he did not check too much
+their love of fighting, Lobengula exercised a fairly effective control.
+He himself was a remarkable man, strong in body and mind. Sir Lewis
+Michell describes him as he appeared to English visitors: 'A somewhat
+grotesque costume of four yards of blue calico over his shoulders and a
+string of tigers' tails round his waist could not make his imposing
+figure ridiculous. In early days he was an athlete and a fine shot; and
+though, as years went on, his voracious appetite rendered him
+conspicuously obese, he was every inch a ruler.... Visitors were much
+struck by his capacity for government: very little went on in his wide
+dominions of which he was not instantly and accurately informed.' He was
+an arbitrary ruler, but not cruel to Europeans, of whom a few, like the
+famous hunter Selous, visited his capital from time to time. He clearly
+held the keys to the north, and it was with him that Rhodes had now to
+deal.
+
+The first step was the mission sent out by Rhodes and Beit early in
+1888, headed by their old associate Rudd. He and his two fellow-envoys
+stayed some months with Lobengula watching for favourable moments and
+trying to win his favour. They shifted their quarters when the king did
+so, touring from village to village, plied the king and his indunas with
+offers and arguments, and finally in October they obtained his signature
+to a treaty giving full and unqualified rights to the envoys for working
+minerals in his country. In return they covenanted to give him money,
+rifles, ammunition, and an armed steamboat.
+
+The next step was to get the support of the British authorities in
+London for that political extension which was dearer to Rhodes than the
+richest mines and the biggest dividends. In this he was greatly helped
+by his consistent supporter, Sir Hercules Robinson, who held office in
+Africa for many years, studied men and matters at first hand, and had a
+juster estimate of Rhodes and his value to the Empire than the officials
+in Whitehall. The method of proceeding was by chartered company, the old
+Elizabethan method, which still has its value to-day, as it relieves the
+home Government of the expense of developing new countries, yet reserves
+to it the right to control policy and to enter into the harvest. The
+Company was to build railways and telegraphs, encourage colonization and
+spread trade; the Government was to escape from the diplomatic
+difficulties which might arise with neighbours if it were acting under
+its own name.
+
+The third step was to make a way into the country and to start actual
+work. Lobengula's consent was given conditionally: the first expedition
+was to avoid his capital, Bulawayo, and to go by the south-east to
+Mashonaland. The chief knew how difficult it might prove to hold in his
+impis when, instead of a solitary Selous, some hundreds of Europeans
+began to cross their hunting-grounds. And so it proved. Lobengula had to
+pretend later that he had not consented to their passage, and the
+expedition had to slip through the dangerous zone before they could be
+recalled authoritatively. By May 1890 a column of nearly one thousand
+men was ready to start from Khama's country; and in June their equipment
+was approved by a British officer. On September 11, after a march of
+four hundred miles through trackless country (some of it unknown even to
+Selous, their guide), the British flag was hoisted on the site of the
+modern town of Salisbury. It is a chapter of history well worth reading
+in detail, but Rhodes himself could not be there: the heroes of the
+march were Jameson and Selous. The other half of Rhodesia, Matabeleland,
+was not added till a few years later; but British enterprise had now
+found the way and overcome the worst difficulties. 'Occupation Day' is
+still kept as the chief festival of the Colony.
+
+Further extension was inevitable. The Matabele impis would not forgo
+their old habit of raiding amongst the Mashonas. Jameson's complaints
+received only partial satisfaction from Lobengula. He himself did not
+want war, but he failed to control his men, and in September 1893 the
+Chartered Company was driven to fight. They had on the spot about nine
+hundred men and some machine-guns. Against these the Matabele with all
+their bravery could effect little. In two engagements they threw away
+their lives with reckless gallantry, and then they broke and fled.
+Lobengula himself was never heard of again. His rearguard cut up a small
+party of British who were too impetuous in pursuit, but by the end of
+the year the country was at peace. In 1894 Matabeleland was added to the
+territory of the Chartered Company, in 1895 the term 'Rhodesia' came
+into use for postal purposes, and in 1897 it was officially adopted for
+administrative purposes.
+
+The jealousy of the Portuguese, who claimed the 'Hinterland' behind
+their East African colony, though they had never occupied it, caused a
+good deal of ill feeling, and very nearly led to hostilities both in
+Africa and Europe. The Boers formed schemes for raiding the new lands
+before they could be effectively occupied, and had to be headed off. The
+Matabele impis continued for months in a state of excitement; and their
+forays made it far too dangerous for Rhodes or for others to go up there
+for some time. But Rhodes himself said that he had less trouble with
+natives, with Dutch, and with Portuguese, than he had with compatriots
+of his own, who claimed to have received concessions from native chiefs
+and intrigued against him in London. But here his peculiar gifts came
+out, his patience, his persuasive power, his readiness to pour out money
+like water for a worthy end. Some he beat, others he bought; and in all
+cases he maintained his position against his rivals. Robinson, Rudd,
+Jameson, Selous, had all done their parts well, and Rhodes gave them
+full credit and generous praise; but the mind and the will that planned
+and carried out the whole movement, and added a province to the British
+Empire, was unquestionably his own.
+
+Rhodes was Prime Minister of Cape Colony from 1890 to 1895; and during
+this time he was obliged to be more often at Cape Town. It was in 1891
+that he first leased the property lying on the eastern slopes of Table
+Mountain where he built 'Groote Schuur', the famous house which he
+bequeathed to the service of the State. Here he gradually acquired 1,500
+acres of land, laying them out with a sure eye to the beauty of the
+surroundings, and to the pleasure of his fellow-citizens. Here he lived
+from time to time, and received all kinds of men with boundless
+hospitality. No one can fully understand him who does not read the
+varying impressions of the friends and guests who sat with him on the
+'stoep', under the trees in his garden, or high up on the mountain side,
+where he had his favourite nooks. The visitors saw what they had eyes to
+see. One would note his foibles, his blunt manner, his slovenly dress,
+his want of skill at billiards, his fondness for special dishes or
+drinks. Another would be impressed by his library with its teak
+panelling, by the books which he read and the questions which he asked,
+by his love for Gibbon and Plutarch, by his interest in Marcus Aurelius
+and other writers on high themes. Others again tell us of his relations
+to his fellow-men, how recklessly generous he was to young and old, to
+British and Dutch, and how his generosity was abused: how his
+acquaintances preyed upon him; how, for all that, he kept his true
+friendships few in number and he held them sacred. In fact, loyalty to
+friends meant more to Rhodes than loyalty to principles. His temper was
+impatient, especially in the last years of physical pain; he often tried
+to take short cuts to his ends, believing that his ends were worthy and
+knowing that life was short. He made many mistakes, but he retrieved
+them nobly. He was in some ways rough-hewn and unpolished, but he was a
+great man.
+
+It is impossible to put in a short compass the many important questions
+with which he dealt. His policy towards the natives was moderate and
+wise. He wished to educate them and then to trust them; to restrict the
+sale of liquor among them and to open to them the nobler lessons of
+civilization; to give them the vote when they were educated enough to
+use it well, but not before; to apply to them too his motto of 'Equal
+rights for every civilized man south of the Zambezi'. His policy towards
+the Dutch was to establish identity of interest between the two nations
+and so to secure friendly relations with them; to draw them into
+co-operation in agriculture, in railways, in colonization, in export
+trade, in imperial politics. He did his best to win over the Orange Free
+State by a policy of common railways, and even to break down the sullen
+opposition of the Transvaal. But the latter proved impossible. President
+Kruger leant more and more upon Dutch counsellors from Holland; he
+looked more and more to Delagoa Bay and turned his back upon Cape Town:
+and the antagonism became more acute. In 1895 Mr. Chamberlain initiated
+a new era at the Colonial Office. He was actively awake to British
+interests in all parts of the globe; and President Kruger, who had tried
+to check trade with Cape Town by stopping the Cape railway at his
+frontier, and then by closing the 'Drifts' or fords over the Vaal, was
+compelled to give way and to keep to the agreements made with the
+Suzerain State.
+
+A still more serious question was the treatment of the 'Uitlanders' or
+alien European settlers in the Transvaal. Though the Boer rulers took an
+increasingly large share of their earnings, they restricted more and
+more the grant of the franchise. In taxation, in commerce, in education,
+there was no prospect between the Vaal and the Limpopo of 'Equal rights
+for all civilized men' or anything like it. In June 1894 the High
+Commissioner frankly told Kruger that the Uitlanders had 'very real and
+substantial grievances'; in 1895 they were no less substantial, and
+agitation was rife in Johannesburg. On December 28, Jameson at the head
+of an armed column left Pitsani on the borders and rode into the
+Transvaal to support a rising against the Boer Government. The
+Uitlanders were not expecting him; no rising took place, and Jameson's
+small column was surrounded some miles west of Johannesburg,
+outnumbered, and forced to surrender. The Jameson Raid, for which Rhodes
+was generally held responsible, attracted all eyes in Europe as in
+Africa. How President Kruger used his advantage against the Uitlanders,
+among whom Col. Frank Rhodes was a leader, can be read in many books:
+here we need only relate how the event affected the Premier of Cape
+Colony. He resigned office at once and put himself at the disposal of
+the Government. Despite his past record he was judged by the Dutch,
+alike in the Cape and in the Transvaal, to have been the author of the
+Raid, and all chance of his doing further service in reconciling the two
+races was at an end. The beginning of 1895 saw him at the height of his
+ambition. The end of it saw his power shattered beyond repair.
+
+His behaviour in this crisis enables us to know the real man. For a few
+days he kept aloof, unapproachable, overcome by the ruin of his work. He
+made no attempt to conciliate opinion: in moments of bitterness he
+scoffed at the 'unctuous rectitude' of certain politicians who were
+improving the occasion. But he spoke frankly to those who had the right
+to question him. He went to London in February and saw Mr. Chamberlain,
+the Colonial Secretary, and his Directors. He admitted that he was at
+fault. Believing that Kruger would always yield to a show of force, he
+had been responsible for putting troops near the border to exercise
+moral pressure. But neither then nor at any time had he given Jameson
+orders to invade the Transvaal, or to precipitate an armed conflict,
+which he believed to be unnecessary. Such was his consistent statement,
+and he was ready to face, when the time should come, the Parliamentary
+committees appointed by the British and South African Houses to report
+on the Raid. Meanwhile he put all brooding away and looked round for
+some practical work. Fortunately he found it in the most congenial
+sphere. His colony of Rhodesia, to which he had gone straight from
+London, was threatened with disaster from a great native outbreak. The
+causes were various. Rinderpest had spoiled one of the chief native
+industries, and superstition had invented foolish reasons for it; also
+the rumours, which were spreading about the Raid, made the natives
+believe that the British power was shaken. The Mashonas, as well as the
+Matabele, took part in the revolt which began early in April 1896. To
+meet it the colonists mustered their full strength, while General
+Carrington was sent out from home with some regular troops. Several
+engagements in difficult country followed: the enemies' forces were
+quickly broken up, and by the end of July the time for negotiation was
+come.
+
+But the chiefs of the Matabele had retired into their fortresses in the
+Matoppo hills and could not be reached. To send small columns to track
+them down might mean needless loss of life: to keep the forces in the
+field right through the winter was ruinous to the Company's finances.
+Rhodes offered his own services as negotiator, and they were accepted.
+The man who could carry his point with Jewish financiers and Dutch
+politicians might hope to achieve his ends with the simpler native
+chiefs. But it was a sore trial of patience. He moved his own tent two
+miles away from the British troops to the foot of the hills, sent native
+messengers to the chiefs, and waited. During this time he was not idle:
+he put in a lot of riding and of miscellaneous reading: his mind was
+actively employed in planning roads and dams for irrigation, in scheming
+for the future greatness of the country. It was six weeks before a chief
+responded. Gradually they began to drop in and to hold informal meetings
+round the tent, putting questions, replying to Rhodes's jokes, relapsing
+into fits of silence, oblivious as all savages are of the value of time.
+He would spend hours day after day in this apparently futile way;
+accustoming them to his presence, coaxing them into the right humour. At
+last he persuaded them to meet him in a formal 'indaba', which must have
+been a dramatic scene. Alone he stood facing them, boldly reproaching
+them with their bad faith and cruel acts. They stated their grievances:
+some were admitted: satisfaction was promised. In the end peace was
+proclaimed and the delighted natives greeted him uproariously with the
+title of Lamula 'm Kunzi (Separator of the Fighting Bulls). The
+discussions were not over till the end of October, and it was a month
+later ere Rhodes was able to leave the country and face the Committee in
+London--a very different gathering in very different surroundings. His
+work during these two months was perhaps the greatest of his life; and
+that he should have been able to concentrate all his powers upon it so
+soon after the shattering blow of the Raid is a great tribute to his
+essential manliness and patriotism.
+
+The two Committees, sitting in London and Cape Town, agreed to censure,
+though in modified terms, Rhodes's conduct over the Raid; but he still
+retained the respect of the bulk of his countrymen, and on his return
+the citizens of Cape Town gave him an enthusiastic welcome. They and he
+were looking ahead as well as behind: they felt that his services were
+still needed for the establishing of a United South Africa under the
+British flag. But in this respect his work was done. The Cape Dutch were
+more and more influenced by their sentiment for the Transvaal, and
+racial feeling ran high. Rhodes severed himself from all his old Dutch
+colleagues and became more of a party leader. Meanwhile Kruger watched
+the breach, assured himself of Dutch support, made no concessions to the
+Uitlanders, repelled all overtures from Mr. Chamberlain, and steered
+straight for war. Rhodes, despite his knowledge of the Dutch, made the
+mistake of believing up to the last moment that Kruger would give way
+and not fight; but, when the war broke out in 1899, he went up to
+Kimberley to take his share of the work and the danger. The siege lasted
+about four months, and Rhodes, though he failed to work harmoniously
+with the military commandant, rendered many services to the town, thanks
+to his wealth, influence, and knowledge of the place. When the town was
+relieved in February 1900, he went to Rhodesia and spent many months
+there. Though he was urged by his followers to return to politics, Cape
+Town saw little of him; when he was not in the north, he was mostly at
+his seaside cottage at Muizenberg, half-way between the capital and the
+Cape of Good Hope. The heart complaint, from which he had suffered
+intermittently all his life, had rapidly grown worse; his last year was
+one of great suffering, and in March 1902 he breathed his last at
+Muizenberg with Jameson and a few of his dearest friends around him. He
+was buried in the place which he had himself chosen amid the Matoppo
+hills. On a bare hill-top seven gigantic boulders keep guard round the
+simple tombstone on which his name is engraved. After the English
+service was over, the natives celebrated in their own fashion the
+passing of the great chief who had already been enshrined in their
+imagination.
+
+At Kimberley, at Cape Town, in the Matoppos, his work was done before
+the nineteenth century was finished, and he had earned his rest. The
+complete union of the European races for which he laboured in Parliament
+is yet to come. The vast wealth which he won in Kimberley is fulfilling
+a noble purpose. By his will he founded scholarships at Oxford for
+scholars from the Dominions and Colonies, from the United States and
+from Germany--his faith in the Anglo-Saxon race being extended to our
+Teutonic kinsmen. He regarded a common education and common ideals as
+the surest cement of Empire. But above all else his name will be
+preserved among his countrymen by the provinces which he added to the
+British dominions. Kimberley and Cape Town have their monuments, their
+memories of his many successes and his few failures: the Matoppos have
+his grave. To us the peace and solitude of the hills where he lies may
+seem to contrast strangely with the stirring activity of his life. But
+solitude will not reign there always, if Rhodes's ideal is fulfilled. It
+was here that he had stood with a friend, looking towards the vast
+horizon northwards, and, in an often-quoted sentence, expressed his
+dream for the future: 'Homes, more homes, that's what I work for!' So
+long as our race produces such bold dreamers, such strenuous workers,
+its future, in Africa and elsewhere, need occasion no doubts or fears.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+A
+
+Aberdeen, 4th Earl of, 32, 51
+
+Acton, Lord, 5, 272, 325
+
+Adams, Professor J. C., 277
+
+Addison, Joseph, 137, 326, 336
+
+Afghanistan, 62, 103, 107
+
+Afrikander Bond, 354
+
+Agram, 251
+
+Agricultural labourers, 79, 117
+
+Aldworth, 171, 176, 345
+
+Alexander III, Tsar, 266, 268, 271
+
+Alexander, Prince of Bulgaria, 265-6
+
+Alexandria, 127
+
+Alfonso XII, King of Spain, 262-4
+
+Alsace, 256, 345
+
+Althorp, Lord (3rd Earl Spencer), 42, 43, 83
+
+American Civil War, 121, 123-4
+
+Ampthill, Lord, _v._ Odo Russell, 248, 264, 272, 273, 275
+
+Angevin kings, 334, 337
+
+Anglesey, Lord, 39
+
+Annandale, 10-13, 16, 29
+
+Appomattox, 124
+
+Argyll, 8th Duke of, 86
+
+Arnold, Matthew, 6, 8, 194, 321
+
+Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 8, 24
+
+Ashburton, 2nd Lord, 23
+
+Atkin, Joseph, 235, 242-3
+
+Auckland, N. Z., 226-7, 237-8, 242
+
+
+B
+
+Baden, 249, 256
+
+Bagehot, Walter, 33
+
+Baird-Smith, 104
+
+Baluchs, 62-6
+
+Bamford, Samuel, 175
+
+Baring, Lady Harriet, 23
+
+Barnack, 178
+
+Barnato, Barney, 352
+
+Barry, Sir Charles, 200
+
+Basutoland, 355
+
+Batum, 268
+
+Bazaine, Marshal, 257
+
+Bechuanaland, 357
+
+de Beers Company, 352, 357
+
+Behnes, Charles and Wm., 199
+
+Beit, Alfred, 350, 358
+
+Bentham, Jeremy, 2
+
+Bergmann, Professor von, 298
+
+Berlin, 248, 252-3, 263, 293;
+  Treaty of, 268
+
+Bermuda, 58
+
+Besant, Sir Walter, 89
+
+Biarritz, 191
+
+Bideford, 183
+
+Bird, Robert, 98
+
+Birmingham, 6, 126, 304, 311
+
+Bishop's Stortford, 348
+
+Bismarck, 252-9, 264, 273
+
+Blackburn, 32
+
+Blackie, Professor, 294
+
+Blomfield, Bishop, 190
+
+Bloomsbury, 313
+
+Boehm, Sir J. E., 21
+
+Bolivar, Simon, 60
+
+Borrow, George, 6
+
+Bright, Jacob, 111-13
+
+Bright, John: America, 123;
+  Anti-Corn-Law League, 114-19;
+  education, 111-12;
+  family, 111-14, 126;
+  foreign policy, 122, 127;
+  Ireland, 121, 127;
+  oratorical style, 117, 119-20;
+  Parliament, 85, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125;
+  public meetings, 116, 117, 125;
+  Quakers, 111, 113, 115, 117, 122;
+  Reform, 113, 124-5;
+  other references, 25-6, 85, 278
+
+Brindley, James, 120, 338
+
+Bronte, Charlotte, 7
+
+Brooke, Stopford, 162, 187, 310, 339, 342-5
+
+Brookfield, Rev. W., 157
+
+Brougham, Lord, 7, 40, 42
+
+Brown, Ford Madox, 197, 307
+
+Browning, E. B., 81
+
+Browning, Robert, 5, 9, 140, 158, 165, 169, 170, 175, 250
+
+Brunton, Sir Lauder, 345
+
+Bryce, Viscount, 334, 343, 345
+
+Bulgaria, 264-8
+
+Burlington House (Royal Academy), 198, 200, 206, 217
+
+Burne-Jones, Sir E., 197, 205, 209, 212, 217, 219, 304-8, 311, 319, 328
+
+Burton, Richard, 4
+
+Byron, Lord, 33, 60, 153
+
+
+C
+
+Cambridge, 153-4, 179, 190, 221
+
+Cameron, Sir Hector, 288
+
+Cameron, Julia, 172, 205
+
+Campbell, Sir Colin (Lord Clyde), 69, 70, 105
+
+Canning, Charles, Lord, 105, 122
+
+Canning, George, 32, 35, 37, 38
+
+Capri, 343
+
+Carlisle, 10, 290
+
+Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 14-19, 22, 25, 27
+
+Carlyle, John, 14
+
+Carlyle, Thomas: appearance, 19, 212;
+  books, chief, 11, 20, 22, 23, 25-7;
+  character, 16, 17, 29;
+  education, 12, 13;
+  family, 11, 15, 29;
+  friends, 4, 13, 18, 23, 30, 140, 163;
+  German literature, 16, 17;
+  homes, 6, 11, 13, 15, 18, 21;
+  lectures, 22;
+  literary style, 20, 29, 321, 324-5;
+  quoted opinions, 71, 164, 189, 302
+
+Carnot, President, 300
+
+Carrington, General, 364
+
+Cashel, 34
+
+Castelar, Emilio, 261
+
+Castlereagh, Lord, 38
+
+Cauteretz, 173
+
+Celbridge, 55, 56
+
+Cephalonia, 59
+
+Chamberlain, Joseph, 6, 53, 362, 364, 366
+
+Chartered Company, 359, 360, 364-5
+
+Chartists, 61, 187-9
+
+Chatham, 130, 144
+
+Chelsea, 21, 163, 179
+
+Chester, 191
+
+Cheyne, Sir Watson, 297
+
+Chili[=a]nw[=a]la, 69, 101
+
+Christison, Sir Robert, 294
+
+Clare election, 39, 49
+
+Clarendon, Edw. Hyde, Earl of, 324
+
+Clarendon, Geo. Villiers, Earl of, 7, 250
+
+Clark, Sir Andrew, 345
+
+Clovelly, 178
+
+Cobden, Richard, 2;
+  and Bright, 114-19, 124, 127;
+  and Peel, 48, 49, 51;
+  and Shaftesbury, 84, 87
+
+Coburg, Duchy of, 249, 253
+
+Codrington, Rev. R., 235
+
+Coleridge, Rev. Derwent, 178
+
+Coleridge, Rev. Edward, 223
+
+Coleridge, John, 222
+
+Coleridge, S. T., 13, 29
+
+Cook, Captain James, 220
+
+Cook, John Douglas, 335
+
+Cooper, Thomas, 189
+
+Corn Laws, 47, 115-20
+
+Coruna, 57
+
+Craigenputtock, 18
+
+Creighton, Bishop, 344
+
+Crimean War, 121-3, 167, 251
+
+Cromer, Earl of, 123, 272
+
+Crotch, W. W., 136, 146
+
+Crown Prince of Germany (Frederick III), 252, 258
+
+Currency, Reform of, 36-7
+
+
+D
+
+Dabo, Battle of, 65
+
+Dalhousie, Marquis of, 69, 70, 100, 101, 103
+
+Dal[=i]p Singh, 271
+
+Dalling, Lord, 45
+
+Darmstadt, Court of, 255-7
+
+Darwin, Charles, 2, 4, 5, 6, 152, 183, 277, 279, 291
+
+Dawkins, Boyd, 328-30, 333-4
+
+Delagoa Bay, 260, 362
+
+Delane, John Thaddeus, 8, 123, 253
+
+Delarey, General, 356
+
+Delhi, 95, 99, 103-4
+
+Derby, Edw. Stanley, 14th Earl of, 32, 42-4
+
+Dickens, Charles: appearance, 132-3;
+  character, 131-3, 141, 146;
+  friends, 140;
+  influence, 130, 135, 147;
+  journalism, 132, 138;
+  novels, 132-9;
+  Poor Law, 146-7;
+  'purpose', 130, 135, 144-8, 185;
+  readings, 142-3;
+  satire, 137, 145, 239;
+  sensation, 141-2;
+  sentiment, 136;
+  travels, 136-8;
+  other references, 4, 82, 89
+
+Dilke, Sir Charles, 6, 272
+
+Disraeli, Benjamin: novels, 3, 34;
+  personal, 28, 53;
+  political, 32, 47, 50, 90, 121, 123-5, 128, 193
+
+Doellinger, 257
+
+Durham City, 117
+
+
+E
+
+East India Company, 68, 76, 94, 105
+
+Edinburgh, 12-13, 18, 27, 120, 280-4, 293-6
+
+Edwardes, Sir Herbert, 101, 103
+
+Eldon, Lord, 34, 38
+
+Elgin, Lord, 105
+
+Elgin Marbles, 199, 210
+
+Ellenborough, Lord, 62
+
+Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 19-20, 29, 30, 164
+
+Epping Forest, 303
+
+Erichsen, Sir J. E., 286
+
+Et[=a]wa, 98, 100
+
+Eton, 219, 221, 223, 232-4, 246, 349
+
+Euston station, 206
+
+Eversley, 180-3, 186-7, 191-2, 195
+
+
+F
+
+Factory Acts, 81-6, 135
+
+Fairman, Mr., 270
+
+Farnham, 58, 180
+
+Farringford, 171-2
+
+Faulkner, C. J., 307-8
+
+Feniton, 222, 225
+
+Ferdinand, Prince of Bulgaria, 266
+
+Fiji, 240-3
+
+FitzGerald, Edward, 6, 153-4, 164, 175, 204
+
+Fitzgerald, William Vesey, 39
+
+Florence, 201-3, 206, 309, 343
+
+Fontevraud, 337
+
+Forster, John, 131, 140, 142-3
+
+Fox, George, 20
+
+Franco-German War, 256, 294, 345
+
+Frederick the Great, 26
+
+Freeman, Edward A., 5, 325, 334-6, 341-3, 345
+
+Froude, James Anthony, 5, 23, 28, 172, 325, 335
+
+Fry, Elizabeth, 279
+
+
+G
+
+Gadshill, 143, 148
+
+Gardiner, Professor S. R., 326
+
+Garibaldi, 60, 172, 345
+
+Garrett, Edmund, 353
+
+Gaskell, Mrs., 163
+
+Geikie, Professor, 183, 294
+
+Genoa, 138
+
+George III, 37
+
+George IV, 37, 78
+
+Gibbon, Edward, 14, 323, 328, 361
+
+Giers, Monsieur de, 267-9, 274
+
+Gladstone, W. E., 6, 265;
+  and Bright, 120, 123, 126-8;
+  and Green, 344-5;
+  and Morier, 258;
+  and Peel, 32, 47, 51-3;
+  and Shaftesbury, 90;
+  and Tennyson, 152, 154, 173;
+  and Watts, 208
+
+Glasgow, 125, 285-7, 293
+
+Godlee, Sir Rickman, 283, 295
+
+Goethe, 19
+
+Gordon, General, 4, 66, 70, 355
+
+Gough, Viscount, 68, 69, 100
+
+Graham, Sir James, 43, 85
+
+Granville, Earl, 259, 275
+
+Green, John Richard: books, 336-46;
+  church views, 329, 342;
+  conversation, 345;
+  education, 326-8;
+  essays, 336-7, 340;
+  friends, 187, 328-9, 334, 342, 345;
+  historical method, 336-42;
+  historical schemes, 333-4, 344;
+  parochial work, 331-3, 342;
+  travels, 342-3
+
+Greenbank, 112
+
+Greville, Charles, 44, 46
+
+Grevy, President, 263
+
+Grey, Charles, Earl, 41, 42
+
+Grey, Sir George, 5, 220, 240
+
+Griqualand, 350, 353
+
+Groote Schuur, 361
+
+
+H
+
+Haddington, 15
+
+Haileybury, 94
+
+Hallam, Arthur, 154, 156-8, 161, 173
+
+Hammersmith, 308, 319, 321
+
+Hardinge, 1st Viscount, 68, 99
+
+Hardwick, Philip, 207
+
+Harrow, 33, 75, 247
+
+Harte, Bret, 136
+
+Haworth, Mr., 32
+
+Helston, 179
+
+Henley, W. E., 294
+
+Henry II, 337
+
+Herbert, Sidney, 51
+
+Hilton, William, 200
+
+Hodder River, 111
+
+Hofmeyr, Jan, 354-5
+
+Holland, 4th Baron, 201-2, 207
+
+Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 137
+
+Hook, Dean, 178, 333
+
+Horner, Francis, 36, 37
+
+Howard, John, 3, 338
+
+Huddlestone, John, 94
+
+Hudson, Sir James, 272
+
+Hughes, Tom, 182, 186, 189
+
+Humboldt, Alexander von, 248
+
+Huskisson, William, 36, 48
+
+Huxley, T. H., 5
+
+Hyder[=a]b[=a]d, 65, 67
+
+Hyndman, H. M., 310, 318, 320
+
+
+I
+
+Iceland, 309
+
+Indian Mutiny, 69, 103-5
+
+Ionides family, 207
+
+Irish politics, 35, 38, 49, 51, 119, 121-2, 127
+
+Irving, Edward, 13-15
+
+Irving, Sir Henry, 169, 172
+
+
+J
+
+Jackson, General 'Stonewall', 59
+
+Jacob, Colonel, 65
+
+J[=a]landhar, 99-100
+
+Jameson, Leander Starr, 350, 360-3, 366
+
+Jeffrey, Francis, Lord, 18, 136
+
+Jellacic, Baron, 251
+
+Johnson, Samuel, 14
+
+Jomini, Baron, 270
+
+Jowett, Benjamin, 172, 204, 247, 249, 258, 273
+
+
+K
+
+Kachhi Hills, 67
+
+Karachi, 67
+
+Katkoff, Monsieur, 267, 269
+
+Keble, John, 232
+
+Kelmscott, 319, 321
+
+Kelmscott Press, 319
+
+Kiel, 249
+
+Kimberley, 349-53, 355, 357, 366
+
+King's College, 179, 296
+
+Kingsley, Charles: character, 179, 186-7, 192-5;
+  church views, 181, 193;
+  history lectures, 190, 335;
+  novels, 183, 185;
+  parish work, 180-3, 195;
+  poetry, 184;
+  physical science, 183-5;
+  social reform, 187-90;
+  sport, 18-56;
+  travels, 191;
+  other references, 335, 343
+
+Kirkcaldy, 13
+
+Knox, John, 15, 93
+
+Knox, Rev. James, 93
+
+Koch, Professor, 300
+
+Kruger, President, 362-4, 366
+
+
+L
+
+Lahore, 68, 100, 103-4
+
+Lamb, Charles, 29, 165
+
+Lambeth, 336
+
+Landor, Walter Savage, 136, 165
+
+Larkin, Henry, 27
+
+Laud, Archbishop, 336, 340
+
+Lausanne, 138
+
+Lawrence, Alexander, 93, 94
+
+Lawrence, Henry, 59, 66, 94, 100, 101-3
+
+Lawrence, John: administrative posts, 96, 98-9, 101, 105;
+  administrative talents, 97, 100, 102, 106;
+  character, 97, 105;
+  family, 93-4, 98;
+  frontier question, 107;
+  Indian Mutiny, 103-5;
+  Indian peasantry, 98, 100;
+  official subordinates, 102-3
+
+Layard, Sir H. A., 204, 254
+
+Lecky, W. E. H., 345
+
+Leighton, Frederic, Lord, 208, 219
+
+Lemaire, Monsieur, 291
+
+Lennox, Lady Sarah (Napier), 55, 57
+
+Lewis, Sir G. C., 285
+
+Lightfoot, Bishop, 238
+
+Limerick, 57
+
+Limnerslease, 217
+
+Lincoln's Inn, 198, 207
+
+Lincolnshire, 151
+
+Lister, Joseph Jackson, 278-9
+
+Lister, Joseph: antiseptic method, 288-95;
+  aseptic method, 298-9;
+  honours, 295, 297, 300;
+  hospitals, 285-7;
+  lecturing, 284-5, 295-7;
+  operations, 283, 292;
+  opponents, 291, 296-7;
+  research, 281-2, 288;
+  teachers, 280-2;
+  travels, 283;
+  vivisection, 299;
+  war, 294, 299
+
+Littledale, Mr., 269
+
+Liverpool, Earl of, 34, 38
+
+Livingstone, David, 4
+
+Lobanoff, Prince, 266
+
+Lobengula, 357-60
+
+Locker [-Lampson], Frederick, 172
+
+Londonderry, 93
+
+Louis Philippe, 40
+
+Louth, 152
+
+Lowe, Robert, Lord Sherbrooke, 8, 124
+
+Loyalty Islands, 230
+
+Lucknow, 103, 105, 174
+
+Lushington, Edmund, 154
+
+Lycidas, 155
+
+Lyons, Viscount, 123, 273
+
+Lyttelton, Sarah, Lady, 44
+
+Lytton, Robert, Earl of, 108, 212
+
+
+M
+
+Mablethorpe, 151, 171
+
+Macaulay, Lord, 8, 325
+
+Mackintosh, Sir James, 37
+
+Maclise, Daniel, 133, 140
+
+Macmillan, George, 339, 344
+
+Macready, William Charles, 138, 140
+
+Magnusson, Professor, 309
+
+Maine, Sir Henry, 345
+
+Mainhill, 15
+
+Mallet, Sir Louis, 255, 272
+
+Manchester, 112, 116, 214, 217, 315
+
+Manning, Cardinal, 212
+
+Marlborough College, 303
+
+Marsden, Samuel, 221
+
+Martin, Sir Richard, 233
+
+Matabele, 357-60, 364-5
+
+Matoppo Hills, 364, 367
+
+Maurice, Rev. F. D., 187, 189, 329, 331
+
+McMurdo, General Sir W. M., 70
+
+Melbourne, Viscount, 43
+
+Mentone, 346
+
+Meredith, George, 6, 26
+
+Merivale, Dean, 154-5
+
+Merton, Surrey, 313
+
+Metternich, Prince, 251
+
+Miani, 63-4
+
+Michel Angelo, 203
+
+Michelet, Jules, 339
+
+Mill, John Stuart, 2, 3, 22, 25, 29, 157, 193, 212
+
+Millais, Sir John, 8, 197, 212, 280, 305
+
+Milnes, R. Monckton, 159
+
+Milton, 75, 112, 120, 155, 161
+
+Moberly, Bishop, 232
+
+Montgomery, Sir Robert, 93, 101, 103
+
+Moore, Sir John, 57, 62
+
+Morier, David, 246, 248
+
+Morier, Sir Robert: appearance, 248, 251;
+  Austria, 251, 254-5;
+  character, 251, 272-5;
+  commercial treaties, 254, 260;
+  diplomatic methods, 260, 262-3, 266, 273-4;
+  diplomatic posts, 245, 250, 252, 255, 257, 259, 261, 264, 271;
+  friends, 204, 247-9, 258, 270;
+  Germany, 248-9, 252-8;
+  Portugal, 259-61;
+  Russia, 26-71;
+  Spain, 261-4
+
+Morley, Viscount, 2, 51, 86
+
+Morocco, 263
+
+Morris, William: appearance, 310;
+  character, 6, 307, 321;
+  designing, 311-12;
+  dyeing, 313;
+  friends, 304, 308, 321, 328;
+  homes, 307-8, 319;
+  painting, 306;
+  poetry, 159, 175, 308-9;
+  printing, 319;
+  Socialism, 315-19;
+  travels, 309, 318-19;
+  workshop, 313-14
+
+Mota, 227, 230, 237, 242
+
+Mozley, Canon J. B., 327
+
+Muizenberg, 366
+
+Mueller, Professor Max, 248
+
+
+N
+
+Napier, Charles: campaigns, 57, 58, 63-5, 67;
+  character, 56, 66, 70;
+  military commands, 59, 61, 62, 68;
+  military training, 58, 62;
+  official superiors, 57, 68, 70, 100;
+  rank and file, 66-7, 69, 72
+
+Napier, Hon. George, 54
+
+Napier, Sir George, 54, 57
+
+Napier, Robert (Lord N. of Magdala), 103, 106
+
+Napier, Sir William, 54-5, 57, 70, 71
+
+Napoleon III, Emperor, 123
+
+Natal, 349
+
+National Gallery, 53, 188
+
+Nelidoff, Monsieur de, 267
+
+Neuberg, Joseph, 27
+
+Newbattle, 79
+
+Newman, Cardinal, 5, 194
+
+Newton, Sir Charles, 210
+
+Nicholson, John, 66, 101-2, 104
+
+Nightingale, Florence, 286, 291
+
+Norfolk Island, 237, 239, 242
+
+Nukapu, 242
+
+
+O
+
+Oaklands, 70
+
+O'Connell, Daniel, 38, 39, 42, 44, 49
+
+Omarkot, 63
+
+Orleans, Duke of, 270
+
+Oxford, 12-13, 34, 38, 40, 75, 196, 223-5, 247, 278, 304-6, 325-30, 351, 367
+
+
+P
+
+Paget, Sir James, 298
+
+Palgrave, Francis T., 172, 204, 247
+
+Palmerston, Viscount, 8, 32, 42, 78, 90, 123-4, 127, 185, 249-50, 254
+
+P[=a]n[=i]pat, 96, 99
+
+Panizzi, Sir A.; 212
+
+Parkes, Sir Henry, 5
+
+Parnell, Charles Stewart, 127
+
+Pasteur, Louis, 288-9, 300
+
+Patteson, Sir John, 222, 225, 233
+
+Patteson, John Coleridge:
+  centres of work, 226, 230, 237;
+  character, 223, 231, 233, 235-6;
+  consecration, 233;
+  family, 222, 225, 234;
+  labour trade, 240-1;
+  languages, 224, 226;
+  mission methods and principles, 227, 229, 234, 238-9;
+  workers, 234, 238
+
+Pattle family, 205
+
+Pau, 191
+
+Peel, 1st Sir Robert, 32-3, 37, 82
+
+Peel, 2nd Sir Robert:
+  administrative gifts, 35, 36, 52;
+  character, 33, 45, 52-3, 80, 90;
+  constituencies, 34, 38, 40, 43;
+  education, 33-4;
+  finance, 36;
+  free trade, 47-51, 87, 118-19;
+  Ireland, 35, 38-9;
+  patronage, 159-60;
+  political parties, 34, 50-1, 53;
+  quoted on Napier, 72;
+  Reform, 40-1
+
+Pen-y-gwryd, 183, 186
+
+Perry, Father, S.J., 270
+
+Pio Nono, Pope, 259
+
+Pitt, William, 31, 33-8
+
+Plutarch, 56, 57, 361
+
+Pobedonostsev, Monsieur, 267, 270
+
+Porter, Mrs., 294
+
+Portsmouth, 70, 72, 130
+
+Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 4, 197
+
+Prince Consort, 52, 85, 100, 252
+
+Prinsep, Mr., 205, 207, 210
+
+Punjab, 68-9, 102-4
+
+Pusey, Canon E. B., 87
+
+
+R
+
+Reade, Charles, 185
+
+Reform Bills, 40-3, 124-5
+
+Rhodes, Cecil: 207, 211;
+  Boers, 353-5, 362-4, 366;
+  character, 356, 361-2;
+  friends, 350-1, 361;
+  imperial extension, 4, 353, 355, 357-61;
+  mines, 350, 352;
+  native wars, 360, 364-5;
+  Oxford, 351, 367;
+  political work, 353-6, 362
+
+Rhodes, Colonel Frank, 349, 363
+
+Rhodes, Herbert, 349
+
+Rickards, Charles, 217
+
+Roberts, Earl, 108
+
+Robinson, Sir Hercules (Lord Rosmead), 356, 359, 361
+
+Rochdale, 111-13, 119, 127-8
+
+Rochester, 135, 143-4, 148
+
+Rogers, Samuel, 163
+
+Roggenbach, Herr von, 248
+
+Romero y Robledo, 261
+
+Rome, 43, 79, 203
+
+Romilly, Sir Samuel, 36
+
+Rose, Sir Hugh, 106
+
+Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 154, 163, 197, 205, 209, 212, 305-8
+
+Rottingdean, 311
+
+Routh, Dr., 328
+
+Royal Academy, 198, 200, 206, 217
+
+Rubens, 214
+
+Rudd, Charles D., 350, 358, 361
+
+Rumbold, Sir H., 272
+
+Runnymede, 335
+
+Ruskin, John: art, 129, 204, 316;
+  economics, 8, 30, 147, 193, 315;
+  general, 4, 6, 23, 303
+
+Russell, Lord John, 32, 42, 44, 46, 50, 118, 123-4, 207, 253
+
+Russell, Odo, 248, 264, 272-3, 275
+
+
+S
+
+Sadler, Michael T., 82
+
+Sagasta, Senor, 261
+
+Salisbury, Marquess of, 268, 275
+
+Salisbury, Rhodesia, 359
+
+Santa Cruz, 236
+
+Sarawia, George, 238
+
+Schiller, 17
+
+Schleswig-Holstein, 249, 254
+
+Schools, 88-9, 135-6
+
+Scotsbrig, 15
+
+Scott, Sir Walter, 11, 78, 187, 198, 303, 324-5
+
+Scott, Capt. R. F., 4
+
+Selous, Frederick C., 358-61
+
+Selwyn, Bishop, 221-30, 233, 238
+
+Shaftesbury, 3rd Earl, 74, 79
+
+Shaftesbury, 4th Earl: administrative offices, 76, 80;
+  appearance, 83;
+  character, 74, 76;
+  Factory Acts, 83-6, 135;
+  family, 74, 77-9, 89;
+  other philanthropic work, 77, 87-8;
+  and political leaders, 46, 85-6, 90;
+  religious work, 77, 87;
+  schools, 88-9
+
+Shakespeare, 302
+
+Sharpey, William, 280-1
+
+Shelley, 199, 303
+
+Shepstone, Sir Theophilus, 260
+
+Sikh wars, 68-9, 99-100
+
+Simeon, Sir John, 166, 172
+
+Simpson, Sir James, 286, 291, 294
+
+Sind, 62-8
+
+Smith, Sir Harry, 59
+
+Smith, R. Bosworth, 93, 97
+
+Smith, Sir Thomas, 298
+
+Somers, Lady, 205
+
+Somersby, 151, 156
+
+Southey, 82
+
+Spedding, James, 154, 165, 175, 204
+
+Sprigg, Sir Gordon, 353
+
+Staael, Baron de, 268
+
+Stanley, Dean, 248, 329, 331
+
+Stanley, Edward, _v._ Derby
+
+Stein, Baron von, 252
+
+Stepney, 331-2
+
+Sterling, John, 23
+
+Stevens, Alfred, 197
+
+Stewart, John, M.D., 297
+
+Stockmar, Baron, 249
+
+Stokes, Sir George G., 277
+
+Stratford de Redcliffe, Viscount, 210
+
+Street, George E., 306
+
+Stubbs, Bishop, 5, 325, 334, 340-1, 345
+
+Syme, James, 280-3, 285, 293
+
+
+T
+
+Talleyrand, 273
+
+Tamworth, 32, 43
+
+Taylor, Alexander, 104
+
+Taylor, Sir Henry, 165, 209
+
+Taylor, Tom, 186
+
+Temple, Archbishop, 247, 249
+
+Tennyson, Alfred: appearance, 157, 164, 212;
+  character, 155, 156, 173;
+  conversation, 155, 164, 250;
+  education, 152-6, 158;
+  family, 153, 156, 163;
+  friends, 23, 154, 163-5, 172, 205, 209;
+  homes, 151, 171;
+  poems, dramatic, 169;
+  epic, 166-8;
+  lyric, 156-7, 159, 161-3, 166, 174;
+  patriotic, 174;
+  political ideas, 167, 175;
+  quoted opinions, 187, 345;
+  travels, 173;
+  other references, 5, 6, 208, 305
+
+Tennyson, Frederick, 153
+
+Thackeray, W. M., 5, 7, 140, 154, 205, 209
+
+Thompson, Sir Henry, 280
+
+Tilly, Lieutenant, 235
+
+Titian, 173, 213, 219, 227
+
+Tolstoy, Count Dmitri, 267, 269
+
+Trevelyan, George Macaulay, 121, 347
+
+Troyes, 343
+
+
+U
+
+University College, London, 278-9
+
+Upton, Essex, 278
+
+Upton, Kent, 307
+
+Utilitarians, 2, 3
+
+
+V
+
+Vere, Aubrey de, 165
+
+Victoria, Queen: official, 46, 50, 52, 126, 174, 190, 253, 257;
+  personal, 44, 78, 85, 148, 162, 175
+
+Vienna, 250, 255, 283
+
+Villiers, Charles Pelham, 50
+
+Virgil, 167, 173
+
+Vischnegradsky, 270
+
+
+W
+
+Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 4, 220
+
+Wallace, Alfred Russel, 183, 291
+
+Walmer, 300
+
+Wanostrocht, Nicholas, 199
+
+Ward, Mr. and Mrs. Humphry, 345
+
+Waterloo, 58
+
+Watt, James, 2, 277, 338
+
+Watts, George Frederick: Academy, Royal, 200, 217;
+  appearance, 199, 209;
+  art--views on, 215-16;
+  character, 200, 202, 208, 218;
+  education, 198-200;
+  exhibitions, 217;
+  friends, 172, 201, 204-5, 208-9, 250;
+  homes, 205, 217;
+  mural decoration, 202, 206-7;
+  pictures, allegories, 214, 217;
+  pictures, myths, 213;
+  pictures, portraits, 93, 207-8, 212, 217;
+  sculpture, 211, 219;
+  travels, 201, 203, 210, 216
+
+Webb, Philip, 307
+
+Wellesley, Marquis, 95
+
+Wellington, Duke of: military, 57, 68, 71-2, 76, 93, 187;
+  personal, 46, 70, 78, 80;
+  political, 35, 38-41, 43, 46, 51
+
+Welsh, John, 15
+
+Wesley, John, 3, 92, 340
+
+West Indies, 178, 191
+
+Westminster, 191, 200, 203
+
+Westminster, Duke of, 211
+
+Westmorland, Earl of, 250
+
+Whistler, J. McN., 197, 215
+
+White, Sir William, 266, 272, 274-5
+
+Whittier, John Greenleaf, 192
+
+Wiggins, Captain, 270
+
+Wilberforce, Bishop Samuel, 5
+
+Wilberforce, William, 3
+
+William I, German Emperor, 253-4, 258
+
+William IV, King, 41
+
+Wimborne St. Giles, 75, 89, 90
+
+Winchester, 232, 246
+
+Windsor, 221
+
+Windt, Harry de, 270
+
+Wolseley, Viscount, 57
+
+Wordsworth, William, 29, 163, 165-6, 242
+
+Wotton, Sir Henry, 246
+
+Wotton, Dean Nicholas, 246
+
+Wraxall, 93
+
+Wyndham, George, 122
+
+
+Y
+
+Yonge, Charlotte, 232, 240, 243
+
+
+Z
+
+Zambezi, 355, 362
+
+Zionist movement, 87
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTORIAN WORTHIES***
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