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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Studies in Contemporary Biography, by James
+Bryce, Viscount Bryce
+
+
+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: Studies in Contemporary Biography
+
+
+Author: James Bryce, Viscount Bryce
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 17, 2010  [eBook #31677]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY
+BIOGRAPHY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Clarke, Dan Horwood, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page
+images generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/Canadian Libaries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/r8548972200brycuoft
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+  Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
+
+  Text transcribed from Greek is enclosed by plus signs
+  (+Greek transliteration+).
+
+
+
+
+
+STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY
+
+by
+
+JAMES BRYCE
+
+Author of
+'The Holy Roman Empire,' 'The American Commonwealth', etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Macmillan and Co., Limited
+New York: The Macmillan Company
+1903
+
+All rights reserved
+
+Copyright in the United States of America 1903
+
+
+
+
+  To
+
+  CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
+  President of Harvard University
+
+  IN COMMEMORATION OF A LONG AND VALUED FRIENDSHIP
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The first and the last of these Studies relate to persons whose fame
+has gone out into all lands, and about whom so much remains to be said
+that one who has reflected on their careers need not offer an apology
+for saying something. Of the other eighteen sketches, some deal with
+eminent men whose names are still familiar, but whose personalities
+have begun to fade from the minds of the present generation. The rest
+treat of persons who came less before the public, but whose brilliant
+gifts and solid services to the world make them equally deserve to be
+remembered with honour. Having been privileged to enjoy their
+friendship, I have felt it a duty to do what a friend can to present a
+faithful record of their excellence which may help to keep their
+memory fresh and green.
+
+These Studies are, however, not to be regarded as biographies, even
+in miniature. My aim has rather been to analyse the character and
+powers of each of the persons described, and, as far as possible, to
+convey the impression which each made in the daily converse of life.
+All of them, except Lord Beaconsfield, were personally, and most of
+them intimately, known to me.
+
+In the six Studies which treat of politicians I have sought to set
+aside political predilections, and have refrained from expressing
+political opinions, though it has now and then been necessary to point
+out instances in which the subsequent course of events has shown the
+action of Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Lowe, and Mr. Gladstone to have been
+right or wrong (as the case may be) in the action they respectively
+took.
+
+The sketches of T. H. Green, E. A. Freeman, and J. R. Green were
+originally written for English magazines, and most of the other
+Studies have been published in the United States. All of those that
+had already appeared in print have been enlarged and revised, some
+indeed virtually rewritten. I have to thank the proprietors of the
+_English Historical Review_, the _Contemporary Review_, and the _New
+York Nation_, as also the Century Company of New York, for their
+permission to use so much of the matter of the volume as had appeared
+(in its original form) in the organs belonging to them respectively.
+
+_March 6, 1903._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                  Page
+      I. Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield      1804-1881      1
+     II. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of
+             Westminster                              1815-1881     69
+    III. Thomas Hill Green                            1836-1882     85
+     IV. Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of
+             Canterbury                               1811-1882    100
+      V. Anthony Trollope                             1815-1882    116
+     VI. John Richard Green                           1837-1883    131
+    VII. Sir George Jessel                            1824-1883    170
+   VIII. Hugh M'Calmont Cairns, Earl
+             Cairns                                   1819-1885    184
+     IX. James Fraser, Bishop of Manchester           1818-1885    196
+      X. Stafford Henry Northcote, Earl of
+             Iddesleigh                               1818-1887    211
+     XI. Charles Stewart Parnell                      1846-1891    227
+    XII. Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop and
+             Cardinal                                 1808-1892    250
+   XIII. Edward Augustus Freeman                      1823-1892    262
+    XIV. Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke             1811-1892    293
+     XV. William Robertson Smith                      1846-1894    311
+    XVI. Henry Sidgwick                               1838-1900    327
+   XVII. Edward Ernest Bowen                          1836-1901    343
+  XVIII. Edwin Lawrence Godkin                        1831-1902    363
+    XIX. John Emerich Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton       1834-1902    382
+     XX. William Ewart Gladstone                      1809-1898    400
+
+
+
+
+BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD[1]
+
+
+When Lord Beaconsfield died in 1881 we all wondered what people would
+think of him fifty years thereafter. Divided as our own judgments
+were, we asked whether he would still seem a problem. Would opposite
+views regarding his aims, his ideas, the sources of his power, still
+divide the learned, and perplex the ordinary reader? Would men
+complain that history cannot be good for much when, with the abundant
+materials at her disposal, she had not framed a consistent theory of
+one who played so great a part in so ample a theatre? People called
+him a riddle; and he certainly affected a sphinx-like attitude. Would
+the riddle be easier then than it was for us, from among whom the man
+had even now departed?
+
+When he died, there were many in England who revered him as a profound
+thinker and a lofty character, animated by sincere patriotism.
+Others, probably as numerous, held him for no better than a cynical
+charlatan, bent through life on his own advancement, who permitted no
+sense of public duty, and very little human compassion, to stand in
+the way of his insatiate ambition. The rest did not know what to
+think. They felt in him the presence of power; they felt also
+something repellent. They could not understand how a man who seemed
+hard and unscrupulous could win so much attachment and command so much
+obedience.
+
+Since Disraeli departed nearly one-half of those fifty years has
+passed away. Few are living who can claim to have been his personal
+friends, none who were personal enemies. No living statesman professes
+to be his political disciple. The time has come when one may discuss
+his character and estimate his career without being suspected of doing
+so with a party bias or from a party motive. Doubtless those who
+condemn and those who defend or excuse some momentous parts of his
+conduct, such as, for instance, his policy in the East and in
+Afghanistan from 1876 to 1879, will differ in their judgment of his
+wisdom and foresight. If this be a difficulty, it is an unavoidable
+one, and may never quite disappear. There were in the days of Augustus
+some who blamed that sagacious ruler for seeking to check the
+expansion of the Roman Empire. There were in the days of King Henry
+the Second some who censured and others who praised him for issuing
+the Constitutions of Clarendon. Both questions still remain open to
+argument; and the conclusion any one forms must affect in some measure
+his judgment of each monarch's statesmanship. So differences of
+opinion about particular parts of Disraeli's long career need not
+prevent us from dispassionately inquiring what were the causes that
+enabled him to attain so striking a success, and what is the place
+which posterity is likely to assign to him among the rulers of
+England.
+
+First, a few words about the salient events of his life, not by way of
+writing a biography, but to explain what follows.
+
+He was born in London, in 1804. His father, Isaac Disraeli, was a
+literary man of cultivated taste and independent means, who wrote a
+good many books, the best known of which is his _Curiosities of
+Literature_, a rambling work, full of entertaining matter. He belonged
+to that division of the Jewish race which is called the Sephardim, and
+traces itself to Spain and Portugal;[2] but he had ceased to frequent
+the synagogue--had, in fact, broken with his co-religionists. Isaac
+had access to good society, so that the boy saw eminent and polished
+men from his early years, and, before he had reached manhood, began
+to make his way in drawing-rooms where he met the wittiest and
+best-known people of the day. He was articled to a firm of attorneys
+in London in 1821, but after two or three years quitted a sphere for
+which his peculiar gifts were ill suited.[3] Samuel Rogers, the poet,
+took a fancy to him, and had him baptized at the age of thirteen. As
+he grew up, he was often to be seen with Count d'Orsay and Lady
+Blessington, well-known figures who fluttered on the confines of
+fashion and Bohemia. It is worth remarking that he never went either
+to a public school or to a university. In England it has become the
+fashion to assume that nearly all the persons who have shone in public
+life have been educated in one of the great public schools, and that
+they owe to its training their power of dealing with men and
+assemblies. Such a superstition is sufficiently refuted by the
+examples of men like Pitt, Macaulay, Bishop Wilberforce, Disraeli,
+Cobden, Bright, and Cecil Rhodes, not to add instances drawn from
+Ireland and Scotland, where till very recently there have been no
+public schools in the current English sense.
+
+Disraeli first appeared before the public in 1826, when he published
+_Vivian Grey_, an amazing book to be the production of a youth of
+twenty-two. Other novels--_The Young Duke_, _Venetia_, _Contarini
+Fleming_, _Henrietta Temple_--maintained without greatly increasing
+his reputation between 1831 and 1837. Then came two political stories,
+_Coningsby_ and _Sybil_, in 1844 and 1845, followed by _Tancred_ in
+1847, and the _Life of Lord George Bentinck_ in 1852; with a long
+interval of silence, till, in 1870, he produced _Lothair_, in 1880
+_Endymion_. Besides these he published in 1839 the tragedy of
+_Alarcos_, and in 1835 the more ambitious _Revolutionary Epick_,
+neither of which had much success. In 1828-31 he took a journey
+through the East, visiting Constantinople, Syria, and Egypt, and it
+was then, no doubt, in lands peculiarly interesting to a man of his
+race, that he conceived those ideas about the East and its mysterious
+influences which figure largely in some of his stories, notably in
+_Tancred_, and which in 1878 had no small share in shaping his policy
+and that of England. Meanwhile, he had not forgotten the political
+aspirations which we see in _Vivian Grey_. In 1832, just before the
+passing of the Reform Bill, he appeared as candidate for the petty
+borough of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, and was defeated by a
+majority of twenty-three to twelve, so few were the voters in many
+boroughs of those days. After the Bill had enlarged the constituency,
+he tried his luck twice again, in 1833 and 1835, both times
+unsuccessfully, and came before two other boroughs also, Taunton and
+Marylebone, though in the latter case no contest took place. Such
+activity in a youth with little backing from friends and comparatively
+slender means marked him already as a man of spirit and ambition. His
+next attempt was more lucky. At the general election of 1837 he was
+returned for Maidstone.
+
+His political professions during this period have been keenly
+canvassed; nor is it easy to form a fair judgment on them. In 1832 he
+had sought and obtained recommendations from Joseph Hume and Daniel
+O'Connell, and people had therefore set him down as a Radical.
+Although, however, his professions of political faith included dogmas
+which, like triennial parliaments, the ballot, and the imposition of a
+new land-tax, were part of the so-called "Radical" platform, still
+there was a vague and fanciful note in his utterances, and an
+aversion to the conventional Whig way of putting things, which showed
+that he was not a thorough-going adherent of any of the then existing
+political parties, but was trying to strike out a new line and
+attract men by the promise of something fresher and bolder than the
+recognised schools offered. In 1834 his hostility to Whiggism was
+becoming more pronounced, and a tenderness for some Tory doctrines
+more discernible. Finally, in 1835, he appeared as an avowed Tory,
+accepting the regular creed of the party, and declaring himself a
+follower of Sir Robert Peel, but still putting forward a number of
+views peculiar to himself, which he thereafter developed not only
+in his speeches but in his novels. _Coningsby_ and _Sybil_ were
+meant to be a kind of manifesto of the "Young England" party--a party
+which can hardly be said to have existed outside his own mind, though
+a small knot of aristocratic youths who caught up and repeated his
+phrases seemed to form a nucleus for it.
+
+The fair conclusion from his deliverances during these early years is
+that he was at first much more of a Liberal than a Tory, yet with
+ideas distinctively his own which made him appear in a manner
+independent of both parties. The old party lines might seem to have
+been almost effaced by the struggle over the Reform Bill; and it was
+natural for a bold and inventive mind to imagine a new departure, and
+put forward a programme in which a sort of Radicalism was mingled with
+doctrines of a different type. But when it became clear after a time
+that the old political divisions still subsisted, and that such a
+distinctive position as he had conceived could not be maintained, he
+then, having to choose between one or other of the two recognised
+parties, chose the Tories, dropping some tenets he had previously
+advocated which were inconsistent with their creed, but retaining
+much of his peculiar way of looking at political questions. How far
+the change which passed over him was a natural development, how far
+due to mere calculations of interest, there is little use discussing:
+perhaps he did not quite know himself. Looking back, we of to-day
+might be inclined to think that he received more blame for it than he
+deserved, but contemporary observers generally set it down to a want
+of principle. In one thing, however, he was consistent then, and
+remained consistent ever after--his hearty hatred of the Whigs. There
+was something in the dryness and coldness of the great Whig families,
+their stiff constitutionalism, their belief in political economy,
+perhaps also their occasional toyings with the Nonconformists (always
+an object of dislike to Disraeli), which roused all the antagonisms of
+his nature, personal and Oriental.
+
+When he entered the House of Commons he was already well known to
+fashionable London, partly by his striking face and his powers of
+conversation, partly by the eccentricities of his dress--he loved
+bright-coloured waistcoats, and decked himself with rings,--partly by
+his novels, whose satirical pungency had made a noise in society. He
+had also become, owing to his apparent change of front, the object of
+angry criticism. A quarrel with Daniel O'Connell, in the course of
+which he challenged the great Irishman to fight a duel, each party
+having described the other with a freedom of language bordering on
+scurrility, made him, for a time, the talk of the political world.
+Thus there was more curiosity evoked by his first speech than usually
+awaits a new member. It was unsuccessful, not from want of ability,
+but because its tone did not suit the temper of the House of Commons,
+and because a hostile section of the audience sought to disconcert him
+by their laughter. Undeterred by this ridicule, he continued to speak,
+though in a less ambitious and less artificial vein, till after a few
+years he had become one of the most conspicuous unofficial members. At
+first no one had eulogised Peel more warmly, but after a time he edged
+away from the minister, whether repelled by his coldness, which showed
+that in that quarter no promotion was to be expected, or shrewdly
+perceiving that Peel was taking a line which would ultimately separate
+him from the bulk of the Conservative party. This happened in 1846,
+when Peel, convinced that the import duties on corn were economically
+unsound, proposed their abolition. Disraeli, who, since 1843, had
+taken repeated opportunities of firing stray shots at the powerful
+Prime Minister, now bore a foremost part not only in attacking him,
+but in organising the Protectionist party, and prompting its leader,
+Lord George Bentinck. In embracing free trade, Peel carried with him
+his own personal friends and disciples, men like Gladstone, Sidney
+Herbert, Lord Lincoln, Sir James Graham, Cardwell, and a good many
+others, the intellectual _élite_ of the Tory party. The more numerous
+section who clung to Protection had numbers, wealth, respectability,
+cohesion, but brains and tongues were scarce. An adroit tactician and
+incisive speaker was of priceless value to them. Such a man they found
+in Disraeli, while he gained, sooner than he had expected, an
+opportunity of playing a leading part in the eyes of Parliament and
+the country. In the end of 1848, Lord George Bentinck, who, though a
+man of natural force and capable of industry when he pleased, had been
+to some extent Disraeli's mouthpiece, died, leaving his prompter
+indisputably the keenest intellect in the Tory-Protectionist party. In
+1850, Peel, who might possibly have in time brought the bulk of that
+party back to its allegiance to him, was killed by a fall from his
+horse. The Peelites drifted more and more towards Liberalism, so that
+when Lord Derby, who, in 1851, had been commissioned as head of the
+Tory party to form a ministry, invited them to join him, they refused
+to do so, imagining him to be still in favour of the corn duties, and
+resenting the behaviour of the Protectionist section to their own
+master. Being thus unable to find one of them to lead his followers in
+the House of Commons, Lord Derby turned in 1852 to Disraeli, giving
+him, with the leadership, the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
+The appointment was thought a strange one, because Disraeli brought to
+it absolutely no knowledge of finance and no official experience. He
+had never been so much as an Under-Secretary. The Tories themselves
+murmured that one whom they regarded as an adventurer should be raised
+to so high a place. After a few months Lord Derby's ministry fell,
+defeated on the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Budget, which had been
+vehemently attacked by Mr. Gladstone. This was the beginning of that
+protracted duel between him and Mr. Disraeli which lasted down till
+the end of the latter's life.
+
+For the following fourteen years Disraeli's occupation was that of a
+leader of Opposition, varied by one brief interval of office in
+1858-59. His party was in a permanent minority, so that nothing was
+left for its chief but to fight with skill, courage, and resolution a
+series of losing battles. This he did with admirable tenacity of
+purpose. Once or twice in every session he used to rally his forces
+for a general engagement, and though always defeated, he never
+suffered himself to be dispirited by defeat. During the rest of the
+time he was keenly watchful, exposing all the mistakes in domestic
+affairs of the successive Liberal Governments, and when complications
+arose in foreign politics, always professing, and generally
+manifesting, a patriotic desire not to embarrass the Executive, lest
+national interests should suffer. Through all these years he had to
+struggle, not only with a hostile majority in office, but also with
+disaffection among his own followers. Many of the landed aristocracy
+could not bring themselves to acquiesce in the leadership of a new
+man, of foreign origin, whose career had been erratic, and whose ideas
+they found it hard to assimilate. Ascribing their long exclusion from
+power to his presence, they more than once conspired to dethrone him.
+In 1861 these plots were thickest, and Disraeli was for a time left
+almost alone. But as it happened, there never arose in the House of
+Commons any one on the Conservative side possessing gifts of speech
+and of strategy comparable to those which in him had been matured and
+polished by long experience, while he had the address to acquire an
+ascendency over the mind of Lord Derby, still the titular head of the
+party, who, being a man of straightforward character, high social
+position, and brilliant oratorical talent, was therewithal somewhat
+lazy and superficial, and therefore disposed to lean on his lieutenant
+in the Lower House, and to borrow from him those astute schemes of
+policy which Disraeli was fertile in devising. Thus, through Lord
+Derby's support, and by his own imperturbable confidence, he
+frustrated all the plots of the malcontent Tories. New men came up
+who had not witnessed his earlier escapades, but knew him only as the
+bold and skilful leader of their party in the House of Commons. He
+made himself personally agreeable to them, encouraged them in their
+first efforts, diffused his ideas among them, stimulated the local
+organisation of the party, and held out hopes of great things to be
+done when fortune should at last revisit the Tory banner.
+
+While Lord Palmerston lived, these exertions seemed to bear little
+fruit. That minister had, in his later years, settled down into a sort
+of practical Toryism, and both parties acquiesced in his rule. But, on
+his death, the scene changed. Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone brought
+forward a Reform Bill strong enough to evoke the latent Conservative
+feeling of a House of Commons which, though showing a nominally
+Liberal majority, had been chosen under Palmerstonian auspices. The
+defeat of the Bill, due to the defection of the more timorous Whigs,
+was followed by the resignation of Lord Russell's Ministry. Lord Derby
+and Mr. Disraeli came into power, and, next year, carried a Reform
+Bill which, as it was finally shaped in its passage through the House,
+really went further than Lord Russell's had done, enfranchising a much
+larger number of the working classes in boroughs. To have carried this
+Bill remains the greatest of Disraeli's triumphs. He had to push it
+gently through a hostile House of Commons by wheedling a section of
+the Liberal majority, against the appeals of their legitimate leader.
+He had also to persuade his own followers to support a measure which
+they had all their lives been condemning, and which was, or in their
+view ought to have been, more dangerous to the Constitution than the
+one which they and the recalcitrant Whigs had thrown out in the
+preceding year. He had, as he happily and audaciously expressed it, to
+educate his party into doing the very thing which they (though
+certainly not he himself) had cordially and consistently denounced.
+
+The process was scarcely complete when the retirement of Lord Derby,
+whose health had given way, opened Disraeli's path to the post of
+first Minister of the Crown. He dissolved Parliament, expecting to
+receive a majority from the gratitude of the working class whom his
+Act had admitted to the suffrage. To his own surprise, and to the
+boundless disgust of the Tories, a Liberal House of Commons was again
+returned, which drove him and his friends once more into the cold
+shade of Opposition. He was now sixty-four years of age, had suffered
+an unexpected and mortifying discomfiture, and had no longer the great
+name of Lord Derby to cover him. Disaffected voices were again heard
+among his own party, while the Liberals, reinstalled in power, were
+led by the rival whose unequalled popularity in the country made him
+for the time omnipotent. Still Mr. Disraeli was not disheartened. He
+fought the battle of apparently hopeless resistance with his old tact,
+wariness, and tenacity, losing no occasion for any criticism that
+could damage the measures--strong and large measures--which Mr.
+Gladstone's Government brought forward.
+
+Before long the tide turned. The Dissenters resented the Education Act
+of 1870. A reaction in favour of Conservatism set in, which grew so
+fast that, in 1874, the general election gave, for the first time
+since 1846, a decided Conservative majority. Mr. Disraeli became again
+Prime Minister, and now a Prime Minister no longer on sufferance, but
+with the absolute command of a dominant party, rising so much above
+the rest of the Cabinet as to appear the sole author of its policy. In
+1876, feeling the weight of age, he transferred himself to the House
+of Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield. The policy he followed (from 1876
+till 1880) in the troubles which arose in the Turkish East out of the
+insurrection in Herzegovina and the massacres in Bulgaria, as well as
+that subsequently pursued in Afghanistan and in South Africa, while it
+received the enthusiastic approval of the soldiers, the stockbrokers,
+and the richer classes generally, raised no less vehement opposition
+in other sections of the nation, and especially in those two which,
+when heartily united and excited, have usually been masters of
+England--the Protestant Nonconformists and the upper part of the
+working class. An election fought with unusual heat left him in so
+decided a minority that he resigned office in April 1880, without
+waiting for an adverse vote in Parliament. When the result had become
+clear he observed, "They," meaning his friends, "will come in again,
+but I shall not." A year later he died.
+
+Here is a wonderful career, not less wonderful to those who live in
+the midst of English politics and society than it appears to observers
+in other countries. A man with few external advantages, not even that
+of education at a university, where useful friendships are formed,
+with grave positive disadvantages in his Jewish extraction and the
+vagaries of his first years of public life, presses forward, step by
+step, through slights and disappointments which retard but never
+dishearten him, assumes as of right the leadership of a party--the
+aristocratic party, the party in those days peculiarly suspicious of
+new men and poor men,--wins a reputation for sagacity which makes his
+early errors forgotten, becomes in old age the favourite of a court,
+the master of a great country, one of the three or four arbiters of
+Europe. There is here more than one problem to solve, or, at least, a
+problem with more than one aspect. What was the true character of the
+man who had sustained such a part? Did he hold any principles, or was
+he merely playing with them as counters? By what gifts or arts did he
+win such a success? Was there really a mystery beneath the wizard's
+robe which he delighted to wrap around him? And how, being so unlike
+the Englishmen among whom his lot was cast, did he so fascinate and
+rule them?
+
+Imagine a man of strong will and brilliant intellectual powers,
+belonging to an ancient and persecuted race, who finds himself born
+in a foreign country, amid a people for whose ideas and habits he
+has no sympathy and scant respect. Suppose him proud, ambitious,
+self-confident--too ambitious to rest content in a private station,
+so self-confident as to believe that he can win whatever he aspires
+to. To achieve success, he must bend his pride, must use the language
+and humour the prejudices of those he has to deal with; while his
+pride avenges itself by silent scorn or thinly disguised irony.
+Accustomed to observe things from without, he discerns the weak
+points of all political parties, the hollowness of institutions and
+watchwords, the instability of popular passion. If his imagination be
+more susceptible than his emotions, his intellect more active than
+his conscience, the isolation in which he stands and the superior
+insight it affords him may render him cold, calculating, self-centred.
+The sentiment of personal honour may remain, because his pride will
+support it; and he will be tenacious of the ideas which he has
+struck out, because they are his own. But for ordinary principles of
+conduct he may have small regard, because he has not grown up
+under the conventional morality of the time and nation, but has
+looked on it merely as a phenomenon to be recognised and reckoned
+with, because he has noted how much there is in it of unreality or
+pharisaism--how far it sometimes is from representing or expressing
+either the higher judgments of philosophy or the higher precepts of
+religion. Realising and perhaps exaggerating the power of his own
+intelligence, he will secretly revolve schemes of ambition wherein
+genius, uncontrolled by fears or by conscience, makes all things bend
+to its purposes, till the scruples and hesitations of common humanity
+seem to him only parts of men's cowardice or stupidity. What
+success he will win when he comes to carry out such schemes in
+practice will largely depend on the circumstances in which he finds
+himself, as well as on his gift for judging of them. He may become a
+Napoleon. He may fall in a premature collision with forces which
+want of sympathy has prevented him from estimating.
+
+In some of his novels, and most fully in the first of them, Mr.
+Disraeli sketched a character and foreshadowed a career not altogether
+unlike that which has just been indicated. It would be unfair to treat
+as autobiographical, though some of his critics have done so, the
+picture of Vivian Grey. What that singular book shows is that, at an
+age when his contemporaries were lads at college, absorbed in cricket
+matches or Latin verse-making, Disraeli had already meditated
+profoundly on the conditions and methods of worldly success, had
+rejected the allurements of pleasure and the attractions of
+literature, as well as the ideal life of philosophy, had conceived of
+a character isolated, ambitious, intense, resolute, untrammelled by
+scruples, who moulds men to his purposes by the sheer force of his
+intellect, humouring their foibles, using their weaknesses, and luring
+them into his chosen path by the bait of self-interest.
+
+To lay stress on the fact that Mr. Disraeli was of Hebrew birth is
+not, though some of his political antagonists stooped so to use it, to
+cast any reproach upon him: it is only to note a fact of the utmost
+importance for a proper comprehension of his position. The Jews were
+at the beginning of the nineteenth century still foreigners in
+England, not only on account of their religion, with its mass of
+ancient rites and usages, but also because they were filled with the
+memory of centuries of persecution, and perceived that in some parts
+of Europe the old spirit of hatred had not died out. The antiquity of
+their race, their sense of its long-suffering and isolation, their
+pride in the intellectual achievements of those ancestors whose blood,
+not largely mixed with that of any other race, flows in their veins,
+lead the stronger or more reflective spirits to revenge themselves by
+a kind of scorn upon the upstart Western peoples among whom their lot
+is cast. The mockery one finds in Heinrich Heine could not have come
+from a Teuton. Even while imitating, as the wealthier of them have
+latterly begun to imitate, the manners and luxury of those nominal
+Christians among whom they live, they retain their feeling of
+detachment, and are apt to regard with a coldly observant curiosity
+the beliefs, prejudices, enthusiasms of the nations of Europe. The
+same passionate intensity which makes the grandeur of the ancient
+Hebrew literature still lives among them, though often narrowed by
+ages of oppression, and gives them the peculiar effectiveness that
+comes from turning all the powers of the mind, imaginative as well as
+reasoning, into a single channel, be that channel what it may. They
+produce, in proportion to their numbers, an unusually large number of
+able and successful men, as any one may prove by recounting the
+eminent Jews of the last seventy years. This success has most often
+been won in practical life, in commerce, or at the bar, or in the
+press (which over the European continent they so largely control); yet
+often also in the higher walks of literature or science, less
+frequently in art, most frequently in music.
+
+Mr. Disraeli had three of these characteristics of his race in
+full measure--detachment, intensity, the passion for material success.
+Nature gave him a resolute will, a keen and precociously active
+intellect, a vehement individuality; that is to say, a consciousness
+of his own powers, and a determination to make them recognised by
+his fellows. In some men, the passion to succeed is clogged by the
+fear of failure; in others, the sense of their greatness is
+self-sufficing and indisposes them to effort. But with him ambition
+spurred self-confidence, and self-confidence justified ambition. He
+grew up in a cultivated home, familiar not only with books but with
+the brightest and most polished men and women of the day, whose
+conversation sharpened his wits almost from childhood. No religious
+influences worked upon him, for his father had ceased to be a Jew in
+faith without becoming even nominally a Christian, and there is little
+in his writings to show that he had ever felt anything more than
+an imaginative, or what may be called an historical, interest in
+religion.[4] Thus his development was purely intellectual. The society
+he moved in was a society of men and women of the world--witty,
+superficial in its interests, without seriousness or reverence. He
+felt himself no Englishman, and watched English life and politics as a
+student of natural history might watch the habits of bees or ants.
+English society was then, and perhaps is still, more complex, more
+full of inconsistencies, of contrasts between theory and practice,
+between appearances and realities, than that of any other country.
+Nowhere so much limitation of view among the fashionable, so much
+pharisaism among the respectable, so much vulgarity among the rich,
+mixed with so much real earnestness, benevolence, and good sense;
+nowhere, therefore, so much to seem merely ridiculous to one who
+looked at it from without, wanting the sympathy which comes from the
+love of mankind, or even from the love of one's country. It was
+natural for a young man with Disraeli's gifts to mock at what he
+saw. But he would not sit still in mere contempt. The thirst for
+power and fame gave him no rest. He must gain what he saw every one
+around him struggling for. He must triumph over these people whose
+follies amused him; and the sense that he perceived and could use
+their follies would add zest to his triumph. He might have been a
+great satirist; he resolved to become a great statesman. For such a
+career, his Hebrew detachment gave him some eminent advantages. It
+enabled him to take a cooler and more scientific view of the social
+and political phenomena he had to deal with. He was not led astray
+by party cries. He did not share vulgar prejudices. He calculated
+the forces at work as an engineer calculates the strength of his
+materials, the strain they have to bear from the wind, and the weights
+they must support. And what he had to plan was not the success of a
+cause, which might depend on a thousand things out of his ken, but his
+own success, a simpler matter.
+
+A still greater source of strength lay in his Hebrew intensity. It
+would have pleased him, so full of pride in the pure blood of his
+race,[5] to attribute to that purity the singular power of concentration
+which the Jews undoubtedly possess. They have the faculty of throwing
+the whole stress of their natures into the pursuit of one object,
+fixing their eyes on it alone, sacrificing to it other desires,
+clinging to it even when it seems unattainable. Disraeli was only
+twenty-eight when he made his first attempt to enter the House of
+Commons. Four repulses did not discourage him, though his means were
+but scanty to support such contests; and the fifth time he
+succeeded. When his first speech in Parliament had been received with
+laughter, and politicians were congratulating themselves that this
+adventurer had found his level, he calmly told them that he had
+always ended by succeeding in whatever he attempted, and that he
+would succeed in this too. He received no help from his own side, who
+regarded him with suspicion, but forced himself into prominence, and at
+last to leadership, by his complete superiority to rebuffs. Through
+the long years in which he had to make head against a majority in the
+House of Commons, he never seemed disheartened by his repeated
+defeats, never relaxed the vigilance with which he watched his
+adversaries, never indulged himself (though he was physically
+indolent and often in poor health) by staying away from Parliament,
+even when business was slack; never missed an opportunity for exposing
+a blunder of his adversaries, or commending the good service of one of
+his own followers. The same curious tenacity was apparent in his
+ideas. Before he was twenty-two years of age he had, under the
+inspiration of Bolingbroke, excogitated a theory of the Constitution of
+England, of the way England should be governed at home and her
+policy directed abroad, from which he hardly swerved through all his
+later life. Often as he was accused of inconsistency, he probably
+believed himself to be, and in a sense he was, substantially faithful,
+I will not say to the same doctrines, but to the same notions or
+tendencies; and one could discover from the phrases he employed how
+he fancied himself to be really following out these old notions, even
+when his conduct seemed opposed to the traditions of his party.[6] The
+weakness of intense minds is their tendency to narrowness, and this
+weakness was in so far his that, while always ready for new
+expedients, he was not accessible to new ideas. Indeed, the old ideas
+were too much a part of himself, stamped with his own individuality, to
+be forsaken or even varied. He did not love knowledge, nor enjoy
+speculation for its own sake; he valued views as they pleased his
+imagination or as they carried practical results with them; and having
+framed his theory once for all and worked steadily upon its lines, he
+was not the man to admit that it had been defective, and to set
+himself in later life to repair it. His pride was involved in proving
+it correct by applying it.
+
+With this resolute concentration of purpose there went an undaunted
+courage--a quality less rare among English statesmen, but eminently
+laudable in him, because for great part of his career he had no family
+or party connections to back him up, but was obliged to face the world
+with nothing but his own self-confidence. So far from seeking to
+conceal his Jewish origin, he displayed his pride in it, and refused
+all support to the efforts which the Tory party made to maintain the
+exclusion of Jews from Parliament. Nobody showed more self-possession
+and (except on two or three occasions) more perfect self-command in
+the hot strife of Parliament than this suspected stranger. His
+opponents learnt to fear one who never feared for himself; his
+followers knew that their chief would not fail them in the hour of
+danger. His very face and bearing had in them an impassive calmness
+which magnetised those who watched him. He liked to surround himself
+with mystery, to pose as remote, majestic, self-centred, to appear
+above the need of a confidant. He would sit for hours on his bench in
+the House of Commons, listening with eyes half-shut to furious
+assaults on himself and his policy, not showing by the movement of a
+muscle that he had felt a wound; and when he rose to reply would
+discharge his sarcasms with an air of easy coolness. That this
+indifference was sometimes simulated appeared by the resentment he
+showed afterwards.
+
+Ambition such as his could not afford to be scrupulous, nor have his
+admirers ever claimed conscientiousness as one of his merits. One who
+sets power and fame before him as the main ends to be pursued may no
+doubt be restrained by pride from the use of such means as are
+obviously low and dishonourable. Other questionable means he may
+reject because he knows that the opinion of those whose good-will and
+good word he must secure would condemn them. But he will not be likely
+to allow kindliness or compassion to stand in his way; nor will he be
+very regardful of truth. To a statesman, who must necessarily have
+many facts in his knowledge, or many plans in his mind, which the
+interests of his colleagues, or of his party, or of the nation, forbid
+him to reveal, the temptation to put questioners on a false scent, and
+to seem to agree where he really dissents, is at all times a strong
+one. An honest man may sometimes be betrayed into yielding to it; and
+those who know how difficult are the cases of conscience that arise
+will not deal harshly with a possibly misleading silence, or even with
+the evasion of an embarrassing inquiry, where a real public interest
+can be pleaded, for the existence of such a public interest, if it
+does not justify, may palliate omissions to make a full disclosure of
+the facts. All things considered, the standard of truthfulness among
+English public men has (of course with some conspicuous exceptions)
+been a high one. Of that standard Disraeli fell short. People did not
+take his word for a thing as they would have taken the word of the
+Duke of Wellington, or Lord Althorp, or Lord Derby, or Lord Russell,
+or even of that not very rigid moralist, Lord Palmerston. Instances of
+his lapses were not wanting as late as 1877. His behaviour toward Sir
+Robert Peel, whom he plied with every dart of sarcasm, after having
+shortly before lavished praises on him, and sought office under him,
+has often been commented on.[7] Disraeli was himself (as those who
+knew him have often stated) accustomed to justify it by observing that
+he was then an insignificant personage, to whom it was supremely
+important to attract public notice and make a political position; that
+the opportunity of attacking the powerful Prime Minister, at a moment
+when their altered attitude towards the Corn Laws had exposed the
+Ministry to the suspicions of their own party, was too good to be
+lost; and that he was therefore obliged to assail Peel, though he had
+himself no particular attachment to the Corn Laws, and believed Peel
+to have been a _bona-fide_ convert. It was therefore no personal
+resentment against one who had slighted him, but merely the exigencies
+of his own career, that drove him to this course, whose fortunate
+result proved the soundness of his calculations.
+
+This defence will not surprise any one who is familiar with Disraeli's
+earlier novels. These stories are as far as possible from being
+immoral; that is to say, there is nothing in them unbecoming or
+corrupting. Friendship, patriotism, love, are all recognised as
+powerful and worthy motives of conduct. That which is wanting is the
+sense of right and wrong. His personages have for certain purposes the
+conventional sense of honour, though seldom a fine sense, but they do
+not ask whether such and such a course is conformable to principle.
+They move in a world which is polished, agreeable, dignified, averse
+to baseness and vulgarity, but in which conscience and religion
+scarcely seem to exist. The men live for pleasure or fame, the women
+for pleasure or love.
+
+Some allowance must, of course, be made for the circumstances of
+Disraeli's position and early training. He was brought up neither a
+Jew nor a Christian. The elder people who took him by the hand when he
+entered life, people like Samuel Rogers and Lady Blessington, were not
+the people to give lessons in morality. Lord Lyndhurst, the first of
+his powerful political friends, and the man whose example most
+affected him, was, with all his splendid gifts, conspicuously wanting
+in political principle. Add to this the isolation in which the young
+man found himself, standing outside the common stream of English life,
+not sharing its sentiments, perceiving the hollowness of much that
+passed for virtue and patriotism, and it is easy to understand how he
+should have been as perfect a cynic at twenty-five as their experience
+of the world makes many at sixty. If he had loved truth or mankind, he
+might have quickly worked through his youthful cynicism. But pride and
+ambition, the pride of race and the pride of genius, left no room for
+these sentiments. Nor was his cynicism the fruit merely of a keen and
+sceptical intelligence. It came from a cold heart.
+
+The pursuit of fame and power, to which he gave all his efforts, is
+presented in his writings as the only alternative ideal to a life of
+pleasure; and he probably regarded those who pursued some other as
+either fools or weaklings. Early in his political life he said one
+night to Mr. Bright (from whom I heard the anecdote), as they took
+their umbrellas in the cloak-room of the House of Commons: "After all,
+what is it that brings you and me here? Fame! This is the true arena.
+I might have occupied a literary throne; but I have renounced it for
+this career." The external pomps and trappings of life, titles,
+stately houses and far-spreading parks, all those gauds and vanities
+with which sumptuous wealth surrounds itself, had throughout his life
+a singular fascination for him. He liked to mock at them in his
+novels, but they fascinated him none the less. One can understand how
+they might fire the imagination of an ambitious youth who saw them
+from a distance--might even retain their charm for one who was just
+struggling into the society which possessed them, and who desired to
+feel himself the equal of the possessors. It is stranger that, when he
+had harnessed the English aristocracy to his chariot, and was driving
+them where he pleased, he should have continued to admire such things.
+So, however, it was. There was even in him a vein of inordinate
+deference to rank and wealth which would in a less eminent person have
+been called snobbishness. In his will he directs that his estate of
+Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire, shall pass under an entail as
+strict as he could devise, that the person who succeeds to it shall
+always bear the name of Disraeli. His ambition is the common, not to
+say vulgar, ambition of the English _parvenu_, to found a "county
+family." In his story of _Endymion_, published a few months before his
+death, the hero, starting from small beginnings, ends by becoming
+prime minister: this is the crown of his career, the noblest triumph
+an Englishman can achieve. It might have been thought that one who had
+been through it all, who had realised the dreams of his boyhood, who
+had every opportunity of learning what power and fame come to, would
+have liked to set forth some other conception of the end of human
+life, or would not have told the world so naively of his self-content
+at having attained the aim he had worked for. With most men the flower
+they have plucked withers. It might have been expected that one who
+was in other things an ironical cynic would at least have sought to
+seem disillusionised.
+
+To say that Disraeli's heart was somewhat cold is by no means to say
+that he was heartless. He was one of those strong natures who
+permit neither persons nor principles to stand in their way. His
+doctrine was that politics had nothing to do with sentiment; so those
+who appealed to him on grounds of humanity appealed in vain. No act
+of his life ever so much offended English opinion as the airy
+fashion in which he tossed aside the news of the Bulgarian massacre of
+1876. It incensed sections who were strong enough, when thoroughly
+roused, to bring about his fall. But he was far from being unkindly.
+He knew how to attach men to him by friendly deeds as well as
+friendly words. He seldom missed an opportunity of saying something
+pleasant and cheering to a _débutant_ in Parliament, whether of his
+own party or the opposite. He was not selfish in little things; was
+always ready to consider the comfort and convenience of those who
+surrounded him. Age and success, so far from making him morose or
+supercilious, softened the asperities of his character and developed
+the affectionate side of it. His last novel, published a few months
+before his death, contains more human kindliness, a fuller
+recognition of the worth of friendship and the beauty of sisterly
+and conjugal love, than do the writings of his earlier manhood.
+What it wants in intellectual power it makes up for in a mellower and
+more tender tone. Of loyalty to his political friends he was a
+model, and nothing did more to secure his command of the party than
+its sense that his professional honour, so to speak, could be
+implicitly relied upon. To his wife, a warm-hearted woman older than
+himself, and inferior to him in education, he was uniformly
+affectionate and indeed devoted. The first use he made of his
+power as Prime Minister was to procure for her the title of
+viscountess. Being once asked point blank by a lady what he thought
+of his life-long opponent, Mr. Gladstone answered that two things
+had always struck him as very admirable in Lord Beaconsfield's
+character--his perfect loyalty to his wife, and his perfect
+loyalty to his own race. A story used to be told how, in Disraeli's
+earlier days, when his political position was still far from
+assured, he and his wife happened to be the guests of the chief of
+the party, and that chief so far forgot good manners as to quiz Mrs.
+Disraeli at the dinner-table. Next morning Disraeli, whose visit
+was to have lasted for some days longer, announced that he must
+leave immediately. The host besought him to stay, and made all
+possible apologies. But Disraeli was inexorable, and carried off his
+wife forthwith. To literary men, whatever their opinions, he was
+ready to give a helping hand, representing himself as one of their
+profession. In paying compliments he was singularly expert, and few
+used the art so well to win friends and disarm enemies. He knew
+how to please Englishmen, and especially the young, by showing
+interest in their tastes and pleasures, and, without being what
+would be called genial, was never wanting in _bonhomie_. In
+society he was a perfect man of the world--told his anecdote apropos,
+wound up a discussion by some epigrammatic phrase, talked to the
+guest next him, if he thought that guest's position made him worth
+talking to, as he would to an old acquaintance. But he had few
+intimates; nor did his apparent frankness unveil his real thoughts.
+
+He was not of those who complicate political opposition with private
+hatreds. Looking on politics as a game, he liked, when he took off his
+armour, to feel himself on friendly terms with his antagonists, and
+often seemed surprised to find that they remembered as personal
+affronts the blows which he had dealt in the tournament. Two or three
+years before his death, a friend asked him whether there was in London
+any one with whom he would not shake hands. Reflecting for a moment,
+he answered, "Only one," and named Robert Lowe, who had said hard
+things of him, and to whom, when Lowe was on one occasion in his
+power, he had behaved with cruelty. Yet his resentments could smoulder
+long. In _Lothair_ he attacked, under a thin disguise, a distinguished
+man of letters who had criticised his conduct years before. In
+_Endymion_ he gratified what was evidently an ancient grudge by a
+spiteful presentation of Thackeray, as he had indulged his more bitter
+dislike of John Wilson Croker by portraying that politician in
+_Coningsby_ under the name of Nicholas Rigby. For the greatest of his
+adversaries he felt, there is reason to believe, genuine admiration,
+mingled with inability to comprehend a nature so unlike his own. No
+passage in the striking speech which that adversary pronounced, one
+might almost say, over Lord Beaconsfield's grave--a speech which may
+possibly go down to posterity with its subject--was more impressive
+than the sentence in which he declared that he had the best reason to
+believe that, in their constant warfare, Lord Beaconsfield had not
+been actuated by any personal hostility. Brave men, if they can
+respect, seldom dislike, a formidable antagonist.
+
+His mental powers were singularly well suited to the rest of his
+character--were, so to speak, all of a piece with it. One sometimes
+sees intellects which are out of keeping with the active or emotional
+parts of the man. One sees persons whose thought is vigorous, clear,
+comprehensive, while their conduct is timid; or a comparatively
+narrow intelligence joined to an enterprising spirit; or a sober,
+reflective, sceptical turn of mind yoked to an ardent and impulsive
+temperament. What we call the follies of the wise often spring from
+some such source. Not so with him. His intelligence had the same
+boldness, intensity, concentration, directness, which we discover in
+the rest of the man. It was just the right instrument, not perhaps for
+the normal career of a normal Englishman seeking political success,
+but for the particular kind of work Disraeli had planned to do; and
+this inner harmony was one of the chief causes of his success, as the
+want of it has caused the failure of so many gifted natures.
+
+The range of his mind was not wide. All its products were like one
+another. No one of them gives the impression that Disraeli could, had
+he so wished, have succeeded in a wholly diverse line. It was a
+peculiar mind: there is even more variety in minds than in faces. It
+was not logical or discursive, liking to mass and arrange stores of
+knowledge, and draw inferences from them, nor was it judicial, with a
+turn for weighing reasons and reaching a decision which recognises all
+the facts and is not confused by their seeming contradictions. Neither
+was it analytically subtle. It reached its conclusions by a process of
+intuition or divination in which there was an imaginative as well as a
+reflective element. It might almost have been called an artist's mind,
+capable of deep meditation, but meditating in an imaginative way, not
+so much on facts as on its own views of facts, on the pictures which
+its own creative faculty had called up. The meditation became dreamy,
+but the dreaminess was corrected by an exceedingly keen and quick
+power of observation, not the scientific observation of the
+philosopher, but rather the enjoying observation of the artist who
+sees how he can use the characteristic details which he notes, or the
+observation of the forensic advocate (an artist, too, in his way) who
+perceives how they can be fitted into the presentation of his case.
+There are, of course, other qualities in Disraeli's work. As a
+statesman he was obliged to learn how to state facts, to argue, to
+dissect an opponent's arguments. But the characteristic note, both of
+his speeches and of his writings, is the combination of a few large
+ideas, clear, perhaps, to himself, but generally expressed with
+grandiose vagueness, and often quite out of relation to the facts as
+other people saw them, with a turn for acutely fastening upon small
+incidents or personal traits. In his speeches he used his command of
+sonorous phrases and lively illustrations, sometimes to support the
+views he was advancing, but more frequently to conceal the weakness of
+those views; that is, to make up for the absence of such solid
+arguments as were likely to move his hearers. Everybody is now and
+then conscious of holding with assured conviction theories which he
+would find it hard to prove to a given audience, partly because it is
+too much trouble to trace out the process by which they were reached,
+partly because uninstructed listeners could not be made to feel the
+full cogency of the considerations on which his own mind relies.
+Disraeli was usually in this condition with regard to his political
+and social doctrines. He believed them, but as he had not reached them
+by logic, he was not prepared to use logic to establish them; so he
+picked up some plausible illustration, or attacked the opposite
+doctrine and its supporters with a fire of raillery or invective. This
+non-ratiocinative quality of his thinking was a source both of
+strength and of weakness--of weakness, because he could not prove his
+propositions; of strength, because, stated as he stated them, it was
+not less hard to disprove them. That mark of a superior mind, that it
+must have a theory, was never wanting. Some one said of him that he
+was "the ruins of a thinker." He could not rest content, like many
+among his followers, with a prejudice, a dogma delivered by tradition,
+a stolid suspicion unamenable to argument. He would not acquiesce in
+negation. He must have a theory, a positive theory, to show not only
+that his antagonist's view was erroneous, but that he had himself a
+more excellent way. These theories generally had in them a measure of
+truth and value for any one who could analyse them; but as this was
+exactly what the rank and file of the party could not do, they got
+into sad confusion when they tried to talk his language.
+
+He could hardly be called a well-read man, nor were his intellectual
+interests numerous. His education had consisted mainly in promiscuous
+reading during boyhood and early youth. There are worse kinds of
+education for an active intelligence than to let it have the run of a
+large library. The wild browsings of youth, when curiosity is strong
+as hunger, stir the mind and give the memory some of the best food it
+ever gets. The weak point of such a method is that it does not teach
+accuracy nor the art of systematic study. In middle life natural
+indolence and his political occupations had kept Disraeli from filling
+up the gaps in his knowledge, while, in conversation, what he liked
+best was persiflage. He was, however, tolerably familiar with the
+ancient classics, and with modern English and French literature;
+enjoyed Quintilian and Lucian, preferred Sophocles to Æschylus and
+(apparently) Horace to Virgil, despised Browning, considered Tennyson
+the best of contemporary poets, but "not a poet of a high order."[8]
+Physical science seems never to have attracted him. Political economy
+he hated and mocked at almost as heartily as did Carlyle. People have
+measured his knowledge of history and geography by observing that he
+placed the Crucifixion in the lifetime of Augustus, and thought, down
+till 1878, when he had to make a speech about Afghanistan, that the
+Andes were the highest mountains in the world. But geography is a
+subject which a man of affairs does not think of reading up in later
+life: he is content if he can get information when he needs it. There
+are some bits of metaphysics and some historical allusions scattered
+over his novels, but these are mostly slight or superficial. He amused
+himself and the public by now and then propounding doctrines on
+agricultural matters, but would not appear to have mastered either
+husbandry or any other economical or commercial subject. Such things
+were not in his way. He had been so little in office as not to have
+been forced to apply himself to them, while the tide of pure
+intellectual curiosity had long since ebbed.
+
+For so-called "sports" he had little taste. He liked to go mooning in
+a meditative way round his fields and copses, and he certainly enjoyed
+Nature; but there seems to be no solid evidence that the primrose was
+his favourite flower. In his fondness for particular words and phrases
+there was a touch of his artistic quality, and a touch also of the
+cynical view that words are the counters with which the wise play
+their game. There is a passage in _Contarini Fleming_ (a story into
+which he has put a good deal of himself) where this is set out.
+Contarini tells his father that he left college "because they taught
+me only words, and I wished to learn ideas." His father answers, "Few
+ideas are correct ones, and what are correct, no one can ascertain;
+but with words we govern men."
+
+He went on acting on this belief in the power of words till he
+became the victim of his own phrases, just as people who talk
+cynically for effect grow sometimes into real cynics. When he had
+invented a phrase which happily expressed the aspect he wished his
+view, or some part of his policy, to bear, he came to believe in
+the phrase, and to think that the facts were altered by the colour
+the phrase put upon them. During the contest for the extension of
+the parliamentary franchise, he declared himself "in favour of
+popular privileges, but opposed to democratic rights." When he was
+accused of having assented, at the Congress of Berlin, to the
+dismemberment of the Turkish Empire, he said that what had been done
+was "not dismemberment, but consolidation." No statesman of recent
+times has given currency to so many quasi-epigrammatic expressions:
+"organised hypocrisy," "England dislikes coalitions," "plundering and
+blundering," "peace with honour," "_imperium et libertas_," "a
+scientific frontier," "I am on the side of the angels," are a few,
+not perhaps the best, though the best remembered, of the many which
+issued from his fertile mint. This turn for epigram, not common in
+England, sometimes led him into scrapes which would have damaged a man
+of less imperturbable coolness. No one else could have ventured to
+say, when he had induced the Tories to pass a Reform Bill stronger
+than the one they had rejected from the Liberals in the preceding
+year, that it had been his mission "to educate his party." Some of
+his opponents professed to be shocked by such audacity, and many
+old Tories privily gnashed their teeth. But the country received the
+dictum in the spirit in which it was spoken. "It was Disraeli all
+over."
+
+If his intellect was not of wide range, it was within its range a
+weapon of the finest flexibility and temper. It was ingenious, ready,
+incisive. It detected in a moment the weak point, if not of an
+argument, yet of an attitude or of a character. Its imaginative
+quality made it often picturesque, sometimes even impressive. Disraeli
+had the artist's delight in a situation for its own sake, and what
+people censured as insincerity or frivolity was frequently only the
+zest which he felt in posing, not so much because there was anything
+to be gained, as because he realised his aptitude for improvising a
+new part in the drama which he always felt himself to be playing. The
+humour of the situation was too good to be wasted. Perhaps this love
+of merry mischief may have had something to do with his tendency to
+confer honours on those whom the world thought least deserving.
+
+His books are not only a valuable revelation of his mind, but have
+more literary merit than critics have commonly allowed to them,
+perhaps because we are apt, when a man excels in one walk, to deem
+him to have failed in any other wherein he does not reach the same
+level. The novels foam over with cleverness; indeed, _Vivian Grey_,
+with all its youthful faults, gives as great an impression of
+intellectual brilliance as does anything Disraeli ever wrote or spoke.
+Their easy fertility makes them seem to be only, so to speak, a few
+sketches out of a large portfolio. There is some variety in the
+subjects--_Contarini Fleming_ and _Tancred_ are more romantic than the
+others, _Sybil_ and _Coningsby_ more political--as well as in the
+merits of the stories. The two latest, _Lothair_ and _Endymion_,
+works of his old age, are markedly inferior in spirit and invention;
+but the general features are the same in all--a lively fancy, a knack
+of hitting characters off in a few lines and of catching the
+superficial aspects of society, a brisk narrative, a sprightly
+dialogue, a keen insight into the selfishness of men and the vanities
+of women, with flashes of wit lighting up the whole stage. It is
+always a stage. The brilliance is never open-air sunshine. There is
+scarcely one of the characters whom we feel we might have met and
+known. Heroes and heroines are theatrical figures; their pathos
+rings false, their love, though described as passionate, does not
+spring from the inner recesses of the soul. The studies of men of
+the world, and particularly of heartless ones, are the most
+life-like; yet, even here, any one who wants to feel the difference
+between the great painter and the clever sketcher need only
+compare Thackeray's Marquis of Steyne with Disraeli's Marquis of
+Monmouth, both of them suggested by the same original. There is
+little intensity, little dramatic power in these stories, as also in
+his play of _Alarcos_; and if we read them with pleasure it is not
+for the sake either of plot or of character, but because they contain
+so many sparkling witticisms and reflections, setting in a strong
+light, yet not always an unkindly light, the seamy side of politics
+and human nature. The slovenliness of their style, which is often
+pompous, but seldom pure, makes them appear to have been written
+hastily. But Disraeli seems to have taken the composition of them
+(except, perhaps, the two latest) quite seriously. When he wrote the
+earlier tales, he meant to achieve literary greatness; while the
+middle ones, especially _Coningsby_ and _Sybil_, were designed as
+political manifestoes. The less they have a purpose or profess to
+be serious, the better they are; and the most vivacious of all are
+two classical burlesques, written at a time when that kind of
+composition had not yet become common--_Ixion in Heaven_ and _The
+Infernal Marriage_--little pieces of funning worthy of Thackeray, I
+had almost said of Voltaire. They recall, perhaps they were
+suggested by, similar pieces of Lucian's. Is Semitic genius specially
+rich in this mocking vein? Lucian was a Syrian from Samosata,
+probably a Semite; Heinrich Heine was a Semite; James Russell
+Lowell used to insist, though he produced little evidence for his
+belief, that Voltaire was a Semite.
+
+Whether Disraeli could ever have taken high rank as a novelist if he
+had thrown himself completely into the profession may be doubted,
+for his defects were such as pains and practice would hardly have
+lessened. That he had still less the imagination needed by a poet, his
+_Revolutionary Epick_, conceived on the plains of Troy, and meant
+to make a fourth to the _Iliad_, the _Æneid_, and the _Divina
+Commedia_, is enough to show. The literary vocation he was best
+fitted for was that of a journalist or pamphleteer; and in this he
+might have won unrivalled success. His dash, his verve, his
+brilliancy of illustration, his scorching satire, would have made
+the fortune of any newspaper, and carried dismay into the enemy's
+ranks.
+
+In inquiring how far the gifts I have sought to describe qualified
+Disraeli for practical statesmanship, it is well to distinguish the
+different kinds of capacity which an English politician needs to
+attain the highest place. They may be said to be four. He must be a
+debater. He must be a parliamentary tactician. He must understand the
+country. He must understand Europe. This last is, indeed, not always
+necessary; there have been moments when England, leaving Europe to
+itself, may look to her own affairs only; but when the sky grows
+stormy over Europe, the want of knowledge which English statesmen
+sometimes evince may bode disaster.
+
+An orator, in the highest sense of the word, Disraeli never was. He
+lacked ease and fluency. He had not Pitt's turn for the lucid
+exposition of complicated facts, nor for the conduct of a close
+argument. The sustained and fiery declamation of Fox was equally
+beyond his range. And least of all had he that truest index of
+eloquence, the power of touching the emotions. He could not make his
+hearers weep. But he could make them laugh; he could put them in
+good-humour with themselves; he could dazzle them with rhetoric; he
+could pour upon an opponent streams of ridicule more effective than
+the hottest indignation. When he sought to be profound or solemn, he
+was usually heavy and laboured--the sublimity often false, the diction
+often stilted. For wealth of thought or splendour of language his
+speeches will not bear to be compared--I will not say with those of
+Burke (on whom he sometimes tried to model himself), but with those of
+three or four of his own contemporaries. Even within his own party,
+Lord Derby, Lord Ellenborough, and Lord Cairns in their several ways
+surpassed him. There is not one of his longer and more finished
+harangues which can be read with interest from beginning to end. But
+there is hardly any among them which does not contain some striking
+passage, some image or epigram, or burst of sarcasm, which must have
+been exceedingly effective when delivered. It is partly upon these
+isolated passages, especially the sarcastic ones (though the
+witticisms were sometimes borrowed), and still more upon the aptness
+of the speech to the circumstances under which it was made, that his
+parliamentary fame rests. If he was not a great orator he was a superb
+debater, who watched with the utmost care the temper of the audience,
+and said just what was needed at the moment to disconcert an opponent
+or to put heart into his friends. His repartees were often happy, and
+must sometimes have been unpremeditated. As he had not the ardent
+temperament of the born orator, so neither had he the external
+advantages which count for much before large assemblies. His voice was
+not remarkable either for range or for quality. His manner was
+somewhat stiff, his gestures few, his countenance inexpressive. Yet
+his delivery was not wanting in skill, and often added point, by its
+cool unconcern, to a stinging epigram.
+
+What he lacked in eloquence he made up for by tactical adroitness. No
+more consummate parliamentary strategist has been seen in England. He
+had studied the House of Commons till he knew it as a player knows his
+instrument--studied it collectively, for it has a collective
+character, and studied the men who compose it: their worse rather than
+their better side, their prejudices, their foibles, their vanities,
+their ambitions, their jealousies, above all, that curious corporate
+pride which they have, and which makes them resent any approach to
+dictation. He could play on every one of these strings, and yet so as
+to conceal his skill; and he so economised himself as to make them
+always wish to hear him. He knew how in a body of men obliged to
+listen to talk, and most of it tedious talk, about matters in
+themselves mostly uninteresting, the desire for a little amusement
+becomes almost a passion; and he humoured this desire so far as
+occasionally to err by excess of banter and flippancy. Almost always
+respectful to the House, he had a happy knack of appearing to follow
+rather than to lead, and when he made an official statement it was
+with the air of one who was taking them into his confidence. Much of
+this he may have learned from observing Lord Palmerston; but the art
+came more naturally to that statesman, who was an Englishman all
+through, than to a man of Mr. Disraeli's origin, who looked on
+Englishmen from outside, and never felt himself, so to speak,
+responsible for their habits or ideas.
+
+As leader of his party in Opposition, he was at once daring and
+cautious. He never feared to give battle, even when he expected
+defeat, if he deemed it necessary, with a view to the future, that the
+judgment of his party should have been pronounced in a formal way. On
+the other hand, he was wary of committing himself to a policy of blind
+or obstinate resistance. When he perceived that the time had come to
+yield, he knew how to yield with a good grace, so as both to support a
+character for reasonableness and to obtain valuable concessions as the
+price of peace. If difficulties arose with foreign countries he
+claimed full liberty of criticising the conduct of the Ministry, but
+ostentatiously abstained from obstructing or thwarting their acts,
+declaring that England must always present a united front to the
+foreigner, whatever penalties she might afterwards visit on those who
+had mismanaged her concerns. As regards the inner discipline of his
+party, he had enormous difficulties to surmount in the jealousy which
+many Tories felt for him as a new man, a man whom they could not
+understand and only partially trusted.[9] Conspiracies were repeatedly
+formed against him; malcontents attacked him in the press, and
+sometimes even in Parliament. These he seldom noticed, maintaining a
+cool and self-confident demeanour which disheartened the plotters, and
+discharging the duties of his post with steady assiduity. He was
+always on the look-out for young men of promise, drew them towards
+him, encouraged them to help him in parliamentary sharp-shooting, and
+fostered in every way the spirit of party. The bad side of that spirit
+was seen when he came into office, for then every post in the public
+service was bestowed either by mere favouritism or on party grounds;
+and men who had been loyal to him were rewarded by places or titles to
+which they had no other claim. But the unity and martial fervour of
+the Tory party was raised to the highest point. Nor was Disraeli
+himself personally unpopular with his parliamentary opponents, even
+when he was most hotly attacked on the platform and in the press.
+
+To know England and watch the shifting currents of its opinion is a
+very different matter from knowing the House of Commons. Indeed, the
+two kinds of knowledge are in a measure incompatible. Men who enter
+Parliament soon begin to forget that it is not, in the last resort,
+Parliament that governs, but the people. Absorbed in the daily
+contests of their Chamber, they over-estimate the importance of those
+contests. They come to think that Parliament is in fact what it is in
+theory, a microcosm of the nation, and that opinion inside is sure to
+reflect the opinion outside. When they are in a minority they are
+depressed; when they are in a majority they fancy that all is well,
+forgetting their masters out-of-doors. This tendency is aggravated by
+the fact that the English Parliament meets in the capital, where the
+rich and luxurious congregate and give their tone to society. The
+House of Commons, though many of its members belong to the middle
+class by origin, belongs practically to the upper class by sympathy,
+and is prone to believe that what it hears every evening at dinners or
+receptions is what the country is thinking. A member of the House of
+Commons is, therefore, ill-placed for feeling the pulse of the nation,
+and in order to do so must know what is being said over the country,
+and must frequently visit or communicate with his constituents. If
+this difficulty is experienced by an ordinary private member, it is
+greater for a minister whose time is filled by official duties, or for
+a leader of Opposition, who has to be constantly thinking of his
+tactics in the House. In Disraeli's case there was a keenness of
+observation and discernment far beyond the common. But he was under
+the disadvantages of not being really an Englishman, and of having
+never lived among the people.[10] The detachment I have already
+referred to tended to weaken his power of judging popular sentiment,
+and appraising at their true value the various tendencies that sway
+and divide a nation so complex as the English. Early in life he had
+formed theories about the relations of the different classes of
+English society--nobility, gentry, capitalists, workmen, peasantry,
+and the middle classes--theories which were far from containing the
+whole truth; and he adhered to them even when the changes of half a
+century had made them less true. He had a great aversion, not to say
+contempt, for Puritanism, and for the Dissenters among whom it chiefly
+holds its ground, and pleased himself with the notion that the
+extension of the suffrage which he carried in 1867 had destroyed their
+political power. The Conservative victory at the election of 1874
+confirmed him in this belief, and made him also think that the working
+classes were ready to follow the lead of the rich. He perceived that
+the Liberal ministry of 1868-74 had offended certain influential
+sections by appearing too demiss or too unenterprising in foreign
+affairs, and fancied that the bulk of the nation would be dazzled by a
+warlike mien, and an active, even aggressive, foreign policy. Such a
+policy was congenial to his own ideas, and to the society that
+surrounded him. It was applauded by some largely circulated newspapers
+which had previously been unfriendly to the Tory party. Thus he was
+more surprised than any other man of similar experience to find the
+nation sending up a larger majority against him in 1880 than it had
+sent up for him in 1874. This was the most striking instance of his
+miscalculation. But he had all through his career an imperfect
+comprehension of the English people. Individuals, or even an assembly,
+may be understood by dint of close and long-continued observation; but
+to understand a whole nation, one must also have sympathy, and this
+his circumstances, not less than his character, had denied him.
+
+It was partly the same defect that prevented him from mastering the
+general politics of Europe. There is a sense in which no single man
+can pretend to understand Europe. Bismarck himself did not. The
+problem is too vast, the facts to be known too numerous, the
+undercurrents too varying. One can speak only of more or less. If
+Europe had been in his time what it was a century before, Disraeli
+would have had a far better chance of being fit to become what it was
+probably his dearest wish to become--its guide and arbiter. He would
+have taken the measure of the princes and ministers with whom he had
+to deal, would have seen and adroitly played on their weaknesses. His
+novels show how often he had revolved diplomatic situations in his
+mind, and reflected on the way of handling them. Foreign diplomatists
+are agreed that at the Congress of Berlin he played his part to
+admiration, spoke seldom, but spoke always to the point and with
+dignity, had a perfect conception of what he meant to secure, and of
+the means he must employ to secure it, never haggled over details or
+betrayed any eagerness to win support, never wavered in his demands,
+even when they seemed to lead straight to war. Dealing with
+individuals, who represented material forces which he had gauged, he
+was perfectly at home, and deserved the praise he obtained from
+Bismarck, who, comparing him with other eminent figures at the
+Congress, is reported to have said, bluntly but heartily, "Der alte
+Jude, das ist der Mann."[11] But to know what the condition of
+South-Eastern Europe really was, and understand how best to settle its
+troubles, was a far more difficult task, and Disraeli possessed
+neither the knowledge nor the insight required. In the Europe of
+to-day, peoples count for more than the wills of individual rulers:
+one must comprehend the passions and sympathies of peoples if one is
+to forecast the future. This he seldom cared to do. He did not realise
+the part and the power of moral forces. Down to the outbreak of the
+American Civil War he maintained that the question between the North
+and the South was mainly a fiscal question between the Protectionist
+interests of the one and the Free Trade interests of the other. He
+always treated with contempt the national movement in Italy. He made
+no secret in the days before 1859 of his good-will to Austria and of
+his liking for Louis Napoleon--a man inferior to him in ability and in
+courage, but to whose character his own had some affinities. In that
+elaborate study of Sir Robert Peel's character,[12] which is one of
+Disraeli's best literary performances, he observes that Peel "was
+destitute of imagination, and wanting imagination he wanted
+prescience." True it is that imagination is necessary for prescience,
+but imagination is not enough to give prescience. It may even be a
+snare.
+
+Disraeli's imagination, his fondness for theories, and disposition
+rather to cling to them than to study and interpret facts, made him
+the victim of his own preconceived ideas, as his indolence deterred
+him from following the march of change and noting how different things
+were in the 'seventies from what they had been in the 'thirties. Mr.
+Gladstone said to me in 1876, "Disraeli's two leading ideas in foreign
+policy have always been the maintenance of the temporal power of the
+Pope, and the maintenance of the power of the Sultan." Unable to save
+the one, he clung to the hope of saving the other. He was possessed by
+the notion, seductive to a dreamy mind, that all the disturbances of
+Europe arose from the action of secret societies; and when the Eastern
+Question was in 1875 re-opened by the insurrection in Herzegovina,
+followed by the war of Servia against the Turks, he explained the
+event in a famous speech by saying, "The secret societies of Europe
+have declared war against Turkey"--the fact being that the societies
+which in Russia were promoting the Servian war were public societies,
+openly collecting subscriptions, while those secret "social
+democratic" societies of which we have since heard so much were
+strongly opposed to the interference of Russia, and those other secret
+societies in the rest of Europe, wherein Poles and Italians have
+played a leading part, were, if not hostile, at any rate quite
+indifferent to the movement among the Eastern Christians.
+
+Against these errors there must be set several cases in which he
+showed profound discernment. In 1843 and 1844 he delivered, in debates
+on the condition of Ireland, speeches which then constituted and long
+remained the most penetrating and concise diagnosis of the troubles of
+that country ever addressed to Parliament. Ireland has, he said, a
+starving peasantry, an alien church, and an absentee aristocracy, and
+he went on to add that the function of statesmanship was to cure by
+peaceful and constitutional methods ills which in other countries had
+usually induced, and been removed by, revolution. During the American
+Civil War of 1861-65, Disraeli was the only leading statesman on his
+own side of politics who did not embrace and applaud the cause of the
+South. Whether this arose from a caution that would not commit itself
+where it recognised ignorance, or from a perception of the superior
+strength of the Northern States (a perception which whoever visits the
+South even to-day is astonished that so few people in Europe should
+have had), it is not easy to decide; but whatever the cause, the fact
+is an evidence of his prudence or sagacity all the more weighty
+because Lord Palmerston, Lord Russell, and Mr. Gladstone, as well as
+Lord Derby and Sir Hugh Cairns, had each of them expressed more or
+less sympathy with, or belief in, the success of the Southern cause.
+
+The most striking instance, however, of Disraeli's insight was his
+perception that an extension of the suffrage would not necessarily
+injure, and might end by strengthening, the Tory party. The Act of
+1867 was described at the time as "a leap in the dark." But
+Disraeli's eyes had pierced the darkness. For half a century
+politicians had assumed that the masses of the people were and would
+remain under the Liberal banner. Even as late as 1872 it was thought
+on Liberal platforms a good joke to say of some opinion that it might
+do for Conservative working men, if there were any. Disraeli had, long
+before 1867, seen deeper, and though his youthful fancies that the
+monarchy might be revived as an effective force, and that "the
+peasantry" would follow with mediæval reverence the lead of the landed
+gentry, proved illusory, he was right in discerning that wealth and
+social influence would in parliamentary elections count for more among
+the masses than the traditions of constitutional Whiggism or the
+dogmas of abstract Radicalism.
+
+In estimating his statesmanship as a whole, one must give due weight
+to the fact that it impressed many publicists abroad. No English
+minister had for a long time past so fascinated observers in Germany
+and Austria. Supposing that under the long reign of Liberalism
+Englishmen had ceased to care for foreign politics, they looked on him
+as the man who had given back to Britain her old European position,
+and attributed to him a breadth of design, a grasp and a foresight
+such as men had revered in Lord Chatham, greatest in the short list of
+ministers who have raised the fame of England abroad. I remember
+seeing in a Conservative club, about 1880, a large photograph of Lord
+Beaconsfield, wearing the well-known look of mysterious fixity, under
+which is inscribed the line of Homer: "He alone is wise: the rest are
+fleeting shadows."[13] It was a happy idea to go for a motto to the
+favourite poet of his rival, as it was an unhappy chance to associate
+the wisdom ascribed to Disraeli with his policy in the Turkish East
+and in Afghanistan, a policy now universally admitted to have been
+unwise and unfortunate.[14] But whatever may be thought of the
+appropriateness of the motto, the fact remains that this was the
+belief he succeeded in inspiring. He did it by virtue of those very
+gifts which sometimes brought him into trouble--his taste for large
+and imposing theories, his power of clothing them in vague and solemn
+language, his persistent faith in them. He came, by long posing, to
+impose upon himself and to believe in his own profundity. Few people
+could judge whether his ideas of imperial policy were sound and
+feasible; but every one saw that he had theories, and many fell under
+the spell which a grandiose imagination can exercise. It is chiefly
+this gift, coupled with his indomitable tenacity, which lifts him out
+of the line of mere party leaders. If he failed to see how much the
+English are sometimes moved by compassion, he did see that it may be
+worth while to play to their imagination.
+
+We may now ask again the question asked at first: How did a man,
+whatever his natural gifts, who was weighted in his course by such
+disadvantages as Disraeli's, by his Jewish origin, by the escapades of
+his early career, by the want of confidence which his habitual
+cynicism inspired, by the visionary nature of so many of his
+views,--how did he, in a conservative and aristocratic country like
+England, triumph over so many prejudices and enmities, and raise
+himself to be the head of the Conservative and aristocratic party, the
+trusted counsellor of the Crown, the ruler, almost the dictator, of a
+free people?
+
+However high be the estimate formed of Disraeli's gifts, secondary
+causes must have been at work to enable him to overcome the obstacles
+that blocked his path. The ancients were not wrong in ascribing to
+Fortune a great share in human affairs. Now, among the secondary
+causes of success, that "general minister and leader set over worldly
+splendours," as Dante calls her,[15] played no insignificant part. One
+of these causes lay in the nature of the party to which he belonged.
+The Tory party of the years between 1848 and 1865 contained a
+comparatively small number of able men. When J. S. Mill once called it
+the stupid party, it did not repudiate the name, but pointed to its
+cohesion and its resolution as showing how many things besides mere
+talent go to make political greatness. A man of shining gifts had
+within its ranks few competitors; and this was signally the case
+immediately after Peel's defection. That statesman had carried off
+with him the intellectual flower of the Conservatives. Those who were
+left behind to form the Protectionist Opposition in the House of
+Commons were broad-acred squires, of solid character but slender
+capacity. Through this heavy atmosphere Mr. Disraeli rose like a
+balloon. Being practically the only member of his party in the Commons
+with either strategical or debating power, he became indispensable,
+and soon established a supremacy which years of patient labour might
+not have given him in a rivalry with the distinguished band who
+surrounded Peel. During the twenty years that followed the great Tory
+schism of 1846 no man arose in the Tory ranks capable of disputing his
+throne. The conspiracies hatched against him might well have prospered
+could a candidate for the leadership have been found capable of
+crossing swords with the chieftain in possession. Fortune, true to her
+nursling, suffered none such to appear.
+
+Another favouring influence not understood outside England was to be
+found in the character of the party he led. In his day the Tories,
+being the party of the property-holders, and having not to advance but
+to stand still, not to propose changes but to resist them, having
+bonds of interest as well as of sentiment to draw them close together,
+possessed a cohesion, a loyalty to their chiefs, a tenacious corporate
+spirit, far exceeding what was to be found among their adversaries,
+who were usually divided into a moderate or Whig and an advanced or
+Radical section. He who established himself as the Tory leader was
+presently followed by the rank and file with a devotion, an
+unquestioning submission and confidence, which placed his character
+and doctrines under the ægis of the party, and enforced loyalty upon
+parliamentary malcontents. This corporate spirit was of infinite value
+to Disraeli. The historical past of the great Tory party, its
+associations, the social consideration which it enjoys, all went to
+ennoble his position and efface the remembrance of the less creditable
+parts of his career. And in the later days of his reign, when no one
+disputed his supremacy, every Tory was, as a matter of course, his
+advocate and admirer, and resented assaults on him as insults to the
+party. When a man excites hatred by his words or deeds, attacks on his
+character are an inevitable relief to overcharged feelings.
+Technically regarded, they are not good politics. Misrepresentation
+sometimes succeeds; vituperation seldom. Let a man be personally
+untrustworthy or dangerous, still, it is only his own words that
+damage him, at least in England and America. Even his own words,
+however discrediting, even his acts, however culpable, may, if they
+belong to a past unfamiliar to the voter of to-day, tell little,
+perhaps too little, on the voter's mind when they are brought up
+against him. The average citizen has a short memory, and thinks that
+the dead may be allowed to bury their dead.
+
+Let it be further noted that Disraeli's career coincided with a
+significant change in English politics, a change partly in the temper
+of the nation, partly in the balance of voting power. For thirty years
+after the Reform Act of 1832, not only had the middle classes
+constituted the majority of the electors, but the social influence of
+the great Whig families and the intellectual influence of the economic
+school of Cobden had been potent factors. These forces were, in the
+later part of Disraeli's life, tending to decline. The working-class
+vote was vastly increased in 1867. The old Whig light gradually paled,
+and many of the Whig magnates, obeying class sympathies rather than
+party traditions, drifted slowly into Toryism. A generation arose
+which had not seen the Free Trade struggle, or had forgotten the Free
+Trade arguments, and which was attracted by ideals other than those
+which Cobden had preached. The grievances which had made men
+reformers had been largely removed. The battle of liberty and
+nationality in Continental Europe had been in the main won, and
+Englishmen had lost the enthusiasm for freedom which had fired them in
+the days when the memory of their own struggle against the Crown and
+the oligarchy was still fresh. With none of these changes had
+Disraeli's personal action much to do, but they all enured to the
+benefit of his party, they all swelled the tide which bore him into
+office in 1874.
+
+Finally, he had the great advantage of living long. Many a statesman
+has died at fifty, and passed from the world's memory, who might have
+become a figure in history with twenty years more of life. Had
+Disraeli's career closed in 1854, he would have been remembered as a
+parliamentary gladiator, who had produced a few incisive speeches, a
+crude Budget, and some brilliant social and political sketches. The
+stronger parts of his character might have remained unknown. True it
+is that a man must have greatness in order to stand the test of long
+life. Some are found out, like Louis Napoleon. Some lose their balance
+and therewith their influence, like Lord Brougham. Some cease to grow
+or learn, and if a statesman is not better at sixty than he was at
+thirty, he is worse. Some jog heavily on, like Metternich, or stiffen
+into arbitrary doctrinaires, like Guizot. Disraeli did not merely
+stand the test, he gained immensely by it. He gained by rising into a
+position where his strength could show itself. He gained also by so
+impressing his individuality upon people as to make them accept it as
+an ultimate fact, till at length they came, not so much to blame him
+for what he did in accord with his established reputation, as rather
+to relish and enter into the humour of his character. As they
+unconsciously took to judging him by a standard different from that
+which they applied to ordinary Englishmen, they hardly complained of
+deflections from veracity which would have seemed grave in other
+persons. He had given notice that he was not like other men, that his
+words must not be taken in their natural sense, that he was to be
+regarded as the skilful player of a great game, the consummate actor
+in a great part. And, once more, he gained by the many years during
+which he had opportunities of displaying his fortitude, patience,
+constancy under defeat, unwavering self-confidence--gifts rarer than
+mere intellectual power, gifts that deserve the influence they bestow.
+Nothing so fascinates mankind as to see a man equal to every fortune,
+unshaken by reverses, indifferent to personal abuse, maintaining a
+long combat against apparently hopeless odds with the sharpest weapons
+and a smiling face. His followers fancy he must have hidden resources
+of wisdom as well as of courage. When some of his predictions come
+true, and the turning tide of popular feeling begins to bear them
+toward power, they believe that he has been all along right and the
+rest of the world wrong. When victory at last settles on his crest,
+even his enemies can hardly help applauding a reward which seems so
+amply earned. It was by this quality, more perhaps than by anything
+else, by this serene surface with fathomless depths below, that he
+laid his spell upon the imagination of observers in Continental
+Europe, and received at his death a sort of canonisation from a large
+section of the English people.
+
+What will posterity think of him, and by what will he be remembered?
+The glamour has already passed away, and to few of those who on the
+19th of April deck his statue with flowers is he more than a name.
+
+Parliamentary fame is fleeting: the memory of parliamentary conflicts
+soon grows dim and dull. Posterity fixes a man's place in history by
+asking not how many tongues buzzed about him in his lifetime, but how
+great a factor he was in the changes of the world, that is, how far
+different things would have been twenty or fifty years after his death
+if he had never lived. Tried by this standard, the results upon the
+course of events of Disraeli's personal action are not numerous,
+though some of them may be deemed momentous. He was an adroit
+parliamentary tactician who held his followers together through a
+difficult time. By helping to keep the Peelites from rejoining their
+old party, he gave that party a colour different from the sober hues
+which it had worn during the leadership of Peel. He became the founder
+of what has in later days been called Tory democracy, winning over a
+large section of the humbler classes to the banner under which the
+majority of the wealthy and the holders of vested interests already
+stood arrayed. He saved for the Turkish Empire a part of its
+territories, yet in doing so merely prolonged for a little the death
+agony of Turkish power. Though it cannot be said that he conferred any
+benefit on India or the Colonies, he certainly stimulated the imperial
+instincts of Englishmen. He had occasional flashes of insight, as when
+in 1843 he perceived exactly what Ireland needed, and at least one
+brilliant flash of foresight when he predicted that a wide extension
+of the suffrage would bring no evil to the Tory party. Yet in the case
+of Ireland he did nothing, when the chance came to him, to give effect
+to the judgment which he had formed, while in the case of the suffrage
+he did but follow up and carry into effect an impulse given by others.
+The Franchise Act of 1867 is perhaps the only part of his policy which
+has, by hastening a change that induced other changes, permanently
+affected the course of events; and it remains the chief monument of
+his parliamentary skill. There was nothing in his career to set the
+example of a lofty soul or a noble purpose. He did not raise, he may
+even have lowered, the tone of English public life.
+
+Yet history will not leave him without a meed of admiration. When all
+possible explanations of his success have been given, what a wonderful
+career! An adventurer foreign in race, in ideas, in temper, without
+money or family connections, climbs, by patient and unaided efforts,
+to lead a great party, master a powerful aristocracy, sway a vast
+empire, and make himself one of the four or five greatest personal
+forces in the world. His head is not turned by his elevation. He never
+becomes a demagogue; he never stoops to beguile the multitude by
+appealing to sordid instincts. He retains through life a certain
+amplitude of view, a due sense of the dignity of his position, a due
+regard for the traditions of the ancient assembly which he leads, and
+when at last the destinies of England fall into his hands, he feels
+the grandeur of the charge, and seeks to secure what he believes to be
+her imperial place in the world. Whatever judgment history may
+ultimately pass upon him, she will find in the long annals of the
+English Parliament no more striking figure.
+
+-----
+
+   [1] No "authorised" life of Lord Beaconsfield, nor indeed any life
+       commensurate with the part he played in English politics, has
+       yet appeared.
+
+   [2] Disraeli's family claimed to be of Spanish origin, but had come
+       from Italy to England shortly before 1748.
+
+   [3] There are few legal allusions in his novels, fewer in proportion
+       than in Shakespeare's plays, but an ingenious travesty of the
+       English use of legal fictions may be found in the _Voyage of
+       Captain Popanilla_, a satire on the English constitution and
+       government. Popanilla, who is to be tried for treason, is, to
+       his astonishment, indicted for killing a camelopard.
+
+   [4] That historical interest he did feel deeply. One might almost say
+       of him that he was a Christian because he was a Jew, for
+       Christianity was to him the proper development of the ancient
+       religion of Israel. "The Jews," he observes in the _Life of
+       Lord George Bentinck_, "represent the Semitic principle, all
+       that is most spiritual in our nature.... It is deplorable that
+       several millions of Jews still persist in believing only a part
+       of their religion."
+
+   [5] Though it has been maintained that in the Dark and Middle Ages a
+       considerable number of Gentiles found their way into Jewish
+       communities and became Judaised.
+
+       The high average of intellectual power among the Jews need
+       not be attributed to purity of race; it is sufficiently
+       explained by their history. Nor is it clear that where two
+       of the more advanced races are mixed by intermarriage, the
+       product is inferior to either of the parent stocks. On the
+       contrary, such a mixture, _e.g._ of Teutonic and Slavonic
+       blood, or of Celtic and Teutonic, gives a result at least
+       equal in capacity to either of the pure-blooded races which
+       have been so commingled.
+
+   [6] He had an intellectual arrogance, which made him dislike what may
+       be called the Radical conception of human equality. In the
+       _Life of Lord George Bentinck_ he remarks, "The Jews are a
+       living and the most striking evidence of the falsity of that
+       pernicious doctrine of modern times, the natural equality of
+       man.... All the tendencies of the Jewish race are conservative.
+       Their bias is to religion, property, and natural aristocracy."
+
+   [7] On one occasion he went so far as to deny that he had asked Peel
+       for office, relying on the fact that the letter which contained
+       the request was marked "private," so that Peel could not use it
+       to disprove his statement (_Letters of Sir Robert Peel_, by C.
+       S. Parker, vol. ii. p. 486; vol. iii. pp. 347, 348).
+
+   [8] See Sir S. Northcote's report of a conversation with Disraeli in
+       his last years (_Life of Sir Stafford Northcote_, vol. ii.).
+
+   [9] In the _Life of Lord George Bentinck_ (written shortly after
+       Peel's death), Disraeli, after dilating upon the loyalty which
+       the Tory aristocracy had displayed towards Peel, observes, "An
+       aristocracy hesitates before it yields its confidence, but it
+       never does so grudgingly.... In political connections the
+       social feeling mingles with the principle of honour which
+       governs gentlemen.... Such a following is usually cordial and
+       faithful. An aristocracy is rather apt to exaggerate the
+       qualities and magnify the importance of a plebeian leader."
+
+  [10] When he did set himself to examine the condition of the people,
+       the diagnosis, if not always correct, was always suggestive,
+       _e.g._ the account of the manufacturing districts given in
+       _Sybil, or the Two Nations_.
+
+  [11] "The old Jew, that is the man."
+
+  [12] In the _Life of Lord George Bentinck_.
+
+  [13] +Oiô pepnusthai, toi de skiai aïssousin+ (_Od._ x. 495). Used of
+       Tiresias, in the world of disembodied spirits.
+
+  [14] To defend Disraeli by arguing that his policy had not a fair
+       chance because his colleagues did not allow him to carry it
+       through is to admit another error not less grave, for the path
+       he took was one on which no minister ought to have entered
+       unless satisfied that the Cabinet and the country would let him
+       follow it to the end.
+
+  [15] _Inf._ vii. 77.
+
+
+
+
+DEAN STANLEY[16]
+
+
+In the England of his time there was no personality more attractive,
+nor any more characteristic of the country, than Arthur Penrhyn
+Stanley, Dean of Westminster. England is the only European country in
+which such a figure could have appeared, for it is the only country in
+which a man may hold a high ecclesiastical post and yet be regarded by
+the nation, not specially as an ecclesiastic, but rather as a
+distinguished writer, an active and influential man of affairs, an
+ornament of social life. But if in this respect he was typical of his
+country, he was in other respects unique. He was a clergyman untouched
+by clericalism, a courtier unspoiled by courts. No one could point to
+any one else in England who occupied a similar position, nor has any
+one since arisen who recalls him, or who fills the place which his
+departure left empty.
+
+Stanley was born in 1815. His father, then Rector of Alderley, in
+Cheshire, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, belonged to the family of the
+Stanleys of Alderley, a branch of that ancient and famous line the
+head of which is Earl of Derby. His mother, Catherine Leycester, was a
+woman of much force of character and intellectual power. He was
+educated at Rugby School under Dr. Arnold, the influence of whose
+ideas remained great over him all through his life, and at Oxford,
+where he became a fellow and tutor of University College. Passing
+thence to be Canon of Canterbury, he returned to the University as
+Professor of Ecclesiastical History, and remained there for seven
+years. In 1863 he was appointed Dean of Westminster, and at the same
+time married Lady Augusta Bruce (sister of the then Lord Elgin,
+Governor-General first of Canada and afterwards of India). He died in
+1881.
+
+He had an extraordinarily active and busy life, so intertwined with
+the history of the University of Oxford and the history of the Church
+of England from 1850 to 1880, that one can hardly think of any salient
+point in either without thinking also of him. Yet it was perhaps
+rather in the intensity of his nature and the nobility of his
+sentiments than in either the compass or the strength of his
+intellectual faculties that the charm and the force he exercised lay.
+In some directions he was curiously deficient. He had no turn for
+abstract reasoning, no liking for metaphysics or any other form of
+speculation. He was equally unfitted for scientific inquiry, and could
+scarcely work a sum in arithmetic. Indeed, in no field was he a
+logical or systematic thinker. Neither, although he had a retentive
+memory, and possessed a great deal of various knowledge on many
+subjects, could he be called learned, for he had not really mastered
+any branch of history, and was often inaccurate in details. He had
+never been trained to observe facts in natural history. He had
+absolutely no ear for music, and very little perception either of
+colour or of scent. He learned foreign languages with difficulty and
+never spoke them well. He was so short-sighted as to be unable to
+recognise a face passing close in the street. Yet with these
+shortcomings he was a born traveller, went everywhere, saw everything
+and everybody worth seeing, always seized on the most characteristic
+features of a landscape, or building, or a person, and described them
+with a freshness which made one feel as if they had never been
+described before. Of the hundreds who have published books on the
+Desert of Sinai and the Holy Land, many of them skilful writers or men
+of profound knowledge, he is the only one who is still read and likely
+to continue to be read, so vivid in colour, so exquisite in feeling,
+are the pictures he has given. Nature alone, however, nature taken by
+herself, did not satisfy him, did not, indeed, in his later days (for
+in his boyhood he had been a passionate lover of the mountains)
+greatly interest him. A building or a landscape had power to rouse his
+imagination and call forth his unrivalled powers of description only
+when it was associated with the thoughts and deeds of men.
+
+The largest part of his literary work was done in the field of
+ecclesiastical history, a subject naturally congenial to him, and
+to which he was further drawn by the professorship which he held at
+Oxford during a time when a great revival of historical studies was
+in progress. It was work which critics could easily disparage, for
+there were many small errors scattered through it; and the picturesque
+method of treatment he employed was apt to pass into scrappiness. He
+fixed on the points which had a special interest for his own mind as
+illustrating some trait of personal or national character, or some
+moral lesson, and passed hastily over other matters of equal or
+greater importance. Nevertheless his work had some distinctive merits
+which have not received from professional critics the whole credit
+they deserved. In all that Stanley wrote one finds a certain
+largeness and dignity of view. He had a sense of the unity of
+history, of the constant relation of past and present, of the
+similarity of human nature in one age and country to human nature in
+another; and he never failed to dwell upon the permanently valuable
+truths which history has to teach. Nothing was too small to
+attract him, because he discovered a meaning in everything, and he
+was therefore never dull, for even when he moralised he would light
+up his reflections by some happy anecdote. With this he possessed a
+keen eye, the eye of a poet, for human character, and a power of
+sympathy that enabled him to appreciate even those whose principles
+and policy he disliked. Herein he was not singular, for the
+sympathetic style of writing history has become fashionable among
+us. What was remarkable in him was that his sympathy did not
+betray him into the error, now also fashionable, of extenuating moral
+distinctions. His charity never blunted the edge of his justice, nor
+prevented him from reprobating the faults of the personages who had
+touched his heart. For one sin only he had little historical
+tolerance--the sin of intolerance. So there was one sin only which
+ever led him to speak severely of any of his contemporaries--the
+sin of untruthfulness. Being himself so simple and straightforward as
+to feel his inability to cope with deceitful men, deceit incensed
+him. But he did not resent the violence of his adversaries, for
+though he suffered much at their hands he knew many of them to be
+earnest, unselfish, and conscientious men.
+
+His pictures of historical scenes are admirable, for with his interest
+in the study of character there went a large measure of dramatic
+power. Nothing can be better in its way than the description of the
+murder of St. Thomas of Canterbury given in the _Memorials of
+Canterbury_, which, after _Sinai and Palestine_ and the _Life of
+Arnold_, may be deemed the best of Stanley's books. Whether he could,
+with more leisure for careful thought and study, have become a
+great historian, was a question which those of us who were dazzled
+by his Public Lectures at Oxford used often to discuss. The leisure
+never came, for he was throughout life warmly interested in every
+current ecclesiastical question, and ready to bear a part in
+discussing it, either in the press--for he wrote in the _Edinburgh
+Review_, and often sent letters to the _Times_ under the signature of
+"Anglicanus"--or in Convocation, where he had a seat during the
+latter part of his career. These interruptions not only checked the
+progress of his studies, but gave to his compositions an air of
+haste, which made them seem to want system and finish. The habit
+of rapid writing for magazines or other ephemeral purposes is alleged
+to tell injuriously upon literary men: it told the more upon
+Stanley because he was also compelled to produce sermons rapidly.
+Now sermon-writing, while it breeds a tendency to the making of
+rhetorical points, subordinates the habit of dispassionate inquiry to
+the enforcement of a moral lesson. Stanley, who had a touch of
+the rhetorical temperament, and was always eager to improve an
+occasion, certainly suffered in this way. When he brings out a
+general truth he is not content with it as a truth, but seeks to turn
+it also to edification, or to make it illustrate and support some
+view for which he is contending at the time. When he is simply
+describing, he describes rather as a dramatic artist working for
+effect than as a historian solely anxious to represent men and
+events as they were. Yet if we consider how much a historian gains,
+not only from an intimate knowledge of his own time, but also, and
+even more largely, from playing an active part in the events of his
+own time, from swaying opinion by his writings and his speeches,
+from sitting in assemblies and organising schemes of attack and
+defence, we may hesitate to wish that Stanley's time had been more
+exclusively given to quiet investigation. The freshness of his
+historical portraits is notably due to the sense he carried about
+with him of moving in history and being a part of it. He never
+mounted his pulpit in the Abbey or walked into the Jerusalem
+Chamber when Convocation was sitting without feeling that he was about
+to do something which might possibly be recorded in the annals of
+his country. I remember his mentioning, to illustrate undergraduate
+ignorance, that once when he was going to give a lecture to his
+class, he suddenly recollected that Mr. Goldwin Smith, then Regius
+Professor of Modern History, was announced to deliver a public
+lecture at the same hour. Telling the class that they would be
+better employed in hearing Mr. Goldwin Smith than himself, he led
+them all there. The next time the class met, one of them, after
+making some acute comments on the lecture, asked who the lecturer
+was. "I was amazed," said Stanley, "that an intelligent man should
+ask such a question, and then it occurred to me that probably he did
+not know who I was either." There was nothing of personal vanity or
+self-importance in this. All the men of mark among whom he moved
+were to him historical personages, and he would describe to his
+friends some doing or saying of a contemporary statesman or
+ecclesiastic with the same eagerness, the same sense of its being a
+fact to be noted and remembered, as the rest of us feel about a
+personal anecdote relating to Oliver Cromwell or Cardinal Richelieu.
+
+His sermons, like nearly all good sermons, will be inadequately
+appreciated by those who now peruse them, not only because they were
+composed for a given audience with special reference to the
+circumstances of the time, but also because the best of them gained so
+much by his impassioned delivery. They were all read from manuscript,
+and his handwriting was so illegible that it was a marvel how he
+contrived to read them. I once asked him, not long after he had been
+promoted to the Deanery of Westminster, whether he found it easy to
+make himself heard in the enormous nave of the Abbey church. His
+frame, it ought to be stated, was spare as well as small, and his
+voice not powerful. He answered: "That depends on whether I am
+interested in what I am saying. If the sermon is on something which
+interests me deeply I can fill the nave; otherwise I cannot." When he
+had got a worthy theme, or one which stimulated his own emotions, the
+power of his voice and manner was wonderful. His tiny body seemed to
+swell, his chest vibrated as he launched forth glowing words. The
+farewell sermon he delivered when quitting Oxford for Westminster
+lives in the memory of those who heard it as a performance of
+extraordinary power, the power springing from the intensity of his own
+feeling. No sermon has ever since so moved the University.
+
+He was by nature shy and almost timid, and he was not supposed to
+possess any gift for extempore speaking. But when in his later days he
+found himself an almost solitary champion in Convocation of the
+principles of universal toleration and comprehension which he held, he
+developed a debating power which surprised himself as well as his
+friends. It was to him a matter of honour and conscience to defend his
+principles, and to defend them all the more zealously because he
+stood alone on their behalf in a hostile assembly. His courage was
+equal to the occasion, and his faculties responded to the call his
+courage made.
+
+In civil politics he was all his life a Liberal, belonging by birth to
+the Whig aristocracy, and disposed on most matters to take rather the
+Whiggish than the Radical view, yet drawn by the warmth of his
+sympathy towards the working classes, and popular with them. One of
+his chief pleasures was to lead parties of humble visitors round the
+Abbey on public holidays. Like most members of the Whig families, he
+had no great liking for Mr. Gladstone, not so much, perhaps, on
+political grounds as because he distrusted the High Churchism and
+anti-Erastianism of the Liberal leader. However, he never took any
+active part in general politics, reserving his strength for those
+ecclesiastical questions which seemed to lie within his peculiar
+province.[17] Here he had two leading ideas: one, that the Church of
+England must at all hazards continue to be an Established Church, in
+alliance with, or subjection to, the State (for his Erastianism was
+unqualified), and recognising the Crown as her head; the other, that
+she must be a comprehensive Church, finding room in her bosom for
+every sort or description of Christian, however much or little he
+believed of the dogmas contained in the Thirty-nine Articles and the
+Prayer-Book, to which she is bound by statute. The former view cut him
+off from the Nonconformists and the Radicals; the latter exposed him
+to the fire not only of those who, like the High Churchmen and the
+Evangelicals, attach the utmost importance to these dogmas, but of
+those also among the laity who hold that a man ought under no
+circumstances to sign any test or use any form of prayer which does
+not express his own convictions. Stanley would, of course, have
+greatly preferred that the laws which regulate the Church of England
+should be so relaxed as to require little or no assent to any
+doctrinal propositions from her ministers. He strove for this; and he
+continued to hope that this might be ultimately won. But he conceived
+that in the meantime it was a less evil that men should be technically
+bound by subscriptions they objected to than that the National Church
+should be narrowed by the exclusion of those whose belief fell short
+of her dogmatic standards. It was remarkable that not only did he
+maintain this unpopular view of his with unshaken courage on every
+occasion, pleading the cause of every supposed heretic against hostile
+majorities with a complete forgetfulness of his own peace and ease,
+but that no one ever thought of attributing the course he took to any
+selfish or sinister motive. It was generally believed that his own
+opinions were what nine-tenths of the Church of England would call
+unorthodox. But the honesty and uprightness of his character were so
+patent that nobody supposed that this fact made any difference, or
+that it was for the sake of keeping his own place that he fought the
+cause of others.
+
+What his theological opinions were it might have puzzled Stanley
+himself to explain. His mind was not fitted to grasp abstract
+propositions. His historical imagination and his early associations
+attached him to the doctrines of the Nicene Creed; but when he came to
+talk of Christianity, he laid so much more stress on its ethics than
+on its dogmatic side that his clerical antagonists thought he held no
+creed at all. Dr. Pusey once said that he and Stanley did not worship
+the same God. The point of difference between him and them was not so
+much that he consciously disbelieved the dogmas they held--probably he
+did not--as that he did not, like them, think that true religion and
+final salvation depended on believing them. And the weak point in his
+imagination was that he seemed never to understand their position, nor
+to realise how sacred and how momentous to them were statements which
+he saw in a purely imaginative light. He never could be got to see
+that a Church without any dogmas would not be a Church at all in the
+sense either of mankind in the past or of mankind in the present. An
+anecdote was current that once when he had in Disraeli's presence been
+descanting on the harm done by the enforcement of dogmatic standards,
+Disraeli had observed, "But pray remember, Mr. Dean, no dogma, no
+Dean."
+
+Those who thought him a heathen would have assailed him less bitterly
+if he had been content to admit his own differences from them. What
+most incensed them was his habit of assuming that, except in mere
+forms of expression, there were really no differences at all, and that
+they also held Christianity to consist not in any body of doctrines,
+but in reverence for God and purity of life. They would have preferred
+heathenism itself to this kind of Universalism.
+
+As ecclesiastical preferment had not discoloured the native hue of his
+simplicity, so neither did the influences of royal favour. It says
+little for human nature that few people should be proof against what
+the philosopher deems the trivial and fleeting fascinations of a
+court. Stanley's elevation of mind was proof. Intensely interested in
+the knowledge of events passing behind the scenes which his relations
+with the reigning family opened to him, he scarcely ever referred to
+those relations, and seemed neither to be affected thereby, nor to
+care a whit more for the pomps and vanities of power or wealth, a whit
+less for the friends and the causes he had learned to value in his
+youth.
+
+In private, that which most struck one in his intellect was the quick
+eagerness with which his imagination fastened upon any new fact,
+caught its bearings, and clothed it with colour. His curiosity
+remained inexhaustible. His delight in visiting a new country was like
+that of an American scholar landing for the first time in Europe. A
+friend met him a year before his death at a hotel in the North of
+England, and found he was going to the Isle of Man. He had mastered
+its geography and history, and talked about it and what he was to
+explore there as one might talk of Rome or Athens when visiting them
+for the first time. When anybody told him an anecdote his susceptible
+imagination seized upon points which the narrator had scarcely
+noticed, and discovered a whole group of curious analogies from other
+times or countries. Whatever you planted in this fertile soil struck
+root and sprouted at once. Morally, he impressed those who knew him
+not only by his kindness of heart, but by a remarkable purity and
+nobleness of aim. Nothing mean or small or selfish seemed to harbour
+in his mind. You might think him right or wrong, but you never doubted
+that he was striving after the truth. He was not merely a just man; he
+loved justice with passion. It was partly, perhaps, because justice,
+goodness, honour, charity, seemed to him of such paramount importance
+in life that he made little of doctrinal differences, having perceived
+that these virtues may exist, and may also be found wanting, in every
+form of religious creed or philosophical profession. When the
+Convocation of the Anglican Church met at Westminster, it was during
+many years his habit to invite a great number of its leading members
+to the deanery, the very men who had been attacking him most hotly in
+debate, and who would go on denouncing his latitudinarianism till
+Convocation met again. They yielded--sometimes reluctantly, but still
+they yielded--to the kindliness of his nature and the charm of his
+manner. He used to dart about among them, introducing opponents to one
+another, as indeed on all occasions he delighted to bring the most
+diverse people together, so that some one said the company you met at
+the deanery were either statesmen and duchesses or starving curates
+and briefless barristers.
+
+He had on the whole a happy life. It is true that the intensity of his
+attachments exposed him to correspondingly intense grief when he lost
+those who were dearest to him; true also that, being by temperament a
+man of peace, he was during the latter half of his life almost
+constantly at war. But his home, first in the lifetime of his mother
+and then in that of his wife, had a serene and unclouded brightness;
+and the care of the Abbey, rich with the associations of nearly a
+thousand years of history, provided a function which exactly suited
+him and which constituted a never-failing source of enjoyment. To
+dwell in the centre of the life of the Church of England, and to dwell
+close to the Houses of Parliament, in the midst of the making of
+history, knowing and seeing those who were principally concerned in
+making it, was in itself a pleasure to his quenchless historical
+curiosity. His cheerfulness and animation, although to some extent
+revived by his visit to America and the reception he met with there,
+were never the same after his wife's death in 1876. But the sweetness
+of his disposition and his affection for his friends knew no
+diminution. He remembered everything that concerned them; was always
+ready with sympathy in sorrow or joy; and gave to all alike, high or
+low, famous or unknown, the same impression, that his friendship was
+for themselves, and not for any gifts or rank or other worldly
+advantage they might enjoy. The art of friendship is the greatest art
+in life. To enjoy his was to be educated in that art.
+
+-----
+
+  [16] A _Life of Dean Stanley_, in two volumes, begun by Theodore
+       Walrond, continued by Dean Bradley, and completed by Mr. R. E.
+       Prothero, appeared in 1893.
+
+  [17] When J. S. Mill was a candidate for Westminster in 1868, Stanley
+       published a letter announcing his support, partly out of
+       personal respect for Mill, partly because it gave him an
+       opportunity of expressing an opinion on the Irish Church
+       question, and of reprobating the charge of atheism which had
+       been brought against Mill.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS HILL GREEN
+
+
+The name of Thomas Green, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the
+University of Oxford, was not, during his lifetime, widely known
+outside the University itself. But he is still remembered by students
+of metaphysics and ethics as one of the most vigorous thinkers of his
+time; and his personality was a striking one, which made a deep and
+lasting impression on those with whom he came in contact.
+
+He was born in Yorkshire in 1836, the son of a country clergyman; was
+educated at Rugby School and at Balliol College, Oxford, of which he
+became a fellow in 1860, and a tutor in 1869. In 1867 he was an
+unsuccessful candidate for a chair of philosophy at St. Andrews, and
+in 1878 was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in his own
+University, which he never thereafter quitted. He was married in 1869
+and died in 1882. It was a life externally uneventful, but full of
+thought and work, and latterly crowned by great influence over the
+younger and great respect from the senior members of the University.
+
+I can best describe Green as he was in his undergraduate days, for
+it was then that I saw most of him. His appearance was striking, and
+made him a familiar figure even to those who did not know him
+personally. Thick black hair, a sallow complexion, dark eyebrows,
+deep-set eyes of rich brown with a peculiarly steadfast look, were
+the features which first struck one; and with these there was a
+remarkable seriousness of expression, an air of solidity and quiet
+strength. He knew comparatively few people, and of these only a
+very few intimately, having no taste or turn for those sports in
+which university acquaintances are most frequently made, and seldom
+appearing at breakfast or wine parties. This caused him to pass for
+harsh or unsocial; and I remember having felt a slight sense of
+alarm the first time I found myself seated beside him. Though we
+belonged to different colleges I had heard a great deal about him,
+for Oxford undergraduates are warmly interested in one another, and
+at the time I am recalling they had an inordinate fondness for
+measuring the intellectual gifts and conjecturing the future of those
+among their contemporaries who seemed likely to attain eminence.
+
+Those who came to know Green intimately, soon perceived that under
+his reserve there lay not only a capacity for affection--no man was
+more tenacious in his friendships--but qualities that made him an
+attractive companion. His tendency to solitude sprang less from
+pride or coldness, than from the occupation of his mind by subjects
+which seldom weigh on men of his age. He had, even when a boy at
+school (where he lived much by himself, but exercised considerable
+moral influence), been grappling with the problems of metaphysics
+and theology, and they had given a tinge of gravity to his manner.
+The relief to that gravity lay in his humour, which was not only
+abundant but genial and sympathetic. It used to remind us of
+Carlyle--he had both the sense of humour and an underlying Puritanism
+in common with Carlyle, one of the authors who (with Milton and
+Wordsworth) had most influenced him--but in Green the Puritan tinge
+was more kindly, and, above all, more lenient to ordinary people.
+While averse, perhaps too severely averse, to whatever was luxurious
+or frivolous in undergraduate life, he had the warmest interest in,
+and the strongest sympathy for, the humbler classes. Loving social
+equality, and filled with a sense of the dignity of simple human
+nature, he liked to meet farmers and tradespeople on their own level,
+and knew how to do so without seeming to condescend; indeed
+nothing pleased him better, than when they addressed him as one of
+themselves, the manner of his talk to them, as well as the extreme
+plainness of his dress, conducing to such mistakes. The belief in
+the duty of approaching the people directly and getting them to
+think and to form and express their own views in their own way was
+at the root of all his political doctrines.
+
+Though apt to be silent in general company, no one could be more
+agreeable when you were alone with him. We used to say of him--and his
+seniors said the same--that one never talked to him without carrying
+away something to ponder over. On everything he said or wrote there
+was stamped the impress of a strong individuality, a mind that thought
+for itself, a character ruggedly original, wherein grimness was
+mingled with humour, and practical shrewdness with a love for abstract
+speculation. His independence appeared even in the way he pursued his
+studies. With abilities of the highest order, he cared comparatively
+little for the distinctions which the University offers; choosing
+rather to follow out his own line of reading in the way he judged
+permanently useful than to devote himself to the pursuit of honours
+and prizes.
+
+He was constitutionally lethargic, found it hard to rouse himself to
+exertion, and was apt to let himself be driven to the last moment in
+finishing a piece of work. There was a rule in his College that an
+essay should be given in every Friday evening. His was, to the great
+annoyance of the dons, never ready till Saturday. But when it did go
+in, it was the weightiest and most thoughtful, as well as the most
+eloquent, that the College produced. This indolence had one good
+result. It disposed him to brood over subjects, while others were
+running quickly through many books and getting up subjects for
+examination. It contributed to that depth and systematic quality which
+struck us in his thinking, and made him seem mature beside even the
+ablest of his contemporaries. When others were being, so to speak,
+blown hither and thither, picking up and fascinated by new ideas,
+which they did not know how to fit in with their old ones, he seemed
+to have already formed for himself, at least in outline, a scheme of
+philosophy and life coherent and complete. There was nothing random or
+scattered in his ideas; his mind, like his style of writing, which ran
+into long and complicated sentences, had a singular connectedness. You
+felt that all its principles were in relation with one another. This
+maturity in his mental attitude gave him an air of superiority, just
+as the strength of his convictions gave a dogmatic quality to his
+deliverances. Yet in spite of positiveness and tenacity he had the
+saving grace of a humility which distrusted human nature in himself at
+least as much as he distrusted it in others. Leading an introspective
+life, he had many "wrestlings," and often seemed conscious of the
+struggle between the natural man and the spiritual man, as described
+in the Epistle to the Romans.
+
+In these early days, before, and to a less extent after, taking his
+degree, he used to speak a good deal, mostly on political topics, at
+the University Debating Society, where so many generations of young
+men have sharpened their wits upon one another. His speaking was
+vigorous, shrewd, and full of matter, yet it could not be called
+popular. It was, in a certain sense, too good for a debating society,
+too serious, and without the dash and sparkle which tell upon
+audiences of that kind. Sometimes, however, and notably in a debate
+on the American War of Secession in 1863, he produced, by the
+concentrated energy of his language and the fierce conviction with
+which he spoke, a powerful effect.[18] In a business assembly,
+discussing practical questions, he would soon have become prominent,
+and would have been capable on occasions of an oratorical success.
+
+Retired as was Green's life, he became by degrees more and more widely
+known beyond the circle of his own intimates; and became also, I
+think, more willing to make new friends. His truthfulness appeared in
+this that, though powerful in argument, he did not argue for victory.
+When he felt the force of what was urged against him, his admissions
+were candid. Thus people came to respect his character, with its high
+sense of duty, its simplicity, its uprightness, its earnest devotion
+to an ideal, even more than they admired his intellectual powers. I
+remember one friend of my own, himself eminent in undergraduate
+Oxford, and belonging to another college, between which and Green's
+there existed much rivalry, who, having been defeated by Green in
+competition for a University prize, said, "If it had been any one
+else, I should have been vexed, but I don't mind being beaten by a man
+I respect so much." My friend knew Green very slightly, and had been
+at one time strongly prejudiced against him by rumours of his
+heterodox opinions.
+
+So much for those undergraduate days on which recollection loves to
+dwell, but which were not days of unmixed happiness to Green, for his
+means were narrow and the future rose cloudy before him. When anxiety
+was removed by the income which a fellowship secured, he still
+hesitated as to his course in life. At one time he thought of
+journalism, or of seeking a post in the Education Office. More
+frequently his thoughts turned to the clerical profession. His
+theological opinions would not have permitted him to enter the
+service of the Church of England, but he did seriously consider
+whether he should become a Unitarian minister. It was not till he
+found that his college needed him as a teacher that these difficulties
+came to an end. Similarly he had doubted whether to devote himself to
+history, to theology, or to metaphysics. For history he had
+unquestionable gifts. With no exceptional capacity for mastering or
+retaining facts, he had a remarkable power of penetrating at once to
+the dominant facts, of grasping their connection, and working out
+their consequences. He had also a keen sense of the dramatic aspect of
+events, and a turn, not unlike Carlyle's, partly perhaps formed on
+Carlyle, of fastening on the details in which character shows itself,
+and illumining narrative by personal touches. On the problems of
+theology he had meditated even at school, and after taking his degree
+he set himself to a systematic study of the German critics, and I
+remember that when we were living together at Heidelberg he had begun
+to prepare a translation of C. F. Baur's principal treatise. As he
+worked slowly, the translation was never finished. Though not
+professing to be an adherent of the Tübingen school, he had been
+fascinated by Baur's ingenuity and constructive power.
+
+Ultimately he settled down to metaphysical and ethical inquiries, and
+devoted to these the last thirteen years of his life. During his
+undergraduate years the two intellectual forces most powerful at
+Oxford had been the writings of J. H. Newman in the religious sphere,
+though their influence was already past its meridian, and the writings
+of John Stuart Mill in the sphere of logic and philosophy. By neither
+of these, save in the way of antagonism, had Green been influenced. He
+heartily hated all the Utilitarian school, and had an especial scorn
+for Buckle, who, now almost forgotten, enjoyed in those days, as being
+supposed to be a philosophic historian, a brief term of popularity.
+Green had been led by Carlyle to the Germans, and his philosophic
+thinking was determined chiefly by Kant and Hegel, more perhaps by the
+former than by the latter, for it was always upon ethical rather than
+upon purely metaphysical problems that his mind was bent. His
+religious vein and his hold upon practical life made him more
+interested in morals than in abstract speculation. Thus he became the
+leader in Oxford of a new philosophic school which looked to Kant as
+its master, and which for a time, partly perhaps because it
+effectively attacked the school of Mill, received the adhesion of some
+among the most thoughtful of the younger High Churchmen. Like Kant, he
+set himself to answer David Hume, and the essay prefixed to his
+edition of Hume's _Treatise on Human Nature_. along with his
+_Prolegomena to Ethics_, are the only books in which his doctrines
+have been given to the world, for he did not live to write the more
+systematic exposition he had planned. These two essays are hard
+reading, for his philosophical style was usually technical, and
+sometimes verged on obscurity. But when he wrote on less abstruse
+matters he was intelligible as well as weighty, full of thought, and
+with an occasional underglow of restrained eloquence. The force of
+character and convictions makes itself felt through the language.
+
+His mind, though constructive, was not, having regard to its general
+power, either fertile or versatile. Like most of those who prefer
+solitary musings to the commerce of men, he had little facility, and
+found it hard to express his thoughts in any other words than those
+into which his musings had first flowed. Thus even his oral teaching
+was not easy to follow. An anecdote was current how when one day he
+had been explaining to a small class his theory of the origin of our
+ideas, the class listened in rapt attention to his forcible rhetoric,
+admiring each sentence as it fell, and thinking that all their
+difficulties were being removed. When he ended they expressed their
+gratitude for the pleasure he had given them, and were quitting the
+room, when one, halting at the door, said timidly, "But, Mr. Green,
+what did you say was really the origin of our ideas?" However,
+whether they were or were not capable of assimilating his doctrines,
+his pupils all joined in their respect for him. They felt the
+loftiness of his character, they recognised the fervour of his belief.
+He was the most powerful ethical influence, and perhaps also the most
+stimulative intellectual influence, that in those years played upon
+the minds of the ablest youth of the University. But it was a singular
+fact, which those who have never lived in Oxford or Cambridge may find
+it hard to understand, that when he rose from the post of a college
+tutor to that of a University professor, his influence declined, not
+that his powers or his earnestness waned, but because as a professor
+he had fewer auditors and less personal relation with them than he had
+commanded as a college teacher. Such is the working of the collegiate
+system in Oxford, curiously unfortunate when it deprives the ablest
+men, as they rise naturally to the highest positions, of the
+opportunities for usefulness they had previously enjoyed.
+
+As his powers developed and came to be recognised, so did those slight
+asperities which had been observed in undergraduate days soften down
+and disappear. Though he lived a retired life, his work brought him
+into contact with a good many people, and he became more genial in
+general company. I remember his saying with a smile when I had lured
+him into Wales for a short excursion, "I don't know whether it is a
+sign of declining virtue, but I find as I grow older that I am less
+and less fond of my own company." From the first he had won the
+confidence and affection of his pupils. Many of them used long
+afterwards to say that his conduct and his teaching had been the one
+great example or one great influence they had found and felt in
+Oxford. The unclouded happiness of his married life made it easier for
+him to see the bright side of things, and he could not but enjoy the
+sense that the seed he sowed was falling on ground fit to receive it.
+Even when ill-health had fastened on him, and was checking both his
+studies and his public work, it did not affect the evenness of his
+temper nor sharpen the edge of his judgments of others. In earlier
+days these had been sometimes austere, though expressed in temperate
+and measured terms.
+
+I must not forget to add that although Green's opinions were by no
+means orthodox, the influence he exerted while he remained a college
+tutor was in large measure a religious influence. As the clergyman
+used to be in the English Universities less of a clergyman than he was
+anywhere else, so conversely it caused no surprise there that a lay
+teacher should concern himself with the religious life of his pupils.
+Green, however, did more, for he on two occasions at least delivered
+to his pupils, before the celebration of the communion in the college
+chapel, addresses which were afterwards privately printed, and which
+present his view of the relations of ethics and religion in a way
+impressive even to those who may find it hard to follow the
+philosophical argument.
+
+Metaphysicians are generally as little interested in practical
+politics as poets are, and not better suited for political life. Green
+was a remarkable exception. Politics were in a certain sense the
+strongest of his interests. To him metaphysics were not only the basis
+of theology, but also the basis of politics. Everything was to
+converge on the free life of the individual in a free State; rational
+faith and reason inspired by emotion were to have their perfect work
+in making the good citizen.
+
+His interest in politics was perhaps less active in later years than
+it had been in his youth, but his principles stood unchanged. He was a
+thoroughgoing Liberal, or what used to be called a Radical, full of
+faith in the people, an advocate of pretty nearly every measure that
+tended to democratise English institutions, a friend of peace and of
+non-intervention. In our days he would have been called a Little
+Englander, for though his ideal of national life was lofty, the
+wellbeing of the masses was to him a more essential part of that ideal
+than any extension of territory or power. He once said that he would
+rather see the flag of England trailed in the dirt than add sixpence
+to the taxes that weigh upon the poor. In foreign politics Louis
+Napoleon, as the corrupter of France and the disturber of Europe, was
+his favourite aversion; in home politics, Lord Palmerston, as the
+chief obstacle to parliamentary reform. The statesman whom he most
+admired and trusted was Mr. Bright. A strong sense of civic duty led
+him to enter the City Council of Oxford, although he could ill spare
+from his study and his lecture-room the time which the discharge of
+municipal duties required. He was the first tutor who had ever offered
+himself to a ward for election. The townsfolk, between whom and the
+University there had generally been little love, the former thinking
+themselves looked down upon by the latter, warmly appreciated his
+action in coming out of his seclusion to help them, and his influence
+in the Council contributed to secure some useful reforms, among
+others, the establishment of a "grammar" or secondary school for the
+city.
+
+One of the last things he wrote was a short pamphlet on freedom of
+contract, intended to justify the interference with bargains between
+landlord and tenant which was proposed by Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land
+Bill of 1881. It is a vigorous piece of reasoning, which may still be
+read with interest in respect of its application of philosophical
+principles to a political controversy. Had he desired it he might have
+gone to the House of Commons as member for the city of Oxford. But he
+had found in the Council a field for local public work, and apart from
+his constitutional indolence and his declining health, he had
+concluded that his first duty lay in expounding his philosophical
+system.
+
+Green will be long remembered in the English Universities as the
+strongest force in the sphere of ethical philosophy that they have
+seen in the second half of the nineteenth century, and remembered also
+as a singular instance of a metaphysician with a bent towards politics
+and practical life, no less than as a thinker far removed from
+orthodoxy who exerted over orthodox Christians a potent and inspiring
+religious influence.
+
+-----
+
+  [18] As I have referred to the American Civil War, it is worth adding
+       that there were no places in England where the varying fortunes
+       of that tremendous struggle were followed with a more intense
+       interest than in Oxford and Cambridge, and none in which so
+       large a proportion of the educated class sympathised with the
+       cause of the North. Mr. Goldwin Smith led the section which
+       took that view, and which included three-fourths of the best
+       talent in Oxford. Among the younger men Green was the most
+       conspicuous for his ardour on behalf of the principles of human
+       equality and freedom. He followed and watched every move in the
+       military game. No Massachusetts Abolitionist welcomed the fall
+       of Vicksburg with a keener joy. He used to say that the whole
+       future of humanity was involved in the triumph of the Federal
+       arms.
+
+
+
+
+ARCHBISHOP TAIT[19]
+
+
+England is now the only Protestant country in which bishops retain
+some relics of the dignity and influence which belonged to the
+episcopal office during the Middle Ages. Even in Roman Catholic
+countries they have been sadly shorn of their ancient importance,
+though the prelates of Hungary still hold vast possessions, while
+in France, or Spain, or the Catholic parts of Germany a man of eminent
+talents and energy may occasionally use his official position to
+become, through his influence over Catholic electors or Catholic
+deputies, a considerable political factor. This happens even in
+the United States and Canada, though in the United States the
+general feeling that religion must be kept out of politics obliges
+ecclesiastics to use their spiritual powers cautiously and sparingly.
+England stands alone in the fact that although the Protestant
+Episcopal Church is, in so far as she is established by law, the
+creature and subject of the State, she is nevertheless so far
+independent as a religious organisation that she retains a greater
+power than in other Protestant nations. State establishment, though it
+may have depressed, has not stifled her ecclesiastical life, and an
+interest in ecclesiastical questions is shown by a larger proportion
+of her laity than one finds in Germany or the Scandinavian kingdoms. A
+man of shining parts has, as an English bishop, a wide field of
+action and influence open to him outside the sphere of theology or
+of purely official duty. And the opportunities of the position
+attain their maximum when he reaches the primatial chair of
+Canterbury, which is now the oldest and the most dignified of all the
+metropolitan sees in countries that have accepted the Reformation of
+the sixteenth century.
+
+Ever since there was a bishop at Canterbury at all, that is to say,
+ever since the conversion of the English began in the seventh
+century of our era, the holder of that see has been the greatest
+ecclesiastical personage in these islands, with a recognised
+authority over all England, as well as an influence and dignity to
+which, in the Middle Ages, the Archbishops of Armagh and St. Andrews
+(primates of the Irish and Scottish Churches) practically bowed,
+even while refusing to admit his legal supremacy. To be the most
+highly placed and officially the most powerful man in the churches of
+Britain, in days when the Church was better organised, and in some
+ways stronger, than the State, meant a vast deal. The successor of
+Augustine was often called a Pope of his own world--that world of
+Britain which lay apart from the larger world of the European
+continent. Down to the Reformation, the English primates possessed a
+power which made some of them almost a match for the English kings.
+Dunstan, Lanfranc, Anselm, Thomas (Becket), Hubert, Stephen Langton,
+Arundel, Warham, were among the foremost statesmen of their time.
+After Henry VIII.'s breach with Rome, the Primate of England
+received some access of dignity in becoming independent of the
+Pope; but, in reality, the loss of church power and church wealth
+which the Reformation caused lowered his political importance. In
+the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, there were still
+some conspicuous and influential prelates at Canterbury--Cranmer,
+Pole, Whitgift, and Laud the best remembered among them. After the
+Revolution of 1688, a time of smaller men begins. The office
+retained its dignity as the highest place open to a subject, ranking
+above the Lord Chancellor or the Lord President of the Council, but
+the Church of England, having no fightings within, nor anything to
+fear from without, was lapped in placid ease, so it mattered
+comparatively little who her chief pastor was.
+
+Bishoprics were in those days regarded chiefly as pieces of rich
+preferment with which prime ministers bought the support of powerful
+adherents. But since the middle of the nineteenth century, as the
+Anglican Church has become at once more threatened and more energetic,
+as more of the life of the nation has flowed into her and round her,
+the office of a bishop has risen in importance. People show more
+interest in the appointments to be made, and ministers have become
+proportionately careful in making them. Bishops work harder and are
+more in the public eye now than they were eighty, or even fifty, years
+ago. They have lost something of the antique dignity and social
+consideration which they enjoyed. They no longer wear wigs or ride in
+State coaches. They may be seen in third-class railway carriages, or
+sitting on the tops of omnibuses. But they have gained by having
+countless opportunities opened up to them for exerting influence in
+philanthropic as well as in religious movements; and the more zealous
+among them turn these opportunities to excellent account.
+
+Whatever is true of an ordinary bishop is true _a fortiori_ of the
+Archbishop of Canterbury. He is still a great personage, but he is
+great in a new way, with less of wealth and power but larger
+opportunities of influence. He is also a kind of Pope in a new way,
+because he is the central figure of the Anglican communion over the
+whole world, with no legal jurisdiction outside England (except in
+India), but far over-topping all the prelates of that communion in the
+United States or the British Colonies. Less deference is paid to the
+office, considered simply as an office, than it received in the Middle
+Ages, because society and thought have been tinged by the spirit of
+democratic equality, and people realise that offices are only
+artificial creations, whose occupants are human beings like
+themselves. But if he is himself a man of ability and force, he may
+make his headship of an ancient and venerated church a vantage-ground
+whence to address the nation as well as the members of his own
+communion. He is sure of being listened to, which is of itself no
+small matter in a country where many voices are striving to make
+themselves heard at the same time. The world takes his words into
+consideration; the newspapers repeat them. His position gives him easy
+access to the ministers of the Crown, and implies a confidential
+intercourse with the Crown itself. He is, or can be, "in touch" with
+all the political figures who can in any way influence the march of
+events, and is able to enforce his views upon them. All his conduct is
+watched by the nation; so that if it is discreet, provident, animated
+by high and consistent principle, he gets full credit for whatever he
+does well, and acquires that influence to which masses of men are
+eager to bow whenever they can persuade themselves that it is
+deserved. During the first half of the nineteenth century the English
+people was becoming more interested in ecclesiastical and in
+theological matters than it had been during the century preceding. It
+grew by slow degrees more inclined to observe ecclesiastical persons,
+to read and think about theological subjects, to reflect upon the
+relations which the Church ought to bear to civil life and moral
+progress. Thus a leader of the Church of England became relatively a
+more important factor than he had been a century ago, and an
+archbishop, strong by his character, rectitude, and powers of
+utterance, rose to occupy a more influential, if not more conspicuous,
+position than his predecessors in the days of the Georges had done.
+
+These changes naturally made the selection of an archbishop a more
+delicate and troublesome business than it was in those good old days.
+Nobody then blamed a Prime Minister for preferring an aspirant who had
+the support of powerful political connections. Blameless in life he
+must be: even the eighteenth century demanded that from candidates for
+English, if not, according to Dean Swift, for Irish sees. If he was
+also a man of courtly grace and dignity, and a finished scholar, so
+much the better. If he was a man of piety, that also was well. By the
+time of Queen Victoria the possession of piety and of gifts of speech
+had become more important qualifications, but the main thing was
+tactful moderation. Even in apostolic days it was required that a
+bishop should rule his own house well, and the Popes esteemed most
+saintly have not always been the best, as the famous case of Celestine
+the Fifth attests. An archbishop must first and foremost be a discreet
+and guarded man, expressing few opinions, and those not extreme ones.
+His chief virtue came to be, if not the purely negative one of
+offending no section by expressing the distinctive views of any other,
+yet that of swerving so little from the _via media_ between Rome and
+Geneva that neither the Tractarian party, who began to be feared after
+1837, nor the pronounced Low Churchmen could claim the Primate as
+disposed to favour their opinions. In the case of ordinary bishops the
+plan could be adopted, and has since the days of Lord Palmerston been
+mostly followed, of giving every party its turn, while choosing from
+every party men of the safer sort. This method, however, was less
+applicable to the See of Canterbury, for a man on whose action much
+might turn could not well be taken from any particular section. The
+acts and words of a Primate, who is expected to "give a line" to the
+clergy generally and to speak on behalf of the bench of bishops as a
+whole, are so closely scrutinised that he must be prudent and wary,
+yet not so wary as to seem timid. He ought to be both firm and suave,
+conciliatory and decided. That he may do justice to all sections of
+the Church of England, he ought not to be an avowed partisan of any.
+Yet he must be able and eminent, and of course able and eminent men
+are apt to throw themselves into some one line of action or set of
+views, and so come to be considered partisans. The position which the
+Archbishop of Canterbury holds as the representative in Parliament of
+the whole Established Church, makes statesmanship the most important
+of all qualifications. Learning, energy, eloquence, piety would none
+of them, nor all of them together, make up for the want of calmness
+and wisdom. Yet all those qualities are obviously desirable, because
+they strengthen as well as adorn the primate's position.
+
+Archibald Campbell Tait (born in Scotland in 1811, died 1882) was
+educated at Glasgow University and at Balliol College, Oxford; worked
+at his college for some years as a tutor, succeeded Dr. Arnold as
+headmaster of Rugby School in 1843, became Dean of Carlisle and then
+Bishop of London, and was translated to Canterbury in 1868. It has
+been generally understood that Mr. Disraeli, then Prime Minister,
+suggested another prelate for the post, but the Queen, who did not
+share her minister's estimate of that prelate, expressed a preference
+for Tait. Her choice was amply justified, for Tait united, and indeed
+possessed in a high degree, the qualifications which have just been
+enumerated. He was, if it be not a paradox to say so, more remarkable
+as an archbishop than as a man. He had no original power as a thinker.
+He was not a striking preacher, and the more pains he took with his
+sermons the less interesting did they become. He was so far from being
+learned that you could say no more of him than that he was a sound
+scholar and a well-informed man. He was deeply and earnestly pious,
+but in a quiet, almost dry way, which lacked what is called unction,
+though it impressed those who were in close contact with him. He
+showed slight interest either in the historical or in the speculative
+side of theology. Though a good headmaster, he was not a stimulating
+teacher. Had he remained all his life in a subordinate position, as a
+college tutor at Oxford, or as canon of some cathedral, he would have
+discharged the duties of the position in a thoroughly satisfactory
+way, and would have acquired influence among his colleagues, but no
+one would have felt that Fate had dealt unfairly with him in depriving
+him of some larger career and loftier post. No one, indeed, who knew
+him when he was a college tutor seems to have predicted the dignities
+he was destined to attain, although he had shown in the theological
+strife that then raged at Oxford the courage and independence of his
+character.
+
+In what, then, did the secret of his success lie--the secret, that is,
+of his acquitting himself so excellently in those dignities as to have
+become almost a model to his own and the next generation of what an
+Archbishop of Canterbury ought to be? In the statesmanlike quality of
+his mind. He had not merely moderation, but what, though often
+confounded with moderation, is something rarer and better, a steady
+balance of mind. He was carried about by no winds of doctrine. He
+seldom yielded to impulses, and was never so seduced by any one theory
+as to lose sight of other views and conditions which had to be
+regarded. He was, I think, the first man of Scottish birth who ever
+rose to be Primate of England, and he had the cautious self-restraint
+which is deemed characteristic of his nation. He knew how to be
+dignified without assumption, firm without vehemence, prudent without
+timidity, judicious without coldness. He was, above all things, a
+singularly just man, who recognised every one's rights, and did not
+seek to overbear them by an exercise of authority. He was as ready to
+listen to his opponents as to his friends. Indeed, he so held himself
+as to appear to have no opponents, but to be rather a judge before
+whom different advocates were stating their respective cases, than a
+leader seeking to make his own views or his own party prevail. Genial
+he could hardly be called, for there was little warmth, little display
+of emotion, in his manner; and the clergy noted, at least in his
+earlier episcopal days, a touch of the headmaster in his way of
+receiving them. But he was simple and kindly, capable of seeing the
+humorous side of things, desiring to believe the good rather than the
+evil, and to lead people instead of driving them. With all his caution
+he was direct and straightforward, saying no more than was necessary,
+but saying nothing he had occasion to be ashamed of. He sometimes made
+mistakes, but they were not mistakes of the heart, and, being free
+from vanity or self-conceit, he was willing in his quiet way to admit
+them and to alter his course accordingly. So his character by degrees
+gained upon the nation, and so even ecclesiastical partisanship,
+proverbially more bitter than political, because it springs from
+deeper wells of feeling, grew to respect and spare him. The influence
+he obtained went far to strengthen the position of the Established
+Church, and to keep its several parties from breaking out into more
+open hostility with one another. He himself inclined to what might be
+called a moderate Broad Church attitude, leaning more to Evangelical
+than to Tractarian or Romanising views in matters of doctrine. At one
+time the extreme High Churchmen regarded him as an enemy. But this
+unfriendliness had almost died away when the death of his wife and his
+only son (a young man of singularly winning character), followed by
+his own long illness, stilled the voices of criticism.
+
+He exerted great influence in the House of Lords by his tact, by his
+firmness of character, and by the consistency of his public course, as
+well as by powers of speech, which, matured by long practice, had
+risen to a high level. Without eloquence, without either imagination
+or passion, which are the chief elements in eloquence, he had a grave,
+weighty, thoughtful style which impressed that fastidious audience.
+His voice was strong and sonorous, his diction plain yet pure and
+dignified, his matter well considered. His thought moved on a high
+plane; he spoke as one who fully believed every word he said. The late
+Bishop of Winchester, the famous Dr. Samuel Wilberforce, was
+incomparably his superior not only as a talker but as an orator, but
+no less inferior in his power over the House of Lords, for so little
+does rhetorical brilliance count in a critical and practical assembly.
+Next to courage, the quality which gains trust and regard in a
+deliberative body is that which is familiarly described when it is
+said of a man, "You always know where to find him." Tait belonged to
+no party. But his principles, though not rigid, were fixed and
+settled; his words and votes were the expression of his principles.
+
+The presence of bishops in the House of Lords is disapproved by some
+sections of English opinion, and there are those among the temporal
+peers who, quite apart from any political feeling, are said to regard
+them with little favour. But every one must admit that they have
+raised and adorned the debates in that chamber. Besides Tait and
+Wilberforce, two other prelates of the same generation stood in the
+front rank of speakers, Dr. Magee, whose wit and fire would have found
+a more fitting theatre in the House of Commons, and Dr. Thirlwall, a
+scholar and historian whose massive intellect and stately diction were
+too rarely used to raise great political issues above the dust-storms
+of party controversy.
+
+Perhaps no Archbishop since the Revolution of 1688 has exercised so
+much influence as Dr. Tait, and certainly none within living memory is
+so well entitled to be credited with a definite ecclesiastical policy.
+His aim was to widen the bounds of the Church of England, so far as
+the law could, without evasion, be stretched for that purpose. He bore
+a leading part in obtaining an Act of Parliament which introduced a
+new and less strict form of clerical subscription. He realised that
+the Church of England can maintain her position as a State Church
+only by adapting herself to the movements of opinion, and accordingly
+he voted for the Divorce Bill of 1859, and for the Burials Bill, which
+relieved Dissenters from a grievance that exposed the Established
+Church to odium. The Irish Church Disestablishment Bill of 1869 threw
+upon him, at the critical moment when it went from the House of
+Commons, where it had passed by a large majority, to the House of
+Lords, where a still larger majority was hostile, a duty delicate in
+itself, and such as seldom falls to the lot of a prelate. The Queen
+wrote to him suggesting that he should endeavour to effect a
+compromise between Mr. Gladstone, then head of the Liberal Ministry,
+and the leading Tory peers who were opposing the Bill. He conducted
+the negotiation with tact and judgment, and succeeded in securing good
+pecuniary terms for the Protestant Episcopal Establishment. Though he
+had joined in the Letter of the Bishops which conveyed their strong
+disapproval of the book called _Essays and Reviews_ (whose supposed
+heretical tendencies roused such a storm in 1861), and had thereby
+displeased his friends, Temple (afterwards archbishop), Jowett, and
+Stanley,[20] he joined in the judgment of the Privy Council which in
+1863 dismissed the charges against the impugned Essayists. Despite his
+advocacy of the Bill which in 1874 provided a new procedure to be used
+against clergymen transgressing the ritual prescribed by law, he
+discouraged prosecutions, and did his utmost to keep Ritualists as
+well as moderate Rationalists within the pale of the Church of
+England. He did not succeed--no one could have succeeded, even though
+he had spoken with the tongues of men and of angels--in stilling
+ecclesiastical strife. The controversies of his days still rage,
+though in a slightly different form. But in refusing to yield to the
+pressure of any section, in regarding the opinion of the laity rather
+than that of the clergy, in keeping close to the law yet giving it the
+widest possible interpretation, he laid down the lines on which the
+Anglican Established Church can best be defended and upheld. That she
+will last, as an Establishment, for any very long time, will hardly be
+expected by those who mark the direction in which thought tends to
+move all over the civilised world. But Tait's policy and personality
+have counted for something in prolonging the time-honoured connection
+of the Anglican Church with the English State.
+
+Perhaps a doubtful service either to the Church or to the State. Yet
+even those who regret the connection, and who, surveying the long
+course of Christian history from the days of the Emperor Constantine
+down to our own, believe that the Christian Church would have been
+spiritually purer and morally more effective had she never become
+either the mistress or the servant or the ally of the State, but
+relied on her divine commission only, may wish that, when the day
+arrives for the ancient bond to be unloosed, it should be unloosed not
+through an embittered political struggle, but because the general
+sentiment of the nation, and primarily of religious men throughout the
+nation, has come to approve the change.
+
+-----
+
+  [19] An admirable life of Archbishop Tait by his son-in-law, Dr. R. T.
+       Davidson (now Archbishop of Canterbury), and Canon Benham
+       appeared in 1891.
+
+  [20] They thought his public action scarcely consistent with the
+       language he had used to Temple in private.
+
+
+
+
+ANTHONY TROLLOPE[21]
+
+
+When Mr. Anthony Trollope died (December 11, 1882) at the age of
+sixty-seven, he was the best known of our English writers of fiction,
+and stood foremost among them if the double test of real merit and
+wide popularity be applied. Some writers, such as Wilkie Collins, may
+have commanded a larger sale. One writer at least, Mr. George
+Meredith, had produced work of far deeper insight and higher
+imaginative power. But the gifts of Mr. Meredith had then scarcely
+begun to win recognition, and not one reader knew his name for five
+who knew Trollope's. So Mr. Thomas Hardy had published what many
+continue to think his two best stories, but they had not yet caught
+the eye of the general public. Mrs. Oliphant, high as was the general
+level of her work, and inexhaustible as her fertility appeared, had
+not cut her name so deep upon the time as Trollope did. Everything she
+did was good, nothing superlatively good. No one placed Trollope in
+the first rank of creative novelists beside Dickens or Thackeray, or
+beside George Eliot, who had died two years before. But in the second
+rank he stood high; and though other novelists may have had as many
+readers as he, none was in so many ways representative of the general
+character and spirit of English fiction. He had established his
+reputation nearly thirty years before, when Thackeray and Dickens were
+still in the fulness of their fame; and had maintained it during the
+zenith of George Eliot's. For more than a generation his readers had
+come from the best-educated classes as well as from those who lack
+patience or taste for anything heavier than a story of adventure. In
+this respect he stood above Miss Braddon, Mrs. Henry Wood, Ouida, and
+other heroines of the circulating libraries, and also above such more
+artistic or less sensational writers as William Black, Walter Besant,
+James Payn, and Whyte Melville. (The school of so-called realistic
+fiction had scarcely begun to appear.) None of these had, like
+Trollope, succeeded in making their creations a part of the common
+thought of cultivated Englishmen; none had, like him, given us
+characters which we treat as typical men and women, and discuss at a
+dinner-table as though they were real people. Mrs. Proudie, for
+instance, the Bishop of Barchester's wife, to take the most obvious
+instance (though not that most favourable to Trollope, for he produced
+better portraits than hers), or Archdeacon Grantly, was when Trollope
+died as familiar a name to English men and women between sixty and
+thirty years of age as Wilkins Micawber, or Blanche Amory, or Rosamond
+Lydgate. There was no other living novelist of whose personages the
+same could be said, and perhaps none since has attained this
+particular kind of success.
+
+Personally, Anthony Trollope was a bluff, genial, hearty, vigorous
+man, typically English in his face, his talk, his ideas, his tastes.
+His large eyes, which looked larger behind his large spectacles, were
+full of good-humoured life and force; and though he was neither witty
+nor brilliant in conversation, he was what is called very good
+company, having travelled widely, known all sorts of people, and
+formed views, usually positive views, on all the subjects of the day,
+views which he was prompt to declare and maintain. There was not much
+novelty in them--you were disappointed not to find so clever a writer
+more original--but they were worth listening to for their solid
+common-sense, tending rather to commonplace sense, and you enjoyed the
+ardour with which he threw himself into a discussion. Though
+boisterous and insistent in his talk, he was free from assumption or
+conceit, and gave the impression of liking the world he lived in, and
+being satisfied with his own place in it. Neither did one observe in
+him that erratic turn which is commonly attributed to literary men. He
+was a steady and regular worker, who rose every morning between five
+and six to turn out a certain quantity of copy for the printer before
+breakfast, enjoying his work, and fond of his own characters--indeed
+he declared that he filled his mind with them and saw them moving
+before him--yet composing a novel just as other people might compose
+tables of statistics. These methodical habits were to some extent due
+to his training as a clerk in the Post Office, where he spent the
+earlier half of his working life, having retired in 1864. He did not
+neglect his duties there, even when occupied in writing, and claimed
+to have been the inventor of the pillar letter-box. It was probably in
+his tours as an inspector of postal deliveries that he obtained that
+knowledge of rural life which gives reality to his pictures of country
+society. He turned his Civil Service experiences to account in some of
+his stories, giving faithful and characteristic sketches, in _The
+Three Clerks_ and _The Small House at Allington_, of different types
+of Government officials, a class which is much more of a class in
+England than it is in America, though less of a class than it is in
+Germany or France. His favourite amusement was hunting, as readers of
+his novels know, and until his latest years he might have been seen,
+though a heavy weight, following the hounds in Essex once or twice a
+week.
+
+When E. A. Freeman wrote a magazine article denouncing the cruelty of
+field sports, Trollope replied, defending the amusement he loved. Some
+one said it was a collision of two rough diamonds. But the end was
+that Freeman invited Trollope to come and stay with him at Wells, and
+they became great friends.
+
+Like most of his literary contemporaries, he was a politician, and
+indeed a pretty keen one. He once contested in the Liberal interest--in
+those days literary men were mostly Liberals--the borough of Beverley in
+Yorkshire, a corrupt little place, where bribery proved too strong
+for him. It was thereafter disfranchised as a punishment for its
+misdeeds; and his costly experiences doubtless suggested the clever
+electioneering sketches in the story of _Ralph the Heir_. Thackeray
+also was once a Liberal candidate. He stood for the city of Oxford, and
+the story was current there for years afterwards how the freemen of
+the borough (not an exemplary class of voters) rose to an unwonted
+height of virtue by declaring that though they did not understand his
+speeches or know who he was, they would vote for him, expecting
+nothing, because he was a friend of Mr. Neate's. Trollope showed his
+continued interest in public affairs by appearing on the platform at
+the great meeting in St. James's Hall in December 1876, which was the
+beginning of a vehement party struggle over the Eastern Question that
+only ended at the general election of 1880. He was a direct and
+forcible speaker, who would have made his way had he entered
+Parliament. But as he had no practical experience of politics either in
+the House of Commons or as a working member of a party organisation in
+a city where contests are keen, the pictures of political life which are
+so frequent in his later tales have not much flavour of reality. They
+are sketches obviously taken from the outside. Very rarely do even the
+best writers of fiction succeed in reproducing any special and
+peculiar kind of life and atmosphere. Of the various stories that
+purport to describe what goes on in the English Parliament, none
+gives to those who know the social conditions and habits of the place
+an impression of truth to nature, and the same has often been
+remarked with regard to tales of English University life. Trollope,
+however, with his quick eye for the superficial aspects of any
+society, might have described the House of Commons admirably had he
+sat in it himself. He was fond of travel, and between 1862 and 1880
+visited the United States, the West Indies, Australia and New
+Zealand, and South Africa, about all of which he wrote books which, if
+hardly of permanent value, were fresh, vigorous, and eminently
+readable, conveying a definite and generally correct impression of the
+more obvious social and economic phenomena he found then existing.
+His account of the United States, for instance, is excellent, and did
+something to make the Americans forgive the asperity with which his
+mother had described her experiences there many years before.
+Trollope's travel sketches are as much superior in truthfulness to
+Froude's descriptions of the same regions as they are inferior in the
+allurements of style.
+
+The old classification of novels, based on the two most necessary
+elements of a drama, divided them into novels of plot and novels of
+character. To these we have of late years added novels of incident
+or adventure, novels of conversation, novels of manners, not to
+speak of "novels with a purpose," which are sermons or pamphlets
+in disguise. No one doubted to which of these categories Trollope's
+work should be referred. There was in his stories as little plot as a
+story can well have. The conversations never beamed with humour like
+that of Scott, nor glittered with aphorisms like those of George
+Meredith. The incidents carried the reader pleasantly along, but
+seldom surprised him by any ingenuity of contrivance. Character there
+was, and, indeed, great fertility in the creation of character, for
+there is hardly one of the tales in which three or four at least
+of the personages do not stand out as people whom you would know
+again if you met them years after. But the conspicuous merit of
+Trollope's novels, in the eyes of his own countrymen, is their
+value as pictures of contemporary manners. Here he may claim to
+have been surpassed by no writer of his own generation. Dickens, with
+all his great and splendid gifts, did not describe the society he
+lived in. His personages were too unusual and peculiar to speak and
+act and think like the ordinary men and women of the nineteenth
+century; nor would a foreigner, however much he might enjoy the
+exuberant humour and dramatic power with which they are presented,
+learn from them much about the ways and habits of the average
+Englishman. The everyday life to which the stories are most true
+is the life of the lower middle class in London; and some one has
+observed that although this class changes less quickly than the
+classes above it, it is already unlike that which Dickens saw when
+in the 'thirties he was a police-court reporter. Critics have,
+indeed, said that Dickens was too great a painter to be a good
+photographer, but the two arts are not incompatible, as appears
+from the skill with which Walter Scott, for instance, portrayed the
+peasantry of his own country in _The Antiquary_. Thackeray, again,
+though he has described certain sections of the upper or upper
+middle class with far more power and delicacy than Trollope ever
+reached, does not go beyond those sections, and has little to tell us
+about the middle class generally, still less about the classes
+beneath them. Trollope was thoroughly at home in the English middle
+class and also (though less perfectly) in the upper class; and his
+pictures are all the more true to life because there is not that vein
+of stern or cynical reflection which runs through Thackeray, and makes
+us think less of the story than of the moral. Trollope usually has a
+moral, but it is so obvious, so plainly and quietly put, that it does
+not distract attention from the minor incidents and little touches
+of every day which render the sketches lifelike. If even his
+best-drawn characters are not far removed from the commonplace
+this helps to make them fairly represent the current habits and
+notions of their time. They are the same people we meet in the street
+or at a dinner-party; and they are mostly seen under no more
+exciting conditions than those of a hunting meet, or a lawn-tennis
+match, or an afternoon tea. They are flirting or talking for effect,
+or scheming for some petty temporary end; they are not under the
+influence of strong passions, or forced into striking situations,
+like the leading characters in Charlotte Brontë's or George Eliot's
+novels; and for this reason again they represent faithfully the
+ordinary surface of English upper and upper middle class society:
+its prejudices, its little pharisaisms and hypocrisies, its
+snobbishness, its worship of conventionalities, its aloofness from or
+condescension to those whom it deems below its own level; and
+therewith also its public spirit, its self-helpfulness, its
+neighbourliness, its respect for honesty and straightforwardness,
+its easy friendliness of manner towards all who stand within the
+sacred pale of social recognition. Nor, again, has any one more
+skilfully noted and set down those transient tastes and fashions
+which are, so to speak, the trimmings of the dress, and which,
+transient though they are, and quickly forgotten by contemporaries,
+will have an interest for one who, a century or two hence, feels the
+same curiosity about our manners as we feel about those of the
+subjects of King George the Third. That Trollope will be read at
+all fifty years after his death one may hesitate to predict,
+considering how comparatively few in the present generation read
+Richardson, or Fielding, or Miss Edgeworth, or Charlotte Brontë, and
+how much reduced is the number of those who read even Walter Scott
+and Thackeray. But whoever does read Trollope in 1930 will gather
+from his pages better than from any others an impression of what
+everyday life was like in England in the "middle Victorian" period.
+The aspects of that life were already, when his latest books were
+written, beginning to change, and the features he drew are fast
+receding into history. Even the clergy of 1852-1862 are no longer,
+except in quiet country districts, the same as the clergy we now see.
+
+People have often compared the personal impressions which eminent
+writers make on those who talk to them with the impressions previously
+derived from their works. Thomas Carlyle and Robert Browning used to
+be taken as two instances representing opposite extremes. Carlyle
+always talked in character: had there been phonographs in his days,
+the phonographed "record" might have been printed as part of one of
+his books. Browning, on the other hand, seemed unlike what his poems
+had made a reader expect: it was only after a long _tête-à-tête_ with
+him that the poet whose mind had been learned through his works stood
+revealed. Trollope at first caused a similar though less marked
+surprise. This bluff burly man did not seem the kind of person who
+would trace with a delicate touch the sunlight sparkling on, or a gust
+of temper ruffling, the surface of a youthful soul in love. Upon
+further knowledge one perceived that the features of Trollope's
+talent, facile invention, quick observation, and a strong common-sense
+view of things, with little originality or intensity, were really the
+dominant features of his character as expressed in talk. Still, though
+the man was more of a piece with his books than he had seemed, one
+could never quite recognise in him the delineator of Lily Dale.
+
+As a painter of manners he recalls two of his predecessors--one
+greater, one less great than himself. In his limitations and in his
+fidelity to the aspects of daily life as he saw them, he resembles
+Miss Austen. He is inferior to her in delicacy of portraiture, in
+finish, in atmosphere. No two of his books can be placed on a level
+with _Emma_ and _Persuasion_. On the other hand, while he has done for
+the years 1850-1870 what Miss Burney did for 1770-1790, most critics
+will place him above her both in fertility and in naturalness. Her
+characters are apt either to want colour, like the heroines of
+_Evelina_ and _Cecilia_, or to be so exaggerated, like Mr. Briggs and
+Miss Larolles, as to approach the grotesque. Trollope is a realist in
+the sense of being, in all but a few of his books, on the lines of
+normal humanity, though he is seldom strong enough to succeed, when he
+pierces down to the bed-rock of human nature, in rendering the primal
+passions either solemn or terrible. Like Miss Austen, he attains
+actuality by observation rather than by imagination, hardly ever
+entering the sphere of poetry.
+
+His range was not wide, for he could not present either grand
+characters or tragical situations, any more than he could break out
+into the splendid humour of Dickens. His wings never raised him far
+above the level floor of earth. But within that limited range he had
+surprising fertility. His clerical portrait-gallery is the most
+complete that any English novelist has given us. No two faces are
+exactly alike, and yet all are such people as one might see any day in
+the pulpit. So, again, there is scarcely one of his stories in which a
+young lady is not engaged, formally or practically, to two men at the
+same time, or one man more or less committed to two women; yet no
+story repeats exactly the situation, or raises the problem of honour
+and duty in quite the same form as it appears in the stories that went
+before. Few people who have written so much have so little appeared to
+be exhausting their invention.
+
+It must, however, be admitted that Trollope's fame might have stood
+higher if he had written less. The public which had been delighted
+with his earlier groups of novels, and especially with that group in
+which _The Warden_ comes first and _Barchester Towers_ second, began
+latterly to tire of what they had come to deem the mannerisms of their
+favourite, and felt that they now knew the compass of his gifts.
+Partly, perhaps, because he feared to be always too like himself, he
+once or twice attempted to represent more improbable situations and
+exceptional personages. But the attempt was not successful. He lost
+his touch of ordinary life without getting into any higher region of
+poetical truth; and in his latest stories he had begun to return to
+his earlier and better manner.
+
+New tendencies, moreover, embodying themselves in new schools, were
+already beginning to appear. R. L. Stevenson as leader of the school
+of adventure, Mr. Henry James as the apostle of the school of
+psychological analysis, soon to be followed by Mr. Kipling with a type
+of imaginative directness distinctively his own, were beginning to
+lead minds and tastes into other directions. The influence of France
+was more felt than it had been when Trollope began to write. And what
+a contrast between Trollope's manner and that of his chief French
+contemporaries, such as Octave Feuillet or Alphonse Daudet or Guy de
+Maupassant! The French novelists, be their faculty of invention
+greater or less, at any rate studied their characters with more care
+than English writers had usually shown. The characters were fewer,
+almost as few as in a classical drama; and the whole action of the
+story is carefully subordinated to the development of these
+characters, and the placing of them in a critical position which sets
+their strength and weakness in the fullest light. There was more of a
+judicious adaptation of the parts to the whole in French fiction than
+in ours, and therefore more unity of impression was attained.
+Trollope, no doubt, set a bad example in this respect. He crowded his
+canvas with figures; he pursued the fortunes of three or four sets of
+people at the same time, caring little how the fate of the one set
+affected that of the others; he made his novel a sort of chronicle
+which you might open anywhere and close anywhere, instead of a drama
+animated by one idea and converging towards one centre. He neglected
+the art which uses incidents small in themselves to lead up to the
+_dénoûment_ and make it more striking. He took little pains with his
+diction, seeming not to care how he said what he had to say. These
+defects strike those who turn over his pages to-day. But to those who
+read him in the 'fifties or 'sixties, the carelessness was redeemed
+by, or forgotten in, the vivacity with which the story moved, the
+freshness and faithfulness of its pictures of character and manners.
+
+-----
+
+  [21] Trollope's autobiography, published in 1883, is a good specimen
+       of self-portraiture, candid, straightforward, and healthy, and
+       leaves an agreeable impression of the writer. Dr. Richard
+       Garnett has written well of him in the _Dictionary of National
+       Biography_.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN RICHARD GREEN[22]
+
+
+John Richard Green was born in Oxford on 12th December 1837, and
+educated first at Magdalen College School, and afterwards, for a short
+time, at a private tutor's. He was a singularly quick and bright boy,
+and at sixteen obtained by competition a scholarship at Jesus College,
+Oxford, where he began to reside in 1856. The members of that college
+were in those days almost entirely Welshmen, and thereby somewhat cut
+off from the rest of the University. They saw little of men in other
+colleges, so that a man might have a reputation for ability in his own
+society without gaining any in the larger world of Oxford. It so
+happened with Green. Though his few intimate friends perceived his
+powers, they had so little intercourse with the rest of the
+University, either by way of breakfasts and wine-parties, or at the
+University debating society, or in athletic sports, that he remained
+unknown even to those among his contemporaries who were interested in
+the same things, and would have most enjoyed his acquaintance. The
+only eminent person who seems to have appreciated and influenced him
+was Dean Stanley, then Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Canon
+of Christ Church. Green had attended Stanley's lectures, and Stanley,
+whose kindly interest in young men never failed, was struck by him,
+and had some share in turning his studies towards history. He
+graduated in 1860, having refused to compete for honours, because he
+had not received from those who were then tutors of the college the
+recognition to which he was entitled.
+
+In 1860 he was ordained, and became curate in London at St. Barnabas,
+King's Square, whence, after two years' experience, and one or two
+temporary engagements, including the sole charge of a parish in
+Hoxton, he was appointed in 1865 to the incumbency of St. Philip's,
+Stepney, a district church in one of the poorest parts of London,
+where the vicar's income was ill-proportioned to the claims which
+needy parishioners made upon him. Here he worked with zeal and
+assiduity for about three years, gaining an insight into the condition
+and needs of the poor which scholars and historians seldom obtain. He
+learnt, in fact, to know men, and the real forces that sway them; and
+he used to say in later life that he was conscious how much this had
+helped him in historical writing. Gibbon, as every one knows, makes a
+similar remark about his experience as a captain in the Hampshire
+militia.
+
+Green threw the whole force of his nature into the parish schools,
+spending some part of every day in them; he visited incessantly, and
+took an active part in the movement for regulating and controlling
+private charity which led to the formation of the Charity Organisation
+Society. An outbreak of cholera and period of distress among the poor
+which occurred during his incumbency drew warm-hearted men from other
+parts of London to give their help to the clergy of the East End.
+Edward Denison, who was long affectionately remembered by many who
+knew him in Oxford and London, chose Green's parish to work in, and
+the two friends confirmed one another in their crusade against
+indiscriminate and demoralising charity. It was at this time that
+Green, who spent upon the parish nearly all that he received as vicar,
+found himself obliged to earn some money by other means, and began to
+write for the _Saturday Review_. The addition of this labour to the
+daily fatigues of his parish duties told on his health, which had
+always been delicate, and made him willingly accept from Archbishop
+Tait, who had early marked and learned to value his abilities, the
+post of librarian at Lambeth. He quitted Stepney, and never took any
+other clerical work.
+
+Although physical weakness was one of the causes which compelled this
+step, there was also another. He had been brought up in Tractarian
+views, and is said to have been at one time on the point of entering
+the Church of Rome. This tendency passed off, and before he went to
+St. Philip's he had become a Broad Churchman, and was much influenced
+by the writings of Mr. F. D. Maurice, whom he knew and used frequently
+to meet, and whose pure and noble character, even more perhaps than
+his preaching, had profoundly impressed him. However, his restless
+mind did not stop long at that point. The same tendency which had
+carried him away from Tractarianism made him feel less and less at
+home in the ministry of the Church of England, and would doubtless
+have led him, even had his health been stronger, to withdraw from
+clerical duties. After a few years his friends ceased to address
+letters to him under the usual clerical epithet; but he continued to
+interest himself in ecclesiastical affairs, and always retained a
+marked dislike to Nonconformity. Aversions sometimes outlive
+attachments.
+
+On leaving Stepney he went to live in lodgings in Beaumont Street,
+Marylebone, and divided his time between Lambeth and literary work.
+He now during several years wrote a good deal for the _Saturday
+Review_, and his articles were among the best which then appeared in
+that organ. The most valuable of them were reviews of historical
+books, and descriptions from the historical point of view of cities or
+other remarkable places, especially English and French towns. Some of
+these are masterpieces. Other articles were on social, or what may be
+called occasional, topics, and attracted much notice at the time from
+their gaiety and lightness of touch, which sometimes seemed to pass
+into flippancy. He never wrote upon politics, nor was he in the
+ordinary sense of the word a journalist, for with the exception of
+these social articles, his work was all done in his own historical
+field, and done with as much care and pains as others would bestow on
+the composition of a book. Upon this subject I may quote the words of
+one of his oldest and most intimate friends (Mr. Stopford Brooke), who
+knew all he did in those days.
+
+  The real history of this writing for the _Saturday Review_ has
+  much personal, pathetic, and literary interest.
+
+  It was when he was vicar of St. Philip's, Stepney, that he wrote
+  the most. The income of the place was, I think, £300 a year, and
+  the poverty of the parish was very great. Mr. Green spent every
+  penny of this income on the parish. And he wrote--in order to
+  live, and often when he was wearied out with the work of the day
+  and late into the night--two, and often three, articles a week for
+  the _Saturday Review_. It was less of a strain to him than it
+  would have been to many others, because he wrote with such speed,
+  and because his capacity for rapidly throwing his subject into
+  form and his memory were so remarkable. But it was a severe
+  strain, nevertheless, for one who, at the time, had in him the
+  beginnings of the disease of which he died.
+
+  I was staying with him once for two days, and the first night he
+  said to me, "I have three articles to write for the _Saturday
+  Review_, and they must all be done in thirty-six hours." "What are
+  they?" I said; "and how have you found time to think of them?"
+  "Well," he answered, "one is on a volume of Freeman's _Norman
+  Conquest_, another is a 'light middle,' and the last on the
+  history of a small town in England; and I have worked them all
+  into form as I was walking to-day about the parish and in London."
+  One of these studies was finished before two o'clock in the
+  morning, and while I talked to him; the other two were done the
+  next day. It is not uncommon to reach such speed, but it is very
+  uncommon to combine this speed with literary excellence of
+  composition, and with permanent and careful knowledge. The
+  historical reviews were of use to, and gratefully acknowledged by,
+  his brother historians, and frequently extended, in two or three
+  numbers of the _Saturday Review_, to the length of an article in a
+  magazine. I used to think them masterpieces of reviewing, and
+  their one fault was the fault which was then frequent in that
+  _Review_--over-vehemence in slaughtering its foes. Such reviewing
+  cannot be fairly described as journalism. It was an historical
+  scholar speaking to scholars.
+
+  Another class of articles written by Mr. Green were articles on
+  towns in England, France, or Italy. I do not know whether it was
+  he or Mr. Freeman who introduced this custom of bringing into a
+  short space the historical aspect of a single town or of a famous
+  building, and showing how the town or the building recorded its
+  own history, and how it was linked to general history, but Mr.
+  Green, at least, began it very early in his articles on Oxford. At
+  any rate, it was his habit, at this time, whenever he travelled in
+  England, France, or Italy, to make a study of any town he
+  visited.
+
+  Articles of this kind--and he had them by fifties in his
+  head--formed the second line of what has been called his
+  journalism. I should prefer to call them contributions to history.
+  They are totally different in quality from ordinary journalism.
+  They are short historical essays.
+
+As his duties at Lambeth made no great demands on his time, he was now
+able to devote himself more steadily to historical work. His first
+impulse in that direction seems, as I have said, to have been received
+from Dean Stanley at Oxford. His next came from E. A. Freeman, who had
+been impressed by an ingenious paper of his at a meeting of the
+Somerset Archæological Society, and who became from that time his
+steadfast friend. Green was a born historian, who would have been
+eminent without any help except that of books. But he was wise enough
+to know the value of personal counsel and direction, and generous
+enough to be heartily grateful for what he received. He did not belong
+in any special sense to what has been called Freeman's school,
+differing widely from that distinguished writer in many of his views,
+and still more in style and manner. But he learnt much from Freeman,
+and he delighted to acknowledge his debt. He learnt among other things
+the value of accuracy, the way to handle original authorities, the
+interpretation of architecture, and he received, during many years of
+intimate intercourse, the constant sympathy and encouragement of a
+friend whose affection was never blind to faults, while his
+admiration was never clouded by jealousy. It was his good fortune to
+win the regard and receive the advice of another illustrious
+historian, Dr. Stubbs, who has expressed in language perhaps more
+measured, but not less emphatic than Freeman's, his sense of Green's
+services to English history. These two he used to call his masters;
+but no one who has read him and them needs to be told that his was one
+of those strong and rich intelligences which, in becoming more perfect
+by the study of others, loses nothing of its originality.
+
+His first continuous studies had lain among the Angevin kings of
+England, and the note-books still exist in which he had accumulated
+materials for their history. However, the book he planned was never
+written, for when the state of his lungs (which forced him to spend
+the winter of 1870-71 at San Remo) had begun to alarm his friends,
+they urged him to throw himself at once into some treatise likely to
+touch the world more than a minute account of so remote a period could
+do. Accordingly he began, and in two or three years, his winters
+abroad sadly interrupting work, he completed the _Short History of the
+English People_. When a good deal of it had gone through the press, he
+felt, and his friends agreed with him, that the style of the earlier
+chapters was too much in the eager, quick, sketchy, "point-making"
+manner of his _Saturday Review_ articles, "and did not possess" (says
+the friend whom I have already quoted) "enough historical dignity for
+a work which was to take in the whole history of England. It was then,
+being convinced of this, that he cancelled a great deal of what had
+been stereotyped, and re-wrote it, re-creating, with his passionate
+facility, his whole style." In order to finish it he gave up the
+_Saturday Review_ altogether, though he could ill spare what his
+writing there brought him in. It is seldom that one finds such
+swiftness and ease in composition as his, united to so much
+fastidiousness. He went on remoulding and revising till his friends
+insisted that the book should be published anyhow, and published it
+accordingly was, in 1874. Feeling that his time on earth might be
+short, for he was often disabled even by a catarrh, he was the readier
+to yield.
+
+The success of the _Short History_ was rapid and overwhelming.
+Everybody bought it. It was philosophical enough for scholars, and
+popular enough for schoolboys. No historical book since Macaulay's
+_History_ has made its way so fast, or been read with so much avidity.
+And Green was under disadvantages from which his great predecessor did
+not suffer. Macaulay's name was famous before his _History of England_
+appeared, and Macaulay's scale was so large that he could enliven his
+pages with a multitude of anecdotes and personal details. Green was
+known only to a small circle of friends, having written nothing under
+his own signature except one or two papers in magazines or in the
+Transactions of archæological societies; and the plan of his book,
+which dealt, in eight hundred and twenty pages, with the whole
+fourteen centuries of English national life, obliged him to handle
+facts in the mass, and touch lightly and briefly on personal traits. A
+summary is of all kinds of writing that which it is hardest to make
+interesting, because one must speak in general terms, one must pack
+facts tightly together, one must be content to give those facts
+without the delicacies of light and shade, or the subtler tints of
+colour. Yet such was his skill, both literary and historical, that his
+outlines gave more pleasure and instruction than other people's
+finished pictures.
+
+In 1876 he took, for the only time in his life, except when he had
+supported a working-man's candidate for the Tower Hamlets at the
+general election of 1868, an active part in practical politics.
+Towards the end of that year, when war seemed impending between Russia
+and the Turks, fears were entertained that England might undertake the
+defence of the Sultan, and a body called the Eastern Question
+Association was formed to organise opposition to the pro-Turkish
+policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Ministry. Green threw himself warmly
+into the movement, was chosen to serve on the Executive Committee of
+the Association, and was one of a sub-committee of five (which
+included also Mr. Stopford Brooke and Mr. William Morris the poet[23])
+appointed to draw up the manifesto convoking the meeting of delegates
+from all parts of the country, which was held in December 1876, under
+the title of the Eastern Question Conference. The sub-committee met at
+my house and spent the whole day on its work. It was a new and curious
+experience to see these three great men of letters drafting a
+political appeal. Morris and Green were both of them passionately
+anti-Turkish, and Morris indeed acted for the next two years as
+treasurer of the Association, doing his work with a business-like
+efficiency such as poets seldom possess. Green continued to attend the
+general committee until, after the Treaty of Berlin, it ceased to
+meet, and took the keenest interest in its proceedings. But his weak
+health and frequent winter absences made public appearances impossible
+to him. He was all his life an ardent Liberal. His sympathy with
+national movements did not confine itself to Continental Europe, but
+embraced Ireland and made him a Home Ruler long before Mr. Gladstone
+and the Liberal party adopted that policy. It ought to be added that
+though he had ceased to belong to the Church of England, he remained
+strongly opposed to disestablishment.
+
+When he had completed the re-casting of his _Short History_ in the
+form of a larger book, which appeared under the title of _A History of
+the English People_, he addressed himself with characteristic activity
+to a new project. He had for a long time meditated upon the _origines_
+of English history, the settlement of the Teutonic invaders in
+Britain, followed by the consolidation of their tribes into a nation
+with definite institutions and a settled order; and his desire to
+treat this topic was stimulated by the way in which some critics had
+sought to disparage his _Short History_ as a mere popularising of
+other people's ideas. The criticism was unjust, for, if there had been
+no rummaging in MS. sources for the _Short History_, there was
+abundant originality in the views the book contained. However, these
+carpings disposed his friends to recommend an enterprise which would
+lead him to deal chiefly with original authorities, and to put forth
+those powers of criticism and construction which they knew him to
+possess. Thus he set to work afresh at the very beginning, at Roman
+Britain and the Saxon Conquest. He had not advanced far when, having
+gone to spend the winter in Egypt, he caught an illness which so told
+on his weak frame that he was only just able to return to London in
+April, and would not have reached it at all but for the care with
+which he was tended by his wife. (He had married Miss Alice Stopford
+in 1877.) In a few weeks he so far recovered as to be able to resume
+his studies, though now forbidden to give to them more than two or
+three hours a day. However, what he could not do alone he did with and
+through his wife, who consulted the original sources for him,
+investigated obscure points, and wrote at his dictation. In this way,
+during the summer and autumn months of 1881, when often some slight
+change of weather would throw him back and make work impossible for
+days or weeks, the book was prepared, which he published in February
+1882, under the title of _The Making of England_. Even in those few
+months it was incessantly rewritten; no less than ten copies were made
+of the first chapter. It was warmly received by the few persons who
+were capable of judging its merits. But he was himself far from
+satisfied with it as a literary performance, thinking that a reader
+would find it at once too speculative and too dry, deficient in the
+details needed to make the life of primitive England real and
+instructive. If this had been so it would have been due to no failing
+in his skill, but to the scantiness of the materials available for the
+first few centuries of our national history. But he felt it so
+strongly that he was often disposed to recur to his idea of writing a
+history of the last seventy or eighty years, and was only induced by
+the encouragement of a few friends to pursue the narrative which, in
+_The Making of England_, he had carried down to the reign of Egbert.
+The winter of 1881 was spent at Mentone, and the following summer in
+London. He continued very weak, and was sometimes unable for weeks
+together to go out driving or to work at home. But the moment that an
+access of strength returned, the note-books were brought out, and he
+was again busy going through what his wife's industry had tabulated,
+and dictating for an hour or two till fatigue forced him to desist.
+Those who saw him during that summer were amazed, not only at the
+brave spirit which refused to yield to physical feebleness, but at the
+brightness and clearness of his intellect, which was not only as
+active as it had ever been before, but as much interested in whatever
+passed in the world. When one saw him sitting propped up with cushions
+on the sofa, his tiny frame worn to skin and bone, his voice
+interrupted by frequent fits of coughing, it seemed wrong to stay,
+but, after a little, all was forgotten in the fascination of his talk,
+and one found it hard to realise that where thought was strong speech
+might be weak.
+
+In October, when he returned to Mentone, the tale of early English
+history had been completed, and was in type down to the death of Earl
+Godwine in A.D. 1052. He had hesitated as to the point at which the
+book should end, but finally decided to carry it down to A.D. 1085,
+the date of the dispersion of the last great Scandinavian armament
+which threatened England. As the book dealt with both the Danish and
+Norman invasions, he called it _The Conquest of England_. It appeared
+after his death, wanting, indeed, those expansions in several places
+which he had meant to give it, but still a book such as few but he
+could have produced, full of new light, and equal in the parts which
+have been fully handled to the best work of his earlier years.
+
+Soon after he returned to Mentone he became rapidly worse, and unfit
+for any continuous exertion. He could barely sit in the garden during
+an hour or two of morning sunshine. There I saw him in the end of
+December, fresh and keen as ever, aware that the most he could hope
+for was to live long enough to complete his _Conquest_, but eagerly
+reading every new book that came to him from England, starting schemes
+for various historical treatises sufficient to fill three life-times,
+and ranging in talk over the whole field of politics, literature, and
+history. It seemed as if the intellect and will, which strove to
+remain till their work was done, were the only things which held the
+weak and wasted body together. The ardour of his spirit prolonged life
+amid the signs of death. In January there came a new attack, and in
+February another unexpected rally. On the 2nd of March he remarked
+that it was no use fighting longer, and expired five days afterwards
+at the age of forty-six.
+
+Short as his life was, maimed and saddened by an ill-health which gave
+his powers no fair chance, it was not an unhappy life, for he had that
+immense power of enjoyment which so often belongs to a vivacious
+intelligence. He delighted in books, in travel, in his friends'
+company, in the constant changes and movements of the world. No
+satiety dulled his taste for these things, nor was his spirit, except
+for passing moments, darkened by the shadows which to others seemed to
+lie so thick around his path. He enjoyed, though without boasting, the
+fame his books had won, and the sense of creative power. And the last
+six years of his life were brightened by the society and affection of
+one who entered into all his tastes and pursuits with the fullest
+sympathy, and enabled him, by her unwearied diligence, to prosecute
+labours which physical weakness must otherwise have arrested.
+
+He might have won fame as a preacher or as a political journalist. It
+was, however, towards historical study that the whole current of his
+intellect set, and as it is by what he did in that sphere that he will
+be remembered, his special gifts for it deserve to be examined.
+
+A historian needs four kinds of capacity. First of all, accuracy,
+and a desire for the exact truth, which will grudge no time and
+pains in tracing out even what might seem a trivial matter.
+Secondly, keen observation, which can fasten upon small points, and
+discover in isolated data the basis for some generalisation, or the
+illustration of some principle. Thirdly, a sound and calm judgment,
+which will subject all inferences and generalisations, both one's
+own and other people's, to a searching review, and weigh in delicate
+scales their validity. These two last-mentioned qualifications taken
+together make up what we call the critical faculty, _i.e._ the power
+of dealing with evidence as tending to establish or discredit
+statements of fact, and those general conclusions which are built on
+the grouping of facts. Neither acuteness alone nor the judicial
+balance alone is enough to make the critic. There are men quick in
+observation and fertile in suggestion whose conclusions are
+worthless, because they cannot weigh one argument against another,
+just as there are solid and well-balanced minds that never enlighten
+a subject because, while detecting the errors of others, they
+cannot combine the data and propound a luminous explanation. To the
+making of a true critic, in history, in philosophy, in literature,
+in psychology, even largely in the sciences of nature, there should
+go not only judgment, but also a certain measure of creative
+power. Fourthly, the historian must have imagination, not indeed
+with that intensity which makes the poet, but in sufficient volume
+to let him feel the men of other ages and countries to be living
+and real like those among whom he moves, to present to him a large and
+full picture of a world remote from himself in time--as a world
+moving, struggling, hoping, fearing, enjoying, believing, like the
+near world of to-day--a world in which there went on a private life
+of thousands or millions of men and women, vaster, more complex,
+more interesting than that public life which is sometimes all that
+the records of the past have transmitted to us. Our imaginative
+historian may or may not be able to reconstruct for us the private
+and personal as well as the public or political life of the past. If
+he can, he will. If the data are too scanty, he may cautiously
+forbear. Yet he will still feel that those whose movements on the
+public stage he chronicles were steeped in an environment of natural
+and human influences which must have affected them at every turn;
+and he will so describe them as to make us feel them human, and give
+life to the pallid figures of far-off warriors and lawgivers.
+
+To these four aptitudes one need hardly add the faculty of literary
+exposition, for whoever possesses in large measure the last three, or
+even the last alone, cannot fail to interest his readers; and what
+more does literary talent mean?
+
+Distinguishing these several aptitudes, historians will be found to
+fall into two classes, according as there predominates in them the
+critical or the imaginative faculty. Though no one can attain
+greatness without both gifts, still they may be present in very
+unequal degrees. Some will investigate tangible facts and their
+relations with special care, occupying themselves chiefly with that
+constitutional and diplomatic side of history in which positive
+conclusions are (from the comparative abundance of records) most
+easily reached. Others will be drawn towards the dramatic and personal
+elements in history, primarily as they appear in the lives of famous
+individual men, secondarily as they are seen, more dimly but not less
+impressively, in groups and masses of men, and in a nation at large,
+and will also observe and dwell upon incidents of private life or
+features of social and religious custom, which the student of stately
+politics passes by.
+
+As Coleridge, when he divided thinkers into two classes, took Plato
+as the type of one, Aristotle of the other, so we may take as
+representatives of these two tendencies among historians Thucydides
+for the critical and philosophical, Herodotus for the imaginative
+and picturesque. The former does not indeed want a sense of the
+dramatic grandeur of a situation; his narrative of the later part of
+the Athenian expedition against Syracuse is like a piece of Æschylus
+in prose. So too Herodotus is by no means without a philosophical
+view of things, nor without a critical instinct, although his
+generalisations are sometimes vague or fanciful, and his critical
+apparatus rudimentary. Each is so splendid because each is wide,
+with the great gifts largely, although not equally, developed.
+
+Green was an historian of the Herodotean type. He possessed capacities
+which belong to the other type also; he was critical, sceptical,
+perhaps too sceptical, and philosophical. Yet the imaginative quality
+was the leading and distinctive quality in his mind and writing. An
+ordinary reader, if asked what was the main impression given by the
+_Short History of the English People_, would answer that it was the
+impression of picturesqueness and vividity--picturesqueness in
+attention to the externals of the life described, vividity in the
+presentation of that life itself.
+
+I remember to have once, in talking with Green about Greek history,
+told him how I had heard Mr. Jowett, in discussing the ancient
+historians, disparage Herodotus and declare him unworthy to be placed
+near Thucydides. Green answered, almost with indignation, that to say
+such a thing showed that eminent scholars might have little feeling
+for history. "Great as Thucydides is," he said, "Herodotus is far
+greater, or at any rate far more precious. His view was so much
+wider." I forget the rest of the conversation, but what he meant was
+that Herodotus, to whom everything in the world was interesting, and
+who has told us something about every country he visited or heard of,
+had a more fruitful conception of history than his Athenian successor,
+who practically confined himself to politics in the narrower sense of
+the term, and that even the wisdom of the latter is not so valuable to
+us as the flood of miscellaneous information which Herodotus pours out
+about everything in the early world--a world about which we should
+know comparatively little if his book had not been preserved.
+
+This deliverance was thoroughly characteristic of Green's own view of
+history. Everything was interesting to him because his imagination
+laid hold of everything. When he travelled, nothing escaped his quick
+eye, perpetually ranging over the aspects of places and society. When
+he went out to dinner, he noted every person present whom he had not
+known before, and could tell you afterwards something about them. He
+had a theory, so to speak, about each of them, and indeed about every
+one with whom he exchanged a dozen words. When he read the newspaper,
+he seemed to squeeze all the juice out of it in a few minutes. Nor was
+it merely the large events that fixed his mind; he drew from stray
+notices of minor current matters evidence of principles or tendencies
+which escaped other people's eyes. You never left him without having
+new light thrown upon the questions of the hour. His memory was
+retentive, but more remarkable was the sustained keenness of
+apprehension with which he read, and which made him fasten upon
+everything in a book or in talk which was significant, and could be
+made the basis for an illustration of some view. He had the Herodotean
+quality of reckoning nothing, however small or apparently remote from
+the main studies of his life, to be trivial or unfruitful. His
+imagination vitalised the small things, and found a place for them in
+the pictures he was always sketching out.
+
+As this faculty of discerning hidden meanings and relations was one
+index and consequence of his imaginative power, so another was found
+in that artistic gift to which I have referred. To give literary form
+to everything was a necessity of his intellect. He could not tell an
+anecdote or repeat a conversation without unconsciously dramatising
+it, putting into people's mouths better phrases than they would have
+themselves employed, and giving a finer point to the moral which the
+incident expressed. Verbal accuracy suffered, but what he thought the
+inner truth came out the more fully.
+
+Though he wrote very fast, and in the most familiar way, the style of
+his more serious letters was as good, I might say as finished, as that
+of his books. Every one of them had a beginning, middle, and end. The
+ideas were developed in an apt and graceful order, the sentences could
+all be construed, the diction was choice. It was the same with the
+short articles which he at one time used to write for the _Saturday
+Review_. They are little essays, some of them worthy to live not only
+for the excellent matter they contain, but for the delicate refinement
+of their form. Yet they were all written swiftly, and sometimes in the
+midst of physical exhaustion. The friend I have previously quoted
+describes the genesis of one. Green had reached the town of Troyes
+early one morning with two companions, and immediately started off to
+explore it, darting hither and thither through the streets like a dog
+trying to find a scent. In two or three hours the examination was
+complete. The friends lunched together, took the train on to Basel,
+got there late, and went off to bed. Green, however, wrote before he
+slept, and laid on the breakfast-table next morning, an article on
+Troyes, in which its characteristic features were brought out and
+connected with its fortunes and those of the Counts of Champagne
+during some centuries, an article which was really a history in
+miniature. Then they went out together to look at Basel, and being
+asked some question about that city he gave on the spur of the moment
+a sketch of its growth and character equally vivid and equally
+systematic, grouping all he had to say round two or three leading
+theories. Yet he had never been in either place before, and had not
+made a special study of either. He could apparently have done the same
+for many another town in France or the Rhineland.
+
+Nothing struck one so much in daily intercourse with him as his
+passionate interest in human life. The same quickness of sympathy
+which had served him well in his work among the East End poor, enabled
+him to pour feeling into the figures of a bygone age, and become the
+most human, and in so far the most real and touching, of all who have
+dealt with English history. Whether or not his portraits are true,
+they always seem to breathe.
+
+Men and women--that is to say, such of them as have characteristics
+pronounced enough to make them classifiable--may be divided into those
+whose primary interests are in nature and what relates to nature, and
+those whose primary interests are in and for man. Green was the most
+striking type I have known of the latter class, not merely because his
+human interests were strong, but also because they excluded, to a
+degree singular in a mind so versatile, interests in purely natural
+things. He did not seem to care for or seek to know any of the
+sciences of nature[24] except in so far as they bore directly upon
+man's life, and were capable of explaining it or of serving it. He had
+a keen eye for country, for the direction and character of hills, the
+position and influence of rivers, forests, and marshes, of changes in
+the line of land and sea. Readers of _The Making of England_ will
+recall the picture of the physical aspects of Britain when the
+Teutonic invaders entered it as an unsurpassed piece of reconstructive
+description. So on a battle-field or in an historical town, his vision
+of the features of the ground or the site was unerring. But he
+perceived and enjoyed natural beauty chiefly in reference to human
+life. The study of the battle-field and the town site were aids to the
+comprehension of historical events. The exquisite landscape was
+exquisite because it was associated with the people dwelling there,
+with the processes of their political growth, with their ideas or
+their social usages. I remember to have had from him the most vivid
+descriptions of the towns of the Riviera and of Capri, where he used
+to pass the winter, but he never touched on anything which did not
+illustrate or intertwine itself with the life of the people, leaving
+one uninformed on matters purely physical. Facts about the character
+of the mountains, the relation of their ranges to one another, or
+their rocks, or the trees and flowers of their upper regions, the
+prospects their summits command, the scenes of beauty in their glens,
+or beside their wood-embosomed lakes, all, in fact, which the mountain
+lover delights in, and which are to him a part of the mountain ardour,
+of the passion for pure nature unsullied by the presence of man--all
+this was cold to him. But as soon as a touch of human life fell like a
+sunbeam across the landscape, all became warm and lovable.
+
+It was the same with art. With an historian's delight in the creative
+ages and their work, he had a fondness for painting and sculpture, and
+could so describe what he saw in the galleries and churches of Italy
+as to bring out meanings one had not perceived before. But here, too,
+it was the human element that fascinated him. Technical merits, though
+he observed them, as he observed most things, were forgotten; he dwelt
+only on what the picture expressed or revealed. Pure landscape
+painting gave him little pleasure.
+
+It seems a truism to say that one who writes history ought to care
+for all that bears upon man in the present in order that he may
+comprehend what bore upon him in the past. This roaring loom of
+Time, these complex physical and moral forces playing round us, and
+driving us hither and thither by such a strange and intricate
+interlacement of movements that we seem to perceive no more than what
+is next us, and are unable to say whither we are tending, ought to
+be always before the historian's mind. But there are few who have
+tried, as Green tried, to follow every flash of the shuttle, and to
+discover a direction and a relation amidst apparent confusion, for
+there are few who have taken so wide a view of the historian's
+functions, and have so distinctly set before them as their object the
+comprehension and realisation and description of the whole field
+of bygone human life. The Past was all present to him in this sense,
+that he saw and felt in it not only those large events which
+annalists or state papers have recorded, but the everyday life of
+the people, their ideas, their habits, their external surroundings.
+And the Present was always as if past to him in this sense, that in
+spite of his strong political feelings, he looked at it with the eye
+of a philosophical observer, trying to disengage principles from
+details, permanent tendencies from passing outbursts. His imagination
+visualised, so to speak, the phenomena as in a picture; his
+speculative faculty tried to harmonise them, measure them, and
+forecast their effects. Hence it was a necessity to him to know
+what was passing in the world. The first thing he did every day,
+whatever other pressure there might be on him, was to read the daily
+newspaper. The last thing that he ceased to read, when what remained
+of life began to be counted by hours, was the daily newspaper. This
+warm interest in mankind is the keynote of his _History of the
+English People_. It is the whole people that is ever present to him,
+as it had been present before to few other historians.
+
+Such power of imagination and sympathy as I have endeavoured to
+describe is enough to make a brilliant writer, yet not necessarily a
+great historian. One must see how far the other qualifications,
+accuracy, acuteness of observation, and judgment, are also brought
+into action.
+
+His accuracy has been much impeached. When the first burst of applause
+that welcomed the _Short History_ had subsided, several critics began
+to attack it on the score of minor errors. They pointed out a number
+of statements of fact which were doubtful, and others which were
+incorrect, and spread in some quarters the impression that Green was a
+careless and untrustworthy writer. I do not deny that there are in the
+first editions of the _Short History_ some assertions made more
+positively than the evidence warrants, some pictures drawn from
+exceedingly slender materials. Mr. Skene remarks of the account given
+of the battle between the Jutes and the Britons which took place in
+the middle of the fifth century, somewhere near Aylesford in Kent, and
+about which we really know scarcely anything, "Mr. Green describes it
+as if he had been present." The temptation to such liberties is strong
+where the treatment of a period is summary. A writer who compresses
+the whole history of England into eight hundred pages of small
+octavo, making his narrative not a bare narrative but a picture full
+of colour and incident--incident which, for brevity's sake, must often
+be given by allusion--cannot be always interrupting the current of the
+story to indicate doubts or quote authorities for every statement in
+which there may be an element of conjecture; and it is probable that
+when the authorities are scrutinised their result will sometimes
+appear different from that which the author has presented. On this
+head the _Short History_ may be admitted to have occasionally
+purchased vividity at the price of exactitude. Of mistakes, strictly
+so called--_i.e._ statements demonstrably incorrect and therefore
+ascribable to haste or carelessness--there are enough to make a show
+under the hands of a hostile critic, yet not more than one is prepared
+to expect from any but the most careful scholars. The book falls far
+short of the accuracy of Thirlwall or Ranke or Stubbs, short even of
+the accuracy of Gibbon or Carlyle; but it is not greatly below the
+standard of Grote or Macaulay or Robertson, it is equal to the
+standard of Milman, above that of David Hume. I take famous names, and
+could put a better face on the matter by choosing for comparison
+divers contemporary writers whose literary eminence is higher than
+their historical. And Green's mistakes, although pretty numerous, were
+(for they have been corrected in later editions) nearly all in small
+matters. He puts an event, let us say, in 1340 which happened in the
+November of 1339; he calls a man John whose name was William. These
+are mistakes to the eye of a civil service examiner, but they seldom
+make any difference to the general reader, for they do not affect the
+doctrines and pictures which the book contains, and in which lies its
+permanent value as well as its literary charm. As Bishop Stubbs says,
+"Like other people, Green makes mistakes sometimes; but scarcely ever
+does the correction of his mistakes affect either the essence of the
+picture or the force of the argument.... All his work was real and
+original work; few people besides those who knew him well would see
+under the charming ease and vivacity of his style the deep research
+and sustained industry of the laborious student." It may be added that
+Green's later and more detailed works, _The Making of England_ and
+_The Conquest of England_, though they contain plenty of debatable
+matter, as in the paucity of authentic data any such book must do,
+have been charged with few errors in matters of fact.
+
+In considering his critical gift, it is well to distinguish those two
+elements of acute perception and sober judgment which I have already
+specified, for he possessed the former in larger measure than the
+latter. The same activity of mind which made him notice everything
+while travelling or entering a company of strangers, played
+incessantly upon the historical data of his work, and supplied him
+with endless theories as to the meaning of a statement, the source it
+came from, the way it had been transmitted, the conditions under which
+it was made. No one could be more acute and penetrating in what the
+Germans call _Quellenforschung_, the collection and investigation and
+testing of the sources of history, nor could any one be more
+painstaking. Errors of view, apart from those trivial inaccuracies
+already referred to, did not arise from an indolence that left any
+stone unturned, but rather from an occupation with the leading idea
+which had drawn his attention away from the details of time and place.
+The ingenuity with which he built up theories was as admirable as the
+art with which he stated them. People whom that art fascinated
+sometimes fancied that the charm lay entirely in the style. But the
+style was only a part of the craftsmanship. The facility in
+theorising, the power of grouping facts under new aspects, the skill
+in gathering and sifting evidence, were as remarkable as those
+artistic qualities which expressed themselves in the paragraphs and
+sentences and phrases. What danger there was arose from this
+fecundity. His mind was so fertile, could see so much in a theory and
+apply it so dexterously, that his judgment was sometimes dazzled by
+the brilliance of his ingenuity. I do not think he loved his theories
+specially because they were his own, for he often modified them, and
+was ready to consider any one else's suggestions; but he had a passion
+for light, and when a new view seemed to him to explain things
+previously dark, he wanted the patience to suspend his judgment and
+abide in uncertainty. Some of his hypotheses he himself dropped. Some
+others he probably would have dropped, as the authorities he respected
+have not embraced them. Others have made their way into general
+acceptance, and may become still more useful as future research works
+them out. But, whether right or wrong, they were instructive. Every
+one of them is based upon facts whose importance had not been so fully
+seen before, and suggests a point of view worth considering. Green's
+view may sometimes appear fanciful: it is never foolish, or
+superficial, or perverse. And so far from being credulous, his natural
+tendency was towards doubt.
+
+Inventive as his mind was, it was also solvent and sceptical. Seldom
+is a strong imagination coupled with so unsparing a criticism as
+that which he applied to the materials on which the constructive
+faculty had to work. His later tendencies were rather towards
+scepticism, and towards what one may call a severe and ascetic view
+of history. While writing _The Making of England_ and _The Conquest
+of England_, he used to lament the scantiness of the data and the
+barren dryness which he feared the books would consequently show.
+"How am I to make anything of these meagre entries of marches and
+battles which are the only materials for the history of whole
+centuries? Here are the Norsemen and Danes ravaging and occupying
+the country; we learn hardly anything about them from English
+sources, and nothing at all from Danish. How can one conceive and
+describe them? how have any comprehension of what England was like in
+the districts the Northmen took and ruled?" I tried to get him to
+work at the Norse Sagas, and remember in particular to have
+entreated him when he came to the battle of Brunanburh to eke out
+the pitifully scanty records of that fight from the account given of
+it in the story of the Icelandic hero, Egil, son of Skallagrim. But
+he answered that the Saga was unhistorical, a bit of legend
+written down more than a century after the events, and that he
+could not, by using it in the text, appear to trust it, or to mix up
+authentic history with what was possibly fable. It was urged that he
+could guard himself in a note from being supposed to take it for more
+than what it was, a most picturesque embellishment of his tale. But
+he stood firm. Throughout these two last books, he steadily
+refrained from introducing any matter, however lively or romantic,
+which could not stand the test of his stringent criticism, and used
+laughingly to tell how Dean Stanley had long ago said to him, after
+reading one of his earliest pieces, "I see you are in danger of
+growing picturesque. Beware of it. I have suffered for it."
+
+If in these later years he reined in his imagination more tightly, the
+change was due to no failing in his ingenuity. Nothing in his work
+shows higher constructive ability than _The Making of England_. He had
+to deal with a time which has left us scarcely any authentic records,
+and to piece together his narrative and his picture of the country out
+of these records, and the indications, faint and scattered, and often
+capable of several interpretations, which are supplied by the remains
+of Roman roads and villas, the names of places, the boundaries of
+local divisions, the casual statements of writers many centuries
+later. What he has given us remains an enduring witness to his
+historical power. For here it is not a question of mere brilliance of
+style. The result is due to patience, penetration, and the careful
+weighing of evidence, joined to that faculty of realising things in
+the concrete by which a picture is conjured up out of a mass of
+phenomena, everything falling into its place under laws which seem to
+prove themselves as soon as they are stated.
+
+Of his style nothing need be said, for his readers have felt its
+charm. But it deserves to be remarked that this accomplished master of
+words had little verbal memory. He used to say that he could never
+recollect a phrase in its exact form, and in his books he often
+unconsciously varied, writing from memory, some expression whose
+precise form is on record. Nor had he any turn for languages. German
+he knew scarcely at all, a fact which makes the range of his
+historical knowledge appear more striking; and though he had spent
+several winters in Italy, he could not speak Italian except so far as
+he needed it for the inn or the railway. The want of mere verbal
+memory partly accounts for this deficiency, but it was not unconnected
+with the vehemence of his interest in the substance of things. He was
+so anxious to get at the kernel that he could not stop to examine the
+nut. In this absence of linguistic gifts, as well as in the keenness
+of his observation (and in his shortsightedness), he resembled Dean
+Stanley, who, though he had travelled in and brought back all that was
+best worth knowing from every country in Europe, had no facility in
+any language but his own.
+
+Green was not one of those whose personality is unlike their books,
+for there was in both the same fertility, the same vivacity, the
+same quickness of sympathy. Nevertheless, his conversation seemed to
+give an even higher impression of intellectual power than did his
+writings, because it was so swift and so spontaneous. Such talk has
+rarely been heard in our time, so gay was it, so vivid, so various,
+so full of anecdote and illustration, so acute in criticism, so
+candid in consideration, so graphic in description, so abundant in
+sympathy, so flashing in insight, so full of colour and emotion as
+well as of knowledge and thought. One had to forbid one's self to
+visit him in the evening, because it was impossible to get away before
+two o'clock in the morning. And, unlike many famous talkers, he was
+just as willing to listen as to speak. One of the charms of his
+company was that it made a man feel better than his ordinary self.
+His appreciation of whatever had any worth in it, his comments and
+replies, so stimulated the interlocutor's mind that it moved faster
+and could hit upon apter expressions than at any other time. The
+same gifts which shone in his conversation, lucid arrangement of
+ideas, ready command of words, and a power in perceiving the
+tendencies of those whom he addressed, would have made him an
+admirable public speaker. I do not remember that he ever did
+speak, in his later years, to any audience larger than a committee
+of twenty. But he was an eloquent preacher. The first time I ever
+saw him was in St. Philip's Church at Stepney about 1866, and I
+shall never forget the impression made on me by the impassioned
+sentences that rang through the church from the fiery little figure
+in the pulpit with its thin face and bright black eyes.
+
+What Green accomplished seems to those who used to listen to him
+little in comparison with what he might have done had longer life
+and a more robust body been granted him. Some of his finest gifts
+would not have found their full scope till he came to treat of a
+period where the materials for history are ample, and where he
+could have allowed himself space to deal with them--such a period,
+for instance, as that of his early choice, the Angevin kings of
+England. Yet, even basing themselves on what he has done, they may
+claim for him a place among the foremost writers of his time. He
+left behind him no one who combined so many of the best gifts. There
+were among his contemporaries historians more learned and equally
+industrious. There were two or three whose accuracy was more
+scrupulous, their judgment more uniformly sober and cautious. But
+there was no one in whom so much knowledge and so wide a range of
+interests were united to such ingenuity, acuteness, and originality,
+as well as to such a power of presenting results in rich, clear,
+pictorial language. A master of style may be a worthless historian.
+We have instances. A skilful investigator and sound reasoner may be
+unreadable. The conjunction of fine gifts for investigation with
+fine gifts for exposition is a rare conjunction, which cannot be
+prized too highly, for while it advances historical science, it brings
+historical methods, as well as historical facts, within the horizon of
+the ordinary reader.
+
+Of the services Green rendered to English history, the first, and that
+which was most promptly appreciated, was the intensity with which he
+realised, and the skill with which he portrayed, the life of the
+people of England as a whole, and taught his readers that the exploits
+of kings and the intrigues of ministers, and the struggles of parties
+in Parliament, are, after all, secondary matters, and important
+chiefly as they affect the welfare or stimulate the thoughts and
+feelings of the great mass of undistinguished humanity in whose hands
+the future of a nation lies. He changed the old-fashioned distribution
+of our annals according to reigns and dynasties into certain periods,
+showing that such divisions often obscure the true connection of
+events, and suggesting new and better conceptions of the periods into
+which the record of English progress naturally falls. And, lastly, he
+laid, in his latest books, a firm and enduring foundation for our
+mediæval history by that account of the Teutonic occupation of
+England, of the state of the country as they found it, and the way
+they conquered and began to organise it, which I have already dwelt on
+as a signal proof of his constructive faculty.
+
+Many readers will be disposed to place him near Macaulay, for though
+he was less weighty he was more subtle, and not less fascinating. To
+fewer perhaps will it occur to compare him with Gibbon, yet I am
+emboldened by the opinion of one of our greatest contemporary
+historians to venture on the comparison. There are indeed wide
+differences between the two. Green is as completely a man of the
+nineteenth century as Gibbon was a man of the eighteenth. Green's
+style has not the majestic march of Gibbon: it is quick and eager
+almost to restlessness. Nor is his judgment so uniformly grave and
+sound. But one may find in his genius what was characteristic of
+Gibbon's also, the combination of a mastery of multitudinous details,
+with a large and luminous view of those far-reaching forces and
+relations which govern the fortunes of peoples and guide the course of
+empire. This width and comprehensiveness, this power of massing for
+the purposes of argument the facts which his literary art has just
+been clothing in its most brilliant hues, is the highest of a
+historian's gifts, and is the one which seems most surely to establish
+Green's position among the leading historical minds of his time.
+
+-----
+
+  [22] This sketch was written in 1883. A volume of Green's Letters,
+       with a short connecting biography by Sir Leslie Stephen, was
+       published in 1901. The letters are extremely good reading, the
+       biography faithful and graceful.
+
+  [23] Sir George Young and I were the other members.
+
+  [24] At one time, however, he learnt a little geology from his friend
+       Professor Dawkins, perceiving its bearings on history.
+
+
+
+
+SIR GEORGE JESSEL, MASTER OF THE ROLLS
+
+
+There is hardly any walk of English life in which brilliant abilities
+win so little fame for their possessor among the public at large as
+that of practice at the Chancery bar. A leading ecclesiastic, or
+physician, or surgeon, or financier, or manufacturer, or even a great
+man of science, unless his work is done in some sphere which, like
+pure mathematics, is far removed from the comprehension of ordinary
+educated men, is sure, in a time like ours, to become well known to
+the world and acquire influence in it. A great advocate practising in
+the Common-law Courts is, of course, still more certain to become a
+familiar figure. But the cases which are dealt with by the Courts of
+Equity, though they often involve vast sums of money and raise
+intricate and important points of law, mostly turn on questions of a
+technical kind, and are seldom what the newspapers call sensational.
+Thus it may happen that a practitioner or a judge in these Courts
+enjoys an extraordinary reputation within his profession, and is by
+them regarded as one of the ornaments of his time, while the rest of
+his fellow-countrymen know nothing at all about his merits.
+
+This was the case with Sir George Jessel, though towards the end of
+his career the admiration which the Bar felt for his powers began so
+far to filter through to the general public that his premature death
+was felt to be a national misfortune.
+
+Jessel (born in 1824, died in 1883) was only one among many instances
+England has lately seen of men of Jewish origin climbing to the
+highest distinction. But he was the first instance of a Jew who,
+continuing to adhere to the creed of his forefathers, received a very
+high office; for Mr. Disraeli, as every one knows, had been baptized
+as a boy, and always professed to be a Christian. Jessel's career was
+not marked by any remarkable incidents. He rose quickly to eminence at
+the bar, being in this aided by his birth; for the Jews in London, as
+elsewhere, hold together. There are among them many solicitors in
+large practice, and these take a natural pleasure in pushing forward
+any specially able member of their community. His powers were more
+fully seen and appreciated when he became (in 1865) a Queen's Counsel,
+and brought him with unusual speed to the front rank. He came into
+Parliament at the general election of 1868 on the Liberal side, and
+three years later was made Solicitor-General in Mr. Gladstone's first
+Government, retaining, as was then usual, his private practice, which
+had become so large that there was scarcely any case of first-rate
+importance brought into the Chancery Courts in which he did not
+appear. Although a decided Liberal, as the Jews mostly were until Lord
+Beaconsfield's foreign policy had begun to lead them into other paths,
+he had borne little part in politics till he took his seat in the
+House of Commons; and when he spoke there, he obtained no great
+success. Lawyers in the English Parliament are under the double
+disadvantage of having had less leisure than most other members to
+study and follow political questions, and of having contracted a
+manner and style of speaking not suited to an assembly which, though
+deliberative, is not deliberate, and which listens with impatience to
+a technical or forensic method of treating the topics which come
+before it.
+
+Jessel's ability would have soon overcome the former difficulty, but
+less easily the latter. Though he was lucid and powerful in his
+treatment of legal topics, and made a quite admirable law officer in
+the way of advising ministers and the public departments, he was never
+popular with the House of Commons, for he presented his views in a
+hard, dry, dogmatic form, with no graces of style or delivery.
+However, he did not long remain in that arena, but on the retirement
+of Lord Romilly from the office of Master of the Rolls, was in 1873
+appointed to succeed him. In this post his extraordinary gifts found
+their amplest sphere. The equity judges in England used always to sit,
+and in nearly all cases do still sit, without a jury to hear causes,
+with or without witnesses, and they despatch a great deal of the
+heaviest business that is brought into the courts. Commercial causes
+of the first importance come before them, no less than those which
+relate to trusts or to real property; and the granting of injunctions,
+a specially serious matter, rests chiefly in their hands. Each equity
+judge sits alone, and the suitor may choose before which of them he
+will bring his case. Among the four--a number subsequently increased
+to five--equity judges of first instance, Jessel immediately rose to
+the highest reputation, so that most of the heavy and difficult cases
+were brought into his court. He possessed a wonderfully quick, as well
+as powerful, mind, which got to the kernel of a matter while other
+people were still hammering at the shell, and which applied legal
+principles just as swiftly and surely as it mastered a group of
+complicated facts.
+
+The Rolls Court used to present, while he presided over it, a curious
+and interesting sight, which led young counsel, who had no business to
+do there, to frequent it for the mere sake of watching the Judge. When
+the leading counsel for the plaintiff was opening his case, Jessel
+listened quietly for the first few minutes only, and then began to
+address questions to the counsel, at first so as to guide his remarks
+in a particular direction, then so as to stop his course altogether
+and turn his speech into a series of answers to the Judge's
+interrogatories. When, by a short dialogue of this kind, Jessel had
+possessed himself of the vital facts, he would turn to the leading
+counsel for the defendant and ask him whether he admitted such and
+such facts alleged by the plaintiff to be true. If these facts were
+admitted, the Judge proceeded to indicate the view he was disposed to
+take of the law applicable to the facts, and, by a few more questions
+to the counsel on the one side or the other, as the case might be,
+elicited their respective legal grounds of contention. If the facts
+were not admitted, it of course became necessary to call the witnesses
+or read the affidavits, processes which the vigorous impatience of the
+Judge considerably shortened, for it was a dangerous thing to read to
+him any irrelevant or loosely-drawn paragraph. But more generally his
+searching questions and the sort of pressure he applied so cut down
+the issues of fact that there was little or nothing left in
+controversy regarding which it was necessary to examine the evidence
+in detail, since the counsel felt that there was no use in putting
+before him a contention which they could not sustain under the fire
+of his criticism. Then Jessel proceeded to deliver his opinion and
+dispose of the case. The affair was from beginning to end far less an
+argument and counter-argument by counsel than an investigation
+directly conducted by the Judge himself, in which the principal
+function of the counsel was to answer the Judge's questions concisely
+and exactly, so that the latter might as soon as possible get to the
+bottom of the matter. The Bar in a little while came to learn and
+adapt themselves to his ways, and few complained of being stopped or
+interrupted by him, because his interruptions, unlike those of some
+judges, were neither inopportune nor superfluous. The counsel (with
+scarcely an exception) felt themselves his inferiors, and recognised
+not only that he was better able to handle the case than they were,
+but that the manner and style in which they presented their facts or
+arguments would make little difference to the result, because his
+penetration was sure to discover the merits of each contention, and
+neither eloquence nor pertinacity would have the slightest effect on
+his resolute and self-confident mind. Thus business was despatched
+before him with unexampled speed, and it became a maxim among
+barristers that, however low down in the cause-list at the Rolls your
+cause might stand, it was never safe to be away from the court, so
+rapidly were cases "crumpled up" or "broken down" under the blows of
+this vigorous intellect. It was more surprising that the suitors, as
+well as the Bar and the public generally, acquiesced, after the first
+few months, in this way of doing business. Nothing breeds more
+discontent than haste and heedlessness in a judge. But Jessel's speed
+was not haste. He did as much justice in a day as others could do in a
+week; and those few who, dissatisfied with these rapid methods, tried
+to reverse his decisions before the Court of Appeal, were very seldom
+successful, although that court then contained in Lord Justice James
+and Lord Justice Mellish two unusually strong men, who would not have
+hesitated to differ even from the redoubtable Master of the Rolls.
+
+As I have mentioned Lord Justice Mellish, I may turn aside for a
+moment to say a word regarding that extraordinary man, who stood along
+with Cairns and Roundell Palmer in the foremost rank of Jessel's
+professional contemporaries. Mellish held for some years before his
+elevation to the Bench in 1869 a position unique at the English
+Common-law Bar as a giver of opinions on points of law. As the
+Israelites in King David's day said of Ahithophel that his counsel was
+as if a man had inquired at the oracle of God,[25] so the legal
+profession deemed Mellish practically infallible, and held an opinion
+signed by him to be equal in weight to a judgment of the Court of
+Exchequer Chamber (the then court of appeal in common-law cases). He
+was not effective as an advocate addressing a jury, being indeed far
+too good for any jury; but in arguing a point of law his unerring
+logic, the lucidity with which he stated his position, the cogency and
+precision with which he drew his inferences, made it a delight to
+listen to him. The chain of ratiocination seemed irrefragable:
+
+        +en d' ethet' akmothetô megan akmona, kopte de desmous
+        arrhêktous alutous, ophr' empedon authi menoien.+[26]
+
+He had, indeed, but one fault as an arguer. He could not argue a point
+whose soundness he doubted as effectively as one in which he had
+faith; and when it befell that several points arose in a case, and the
+Court seemed disposed to lay more stress on the one for which he cared
+little than on the one he deemed conclusive, he refused to fall in
+with their view and continued to insist upon that which his own mind
+approved.
+
+I remember to have once heard him and Cairns argue before the House of
+Lords (sitting as the final Court of Appeal) a case relating to a
+vessel called the _Alexandra_--it was a case arising out of an
+attempt of the Confederates, during the American War of Secession, to
+get out of a British port a cruiser they had ordered. Cairns spoke
+first with all his usual power, and seemed to have left nothing to be
+added. But when Mellish followed on the same side, he set his points
+in so strong a light, and placed his contention on so solid a basis,
+that even Cairns's speech was forgotten, and it seemed impossible that
+any answer could be found to Mellish's arguments. One felt as if the
+voice of pure reason were speaking through his lips.
+
+Such an intellect might seem admirably qualified for judicial work.
+But as a judge, Mellish, admirable though he was in temper, in
+fairness, in learning, and in logic, did not win so exceptional a
+reputation as he had won at the Bar. People used to ascribe this
+partly to his weak health, partly to the fact that he, who had been a
+common-law practitioner, was sitting in a court which heard equity
+appeals, and alongside of a quick and strong colleague reared in the
+equity courts.[27] But something may have been due to the fact that he
+needed the stimulus of conflict to bring out the full force of his
+splendid intelligence. A circumstance attending the appointment of
+Mellish illustrates the remark already made that a great counsel whose
+work lies apart from so-called "sensation cases" may remain unknown to
+his contemporaries. When Mr. Gladstone, being then Prime Minister, and
+having to select a Lord Justice of Appeal, was told that Mellish was
+the fittest man for the post, he asked, "Can that be the boy who was
+my fag at Eton?" He had not heard of Mellish during the intervening
+forty years!
+
+However, I return to the Master of the Rolls. In dealing with facts,
+Jessel has never had a superior, and in our days, perhaps, no rival.
+He knew all the ways of the financial and commercial world. In his
+treatment of points of law, every one admitted and admired both an
+extraordinary knowledge and mastery of reported cases, and an
+extremely acute and exact appreciation of principles, a complete power
+of extracting them from past cases and fitting them to the case in
+hand. He had a memory which forgot nothing, and which, indeed, wearied
+him by refusing to forget trivial things. When he delivered an
+elaborate judgment it was his delight to run through a long series of
+cases, classifying and distinguishing them. His strength made him
+bold; he went further than most judges in readiness to carry a
+principle somewhat beyond any decided case, and to overrule an
+authority which he did not respect. The fault charged on him was his
+tendency, perhaps characteristic of the Hebrew mind, to take a
+somewhat hard and dry view of a legal principle, overlooking its more
+delicate shades, and, in the interpretation of statutes or documents,
+to adhere too strictly to the letter, overlooking the spirit. An
+eminent lawyer said, "If all judges had been like Jessel, there might
+have been no equity." In that respect many deemed him inferior to Lord
+Cairns, the greatest judge among his contemporaries, who united to an
+almost equally wide and accurate knowledge of the law a grasp of
+principles even more broad and philosophical than Jessel's was. Be
+this as it may, the judgments of the Master of the Rolls, which fill
+so many pages of the recent English Law Reports, are among the best
+that have ever gone to build up the fabric of the English law. Except
+on two occasions, when he reserved judgment at the request of his
+colleagues in the Court of Appeal, they were delivered on the spur of
+the moment, after the conclusion of the arguments, or of so much of
+the arguments as he allowed counsel to deliver; but they have all the
+merits of carefully-considered utterances, so clear and direct is
+their style, so concisely as well as cogently are the authorities
+discussed and the grounds of decision stated. The bold and sweeping
+character which often belongs to them makes them more instructive as
+well as more agreeable reading than the judgments of most modern
+judges, whose commonest fault is a timidity which tries to escape, by
+dwelling on the details of the particular case, from the enunciation
+of a definite general principle. Positive and definite Jessel always
+was. As he put it himself: "I may be wrong, but I never have any
+doubts."
+
+At the Bar, Jessel had been far from popular; for his manners were
+unpolished, and his conduct towards other counsel overbearing. On
+the Bench he improved, and became liked as well as respected. There
+was a sort of rough _bonhomie_ about him, and though he could be
+disagreeable on occasions to a leading counsel, especially if brought
+from the common-law bar into his court, he showed a good-humoured
+wish to deal gently with young or inexperienced barristers. There
+was also an obvious anxiety to do justice, an impatience of mere
+technicalities, and a readiness, remarkable in so strong-willed a
+man, to hear what could be said against his own opinion, and to
+reconsider it. Besides, a profession is naturally proud of any one
+whose talents adorn it, and whose eminence seems to be communicated
+to the whole body.
+
+Ever since, under the Plantagenet kings, the Chancery became a law
+court, the office of Master of the Rolls had been that of a judge of
+first instance. In 1881 its character was changed, and its occupant
+placed at the head of the Court of Appeal. Thus it was as an appellate
+judge that Jessel latterly sat, giving no less satisfaction in that
+capacity than in his former one, and being indeed confessedly the
+strongest judicial intellect (except Lord Cairns) on the Bench.
+Outside his professional duties, his chief interest was in the
+University of London, at which he had himself graduated. He was a
+member of its senate, and busied himself with its examinations, being
+up till the last excessively fond of work, and finding that of a judge
+who sits for five or six hours daily insufficient to satisfy his
+appetite. He was not what would be called a highly cultivated man,
+although he knew a great deal beyond the field of law, mathematics,
+for instance, and Hebrew literature and botany, for he had been
+brought up in a not very refined circle, and had been absorbed in
+legal work during the best years of his life. But his was an
+intelligence of extraordinary power and flexibility, eminently
+practical, as the Semitic intellect generally is, and yet thoroughly
+scientific. And he was also one of those strong natures who make
+themselves disliked while they are fighting their way to the top, but
+grow more genial and more tolerant when they have won what they
+sought, and perceive that others admit their pre-eminence. The
+services which he rendered as a judge illustrate not only the
+advantage of throwing open all places to all comers--the bigotry of an
+elder day excluded the Jews from judicial office altogether--but also
+the benefit of having a judge at least equal in ability to the best of
+those who practise before him. It was because Jessel was so easily
+master in his court that so large and important a part of the judicial
+business of the country was, during many years, despatched with a
+swiftness and a success seldom equalled in the annals of the English
+Courts.
+
+-----
+
+  [25] 2 Sam. xvi. 23.
+
+  [26] _Odyss._ viii. 274: "And upon the anvil-stand he set the mighty
+       anvil; and he forged the links that could be neither broken nor
+       loosed, so that they should stay firm in their place."
+
+  [27] Lord Justice James said of his colleague that he had only one
+       defect as a judge: "He was too anxious to convince counsel that
+       they were wrong, when he thought their contention unsound,
+       seeming to forget that counsel are paid not to be convinced."
+
+
+
+
+LORD CHANCELLOR CAIRNS
+
+
+Hugh M'Calmont Cairns, afterwards Earl Cairns (born 1819, died
+1885), was one of three remarkable Scoto-Irishmen whom the north-east
+corner of Ulster gave to the United Kingdom in one generation, and
+each of whom was foremost in the career he entered. Lord Lawrence
+was the strongest of Indian or Colonial administrators, and did more
+than any other man to save India for England in the crisis of the
+great Mutiny of 1857. Lord Kelvin has been, since the death of
+Charles Darwin, the first among British men of science. Lord Cairns
+was unquestionably the greatest judge of the Victorian epoch, perhaps
+of the nineteenth century.[28] His name and family were of Scottish
+origin, but he combined with the shrewd sense and grim persistency
+of Scotland some measure of the keen partisanship which marks the
+Irish Orangeman. Born an Episcopalian, he grew up a Tory in
+politics, an earnest Low-Church Evangelical in religion; nor did his
+opinions in either respect ever seem to alter during his long
+life. His great abilities were perceived both at school (he was
+educated at the Academy in Belfast) and at college (Trinity College,
+Dublin), and so much impressed the counsel in whose chambers he
+studied for a year in London, that he strongly dissuaded the young
+man from returning to Dublin to practise at the Irish bar, promising
+him a brilliant career on the wider theatre of England. The prediction
+was verified by the rapidity with which Cairns, who had, no doubt,
+the advantage of influential connections in the City of London, rose
+into note. He obtained (as a Conservative) a seat in Parliament
+for his native town of Belfast when only thirty-three years of age,
+and was appointed Solicitor-General to Lord Derby's second Ministry
+six years later--a post which few eminent lawyers have reached before
+fifty. In the House of Commons, though at first somewhat diffident and
+nervous, he soon proved himself a powerful as well as ready speaker,
+and would doubtless have remained in an assembly where he was
+rendering such valuable services to his party but for the weakness
+of his lungs and throat, which had threatened his life since boyhood.
+He therefore accepted, in 1867, the office of Lord Justice of
+Appeal, with a seat in the House of Lords, and next year was made
+Lord Chancellor by Mr. Disraeli, then Prime Minister, who dismissed
+Lord Chelmsford, then Chancellor, in order to have the benefit of
+Cairns's help as a colleague. Disraeli subsequently caused him to
+be raised to an earldom.
+
+After Lord Derby's death, Cairns led the Tory party in the House of
+Lords for a time (replacing the Duke of Richmond when the latter
+quitted the leadership), but his very pronounced Low-Church
+proclivities, coupled perhaps with a certain jealousy felt toward him
+as a newcomer, prevented him from becoming popular there, so that
+ultimately the leadership of that House settled itself in the hands of
+Lord Salisbury, a statesman not superior to Cairns in political
+judgment or argumentative power, but without the disadvantage of being
+a lawyer, possessing a wider range of political experience, and in
+closer sympathy with the feelings and habits of the titled order.
+There were, however, some peers who, when Lord Beaconsfield died in
+1881, desired to see Cairns chosen to succeed him in the leadership of
+the Tory party, then in opposition, in the Upper Chamber. Whether in
+opposition or in power, Cairns took a prominent part in all
+"full-dress" political debates in the House of Lords and in the
+discussion of legal measures, and was indeed so absolutely master of
+the Chamber when such measures came under discussion, that the
+Liberal Government, during the years from 1868 to 1874, and again from
+1880 till 1885, could carry no legal reforms through the House of
+Lords except by his permission, which, of course, was never given when
+such reforms could seem to affect any political issue. Yet the
+vehemence of his party feeling did not overcast his judgment. It was
+mainly through his interposition (aided by that of Archbishop Tait)
+that the House of Lords consented to pass the Irish Church Bill of
+1869, a measure which Cairns, of course heartily disliking it,
+accepted for the sake of saving to the disestablished Church a part of
+her funds, since these might have been lost had the Bill been rejected
+then and passed next year by an angrier House of Commons. Of all the
+members of Disraeli's two Cabinets, he was the one whom Disraeli
+himself had been wont most to trust and most to rely on. In January
+1874, when Mr. Gladstone's suddenly announced dissolution of
+Parliament startled all England one Saturday morning, Disraeli, who
+heard of it while still in bed, was at first frightened, thinking that
+the Liberal leader had played his cards boldly and well, and would
+carry the elections. When his chief party manager came to see him he
+was found restless and dejected, and cried out, "Send for Cairns at
+once." Lord Cairns was sent for, came full of vigour, hope, and
+counsel, and after an hour's talk so restored the confidence of his
+ally that Disraeli sat down in the best spirits to compose his
+electoral manifesto. As everybody knows, Cairns's forecast was right,
+and the Tories won the general election by a large majority.
+
+For political success Cairns had several qualities of the utmost
+value--a stately presence, a clear head, a resolute will, and splendid
+oratorical gifts. He was not an imaginative speaker, nor fitted to
+touch the emotions; but he had a matchless power of statement, and a
+no less matchless closeness and cogency in argument. In the famous
+controversies of 1866, he showed himself the clearest and most
+vigorous thinker among the opponents of reform, more solid, if less
+brilliant, than was Robert Lowe. His diction, without being
+exceptionally choice, was pure and precise, and his manner had a
+dignity and weight which seemed to compel your attention even when
+the matter was uninteresting. A voice naturally neither strong nor
+musical, and sometimes apt to sound hollow (for the chest was weak),
+was managed with great skill; action and gesture were used sparingly
+but effectively, and the tall well-built figure and strongly-marked,
+somewhat Roman features, with their haughty and distant air,
+deepened the impression of power, courage, and resolution which was
+characteristic of the whole man.
+
+The qualities of oratory I have described may seem better fitted to a
+comparatively sober and sedate assembly like the House of Lords than
+to a changeful and excitable assembly like the House of Commons. Yet,
+in point of fact, Cairns spoke better in the Commons than he did
+afterwards in the Lords, and would have left an even higher oratorical
+reputation had his career in the popular House been longer and his
+displays more numerous. The reason seems to be that the heat of that
+House warmed his somewhat chilly temperament, and roused him to a more
+energetic and ardent style of speaking than was needed in the Upper
+Chamber, where he and his friends, commanding a large majority, had
+things all their own way. In the House of Commons he confronted a
+crowd of zealous adversaries, and put forth all the forces of his
+logic and rhetoric to overcome them. In the more languid House of
+Lords he was apt to be didactic, sometimes even prolix. He overproved
+his own case without feeling the need, which he would have felt in the
+Commons, of overthrowing the case of the other side; his manner wanted
+animation and his matter variety. Still, he was a great speaker,
+greater as a speaker upon legal topics, where a power of exact
+statement and lucid exposition is required, than any one he left
+behind him.
+
+Why, it may be asked, with these gifts, and with so much firmness and
+energy of character, did he not play an even more conspicuous part in
+politics, and succeed, after Lord Beaconsfield's death, to the
+chieftaincy of the Tory party? The answer is to be found partly in the
+prejudice which still survives in England against legal politicians,
+partly in certain defects of his own personality. Although sincerely
+pious, and exemplary in all the relations of domestic life, he was
+ungenial and unbending in social intercourse. Few equally eminent men
+of our time have had so narrow a circle of personal friends. There was
+a dryness, a coldness, and an appearance of reserve and hauteur about
+his manner which repelled strangers, and kept acquaintanceship from
+ripening into friendship. To succeed as a political leader, a man must
+usually (I do not say invariably, because there are a few remarkable
+instances--Mr. Parnell's would appear to be one of them--to the
+contrary) at least seem sympathetic; must be able to enter into the
+feelings of his followers, and show himself interested in them not
+merely as party followers, but as human beings. There must be a
+certain glow, a certain effluence of feeling about him, which makes
+them care for him and rally to him as a personality. Whether Lord
+Cairns wanted warmth of heart, or whether it was that an inner warmth
+failed to pierce the cloak of reserve and pride which he habitually
+wore, I do not attempt to determine. But the defect told heavily
+against him. He never became a familiar figure to the mass of his
+party, a person whose features they knew, at whose name they would
+cheer; and nowadays all leaders, to whatever party they belong, find a
+source of strength in winning this kind of popularity. The quality
+which Americans call magnetism is perhaps less essential in England
+than in the country which distinguished and named it; but it is
+helpful even in England. Cairns, though an Irishman, was wholly
+without it.
+
+In the field of law, where passion has no place, and even imagination
+must be content to move with clipped wings along the ground, the
+merits of Lord Cairns's intellect showed to the best advantage. At the
+Chancery bar he was one of a trio who had not been surpassed, if ever
+equalled, during the nineteenth century, and whom none of our now
+practising advocates rivals. The other two were Mr., afterwards Lord
+Justice, Rolt, and Mr. Roundell Palmer, afterwards Lord Chancellor
+Selborne. All were admirable lawyers, but, of the three, Rolt excelled
+in his spirited presentation of a case and in the lively vigour of his
+arguments. Palmer was conspicuous for exhaustless ingenuity, and for a
+subtlety which sometimes led him away into reasonings too fine for the
+court to follow. Cairns was broad, massive, convincing, with a robust
+urgency of logic which seemed to grasp and fix you, so that while he
+spoke you could fancy no conclusion possible save that toward which he
+moved. His habit was to seize upon what he deemed the central and
+vital point of the case, throwing the whole force of his argument upon
+that one point, and holding the judge's mind fast to it.
+
+All these famous men were raised to the judicial bench. Rolt remained
+there for a few months only, so his time was too short to permit him
+to enrich our jurisprudence and leave a memory of himself in the
+Reports. Palmer sat in the House of Lords from his accession to the
+Chancellorship in 1872 till his death in 1896, and, while fully
+sustaining his reputation as a man of eminent legal capacity, was, on
+the whole, less brilliant as a judge than he had been as an advocate,
+because a tendency to over-refinement is more dangerous in the
+judicial than in the forensic mind. He made an admirable Chancellor,
+and showed himself more industrious and more zealous for law reform
+than did Cairns. But Cairns was the greater judge, and became to the
+generation which argued before him a model of judicial excellence. In
+hearing a cause he was singularly patient, rarely interrupting
+counsel, and then only to put some pertinent question. His figure was
+so still, his countenance so impassive, that people sometimes doubted
+whether he was really attending to all that was urged at the bar. But
+when the time came for him to deliver judgment, which in the House of
+Lords is done in the form of a speech addressed to the House in
+moving or supporting a motion that is to become the judgment of the
+tribunal, it was seen how fully he had apprehended the case in all its
+bearings. His deliverances were never lengthy, but they were
+exhaustive. They went straight to the vital principles on which the
+question turned, stated these in the most luminous way, and applied
+them with unerring exactitude to the particular facts. It is as a
+storehouse of fundamental doctrines that his judgments are so
+valuable. They disclose less knowledge of case-law than do those of
+some other judges; but Cairns was not one of the men who love cases
+for their own sake, and he never cared to draw upon, still less to
+display, more learning than was needed for the matter in hand. It was
+in the grasp of the principles involved, in the breadth of view which
+enabled him to see these principles in their relation to one another,
+in the precision of the logic which drew conclusions from the
+principles, in the perfectly lucid language in which the principles
+were expounded and applied, that his strength lay. Herein he surpassed
+the most eminent of contemporary judges, the then Master of the Rolls,
+for while Jessel had perhaps a quicker mind than Cairns, he had not so
+wide a mind, nor one so thoroughly philosophical in the methods by
+which it moved.
+
+Outside the spheres of law and politics, Cairns's only interest was in
+religion. He did not seem, although a good classical scholar and a
+competent mathematician, to care either for letters or for science. But
+he was a Sunday-school teacher nearly all his life. Prayer-meetings
+were held at his house, at which barristers, not otherwise known for
+their piety, but believed to desire county court judgeships, were
+sometimes seen. He used to take the chair at missionary and other
+philanthropic meetings. He was surrounded by evangelisers and
+clergymen. But nothing softened the austerity or melted the ice of
+his manners. Neither did the great position he had won seem to give a
+higher and broader quality to his statesmanship. It is true that in
+law he was wholly free from the partisanship which tinged his politics.
+No one was more perfectly fair upon the bench; no one more honestly
+anxious to arrive at a right decision. And as a law reformer, although
+he effected less than might have been hoped from his abilities or
+expected from the absolute sway which he exercised while Chancellor in
+Lord Beaconsfield's Government from 1874 to 1880, he was free from
+prejudice, and willing to sweep away antiquated rules or usages if they
+seemed to block the channel of speedy justice. But in politics this
+impartiality and elevation vanished even after he had risen so high
+that he did not need to humour the passions or confirm the loyalty of
+his own associates. He seemed to be not merely a party man, which an
+English politician is forced to be, because if he stands outside
+party he cannot effect anything, but a partisan--that is, a man
+wholly devoted to his party, who sees everything through its eyes, and
+argues every question in its interests. He gave the impression of
+being either unwilling or unable to rise to a higher and more truly
+national view, and sometimes condescended to arguments whose unsoundness
+his penetrating intellect could hardly have failed to detect. His
+professional tone had been blameless, but at the bar the path of
+rectitude is plain and smooth, and a scrupulous mind finds fewer cases
+of conscience present themselves in a year than in Parliament within a
+month. Yet if in this respect Cairns failed to reach a level worthy of
+his splendid intellect, the defect was due not to any selfish view of
+his own interest, but rather to the narrowness of the groove into
+which his mind had fallen, and to the atmosphere of Orange sentiment
+in which he had grown up. As a politician he is already beginning to
+be forgotten; but as a judge he will be held in honourable remembrance
+as one of the five or six most brilliant luminaries that have
+adorned the English bench since those remote days[29] in which the
+beginning of legal memory is placed.
+
+-----
+
+  [28] No biography of Lord Cairns has (so far as I know) appeared--a
+       singular fact, considering the brilliancy of his career, and
+       considering the tendency which now prevails to bestow this kind
+       of honour on many persons of the second or even the third rank.
+       One reason may be that Cairns, great though he was, never won
+       personal popularity even with his own political party or among
+       his contemporaries at the bar, and was to the general public no
+       more than a famous name.
+
+  [29] The reign of King Richard the First.
+
+
+
+
+BISHOP FRASER
+
+
+James Fraser, Bishop of Manchester from 1870 till 1885, was born in
+Gloucestershire, of a Scottish family, in 1818, and died at Manchester
+in 1885.[30] He took no prominent part in ecclesiastical politics, and
+no part at all in general politics. Though a sound classical scholar
+in the old-fashioned sense of the term--he won the Ireland University
+Scholarship at Oxford, then and still the most conspicuous prize in
+the field of classics--he was not an exceptionally cultivated man, and
+he never wrote anything except official reports and episcopal charges.
+Neither was he, although a ready and effective speaker, gifted with
+the highest kind of eloquence. Neither was he a profound theologian.
+Yet his character and career are of permanent interest, for he created
+not merely a new episcopal type, but (one may almost say) a new
+ecclesiastical type within the Church of England.
+
+Till some sixty or seventy years ago the normal English bishop was a
+rich, dignified, and rather easy-going magnate, aristocratic in his
+tastes and habits, moderate in his theology, sometimes to the verge of
+indifferentism, quite as much a man of the world as a pastor of souls.
+He had usually obtained his preferment by his family connections, or
+by some service rendered to the court or a political chief--perhaps
+even by solicitation or intrigue. Now and then eminence in learning or
+literature raised a man to the bench: there were, for instance, the
+"Greek play" bishops, such as Dr. Monk of Gloucester, whose fame
+rested on their editions of the Attic dramatists; and the _Quarterly
+Review_ bishops, such as Dr. Copleston, of Llandaff, whose powerful
+pen, as well as his wise administration of the great Oxford College
+over which he long presided, amply justified his promotion. So even in
+the eighteenth century the illustrious Butler had been Bishop of
+Durham, as in Ireland the illustrious Berkeley had been Bishop of
+Cloyne. But, on the whole, the bishops of our grandfathers' days were
+more remarkable for their prudence and tact, their adroitness or
+suppleness, than for intellectual or moral superiority to the rest of
+the clergy. Their own upper-class world, and the middle class which,
+in the main, took its view of English institutions from the upper
+class, respected them as a part of the solid fabric of English
+society, but they were a mark for Radical invective and for literary
+sneers. Their luxurious pomp and ease were incessantly contrasted
+with the simplicity of the apostles and the poverty of curates, and
+the abundance among them of the gifts that befit the senate or the
+drawing-room was compared with the rarity of the graces that adorn a
+saint. The comparison was hardly fair, for saints are scarce, and a
+good bishop needs some qualities which a saint may lack.
+
+That revival within the Church of England which went on in various
+forms from 1800 till 1870, at first Low Church or Evangelical in its
+tendencies, latterly more conspicuously High Church and Ritualist,
+began from below and worked upwards till at length it reached the
+bishops. Lord Palmerston, influenced by Lord Shaftesbury, filled the
+vacant sees that fell to him with earnest men, sometimes narrow,
+sometimes deficient in learning, but often good preachers, and zealous
+for the doctrines they held. When the High Churchmen found their way
+to the Bench, as they did very largely under Lord Derby's and Mr.
+Gladstone's rule, they showed as much theological zeal as the
+Evangelicals, and perhaps more talent for administration. The popular
+idea of what may be expected from a bishop rose, and the bishops rose
+with the idea. As Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Samuel Wilberforce was among
+the first to make himself powerfully felt through his diocese. His
+example told upon other prelates, and prime ministers grew more
+anxious to select energetic and popular men. So it came to pass that
+the bishops began to be among the foremost men in the Church of
+England. Some, like Dr. Magee of Peterborough, and afterwards of York,
+were brilliant orators; some, like Dr. Lightfoot of Durham, profound
+scholars; some, like Dr. Temple of Exeter, able and earnest
+administrators. There remained but few who had not some good claim to
+the dignity they enjoyed. So it may be said, when one compares the
+later Victorian bishops with their Georgian predecessors, that no
+class in the country has improved more. Few now sneer at them, for no
+set of men take a more active and more creditable part in the public
+business of the country. Their incomes, curtailed of late years in the
+case of the richer sees, are no more than sufficient for the expenses
+which fall upon them, and they work as hard as any other men for their
+salaries. Though the larger sees have been divided, the reduction of
+the toil of bishops thus effected has been less than the addition to
+it due to the growth of population and the increased activity of the
+clergy. The only defect which the censorious still impute to them is a
+certain episcopal conventionality, a disposition to try to please
+everybody by the use of vague professional language, a tendency to
+think too much about the Church as a church establishment, and to
+defer to clerical opinion when they ought to speak and act with an
+independence born of their individual opinions. Some of them, as, for
+instance, the three I have just mentioned, were not open to this
+reproach. It was one of the merits and charms of Fraser that he was
+absolutely free from any such tendency. Other men, such as Bishop
+Lightfoot, have been not less eminent models of the virtues which
+ought to characterise a great Christian pastor; but Fraser (appointed
+some time before Lightfoot) was the first to be an absolutely
+unconventional and, so to speak, unepiscopal bishop. His career marked
+a new departure and set a new example.
+
+Fraser spent the earlier years of his manhood in Oxford, as a tutor in
+Oriel College, teaching Thucydides and Aristotle. Like many of his
+Oxford contemporaries, he continued through life to think on
+Aristotelian lines, and one could trace them in his sermons. He then
+took in succession two college livings, both in quiet nooks in the
+South of England, and discharged for nearly twenty years the simple
+duties of a parish priest, unknown to the great world, but making
+himself beloved by the people, and doing his best to improve their
+condition. The zeal he had shown in promoting elementary education
+caused him to be appointed (in 1865) by the Schools Inquiry
+Commissioners to be their Assistant Commissioner to examine the
+common-school system of the United States, and the excellence of his
+report thereon attracted the notice of the late Lord Lyttelton, one
+of those Commissioners who were then sitting to investigate the state
+of secondary education in England. His report long remained by far the
+best general picture of American schools, conspicuous for its breadth
+of view, its clearness of statement, its sympathetic insight into
+conditions unlike those he had known in England. On the recommendation
+(as has been generally believed) of Lord Lyttelton and of the then
+Bishop of Salisbury, who was a friend of Dr. Fraser's, Mr. Gladstone,
+at that time Prime Minister, appointed him Bishop of Manchester in
+1870. The diocese of Manchester, which included all Lancashire except
+Liverpool and a small district in the extreme north of the county, had
+been under a bishop who, although an able and learned man, capable of
+making himself agreeable when he pleased, was personally unpopular,
+and had done little beyond his formal duties. He lived in a large and
+handsome country-house some miles from the city, and was known by
+sight to very few of its inhabitants. (I was familiar with Lancashire
+in those days, for I had visited all its grammar-schools as Assistant
+Commissioner to the Commission just referred to, and there was hardly
+a trace to be found in it of the bishop's action.) Fraser had not been
+six months in the county before everything was changed. The country
+mansion was sold, and he procured a modest house in one of the less
+fashionable suburbs of the city. He preached twice every Sunday,
+usually in some parish church, and spent the week in travelling up and
+down his diocese, so that the days were few in which he was not on the
+railway. He stretched out the hand of friendship to the Dissenters
+(numerous and powerful in the manufacturing districts), who had
+hitherto regarded a bishop as a sort of natural enemy, gained their
+confidence, and soon became as popular with them as with the laity of
+his own Church. He associated himself with all the works of
+benevolence or public utility which were in progress, subscribed to
+all so far as his means allowed, and was always ready to speak at a
+meeting on behalf of any good enterprise. He dealt in his sermons with
+the topics of the day, avoiding party politics, but speaking his mind
+on all social and moral questions with a freedom which sometimes
+involved him in passing difficulties, but stimulated the minds of his
+hearers, and gave the impression of his own perfect candour and
+perfect courage. He used to say that as he felt it his duty to speak
+wherever he was asked to do so, he must needs speak without
+preparation, and must therefore expect sometimes to get into hot
+water; that this was a pity, but it was not his fault that he was
+reported, and that it was better to run the risk of making mistakes
+and suffering for them than to refuse out of self-regarding caution to
+give the best of himself to the diocese. He had that true modesty
+which makes a man willing to do a thing imperfectly, at the risk of
+lowering his intellectual reputation. He knew that he was neither a
+deep thinker nor a finished preacher, and was content to be what he
+was, so long as he could perform the work which it was in him to do.
+He lost no opportunity of meeting the working men, would go and talk
+to them in the yards of the mills or at the evening gatherings of
+mechanics' institutes; and when any misfortune befell, such as a
+colliery accident, he was often among the first who reached the spot
+to help the survivors and comfort the widows. He made no difference
+between rich and poor, showed no wish to be a guest in the houses of
+the great, and treated the poorest curate with as much courtesy as the
+most pompous county magnate. His work in Lancashire seldom allowed him
+to appear in the House of Lords; and this he regretted, not that he
+desired to speak there, but because, as he said, "Whether or not
+bishops do Parliament good, Parliament does bishops good."
+
+Such a simple, earnest, active course of conduct told upon the
+feelings of the people who read of his words and doings. But even
+greater was the impression made by his personality upon those who saw
+him. He was a tall, well-built man,[31] erect in figure, with a quick
+eye, a firm step, a ruddy face, an expression of singular heartiness
+and geniality. He seemed always cheerful, and, in spite of his endless
+labours, always fresh and strong. His smile and the grasp of his hand
+put you into good-humour with yourself and the world; if you were
+dispirited, they led you out of shadow into sunlight. He was not a
+great reader, and had no time for sustained and searching thought; yet
+he seemed always abreast of what was passing in the world, and to know
+what the books and articles and speeches of the day contained,
+although he could not have found time to peruse them. With strong
+opinions of his own, he was anxious to hear yours; a ready and eager
+talker, yet a willing listener. His oratory was plain, with few
+flights of rhetoric, but it was direct and vigorous, free from
+conventional phrases, charged with clear good sense and genuine
+feeling, and capable, when his feeling was exceptionally strong, of
+rising to eloquence. He had a ready sense of humour, the best proof of
+which was that he relished a joke against himself.[32] However, the
+greatest charm, both of his public and private talk, was the
+transparent sincerity and honesty that shone through it. His mind was
+like a crystal pool of water in a mountain stream. You saw everything
+that was in it, and saw nothing that was mean or unworthy. This
+sincerity and freshness made his character not only manly, but lovable
+and beautiful, beautiful in its tenderness, its loyalty to his
+friends, its devotion to truth.
+
+His conscientious anxiety to say nothing more than he thought was apt
+to make him an embarrassing ally. It happened more than once that when
+he came to speak at a public meeting on behalf of some enterprise, he
+was not content, like most men, to set forth its merits and claims,
+but went on to dwell upon possible drawbacks or dangers, so that the
+more ardent friends of the scheme thought he was pouring cold water on
+them, and called him a Balaam reversed. In a political assembly he
+would have been an _enfant terrible_ whom his party would have feared
+to put up to speak; but as people in the diocese got to know that this
+was his way, they only smiled at his too ingenuous honesty. As he
+spoke with no preparation, and was naturally impulsive, he now and
+then spoke unadvisedly, and received a good deal of newspaper censure.
+But he was never involved in real trouble by these speeches. As Dean
+Stanley wrote to him, "You have a singular gift of going to the very
+verge of imprudence and yet never crossing it."
+
+No one will wonder that such a character, set in a conspicuous place,
+and joined to extraordinary activity and zeal, should have produced an
+immense effect on the people of his city and diocese. Since
+Nonconformity arose in England in the seventeenth century, no bishop,
+perhaps, indeed no man, whether cleric or layman, had done so much to
+draw together people of different religious persuasions and help them
+to realise their common Christianity. Densely populated South
+Lancashire is practically one huge town, and he was its foremost
+citizen; the most instant in all good works; the one whose words were
+most sure to find attentive listeners. This was because he spoke, I
+will not say as a layman, but simply as a Christian, never claiming
+for himself any special authority in respect either of his sacerdotal
+character or his official position. No English prelate before him had
+been so welcome to all classes and sections; none was so much lamented
+by the masses of the people. But it is a significant fact that he was
+from first to last more popular with the laity than with the clergy.
+Not that there was ever any slur on his orthodoxy. He began life as a
+moderate High Churchman, and gradually verged, half unconsciously,
+toward what would be called a Broad-Church position; maintaining the
+claim of the Anglican Church to undertake, and her duty to hold
+herself responsible for, the education of the people, and upholding
+her status as an establishment, but dwelling little on minor points of
+doctrinal difference, and seeming to care still less for external
+observances or points of ritual. This displeased the Anglo-Catholic
+party, and even among other sections of the clergy there was a kind of
+feeling that the Bishop was not sufficiently clerical, did not set
+full store by the sacerdotal side of his office, and did not think
+enough about ecclesiastical questions.
+
+He was, I think, the first bishop who greeted men of science as
+fellow-workers for truth, and declared that Christianity had not, and
+could not have, anything to fear from scientific inquiry. This has
+often been said since, but in 1870 it was so novel that it drew from
+Huxley a singularly warm and impressive recognition. He was one of the
+first bishops to condemn the system of theological tests in the
+English universities. He even declared that "it was an evil hour when
+the Church thought herself obliged to add to or develop the simple
+articles of the Apostles' Creed." These deliverances, which any one
+can praise now, alarmed a large section of the Church of England then;
+nor was the bishop's friendliness to Dissenters favourably regarded by
+those who deny to Dissenting pastors the title of Christian
+ministers.[33]
+
+The gravest trouble of his life arose in connection with legal
+proceedings which he felt bound to take in the case of a Ritualist
+clergyman who had persisted in practices apparently illegal. Fraser,
+though personally the most tolerant of men to those who differed from
+his own theological views, felt bound to enforce the law, because it
+was the law, and was at once assailed unjustly, as well as bitterly,
+by those who sympathised with the offending clergyman, and who could
+not, or would not, understand that a bishop, like other persons in an
+official position, may hold it his absolute duty to carry out the
+directions of the law whether or no he approves the law, and at
+whatever cost to himself. These attacks were borne with patience and
+dignity. He was never betrayed into recriminations, and could the more
+easily preserve his calmness, because he felt no animosity.
+
+A bishop may be a power outside his own religious community even in a
+country where the clergy are separated as a caste from the lay
+people. Such men as Dupanloup in France show that. So too he may be a
+mighty moral and religious force outside his own religious community
+in a country where there is no church established or endowed by the
+State. The example of Dr. Phillips Brooks in the United States shows
+that. But Dupanloup would have been eminent and influential had he not
+been a clergyman at all; and Dr. Brooks was the most inspiring
+preacher and the most potent leader of religious thought in America
+long before, in the last years of his life, he reluctantly consented
+to accept the episcopal office. Fraser, not so gifted by nature as
+either of those men, would have had little chance of doing the work he
+did save in a country where the existence of an ancient establishment
+secures for one of its dignitaries a position of far-reaching
+influence. When the gains and losses to a nation of the retention of a
+church establishment are reckoned up, this may be set down among the
+gains.
+
+If the Church of England possessed more leaders like Tait, Fraser, and
+Lightfoot--the statesman, the citizen, and the scholar--in the
+characters and careers of all of whom one finds the common mark of a
+catholic and pacific spirit, she would have no need to fear any
+assaults of political foes, no temptation to ally herself with any
+party, but might stand as an establishment until, after long years,
+by the general wish of her own people, as well as of those who are
+without, she passed peaceably into the position of being the first in
+honour, numbers, and influence among a group of Christian communities,
+all equally free from State control.
+
+Fraser's example showed how much an attitude of unpretending
+simplicity and friendliness to all sects and classes may do to
+mitigate the jealousy and suspicion which still embitter the relations
+of the different religious bodies in England, and which work for evil
+even in its politics. He created, as Dean Stanley said, a new type of
+episcopal excellence: and why should not originality be shown in the
+conception and discharge of an office as well as in the sphere of pure
+thought or of literary creation?
+
+-----
+
+  [30] Two Lives of Dr. Fraser have been published, one (in 1887) by the
+       late Judge Hughes, the other, which gives a fuller impression
+       of his personal character, by the Rev. J. W. Diggle (1891).
+
+  [31] He was a good judge of horses, and had in his youth been fond of
+       hunting.
+
+  [32] A clergyman of his diocese had once, under the greatest
+       provocation, knocked down a person who had insulted him, and
+       the bishop wrote him a letter of reproof pointing out (among
+       other things) that, exposed as the Church of England was to
+       much criticism on all hands, her ministers ought to be very
+       careful in their demeanour. The offender replied by saying, "I
+       must regretfully admit that being grossly insulted, and
+       forgetting in the heat of the moment the critical position of
+       the Church of England, I did knock the man down, etc." Fraser,
+       delighted with this turning of the tables on himself, told me
+       the anecdote with great glee, and invited the clergyman to stay
+       with him not long afterwards.
+
+  [33] He was himself aware that this caused displeasure. In his latest
+       Charge, delivered some months before his death, he said: "I am
+       charged, amongst other grievous sins, with that of thinking not
+       unkindly, and speaking not unfavourably, of Dissenters. I don't
+       profess to love dissent, but I have received innumerable
+       kindnesses from Dissenters. Why should I abuse them? Why should
+       I call them hard names? Remembering how Nonconformity was
+       made--no doubt sometimes by self-will and pride and prejudice
+       and ignorance, but far more often by the Church's supineness,
+       neglect, and intolerance in days long since gone by, of which
+       we have not yet paid the full penalty--though, as I have said,
+       I love not the thing, I cannot speak harshly of it."
+
+       That a defence was needed may seem strange to those who do not
+       know England.
+
+
+
+
+SIR STAFFORD HENRY NORTHCOTE, EARL OF IDDESLEIGH[34]
+
+
+Sir Stafford Northcote (born 1818, died 1887) belonged to a type of
+politician less common among us than it used to be, and likely to
+become still more rare as England grows more democratic--the county
+gentleman of old family and good estate, who receives and profits by a
+classical education at one of the ancient universities, who is at an
+early age returned to Parliament in respect of his social position in
+his county, who has leisure to cultivate himself for statesmanship,
+who has tastes and resources outside the sphere of politics.
+Devonshire, whence he came, has preserved more of the old features of
+English country life than the central and northern parts of England,
+where manufactures and the growth of population have swept away the
+venerable remains of feudalism. In Devonshire the old families are
+still deeply respected by the people. They are so intermarried that
+most of them have ties of kinship with all their neighbours. Few rich
+parvenus have intruded among them; society is therefore exceptionally
+easy, simple, and unostentatious. There is still a strong local
+patriotism, which makes every Devonshire man, whatever his political
+prepossessions, proud of other Devonshire men who rise to eminence,
+and which exerts a wholesome influence on the tone of manners and
+social intercourse. Northcote was a thorough Devonshire man, who loved
+his county and knew its dialect: his Devonshire stories, told with the
+strong accent he could assume, were the delight of any company that
+could tempt him to repeat them. He was immensely popular in the
+county, and had well earned his popularity by his pleasant neighbourly
+ways, as well as by his attention to county business and to the duties
+of a landowner.
+
+He had the time-honoured training of the good old English type, was a
+schoolboy at Eton, went thence to Oxford, won the highest distinctions
+as a scholar, and laid the foundations of a remarkably wide knowledge
+of modern as well as ancient literature. He served his apprenticeship
+to statesmanship as private secretary to Mr. Gladstone, who was then
+(1843) a member of Sir Robert Peel's Government. When the great schism
+in the Tory party took place over the question of free trade in corn,
+he was not yet in Parliament, and therefore was not driven to choose
+between Peel and the Protectionists. In 1855, when he first entered
+the House of Commons, that question was settled and gone, so there was
+no inconsistency in his entering the Tory ranks although himself a
+decided Free Trader. He was not a man who would have elbowed his way
+upward. But elbows were not needed. His abilities, as well as his
+industry and the confidence he inspired, speedily brought him to the
+top. He was appointed Secretary to the Treasury in 1859, entered the
+Cabinet in 1866, when a new Tory Ministry was formed under Lord Derby;
+and when in 1876 Mr. Disraeli retired to the House of Lords, he
+became, being then Chancellor of the Exchequer, leader of the majority
+in the House of Commons, while Mr. Gathorne Hardy, the only other
+person who had been thought of as suitable for that post, received a
+peerage. Mr. Hardy was a more forcible and rousing speaker, but
+Northcote had more varied accomplishments and a fuller mastery of
+official work. Disraeli said that he had "the largest parliamentary
+knowledge of any man he had met."
+
+As an administrator, Sir Stafford Northcote was diligent, judicious,
+and free from any taint of jobbery. He sought nothing for himself; did
+not abuse his patronage; kept the public interests steadily before his
+mind. He was considerate to his subordinates, and gracious to all
+men. He never grudged labour, although there might be no prospect of
+winning credit by it. Scrupulous in discharging his duties to his
+party, he overtaxed his strength by speaking constantly at public
+meetings in the country, a kind of work he must have disliked, and for
+which he was ill fitted by the moderation of his views and of his
+language. Parliament is not a good place for the pursuit of pure
+truth, but the platform is still less favourable to that quest. It was
+remarked of him that even in party gatherings, where invective against
+political opponents is apt to be expected and relished, he argued
+fairly, and never condescended to abuse.
+
+As a Parliamentarian he had two eminent merits--immense knowledge
+and admirable readiness. He had been all his life a keen observer
+and a diligent student; and as his memory was retentive, all that he
+had observed or read stood at his command. In questions of trade and
+finance, questions which, owing, perhaps, to their increasing
+intricacy, seem to be less and less frequently mastered by practical
+politicians in England, he was especially strong. No other man on his
+own side in politics spoke on such matters with equal authority, and
+the brunt of the battle fell on him whenever they came up for
+discussion. As he had now his old master for his chief antagonist, the
+conflict was no easy one; but he never shrank from it. Not less
+remarkable was his alertness in debate. His manner was indeed
+somewhat ineffective, for it wanted both force and variety. Sentence
+followed sentence in a smooth and easy stream, always clear, always
+grammatically correct, but with a flow too equably unbroken. There
+were few impressive phrases, few brilliant figures, few of those
+appeals to passion with which it is necessary to warm and rouse a
+large assembly. When the House grew excited at the close of a long
+full-dress debate, and Sir Stafford rose in the small hours of the
+morning to wind it up on behalf of his party, men felt that the
+ripple of his sweet voice, the softness of his gentle manner, were not
+what the occasion called for. But what he said was always to the
+point and well worth hearing. No facts or arguments suddenly
+thrown at him by opponents disconcerted him; for there was sure to
+be an answer ready. However weak his own case might seem, his
+ingenuity could be relied upon to strengthen it; however powerfully
+the hostile case had been presented, he found weak places in it and
+shook it down by a succession of well-planted criticisms, each
+apparently small, but damaging when taken all together, because no
+one of them could be dismissed as irrelevant.
+
+It was interesting to watch him as he sat on the front bench, with his
+hat set so low on his brow that it hid all the upper part of his face,
+while the lower part was covered by a thick yellowish-brown beard,
+perfectly motionless, rarely taking a note of what was said, and, to
+all appearance, the most indifferent figure in the House. The only
+sign of feeling which he gave was to be found in his habit of
+thrusting each of his hands up the opposite sleeve of his coat when
+Mr. Gladstone, the only assailant whom he needed to fear, burst upon
+him in a hailstorm of declamation. But when he rose, one perceived
+that nothing had escaped him. Every point which an antagonist had made
+was taken up and dealt with; no point that could aid his own
+contention was neglected; and the fluent grace with which his
+discourse swept along, seldom aided by a reference to notes, was not
+more surprising than the unfailing skill with which he shunned
+dangerous ground, and put his propositions in a form which made it
+difficult to contradict them. I remember to have heard a member of the
+opposite party remark, that nothing was more difficult than to defend
+your argument from Northcote, because he had the art of nibbling it
+away, admitting a little in order to evade or overthrow the rest.
+
+So much for his parliamentary aptitudes, which were fully recognised
+before he rose to leadership. But as it was his leadership that has
+given him a place in history, I may dwell for a little upon the way in
+which he filled that most trying as well as most honourable post. He
+led the House--that is to say, the Ministerial majority--for four
+sessions (1877-1880), and the Tory Opposition for five and a half
+sessions (1880 to middle of 1885). To lead the House of Commons a man
+must have, over and above the qualities which make a good debater, an
+unusual combination of talents. He must be both bold and cautious,
+combative and cool. He must take, on his own responsibility, and on
+the spur of the moment, decisions which commit the whole Ministry, and
+yet, especially if he be not Prime Minister, he must consider how far
+his colleagues will approve and implement his action. He must put
+enough force and fire into his speeches to rouse his own ranks and
+intimidate (if he can) his opponents, yet must have regard to the more
+timorous spirits among his own supporters, going no further than he
+feels they will follow, and must sometimes throw a crafty fly over
+those in the Opposition whom he thinks wavering or disaffected. Under
+the fire of debate, perhaps while composing the speech he has to make
+in reply, he must consider not merely the audience before him but also
+the effect his words will have when they are read next morning in cold
+blood, and, it may be, the effect not only in England but abroad.
+Being responsible for the whole conduct of parliamentary business, he
+must keep a close watch upon every pending bill, and determine how
+much of Government time shall be allotted to each, and in what order
+they shall be taken, and how far the general feeling of the House will
+let him go in seizing the hours usually reserved for private members,
+and in granting or refusing opportunities for discussing topics he
+would prefer to have not discussed at all.
+
+So far as prudence, tact, and knowledge of business could enable him
+to discharge these duties, Northcote discharged them admirably. It was
+his good fortune to have behind him in Lord Beaconsfield, who had
+recently gone to the House of Lords, a chief of the whole party who
+trusted him, and with whom he was on the best terms. The immense
+authority of that chief secured his own authority. His party was--as
+the Tory party usually is--compact and loyal; and his majority ample,
+so he had no reason to fear defeat. In the conflicts that arose over
+Eastern affairs in 1877-79, affairs at some moments highly critical,
+he was cautious and adroit, more cautious than Lord Beaconsfield,
+sometimes repairing by moderate language the harm which the latter's
+theatrical utterances had done. When a group of Irish Nationalist
+members, among whom Mr. Parnell soon came to the front, began to evade
+the rules and paralyse the action of the House by obstructive tactics,
+he was less successful. Their ingenuity baffled the Ministry, and
+brought the House into sore straits. But it may be doubted whether
+any leader could have overcome the difficulties of the position. It
+was a new position. The old rules framed under quite different
+conditions were not fit to check members who, far from regarding the
+sentiments of the House, avowed their purpose to reduce it to
+impotence, and thereby obtain that Parliament of their own, which
+could alone, as they held, cure the ills of Ireland.
+
+After ten years of struggle and experiment, drastic remedies for
+obstruction were at last devised; but in the then state of opinion
+within the House, those remedies could not have been carried. Members
+accustomed to the old state of things could not for a good while make
+up their minds to sacrifice part of their own privileges in order to
+deal with a difficulty the source of which they would not attempt to
+cure. On the whole, therefore, though he was blamed at the time,
+Northcote may be deemed to have passed creditably through his first
+period of leadership.
+
+It was when he had to lead his party in Opposition, after April 1880,
+that his severest trial came. To lead the minority is usually easier
+than to lead the majority. A leader of the Opposition also must, no
+doubt, take swift decisions in the midst of a debate, must consider
+how far he is pledging his party to a policy which they may be
+required to maintain when next they come into power, must endeavour
+to judge, often on scanty data, how many of his usual or nominal
+supporters will follow him into the lobby when a division is called,
+and how best he can draw off some votes from among his opponents.
+Still, delicate as this work is, it is not so hard as that of the
+leader of the Government, for it is rather critical than constructive,
+and a mistake can seldom do irreparable mischief. Northcote, however,
+had special difficulties to face. Mr. Gladstone, still full of energy
+and fire, was leading the majority. After a few months Lord
+Beaconsfield's mantle no longer covered Northcote (that redoubtable
+strategist died in April 1881), and a small but active group of Tory
+members set up an irregular skirmishing Opposition on their own
+account, paying little heed to his moderate counsels. The Tory party
+was then furious at its unexpected defeat at the election of 1880. It
+was full of fight, burning for revenge, eager to denounce every
+trifling error of the Ministry, and to give battle on small as well as
+great occasions. Hence it resented the calm and cautiously critical
+attitude which Northcote took up. He had plenty of courage; but he
+thought, as indeed most impartial observers thought, that little was
+to be gained by incessantly worrying an enemy so superior in force and
+flushed with victory; that premature assaults might consolidate a
+majority within which there existed elements of discord; and that it
+was wiser to wait till the Ministry should begin to make mistakes and
+incur misfortunes in the natural course of events, before resuming the
+offensive against them. There is a natural tendency to reaction in
+English popular opinion, and a tendency to murmur against whichever
+party may be in power. This tendency must soon have told in favour of
+the Tories, with little effort on their own part; and when it was
+already manifest, a Parliamentary attack could have been delivered
+with effect. Northcote's view and plan were probably right, but, being
+too prone to yield to pressure, and finding his hand forced, he
+allowed himself to be drawn by the clamour of his followers into
+aggressive operations, which, nevertheless, himself not quite
+approving them, he conducted in a half-hearted way. He had not Mr.
+Gladstone's power of doing excellently what he hated to have to do.
+And it must be admitted that from 1882 onwards, when troubles in
+Ireland and oscillations in Egyptian policy had begun to shake the
+credit of the Liberal Ministry, he showed less fire and pugnacity than
+the needs of the time required from a party leader. In one thing the
+young men, who, like Zulu warriors, wished to wash their spears, were
+right and he was wrong. He conceived that frequent attacks and a
+resort to obstructive tactics would damage the Opposition in the eyes
+of the country. Experience has shown that parties do not greatly
+suffer from the way they fight their Parliamentary battles. Few people
+follow the proceedings closely enough to know when an Opposition
+deserves blame for prolonging debate, or a Ministry for abuse of the
+closure. So, too, in the United States it would seem that neither the
+tyrannical action of a majority nor filibustering by a minority shocks
+the nation.
+
+Not only was Northcote's own temper pacific, but he was too sweetly
+reasonable and too dispassionate to be a successful leader in
+Opposition. He felt that he was never quite a party man. His mind was
+almost too judicial, his courtesy too unfailing, his temper too
+unruffled, his manner too unassuming. He did not inspire awe or fear.
+Not only did he never seek to give pain, even where pain might have
+been a wholesome discipline for pushing selfishness--he seemed
+incapable of irritation, and bore with vexatious obstruction from some
+members of the House, and mutinous attacks from others who belonged to
+his own party, when a spirit less kindly and forgiving might have
+better secured his own authority and the dignity of the assembly. He
+proceeded on the assumption, an unsafe one, as he had too much reason
+to know, that every one else was a gentleman like himself, penetrated
+by the old traditions of the House of Commons.
+
+While superior to the prejudices of the old-fashioned wing of his
+party, he was too cautious and conscientious to join those who sought
+to lead it into demagogic courses. So far as political opinions went,
+he might, had fortune sent him into the world as the son of a Whig
+family, have made an excellent Whig, removed as far from high Toryism
+on the one hand as from Radicalism on the other. There was, therefore,
+a certain incompatibility between the man and the position. Average
+partisans felt that a leader so very reasonable was not in full
+sympathy with them. Even his invincible optimism displeased them.
+"Hang that fellow Northcote!" said one of them; "he's always seeing
+blue sky." The militant partisans, whatever their opinions, desired a
+pugnacious chief. That a leader should draw the enemy's fire does him
+good with his followers, and makes them rally to him. But the fire of
+his opponents was hardly ever directed against Northcote, even when
+controversy was hottest. Had he possessed a more imperious will, he
+might have overcome these difficulties, because his abilities and
+experience were of the highest value to his party, and his character
+stood so high that the mass of sensible Tories all over the country
+might perhaps have rallied to him, if he had appealed to them against
+the intrigues by which it was sought to supplant him. He did not lack
+courage. But he lacked what men call "backbone." For practical
+success, it is less fatal to fail in wisdom than to fail in
+resolution. He had not that unquenchable self-confidence which I have
+sought to describe in Disraeli, and shall have to describe in Parnell
+and in Gladstone. He yielded to pressure, and people came to know that
+he would yield to pressure.
+
+The end of it was that the weakened prestige and final fall of the
+Liberal Ministry were not credited to his generalship, but rather to
+those who had skirmished in advance of the main army. That fall was in
+reality due neither to him nor to them, but partly to the errors or
+internal divisions of the Ministry itself, partly to causes such as
+the condition of Ireland and the revolt of Arabi in Egypt, for which
+Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet was no more, perhaps less, to blame than many
+of its predecessors. No Ministry of recent years seemed, when it was
+formed, to have such a source of strength in the abilities of the men
+who composed it as did the Ministry of 1880. None proved so
+persistently unlucky.
+
+The circumstances under which Northcote's leadership came to an end by
+his elevation to the Upper House (June 1885) as Earl of Iddesleigh, as
+well as those under which he was subsequently (1887) removed from the
+post of Foreign Secretary in the then Tory Ministry, evoked much
+comment at the time, but some of the incidents attending them have not
+yet been disclosed, and they could not be discussed without bringing
+in other persons with whom I am not here concerned. Conscious of his
+own loyalty to his party, and remembering his long and laborious
+services, he felt those circumstances deeply; and they may have
+hastened his death, which came very suddenly in February 1887, and
+called forth a burst of sympathy such as had not been seen since Peel
+perished by an accident nearly forty years before.
+
+In private life Northcote had the charm of unpretending manners,
+coupled with abundant humour, a store of anecdote, and a geniality
+which came straight from the heart. No man was a more agreeable
+companion. In 1884, when the University of Edinburgh celebrated its
+tercentenary, he happened to be Lord Rector, and in that capacity had
+to preside over the festivities. Although a stranger to Scotland, and
+as far removed (for he was a decided High Churchman) from sympathy
+with Scottish Presbyterianism as he was removed in politics from the
+Liberalism then dominant in Edinburgh, he won golden opinions from the
+Scotch, as well as from the crowd of foreign visitors, by the tact and
+grace he showed in the discharge of his duties, and the skill with
+which, putting off the politician, he entered into the spirit of the
+occasion as a lover of letters and learning. Though political eminence
+had secured his election to the office, every one felt that it would
+have been hard to find in the ranks of literature and science any one
+fitter to preside over such a gathering.
+
+He left behind few in whom the capacities of the administrator were so
+happily blended with a philosophic judgment and a wide culture. It is
+a combination which was inadequately appreciated in his own person.
+Vehemence in controversy, domineering audacity of purpose, the power
+of moving crowds by incisive harangues, were the qualities which the
+younger generation seemed disposed to cultivate. They are qualities
+apt to be valued in times of strife and change, times when men are
+less concerned to study and apply principles than to rouse the
+passions and consolidate the organisation of their party, while
+dazzling the nation by large promises or bold strokes of policy. For
+such courses Northcote was not the man. Were it to be observed of him
+that he was too good for the work he had to do, it might be answered
+that political leadership is work for which no man can be too good,
+and that it was rather because his force of will and his combativeness
+were not commensurate with his other gifts, that those other gifts did
+not have their full effect and win their due success. Yet this at
+least may be said, that if he had been less amiable, less fair-minded,
+and less open-minded, he would have retained his leadership to the
+end.
+
+-----
+
+  [34] A _Life of Lord Iddesleigh_, written by Mr. Andrew Lang,
+       presents Northcote's character and career with fairness and
+       discrimination.
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES STEWART PARNELL
+
+
+Though I do not propose to write even the briefest narrative of
+Parnell's life, but only to note certain salient features of his
+intellect and character, it may be well to state a few facts and
+dates; for in these days of rapid change and hasty reading, facts soon
+pass out of most men's memories, leaving only vague impressions
+behind.[35]
+
+He belonged to a family which, established at Congleton in Cheshire,
+had at the time of the Restoration migrated to Ireland, had settled on
+an estate in Wicklow, and had produced in every subsequent generation
+a person of distinction. Thomas Parnell, the friend of Pope and Swift,
+is still remembered by his poem of _The Hermit_. Another Parnell (Sir
+John) was Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer in the days of Henry
+Grattan, whose opinions he shared. Another (Sir Henry) was a leading
+Irish Liberal member of the House of Commons, and died by his own hand
+in 1842. Charles's father and grandfather figured less in the public
+eye. But his mother was a remarkable woman, and the daughter of a
+remarkable man, Commodore Charles Stewart, one of the most brilliant
+naval commanders on the American side in the war of 1812. Stewart was
+the son of a Scoto-Irishman from Ulster, who had emigrated to America
+in the middle of the eighteenth century; so there was a strain of
+Scottish as well as a fuller strain of English blood in the most
+powerful Irish leader of recent times.
+
+Parnell was born at Avondale, the family estate in Wicklow, in 1846,
+and was educated mostly at private schools in England. He spent some
+months at Magdalene College, Cambridge, but, having been rusticated
+for an affray in the street, refused to return to the College, and
+finished his education for himself at home. It was a very imperfect
+education. He cared nothing for study, and indeed showed interest only
+in mathematics and cricket. In 1874 he stood as a candidate for
+Parliament, but without success. When he had to make a speech he broke
+down utterly. In 1875 he was returned as member for the county of
+Meath, and within two years had made his mark in the House of Commons.
+In 1880 he was elected leader of the Irish Parliamentary party, and
+ruled it and his followers in Ireland with a rod of iron until he was
+deposed, in 1890, at the instance of the leaders of the English
+Liberal party, who thought that the verdict against him in a divorce
+suit in which he was co-respondent had fatally discredited him in the
+eyes of the bulk of the English Liberal party, and made co-operation
+with him impossible. Refusing to resign his leadership, he conducted a
+campaign in Ireland against the majority of his former followers with
+extraordinary energy till November 1891, when he died of rheumatic
+fever after a short illness. A constitution which had never been
+strong was worn out by the ceaseless exertions and mental tension of
+the last twelve months.
+
+The whole of his political activity was comprised within a period of
+sixteen years, during ten of which he led the Irish Nationalist party,
+exercising an authority more absolute than any Irish leader had
+exercised before.
+
+It has often been observed that he was not Irish, and that he led the
+Irish people with success just because he did not share their
+characteristic weaknesses. But it is equally true that he was not
+English. One always felt the difference between his temperament and
+that of the normal Englishman. The same remark applies to some other
+famous Irish leaders. Wolfe Tone, for instance, and Fitzgibbon
+(afterwards Lord Clare) were unlike the usual type of Irishman--that
+is, the Irishman in whom the Celtic element predominates; but they
+were also unlike Englishmen. The Anglo-Irish Protestants, a strong
+race who have produced a number of remarkable men in excess of the
+proportion they bear to the whole population of the United Kingdom,
+fall into two classes--the men of North-Eastern Ulster, in whom there
+is so large an infusion of Scottish blood that they may almost be
+called "Scotchmen with a difference," and the men of Leinster and
+Munster, who are true Anglo-Celts. It was to this latter class that
+Parnell belonged. They are a group by themselves, in whom some of the
+fire and impulsiveness of the Celt has been blended with some of the
+firmness, the tenacity, and the close hold upon facts which belong to
+the Englishman. Mr. Parnell, however, though he might be reckoned to
+the Anglo-Irish type, was not a normal specimen of it. He was a man
+whom you could not refer to any category, peculiar both in his
+intellect and in his character generally.
+
+His intellect was eminently practical. He did not love speculation or
+the pursuit of abstract truth, nor had he a taste for literature,
+still less a delight in learning for its own sake. Even of the annals
+of Ireland his knowledge was most slender. He had no grasp of
+constitutional questions, and was not able to give any help in the
+construction of a Home Rule scheme in 1886. His general reading had
+been scanty, and his speeches show no acquaintance either with
+history, beyond the commonest facts, or with any other subject
+connected with politics. Very rarely did they contain a maxim or
+reflection of general applicability, apart from the particular topic
+he was discussing. Nor did he ever attempt to give to them the charm
+of literary ornament. All was dry, direct, and practical, without so
+much as a graceful phrase or a choice epithet. Sometimes, when
+addressing a great public meeting, he would seek to rouse the audience
+by vehement language; but though there might be a glow of suppressed
+passion, there were no flashes of imaginative light. Yet he never gave
+the impression of an uneducated man. His language, though it lacked
+distinction, was clear and grammatical. His taste was correct. It was
+merely that he did not care for any of those things which men of
+ability comparable to his usually do care for. His only interests,
+outside politics, lay in mechanics and engineering and in the
+development of the material resources of his country. He took pains to
+manage his estate well, and was specially anxious to make something
+out of his stone quarries, and to learn what could be done in the way
+of finding and working minerals.
+
+Those who observed that he was almost always occupied in examining and
+attacking the measures or the conduct of those who governed Ireland
+were apt to think his talent a purely critical one. They were
+mistaken. Critical, indeed, it was, in a remarkable degree; keen,
+penetrating, stringently dissective of the arguments of an opponent,
+ingenious in taking advantage of a false step in administration or of
+an admission imprudently made in debate. But it had also a positive
+and constructive quality. From time to time he would drop his negative
+attitude and sketch out plans of legislation which were always
+consistent and weighty, though not made attractive by any touch of
+imagination. They were the schemes not so much of a statesman as of an
+able man of business, who saw the facts, especially the financial
+facts, in a sharp, cold light, and they seldom went beyond what the
+facts could be made to prove. And his ideas struck one as being not
+only forcible but independent, the fruit of his own musings. Although
+he freely used the help of others in collecting facts or opinions, he
+did not seem to be borrowing the ideas, but rather to have looked at
+things for himself, and seen them as they actually were, in their true
+perspective, not (like many Irishmen) through the mists of sentiment
+or party feeling. The impression made by one of his more elaborate
+speeches might be compared to that which one receives from a grey
+sunless day with an east wind, a day in which everything shows clear,
+but also hard and cold.
+
+To call his mind a narrow one, as people sometimes did, was to wrong
+it. If the range of his interests was limited, his intelligence was
+not. Equal to any task it undertook, it judged soundly, appreciating
+the whole phenomena of the case, men and things that had no sort of
+attraction for it. There was less pleasure in watching its activities
+than the observation of a superior mind generally affords, for it was
+always directed to immediate aims, and it wanted the originality which
+is fertile in ideas and analogies. It was not discursive, not
+versatile, not apt to generalise. It did not rejoice in the exercise
+of thought for thought's sake, but felt itself to be merely a useful
+instrument for performing the definite practical work which the will
+required of it.
+
+If, however, the intellect of the man could not be called interesting,
+his character had at least this interest, that it gave one many
+problems to solve, and could not easily be covered by any formulæ. An
+observer who followed the old method of explaining every man by
+ascribing to him a single ruling passion, would have said that his
+ruling passion was pride. The pride was so strong that it almost
+extinguished vanity. Parnell did not appear to seek occasions for
+display, frequently neglecting those which other men would have
+chosen, seldom seeming to be elated by the applause of crowds, and
+treating the House of Commons with equal coolness whether it cheered
+him or howled at him. He cared nothing for any social compliments or
+attentions, rarely accepted an invitation to dinner, dressed with
+little care and often in clothes whose style and colour seemed
+unworthy of his position. He was believed to be haughty and distant to
+his followers; and although he could occasionally be kindly and even
+genial, scarcely any were admitted to intimacy, and few of the
+ordinary signs of familiarity could be observed between him and them.
+Towards other persons he was sufficiently polite but warily reserved,
+showing no desire for the cultivation of friendship, or, indeed, for
+any relations but those of business. Of some ordinary social duties,
+such as opening and answering letters, he was, especially in later
+years, more neglectful than good breeding permits; and men doubted
+whether to ascribe this fault to indolence or to a superb disregard of
+everybody but himself. Such disregard he often showed in greater
+matters, taking no notice of attacks made upon him which he might have
+refuted, and intimating to the English his indifference to their
+praise or blame. On one remarkable occasion, at the beginning of the
+session of 1883, he was denounced by Mr. W. E. Forster in a long and
+bitter speech, which told powerfully upon the House. Many instances
+were given in which Irish members had palliated or failed to condemn
+criminal acts, and Parnell was arraigned as the head and front of this
+line of conduct, and thus virtually responsible for the outrages that
+had occurred. The Irish leader, who had listened in impassive silence,
+broken only by one interjected contradiction, to this fierce
+invective, did not rise to reply, and was with difficulty induced by
+his followers to deliver his defence on the following day. To the
+astonishment of every one, that defence consisted in a declaration,
+delivered in a cold, careless, almost scornful way, that for all he
+said or did in Ireland he held himself responsible to his countrymen
+only, and did not in the least regard what Englishmen thought of him.
+It was an answer not of defence but of defiance.
+
+Even to his countrymen he could on occasion be disdainful, expecting
+them to defer to his own judgment of his own course. He would
+sometimes remain away from Parliament for weeks together, although
+important business might be under consideration, perhaps would vanish
+altogether from public ken. Yet this lordly attitude and the air of
+mystery which surrounded him did not seem to be studied with a view to
+effect. They were due to his habit of thinking first and chiefly of
+himself. If he desired to indulge his inclinations, he indulged them.
+Some extremely strong motive of passion or interest might interpose
+to restrain this desire and stimulate him to an unwelcome exertion;
+but no respect for the opinion of others, nor fear of censure from his
+allies or friends, would be allowed to do so.
+
+This boundless self-confidence and independence greatly contributed to
+his success as a leader. His faith in his star inspired a conviction
+that obstacles whose reality his judgment recognised would ultimately
+yield to his will, and gave him in moments of crisis an undismayed
+fortitude which only once forsook him--in the panic which was suddenly
+created by the Phoenix Park murders of May 1882. The confidence which
+he felt, or appeared to feel, reacted upon his party, and became a
+chief ground of their obedience to him and their belief in his
+superior wisdom. His calmness, his tenacity, his patience, his habit
+of listening quietly to every one, but deciding for himself, were all
+evidences of that resolute will which imposed itself upon the Irish
+masses no less than upon his Parliamentary following, and secured for
+him a loyalty in which there was little or nothing of personal
+affection.
+
+In these several respects his overweening pride was a source of
+strength. In another direction, however, it proved a source of
+weakness. There are men in whom the want of moral principle, of noble
+emotions, or of a scrupulous conscience and nice sense of honour, is
+partly replaced by deference to the opinion of their class or of the
+world. Such men may hold through life a tolerably upright course,
+neither from the love of virtue nor because they are ambitious and
+anxious to stand well with those whom they aspire to influence or
+rule, but because, having a sense of personal dignity, combined with a
+perception of what pleases or offends mankind, they are resolved to do
+nothing whereby their good name can be tarnished or an opening given
+to malicious tongues. But when pride towers to such a height as to
+become a law to itself, disregarding the judgment of others, it may
+not only lead its possessor into an attitude of defiance which the
+world resents, but may make him stoop to acts of turpitude which
+discredit his character. Mr. Parnell was certainly not a scrupulous
+man. Without dwelling upon the circumstances attending the divorce
+case already referred to, or upon his betrayal of Mr. Gladstone's
+confidences, and his reckless appeals during the last year of his life
+to the most inflammable elements in Ireland, there are facts enough in
+his earlier career to show that he had little regard for truth and
+little horror for crime. A revolution may extenuate some sins, but
+even in a revolution there are men (and sometimes the strongest men)
+whose moral excellence shines through the smoke of conflict and the
+mists of detraction. In Mr. Parnell's nature the moral element was
+imperfectly developed. He seemed cynical and callous; and it was
+probably his haughty self-reliance which prevented him from
+sufficiently deferring to the ordinary moralities of mankind. His
+pride, which ought to have kept him free from the suspicion of
+dishonour, made him feel himself dispensed from the usual restraints.
+Whatever he did was right in his own eyes, and no other eyes need be
+regarded. Phenomena somewhat similar were observable in Napoleon. But
+Napoleon, though he came of a good family, was obviously not a
+gentleman in the common sense of the term. Mr. Parnell was a gentleman
+in that sense. He had the bearing, the manners, the natural easy
+dignity of a man of birth who has always moved in good society. He
+rarely permitted any one to take liberties with him, even the innocent
+liberties of familiar intercourse. This made his departures from what
+may be called the inner and higher standard of gentlemanly conduct all
+the more remarkable.
+
+He has been accused of a want of physical courage. He did no doubt
+after the Phoenix Park murders ask the authorities in England for
+police protection, being, not unnaturally, in fear for his life; and
+he habitually carried firearms. He was at times in danger, and there
+was every reason why he should be prepared to defend himself. An
+anecdote was told of another member of the House of Commons whose
+initials were the same as his own, and who, taking what he supposed to
+be his own overcoat from the peg on which it hung in the cloakroom of
+the House, was startled when he put his hand into the pocket to feel
+in it the cold iron of a pistol. Moral courage he showed in a high
+degree during his whole public career, facing his antagonists with an
+unshaken front, even when they were most numerous and bitter. Though
+he intensely disliked imprisonment, the terms on which he came out of
+Kilmainham Gaol left no discredit upon him. He behaved with perfect
+dignity under the attacks of the press in 1887, and in the face of the
+use made of letters attributed to him which turned out to have been
+forged by Richard Pigott--letters which the bulk of the English upper
+classes had greedily swallowed. With this courage and dignity there
+was, however, little trace of magnanimity. He seldom said a generous
+word, or showed himself responsive to such a word spoken by another.
+Accustomed to conceal his feelings, except in his most excited
+moments, he rarely revealed, but he certainly cherished, vindictive
+sentiments. He never forgave either Mr. W. E. Forster or Mr. Gladstone
+for having imprisoned him in 1881;[36] and though he stood in some
+awe of the latter, whom he considered the only really formidable
+antagonist he had ever had to confront, he bore a grudge which
+smouldered under the reconciliation of 1886 and leapt into flame in
+the manifesto of November 1890.
+
+The union in Mr. Parnell of intense passion with strenuous self-control
+struck all who watched him closely, though it was seldom that passion
+so far escaped as to make the contrast visibly dramatic. Usually he was
+cold, grave, deliberate, repelling advances with a sort of icy
+courtesy. He hardly ever lost his temper in the House of Commons,
+even in his last session under the sarcasms of his former friends,
+though the low, almost hissing tones of his voice sometimes betrayed an
+internal struggle. But during the electoral campaign in Kilkenny, in
+December 1890, when he was fighting for his life, he was more than
+once so swept away by anger that those beside him had to hold him
+back from jumping off the platform into the crowd to strike down some
+one who had interrupted him. Suspended for a moment, his mastery of
+himself quickly returned. Men were astonished to observe how, after
+some of the stormy passages at the meetings of Irish members held in
+one of the House of Commons committee-rooms in December 1890, he
+would address quietly, perhaps lay his hand upon the shoulder of, some
+one of the colleagues who had just been denouncing him, and on whom
+he had poured all the vitriol of his fierce tongue. As this could
+not have been good-nature, it must have been either calculated
+policy or a pride that would not accept an injury from those whom he
+had been wont to deem his subjects. Spontaneous kindliness was never
+ascribed to him; nor had he, so far as could be known, a single intimate
+friend.
+
+Oratory is the usual avenue to leadership in a democratic movement,
+and Mr. Parnell is one of the very few who have arrived at power
+neither by that road nor by military success. So far from having by
+nature any of the gifts or graces of a popular speaker, he was at
+first conspicuously deficient in them, and became at last effective
+only by constant practice, and by an intellectual force which asserted
+itself through commonplaceness of language and a monotonous delivery.
+Fluency was wanting, and even moderate ease was acquired only after
+four or five years' practice. His voice was neither powerful nor
+delicate in its modulations, but it was clear, and the enunciation
+deliberate and distinct, quiet when the matter was ordinary, slow and
+emphatic when an important point arrived. With very little action of
+the body, there was often an interesting and obviously unstudied
+display of facial expression. So far from glittering with the florid
+rhetoric supposed to characterise Irish eloquence, his speeches were
+singularly plain, bare, and dry. Neither had they any humour. If they
+ever raised a smile, which seldom happened, it was by some touch of
+sarcasm or adroit thrust at a point left unguarded by an adversary.
+Their merit lay in their lucidity, in their aptness to the matter in
+hand, in the strong practical sense which ran through them, coupled
+with the feeling that they came from one who led a nation, and whose
+forecasts had often fulfilled themselves. They were carefully
+prepared, and usually made from pretty full notes; but the preparation
+had been given rather to the matter and the arrangement than to the
+diction, which had rarely any ornament or literary finish. Of late
+years he spoke infrequently, whether from indolence or from weak
+health, or because he thought little was to be done in the face of a
+hostile majority, now that the tactics of obstruction had been
+abandoned. When he interposed without preparation in a debate which
+had arisen unexpectedly, he was short, pithy, and direct; indeed,
+nothing was more characteristic of Parnell than his talent for hitting
+the nail on the head, a talent which always commands attention in
+deliberative assemblies. No one saw more clearly or conveyed in terser
+language the course which the circumstances of the moment required;
+and as his mastery of parliamentary procedure and practice came next
+to that of Mr. Gladstone, any advice that he gave to the House on a
+point of order carried weight. It would indeed be no exaggeration to
+say that during the sessions of 1889 and 1890 he was distinctly the
+second man in the House of Commons, surpassed in debating power by
+five or six others, but inferior to Mr. Gladstone alone in the
+interest which his speeches excited and in the impression they
+produced. Along with this access of influence his attitude and the
+spirit of his policy appeared to rise and widen. There was less of
+that hard attorneyism which had marked his criticisms of the Tory
+Government and their measures up to March 1880, and of the Liberal
+Government and their measures during the five following years. He
+seemed to grow more and more to the full stature of a statesman, with
+constructive views and a willingness to make the best of the facts as
+he found them. Yet even in this later and better time one note of
+greatness was absent from his speeches. There was nothing genial or
+generous or elevated about them. They never soared into an atmosphere
+of lofty feeling, worthy of the man who was by this time deemed to be
+leading his nation to victory, and who had begun to be admired and
+honoured by one of the two great historic English parties.
+
+Parnell was not only versed in the rules of parliamentary procedure,
+but also a consummate master of parliamentary tactics. Soon after he
+entered the House of Commons he detected its weak point, and perfected
+a system of obstruction which so destroyed the efficiency of its
+time-honoured modes of doing business that new sets of rules, each
+more stringent than the preceding, had to be devised between 1878 and
+1888. The skill with which he handled his small but well-disciplined
+battalion was admirable. He was strict with individuals, requiring
+absolute obedience to the party rules, but ready to gratify any
+prevailing current of feeling when he saw that this could be done
+without harm to the cause. More than once, when English members who
+happened to be acting with him on some particular question pressed him
+to keep his men quiet and let a division be taken at once, he answered
+that they were doubtless right in thinking that the moment for
+securing a good division had arrived, but that he must not muzzle his
+followers when they wanted to have their fling. The best proof of the
+tact with which he ruled a section comprising many men of brilliant
+talents lies in the fact that there was no serious revolt, or movement
+towards revolt, against him until the breach of 1890 between himself
+and the Liberal party had led to the belief that his continued
+leadership would mean defeat at the polls in Great Britain, and the
+postponement, perhaps for many years, of Home Rule for Ireland.
+
+Parnell's political views and tendencies were eagerly canvassed by
+those who had studied him closely. Many, among both Englishmen and
+Irishmen, held that he was at heart a Conservative, valuing strong
+government and attached to the rights of property. They predicted that
+if an Irish Parliament had been established, as proposed by Mr.
+Gladstone in 1886, and an Irish cabinet formed to administer the
+affairs of the island, Parnell would have been the inevitable and
+somewhat despotic leader of the party of authority and order. His
+co-operation with the agrarian agitators from 1879 onwards was in this
+view merely a politic expedient to gain support for the Home Rule
+campaign. For this theory there is much to be said. Though he came to
+lead a revolution, and was willing, as appeared in the last few months
+of his life, to appeal to the genuine revolutionary party, Parnell was
+not by temper or conviction a revolutionist. Those who were left in
+Ireland of the old Fenian group, and especially that section of the
+extreme Fenians out of which the secret insurrectionary and dynamitard
+societies were formed, never liked or trusted him. The passion which
+originally carried him into public life was hatred of England, and a
+wish to restore to Ireland, if possible her national independence
+(though he rarely if ever avowed this), or at least her own
+Parliament. But he was no democratic leveller, and still less
+inclined to those socialistic doctrines which the section influenced
+by Mr. Davitt had espoused. He did not desire the "extinction of
+landlordism," and would probably have been a restraining and
+moderating force in an Irish legislature. That he was genuinely
+attached to his native country need not be doubted. But his patriotism
+had little of a sentimental quality, and seemed to spring as much from
+dislike of England as from love of Ireland.
+
+It may excite surprise that a man such as has been sketched, with so
+cool a judgment and so complete a self-control, a man (as his previous
+career had shown) able to endure temporary reverses in the confidence
+of ultimate success, should have committed the fatal error, which
+blasted his fame and shortened his life, of clinging to the headship
+of his party when prudence prescribed retirement. When he sought the
+advice of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, retirement for a time was the counsel he
+received. His absence need not have been of long duration. Had he,
+after the sentence of the Divorce Court in November 1890, gone abroad
+for eight or ten months, allowing some one to be chosen in his place
+chairman of the Irish party for the session, he might thereafter have
+returned to the House of Commons, and would doubtless, after a short
+lapse of time, have naturally recovered the leadership. No one else
+could have resisted his claims. Unfortunately, the self-reliant pride
+which had many a time stood him in good stead, made him refuse to bow
+to the storm. Probably he could not understand the indignation which
+the proceedings in the divorce case had awakened in England, being
+morally somewhat callous, and knowing that his offence had been no
+secret to many persons in the House of Commons. He had been accustomed
+to despise English opinion, and had on former occasions suffered
+little for doing so. He bitterly resented both Mr. Gladstone's letter
+and the movement to depose him which it roused in his own party.
+Having often before found defiant resolution lead to success, he
+determined again to rely on the maxim which has beguiled so many to
+ruin, just because it has so much truth in it--"_De l'audace, encore
+de l'audace, toujours de l'audace._" The affront to his pride
+disturbed the balance of his mind, and made him feel as if even a
+temporary humiliation would destroy the prestige that had been won by
+his haughty self-confidence. It was soon evident that he had
+overestimated his power in Ireland, but when the schism began there
+were many besides Lord Salisbury--many in Ireland as well as in
+England--who predicted triumph for him. Nor must it be thought that it
+was pure selfishness which made him resolve rather to break with the
+English Liberals than allow the Nationalist bark to be steered by any
+hands but his own. He was a fatalist, and had that confidence in his
+star and his mission which is often characteristic of minds in which
+superstition--for he was superstitious--and a certain morbid taint may
+be discerned. There were others who believed that no one but himself
+could hold the Irish party together and carry the Irish cause to
+triumph. No wonder that this belief should have filled and perhaps
+disordered his own brain.
+
+The swiftness of his rise is a striking instance of the power which
+intellectual concentration and a strenuous will can exert, for he had
+no adventitious help from wealth or family connection or from the
+reputation of having suffered for his country. _Ergo vivida vis animi
+pervicit._ When he entered Parliament he was only thirty, with no
+experience of affairs and no gift of speech; but the quality that was
+in him of leading and ruling men, of taking the initiative, of seeing
+and striking at the weak point of the enemy, and fearlessly facing the
+brunt of an enemy's attack, made itself felt in a few months, and he
+rose without effort to the first place. With some intellectual
+limitations and some great faults, he will stand high in the long and
+melancholy series of Irish leaders: less lofty than Grattan, less
+romantic than Wolfe Tone, less attractive than O'Connell, less
+brilliant than any of these three, yet entitled to be remembered as
+one of the most remarkable characters that his country has produced in
+her struggle of many centuries against the larger isle.
+
+-----
+
+  [35] The _Life of Parnell_, by Mr. R. Barry O'Brien, has taken rank
+       among the best biographies of the last half-century.
+
+  [36] An anecdote was told at the time that when he found himself in
+       the prison yard at Kilmainham, he said, in a sort of soliloquy,
+       "I shall live yet to dance upon those two old men's graves."
+
+
+
+
+CARDINAL MANNING
+
+
+Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop of Westminster and Cardinal of the
+Holy Roman Church, was born in 1808, eight years after Cardinal
+Newman, and died in 1892. He was one of the most notable figures of
+his generation; and, indeed, in a sense, an unique figure, for he
+contributed a new type to the already rich and various ecclesiastical
+life of England. If he could scarcely be described as intellectually a
+man of the first order, he held a considerable place in the history of
+his time, having effected what greater men might perhaps have failed
+to effect, for the race is not always to the swift, and time and
+chance favoured Manning.
+
+He was the son of wealthy parents, his father a City of London
+merchant; was educated at Harrow and at Oxford, where he obtained high
+classical honours and a Fellowship at Merton College; was ordained a
+clergyman, and soon rose to be Archdeacon of Chichester; and, having
+by degrees been led further and further from his original Low Church
+position into the Tractarian movement, ultimately, at the age of
+forty-three, went over to the Church of Rome. Having some time before
+lost his wife, he was at once re-ordained a priest, was appointed
+Archbishop of Westminster on Cardinal Wiseman's death in 1865, and
+raised to the Cardinalate by Pope Pius IX. in 1875.
+
+He was not a great thinker nor a man of wide learning. His writings
+show no trace of originality, nor indeed any conspicuous philosophical
+acuteness or logical power. So far as purely intellectual gifts are
+concerned, he was not to be named with Cardinal Newman or with several
+other of the ablest members of the English Tractarian party, such as
+were the two metaphysicians W. G. Ward and Dalgairns, both of whom
+passed over to Rome, or such as was Dean Church, an accomplished
+historian, and a man of singularly beautiful character, who remained
+an Anglican till his death in 1890. Nor, though he had won a high
+reputation at his University, was Manning a leading spirit in the
+famous "Oxford Movement." It was by his winning manners, his graceful
+rhetoric, and his zealous discharge of clerical duties, rather than by
+any commanding talents that he rose to eminence in the Church of
+England. Neither had his character the same power either to attract or
+to awe as that of Newman. Nobody in those days called him great, as
+men called Newman. Nobody felt compelled to follow where he led. There
+was not, either in his sermons or in his writings, or in his bodily
+presence and conversation, anything which could be pronounced
+majestic, or lofty, or profound. In short, he was not in the grand
+style, either as a man or as a preacher, and wanted that note of
+ethereal purity or passionate fervour which marks the two highest
+forms of religious character.
+
+Intelligent, however, skilful, versatile he was in the highest degree;
+cultivated, too, with a knowledge of all that a highly educated man
+ought to know; dexterous rather than forcible in theological
+controversy; an admirable rhetorician, handling language with
+something of that kind of art which Roman ecclesiastics most
+cultivate, and in their possession of which the leading Tractarians
+showed their affinity to Rome, an exact precision of phrase and a
+subtle delicacy of suggestion. Newman had it in the fullest measure.
+Dean Church had it, with less brilliance than Newman, but with no less
+grace and dignity. Manning equalled neither of these, but we catch in
+him the echo. He wrote abundantly and on many subjects, always with
+cleverness and with the air of one who claimed to belong to the _âmes
+d'élite_, yet his style never attained the higher kind of literary
+merit. There was no imaginative richness about it, neither were there
+the weight and penetration that come from sustained and vigorous
+thinking. Similarly, with a certain parade of references to history
+and to out-of-the-way writers, he gave scant evidence of solid
+learning. He was an accomplished disputant in the sense of knowing
+thoroughly the more obvious weaknesses of the Protestant (and
+especially of the Anglican) position, and of being able to contrast
+them effectively with the external completeness and formal symmetry of
+the Roman system. But he never struck out a new or illuminative
+thought; and he seldom ventured to face--one could indeed sometimes
+mark him seeking to elude--a real difficulty.
+
+What, then, was the secret of his great and long-sustained reputation
+and influence? It lay in his power of dealing with men. For the work
+of an ecclesiastical ruler he had three inestimable gifts--a resolute
+will, captivating manners, and a tact equally acute and vigilant, by
+which he seemed not only to read men's characters, but to discern the
+most effective means of playing on their motives. To call him an
+intriguer would be unjust, because the word, if it does not imply the
+pursuit of some mean or selfish object, does generally connote a
+resort to unworthy arts; and the Cardinal was neither dishonourable
+nor selfish. But he had the talents which an intriguer needs, though
+he used them in a spirit of absolute devotion to the interests of his
+Church, and though he was too much of a gentleman to think that the
+interests of the Church, which might justify a good deal, could be
+made to justify any and every means. In conversation he had the art of
+seeming to lay his mind alongside of yours, wishful to know what you
+had to say, and prepared to listen respectfully to it, even though you
+might be much younger and of no personal consequence. Yet you
+sometimes felt, if your own power of observation had not been lulled
+to sleep by the winning manner, that he was watching you, and
+watching, in conformity to a settled habit, the effect upon you of
+whatever he said. It was hard not to be flattered by this air of
+kindly deference, and natural to admire the great man who condescended
+without condescension, even though one might be secretly disappointed
+at the want of freshness and insight in his conversation. Like his
+famous contemporary, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, Manning was all things
+to all men. He was possessed, no doubt, of far less wit and far less
+natural eloquence than that brilliant but variable creature. But he
+gave a more distinct impression of earnest and unquestioning loyalty
+to the cause he had made his own.
+
+In the government of his diocese, Manning showed himself a finished
+ruler and manager of men, flexible in his power of adapting himself to
+any character or society, yet inflexible when firmness was needed,
+usually tactful if not always gentle in his methods, but tenacious in
+his purposes, demanding rightfully from others the simplicity of life
+and the untiring industry of which he set an example himself. Over
+women his influence was still greater than over men, because women are
+more susceptible to the charm of presence and address; nor could any
+other ecclesiastic count so many conversions among ladies of high
+station, his dignified carriage and ascetic face according admirably
+with his sacerdotal rank and his life of strict observance. For some
+years it was his habit to go to Rome early in Lent and remain till
+after Easter. Promising subjects, who had doubts as to their
+probabilities of salvation in the Anglican communion, used to be
+invited to dinner to meet him, and they fell in swift succession
+before his skilful presentation of the peace and bliss to be found
+within the Roman fold.
+
+In his public appearances, it was neither the solid substance of his
+discourses nor the literary quality of their style that struck one,
+but their judicious adaptation to the audience, and the grace with
+which they were delivered. For this reason--originality being rarer
+and therefore more precious in the pulpit, where well-worn themes have
+to be handled, than on a platform, where the topic is one of the
+moment--his addresses at public meetings were better than his sermons,
+and won for him the reputation of a speaker whom it was well worth
+while to secure at any social or philanthropic gathering. At the
+Vatican OEcumenical Council of 1870 it was less by his speeches than
+by his work in private among the assembled prelates that he served the
+Infallibilist cause. Himself devoted, and, no doubt, honestly devoted,
+to Ultramontane principles, he did not hesitate to do violence to
+history and join in destroying what freedom the Church at large had
+retained, in order to exalt the Chair of Peter to a position unheard
+of even at Trent, not to say in the Middle Ages. His activity, his
+assiduity, and his tireless powers of persuasion contributed largely
+to the satisfaction at that Council of the wishes of Pius IX., who
+presently rewarded him with the Cardinalate. But the opponents of the
+new dogma, who were as superior in learning to the Infallibilists as
+they proved inferior in numbers, carried back with them to Germany and
+North America an undying distrust of the astute Englishman who had
+shown more than a convert's proverbial eagerness for rushing to
+extremes and forcing others to follow. I remember to have met some of
+the anti-Infallibilist prelates returning to America in the autumn of
+1870; and in our many talks on shipboard they spoke of the Archbishop
+in terms no more measured than Nestorius may have used of St. Cyril
+after the Council of Ephesus.
+
+But Manning's powers shone forth most fully in the course he gave to
+his policy as Archbishop of Westminster and head of the Roman
+hierarchy in Britain. He had two difficulties to confront. One was the
+suspicion of the old English Roman Catholic families, who distrusted
+him as a recent recruit from Protestantism, a man brought up in ideas
+unfamiliar to their conservative minds. The other was the aversion of
+the ruling classes in England, and indeed of Englishmen generally, to
+the pretensions of Rome an aversion which, among the Tories, sprang
+from deep-seated historical associations, and among the Whigs drew
+further strength from dislike to the reactionary tendencies of the
+Popedom on the European continent, and especially its resistance to
+the freedom and unity of Italy. In 1850 the creation by the Pope of a
+Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, followed by Cardinal Wiseman's
+letter dated from the Flaminian Gate, had evoked a burst of anti-papal
+feeling which never quite subsided during Wiseman's lifetime. Both
+these enmities Manning overcame. The old Catholic families rallied to
+a prelate who supported with dignity and vigour the pretensions of
+their church; while the suspicions of Protestants were largely, if not
+universally, allayed when they noted the attitude of a patriotic
+Englishman, zealous for the greatness of his country, which the
+Archbishop assumed, as well as the heartiness with which he threw
+himself into moral and philanthropic causes. Loyalty to Rome never
+betrayed him into any apparent disloyalty to England. Too prudent to
+avow sympathy with either political party, he seemed less opposed to
+Liberalism than his predecessor had been or than most of the English
+Catholics were. While, of course, at issue with the Liberal party upon
+educational questions, he was believed to lean to Home Rule, and
+maintained good relations with the Irish leaders. He joined those who
+worked for the better protection of children and the repression of
+vice, advocated total abstinence by precept and example, and did much
+to promote it among the poorer Roman Catholic population. Discerning
+the growing magnitude of what are called labour questions, he did not
+recoil from proposals to limit by legislation the hours of toil, and
+gladly exerted himself to settle differences between employers and
+workmen, showing his own sympathy with the needs and hardships of the
+latter. Thus he won a popularity with the London masses greater than
+any prelate of the Established Church had enjoyed, while the middle
+and upper classes noted with pleasure that, however Ultramontane in
+his theology, he always spoke and wrote as an Englishman upon
+non-theological subjects.
+
+In this there was no playing of a part, for he sincerely cared about
+temperance, the welfare of children, the advancement of the labouring
+class, and the greatness of England. But there was also a sage
+perception of the incidental service which his attitude in these
+matters could render to his church; and he relished opportunities of
+proving that a Catholic prelate could be not only a philanthropist but
+also a patriot. He saw the value of the attitude, though he used it
+honestly, and if he was not artful, he was full of art. Truth, for its
+own sake, he neither loved nor sought, but, having once adopted
+certain conclusions, doctrinal and practical, subordinated everything
+else to them. Power he loved, yet not wholly for the pleasure which he
+found in exerting it, but also because he knew that he was fit to use
+it, and could use it, to promote the aims he cherished. To his church
+he was devoted heart and soul; nor could any one have better served it
+so far as England was concerned. No one in our time, hardly even
+Cardinal Newman, has done so much to sap and remove the old Protestant
+fears and jealousies of Rome, fears and jealousies which had descended
+from days when they were less unreasonable than the liberality or
+indifference of our times will allow. Truly the Roman Church is a
+wonderful institution, fertile beyond any other, since in each
+succeeding age she has given birth to new types of force suited to the
+conditions she has to deal with. In Manning she developed a figure
+full of a kind of charm and strength which could hardly have found due
+scope within a Protestant body: a man who never obtruded a claim, yet
+never yielded one; who was the loyal servant of a spiritual despotism,
+yet apparently in sympathy with democratic ideas and movements;
+equally welcome among the poorest Irish of his diocese and at the
+gatherings of the great; ready to join in every good work with those
+most opposed to his own doctrines, yet standing detached as the
+austere and unbending representative of a world-embracing power.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Since these pages were written there has appeared a Life of Cardinal
+Manning which, for the variety and interest of its contents, and for
+the flood of light which it throws upon its subject, deserves to rank
+among the best biographies in the English language. It reveals the
+inner life of Manning, his high motives and his tortuous methods, his
+piety and his aspirations, his occasional lapses from sincerity and
+rectitude, with a fulness to which one can scarcely find a parallel.
+As was remarked by Mr. Gladstone, who was so keenly interested in the
+book that for months he could talk of little else, it leaves nothing
+for the Day of Judgment.
+
+It would be idle to deny that Manning's reputation did in some measure
+suffer. Yet it must in fairness be remembered that an ordeal such as
+that to which he has been thus subjected is seldom applied, and might,
+if similarly applied, have lowered many another reputation. Cicero
+has suffered in like manner. We should have thought more highly of
+him, though I do not know that we should have liked him better, if his
+letters had not survived to reveal weaknesses which other men, or
+their biographers, were discreet enough to conceal.
+
+I have not attempted to rewrite the preceding pages in the light of
+Mr. Purcell's biography, for to do so would have extended them beyond
+the limits of a sketch. I have, moreover, found that the disclosures
+contained in the biography do not oblige me to darken the colours of
+the sketch itself. Taken all in all, these intimate records of
+Manning's life tend to confirm the view that, along with his love of
+power and pre-eminence, along with his carelessness about historic
+truth, along with the questionable methods he sometimes allowed
+himself to use, there lay deep in his heart a genuine and unfailing
+sympathy with many good causes, such as the cause of temperance, and a
+real tenderness for the poor and for children. If he was far removed
+from a saint, still less was he the mere worldly ecclesiastic, crafty
+and ambitious, who has in all ages been a familiar and unlovely type
+of character.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN[37]
+
+
+Edward Freeman was born at Harborne in South Staffordshire on 2nd
+August 1823, and died at Alicante on 16th March 1892, in the course of
+an archæological and historical journey to the east and south of
+Spain, whither he had gone to see the sites of the early Carthaginian
+settlements. His life was comparatively uneventful, as that of learned
+men in our time usually is. He was educated at home and at a private
+school till he went to Oxford at the age of eighteen. There he was
+elected a scholar of Trinity College in 1841, took his degree (second
+class in _literae humaniores_) in 1845, and was elected a fellow of
+Trinity shortly afterwards. Marrying in 1847, he lost his fellowship,
+and settled in 1848 in Gloucestershire, and at a later time went to
+live in Monmouthshire, whence he migrated in 1860 to Somerleaze, a
+pretty spot about a mile and a half to the north-west of Wells in
+Somerset. Here he lived till 1884, when he was appointed (on the
+recommendation of Mr. Gladstone) to the Regius Professorship of Modern
+History at Oxford. Thenceforth he spent the winter and spring in the
+University, returning for the long vacation to Somerleaze, a place he
+dearly loved, not only in respect of the charm of the surrounding
+scenery, but from its proximity to the beautiful churches of Wells and
+to many places of historical interest. For the greater part of his
+manhood his surroundings were those of a country gentleman, nor did he
+ever reconcile himself to town life, for he loved the open sky, the
+fields and hills, and all wild creatures, though he detested what are
+called field sports, knew nothing of natural history, and had neither
+taste nor talent for farming. As he began life with an income
+sufficient to make a gainful profession unnecessary, he did not
+prepare himself for any, but gave free scope from the first to his
+taste for study and research. Thus the record of his life is, with the
+exception of one or two incursions into the field of practical
+politics, a record of his historical work and of the journeys he
+undertook in connection with it.
+
+History was the joy as well as the labour of his life. But the
+conception he took of it was peculiar enough to deserve some remark.
+The keynote of his character was the extraordinary warmth of his
+interest in the persons, things, and places which he cared for, and the
+scarcely less conspicuous indifference to matters which lay outside the
+well-defined boundary line of his sympathies. If any branch of inquiry
+seemed to him directly connected with history, he threw himself
+heartily into it, and drew from it all it could be made to yield for his
+purpose. About other subjects he would neither read nor talk, no
+matter how completely they might for the time be filling the minds of
+others. While an undergraduate, and influenced, like most of the abler
+men among his Oxford contemporaries, by the Tractarian opinions and
+sentiments then in their full force and freshness,[38] he became
+interested in church architecture, discerned the value which
+architecture has as a handmaid to historical research, set to work
+to study mediæval buildings, and soon acquired a wonderfully full and
+exact knowledge of the most remarkable churches and castles all over
+England. He taught himself to sketch, not artistically, but
+sufficiently well to record characteristic points, and by the end of
+his life he had accumulated a collection of hundreds of drawings made
+by himself of notable buildings in France, Germany, Italy, and
+Dalmatia, as well as in the British Isles. Architecture was always
+thenceforward to him the prime external record and interpreter of
+history. But it was the only art in which he took the slightest
+interest. He cared nothing for pictures or statuary; was believed to
+have once only, when his friend J. R. Green dragged him thither,
+visited a picture-gallery in the course of his numerous journeys; and
+did not seem to perceive the significance which paintings have as
+revealing the thoughts and social condition of the time which produced
+them. Another branch of inquiry cognate to history which he prized
+was comparative philology. With no great turn for the refinements of
+classical scholarship, and indeed with some contempt for the practice
+of Latin and Greek verse-making which used to absorb much of the time
+and labour of undergraduates and their tutors at Oxford and Cambridge,
+he was extremely fond of tracing words through different languages
+so as to establish the relations of the peoples who spoke them, and,
+indeed, used to argue that all teaching of languages ought to begin
+with Grimm's law, and to base his advocacy of the retention of Greek
+as a _sine qua non_ for an Arts degree in the University on the
+importance of that law. But with this love for philology as an
+instrument in the historian's hands, he took little pleasure in
+languages simply as languages--that is to say, he did not care to
+master, and was not apt at mastering, the grammar and idioms of a
+tongue. French was the only foreign language he spoke with any
+approach to ease, though he could read freely German, Italian, and
+modern Greek, and on his tour in Greece made some vigorous speeches
+to the people in their own tongue. He had learnt to pronounce Greek in
+the modern fashion, which few Englishmen can do; but how much of his
+classically phrased discourses did the crowds that acclaimed the
+distinguished Philhellene understand? So too he was a keen and
+well-trained archæologist, but only because archæology was to him a
+priceless adjunct--one might almost say the most trustworthy source--of
+the study of early history. As evidence of his accomplishments as an
+antiquary I cannot do better than quote the words of a master of that
+subject, who was also one of his oldest friends. Mr. George T. Clark
+says:--
+
+  He was an accurate observer, not only of the broad features of a
+  country but of its ancient roads and earthworks, its prehistoric
+  monuments, and its earlier and especially its ecclesiastical
+  buildings. No man was better versed in the distinctive styles of
+  Christian architecture, or had a better general knowledge of the
+  earthworks from the study of which he might hope to correct or
+  corroborate any written records, and by the aid of which he often
+  infused life and reality into otherwise obscure narrations.... He
+  visited every spot upon which the Conqueror is recorded to have
+  set his foot, compared many of the strongholds of his followers
+  with those they left behind them in Normandy, and studied the
+  evidence of Domesday for their character and possessions. When
+  writing upon Rufus he spent some time in examining the afforested
+  district of the New Forest, and sought for traces of the villages
+  and churches said to have been depopulated or destroyed. And for
+  us archæologists he did more than this. When he attended a
+  provincial congress and had listened to the description of some
+  local antiquity, some mound, or divisional earthbank, or
+  semi-Saxon church, he at once strove to show the general evidence
+  to be deduced from them, and how it bore upon the boundaries or
+  formation of some Celtic or Saxon province or diocese, if not upon
+  the general history of the kingdom itself.... He thus did much to
+  elevate the pursuits of the archæologist, and to show the relation
+  they bore to the far superior labours of the historian.
+
+  Freeman was always at his best when in the field. It was then that
+  the full force of his personality came into play: his sturdy
+  upright figure, sharp-cut features, flowing beard, well-modulated
+  voice, clear enunciation, and fluent and incisive speech. None who
+  have heard him hold forth from the steps of some churchyard cross,
+  or from the top stone of some half-demolished cromlech, can ever
+  cease to have a vivid recollection of both the orator and his
+  theme.
+
+Freeman took endless pains to master the topography of any place he
+had to deal with. When at work in his later years on Sicilian history
+he visited, and he has minutely described, the site of nearly every
+spot in that island where a battle or a siege took place in ancient
+times, so that his volumes have become an elaborate historical
+guide-book for the student or tourist.
+
+But while he thus delighted in whatever bore upon history as he
+conceived it, his conception was one which belonged to the eighteenth
+century rather than to our own time. It was to him not only primarily
+but almost exclusively a record of political events--that is to say,
+of events in the sphere of war, diplomacy, and government. He
+expressed this view with concise vigour in the well-known dictum,
+"History is past politics, and politics is present history"; and
+though his friends remonstrated with him against this view as far too
+narrow, excluding from the sphere of history many of its deepest
+sources of interest, he would never give way. That historians should
+care as much (or more) for the religious or philosophical opinions of
+an age, or for its ethical and social phenomena, or for the study of
+its economic conditions, as for forms of government or battles and
+sieges, seemed to him strange. He did not argue against the friends
+who differed from him, for he was ready to believe that there must be
+something true and valuable in the views of a man whom he respected;
+but he could not be induced to devote his own labours to the
+elucidation of these matters. He would say to Green, "You may bring in
+all that social and religious kind of thing, Johnny, but I can't." So
+when he went to deliver lectures in the United States, he delighted in
+making new acquaintances there, and was interested in the Federal
+system and in all institutions which he could trace to their English
+originals, but did not care to see anything or hear anything about the
+economic development or social life of the country.
+
+The same predominant liking for the political element in history made
+him indifferent to many kinds of literature. It may indeed be said
+that literature, simply as literature, did not attract him. In his
+later years, at any rate, he seldom read a book except for the sake of
+the political or historical information it contained. Among the
+writers whom he most disliked were Plato, Carlyle, and Ruskin, in no
+one of whom could he see any merit. Plato, he said, was the only
+author he had ever thrown to the other end of the room. Neither,
+although very fond of the Greek and Roman classics generally, did he
+seem to enjoy any of the Greek poets except Homer and Pindar and, to
+some extent, Aristophanes. His liking for Pindar used to surprise us,
+because Pindar is peculiarly the favourite poet of poetical minds; and
+I suspect it was not so much the splendour of Pindar's style and the
+wealth of his imagination that Freeman enjoyed, as rather the
+profusion of historical and mythological references. He was impatient
+with the Greek tragedians, and still more impatient with Virgil,
+because (as he said) "Virgil cannot or will not say a thing simply."
+Among English poets his preference was for the old heroic ballads,
+such as the songs of Brunanburh and Maldon, and, among recent
+writers, for Macaulay's _Lays_. The first thing he ever published
+(1850) was a volume of verse, consisting mainly of ballads, some of
+them very spirited, on events in Greek and Moorish history. It may be
+doubted if he remembered a line of Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, or
+Tennyson. He blamed Walter Scott for misrepresenting history in
+_Ivanhoe_, but constantly read the rest of his stories, taking special
+pleasure in _Peveril of the Peak_. He bestowed warm praise upon
+_Romola_, on one occasion reading it through twice in a single
+journey. Mrs. Gaskell's _Mary Barton_, Marryatt's _Peter Simple_,
+Trollope's _The Warden_ and _Barchester Towers_, were amongst his
+favourites. Among the moderns, Macaulay was his favourite prose
+author, and he was wont to say that from Macaulay he had learned never
+to be afraid of using the same word to describe the same thing, and
+that no one was a better model to follow in the choice of pure
+English. Limitations of taste are not uncommon among eminent men. What
+was uncommon in Freeman was the perfect frankness with which he avowed
+his aversions, and the absence of any pretence of caring for things
+which he did not really care for. He was in this, as in all other
+matters, a singularly simple and truthful man, never seeking to appear
+different from what he was, and finding it hard to understand why
+other people should not be equally simple and direct. This directness
+made him express himself with an absence of reserve which often gave
+offence. Positive and definite, with a strong broad logic which every
+one could follow, he was a formidable controversialist even on
+subjects outside history. A good specimen of his powers was given in
+the argument against the cruelty of field sports which he carried on
+with Anthony Trollope. His cause was not a popular one in England, but
+he stated it so well as to carry off the honours of the fray.[39]
+
+The restriction of his interest to a few topics--wide ones, to be
+sure--seemed to increase the intensity of his devotion to those few;
+and thus even the two chief practical interests he had in life
+connected themselves with his conception of history. One was the
+discharge of his duties as a magistrate in the local government of his
+county. While he lived at Somerleaze he rarely missed Quarter
+Sessions, speaking seldom, but valuing the opportunity of taking part
+in the rule of the shire. The other was the politics of the time,
+foreign politics even more than domestic. He was from an early age a
+strong Liberal, throwing himself into every question which bore on the
+Constitution, either in state or in church, for (as has been said)
+topics of the social or economic kind lay rather out of his sphere.
+When Mr. Gladstone launched his Irish Home Rule scheme in 1886,
+Freeman espoused it warmly, and praised it for the very point which
+drew most censure even from Liberals, the removal of the Irish members
+from Parliament. He was intensely English and Teutonic, and wished the
+Gael to be left to settle, or fight over, their own affairs in their
+own island, as they had done eight centuries ago. Even the idea of
+separating Ireland altogether from the English Crown would not have
+alarmed him, for he did not thank Strongbow and Henry II. for having
+invaded it; while, on the other hand, the plan of turning the United
+Kingdom into a federation, giving to England, Scotland, Ireland, and
+Wales each a local parliament of its own, with an imperial parliament
+for common concerns, shocked all his historical instincts.
+
+In 1859 he was on the point of coming forward as a parliamentary
+candidate for the borough of Newport in Monmouthshire, and again at
+the election of 1868 he actually did stand for one of the divisions of
+Somerset, and showed in his platform speeches a remarkable gift of
+eloquence, and occasionally, also, of humour, coupled with a want of
+those minor arts which usually contribute more than eloquence does to
+success in electioneering. I went round with him, along with his and
+my friend Mr. Albert Dicey, and few are the candidates who get so much
+pleasure out of a contest as Freeman did. He was a strenuous advocate
+of disestablishment in Ireland, the question chiefly at issue in the
+election of 1868, because he thought the Roman Catholic Church was of
+right, and ought by law to be, the national Church there; but no less
+decidedly opposed to disestablishment in England, where it would have
+pained him to see the uprooting of a system entwined with the ideas
+and events of the Middle Ages. In his later years he told me that if
+the Liberal party took up the policy of disestablishment in Wales, he
+did not know whether he could adhere to them, much as he desired to do
+so.
+
+Similarly he disliked all schemes for drawing the colonies into closer
+relations with the United Kingdom, and even seemed to wish that they
+should sever themselves from it, as the United States had done. This
+view sprang partly from his feeling that they were very recent
+acquisitions, with which the old historic England had nothing to do,
+partly also from the impression made on him by the analogy of the
+Greek colonies. He held that the precedent of the Greek settlements
+showed the true and proper relation between a "metropolis," or
+mother-city, and her colonies to be one not of political dependence or
+interdependence, but of cordial friendliness and a disposition to
+render help, nothing more. These instances are worth citing because
+they illustrate a remarkable difference between his way of looking
+historically at institutions and Macaulay's way. A friend of his (the
+late Mr. S. R. Gardiner), like Freeman a distinguished historian, and
+like him a strong Home Ruler, wrote to me upon this point as
+follows:--
+
+  Freeman and Macaulay are alike in the high value they set upon
+  parliamentary institutions. On the other hand, when Macaulay wants
+  to make you understand a thing, he compares it with that which
+  existed in his own day. The standard of the present is always with
+  him. Freeman traces it to its origin, and testifies to its growth.
+  The strength of this mode of proceeding in an historian is
+  obvious. Its weakness is that it does not help him to appreciate
+  statesmanship looking forward and trying to find a solution of
+  difficult problems. Freeman's attitude is that of the people who
+  cried out for the good laws of King Edward, trying to revive the
+  past.
+
+Freeman was apt to go beyond his own dictum about history and
+politics, for he sometimes made history present politics as well as
+past.
+
+By far the strongest political interest--indeed it rose to a
+passion--of his later years was his hatred of the Turk. In it his
+historical and religious sentiment, for there was a good deal of the
+Crusader about him, was blended with his abhorrence of despotism and
+cruelty. Ever since the beginning of the Crimean war he had been
+opposed to the traditional English policy of supporting the Sultan.
+Ever since he had thought about foreign politics at all he had
+sympathised with the Christians of the East. So when Lord Beaconsfield
+seemed on the point of carrying the country into a war with Russia in
+defence of the Turks, no voice rose louder or bolder than his in
+denouncing the policy then popular with the upper classes in England.
+On this occasion he gave substantial proof of his earnestness by
+breaking off his connection with the _Saturday Review_ because it had
+espoused the Turkish cause. This cost him £600 a year, a sum he could
+ill spare, and took from him what had been the joy of his heart,
+opportunities of delivering himself upon all sorts of current
+questions. But his sense of duty forbade him to write for a journal
+which was supporting a misguided policy and a minister whom he thought
+unscrupulous.
+
+His habit of speaking out his whole mind with little regard to the
+effect his words might produce, or to the way in which they might be
+twisted, sometimes landed him in difficulties. One utterance raised an
+outcry at the time, because it was made at a conference held in London
+in December 1876 to oppose Lord Beaconsfield's Eastern policy. The
+Duke of Westminster and Lord Shaftesbury presided at the forenoon and
+afternoon sessions, and the meeting, which told powerfully on the
+country, was wound up by Mr. Gladstone. Freeman's speech, only ten
+minutes long, but an oratorical success at the moment, contained the
+words, "Perish the interests of England, perish our dominion in India,
+rather than that we should strike one blow or speak one word on behalf
+of the wrong against the right." This flight of rhetoric was perverted
+by his opponents into "Perish India"; and though he indignantly
+repudiated the misrepresentation, it continued to be repeated against
+him for years thereafter, and to be cited as an instance of the
+irresponsible violence of the friends of the Eastern Christians.
+
+The most conspicuous and characteristic merits of Freeman as an
+historian may be summed up in six points: love of truth, love of
+justice, industry, common sense, breadth of view, and power of vividly
+realising the political life of the past.
+
+Every one knows the maxim, _pectus facit theologum_,[40] a maxim
+accountable, by the way, for a good deal of weak theology. More truly
+may it be said that the merits of a great historian are far from lying
+wholly in his intellectual powers. Among the highest of such merits,
+merits which the professional student has even more reason to
+appreciate than the general reader, because he more frequently
+discerns the disturbing causes, are two moral qualities. One is the
+zeal for truth, with the willingness to undertake, in a search for it,
+a toil by which no credit will ever be gained. The other is a clear
+view of, and loyal adherence to, the permanent moral standards. In
+both these points Freeman stood in the front rank. He was kindly and
+fair in his judgments, and ready to make all the allowances for any
+man's conduct which the conditions of his time suggested, but he hated
+cruelty, falsehood, oppression, whether in Syracuse twenty-four
+centuries ago or in the Ottoman empire to-day. That conscientious
+industry which spares no pains to get as near as possible to the facts
+never failed him. Though he talked less about facts and verities than
+Carlyle did, Carlyle was not so assiduous and so minutely careful in
+sifting every statement before he admitted it into his pages. That he
+was never betrayed by sentiment into partisanship it would be too much
+to say. Scottish critics have accused him, perhaps not without
+justice, of being led by his English patriotism to over-state the
+claims of the English Crown to suzerainty over Scotland. J. R. Green,
+as well as the late Mr. C. H. Pearson, thought that the same cause
+disposed him to overlook the weak points in the character of Harold
+son of Godwin, one of his favourite heroes. But there have been few
+writers who have so seldom erred in this way; few who have striven so
+earnestly to do full justice to every cause and every person. Even the
+race prejudices which he allowed himself to indulge, in letters and
+talk, against Irishmen, Frenchmen, and Jews, scarcely ever appear in
+his books. The characters he has drawn of Lucius Cornelius Sulla,
+William the Conqueror and William the Red, St. Thomas of Canterbury
+(none of whom he liked), and, in his _History of Sicily_, of Nicias,
+are models of the fairness which historical portraiture requires. It
+is especially interesting to compare his picture of the unfortunate
+Athenian with the equally vigorous but harsher view of Grote. Freeman,
+whom many people thought fierce, was one of the most soft-hearted of
+men, and tolerant of everything but perfidy and cruelty. Though
+disposed to be positive in his opinions, he was always willing to
+reconsider a point when any new evidence was discovered or any new
+argument brought to his notice, and not unfrequently modified his view
+in the light of such evidence or arguments. It was this passion for
+accuracy and for that lucidity of statement which is the necessary
+adjunct of real accuracy, that made him deal so sternly with confused
+thinkers and careless writers. Carelessness seemed to him a moral
+fault, because a fault which true conscientiousness excludes. So also
+clearness of conception and exact precision in the use of words were
+so natural to him, and appeared so essential to good work, that he
+would set down the want of them rather to indolence than to
+incapacity, and apply to them a proportionately severe censure. Mere
+ignorance he could pardon, but when it was, as often happens, even in
+persons of considerable pretensions, joined to presumption, his wrath
+was the hotter because he deemed it a wholly righteous wrath. Never
+touching any subject which he had not mastered, he thought it his duty
+as a critic to expose impostors, and rendered in this way, during the
+years when he wrote for the _Saturday Review_, services to English
+scholarship second only to those which were embodied in his own
+treatises. It must be confessed that he enjoyed the work, and, like
+Samuel Johnson, was not displeased to be told that he had "tossed and
+gored several persons."
+
+His determination to get to the bottom of a question was the cause of
+the censure he so freely bestowed both on lawyers, who were wont to
+rest content with their technicalities, and not go back to the
+historical basis on which those technicalities rested, and on
+politicians who fell into the habit of using stock phrases which
+muddled or misrepresented the principles involved. The expression
+"national property," as applied to tithes, incensed him, and gave
+occasion for some of his most vigorous writing. So the commonplace
+grumblings against the presence of bishops in the House of Lords,
+which may be heard from people who acquiesce in the presence of
+hereditary peers, led him to give the most clear and forcible
+statement of the origin and character of that House which our time has
+produced. Here he was on ground he knew thoroughly. But his habits of
+accuracy were not less fully illustrated by his attitude towards
+branches of history he had not explored. With a profound and minute
+knowledge of English history down to the fourteenth century, so far as
+his aversion to the employment of manuscript authorities would allow,
+and a scarcely inferior knowledge of foreign European history during
+the same period, with a less full but very sound knowledge down to the
+middle of the sixteenth century, and with a thorough mastery of pretty
+nearly all ancient history, his familiarity with later European
+history, and with the history of such outlying regions as India or
+America, was not much beyond that of the average educated man. He used
+to say when questioned on these matters that "he had not come down to
+that yet." But when he had occasion to refer to those periods or
+countries, he hardly ever made a mistake. If he did not know, he did
+not refer; if he referred, he had seized, as if by instinct, something
+which was really important and serviceable for his purpose. The same
+remark applies (speaking generally) to Gibbon and to Macaulay, and I
+have heard Freeman make it of the writings of Mr. Goldwin Smith, for
+whom he had a warm admiration.
+
+Freeman's abstention from the use of manuscript sources was virtually
+prescribed by his persistence in refusing to work out of his own
+library, or, as he used to say, out of a room which he could
+consider to be his library for the time being. As, however, the
+original authorities for the times with which he chiefly dealt are,
+with few or unimportant exceptions, all in print, this habit can
+hardly be considered a defect in his historical qualifications. In
+handling the sources he was a judicious critic and a sound scholar,
+thoroughly at home in Greek and Latin, and sufficiently equipped in
+Anglo-Saxon, or, as he called it, Old English. Of his breadth of
+view, of the command he had of the whole sweep of his knowledge, of
+his delight in bringing together things the most remote in place or
+time, it is superfluous to speak. These merits are perhaps most
+conspicuously seen in the plan of his treatise on Federal Government,
+as well as in the execution of that one volume which unfortunately
+was all he produced of what might have been, if completed, a book of
+the utmost value. But one or two trifling illustrations of this habit
+of living in an atmosphere in which the past was no less real to him
+than the present may be forgiven. When careless friends directed
+letters to him at "Somerleaze, Wookey, Somerset," Wookey being a
+village a quarter of a mile from his house, but on the other side of
+the river Axe, he would write back complaining that they were
+"confusing the England and Wales of the seventh century." When his
+attention had been called to a discussion in the weekly journals
+about Shelley's first wife he wrote to me, "Why will they worry us
+with this _Harrietfrage_? You and I have quite enough to do with
+Helen, and Theodora, and Mary Stuart." So in addressing Somersetshire
+rustics during his election campaign in 1868, he could not help on one
+occasion referring to Ptolemy Euergetes, and on another launching
+out into an eloquent description of the Landesgemeinde of Uri.
+
+Industry came naturally to Freeman, because he was fond of his own
+studies and did not think of his work as task work. The joy in reading
+and writing about bygone times sprang from the intensity with which he
+realised them. He had no geographical imagination, finding no more
+pleasure in books of travel than in dramatic poetry. But he loved to
+dwell in the past, and seemed to see and feel and make himself a part
+of the events he described. Next to their worth as statements of
+carefully investigated facts, the chief merit of his books lies in the
+sense of reality which fills them. The politics of Corinth or Sicyon,
+the contest of William the Red with St. Anselm, interested him as
+keenly as a general election in which he was himself a candidate.
+Looking upon current events with an historian's eye, he was fond, on
+the other hand, of illustrating features of Roman history from
+incidents he had witnessed when taking part in local government as a
+magistrate; and in describing the relations of Hermocrates and
+Athenagoras at Syracuse he drew upon observations which he had made in
+watching the discussions of the Hebdomadal Council at Oxford. This
+power of realising the politics of ancient or mediæval times was
+especially useful to him as a writer, because without it his
+minuteness might have verged on prolixity, seeing that he cared
+exclusively for the political part of history. It was one of the
+points in which he rose superior to most of those German students with
+whom it is natural to compare him. Many of them have equalled him in
+industry and diligence; some have surpassed him in the ingenuity which
+they bring to bear upon obscure problems; but few of them have shown
+the same gift for understanding what the political life of remote
+times really was. Like Gibbon, Freeman was not a mere student, but
+also a man with opportunities of mixing in affairs, accustomed to bear
+his share in the world's work, and so better able than the mere
+student can be to comprehend how that work goes forward. Though he was
+too peculiar in his views and his way of stating them to have been
+adapted either to the House of Commons or to a local assembly, and
+would indeed have been wasted upon nineteen-twentieths of the business
+there transacted, he loved politics and watched them with a shrewdly
+observant eye. Though he indulged his foibles in some directions, he
+could turn upon history a stream of clear common sense which sometimes
+made short work of German conjectures. And he was free from the
+craving to have at all hazards something new to advance, be it a
+trivial fact or an unsupported guess. He was accustomed of late years
+to complain that German scholarship seemed to be suffering from the
+passion for _etwas Neues_, and the consequent disposition to disparage
+work which did not abound with novelties, however empty or transient
+such novelties might be.
+
+To think of the Germans is to think of industry. Freeman was a true
+Teuton in the mass of his production. Besides the seven thick
+volumes devoted to the Norman Conquest and William Rufus, the four
+thick volumes to Sicily, four large volumes of collected essays,
+and nine or ten smaller volumes on architectural subjects, on the
+English constitution, on the United States, on the Slavs and the
+Turks, he wrote an even greater quantity of matter which appeared in
+the _Saturday Review_ during the twenty years from 1856 to 1876, and
+it was by these articles, not less than by his books, that he
+succeeded in dispelling many current errors and confusions, and in
+establishing some of his own doctrines so firmly that we now
+scarcely remember what iteration and reiteration, in season and out
+of season, and much to the impatience of those who remembered that
+they had heard these doctrines often before, were needed to make
+them accepted by the public. Freeman's swift facility was due to
+his power of concentration. He always knew what he meant an article
+to contain before he sat down to his desk; and in his historical
+researches he made each step so certain that he seldom required to
+reinvestigate a point or to change, in revising for the press, the
+substance of what he had written.
+
+In his literary habits he was so methodical and precise that he could
+carry on three undertakings at the same time, keeping on different
+tables in his working rooms the books he needed for each, and passing
+at stated hours from one to the other. It is often remarked that the
+growth of journalism, forcing men to write hastily and profusely,
+tends to injure literature both in matter and in manner. In point of
+matter, Freeman, though for the best part of his life a very prolific
+journalist, did not seem to suffer. He was as exact, clear, and
+thorough at the end as he had been at the beginning. On his style,
+however, the results were unfortunate. It retained its force and its
+point, but it became diffuse, not that each particular sentence was
+weak, or vague, or wordy, but that what was substantially the same
+idea was apt to be reiterated, with slight differences of phrase, in
+several successive sentences or paragraphs. He was fond of the
+Psalter, great part of which he knew by heart, and we told him that he
+had caught too much of the manner of Psalm cxix. This tendency to
+repetition caused some of his books, and particularly the _Norman
+Conquest_ and _William Rufus_, to swell to a portentous bulk. Those
+treatises, which constitute a history of England from A.D. 1042 to
+1100, would be more widely read if they had been, as they ought to
+have been, reduced to three or four volumes; and as he came to
+perceive this, he resolved in the last year of his life to republish
+the _Norman Conquest_ in a condensed form. To be obliged to compress
+was a wholesome, though unwelcome, discipline, and the result is seen
+in some of his smaller books, such as the historical essays, and the
+sketches of English towns, often wonderfully fresh and vigorous bits
+of work. Anxiety to be scrupulously accurate runs into prolixity, and
+Freeman so loved his subjects that it pained him to omit any
+characteristic detail a chronicler had preserved; as he once observed
+to a distinguished writer who was dealing with a much later period,
+"You know so much about your people that you have to leave out a great
+deal, I know so little that I must tell all I know." The tendency to
+repeat the same word too frequently sprang from his preference for
+words of Teutonic origin and his pride in what he deemed the purity of
+his English. His pages would have been livelier had he felt free to
+indulge in the humour with which his private letters sparkled; for he
+was full of fun, though it often turned on points too recondite for
+the public. But it was only in the notes to his histories, and seldom
+even there, that he gave play to one of the merits that most commended
+him to his friends.
+
+So far of his books. He was, however, also Regius Professor of History
+at Oxford during the last eight years of his life, and thus the head
+of the historical faculty in his own university which he dearly loved.
+That he was less effective as a teacher than as a writer may be partly
+ascribed to his having come too late to a new kind of work, and one
+which demands the freshness of youth; partly also to the cramping
+conditions under which professors have to teach at Oxford, where
+everything is governed by a system of examinations which Freeman was
+never tired of denouncing as ruinous to study. His friends, however,
+doubted whether the natural bent of his mind was towards oral
+teaching. It was a peculiar mind, which ran in a deep channel of its
+own, and could not easily, if the metaphor be permissible, be drawn
+off to irrigate the adjoining fields. He was always better at putting
+his own views in a clear and telling way than at laying his intellect
+alongside of yours, apprehending your point of view, and setting
+himself to meet it. Or, to put the same thing differently, you learned
+more by listening to him than by conversing with him. He had not the
+quick intellectual sympathy and effusion which feels its way to the
+heart of an audience, and indeed derives inspiration from the sight of
+an audience. In his election meetings I noticed that the temper and
+sentiment of the listeners did not in the least affect him; what he
+said was what he himself cared to say, not what he felt they would
+wish to hear. So also in his lecturing he pleased himself, and chose
+the topics he liked best rather than those which the examination
+scheme prescribed to the students. Perhaps he was right, for he was of
+those whose excellence in performance depends upon the enjoyment they
+find in the exercise of their powers. But even on the topics he
+selected, he did not take hold of and guide the mind of the students,
+realising their particular difficulties and needs, but simply
+delivered his own message in his own way. Admitting this deficiency,
+the fact remains that he was not only an ornament to the University by
+the example he set of unflagging zeal, conscientious industry, loyalty
+to truth, and love of freedom, but also a stimulating influence upon
+those who were occupied with history. He delighted to surround himself
+with the most studious of the younger workers, gave them abundant
+encouragement and recognition, and never grudged the time to help them
+by his knowledge or his counsel.
+
+Much the same might be said of his lifelong friend and illustrious
+predecessor in the chair of history (Dr. Stubbs), whom Freeman had
+been generously extolling for many years before the merits of that
+admirable scholar became known to the public. Stubbs disliked
+lecturing; and though once a year he delivered a "public lecture" full
+of wisdom, and sometimes full of wit also, he was not effective as a
+teacher, not so effective, for instance, as Bishop Creighton, who won
+his reputation at Merton College long before he became Professor of
+Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge. But Stubbs, by his mere presence
+in the University, and by the inexhaustible kindness with which he
+answered questions and gave advice, rendered great services to the
+studies of the place. It may be doubted whether, when he was raised to
+the episcopal bench, history did not lose more than the Church of
+England gained. Other men of far less ability could have discharged
+five-sixths of a bishop's duties equally well, but there was no one
+else in England, if indeed in Europe, capable of carrying on his
+historical researches. So Dr. Lightfoot was, as Professor at
+Cambridge, doing work for Christian learning even more precious than
+the work which is still affectionately remembered in his diocese of
+Durham.
+
+Few men have had a genius for friendship equal to Freeman's. The
+names of those he cared for were continually on his lips, and their
+lives in his thoughts; their misfortunes touched him like his own;
+he was always ready to defend them, always ready to give any aid they
+needed. No differences of opinion affected his regard. Sensitive
+as he was to criticism, he received their censure on any part of his
+work without offence. The need he felt for knowing how they fared and
+for sharing his thoughts with them expressed itself in the enormous
+correspondence, not of business, but of pure affection, which he kept
+up with his many friends, and which forms, for his letters were so
+racy that many of them were preserved, the fullest record of his
+life.
+
+This warmth of feeling deserves to be dwelt on, because it explains
+the tendency to vehemence in controversy which brought some enmities
+upon him. There was an odd contrast between his fondness for
+describing wars and battles and that extreme aversion to militarism
+which made him appear to dislike the very existence of a British army
+and navy. So his combativeness, and the zest with which he bestowed
+shrewd blows on those who encountered him, though due to his wholesome
+scorn for pretenders, and his hatred of falsehood and injustice,
+seemed inconsistent with the real kindliness of his nature. The
+kindliness, however, no one who knew him could doubt; it showed itself
+not only in his care for dumb creatures and for children, but in the
+depth and tenderness of his affections. Of religion he spoke little,
+and only to his most intimate friends. In opinion he had drifted a
+long way from the Anglo-Catholic position of his early manhood; but he
+remained a sincerely pious Christian.
+
+Though his health had been infirm for some years before his death, his
+literary activity did not slacken, nor did his powers show signs of
+decline. There is nothing in his writings, nor in any writings of our
+time, more broad, clear, and forcible than many chapters of the
+_History of Sicily_. Much of his work has effected its purpose, and
+will, by degrees, lose its place in the public eye. But much will
+live on into a yet distant future, because it has been done so
+thoroughly, and contains so much sound and vigorous thinking, that
+coming generations of historical students will need it and value it
+almost as our own has done.
+
+-----
+
+  [37] An excellent Life of Freeman has been written by his friend Mr.
+       W. R. W. Stephens, afterwards Dean of Winchester, whose death
+       while these pages were passing through the press has caused the
+       deepest regret to all who had the opportunity of knowing his
+       literary gifts and his lovable character.
+
+  [38] The scholars of Trinity were then (1843) all High Churchmen, and
+       never dined in hall on Fridays. Fourteen years later there was
+       not a single High Churchman among them. Ten or fifteen years
+       afterwards Anglo-Catholic sentiment was again strong. Freeman
+       said that his revulsion against Tractarianism began from a
+       conversation with one of his fellow-scholars, who had remarked
+       that it was a pity there had been a flaw in the consecration of
+       some Swedish bishops in the sixteenth century, for this had
+       imperilled the salvation of all Swedes since that time. He was
+       startled, and began to reconsider his position.
+
+  [39] Having had about the same time a brush with George Anthony
+       Denison (Archdeacon of Taunton), and a less friendly passage of
+       arms with James Anthony Froude, he wrote to me in 1870: "I am
+       greater than Cicero, who was smiter of one Antonius. I venture
+       to think that I have whopped the whole _Gens Antonia_--first
+       Anthony pure and simple, which is Trollope; secondly, James
+       Anthony, whom I believe myself to have smitten, as Cnut did
+       Eadric swiðe rihtlice, in the matter of St. Hugh; thirdly,
+       George Anthony, with whom I fought again last Tuesday, carrying
+       at our Education Board a resolution in favour of Forster's
+       bill." Trollope and he became warm friends. Froude he heartily
+       disliked, not, I think, on any personal grounds, but because he
+       thought Froude indifferent to truth, and was incensed by the
+       defence of Henry VIII.'s crimes.
+
+       It may be added that Freeman, much as he detested Henry VIII.,
+       used to observe that Henry had a sort of legal conscience,
+       because he always wished his murders to be done by Act of
+       Parliament, and that the earlier and better part of Henry's
+       reign ought not to be forgotten. He was fond of quoting the
+       euphemism with which an old Oxford professor of ecclesiastical
+       history concluded his account of the sovereign whom, in respect
+       of his relation to the Church of England, it seemed proper to
+       handle gently: "The later years of this great monarch were
+       clouded by domestic troubles."
+
+  [40] "The heart makes the theologian."
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT LOWE VISCOUNT SHERBROOKE[41]
+
+
+Had Robert Lowe died in 1868, when he became a Cabinet Minister, his
+death would have been a political event of the first magnitude; but
+when he died in 1892 (in his eighty-second year) hardly anybody under
+forty years of age knew who Lord Sherbrooke was, and the new
+generation wondered why their seniors should feel any interest in the
+disappearance of a superannuated peer whose name had long since ceased
+to be heard in either the literary or the political world. It requires
+an effort to believe that he was at one time held the equal in oratory
+and the superior in intellect of Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone. There
+are few instances in our annals of men who have been equally famous
+and whose fame has been bounded by so short a span out of a long
+life.
+
+No one who knew Lowe ever doubted his abilities. He made a brilliant
+reputation, first at Winchester (where, as his autobiography tells
+us, he was miserable) and then at Oxford, where he was the
+contemporary and fully the peer of Roundell Palmer (afterwards Lord
+Chancellor Selborne) and of Archibald Tait (afterwards Archbishop of
+Canterbury). He was much sought after and wonderfully effective as a
+private tutor or "coach" in classical subjects, being not only an
+excellent scholar but extremely clear and stimulating as a teacher. He
+retained his love of literature all through life, and made himself,
+_inter alia permulta_, a good Icelandic scholar and a fair Sanskrit
+scholar. For mathematics he had no turn at all. Active sports, he
+tells us, he enjoyed, characteristically adding, "they open to dulness
+also its road to fame." When he left the University, where anecdotes
+of his caustic wit were long current, he tried his fortune at the Bar,
+but with such scant success that he presently emigrated to New South
+Wales, soon rose to prominence and unpopularity there, returned in ten
+years with a tolerable fortune and a detestation of democracy, became
+a leading-article writer on the _Times_, entered Parliament, but was
+little heard of till Lord Palmerston gave him (in 1859) the place of
+Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education. His function
+in that office was to administer the grants made from the national
+treasury to elementary schools, and as he found the methods of
+inspection rather lax, and noted a tendency to superficiality and a
+neglect of backward children, he introduced new rules for the
+distribution of the grant (the so-called "Revised Code") which
+provoked violent opposition. The motive was good, but the rules were
+too mechanical and rigid and often worked harshly; so he was presently
+driven from office by an attack led by Lord Robert Cecil (now Lord
+Salisbury).
+
+Though Lowe became known by this struggle, his conspicuous fame dates
+from 1865, when he appeared as the trenchant critic of a measure
+for extending the parliamentary franchise in boroughs, introduced
+by a private member. Next year his powers shone forth in their full
+lustre. The Liberal Ministry of Lord Russell, led in the House of
+Commons by Mr. Gladstone, had brought in a Franchise Extension Bill
+(applying to boroughs only) which excited the dislike of the more
+conservative or more timid among their supporters. This dislike might
+not have gone beyond many mutterings and a few desertions but for the
+vehemence with which Lowe opposed the measure. He fought against it
+in a series of speeches which produced a greater impression in the
+House of Commons, and roused stronger feelings of admiration and
+hostility in the country, than any political addresses had done since
+1832. The new luminary rose so suddenly to the zenith, and cast so
+unexpected a light that everybody was dazzled; and though many
+dissented, and some attacked him bitterly, few ventured to meet him
+in argument on the ground he had selected. The effect of these
+speeches of 1866 can hardly be understood by any one who reads them
+to-day unless he knows how commonplace and "practical," that is to
+say, averse to general reasonings and historical illustrations,
+the character of parliamentary debating was becoming even in Lowe's
+time. It is still more practical and still less ornate in our own
+day.
+
+The House of Commons then contained, and has indeed usually contained
+(though some Houses are much better than others), many capable
+lawyers, capable men of business, capable country gentlemen; many men
+able to express themselves with clearness, fluency, and that sort of
+temperate good sense which Englishmen especially value. Few,
+however, were able to produce finished rhetoric; still fewer had a
+range of thought and knowledge extending much beyond the ordinary
+education of a gentleman and the ordinary ideas of a politician;
+and the assembly was one so intolerant of rhetoric, and so much
+inclined to treat, as unpractical, facts and arguments drawn from
+recondite sources, that even those who possessed out-of-the-way
+learning were disposed, and rightly so, to use it sparingly. In
+Robert Lowe, however, a remarkable rhetorical and dialectical power
+was combined with a command of branches of historical, literary, and
+economic knowledge so unfamiliar to the average member as to have
+for him all the charm of novelty. The rhetoric was sometimes too
+elaborate. The political philosophy was not always sound. But the
+rhetoric was so polished that none could fail to enjoy it; and the
+political philosophy was put in so terse, bright, and pointed a form
+that it made the ordinary country gentleman fancy himself a
+philosopher while he listened to it in the House or repeated it to
+his friends at the club. The speeches, which, though directed
+against a particular measure, constituted an indictment of democratic
+government in general, had the advantages of expressing what many
+felt but few had ventured to say, and of being delivered from one side
+of the House and cheered by the other side. No position gives a
+debater in the House of Commons such a vantage ground for securing
+attention. Its rarity makes it remarkable. If the speaker who
+attacks his own party is supposed to do so from personal motives,
+the personal element gives piquancy. If he may be credited with
+conscientious conviction, his shafts strike with added weight, for
+how strong must conviction be when it turns a man against his former
+friends. Accordingly, nothing so much annoys a party and gratifies
+its antagonists as when one of its own recalcitrant members attacks
+it in flank. When one looks back now at the contents of these
+speeches--there were only five or six of them--and finds one's self
+surprised at their success, this favouring circumstance and the whole
+temper of the so-called "upper classes" need to be remembered. The
+bulk of the wealthier commercial class and a large section of the
+landed class had theretofore belonged to the Liberal party. Most
+of them, however, were then already beginning to pass through what
+was called Whiggism into habits of thought that were practically
+Tory. They did not know how far they had gone till Lowe's speeches
+told them, and they welcomed his ideas as justifying their own
+tendencies.
+
+In themselves, as pieces either of rhetoric or of "civil wisdom," the
+speeches are not first-rate. No one would dream of comparing them to
+Burke's, in originality, or in richness of diction, or in weight of
+thought. But for the moment they were far more appreciated than
+Burke's were by the House of his time, which thought of dining while
+he thought of convincing. Robert Lowe was for some months the idol of
+a large part of the educated class, and indeed of that part chiefly
+which plumed itself upon its culture. I recollect to have been in
+those days at a breakfast party given by an eminent politician and
+nominal supporter of the Liberal Ministry, and to have heard Mr. G. S.
+Venables, the leader of the _Saturday Review_ set, an able and copious
+writer who was a sort of literary and political oracle among his
+friends, deliver, amid general applause, including that of the host,
+the opinion that Lowe was an intellectual giant compared to Mr.
+Gladstone, and that the reputation of the latter had been extinguished
+for ever.
+
+This period of glory, which was enhanced by the fall of Lord Russell
+and Mr. Gladstone from power in June 1866--the defeat came on a minor
+point, but was largely due to Lowe's speeches--lasted till Lowe, who
+had now become a force to be counted with, obtained office as
+Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Liberal Ministry which Mr.
+Gladstone formed in the end of 1868. From that moment his position
+declined. He lost popularity and influence both with the country and
+in the House of Commons. His speeches were always able, but they did
+not seem to tell when delivered from the ministerial bench. His
+financial proposals, though ingenious, were thought too ingenious, and
+showed a deficient perception of the tendencies of the English mind.
+No section likes being taxed, but Lowe's budgets met with a more than
+usually angry opposition. His economies and retrenchments, so far from
+bringing him the credit he deserved, exposed him to the charge of
+cheese-paring parsimony, and did much to render the Ministry
+unpopular. Before that ministry fell in 1874, Lowe, who had in 1873
+exchanged the Exchequer for the Home Office, had almost ceased to be a
+personage in politics. He did nothing to retrieve his fame during the
+six years of Opposition that followed, seldom spoke, took little part
+in the denunciation of Lord Beaconsfield's Eastern and Afghan policy,
+which went on from 1876 till 1880, and once at least gave slight signs
+of declining mental power. So in 1880 he was relegated to the House of
+Lords, because the new Liberal Government of that year could not make
+room for him. Very soon thereafter his memory began to fail, and for
+the last ten years of his life he had been practically forgotten,
+though sometimes seen, a pathetic figure, at evening parties. There is
+hardly a parallel in our parliamentary annals to so complete an
+eclipse of so brilliant a luminary.
+
+This rapid obscuration of a reputation which was genuine, for Lowe's
+powers had been amply proved, was due to no accident, and was apparent
+long before mental decay set in. The causes lay in himself. One cause
+was purely physical. He was excessively short-sighted, so much so
+that when he was writing a letter, his nose was apt to rub out the
+words his pen had traced; and this defect shut him out from all that
+knowledge of individual men and of audiences which is to be
+obtained by watching their faces. Mr. Gladstone, who never seemed to
+resent Lowe's attacks, and greatly admired his gifts--it was not so
+clear that Lowe reciprocated the admiration--used to relate that on
+one occasion when a foreign potentate met the Minister in St.
+James's Park and put out his hand in friendly greeting, Lowe
+repelled his advances, and when the King said, "But, Mr. Lowe, you
+know me quite well," he answered, "Yes, indeed, I know you far too
+well, and I don't want to have anything more to do with you." He
+had mistaken the monarch for a prominent politician with whom he
+had had a sharp encounter on a deputation a few days before! For
+social purposes Lowe might almost as well have been blind; yet he did
+not receive that kind of indulgence which is extended to the
+blind. In the interesting fragment of autobiography which he left,
+he attributes his unpopularity entirely to this cause, declaring that
+he was really of a kindly nature, liking his fellow-men just as well
+as most of them like one another.[42] But in truth his own character
+had something to answer for. Without being ill-natured, he was deemed
+a hard-natured man, who did not appear to consider the feelings of
+others. He had indeed a love of mischief, and gleefully tells in
+his autobiography how, when travelling in his youth through the
+Scottish Highlands, he drove the too self-conscious Wordsworth wild
+by his incessant praise of Walter Scott.[43] He had not in political
+life more than his fair share of personal enmities. One of them was
+Disraeli's. They were not unequally matched. Lowe was intellectually
+in some respects stronger, but he wanted Disraeli's skill in
+managing men and assemblies. Disraeli resented Lowe's sarcasms, and
+on one occasion, when the latter had made an indiscreet speech, went
+out of his way to inflict on him a personal humiliation.
+
+Nor was this Lowe's only defect. Powerful in attack, he was feeble in
+defence. Terrible as a critic, he had, as his official career showed,
+little constructive talent, little tact in shaping or recommending his
+measures. Unsteady or inconstant in purpose, he was at one moment
+headstrong, at another timid or vacillating. These faults, scarcely
+noticed when he was in Opposition, sensibly reduced his value as a
+minister and as a Cabinet colleague.
+
+In private Lowe was good company, bright, alert, and not unkindly. He
+certainly did not, as was alleged of another famous contemporary,
+Lord Westbury, positively enjoy the giving of pain. But he had a most
+unchristian scorn for the slow and the dull and the unenlightened, and
+never restrained his scorching wit merely for the sake of sparing
+those who came in his way. If the distinction be permissible, he was
+not cruel but he was merciless, that is to say, unrestrained by
+compassion. Instances are not wanting of men who have maintained great
+influence in spite of their rough tongues and the enmities which rough
+tongues provoke. But such men have usually also possessed some of the
+arts of popularity, and have been able to retain the adherence of
+their party at large, even when they had alienated many who came into
+personal contact with them. This was not Lowe's case. He did not
+conceal his contempt for the multitude, and had not the tact needed
+for humouring it, any more than for managing the House of Commons. The
+very force and keenness of his intellect kept him aloof from other
+people and prevented him from understanding their sentiments. He saw
+things so clearly that he could not tolerate mental confusion, and was
+apt to reach conclusions so fast that he missed perceiving some of the
+things which are gradually borne in upon slower minds. There are also
+instances of strong men who, though they do not revile their
+opponents, incur hatred because their strength and activity make them
+feared. Hostility concentrates itself on the opponents deemed most
+formidable, and a political leader who is spared while his fellows are
+attacked cannot safely assume that this immunity is a tribute to his
+virtues. Incessant abuse fell to the lot of Mr. Bright, who was not
+often, and of Mr. Gladstone, who was hardly ever, personally bitter in
+invective. But in compensation Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone received
+enthusiastic loyalty from their followers. For Lowe there was no such
+compensation. Even his own side did not love him. There was also a
+certain harshness, perhaps a certain narrowness, about his views. Even
+in those days of rigid economics, he took an exceptionally rigid view
+of all economic problems, refusing to make allowance for any motives
+except those of bare self-interest. Though he did not belong by
+education or by social ties to the Utilitarian group, and gave an
+ungracious reception to J. S. Mill's first speeches in the House of
+Commons, he was a far more stringent and consistent exponent of the
+harder kind of Benthamism than was Mill himself. He professed, and
+doubtless to some extent felt, a contempt for appeals to historical or
+literary sentiment, and relished nothing more than deriding his own
+classical training as belonging to an effete and absurd scheme of
+education. He left his mark on our elementary school system by
+establishing the system of payment by results, but nearly every change
+made in that system since his day has tended to destroy the
+alterations he made and to bring back the older condition of things,
+though no doubt in an amended form. His ideas of University reform
+were crude and barren, limited, indeed, to the substitution of what
+the Germans call "bread studies" for mental cultivation, and to the
+extension of the plan of competitive examinations for honours and
+money prizes, a plan which more and more displeases the most
+enlightened University teachers, and is felt to have done more harm
+than good to Oxford and Cambridge, where it has had the fullest play.
+He had also, and could give good reasons for his opinion, a hearty
+dislike to endowments of all kinds; and once, when asked by a Royal
+Commission to suggest a mode of improving their application, answered
+in his trenchant way, "Get rid of them. Throw them into the sea."
+
+It would not be fair to blame Lowe for the results which followed his
+vigorous action against the extension of the suffrage in 1866, for no
+one could then have predicted that in the following year the Tories,
+beguiled by Mr. Disraeli, would reverse their former attitude and
+carry a suffrage bill far wider than that which they had rejected a
+year before. But the sequel of the successful resistance of 1866 may
+stand as a warning to those who think that the course of thoroughgoing
+opposition to a measure they dislike is, because it seems courageous,
+likely to be the right and wise course for patriotic men. Had the
+moderate bill of 1866 been suffered to pass, the question of further
+extending the suffrage might possibly have slept for another thirty
+years, for there was no very general or urgent cry for it among the
+working people, and England would have continued to be ruled in the
+main by voters belonging to the middle class and the upper section of
+the working class. The consequence of the heated contest of 1866 was
+not only to bring about a larger immediate change in 1867, but to
+create an interest in the question which soon prompted the demand for
+the extension of household suffrage to the counties, and completed in
+1884-85 the process by which England has become virtually a democracy,
+though a plutocratic democracy, still affected by the habits and
+notions of oligarchic days. Thus Robert Lowe, as much as Disraeli and
+Gladstone, may in a sense be called an author of the tremendous change
+which has passed upon the British Constitution since 1866, and the
+extent of which was not for a long while realised. Lowe himself never
+recanted his views, but never repeated his declaration of them,
+feeling that he had incurred unpopularity enough, and probably feeling
+also that the case was hopeless.
+
+People who disliked his lugubrious forecasts used to call him a
+Cassandra, perhaps forgetting that, besides the distinctive feature
+of Cassandra's prophecies that nobody believed them, there was another
+distinctive feature, viz. that they came true. Did Lowe's? It is often
+profitable and sometimes amusing to turn back to the predictions
+through which eminent men relieved their perturbed souls, and see how
+far these superior minds were able to discern the tendencies, already
+at work in their time, which were beginning to gain strength, and were
+destined to determine the future. Whoever reads Lowe's speeches of
+1865-67 may do worse than glance at the same time at a book,[44] long
+since forgotten, which contains the efforts of a group of young
+University Liberals to refute the arguments used by him and by Lord
+Cairns, the strongest of his allies, in their opposition to schemes of
+parliamentary reform.
+
+To compare the optimism of these young writers and Lowe's pessimism
+with what has actually come to pass is a not uninstructive task. True
+it is that England has had only thirty-five years' experience of the
+Reform Act of 1867, and only seventeen years' experience of that even
+greater step towards pure democracy which was effected by the
+Franchise and Redistribution Acts of 1884-85. We are still far from
+knowing what sorts of Parliaments and policies the enlarged suffrage
+will end by giving. But some at least of the mischiefs Lowe foretold
+have not arrived. He expected first of all a rapid increase in
+corruption and intimidation at parliamentary elections. The quality of
+the House of Commons would decline, because money would rule, and
+small boroughs would no longer open the path by which talent could
+enter. Members would be either millionaires or demagogues, and they
+would also become far more subservient to their constituents.
+Universal suffrage would soon arrive, because no halting-place between
+the £10 franchise[45] and universal suffrage could be found. Placed on
+a democratic basis, the House of Commons would not be able to retain
+its authority over the Executive. The House of Lords, the Established
+Church, the judicial bench (in that dignity and that independence
+which are essential to its usefulness), would be overthrown as England
+passed into "the bare and level plain of democracy where every
+ant-hill is a mountain and every thistle a forest tree." These and the
+other features characteristic of popular government on which Lowe
+savagely descanted were pieced together out of Plato and Tocqueville,
+coupled with his own disagreeable experiences of Australian politics.
+None of the predicted evils can be said to have as yet become features
+of the polity and government of England,[46] though the power of the
+House relatively to the Cabinet does seem to be declining. Yet some of
+Lowe's incidental remarks are true, and not least true is his
+prediction that democracies will be found just as prone to war, just
+as apt to be swept away by passion, as other kinds of government have
+been. Few signs herald the approach of that millennium of peace and
+enlightenment which Cobden foretold and for which Gladstone did not
+cease to hope.
+
+No one since Lowe has taken up the part of _advocatus diaboli_ against
+democracy which he played in 1866.[47] Since Disraeli passed the
+Household Suffrage in Boroughs Bill in 1867, a nullification of Lowe's
+triumph which incensed him more than ever against Disraeli, no one has
+ever come forward in England as the avowed enemy of changes designed
+to popularise our government. Parties have quarrelled over the time
+and the manner of extensions of the franchise, but the issue of
+principle raised in 1866 has not been raised again. Even in 1884, when
+Mr. Gladstone carried his bill for assimilating the county franchise
+to that existing in boroughs, the Tory party did not oppose the
+measure in principle, but confined themselves to insisting that it
+should be accompanied by a scheme for the redistribution of seats. The
+secret, first unveiled by Disraeli, that the masses will as readily
+vote for the Tory party as for the Liberal, is now common property,
+and universal suffrage, when it comes to be offered, is as likely to
+be offered by the former party as by the latter. This gives a touch of
+historical interest to Lowe's speeches of 1866. They are the swan-song
+of the old constitutionalism. The changes which came in 1867 and 1884
+must have come sooner or later, for they were in the natural line of
+development as we see it all over the world; but they might have come
+much later had not Lowe's opposition wrecked the moderate scheme of
+1866. Apart from that episode Lowe's career would now be scarcely
+remembered, or would be remembered by those who knew his splendid
+gifts as an illustration of the maxim that mere intellectual power
+does not stand first among the elements of character that go to the
+winning of a foremost place.
+
+-----
+
+  [41] A carefully written life of Lord Sherbrooke (in two volumes) by
+       Mr. Patchett Martin was published in 1896. The most interesting
+       part of it is the short fragment of autobiography with which it
+       begins, and which carries the story down to Lowe's arrival in
+       Australia.
+
+  [42] In his autobiography he writes, "With a quiet temper and a real
+       wish to please, I have been obliged all my life to submit to an
+       amount of unpopularity which I really did not deserve, and to
+       feel myself condemned for what were really physical rather than
+       moral deficiencies."
+
+  [43] There was an anecdote current in the University of Oxford down to
+       my time that when Lowe was examining in the examination which
+       the statutes call "Responsions," the dons "Little-go," and the
+       undergraduates "Smalls," a friend coming in while the _viva
+       voce_ was in progress, asked him how he was getting on.
+       "Excellently," said Lowe; "five men plucked already, and the
+       sixth very shaky." Another tale, not likely to have been
+       invented, relates that when he and several members of the then
+       Liberal Ministry were staying in Dublin with the Lord
+       Lieutenant, and had taken an excursion into the Wicklow hills,
+       they found themselves one afternoon obliged to wait for half an
+       hour at a railway station. To pass the time, Lowe forthwith
+       engaged in a dispute about the charge with the car-drivers who
+       had brought them, a dispute which soon became hot and noisy, to
+       the delight of Lowe, but to the horror of the old Lord
+       Chancellor, who was one of the party.
+
+  [44] _Essays on Reform_, published in 1867.
+
+  [45] The then borough qualification, which Mr. Gladstone's Bill
+       proposed to reduce to £7.
+
+  [46] Mr. Gladstone said to me in 1897 that the extension of the
+       suffrage had, in his judgment, improved the quality of
+       legislation, making it more regardful of the interests of the
+       body of the people, but had not improved the quality of the
+       House of Commons.
+
+  [47] Sir H. S. Maine's _Quarterly Review_ articles, published in a
+       volume under the title of _Popular Government_, come nearest to
+       being a literary presentation of the case against democracy,
+       but they are, with all their ingenuity and grace of style, so
+       provokingly vague and loosely expressed that there can seldom
+       be found in them a proposition with which one can agree, or
+       from which one can differ. E. de Laveleye's well-known book is
+       not much more substantial, but instruction may (as respects
+       France) be found in the late Edmond Schérer's _De la
+       Démocratie_, and (as respects England and the United States) in
+       M. Ostrogorski's recent book, _Democracy and the Organisation
+       of Political Parties_.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM ROBERTSON SMITH
+
+
+Robertson Smith,[48] the most widely learned and one of the most
+powerful teachers that either Cambridge or Oxford could show during
+the years of his residence in England, died at the age of forty-seven
+on the 31st of March 1894. To the English public generally his name
+was little known, or was remembered only in connection with the
+theological controversy and ecclesiastical trial of which he had been
+the central figure in Scotland fifteen years before. But on the
+Continent of Europe and by Orientalists generally he was regarded as
+the foremost Semitic scholar of Britain, and by those who knew him as
+one of the most remarkable men of his time.
+
+He was born in 1846 in the quiet pastoral valley of the Don, in
+Aberdeenshire. His father, who was a minister of the Scottish Free
+Church in the parish of Keig, possessed high mathematical talent,
+and his mother, who survived him six years, was a woman of great
+force of character, who retained till her death, at seventy-six years
+of age, the full exercise of her keen intelligence. Smith went
+straight from his father's teaching to the University of Aberdeen, and
+after graduating there, continued his studies first at Bonn in
+1865, and afterwards at Göttingen (1869). When only twenty-four he
+became Professor of Oriental Languages in the College or Divinity
+School of the Free Church at Aberdeen, and two years later was
+chosen one of the revisers of the Old Testament, a striking honour
+for so young a man. In 1881 he became first assistant-editor and
+then editor-in-chief of the ninth edition of the _Encyclopædia
+Britannica_. He was exceptionally qualified for the post by the
+variety of his attainments and by the extreme quickness of his
+mind, which rapidly acquired knowledge on almost any kind of subject.
+Those who knew him are agreed that among all the eminent men who have
+been connected with this great _Encyclopædia_ from its first
+beginning nearly a century and a half ago until now, he was
+surpassed by none, if equalled by any, in the range of his learning
+and in the capacity to bring learning to bear upon editorial work.
+He took infinite pains to find the most competent writers, and was
+able to exercise effective personal supervision over a very large
+proportion of the articles. The ninth edition was much fuller and
+more thorough than any of its predecessors; and good as the first
+twelve volumes were, a still higher level of excellence was attained
+in the latter half, a result due to his industry and discernment.
+Not a few of the articles on subjects connected with the Old
+Testament were from his own pen; and they were among the best in the
+work.
+
+The appearance of one of them, that entitled "Bible," which contained
+a general view of the history of the canonical books of Scripture,
+their dates, authorship, and reception by the Christian Church, became
+a turning-point in his life. The propositions he stated regarding the
+origin of parts of the Old Testament, particularly the Pentateuch,
+excited alarm and displeasure in Scotland, where few persons had
+become aware of the conclusions reached by recent Biblical scholars in
+Continental Europe. The article was able, clear, and fearless, plainly
+the work of a master hand. The views it advanced were not for the most
+part due to Smith's own investigations, but were to be found in the
+writings of other learned men. Neither would they now be thought
+extreme; they are in fact accepted to-day by many writers of
+unquestioned orthodoxy in Britain and a (perhaps smaller) number in
+the United States. In 1876, however, these views were new and
+startling to those who had not studied in Germany or followed the
+researches of such men as Ewald, Kuenen, and Wellhausen. The Scottish
+Free Church had theretofore prided itself upon the rigidity of its
+orthodoxy; and while among the younger ministers there were a good
+many able and learned scholars holding what used to be called
+"advanced views," the mass of the elder and middle-aged clergy had
+gone on in the old-fashioned traditions of verbal inspiration, and
+took every word in the Five Books (except the last chapter of
+Deuteronomy) to have been written down by Moses. It was only natural
+that their anger should be kindled against the young professor, whose
+theories seemed to cut away the ground from under their feet.
+Proceedings were (1876) taken against him before the Presbytery of
+Aberdeen, and the case found its way thence to the Synod of Aberdeen,
+and ultimately to the General Assembly of the Free Church. In one form
+or another (for the flame was lit anew by other articles published by
+him in the _Encyclopædia_) it lingered on for five years. So far from
+yielding to the storm, Robertson Smith defied it, maintaining not only
+the truth of his views, but their compatibility with the Presbyterian
+standards as contained in the Confession of Faith and the Longer and
+Shorter Catechisms. In this latter contention he was successful,
+proving that the divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
+had not committed themselves to any specific doctrine of inspiration,
+still less to any dogmatic deliverance as to the authorship of
+particular books of Scripture. The standards simply declared that the
+Word of God was contained in the canonical books, and as there had
+been little or no controversy between Protestants and Roman Catholics
+regarding the date or the authorship or the divine authority of those
+books (apart of course from disputes regarding the Apocrypha), had not
+dealt specifically with those last mentioned matters. As it was by
+reference to the Confession of Faith that the offence alleged had to
+be established, Smith made good his defence; so in the end, finding it
+impossible to convict him of deviation from the standards, and thereby
+to deal with him as an ordained minister of the Church, his
+adversaries fell back on the plan of depriving him, by an executive
+rather than judicial vote, not indeed of his clerical status, but of
+his professorship, on the ground of the alleged "unsettling character"
+of his teaching.
+
+Meanwhile, however, there had been an immense rally to him of the
+younger clergy and of the less conservative among the laity. The main
+current of Scottish popular thought and life had ever since the
+Reformation flowed in an ecclesiastical channel; and even nowadays,
+when Scotland is rapidly becoming Anglicised, a theological or
+ecclesiastical question excites a wider and keener interest there than
+a similar question would do in England. So in Scotland for four years
+"the Robertson Smith case" was the chief topic of discussion outside
+as well as inside the Free Church. The sympathy felt for the accused
+was heightened by the ingenuity, energy, and courage with which he
+defended his position, showing a power of argument and repartee which
+made it plain that he would have held a distinguished place in any
+assembly whatever. If his debating had a fault, it was that of being
+almost too dialectically cogent, so that his antagonists felt that
+they were being foiled on the form of the argument before they could
+get to the issues they sought to raise. But while he was an
+accomplished lawyer in matters of form, he was no less an accomplished
+theologian in matters of substance. Although the party of repression
+triumphed so far as to deprive him of his chair, the victory virtually
+remained with him, not only because he had shown that the Scottish
+Presbyterian standards did not condemn the views he held, but also
+because his defence and the discussions which it occasioned had, in
+bringing those views to the knowledge of a great number of thoughtful
+laymen, led such persons to reconsider their own position. Some of
+them found themselves forced to agree with Smith. Others, who
+distrusted their capacity for arriving at a conclusion, came at least
+to think that the questions involved did not affect the essentials of
+faith, and must be settled by the ordinary canons of historical and
+philological criticism. Thus the trial proved to be a turning-point
+for the Scottish Churches, much as the _Essays and Reviews_ case had
+been for the Church of England eighteen years earlier. Opinions
+formerly proscribed were thereafter freely expressed. Nearly all the
+doctrinal prosecutions subsequently attempted in the Scottish
+Presbyterian Churches have failed. Much feeling has been excited, but
+the result has been to secure a greater latitude than was dreamt of
+forty years ago. At first the rigidly orthodox section of the Free
+Church, now almost confined to the Highlands, thought of seceding from
+the main body on the ground that tolerance was passing into
+indifference or unbelief. But the new ideas continued to grow, and the
+sentiment in favour of letting clergymen as well as lay church members
+put a lax construction on the doctrinal standards drawn up in the
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has spread as widely in Scotland
+as in England. The Presbyterian Churches in America and the Roman
+Catholic Church now stand almost alone among the larger Christian
+bodies in retaining something of the ancient rigidity. Even the Roman
+Church begins to feel the solvent power of these researches. It may be
+conjectured that as the process of adjusting the letter of Scripture
+to the conclusions of science which Galileo was not permitted to
+apply in the field of astronomy has now been generally applied in the
+fields of geology and biology, so all the churches will presently
+reconcile themselves to the conclusions of historical and linguistic
+criticism, now that such criticism has become truly scientific in its
+methods.
+
+Having no longer any tie to Scotland, as he had never desired a
+pastoral charge there, since he felt his vocation to lie in study and
+teaching, Smith was hesitating which way to turn, when the offer of
+the Lord Almoner's Readership in Arabic, which had become vacant in
+1883, determined him to settle in Cambridge. He had travelled in
+Arabia a few years earlier, thereby adding a colloquial familiarity to
+his grammatical mastery of the language. He was an ardent student of
+Arabic literature, and indeed devoted more time to it than to Hebrew.
+Though he had felt deeply the attacks made upon him, and was indignant
+at the mode of his dismissal, he was not in the least dispirited; and
+his self-control was shown by the way in which he resisted the
+temptation, to which controversialists are prone, of going further
+than they originally meant and thereby damaging the position of their
+supporters. Still, he was weary of controversy, and pleased to see
+before him a prospect of learned quiet and labour, although the salary
+of the Readership was less than £100 a year. Fortunately he had come
+to a place where gifts like his were appreciated. The Master and
+Fellows of Christ's College elected him to a fellowship with no duties
+of tuition attached to it--a wise and graceful recognition of his
+merits which did them the more credit because they had very little
+personal knowledge of him, while he had possessed no prior tie with
+the University. Christ's is one of the smaller colleges, but has
+almost always had men of distinction among its fellows, and has
+maintained a high standard of teaching. In the list of its alumni
+stand the names of John Milton, Isaac Barrow, Ralph Cudworth, and
+Charles Darwin. Robertson Smith dwelt in it for the rest of his days,
+entering into the life of hall and common-room with great zest, for he
+was of an extremely sociable turn, and the College became proud of
+him. When a vacancy occurred in the office of University Librarian, he
+was chosen to fill it. His knowledge of and fondness for books fitted
+him excellently for the place, but the details of administration
+worried him, and it was a change for the better when (in 1889), on the
+death of his friend, William Wright, he became Professor of
+Arabic.[49] His efforts to build up a school of Oriental studies on
+the foundations laid by Wright, and with the help of an eminent Syriac
+scholar, Bensley, were proving successful, and a considerable number
+of able young men were gathering round him, when (in 1890) the hand of
+disease fell upon him, obliging him first to curtail and afterwards to
+intermit his lectures. The last year of his life was a year of
+suffering, borne with uncomplaining fortitude.
+
+What with work on the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, with the distractions
+of his prolonged trial, with the time spent in oral teaching, and with
+the physical weakness of his latest years, Smith's leisure available
+for literary production was not large, and the books he has left do
+not adequately represent either his accumulated knowledge or his
+faculty of investigation. The earlier books--_The Old Testament in the
+Jewish Church_ and _The Prophets of Israel_ (the latter a series of
+lectures delivered at Glasgow)--are comparatively popular in handling.
+The two later--_Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_ and _The
+Religion of the Semites_--are more abstruse and technical, and also
+more original, dealing with topics in which their author was a
+pioneer, though he had been influenced by, and acknowledged in the
+amplest way his obligations to, his friend John F. Maclennan, the
+author of _Primitive Marriage_. _The Religion of the Semites_, though
+masterly in plan and execution, and though it has excited the
+admiration of the few Oriental scholars competent to appraise its
+substantial merit, suffers from its incompleteness. Only the first
+volume was published, for death overtook the author before he could
+put into final shape the materials he had collected for the full
+development of his theories. As the second volume would have traced
+the connection between the primitive religion of the Arab branches of
+the Semitic stock (including Israel) and the Hebrew religion as we
+have it in the earlier books of the Old Testament, the absence of this
+finished statement is a loss to science. Changes had passed upon his
+views since he wrote the incriminated articles, and he said to me (I
+think about 1888) that he would no longer undertake any clerical
+duties. He had a sensitive conscience, and held that no clergyman
+ought to use language in the pulpit which did not express his personal
+convictions.
+
+What struck one most in Robertson Smith's writings was the easy
+command wherewith he handled his materials. His generalisations were
+based on an endlessly patient and careful study of details, a study in
+which he never lost sight of guiding principles. With perfect lucidity
+and an unstrained natural vigour, there was a sense of abounding and
+overflowing knowledge which inspired confidence in the reader, making
+him feel he was in the hands of a master. On all that pertained to the
+languages and literature of the Arabic branch of the Semitic races,
+ancient and modern (for he did not claim to be an Assyriologist), his
+knowledge was accurate no less than comprehensive. Full of deference
+to the great scholars--no one spoke with a warmer admiration of
+Nöldeke, Wellhausen, and Lagarde than he did--he was a stringent
+critic of unscientific work in the sphere of history and physics as
+well as in that of philology, quick to expose the uncritical
+assumptions or loose hypotheses of less careful though more
+pretentious students. He used to say that when he had disposed of the
+_Encyclopædia Britannica_, he might undertake a "Dictionary of
+European Impostors." Oriental lore was only one of many subjects in
+which he might have achieved distinction. His mathematical talents
+were remarkable, and during two sessions he taught with conspicuous
+success the class of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh
+as assistant professor. He had a competent acquaintance with not a few
+other practical arts, including navigation, and once, when the
+compasses of the vessel on which he was sailing in the Red Sea got out
+of order, he proved to be the person on board most competent to set
+them right. In metaphysics and theology, in ancient history and many
+departments of modern history, he was thoroughly at home. Few, indeed,
+were the subjects that came up in the course of conversation on which
+he was not able to throw light, for the range of his acquirements was
+not more striking than the swiftness and precision with which he
+brought knowledge to bear wherever it was wanted.
+
+There was hardly a line of practical life in which he might not have
+attained a brilliant success. But the passion for knowledge made him
+prefer the life of a scholar, and seemed to have quenched any desire
+even for literary fame.
+
+Learning is commonly thought of as a weight to be carried, which makes
+men dull, heavy, or pedantic. With Robertson Smith the effect seemed
+to be exactly the opposite. Because he knew so much, he was interested
+in everything, and threw himself with a joyous freshness and keenness
+into talk alike upon the most serious and the lightest topics. He was
+combative, apt to traverse a proposition when first advanced, even
+though he might come round to it afterwards; and a discussion with him
+taxed the defensive acumen of his companions. Having once spent five
+weeks alone with him in a villa at Alassio on the Riviera, I observed
+to him when we parted that we had had (as the Americans say) "a lovely
+time" together, and that there was not an observation I had made
+during those weeks which he had not contested. He laughed and did not
+contest that observation. Yet this tendency, while it made his society
+more stimulating, did not make it less agreeable, because he never
+seemed to seek to overthrow an adversary, but only to get at the truth
+of the case, and his manner, though positive, had about it nothing
+either acrid or conceited. One could imagine no keener intellectual
+pleasure than his company afforded, for there was, along with an
+exuberant wealth of thought and knowledge, an intensity and ardour
+which lit up every subject which it touched. I once invited him and
+John Richard Green (the historian) to meet at dinner. They took to one
+another at once, nor was it easy to say which lamp burned the
+brighter. Smith had wider and more accurate learning, and stronger
+logical power, but Green was just as swift, just as fertile, just as
+ingenious. In stature Smith, like Green, was small, almost diminutive;
+his dark brown eyes bright and keen; his speech rapid; his laugh ready
+and merry, for he had a quick sense of humour and a power of enjoying
+things as they came. The type of intellect suggested a Teutonic Scot
+of the Lowlands, but in appearance and temperament he was rather a
+Scottish Celt of the Highlands, with a fire and a gaiety, an abounding
+vivacity and vitality, which made him a conspicuous figure wherever he
+lived, in Aberdeen, in Edinburgh, in Cambridge. Even by his walk, with
+its quick, irregular roll, one could single him out at a distance in
+the street.
+
+When a man is attractive personally, he is all the more attractive for
+being unlike other men, and he often becomes the centre of a group.
+This was the case with Smith. His numerous friends were so much
+interested by him that when they met their talk was largely of him,
+and many friendships were based on a common knowledge of this one
+person. Indeed, the geniality, elevation, and simplicity of his
+character gave him a quite unusual hold on those who had come to know
+him well. Few men, leading an equally quiet and studious life, have
+inspired so much regard and affection in so large a number of persons;
+few teachers have had an equal power of stimulating and attracting
+their pupils. He loved teaching hardly less than he loved the
+investigation of truth, and he was the most faithful and sympathetic
+of friends, one who was felt to be unique while he lived and
+irreplaceable when he had departed.
+
+I have spoken of the courage he had shown in confronting his
+antagonists in the ecclesiastical courts. That courage did not fail
+him in the severer trials of his last illness. The nature of the
+disease of which he died was disclosed to him by his physician in
+September 1892, while an international Congress of Orientalists, in
+which he presided over the Semitic section, was holding its meetings.
+A festival dinner was being given in honour of the Congress the same
+afternoon. When the physician had spoken, Smith simply remarked, "This
+means the death my brother died" (one of his brothers had been struck
+by the same malady a few years before). He went straight to the
+dinner, and was throughout the evening the gayest and brightest of the
+guests.
+
+Fancy sometimes indulges herself in imagining what part the eminent
+men one has known would have played had their lot been cast in some
+other age. So I have fancied that Archbishop Tait (described in an
+earlier chapter) ought to have been Primate of England under Edward
+the Sixth or Elizabeth. He would have guided the course of reform more
+prudently and more firmly than Cranmer did; he would have shown a
+broader spirit than did Parker or Whitgift. So Cardinal Manning, had
+he lived in the seventeenth century, might haply have become General
+of the Jesuit Order, and enjoyed the secret control of the politics of
+the Catholic world. So Robertson Smith, had he been born in the great
+age of the mediæval universities, might, like the bold dialectician of
+whom Dante speaks, have "syllogised invidious truths"[50] in the
+University of Paris; or had Fortune placed him two centuries later
+among the scholars of the Italian Renaissance in its glorious prime,
+the fame of his learning might have filled half Europe.
+
+-----
+
+  [48] No life of Robertson Smith has yet been written, but it is hoped
+       that one may be prepared by his intimate friend, Mr. J.
+       Sutherland Black. A portrait of him (by his friend Sir George
+       Reid, late President of the Royal Scottish Academy) hangs in
+       the library of Christ's College, Cambridge, to which Smith's
+       collection of Oriental books was presented by his friends, and
+       another has been placed in the Divinity College of the United
+       Free Presbyterian Church at Aberdeen. A memorial window has
+       been set up in the chapel of the University of Aberdeen, where
+       he won his first distinctions. I have to thank my friend Mr.
+       Black for some suggestions he has kindly made after perusing
+       this sketch.
+
+  [49] There was an aged Jewish scholar who came now and then to
+       Cambridge in those days, and who, as sometimes happens,
+       disliked other scholars labouring in the same field. He was (so
+       it used to be said) one of the few who knew exactly how the
+       word which we write Jehovah or Iahve ought to be pronounced,
+       and it was believed that he had solemnly cursed Wright, Smith,
+       and a third Semitic scholar in the Sacred Name. All three died
+       soon afterwards.
+
+       What would have been thought of this in the Middle Ages!
+
+  [50] _Parad._ x. 136, of Sigier, "Sillogizzó invidiosi veri."
+
+
+
+
+HENRY SIDGWICK
+
+
+Henry Sidgwick was born at Skipton, in Yorkshire, where his father was
+headmaster of the ancient grammar school of the town, on 31st May
+1838.[51] The family belonged to Yorkshire. He was a precocious boy,
+and used to delight his brothers and sister by the fertility of his
+imagination in inventing games and stories. Educated at Rugby School
+under Goulburn (afterwards Dean of Norwich), he was sent at an
+unusually early age to Trinity College, Cambridge. His brilliant
+University career was crowned by the first place in the classical
+tripos and by a first class in the mathematical tripos, and he was
+speedily elected a Fellow of Trinity. Intellectual curiosity and an
+interest in the problems of theology presently drew him to Germany,
+where he worked at Hebrew and Arabic under Ewald at Göttingen, as well
+as with other eminent teachers. After hesitating for a time whether to
+devote himself to Oriental studies or to classical scholarship, he was
+drawn back to philosophy by his desire to investigate questions
+bearing on natural theology, and finally settled down to the pursuit
+of what are called in Cambridge the moral sciences--metaphysics,
+ethics, and psychology; becoming first a College Lecturer and then (in
+1875) a University Prælector in these subjects. In 1869 he resigned
+his fellowship, feeling that he could no longer consider himself a
+"_bona fide_ member of the Church of England," that being the
+condition then attached by law to the holding of fellowships in the
+Colleges at Cambridge. This step caused surprise, for the test was
+deemed a very vague and light one, having been recently substituted
+for a more stringent requirement, and there had been many holders of
+fellowships who were at least as little entitled to call themselves
+_bona fide_ members of the Established Church as he was. But, as was
+afterwards said of him by Mrs. Cross (George Eliot), Sidgwick was
+expected by his intimate friends to conform to standards higher than
+average men prescribe for their own conduct. Taken in conjunction with
+the fact that several English Dissenters and Scottish Presbyterians
+had won the distinction of a Senior Wranglership and been debarred
+from fellowships, though they were in theological opinion more
+orthodox than some nominal members of the Established Church who were
+holding fellowships, Sidgwick's conscientious act made a great
+impression in Cambridge and did much to hasten that total abolition
+of tests in the Universities which was effected by statute in 1871;
+for in England concrete instances of hardship and injustice are more
+powerful incitements to reform than the strongest abstract arguments,
+and Sidgwick was already so eminent and so respected a figure that all
+Cambridge felt the absurdity of excluding such a man from its honours
+and emoluments. In 1883 he was appointed Professor of Moral
+Philosophy, and continued to hold that post till three months before
+his death in 1900, when failing health determined him to resign it.
+
+His life was the still and tranquil life of the thinker, teacher, and
+writer, varied by no events more exciting than those controversies
+over reforms in the studies and organisation of the University in
+which his sense of public duty frequently led him to bear a part.
+
+These I pass over, but there is one branch of his active work to which
+special reference ought to be made, viz. the part he took in promoting
+the University education of women. In or about the year 1868 he joined
+with the late Miss Anne Jane Clough (sister of the poet Arthur Clough)
+and a few other friends in establishing a course of lectures and a
+hall of residence for women at Cambridge, which grew into the
+institution called Newnham College. It and Girton College, founded by
+other friends of the same cause about the same time, were the first
+two institutions in England which provided for women, together with
+residential accommodation, a complete University training equivalent
+and similar to that provided by the two ancient English universities
+for men. The teaching was mainly given by the University professors
+and lecturers, the curriculum was the same as the University
+prescribed, and the women students, though not legally admitted to the
+University, were examined by the University examiners at the same time
+as the other students. Henry Sidgwick was, from the foundation of
+Newnham onwards, the moving spirit and the guiding hand among its
+University friends, the spirit which inspired the policy and the hand
+which piloted the fortunes of the College. Its growth to its present
+dimensions, and its usefulness, not only directly, but through the
+example it has set, have been largely due to his assiduous care and
+temperate wisdom. He had married (in 1876) Miss Eleanor Mildred
+Balfour, and when she accepted the principalship of Newnham after Miss
+Clough's death, in 1889, he and she transferred their residence to the
+College, and lived thenceforward at it. The England of our time has
+seen no movement of opinion more remarkable or more beneficial than
+that which has recognised the claims of women to the highest kind of
+education, and secured a substantial, if still incomplete, provision
+therefor. The change has come so quietly and unobtrusively that few
+people realise how great it is. Few, indeed, remember what things were
+forty years ago, as few realise when waste lands have been stubbed and
+drained and tilled what they were like in their former state. No one
+did more than Sidgwick to bring about this change. Besides his work
+for Newnham, he took a lead in all the movements that have been made
+to obtain for women a fuller admission to University privileges, and
+well deserved the gratitude of Englishwomen for his unceasing efforts
+on their behalf.
+
+The obscure problems of psychology had a great attraction for him, and
+he spent much time in investigating them, being one of the founders,
+and remaining all through his later life a leading and guiding member,
+of the Society for Psychical Research, which has for the last twenty
+years cultivated this field with an industry and ability which have
+deserved larger harvests than have yet been reaped. Two remarkable
+men, both devoted friends of his, worked with him, Edmund Gurney and
+Frederic Myers the poet, the latter of whom survived him a few months
+only. It was characteristic of Sidgwick that he never committed
+himself to any of the bold and possibly over-sanguine anticipations
+formed by some of the other members of the Society, while yet he never
+was deterred by failure, or by the discovery of deceptions, sometimes
+elaborate and long sustained, from pursuing inquiries which seemed to
+him to have an ultimate promise of valuable results. The phenomena, he
+would say, may be true or false; anyhow they deserve investigation.
+The mere fact that so many persons believe them to be genuine is a
+problem fit to be investigated. If they are false, it will be a
+service to have proved them so. If they contain some truth, it is
+truth of a kind so absolutely new as to be worth much effort and long
+effort to reach it. In any case, science ought to take the subject out
+of the hands of charlatans.
+
+The main business of his life, however, was teaching and writing. Three
+books stand out as those by which he will be best remembered--his
+_Methods of Ethics_, his _Principles of Political Economy_, and his
+_Elements of Politics_. All three have won the admiration of those
+who are experts in the subjects to which they respectively relate, and
+they continue to be widely read in universities both in Britain and in
+America. All three bear alike the peculiar impress of his mind.
+
+It was a mind of singular subtlety, fertility, and ingenuity, which
+applied to every topic an extremely minute and patient analysis. Never
+satisfied with the obvious view of a question, it seemed unable to
+acquiesce in any broad and sweeping statement. It discovered
+objections to every accepted doctrine, exceptions to every rule. It
+perceived minute distinctions and qualifications which had escaped the
+notice of previous writers. These qualities made Sidgwick's books
+somewhat difficult reading for a beginner, who was apt to ask what,
+after all, was the conclusion to which he had been led by an author
+who showed him the subject in various lights, and added not a few
+minor propositions to that which had seemed to be the governing one.
+But the student who had already some knowledge of the topic, who,
+though he apprehended its main principles, had not followed them out
+in detail or perceived the difficulties in applying them, gained
+immensely by having so many fresh points presented to him, so many
+fallacies lurking in currently accepted notions detected, so many
+conditions indicated which might qualify the amplitude of a general
+proposition. The method of discussion was stimulating. Sometimes it
+reminded one of the Socratic method as it appears in Plato, but more
+frequently it was the method of Aristotle, who discusses a subject
+first from one side, then from another, throws out a number of
+remarks, not always reconcilable, but always suggestive, regarding it,
+and finally arrives at a view which he delivers as being probably the
+best, but one which must be taken subject to the remarks previously
+made. The reader often feels in Sidgwick's treatment of a subject as
+he often feels in Aristotle's, that he would like to be left with
+something more definite and positive, something that can be easily
+delivered to learners as an established truth. He desires a bolder and
+broader sweep of the brush. But he also feels how much he is benefited
+by the process of sifting and analysing to which every conception or
+dogma is subjected, and he perceives that he is more able to handle it
+afterwards in his own way when his attention has been called to all
+these distinctions and qualifications or antinomies which would have
+escaped any vision less keen than his author's. For those who, in an
+age prone to hasty reading and careless thinking, are disposed to
+underrate the difficulties of economic and political questions, and to
+walk in a vain conceit of knowledge because they have picked up some
+large generalisations, no better discipline can be prescribed than to
+follow patiently such a treatment as Sidgwick gives; nor can any
+reader fail to profit from the candour and the love of truth which
+illumine his discussion of a subject.
+
+The love of truth and the sense of duty guided his life as well as his
+pen. Though always warmly interested in politics, he was of all the
+persons I have known the least disposed to be warped by partisanship,
+for he examined each political issue as it arose on its own merits,
+apart from predilections for either party or for the views of his
+nearest friends. We used to wonder how such splendid impartiality
+would have stood a practical test such as that of the House of
+Commons. His loyalty to civic duty was so strong as on one occasion to
+bring him, in the middle of his vacation, all the way from Davos, in
+the easternmost corner of Switzerland, to Cambridge, solely that he
+might record his vote at a parliamentary election, although the result
+of the election was already virtually certain.
+
+Sidgwick's attitude toward the Benthamite system of Utilitarianism
+illustrates the cautiously discriminative habit of mind I have sought
+to describe. If he had been required to call himself by any name, he
+would not have refused that of Utilitarian, just as in mental
+philosophy he leaned to the type of thought represented by the two
+Mills rather than to the Kantian idealism of his friend and school
+contemporary, the Oxford professor T. H. Green. But the system of
+Utility takes in his hands a form so much more refined and delicate
+than was given to it by Bentham and James Mill, and is expounded with
+so many qualifications unknown to them, that it has become a very
+different thing, and is scarcely, if at all, assailable by the
+arguments which moralists of the idealistic type have brought against
+the older doctrine. Something similar may be said of his treatment of
+bimetallism in his book on political economy. While assenting to some
+of the general propositions on which the bimetallic theory rests, he
+points out so many difficulties in the application of that theory to
+the actual conditions of currency that his assent cannot be cited as a
+deliverance in favour of trying to turn theory into practice. He told
+me in 1896 that he held the political and other practical objections
+to an attempt to establish a bimetallic system to be virtually
+insuperable. When he treats of free trade, he is no less guarded and
+discriminating. He points out various circumstances or conditions
+under which a protective tariff may become, at least for a time,
+justifiable, but never abandons the free trade principle as being
+generally true and sound, a principle not to be departed from save for
+strong reasons of a local or temporary kind. His general economic
+position is equally removed from the "high and dry" school of Ricardo
+on the one hand, and from the "Katheder-Sozialisten" and the modern
+"sentimental" school on the other. In all his books one notes a
+tendency to discover what can be said for the view which is in popular
+disfavour, even often for that which he does not himself adopt, and to
+set forth all the objections to the view which is to receive his
+ultimate adhesion. There is a danger with such a method of losing
+breadth and force of effect. One is ready to cry, "Do lapse for a
+moment into dogmatism." Yet it ought to be added that Sidgwick's
+subtlety is always restrained by practical good sense, as well as by
+the desire to reconcile opposite views. His arguments, though they
+often turn on minute distinctions, are not bits of fine-drawn
+ingenuity, but have weight and substance in them.[52]
+
+One book of his which has not yet (December 1902) been published, but
+which I have had the privilege of reading in proof, displays his
+constructive power in another light. It is a course of lectures on the
+development of political institutions in Europe from early times down
+to our own. Here, as he is dealing with concrete matter, the treatment
+is more broad, and the line of exposition and argument more easy to
+follow, than in the treatises already referred to. It is a masterly
+piece of work, and reveals a wider range of historical knowledge and a
+more complete mastery of historical method than had been shown in his
+earlier books, or indeed than some of his friends had known him to
+possess.
+
+The tendency to analysis rather than to construction, the abstention
+from the deliverance of doctrines easy to comprehend and repeat, which
+belong to his writings on ethics and economics, do not impair the
+worth of his literary criticisms. In this field his fine perception
+and discriminative taste had full scope. He was an incessant reader,
+especially of poetry and novels, with a retentive memory for poetry,
+as well as a finely modulated and expressive voice in reciting it. His
+literary judgments had less of a creative quality, if the expression
+be permissible, than Matthew Arnold's, but are not otherwise inferior
+to those of that brilliant though sometimes slightly prejudiced
+critic. No one of his contemporaries has surpassed Sidgwick in
+catholicity and reasonableness, in the power of delicate appreciation,
+or in an exquisite precision of expression. His essay on Arthur Hugh
+Clough, prefixed to the latest edition of Clough's collected poems, is
+a good specimen of this side of his talent. Clough was one of his
+favourites, and has indeed been called the pet poet of University men.
+Sidgwick's literary essays, which appeared occasionally in magazines,
+were few, but they well deserve to be collected and republished, for
+this age of ours, though largely occupied in talking about literature,
+has produced comparatively little criticism of the first order.
+
+Sidgwick did not write swiftly or easily, because he weighed carefully
+everything he wrote. But his mind was alert and nimble in the highest
+degree. Thus he was an admirable talker, seeing in a moment the point
+of an argument, seizing on distinctions which others had failed to
+perceive, suggesting new aspects from which a question might be
+regarded, and enlivening every topic by a keen yet sweet and kindly
+wit. Wit, seldom allowed to have play in his books, was one of the
+characteristics which made his company charming. Its effect was
+heightened by a hesitation in his speech which often forced him to
+pause before the critical word or phrase of the sentence had been
+reached. When that word or phrase came, it was sure to be the right
+one. Though fond of arguing, he was so candid and fair, admitting all
+that there was in his opponent's case, and obviously trying to see the
+point from his opponent's side, that nobody felt annoyed at having
+come off second best, while everybody who cared for good talk went
+away feeling not only that he knew more about the matter than he did
+before, but that he had enjoyed an intellectual pleasure of a rare and
+high kind. The keenness of his penetration was not formidable, because
+it was joined to an indulgent judgment: the ceaseless activity of his
+intellect was softened rather than reduced by the gaiety of his
+manner. His talk was conversation, not discourse, for though he
+naturally became the centre of nearly every company in which he found
+himself, he took no more than his share. It was like the sparkling of
+a brook whose ripples seem to give out sunshine.
+
+Though Sidgwick's writings are a mine of careful and suggestive
+thinking, he was even more remarkable than his books. Though his
+conversation was delightful, the impression of its fertility and its
+wit was the least part of the impression which his personality
+produced. An eminent man is known to the world at large by what he
+gives them in the way of instruction or of pleasure. A man is prized
+and remembered by his friends for what he was in the intercourse of
+life. Few men of our time have influenced so wide or so devoted a
+circle of friends as did Henry Sidgwick; few could respond to the
+calls of friendship with a like sympathy or wisdom. His advice was
+frequently asked in delicate questions of conduct, and he was
+humorously reminded that, by his own capacity as well as by the title
+of his chair, he was a professor of casuistry. His stores of knowledge
+and helpful criticism were always at the service of his pupils or his
+fellow-workers.
+
+From his earliest college days he had been just, well-balanced,
+conscientious alike in the pursuit of truth and in the regulation of
+his own life, appearing to have neither prejudices nor enmities, and
+when he had to convey censure, choosing the least cutting words in
+which to convey it. Yet in earlier years there had been in him a touch
+of austerity, a certain remoteness or air of detachment, which
+confined to a very few persons the knowledge of his highest qualities.
+As he grew older his purity lost its coldness, his keenness of
+discernment mellowed into a sweet and persuasive wisdom. A life
+excellently conducted, a life which is the expression of fine
+qualities, and in which the acts done are in harmony with the thoughts
+and words of the man, is itself a beautiful product, whether of
+untutored nature or of thought and experience turning every faculty to
+the best account. In the modern world the two types of excellence
+which we are chiefly bidden to admire are that of the active
+philanthropist and that of the saint. The ancient world produced and
+admired another type, to which some of its noblest characters
+conformed, and which, in its softer and more benignant aspect,
+Sidgwick presented. In his indifference to wealth and fame and the
+other familiar objects of human desire, in the almost ascetic
+simplicity of his daily life, in his pursuit of none but the purest
+pleasures, in his habit of subjecting all impulses to the law of
+reason, the will braced to patience, the soul brought into harmony
+with the divinely appointed order, he seemed to reproduce one of those
+philosophers of antiquity who formed a lofty conception of Nature and
+sought to live in conformity with her precepts. But the gravity of a
+Stoic was relieved by the humour and vivacity which belonged to his
+nature, and the severity of a Stoic was softened by the tenderness and
+sympathy which seemed to grow and expand with every year. In
+Cambridge, where, though the society is a large one, all the teachers
+become personally known to one another, and the students have
+opportunities of familiar intercourse with the teachers, affection as
+well as admiration gathered round him. His thoughts quickened and his
+example inspired generation after generation of young men passing
+through the University out into the life of England, as a light set
+high upon the bank beams on the waves of a river gliding swiftly to
+the sea.
+
+It was a life of single-minded devotion to truth and friendship, a
+life serene and gentle, free alike from vanity and from ambition,
+bearing without complaint the ill-health which sometimes checked his
+labours, viewing with calm fortitude those problems of man's life on
+which his mind was always fixed, untroubled in the presence of death.
+
+           Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas
+           Quique metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
+           Subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari.
+
+When his friends heard of his departure there rose to mind the words
+in which the closing scene of the life of Socrates is described by the
+greatest of his disciples, and we thought that among all those we had
+known there was none of whom we could more truly say that in him the
+spirit of philosophy had its perfect work in justice, in goodness, and
+in wisdom.
+
+-----
+
+  [51] It is hoped that a life of Sidgwick, together with a selection
+       from his letters, may before long be published.
+
+  [52] It was his aim to avoid as much as possible technical terms or
+       phrases whose meaning was not plain to the average reader. An
+       anecdote was current that once when, in conducting a
+       university examination, he was perusing the papers of a
+       candidate who had darkened the subject by the use of extreme
+       Hegelian phraseology, he turned to his co-examiner and said, "I
+       can see that this is nonsense, but is it the right kind of
+       nonsense?"
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD ERNEST BOWEN[53]
+
+
+Ever since the publication of Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold that
+eminent headmaster has been taken as the model of a great teacher and
+ruler of boys, the man who, while stimulating the intelligence of his
+pupils, was even more concerned to discipline and mould their moral
+natures. Arnold has become the type of what Carlyle might have called
+"The Hero as Schoolmaster." Though there have been many able men at
+the head of large schools since his time, including three who
+afterwards rose to be Archbishops of Canterbury, as well as a good
+many who have become bishops, his fame remains unrivalled, and the
+type created by his career, or rather perhaps by his biographer's
+account of it, still holds the field. Moreover, during the sixty years
+that have passed since Arnold's death scarcely a word has been said
+regarding any other masters than the head. During those years the
+English universities have sent into the great schools a large
+proportion of their most capable graduates as assistant teachers; and
+some of the strongest men among these graduates have never, from
+various causes, and often because they preferred to remain laymen,
+been raised to the headships of the schools. Every one knows that a
+school depends for its wellbeing and success more largely on the
+assistants taken together than it does on the headmaster. Most people
+also know that individual assistant masters are not unfrequently
+better scholars, better teachers, and more influential with the boys
+than is their official superior. Yet the assistant masters have
+remained unhonoured and unsung in the general chorus of praise of the
+great schools which has been resounding over England for nearly two
+generations.
+
+Edward Bowen was all his life an assistant master, and never cared to
+be anything else. As he had determined not to take orders in the
+Church of England, he was virtually debarred from many of the chief
+headmasterships, which are, some few of them by law, many more by
+custom, confined to Anglican clergymen. But even when other headships
+to which this condition was not attached were known to be practically
+open to his acceptance, were, indeed, in one or two instances almost
+tendered to him, he refused to become a candidate, preferring his own
+simple and easy way of life to the pomp and circumstance which
+convention requires a headmaster to maintain. This abstention,
+however, did not prevent his eminence from becoming known to those who
+had opportunities of judging. In his later years he would, I think,
+have been generally recognised by the teaching profession as the most
+brilliant, and in his own peculiar line the most successful, man among
+the schoolmasters of Britain.
+
+He was born on 30th March 1836, of an Irish family (originally from
+Wales) holding property in the county of Mayo. His father was a
+clergyman of the Church of England; his mother, who survived him a
+few months (dying at the age of ninety-four) and whom he tended with
+watchful care during her years of widowhood, was partly of Irish,
+partly of French extraction. Like his more famous but perhaps not
+more remarkable elder brother, Charles Bowen, who became Lord Bowen,
+and is remembered as one of the most acute and subtle judges as well
+as one of the most winning personalities of our time, he had a gaiety,
+wit, and versatility which suggested the presence of Celtic blood. He
+was educated at Blackheath School, and afterwards at King's College
+in London, whence he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge. In
+1860, after a career at the University, distinguished both in the
+way of honours and in respect of the reputation he won among his
+contemporaries, he became a master at Harrow, and thenceforth
+remained there, leading an uneventful and externally a monotonous
+life, but one full of unceasing and untiring activity in play and
+work. He died on Easter Monday 1901.
+
+Nothing could be less like the traditional Arnoldine methods of
+teaching and ruling boys than Bowen's method was. The note of those
+methods was what used to be called moral earnestness. Arnold was grave
+and serious, distant and awe-inspiring, except perhaps to a few
+specially favoured pupils. Bowen was light, cheerful, vivacious,
+humorous, familiar, and, above all things, ingenious and full of
+variety. His leading principles were two--that the boy must at all
+hazards be interested in the lessons and that he should be at ease
+with the teacher.
+
+A Harrow boy once said to his master, "I don't know how it is, sir,
+but if Mr. Bowen takes a lesson he makes you work twice as hard as
+other masters, but you like it twice as much and you learn far more."
+He was the most unexpected man in conversation that could be imagined,
+always giving a new turn to talk by saying something that seemed
+remote from the matter in hand until he presently showed the
+connection. So his teaching kept the boys alert, because its variety
+was inexhaustible. He seemed to think that it did not greatly matter
+what the lesson was so long as the pupil could be got to enjoy it. The
+rules of the school and the requirements of the examinations for
+which boys had to be prepared would not have permitted him to try to
+any great extent the experiment of varying subjects to suit individual
+tastes; but he was fond of giving lessons in topics outside the
+regular course, on astronomy for instance, of which he had acquired a
+fair knowledge, and on recent military history, which he knew
+wonderfully well, better probably than any man in England outside the
+military profession. When the so-called "modern side" was established
+at Harrow, in 1869, he became head of it, having taken this post, not
+from any want of classical taste and learning, for he was an admirable
+scholar, and to the end of his life wrote charming Latin verses, but
+because he felt that this line of teaching needed to be developed in a
+school which had been formerly almost wholly classical. For
+grammatical minutiæ, for learning rules by heart, and indeed for the
+old style of grammar-teaching generally, he had an unconcealed
+contempt. He thought it unkind and wasteful to let a boy go on
+puzzling over difficulties of language in an author, and permitted,
+under restrictions, the use of English translations, or (as boys call
+them) "cribs." Teaching was in his view a special gift of the
+individual, which depended on the aptitude for getting hold of the
+pupil's mind, and enlisting his interest in the subject. He had
+accordingly no faith in the doctrine that teaching is a science which
+can be systematically studied, or an art in which the apprentice ought
+to be systematically trained. When he was summoned as a witness before
+the Secondary Education Commission in 1894 he adhered, under
+cross-examination, to this view (so far as it affected schools like
+Harrow or Eton), refusing to be moved by the arguments of those among
+the Commissioners who cited the practice of Germany, where Pädagogik,
+as they call it, is elaborately taught in the universities. "I am
+unable," he said, "to conceive any machinery by which the art of
+teaching can be given practically to masters. That art is so much a
+matter of personal power and experience, and of various social and
+moral gifts, that I cannot conceive a good person made a good master
+by merely seeing a class of boys taught, unless he was allowed to take
+a real and serious part in it himself, unless he became a teacher
+himself. I can understand that at a primary school you can learn by
+going in and hearing a good teacher at work; but the teaching of a
+class of older boys is so different, and has so much of the social
+element in it, and it may vary so much, that I should despair of
+teaching a young man how to take a class unless he was a long time
+with me.... A master at a large public school is chiefly a moral and
+social force; a master is this to a much less extent at a primary
+school or in the ordinary day-schools, the grammar-schools of the
+country. To deal with boys when you have them completely under your
+control for the whole of every day is an altogether different thing,
+and requires different virtues in the teacher from those that are
+required in the case of day-schools."
+
+Bowen may possibly have been mistaken, even as regards the teachers in
+the great public boarding schools. His view seems to overlook or
+disregard that large class of persons who have no marked natural
+aptitude for teaching, but are capable of being, by special
+instruction and supervised practice, kneaded and moulded into better
+teachers than they would otherwise have grown to be. He felt so
+strongly that no one ought to teach without having a real gift and
+fondness for teaching that he thought such difference as training
+could make insignificant in comparison with the inborn talent. Perhaps
+he generalised too boldly from himself, for he had an enjoyment of his
+work, and a conscientiousness in always putting the very best of
+himself into it--how much was conscientiousness and how much was
+enjoyment, no one could tell--as well as a quickness and vivacity
+which no study of methods could have improved. As one of his most
+eminent colleagues,[54] who was also his life-long friend, observes:
+"The humdrum and routine which must form so large a part of a
+teacher's life were never humdrum or routine to him, for he put the
+whole of his abounding energies into his work, and round its driest
+details there played and flickered, as with a lambent flame, his
+joyous spirit, finding expression now perhaps in a striking parallel,
+now in a startling paradox, now in a touch of humour, and once again
+in a note of pathos."
+
+The personal influence he exerted on the boys who lived in his House
+was quite as remarkable as his "form-teaching." Stoicism and honour
+were the qualities it was mainly directed to form. Every boy was
+expected to show manliness and endurance, and to utter no complaint.
+Where physical health was concerned he was indulgent; his House was
+the first which gave the boys meat at breakfast in addition to tea
+with bread and butter. But otherwise the discipline was Spartan,
+though not more Spartan than that he prescribed to himself, and the
+House was trained to scorn the slightest approach to luxury.
+Arm-chairs were forbidden except to sixth-form boys. A pupil relates
+that when Bowen found he was in the habit of taking two hot baths a
+week the transgression was reproved with the words: "Oh boy, that's
+like the later Romans, boy." His maxims were: "Take sweet and bitter
+as sweet and bitter come" and "Always play the game." He never
+preached to the boys or lectured them; and if he had to convey a
+reproof, conveyed it in a single sentence. But he dwelt upon honour as
+the foundation of character, and made every boy feel that he was
+expected to reach the highest standard of truthfulness, courage, and
+duty to the little community of the House, or the cricket eleven, or
+the football team.
+
+Some have begun to think that in English schools and universities too
+much time is given to athletic sports, and that they absorb too
+largely the thoughts and interests of the English youth. Bowen,
+however, attached the utmost value to games as a training in
+character. He used to descant upon the qualities of discipline,
+good-fellowship, good-humour, mutual help, and postponement of self
+which they are calculated to foster. Though some of his friends
+thought that his own intense and unabated fondness for these
+games--for he played cricket and football up to the end of his
+life--might have biassed his judgment, they could not deny that the
+games ought to develop the qualities aforesaid.
+
+"Consider the habit of being in public, the forbearance, the
+subordination of the one to the many, the exercise of judgment, the
+sense of personal dignity. Think again of the organising faculty that
+our games develop. Where can you get command and obedience, choice
+with responsibility, criticism with discipline, in any degree remotely
+approaching that in which our social games supply them? Think of the
+partly moral, partly physical side of it, temper, of course, dignity,
+courtesy.... When the match has really begun, there is education,
+there is enlargement of horizon, self sinks, the common good is the
+only good, the bodily faculties exhilarate in functional development,
+and the make-believe ambition is glorified into a sort of ideality.
+Here is boyhood at its best, or very nearly at its best. _Sursum
+crura!..._ When you have a lot of human beings, in highest social
+union and perfect organic action, developing the law of their race and
+falling in unconsciously with its best inherited traditions of
+brotherhood and common action, you are not far from getting a glimpse
+of one side of the highest good. There lives more soul in honest play,
+believe me, than in half the hymn-books."
+
+These words, taken from a half-serious essay on Games written for a
+private society, give some part of Bowen's views. The whole essay is
+well worth reading.[55] Its arguments do not, however, quite settle
+the matter. The playing of games may have, and indeed ought to have,
+the excellent results Bowen claimed for it, and yet it may be doubted
+whether the experience of life shows that boys so brought up do in
+fact turn out substantially more good-humoured, unselfish, and fit for
+the commerce of the world than others who have lacked this training.
+And the further question remains whether the games are worth their
+costly candle. That they occupy a good deal of time at school and at
+college is not necessarily an evil, seeing that the time left for
+lessons or study is sufficient if well spent. The real drawback
+incident to the excessive devotion games inspire in our days is that
+they leave little room in the boy's or collegian's mind either for
+interest in his studies or for the love of nature. They fill his
+thoughts, they divert his ambition into channels of no permanent value
+to his mind or life; they continue to absorb his interest and form a
+large part of his reading long after he has left school or college.
+Nevertheless, be these things as they may, the opinion of a man so
+able and so experienced as Bowen was, deserves to be recorded; and his
+success in endearing himself to and guiding his boys was doubtless
+partly due to the use he made of their liking for games.
+
+He was never married, so the school became the sole devotion of his
+life, and he bequeathed to it the bulk of his property, directing an
+area of land which he had purchased on the top of the Hill to be
+always kept as an open space for the benefit of boys and masters.
+
+It need hardly be said that he loved boys as he loved teaching. He
+took them with him in the holidays on walking tours. He kept up
+correspondence with many of his pupils after they left Harrow, and
+advised them as occasion rose. To many of them he remained through
+life the model whom they desired to imitate. But he was very chary of
+the exercise of influence. "A boy's character," he once wrote, "grows
+like the Temple of old, without sound of mallet and trowel. What we
+can do is to arrange matters so as to give Virtue her best chance. We
+can make the right choice sometimes a little easier, we can prevent
+tendencies from blossoming into acts, and render pitfalls visible. How
+much indirectly and unconsciously we can do, none but the recording
+angel knows. 'You can and you should,' said Chiffers,[56] 'go straight
+to the heart of every individual boy.' Well, a fellow-creature's mind
+is a sacred thing. You may enter into that arcanum once a year,
+shoeless. And in the effort to control the spirit of a pupil, to make
+one's own approval his test and mould him by the stress of our own
+presence, in the ambition to do this, the craving for moral power and
+visible guiding, the subtle pride of effective agency, lie some of the
+chief temptations of a schoolmaster's work."
+
+Such ways and methods as I have endeavoured to describe are less easy
+to imitate than those which belong to the Arnoldine type of
+schoolmaster. In Bowen's gaiety, in his vivacity, in the humour which
+interpenetrated everything he said or did, there was something
+individual. Teachers who do not possess a like vivacity, versatility,
+and humour cannot hope to apply with like success the method of
+familiarity and sympathy. Not indeed that Bowen stood altogether alone
+in his use of that method. There were others among his contemporaries
+who shared his view, and whose practice was not dissimilar. He was,
+however, the earliest and most brilliant exponent of the view, so his
+career may be said to open a new line, and to mark a new departure in
+the teacher's art.
+
+I have mentioned his walking tours. He was a pedestrian of extraordinary
+force, rather tall, but spare and light, swift of foot, and tireless
+in his activity. As an undergraduate he had walked from Cambridge to
+Oxford, nearly ninety miles, in twenty-four hours, scarcely halting. At
+one time or another he had traversed on foot all the coast-line and
+great part of the inland regions of England. He was an accomplished
+Alpine climber. His passion for exercise of body as well as of mind
+was so salient a feature in his character that his friends wondered
+how he would be able to support old age. He was spared the trial,
+for he was gay and joyous as ever on the last morning of his life, and
+he died in a moment, while mounting his bicycle after a long ascent,
+among the lonely forests of Burgundy, then bursting into leaf under
+an April sun.
+
+His interest in politics provided him with a short and strenuous
+interlude of public action, which varied the even tenor of his life at
+Harrow. At the general election of 1880 he stood as a candidate for
+the little borough of Hertford (which has since been merged in the
+county) against Mr. Arthur Balfour, now (1902) First Lord of the
+Treasury in England. The pro-Turkish policy of Lord Beaconsfield,
+followed by the Afghan War of 1878, had roused many Liberals who
+usually took little part in political action. Bowen felt the impulse
+to denounce the conduct of the Ministry, and went into the contest
+with his usual airy suddenness. He had little prospect of success at
+such a place, for, like many of the so-called Academic Liberals of
+those days, he made the mistake of standing for a small semi-rural
+constituency, overshadowed by a neighbouring magnate, instead of for a
+large town, where both his opinions and his oratory would have been
+better appreciated. However, he enjoyed the contest thoroughly,
+amusing himself as well as the electors by his lively and sometimes
+impassioned speeches, and he looked back to it as a pleasant episode
+in his usually smooth and placid life. He was all his life a strong
+Liberal _vieille roche_, a lover of freedom and equality as well as of
+economy in public finance, a Free Trader, an individualist, an enemy
+of all wars and all aggressions, and in later years growingly
+indignant at the rapid increase of military and naval expenditure. He
+was also, like the Liberals of 1850-60 in general, a sympathiser with
+oppressed nationalities, though this feeling did not carry him the
+length of accepting the policy of Home Rule for Ireland, as to which
+he had grave doubts, yet doubts not quite so serious as to involve
+his separation from the Liberal party. Twice after 1880 he was on the
+point of becoming a candidate for a seat in the House of Commons, but
+whether his love for Harrow would have suffered him to remain in
+Parliament had he entered it may be doubted. One could not even tell
+whether he was really disappointed that his political aspirations
+remained unfulfilled. Had he given himself to parliamentary life, his
+readiness, ingenuity, and wit would have soon made him valued by his
+own side, while his sincerity and engaging manners would have
+commended him to both sides alike. His delivery was always too rapid,
+and his voice not powerful, yet these defects would have been
+forgotten in the interest which so peculiar a figure must have
+aroused.
+
+His peace principles contrasted oddly with his passion for military
+history, a passion which prompted many vacation journeys to
+battlefields all over Europe, from Salamanca to Austerlitz. He had
+followed the campaigns of Napoleon through Piedmont and Lombardy,
+through Germany and Austria, as well as those of Wellington in Spain
+and Southern France.[57] This taste is not uncommon in men of peace.
+Freeman had it; J. R. Green and S. R. Gardiner had it; and the
+historical works of Sir George Trevelyan and Dr. Thomas Hodgkin prove
+that it lives in those genial breasts also. It was a pleasure to be
+led over a battlefield by Bowen, for he had a good eye for ground, he
+knew the movements of the armies down to the smallest detail, and he
+could explain with perfect lucidity the positions of the combatants
+and the tactical moves in the game.
+
+Twice only did he come across actual fighting, once at Düppel in 1864,
+during the Schleswig-Holstein war, and again in Paris during the siege
+of the Communards by the forces that obeyed Thiers and the Assembly
+sitting at Versailles. He maintained that the Commune had been
+unfairly judged by Englishmen, and wrote a singularly interesting
+description of what he saw while risking his life in the beleaguered
+city. There was in him a great spirit of adventure, though the
+circumstances of his life gave it little scope.
+
+Travel was one of his chief pleasures, but it was, if possible, a
+still greater pleasure to his fellow-travellers, for he was the most
+agreeable of companions, fertile in suggestion, candid in discussion,
+swift in decision. He cared nothing for luxury and very little for
+comfort; he was absolutely unselfish and imperturbably good-humoured;
+he could get enjoyment out of the smallest incidents of travel, and
+his curiosity to see the surface of the earth as well as the cities of
+men was inexhaustible. He loved the unexpected, and if one had written
+proposing an expedition to explore Tibet, he would have telegraphed
+back, "Start to-night: do we meet Charing Cross or Victoria?"
+
+I have dwelt on Bowen's gifts and methods as a teacher, because
+teaching was the joy and the business of his life, and because he
+showed a new way in which boys might be stimulated and guided. But he
+was a great deal besides a teacher, just as his brother Charles was a
+great deal besides a lawyer. Both had talents for literature of a very
+high order. Charles published a verse translation of Virgil's
+_Eclogues_ and the first six books of the _Æneid_, full of ingenuity
+and refinement, as well as of fine poetic taste. Edward's vein
+expressed itself in the writing of songs. His school songs, composed
+for the Harrow boys, became immensely popular with them, and their use
+at school celebrations of various kinds has passed from Harrow to the
+other great schools of England, even to some of the larger girls'
+schools. The songs are unique in their fanciful ingenuity and humorous
+extravagance, full of a boyish joy in life, in the exertion of
+physical strength, in the mimic strife of games, yet with an
+occasional touch of sadness, like the shadow of a passing cloud as it
+falls on the cricket field over which the shouts of the players are
+ringing. The metres are various: all show rhythmical skill, and in all
+the verse has a swing which makes it singularly effective when sung
+by a mass of voices. Most of the songs are dedicated to cricket or
+football, but a few are serious, and two or three of these have a
+beauty of thought and perfection of form which make the reader ask why
+a poetic gift so true and so delicate should have been rarely used.
+These songs were the work of his middle or later years, and he never
+wrote except when the impulse came upon him. The stream ran pure but
+it ran seldom. In early days he had been for a while, like many other
+brilliant young University men of his time, a contributor to the
+_Saturday Review_. (There surely never was a journal which enlisted so
+much and such varied literary talent as the _Saturday_ did between
+1855 and 1863.) Bowen's articles were, like his elder brother's,
+extremely witty. In later life he could seldom be induced to write,
+having fallen out of the habit, and being, indeed, too busy to carry
+on any large piece of work; but the occasional papers on educational
+subjects he produced showed no decline in his vivacity or in the
+abundance of his humour. Those who knew the range and the resources of
+his mind sometimes regretted that he would do nothing to let the world
+know them. But he was, to a degree most unusual among men of real
+power, absolutely indifferent, not only to fame, but to opportunities
+for exercising power or influence.
+
+The stoicism which he sought to form in his pupils was inculcated by
+his own example. It was a genial and cheerful stoicism, which checked
+neither his affection for them nor his brightness in society, and
+which permitted him to draw as much enjoyment from small things as
+most people can from great ones. But if he had the gaiety of an
+Irishman, he had a double portion of English reserve. He never gave
+expression in words to his emotions. He never seemed either elated or
+depressed. He never lost his temper and never seemed to be curbing it.
+His tastes and way of life were simple to the verge of austerity; nor
+did he appear to desire anything more than what he had obtained.
+
+It is natural--possibly foolish, yet almost inevitable--that those
+who perceive in a friend the presence of rare and brilliant gifts
+should desire that his gifts should not only be turned to full
+account for the world's benefit, but should become so known and
+appreciated as to make others admire and value what they admire and
+value. When such a man prefers to live his life in his own way, and do
+the plain duties that lie near him, with no thought of anything
+further, they feel, though they may try to repress, a kind of
+disappointment, as though greatness or virtue had missed its mark
+because known to few besides themselves. Yet there is a sense in
+which that friend is most our own who has least belonged to the
+world, who has least cared for what the world has to offer, who has
+chosen the simplest and purest pleasures, who has rendered the
+service that his way of life required with no longing for any wider
+theatre or any applause to be there won. Is there indeed anything
+more beautiful than a life of quiet self-sufficing yet beneficent
+serenity, such as the ancient philosophers inculcated, a life which
+is now more rarely than ever led by men of shining gifts, because the
+inducements to bring such gifts into the dusty thoroughfares of the
+world have grown more numerous? Bowen had the best equipment for a
+philosopher. He knew the things that gave him pleasure, and sought no
+others. He knew what he could do well. He followed his own bent.
+His desires were few, and he could gratify them all. He had made life
+exactly what he wished it to be. Intensely as he enjoyed travel, he
+never uttered a note of regret when the beginning of a Harrow school
+term stopped a journey at its most interesting point, so dearly did
+he love his boys. What more can we desire for our friends than
+this--that in remembering them there should be nothing to regret,
+that all who came under their influence should feel themselves for
+ever thereafter the better for that influence, that a happy and
+peaceful life should be crowned by a sudden and painless death?
+
+-----
+
+  [53] Since this sketch was written a very interesting _Life of Edward
+       Bowen_ by his nephew (the Hon. and Rev. W. E. Bowen) has
+       appeared. Some of his (too few) essays and a collection of his
+       school-songs are appended to it.
+
+  [54] Mr. R. Bosworth Smith.
+
+  [55] It is printed in the _Life_.
+
+  [56] "Chiffers" is the typical would-be imitator of Arnold.
+
+  [57] He remarked once that he had so nearly exhausted the battlefields
+       of the past that he must begin to devote himself to the
+       battlefields of the future.
+
+
+
+
+EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN
+
+
+As with the progress of science new arts emerge and new occupations
+and trades are created, so with the progress of society professions
+previously unknown arise, evolve new types of intellectual excellence,
+and supply a new theatre for the display of peculiar and exceptional
+gifts. Such a profession, such a type, and the type which is perhaps
+most specially characteristic of our times, is that of the Editor. It
+scarcely existed before the French Revolution, and is, as now fully
+developed, a product of the last eighty years. Various are its forms.
+There is the Business Editor, who runs his newspaper as a great
+commercial undertaking, and may neither care for politics nor attach
+himself to any political party. America still recollects the familiar
+example set by James Gordon Bennett, the founder of the _New York
+Herald_. There is the Selective Editor, who may never pen a line, but
+shows his skill in gathering an able staff round him, and in allotting
+to each of them the work he can do best. Such an one was John Douglas
+Cook, a man of slender cultivation and few intellectual interests,
+but still remembered in England by those who forty years ago knew the
+staff of the _Saturday Review_, then in its brilliant prime, as
+possessed of an extraordinary instinct for the topics which caught the
+public taste, and for the persons capable of handling those topics.
+John T. Delane, of the _Times_, had the same gift, with talents and
+knowledge far surpassing Cook's. A third and usually more interesting
+form is found in the Editor who is himself an able writer, and who
+imparts his own individuality to the journal he directs. Such an one
+was Horace Greeley, who, in the days before the War of Secession, made
+the _New York Tribune_ a power in America. Such another, of finer
+natural quality, was Michael Katkoff, who in his short career did much
+to create and to develop the spirit of nationality and imperialism in
+Russia thirty years ago.
+
+It was to this third form of the editorial profession that Mr. Godkin
+belonged. He is the most remarkable example of it that has appeared in
+our time--perhaps, indeed, in any time since the profession rose to
+importance; and all the more remarkable because he was never, like
+Greeley or Katkoff, the exponent of any widespread sentiment or potent
+movement, but was frequently in opposition to the feeling for the
+moment dominant.
+
+Edwin Lawrence Godkin, the son of a Protestant clergyman and author,
+was born in the county of Wicklow, in Ireland, in 1831. He was
+educated at Queen's College, Belfast, read for a short time for the
+English bar, but drifted into journalism by accepting the post of
+correspondent to the London _Daily News_ during the Crimean War in
+1853-54. The horror of war which he retained through his life was due
+to the glimpse of it he had in the Crimea. Soon afterwards he went to
+America, was admitted to the bar in New York, but never practised,
+spent some months in travelling through the Southern States on
+horseback, learning thereby what slavery was, and what its economic
+and social consequences, was for two or three years a writer on the
+_New York Times_, and ultimately, in 1865, established in New York a
+weekly journal called the _Nation_. This he continued to edit, writing
+most of it himself, till 1881, when he accepted the editorship of the
+_New York Evening Post_, an old and respectable paper, but with no
+very large circulation. The _Nation_ continued to appear, but became
+practically a weekly edition of the _Evening Post_, or rather, as some
+one said, the _Evening Post_ became a daily edition of the _Nation_,
+for the tone and spirit that had characterised the _Nation_ now
+pervaded the _Post_. In 1900 failing health compelled him to retire
+from active work, and in May 1902 he died in England. Journalism left
+him little leisure for any other kind of literary production; but he
+wrote in early life a short history of Hungary; and a number of
+articles which he had in later years contributed to the _Nation_ or to
+magazines were collected and published in three volumes between 1895
+and 1900. They are clear and wise articles, specially instructive
+where they deal with the most recent aspects of democracy. But as they
+convey a less than adequate impression of the peculiar qualities which
+established his fame, I pass on to the work by which he will be
+remembered, his work as a weekly and daily public writer.
+
+He was well equipped for this career by considerable experience of the
+world, by large reading, for though not a learned man, he had
+assimilated a great deal of knowledge on economical and historical
+subjects, and by a stock of positive principles which he saw clearly
+and held coherently. In philosophy and economics he was a Utilitarian
+of the school of J. S. Mill, and in politics what used to be called a
+philosophical Radical, a Radical of the less extreme type, free from
+sentiment and from prejudices, but equally free from any desire to
+destroy for the sake of destroying. Like the other Utilitarians of
+those days, he was a moderate optimist, expecting the world to grow
+better steadily, though not swiftly; and he went to America in the
+belief that he should there find more progress secured, and more of
+further progress in prospect, than any European country could show. It
+was the land of promise, in which all the forces making for good on
+which the school of Mill relied were to be found at work, hampered
+only by the presence of slavery. I note this fact, because it shows
+that the pessimism of Mr. Godkin's later years was not due to a
+naturally querulous or despondent temperament.
+
+So too was his mind admirably fitted for the career he had chosen.
+It was logical, penetrating, systematic, yet it was also quick and
+nimble. His views were definite, not to say dogmatic, and as they were
+confidently held, so too they were confidently expressed. He never
+struck a doubtful note. He never slurred over a difficulty, nor
+sought, when he knew himself ignorant, to cover up his ignorance.
+Imagination was kept well in hand, for his constant aim was to get
+at and deal with the vital facts of every case. If he was not
+original in the way of thinking out doctrines distinctively his own,
+nor in respect of any exuberance of ideas bubbling up in the
+course of discussion, there was fertility as well as freshness in
+his application of principles to current questions, and in the
+illustrations by which he enforced his arguments.
+
+As his thinking was exact, so his style was clear-cut and trenchant.
+Even when he was writing most swiftly, it never sank below a high
+level of form and finish. Every word had its use and every sentence
+told. There was no doubt about his meaning, and just as little about
+the strength of his convictions. He had a gift for terse vivacious
+paragraphs commenting on some event of the day or summing up the
+effect of a speech or a debate. The touch was equally light and firm.
+But if the manner was brisk, the matter was solid: you admired the
+keenness of the insight and the weight of the judgment just as much as
+the brightness of the style. Much of the brightness lay in the humour.
+That is a plant which blossoms so much more profusely on Transatlantic
+soil that English readers of the _Nation_ had usually a start of
+surprise when told that this most humorous of American journalists was
+not an American at all but a European, and indeed a European who never
+became thoroughly Americanised. It was humour of a pungent and
+sarcastic quality, usually directed to the detection of tricks or the
+exposure of shams, but it was eminently mirth-provoking and never
+malicious. Frequently it was ironical, and the irony sometimes so fine
+as to be mistaken for seriousness.
+
+The _Nation_ was from its very first numbers so full of force,
+keenness, and knowledge, and so unusually well written, that it made
+its way rapidly among the educated classes of the Eastern States. It
+soon became a power, but a power of a new kind. Mr. Godkin wanted
+most of the talents or interests of the ordinary journalist. He
+gave no thought to the organisation of the paper as a business
+undertaking. He scarcely heeded circulation, either when his
+livelihood depended upon the _Nation_ of which he was the chief
+owner, or when he was associated with others in the ownership of
+the _Evening Post_. He refused to allow any news he disapproved,
+including all scandal and all society gossip, to appear. He was
+prepared at any moment to incur unpopularity from his subscribers, or
+even to offend one half of his advertisers. He took no pains to get
+news before other journals, and cared nothing for those "beats" and
+"scoops" in which the soul of the normal newspaper man finds a
+legitimate source of pride. He was not there, he would have said,
+to please either advertisers or subscribers, but to tell the American
+people the truths they needed to hear, and if those truths were
+distasteful, so much the more needful was it to proclaim them. He
+was absolutely independent not only of all personal but of all party
+ties. A public man was never either praised or suffered to escape
+censure because he was a private acquaintance. He once told me that
+the being obliged to censure those with whom he stood in personal
+relations was the least agreeable feature of his profession.
+Whether an act was done by the Republicans or by the Democrats
+made no difference to his judgment, or to the severity with which his
+judgment was expressed. His distrust of Mr. James G. Blaine had led
+him to support Mr. Cleveland at the election of 1884, and he
+continued to give a general approval to the latter statesman during
+both his presidential terms. But when Mr. Cleveland's Venezuelan
+message with its menaces to England appeared in December 1895, Mr.
+Godkin vehemently denounced it, as indeed he had frequently before
+blamed particular acts of the Cleveland administrations. He
+sometimes voted for the Republicans, sometimes for the Democrats,
+according to the merits of the transitory issue or the particular
+candidate, but after 1884 no one could have called him either a
+Republican or a Democrat.
+
+Independence of party is less rare among American than among European
+newspapers; but courage such as Godkin's is rare everywhere. The
+editor of a century ago had in most countries to fear press
+censorship, or the law of political libel, or the frowns of the great.
+The modern editor, delivered from these risks, is exposed to the more
+insidious temptations of financial influence, of social pressure, of
+the fear of injuring the business interests of the paper, which are
+now sometimes enormous. Godkin's conscientiousness and pride made him
+equally indifferent to influence and to threats. As some one said,
+you might as well have tried to frighten the east wind. Clear, prompt,
+and self-confident, judging everything by a high standard of honour
+and public spirit, he distributed censure with no regard either to the
+official position or to the party affiliations of politicians. The
+"Weekly Day of Judgment" was the title bestowed upon the _Nation_ by
+Charles Dudley Warner, who himself admired it. As Godkin expected--or
+at least demanded--righteousness from every one, he was more a terror
+to evildoers than a praise to them that do well, and the fact that,
+having no private ends to serve, he thought only of truth and the
+public interest, made him all the more stringent. Because he was, and
+found it easy to be, fearless and independent, he scarcely allowed
+enough for the timidity of others, and sometimes chastised the weak as
+sternly as the wicked. An editor who smites all the self-seekers and
+all the time-servers whom he thinks worth smiting, is sure to become a
+target for many arrows. But as Godkin was an equally caustic critic of
+the sentimental vagaries or economic heresies of well-meaning men or
+sections of opinion, he incurred hostility from quarters where the
+desire for honest administration and the purity of public life was
+hardly less strong than in the pages of the _Nation_ itself. Though he
+took no personal part in politics, never appeared on platforms nor in
+any way put himself forward, his paper was so markedly himself that
+people talked of it as him. It was not "the _Nation_ says" or "the
+_Post_ says," but "Godkin says." Even his foreign birth was charged
+against him--a rare charge in a country so tolerant and catholic as
+the United States, where every office except that of President is open
+to newcomers as freely as to the native born.
+
+He was called "un-American," and I have heard men who admired and read
+the _Nation_ nevertheless complain that they did not want "to be
+taught by a European how to run this Republic." True it is that he did
+not see things or write about them quite as an American would have
+done. But was this altogether a misfortune? The Italian cities of the
+Middle Ages used to call in a man of character and mark from some
+other place and make him Podestá just because he stood outside the
+family ties and the factions of the city. Godkin's foreign education
+gave him detachment and perspective. It never reduced his ardour to
+see administration and public life in America made worthy of the
+greatness of the American people.
+
+No journal could have maintained its circulation and extended its
+influence in the face of so much hostility except by commanding
+merits. The merits of the _Nation_ were incontestable. It was the best
+weekly not only in America but in the world. The editorials were
+models of style. The book reviews, many of them in earlier days also
+written by Godkin himself, were finished in point of form, and, when
+not his own, came from the ablest specialist hands in the country. The
+"current notes" of progress in such subjects as geography, natural
+history, and archæology were instructive and accurate. So it was that
+people had to read the _Nation_ whether they liked it or not. It could
+not be ignored. It was a necessity even where it was a terror.
+
+Yet neither the force of his reasoning nor the brilliance of his
+style would have secured Godkin's influence but for two other
+elements of strength he possessed. One was the universal belief in his
+disinterestedness and sincerity. He was often charged with prejudice
+or bitterness, but never with any sinister motive; enemies no less
+than friends respected him. The other was his humour. An austere
+moralist who is brimful of fun is rare in any country. Relishing
+humour more than does any other people, the Americans could not be
+seriously angry with a man who gave them so abundant a feast.
+
+To trace the course he took in the politics of the United States since
+1860 would almost be to outline the history of forty years, for
+there was no great issue in the discussion of which he did not bear a
+part. He was a strong supporter of the Northern cause during the
+War of Secession, and by his letters to the London _Daily News_ did
+something to enlighten English readers. When the problems of
+reconstruction emerged after the war, he suggested lines of action
+more moderate than those followed by the Republican leaders, and
+during many subsequent years denounced the "carpet-baggers," and
+advocated the policy of restoring self-government to the Southern
+States and withdrawing Federal troops. Incensed at the corruption of
+some of the men who surrounded President Grant during his first
+term, he opposed Grant's re-election, as did nearly all the
+reformers of those days. By this time he had begun to attack the
+"spoils system," and to demand a reform of the civil service, and he
+had also become engaged in that campaign against the Tammany
+organisation in New York City which he maintained with unabated energy
+till the end of his editorial career.[58] In 1884 he led the
+opposition to the candidacy of Mr. Blaine for President, and it
+was mainly the persistency with which the _Evening Post_ set forth
+the accusations brought against that statesman that secured his defeat
+in New York State, and therewith his defeat in the election. It
+was on this occasion that the nickname of Mugwump[59] was first
+applied to Mr. Godkin by the ablest of his antagonists in the press,
+Mr. Dana of the _New York Sun_, a title before long extended to the
+Independents whom the _Post_ led, and who constituted, during the
+next ten or twelve years, a section of opinion important, if not
+by its numbers, yet by the intellectual and moral weight of the men
+who composed it. When currency questions became prominent, Mr.
+Godkin was a strong opponent of bimetallism and of "silverism" in
+all its forms, and a not less strenuous opponent of all socialistic
+theories and movements. It need hardly be added that he had always
+been an upholder of the principles of Free Trade. Like a sound
+Cobdenite, he was an advocate of peace, and disliked territorial
+extension. He opposed President Grant's scheme for the acquisition
+of San Domingo, as he afterwards opposed the annexation of Hawaii.
+His close study of Irish history, and his old faith in the principle
+of nationality, had made him a strenuous advocate of Home Rule for
+Ireland. But no one was farther than he from sharing the feelings of
+the American Irish towards England. He condemned the threats
+addressed in 1895 to Great Britain over the Venezuela question; and
+glad as he was to see that question settled by England's acceptance
+of an arbitration which she had previously denied the right of the
+United States to demand, he held that England must beware of yielding
+too readily to pressure from the United States, because such
+compliance would encourage that aggressive spirit in the latter whose
+consequences for both countries he feared. Never, perhaps, did he
+incur so much obloquy as in defending, almost single-handed, the
+British position in the Venezuelan affair. The attacks made all over
+the country on the _Evening Post_ were, he used to say, like storms of
+hail lashing against his windows. At the very end of his career,
+he resisted the war with Spain and the annexation of the Philippine
+Islands, deeming the acquisition of trans-Oceanic territories,
+inhabited by inferior races, a dangerous new departure, opposed to
+the traditions of the Fathers of the Republic, and inconsistent with
+the principles on which the Republic was founded. No public writer
+has left a more consistent record.
+
+In private life Mr. Godkin was a faithful friend and a charming
+companion, genial as well as witty, considerate of others, and liked
+no less than admired by his staff on the _Evening Post_, free from
+cynicism, and more indulgent in his views of human nature than might
+have been gathered from his public utterances. He never despaired of
+democratic government, yet his spirits had been damped by the faint
+fulfilment of those hopes for the progress of free nations, and
+especially of the United States, which had illumined his youth. The
+slow advance of economic truths, the evils produced by the increase of
+wealth, the growth of what he called "chromo-civilisation," the
+indifference of the rich and educated to politics, the want of nerve
+among politicians, the excitability of the masses, the tenacity with
+which corruption and misgovernment held their ground, in spite of
+repeated exposures, in cities like New York, Philadelphia, and
+Chicago--all these things had so sunk into his soul that it became
+hard to induce him to look at the other side, and to appreciate the
+splendid recuperative forces which are at work in America. Thus his
+friends were driven to that melancholy form of comfort which consists
+in pointing out that other countries are no better. They argued that
+England in particular, to which he had continued to look as the home
+of political morality and enlightened State wisdom, was suffering from
+evils, not indeed the same as those which in his judgment afflicted
+America, but equally serious. They bade him remember that moral
+progress is not continuous, but subject to ebbs of reaction, and that
+America is a country of which one should never despair, because in it
+evils have often before worked out their cure. He did regretfully own,
+after his latest visits to Europe, that England had sadly declined
+from the England of his earlier days, and he admitted that the clouds
+under which his own path had latterly lain might after a time be
+scattered by a burst of sunshine; but his hopes for the near future of
+America were not brightened by these reflections. Sometimes he seemed
+to feel--though of his own work he never spoke--as though he had
+laboured in vain for forty years.
+
+If he so thought, he did his work far less than justice. It had told
+powerfully upon the United States, and that in more than one way.
+Though the circulation of the _Nation_ was never large, it was read by
+the two classes which in America have most to do with forming
+political and economic opinion--I mean editors and University
+teachers. (The Universities and Colleges, be it remembered, are far
+more numerous, relatively to the population, in America than in
+England, and a more important factor in the thought of the country.)
+From the editors and the professors Mr. Godkin's views filtered down
+into the educated class generally, and affected its opinion. He
+instructed and stimulated the men who instructed and stimulated the
+rest of the people. To those young men in particular who thought about
+public affairs and were preparing themselves to serve their country,
+his articles were an inspiration. The great hope for American
+democracy to-day lies in the growing zeal and the ripened intelligence
+with which the generation now come to manhood has begun to throw
+itself into public work. Many influences have contributed to this
+result, and Mr. Godkin's has been among the most potent.
+
+Nor was his example less beneficial to the profession of journalism.
+There has always been a profusion of talent in the American press,
+talent more alert and versatile than is to be found in the press of
+any European country. But in 1865 there were three things which the
+United States lacked. Literary criticism did not maintain a high
+standard, nor duly distinguish thorough from flashy or superficial
+performances. Party spirit was so strong and so pervasive that
+journalists were content to denounce or to extol, and seldom subjected
+the character of men or measures to a searching and impartial
+examination. There was too much sentimentalism in politics, with too
+little reference of current questions to underlying principles, too
+little effort to get down to what Americans call the "hard pan" of
+facts. In all these respects the last forty years have witnessed
+prodigious advances; and, so far as the press is concerned--for much
+has been due to the Universities and to the growth of a literary
+class--Mr. Godkin's writings largely contributed to the progress made.
+His finished criticism, his exact method, his incisive handling of
+economic problems, his complete detachment from party, helped to form
+a new school of journalists, as the example he set of a serious and
+lofty conception of an editor's duties helped to add dignity to the
+position. He had not that disposition to enthrone the press which made
+a great English newspaper once claim for itself that it discharged in
+the modern world the functions of the mediæval Church. But he brought
+to his work as an anonymous writer a sense of responsibility and a
+zeal for the welfare of his country which no minister of State could
+have surpassed.
+
+His friends may sometimes have wished that he had more fully
+recognised the worth of sentiment as a motive power in politics, that
+he had more frequently tried to persuade as well as to convince, that
+he had given more credit for partial instalments of honest service and
+for a virtue less than perfect, that he had dealt more leniently with
+the faults of the good and the follies of the wise. Defects in these
+respects were the almost inevitable defects of his admirable
+qualities, of his passion for truth, his hatred of wrong and
+injustice, his clear vision, his indomitable spirit.
+
+The lesson of his editorial career is a lesson not for America only.
+Among the dangers that beset democratic communities, none are greater
+than the efforts of wealth to control, not only electors and
+legislators, but also the organs of public opinion, and the
+disposition of statesmen and journalists to defer to and flatter the
+majority, adopting the sentiment dominant at the moment, and telling
+the people that its voice is the voice of God. Mr. Godkin was not
+only inaccessible to the lures of wealth--the same may happily be
+still said of many of his craft-brethren--he was just as little
+accessible to the fear of popular displeasure. Nothing more incensed
+him than to see a statesman or an editor with his "ear to the ground"
+(to use an American phrase), seeking to catch the sound of the coming
+crowd. To him, the less popular a view was, so much the more did it
+need to be well weighed and, if approved, to be strenuously and
+incessantly preached. Democracies will always have demagogues ready to
+feed their vanity and stir their passions and exaggerate the feeling
+of the moment. What they need is men who will swim against the stream,
+will tell them their faults, will urge an argument all the more
+forcibly because it is unwelcome. Such an one was Edwin Godkin. Since
+the death of Abraham Lincoln, America has been generally more
+influenced by her writers, preachers, and thinkers than by her
+statesmen. In the list of those who have during the last forty years
+influenced her for good and helped by their pens to make her history,
+a list illustrated by such names as those of R. W. Emerson and
+Phillips Brooks and James Russell Lowell, his name will find its place
+and receive its well-earned meed of honour.
+
+-----
+
+  [58] The Tammany leaders had him repeatedly arrested, usually on
+       Sunday mornings (that being the day on which it was least easy
+       to find bail) for alleged criminal libels upon them. These
+       prosecutions, threatened in the hope of intimidating him, never
+       went further.
+
+  [59] A Mugwump is in the Algonquin tongue an aged chief or wise man,
+       and the name was meant to ridicule the _ex cathedra_ manner
+       ascribed to the _Evening Post_.
+
+
+
+
+LORD ACTON
+
+
+When Lord Acton died on 19th June 1902, at Tegern See in Bavaria,
+England lost the most truly cosmopolitan of her children, and Europe
+lost one who was, by universal consent, in the foremost rank of her
+men of learning. He belonged to an old Roman Catholic family of
+Shropshire, a branch of which had gone to Southern Italy, where his
+grandfather, General Acton, had been chief minister of the King of
+Naples in the great war, at the time when the Bourbon dynasty
+maintained itself in Sicily by the help of the British fleet, while
+all Italy lay under the heel of Napoleon. His father, Sir Ferdinand
+Acton, married a German lady, heiress of the ancient and famous house
+of Dalberg, one of the great families of the middle Rhineland; so John
+Edward Emerich Dalberg-Acton was born half a German, and connected by
+blood with the highest aristocracy of Germany. He was educated at
+Oscott, one of the two chief Roman Catholic colleges of England, under
+Dr. Wiseman, afterwards Archbishop of Westminster and Cardinal; but
+the most powerful influence on the development of his mind and
+principles came from that glory of Catholic learning, a beautiful soul
+as well as a capacious intellect, Dr. von Döllinger, with whom Acton
+studied during some years at Munich. He sat for a short time in the
+House of Commons as member for Carlow (1859); and was afterwards
+elected for Bridgnorth (1865), but lost his seat (which he had gained
+by one vote only) on a scrutiny. In those days it was not easy for a
+Roman Catholic to find an English constituency, so in 1869 Mr.
+Gladstone procured his elevation to the peerage. He made a successful
+speech in the House of Lords in 1893, but took no prominent part in
+parliamentary life in either House, feeling himself too much of a
+student, and looking at current questions from a point of view unlike
+that of English politicians. Neither as a philosopher, nor as a
+historian, nor as a product of German training, could he find either
+Lords or Commons a congenial audience. When he was asked soon after he
+entered Parliament why he did not speak, he answered that he agreed
+with nobody and nobody agreed with him. But since he regarded politics
+as history in the course of making under his eyes, he continued to be
+all his life keenly interested in public affairs, watching and judging
+every move in the game. Mr. Gladstone, whose trusted friend he had
+been for many years, was believed to have on one occasion wished to
+place him in an important office; but political exigencies made this
+impossible, and the only public post he ever held was that of
+Lord-in-Waiting in the Ministry of 1892. In this capacity he was
+brought into frequent contact with Queen Victoria, who felt the
+warmest respect and admiration for him. He was one of the very few
+persons surrounding her who was familiar with most of the courts of
+Continental Europe, and could discuss with her from direct knowledge
+the men who figured in those courts. At Windsor he spent in the
+library of the Castle all the time during which he was not required to
+be in actual attendance on the Queen, a singular phenomenon among
+Lords-in-Waiting.
+
+Unlike most English Roman Catholics, he was a strong Liberal, a
+Liberal of that orthodox type, individualist, free-trade, and
+peace-loving, which prevailed from 1846 till 1885. He was also a
+convinced Home Ruler, and had, indeed, adopted the principle of Home
+Rule for Ireland long before Mr. Gladstone himself was converted to
+it. His faith in that principle rested on the value he attached to
+self-government as a means of training and developing the political
+aptitudes of a people, and to the recognition of national sentiment,
+which he held to be, like other natural forces, useful when guided but
+formidable when repressed. So too his Liberalism was based on the love
+of freedom for its own sake, joined to the conviction that freedom is
+the best foundation for the stability of a constitution and the
+happiness of a people. Reliance on the power of freedom was, he used
+to say, one of the broadest of all the lessons he had learned from
+history. He applied it in ecclesiastical as well as in political
+affairs. At the time of the Vatican Council of 1870 he was, though a
+layman, prominent among those who constituted the opposition
+maintained by the Liberal section of the Roman Catholic Church to the
+affirmation of the dogma of papal infallibility. His full and accurate
+knowledge of ecclesiastical history was placed at the disposal of the
+prelates, such as Archbishop Dupanloup, Bishop Strossmayer, and
+Archbishop Conolly (of Halifax, Nova Scotia), who combated the
+Ultramontane party in the animated and protracted debates which
+illumined that OEcumenical Council. One, at least, of the treatises,
+and many of the letters in the press which the Council called forth
+were written either by him or from materials which he supplied, and he
+was recognised by the Ultramontanes, and in particular by Archbishop
+Manning, as being, along with Döllinger, the most formidable of their
+opponents behind the scenes. As every one knows, the Infallibilists
+triumphed, and the schism which led to the formation of the Old
+Catholic Church in Germany and Switzerland was the result. Döllinger
+was excommunicated; but against Lord Acton no action was taken, and he
+remained all his life a faithful member of the Roman communion, while
+adhering to the views he had advocated in 1870.
+
+With this close hold upon practical life and this constant interest in
+the politics of the world, especially of England and the United
+States, no one could be less like that cloistered student who is
+commonly taken as the typical man of learning. But Lord Acton was a
+miracle of learning. Of the sciences of nature and their practical
+applications in the arts he had indeed no more knowledge than any
+cultivated man of the world is expected to possess. But of all the
+so-called "human subjects" his mastery was unequalled. Learning was
+the business of his life. He was gifted with a singularly tenacious
+memory. His industry was untiring. Wherever he was--in London, at
+Cannes in winter, at Tegern See in summer, at Windsor or Osborne with
+the Queen, latterly (till his health failed) at Cambridge during the
+University terms--he never worked less than eight hours a day. Yet,
+even after making every allowance for his memory and his industry, his
+friends stood amazed at the range and exactness of his knowledge. It
+was as various as it was profound, and much of it bore on recondite
+matters which few men study to-day. Though less minute where it
+touched the ancient and the early mediæval world than as respected
+more recent times, it might be said to cover the whole field of
+history, both civil and ecclesiastical, and became wonderfully full
+and exact when it reached the Renaissance and Reformation periods. It
+included not only the older theology, but modern Biblical criticism.
+It included metaphysics; and not only metaphysics in the more special
+sense, but the abstract side of economics and that philosophy of law
+on which the Germans set so much store. Most of the prominent figures
+who have during the last half-century led the march of inquiry in
+these subjects, men like Ranke and Fustel de Coulanges in history,
+Wilhelm Roscher in economic science, Adolf Harnack in theology, were
+his personal friends, and he could meet them as an equal on their own
+ground. On one occasion I had invited to meet him at dinner the late
+Dr. (afterwards Bishop) Creighton, who was then writing his _History
+of the Popes_, and the late Professor Robertson Smith, the most
+eminent Hebrew and Arabic scholar in Britain. The conversation turned
+first upon the times of Pope Leo the Tenth, and then upon recent
+controversies regarding the dates of the books of the Old Testament,
+and it soon appeared that Lord Acton knew as much about the former as
+Dr. Creighton, and as much about the latter as Robertson Smith. The
+constitutional history of the United States is a topic far removed
+from those philosophical and ecclesiastical or theological lines of
+inquiry to which most of his time had been given; yet he knew it more
+thoroughly than any other living European, at least in England and
+France, for of the Germans I will not venture to speak, and he
+continued to read most of the books of importance dealing with it
+which from time to time were published. So, indeed, he kept abreast of
+nearly all the literature of possible utility bearing on history
+(especially ecclesiastical history) and political theory that appeared
+in Europe or America, reading much which his less diligent or less
+eager friends thought scarcely worthy of his perusal. And it need
+hardly be said that his friends found him an invaluable guide to the
+literature of any subject. In the sphere of history more especially,
+one might safely assume that a book which he did not know was not
+worth knowing, while he was often able to indicate, as being the right
+book to consult, some work of which the person who consulted him,
+albeit not unversed in the subject, had never heard. He had at one
+time four libraries, the largest at his family seat, Aldenham in
+Shropshire, others at Tegern See, at Cannes, and in London; and he
+could usually tell in which of these the particular book he named was
+to be found. Unlike most men who value their libraries, he was fond of
+lending books, and would sometimes put a friend to shame by asking
+some weeks afterwards what the latter thought of the volumes he had
+almost forced on the borrower, and which the borrower had not found
+time to read. After saying this, I need scarcely add that he was not a
+book collector in the usual sense of the word. He did not care for
+rare editions, and still less did he care about bindings.
+
+His Aldenham library was itself a monument of learning and industry.[60]
+In forming it he sought to bring together the books needed for
+tracing and elucidating the growth of formative ideas and of
+institutions in the sphere of ecclesiastical and civil polity, and to
+attain this he made it include not only all the best treatises
+handling these large and complex subjects, but a mass of original
+records bearing as well on the local histories of the cities and
+provinces of such countries as Italy and France as on the general
+history of the great European States and of the Church. This
+magnificent design he accomplished by his own efforts before he was
+forty. What was still more surprising, he had found time to use the
+books. Nearly all of them show by notes pencilled or marks placed in
+them that he had read some part of them, and knew (so far as was needed
+for his purpose) their contents.
+
+Vast as his stores of knowledge were, they were opened only to his few
+intimate friends. It was not merely that he, as Tennyson said of
+Edmund Lushington, "bore all that weight of learning lightly, like a
+flower." No one could have known in general society that he had any
+weight of learning to bear. He seemed to be merely a cultivated and
+agreeable man of the world, interested in letters and politics, but
+disposed rather to listen than to talk. He was sometimes enigmatic
+and "not incapable of casting a pearl of irony in the way of those
+who would mistake it for pebbly fact."[61] A great capacity for
+cynicism remained a capacity only, because joined to a greater
+reverence for virtue. In a large company he seldom put forth the
+fulness of his powers; it was in familiar converse with persons whose
+tastes resembled his own that the extraordinary finesse and polish
+of his mind revealed themselves. His critical taste was not only
+delicate, but exacting; his judgments leaned to the side of severity.
+No one applied a more stringent moral standard to the conduct of men
+in public affairs, whether to-day or in past ages. He insisted upon
+this, in his inaugural lecture at Cambridge, as the historian's first
+duty. "It is," said he, "the office of historical science to maintain
+morality as the sole impartial criterion of men and things." When he
+came to estimate the value of literary work he seemed no less hard
+to satisfy. His ideal, both as respected thoroughness in substance and
+finish in form, was impossibly high, and he noted every failure to
+reach it. No one appreciated merit more cordially. No one spoke
+with warmer admiration of such distinguished historians and
+theologians as the men whom I have just named. But the precision of
+his thinking and the fastidiousness of his taste gave more than a
+tinge of austerity to his judgment. His opinions were peculiarly
+instructive and illuminative to Englishmen, because he was only
+half an Englishman in blood, less than half an Englishman in his
+training and mental habits. He was as much at home in Paris or Berlin
+or Rome as he was in London, speaking the four great languages with
+almost equal facility, and knowing the men who in each of these
+capitals were best worth knowing. He viewed our insular literature
+and politics with the detachment not only of a Roman Catholic
+among Protestants, of a pupil of Döllinger and Roscher among Oxford
+and Cambridge men, but also of a citizen of the world, whose mastery
+of history and philosophy had given him an unusually wide outlook
+over mankind at large.
+
+His interest in the great things, so far from turning him away from
+the small things, seemed to quicken his sense of their significance.
+It was a noteworthy feature of his view of history that he should have
+held that the explanation of most of what has passed in the light is
+to be found in what has passed in the dark. He was always hunting for
+the key to secret chambers, preferring to believe that the grand
+staircase is only for show, and meant to impose upon the multitude,
+while the real action goes on in hidden passages behind. No one knew
+so much of the gossip of the past; no one was more intensely curious
+about the gossip of the present, though in his hands it ceased to be
+gossip and became unwritten history. One was sometimes disposed to
+wonder whether he did not think too much about the backstairs. But he
+had seen a great deal of history in the making.
+
+The passion for acquiring knowledge which his German education had
+fostered ended by becoming a snare to him, because it checked his
+productive powers. Not that learning burdened him, or clogged the
+soaring pinions of his mind. He was master of all he knew. But
+acquisition absorbed so much of his time that little was left for
+literary composition. (Döllinger saw the danger, for he observed that
+if Acton did not write a great book before he reached the age of
+forty, he would never do so.) It made him think that he could not
+write on a subject till he had read everything, or nearly everything,
+that others had written about it. It developed the habit of making
+extracts from the books he read, a habit which took the form of
+accumulating small slips of paper on which these extracts were written
+in his exquisitely neat and regular hand, the slips being arranged in
+cardboard boxes according to their subjects. He had hundreds of these
+boxes; and though much of their contents must no doubt be valuable,
+the time spent in distilling and bottling the essence of the books
+whence they came, might have been better spent in giving to the world
+the ideas which they had helped to evoke in his own mind. If one may
+take the quotations appended to his inaugural lecture as a sample of
+those he had collected, many of them were not exceptionally valuable,
+and did little more than show how the same idea, perhaps no recondite
+one, might be expressed in different words by different persons. When
+one read some article he had written, garnished and even overloaded
+with citations, one often felt that his own part was better, both in
+substance and in form, than the passages which he had culled from his
+predecessors. It becomes daily more than ever true that the secret of
+historical composition is to know what to neglect, since in our time
+it has become impossible to exhaust the literature of most subjects,
+and, as respects the last two centuries, to exhaust even the original
+authorities. Yet how shall one know what to neglect without at least a
+glance of inspection? Acton was unwilling to neglect anything; and his
+ardour for completeness drew him into a policy fit only for one who
+could expect to live three lives of mortal men.
+
+The love of knowledge grew upon him till it became a passion of the
+intellect, a thirst like the thirst for water in a parching desert.
+What he sought to know was not facts only, but facts in their
+relations to principles, facts so disposed and fitly joined together
+as to become the causeway over which the road to truth shall pass. For
+this purpose events were in his view not more important than the
+thoughts of men, because discursive and creative thought was to him
+the ruling factor in history. Hence books must be known--books of
+philosophic creation, books of philosophic reflection, no less than
+those which record what has happened. The danger of this conception is
+that everything men have said or written, as well as everything they
+have done, becomes a possibly significant fact; and thus the search
+for truth becomes endless because the materials are inexhaustible.
+
+He expressed in striking words, prefixed to a list of books suggested
+for a young man's perusal, his view of the aim of a course of
+historical reading. It is "to give force and fulness and clearness and
+sincerity and independence and elevation and generosity and serenity
+to his mind, that he may know the method and law of the process by
+which error is conquered and truth is won, discerning knowledge from
+probability and prejudice from belief, that he may learn to master
+what he rejects as fully as what he adopts, that he may understand the
+origin as well as the strength and vitality of systems and the better
+motive of men who are wrong ... and to steel him against the charm of
+literary beauty and talent."[62]
+
+Neither his passion for facts nor his appreciation of style and form
+made him decline to the right hand or to the left from the true
+position of a historian. He set little store upon what is called
+literary excellence, and would often reply, when questioned as to the
+merits of some book bearing an eminent name, "You need not read it: it
+adds nothing to what we knew." He valued facts only so far as they
+went to establish a principle or explained the course of events. It
+was really not so much in the range of his knowledge as in the
+profundity and precision of his thought that his greatness lay.
+
+His somewhat overstrained conscientiousness, coupled with the
+practically unattainable ideal of finish and form which he set before
+himself, made him less and less disposed to literary production. No
+man of first-rate powers has in our time left so little by which
+posterity may judge those powers. In his early life, when for a time
+he edited the _Home and Foreign Review_, and when he was connected
+with the _Rambler_ and the _North British Review_, he wrote
+frequently; and even between 1868 and 1890 he contributed to the press
+some few historical essays and a number of anonymous letters. But the
+aversion to creative work seemed to grow on him. About 1890 he so far
+yielded to the urgency of a few friends as to promise to reissue a
+number of his essays in a volume, but, after rewriting and polishing
+these essays during several years, he abandoned the scheme altogether.
+In 1882 he had already drawn out a plan for a comprehensive history of
+Liberty. But this plan also he dropped, because the more he read with
+a view to undertaking it the more he wished to read, and the vaster
+did the enterprise seem to loom up before him. With him, as with many
+men who cherish high literary ideals, the Better proved to be the
+enemy of the Good.
+
+Twenty years ago, late at night, in his library at Cannes, he
+expounded to me his view of how such a history of Liberty might be
+written, and in what wise it might be made the central thread of all
+history. He spoke for six or seven minutes only; but he spoke like a
+man inspired, seeming as if, from some mountain summit high in air, he
+saw beneath him the far-winding path of human progress from dim
+Cimmerian shores of prehistoric shadow into the fuller yet broken and
+fitful light of the modern time. The eloquence was splendid, but
+greater than the eloquence was the penetrating vision which discerned
+through all events and in all ages the play of those moral forces, now
+creating, now destroying, always transmuting, which had moulded and
+remoulded institutions, and had given to the human spirit its
+ceaselessly-changing forms of energy. It was as if the whole landscape
+of history had been suddenly lit up by a burst of sunlight. I have
+never heard from any other lips any discourse like this, nor from his
+did I ever hear the like again.
+
+His style suffered in his later days from the abundance of the
+interspersed citations, and from the overfulness and subtlety of the
+thought, which occasionally led to obscurity. But when he handled a
+topic in which learning was not required, his style was clear, pointed
+and incisive, sometimes epigrammatic. Several years ago he wrote in a
+monthly magazine a short article upon a biography of one of his
+contemporaries which showed how admirable a master he was of polished
+diction and penetrating analysis, and made one wish that he had more
+frequently consented to dash off light work in a quick unstudied way.
+
+To the work of a University professor he came too late to acquire the
+art of fluent and forcible oral discourse, nor was the character of
+his mind, with its striving after a flawless exactitude of statement,
+altogether fitted for the function of presenting broad summaries of
+facts to a youthful audience. His predecessor in the Cambridge chair
+of history, Sir John Seeley, with less knowledge, less subtlety, and
+less originality, had in larger measure the gift of oral exposition
+and the power of putting points, whether by speech or by writing, in
+a clear and telling way. No one, indeed, since Macaulay has been a
+better point-putter than Seeley was. But Acton's lectures (read from
+MS.) were models of lucid and stately narrative informed by fulness of
+thought; and they were so delivered as to express the feeling which
+each event had evoked in his own mind. That sternness of character
+which revealed itself in his judgments of men and books never affected
+his relations to his pupils. Precious as his time was, he gave it
+generously, encouraging them to come to him for help and counsel. They
+were awed by the majesty of his learning. Said one of them to me,
+"When Lord Acton answers a question put to him, I feel as if I were
+looking at a pyramid. I see the point of it clear and sharp, but I see
+also the vast subjacent mass of solid knowledge." They perceived,
+moreover, that to him History and Philosophy were not two things but
+one, and perceived that of History as well as of divine Philosophy it
+may be said that she too is "charming, and musical as is Apollo's
+lute." Thus the impression produced in the University by the amplitude
+of Lord Acton's views, by the range of his learning, by the liberality
+of his spirit and his unfailing devotion to truth and to truth alone,
+was deep and fruitful.
+
+When they wished that he had given to the world more of his wisdom,
+his friends did not undervalue a life which was in itself a rare and
+exquisite product of favouring nature and unwearied diligence. They
+only regretted that the influence of his ideas, of his methods, and of
+his spirit, had not been more widely diffused in an enduring form. It
+was as when a plant unknown elsewhere grows on some remote isle where
+ships seldom touch. Few see the beauty of the flower, and here death
+came before the seed could be gathered to be scattered in receptive
+soil.
+
+To most men Lord Acton seemed reserved as well as remote, presenting a
+smooth and shining surface beneath which it was hard to penetrate. He
+avoided publicity and popularity with the tranquil dignity of one for
+whom the world of knowledge and speculation was more than sufficient.
+But he was a loyal friend, affectionate to his intimates, gracious in
+his manners, blameless in all the relations of life. Comparatively few
+of his countrymen knew his name, and those who did thought of him
+chiefly as the confidant of Mr. Gladstone, and as the most remarkable
+instance of a sincere and steadfast Roman Catholic who was a Liberal
+alike in politics and in theology. But those who had been admitted to
+his friendship recognised him as one of the finest intelligences of
+his generation, an unsurpassed, and indeed a scarcely rivalled, master
+of every subject which he touched.
+
+-----
+
+  [60] This library, bought by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, was presented by him
+       to Mr. John Morley, and by the latter to the University of
+       Cambridge.
+
+  [61] The phrase is Professor Maitland's.
+
+  [62] I owe this quotation to a letter of Sir M. E. Grant Duff's
+       published soon after Lord Acton's death.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
+
+
+Of no man who has lived in our times is it so hard to speak in a
+concise and summary fashion as of Mr. Gladstone. For fifty years he
+was so closely associated with the public affairs of his country that
+the record of his parliamentary life is virtually an outline of
+English political history during those years. His activity spread
+itself out over many fields. He was the author of several learned and
+thoughtful books, and of a multitude of articles upon all sorts of
+subjects. He showed himself as eagerly interested in matters of
+classical scholarship and Christian doctrine and ecclesiastical
+history as in questions of national finance and foreign policy. No
+account of him could be complete without reviewing his actions and
+estimating the results of his work in all these directions.
+
+But the difficulty of describing and judging him goes deeper. His was
+a singularly complex nature, whose threads it was hard to unravel.
+His individuality was extremely strong. All that he said or did
+bore its impress. Yet it was an individuality so far from being
+self-consistent as sometimes to seem a bundle of opposite qualities
+capriciously united in a single person. He might with equal truth
+have been called, and he was in fact called, a conservative and a
+revolutionary. He was dangerously impulsive, and had frequently to
+suffer for his impulsiveness; yet he was also not merely prudent and
+cautious, but so astute as to have been accused of craft and
+dissimulation. So great was his respect for tradition that he clung
+to views regarding the authorship of the Homeric poems and the date
+of the books of the Old Testament which nearly all competent
+specialists have now rejected. So bold was he in practical matters
+that he carried through sweeping changes in the British constitution,
+changed the course of English policy in the nearer East, overthrew an
+established church in one part of the United Kingdom, and committed
+himself in principle to the overthrow of two other established
+churches in other parts. He came near to being a Roman Catholic in
+his religious opinions, yet was for the last twenty years of his life
+the trusted leader of the English Protestant Nonconformists and the
+Scottish Presbyterians. No one who knew him intimately doubted his
+conscientious sincerity and earnestness, yet four-fifths of the
+English upper classes were in his later years wont to regard him as
+a self-interested schemer who would sacrifice his country to his
+ambition. Though he loved general principles, and often soared out
+of the sight of his audience when discussing them, he generally
+ended by deciding upon points of detail the question at issue. He
+was at different times of his life the defender and the assailant of
+the same institutions, yet scarcely seemed inconsistent in doing
+opposite things, because his methods and his arguments preserved the
+same type and colour throughout. Those who had at the beginning of
+his career discerned in him the capacity for such diversities and
+contradictions would probably have predicted that they must wreck
+it by making his purposes fluctuating and his course erratic. Such
+a prediction might have proved true of any one with less firmness of
+will and less intensity of temper. It was the persistent heat and
+vehemence of his character, the sustained passion which he threw
+into the pursuit of the object on which he was for the moment bent,
+that fused these dissimilar qualities and made them appear to
+contribute to and increase the total force which he exerted.
+
+The circumstances of Mr. Gladstone's political career help to explain,
+or, at any rate, will furnish occasion for the attempt to explain,
+this complexity and variety of character. But before I come to his
+manhood it is convenient to advert to three conditions whose influence
+on him was profound--the first his Scottish blood, the second his
+Oxford education, the third his apprenticeship to public life under
+Sir Robert Peel.
+
+Theories of character based on race differences are dangerous, because
+they are as hard to test as they are easy to form. Still, we all know
+that there are specific qualities and tendencies usually found in the
+minds of men of certain stocks, just as there are peculiarities in
+their faces or in their speech. Mr. Gladstone was born and brought up
+in Liverpool, and always retained a touch of Lancashire accent. But,
+as he was fond of saying, every drop of blood in his veins was Scotch.
+His father's family belonged to the Scottish Lowlands, and came from
+the neighbourhood of Biggar, in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire, where
+the ruined walls of Gledstanes[63]--"the kite's rock"--may still be
+seen. His mother was of Highland extraction, by name Robertson, from
+Dingwall, in Ross-shire. Thus he was not only a Scot, but a Scot with
+a strong infusion of the Celtic element, the element whence the Scotch
+derive most of what distinguishes them from the northern English. The
+Scot is more excitable, more easily brought to a glow of passion, more
+apt to be eagerly absorbed in one thing at a time. He is also more
+fond of exerting his intellect on abstractions. It is not merely that
+the taste for metaphysical theology is commoner in Scotland than in
+England, but that the Scotch have a stronger relish for general
+principles. They like to set out by ascertaining and defining such
+principles, and then to pursue a series of logical deductions from
+them. They are, therefore, bolder reasoners than the English, less
+content to remain in the region of concrete facts, more prone to throw
+themselves into the construction of a body of speculative doctrine.
+The Englishman is apt to plume himself on being right in spite of
+logic; the Scotchman likes to think that it is through logic he has
+reached his results, and that he can by logic defend them. These are
+qualities which Mr. Gladstone drew from his Scottish blood. He had a
+keen enjoyment of the processes of dialectic. He loved to get hold of
+an abstract principle and to derive all sorts of conclusions from it.
+He was wont to begin the discussion of a question by laying down two
+or three sweeping propositions covering the subject as a whole, and
+would then proceed to draw from these others which he could apply to
+the particular matter in hand. His well-stored memory and boundless
+ingenuity made the discovery of such general propositions so easy a
+task that a method in itself agreeable sometimes appeared to be
+carried to excess. He frequently arrived at conclusions which the
+judgment of the common-sense auditor did not approve, because,
+although they seemed to have been legitimately deduced from the
+general principles just enunciated, they were somehow at variance with
+the plain teaching of the facts. At such moments one felt that the man
+who was fascinating but perplexing Englishmen by his subtlety was not
+himself an Englishman in mental quality, but had the love for
+abstractions and refinements and dialectical analysis which
+characterises the Scotch intellect. He had also a large measure of
+that warmth and vehemence, called in the sixteenth century the
+_perfervidum ingenium Scotorum_, which belong to the Scottish
+temperament, and particularly to the Celtic Scot. He kindled quickly,
+and when kindled, he shot forth a strong and brilliant flame. To any
+one with less power of self-control such intensity of emotion as he
+frequently showed would have been dangerous; nor did this excitability
+fail, even with him, to prompt words and acts which a cooler judgment
+would have disapproved. But it gave that spontaneity which was one of
+the charms of his nature; it produced that impression of profound
+earnestness and of resistless force which raised him out of the rank
+of ordinary statesmen. The rush of emotion swelling fast and full
+seemed to turn the whole stream of intellectual effort into whatever
+channel lay at the moment nearest.
+
+With these Scottish qualities, Mr. Gladstone was brought up at school
+and college (Eton and Christ Church) among Englishmen, and received at
+Oxford, then lately awakened from a long torpor, a bias and tendency
+which never thereafter ceased to affect him. The so-called "Oxford
+Movement," which afterwards obtained the name of Tractarianism and
+carried Newman and Manning, together with other less famous leaders,
+on to Rome, had not yet, in 1831, when Mr. Gladstone obtained his
+degree with double first-class honours, taken visible shape, or
+become, so to speak, conscious of its own purposes. But its doctrinal
+views, its peculiar vein of religious sentiment, its respect for
+antiquity and tradition, its proneness to casuistry, its taste for
+symbolism, were already in the air as influences working on the more
+susceptible of the younger minds. On Mr. Gladstone they told with full
+force. He became, and never ceased to be, not merely a High-churchman,
+but what may be called an Anglo-Catholic, in his theology, deferential
+not only to ecclesiastical tradition, but to the living voice of the
+Visible Church, revering the priesthood as the recipients (if duly
+ordained) of a special grace and peculiar powers, attaching great
+importance to the sacraments, feeling himself nearer to the Church of
+Rome, despite what he deemed her corruptions, than to any of the
+non-Episcopal Protestant churches. Henceforth his interests in life
+were as much ecclesiastical as political. For a time he desired to be
+ordained a clergyman. Had this wish, abandoned in deference to his
+father's advice, been carried out, he must eventually have become a
+leading figure in the Church of England and have sensibly affected her
+recent history. The later stages in his career drew him away from the
+main current of political opinion within that church. He who had been
+the strongest advocate of the principle of the State establishment of
+religion came to be the chief actor in the disestablishment of the
+Protestant Episcopal Church in Ireland, and a supporter of the policy
+of disestablishment in Scotland and in Wales. But the colour which
+these Oxford years gave to his mind and thoughts was never effaced.
+While they widened the range of his interests and deepened his moral
+earnestness, they at the same time confirmed his natural bent toward
+over-subtle distinctions and fine-drawn reasonings, and put him out of
+sympathy not only with the attitude of the average Englishman, who is
+essentially a Protestant--that is to say, averse to sacerdotalism, and
+suspicious of any other religious authority than that of the Bible and
+the individual conscience--but also with two of the strongest
+influences of our time, the influence of the sciences of nature, and
+the influence of historical criticism. Mr. Gladstone, though too wise
+to rail at science, as many religious men did till within the last
+few years, could never quite reconcile himself either to the
+conclusions of geology and zoology regarding the history of the
+physical world and the creatures which inhabit it, or to modern
+methods of critical inquiry as applied to Scripture and to ancient
+literature generally. The training which Oxford then gave, stimulating
+as it was, and free from the modern error of over-specialisation, was
+defective in omitting the experimental sciences, and in laying undue
+stress upon the study of language. A proneness to dwell on verbal
+distinctions and to trust overmuch to the analysis of terms as a means
+of reaching the truth of things is noticeable in many eminent Oxford
+writers of that and the next succeeding generation--some of them, like
+the illustrious F. D. Maurice, far removed from Cardinal Newman and
+Mr. Gladstone in theological opinion.
+
+When, bringing with him a brilliant University reputation, he
+entered the House of Commons at the age of twenty-three, Sir Robert
+Peel was leading the Tory party with an authority and ability rarely
+surpassed in the annals of parliament. Within two years the young man
+was admitted into the short-lived Tory ministry of 1834, and soon
+proved himself a promising lieutenant of the experienced chief.
+Peel was an eminently wary man, alive to the necessity of watching
+the signs of the times, of studying and interpreting the changeful
+phases of public opinion. Yet he always kept his own counsel. Even
+when he perceived that the policy he had hitherto followed would
+need to be modified, Peel continued to use guarded language and did
+not publicly commit himself to change till it was plain that the
+fitting moment had arrived. He was, moreover, a master of detail,
+slow to propound a plan until he had seen how its outlines were to
+be filled up by appropriate devices for carrying it out in practice.
+These qualities and habits of the minister profoundly affected his
+disciple. They became part of the texture of Mr. Gladstone's
+political character, and in his case, as in that of Peel, they
+sometimes brought censure upon him, as having locked up too long
+within his breast views or purposes which he thought it unwise to
+disclose till effect could be forthwith given to them. Such
+reserve, such a guarded attitude and tenderness for existing
+institutions, may have been not altogether natural to Mr. Gladstone's
+mind, but due partly to the influence of Peel, partly to the
+tendency to hold by tradition and the established order which
+reverence for Christian antiquity and faith in the dogmatic teachings
+of the Church had planted deep in his soul. The contrast between Mr.
+Gladstone's caution and respect for facts on the one hand, and his
+reforming fervour on the other, like the contrast which ultimately
+appeared between his sacerdotal tendencies and his political
+liberalism, contributed to make his character perplexing and to
+expose his conduct to the charge of inconsistency. Inconsistent,
+in the proper sense of the word, he was not, much less changeable.
+He was really, in his fundamental convictions and the main habits of
+his mind, one of the most tenacious and persistent of men. But there
+were always at work in him two tendencies. One was the speculative
+desire to probe everything to the bottom, to try it by the light of
+general principles and logic, and when it failed to stand this
+test, to reject it. The other was the sense of the complexity of
+existing social and political arrangements, and of the risk of
+disturbing any one part of them until the time had arrived for
+resettling other parts also. Every statesman feels both these sides
+to every concrete question of reform. No one has set them forth more
+cogently, and in particular no one has more earnestly dwelt on the
+necessity for the latter side, than the most profound thinker among
+British statesmen, Edmund Burke. When Mr. Gladstone stated either side
+with his incomparable force, people forgot that there was another
+side which would be no less vividly present to him at some other
+moment. He was not only, like all successful parliamentarians,
+necessarily something of an opportunist, though perhaps less so than
+his master, but was moved by emotion more than most statesmen, and
+certainly more than Peel. The relative strength with which the need
+for drastic reform or the need for watchful conservatism, as the
+case might be, presented itself to his mind depended largely upon the
+weight which his emotions cast into one or other scale, and this
+emotional element made it difficult to forecast his course. Thus
+his action in public life was the result of influences differing
+widely in their origin, influences, moreover, which could be duly
+appreciated only by those who knew him intimately.
+
+Whoever has followed his political career has been struck by the sharp
+divergence of the views entertained by his fellow-countrymen about one
+who had been for so long a period under their observation. That he was
+possessed of boundless energy and brilliant eloquence all agreed. But
+agreement went no further. One section of the nation accused him of
+sophistry, of unwisdom, of a want of patriotism, of a lust for power.
+The other section not only repelled these charges, but admired in him
+a conscientiousness and a moral enthusiasm such as no political leader
+had shown for centuries. When the qualities of his mind and the
+aptitudes for politics which he showed have been briefly examined, it
+will be fitting to return to these divergent views of his character,
+and endeavour to discover which of them contains the larger measure of
+truth. Meantime let it suffice to say that among the reasons that led
+men to misjudge him, this union in one person of opposite qualities
+was the chief. He was rather two men than one. Passionate and
+impulsive on the emotional side of his nature, he was cautious and
+conservative on the intellectual. Few understood the conjunction;
+still fewer saw how much of what was perplexing in his conduct it
+explained.
+
+Mr. Gladstone sat for sixty-three years (1833-1895) in Parliament, was
+for twenty-eight years (1866-1894) the leader of his party, and was
+four times Prime Minister. He began as a high Tory, remained about
+fifteen years in that camp, was then led by the split between Peel and
+the Protectionists to take up an intermediate position, and finally
+was forced to cast in his lot with the Liberals, for in England, as in
+America, third parties seldom endure. No parliamentary career in
+English annals is comparable to his for its length and variety; and of
+those who saw its close in the House of Commons, there was only one
+man, Mr. Villiers (who died in January 1898), who could remember its
+beginning. Mr. Gladstone had been opposed in 1833 to men who might
+have been his grandfathers; he was opposed in 1894 to men who might
+have been his grandchildren. It is no part of my design to describe or
+comment on the events of such a life. All that can be done here is to
+indicate the more salient characteristics which a study of his career
+as a statesman and a parliamentarian sets before us.
+
+The most remarkable of these characteristics was the openness,
+freshness, and eagerness of mind which he preserved down to the end of
+his life. Most men form few new opinions after thirty-five, just as
+they form few new intimacies. Intellectual curiosity may remain even
+after fifty, but its range narrows as a man abandons the hope of
+attaining any thorough knowledge of subjects other than those which
+make the main business of his life. It is impossible to follow the
+progress of all the new ideas that are set afloat in the world,
+impossible to be always examining the foundations of one's political
+or religious beliefs. Repeated disappointments and disillusionments
+make a man expect less from changes the older he grows; while
+indolence deters him from entering upon new enterprises. None of these
+causes seemed to affect Mr. Gladstone. He was as much excited over a
+new book (such as Cardinal Manning's Life) at eighty-four as when at
+fourteen he insisted on compelling little Arthur Stanley (afterwards
+Dean of Westminster, and then aged nine) forthwith to procure and
+study Gray's poems, which he had just perused himself. His reading
+covered almost the whole field of literature, except physical and
+mathematical science. While frequently declaring that he must confine
+his political thinking and leadership to a few subjects, he was so
+observant of current events that the course of talk brought up
+scarcely any topic in which he did not seem to know what was the
+latest thing that had been said or done. Neither the lassitude nor the
+prejudices that usually accompany old age prevented him from giving a
+fair consideration to any new doctrines. But though his intellect was
+restlessly at work, and though his curiosity disposed him to relish
+novelties, except in theology, that bottom rock in his mind of caution
+and reserve, which has already been referred to, made him refuse to
+part with old views even when he was beginning to accept new ones. He
+allowed both to "lie on the table" together, and while declaring
+himself open to conviction, felt it safer to speak and act on the old
+lines till the process of conviction had been completed. It took
+fourteen years, from 1846 to 1860, to carry him from the Conservative
+into the Liberal camp. It took five stormy years to bring him round to
+Irish Home Rule, though his mind was constantly occupied with the
+subject from 1880 to 1885, and those who watched him closely saw that
+the process had advanced a long way even in 1882. And as regards
+ecclesiastical establishments, having written a book in 1838 as a warm
+advocate of State churches, it was not till 1867 that he adopted the
+policy of disestablishment for Ireland, not till 1890 that he
+declared himself ready to apply that policy in Wales and Scotland
+also.
+
+Both these qualities--his disposition to revise his opinions in the
+light of new arguments and changing conditions, and the silence he
+maintained till the process of revision had been completed--exposed
+him to misconstruction. Commonplace men, unwont to give serious
+scrutiny to their opinions, ascribed his changes to self-interest, or
+at best regarded them as the index of an unstable purpose. Dull men
+could not understand why he should have forborne to set forth all that
+was passing in his mind, and saw little difference between reticence
+and dishonesty. In so far as they shook public confidence, these
+characteristics injured him in his statesman's work. Yet the loss was
+outweighed by the gain. In a country where opinion is active and
+changeful, where the economic conditions that legislation has to deal
+with are in a state of perpetual flux, where the balance of power
+between the upper, the middle, and the poorer classes has been swiftly
+altering during the last seventy years, no statesman can continue to
+serve the public if he adheres obstinately to the doctrines with which
+he started in life. He must--unless, of course, he stands aloof in
+permanent isolation--either subordinate his own views to the general
+sentiment of his party, and be driven to advocate courses he secretly
+mislikes, or else, holding himself ready to quit his party, if need
+be, must be willing to learn from events, and to reconsider his
+opinions in the light of emergent tendencies and insistent facts. Mr.
+Gladstone's pride as well as his conscience forbade the former
+alternative; it was fortunate that the tireless activity of his
+intellect made the latter natural to him. He was accustomed to say
+that the capital fault of his earlier days had been his failure
+adequately to recognise the worth and power of liberty, and the
+tendency which things have to work out for good when left to
+themselves. The application of this principle gave room for many
+developments, and many developments there were. He may have shown less
+than was needed of that prescience which is, after integrity and
+courage, the highest gift of a statesman, but which can seldom be
+expected from an English minister, too engrossed to find time for the
+patient reflection from which alone sound forecasts can issue. But he
+had the next best quality, that of remaining accessible to new ideas
+and learning from the events which passed under his eyes.
+
+With this openness and flexibility of mind there went a not less
+remarkable ingenuity and resourcefulness. Fertile in expedients, he
+was still more fertile in reasonings by which to recommend the
+expedients. The gift had its dangers, for he was apt to be carried
+away by the dexterity of his own dialectic, and to think that a
+scheme must be sound in whose support he could muster a formidable
+array of arguments. He never seemed at a loss, in public or in
+private, for a criticism, or for an answer to the criticisms of
+others. If his power of adapting his own mind to the minds of those
+whom he had to convince had been equal to the skill and swiftness with
+which he accumulated a mass of matter persuasive to those who looked
+at things in his own way, no one would have exercised so complete a
+control over the political opinion of his time. But his intellect
+lacked this power of adaptation. It moved on lines of its own, which
+were often misconceived, even by those who sought to follow him
+loyally. Thus, as already observed, he was blamed for two opposite
+faults. Some, pointing to the fact that he had frequently altered his
+views, denounced him as a demagogue profuse of promises, ready to
+propose whatever he thought likely to catch the people's ear. Others
+complained that there was no knowing where to have him; that he had an
+erratic mind, whose currents ran underground and came to the surface
+in unexpected places; that he did not consult his party, but followed
+his own impulses; that his guidance was unsafe because his decisions
+were unpredictable. Much of the suspicion with which he was regarded,
+especially after 1885, arose from this view of his character.
+
+It was an unfair view, yet nearer to the truth than that which charged
+him with seeking to flatter and follow the people. No great popular
+leader had in him less of the demagogue. He saw, of course, that a
+statesman cannot oppose the general will beyond a certain point, and
+may have to humour it in small things that he may direct it in great
+ones. He was obliged, as others have been, to take up and settle
+questions he deemed unimportant because they were troubling the body
+politic. Now and then, in his later days, he so far yielded to his
+party advisers as to express his approval of proposals in which his
+own interest was slight. But he was ever a leader, not a follower, and
+erred rather in not keeping his finger closely and constantly upon the
+pulse of public opinion. In this point, at least, one may discover in
+him a likeness to Disraeli. Slow as he was in maturing his opinions,
+Mr. Gladstone was liable to forget that the minds of his followers
+might not be moving along with his own, and hence his decisions
+sometimes took his party as well as the nation by surprise. But he was
+too self-absorbed, too eagerly interested in the ideas that suited his
+own cast of thought, to be able to watch and gauge the tendencies of
+the multitude. The three most remarkable instances in which his new
+departures startled the world were his declarations against the Irish
+Church establishment in 1867, against the Turks and the traditional
+English policy of supporting them in 1876, and in favour of Irish Home
+Rule in 1886, and in none of these did any popular demand suggest his
+pronouncement. It was the masses who took their view from him, not he
+who took a mandate from the masses. In each of these cases he may,
+perhaps, be blamed for not having sooner perceived, or at any rate for
+not having sooner announced, the need for a change of policy. But it
+was very characteristic of him not to give the full strength of his
+mind to a question till he felt that it pressed for a solution. Those
+who listened to his private talk were scarcely more struck by the
+range of his vision than by his unwillingness to commit himself on
+matters whose decision he could postpone. Reticence and caution were
+sometimes carried too far, not merely because they exposed him to
+misconstruction, but because they withheld from his party the guidance
+it needed. This was true in the three instances just mentioned; and in
+the last of them it is possible that earlier and fuller communications
+might have averted the separation of some of his former colleagues.
+Nor did he always rightly divine the popular mind. His proposal (in
+1874) to extinguish the income-tax fell completely flat, because the
+nation was becoming indifferent to that economy in public expenditure
+which both parties had in the days of Peel and Lord John Russell vied
+in demanding. Cherishing his old financial ideals, Mr. Gladstone had
+not marked the change. So he failed to perceive how much the credit of
+his party was suffering (after 1871) from the belief of large sections
+of the people, that he was indifferent to the interests of England
+outside England. Perhaps, knowing the charge of indifference to be
+groundless, he underrated the effect which the iteration of it
+produced: perhaps his pride would not let him stoop to dissipate it.
+
+Though the power of reading the signs of the times and swaying the
+mind of the nation may be now more essential to an English statesman
+than the skill which manages a legislature or holds together a
+cabinet, that skill counts for much, and must continue to do so while
+the House of Commons remains the governing authority of the country. A
+man can hardly reach high place, and certainly cannot retain high
+place, without possessing this kind of art. Mr. Gladstone was at one
+time thought to want it. In 1864, when Lord Palmerston's end was
+approaching, and Mr. Gladstone had shown himself the strongest man
+among the Liberal ministers in the House of Commons, people speculated
+about the succession to the headship of the party; and the wiseacres
+of the day were never tired of repeating that Mr. Gladstone could not
+possibly lead the House of Commons. He wanted tact, they said, he was
+too excitable, too impulsive, too much absorbed in his own ideas, too
+unversed in the arts by which individuals are conciliated. But when,
+after twenty-five years of his unquestioned reign, the time for his
+own departure drew nigh, men asked how the Liberal party in the House
+of Commons would ever hold together after it had lost a leader of such
+consummate capacity. The Whig critics of 1864 had grown so accustomed
+to Palmerston's way of handling the House as to forget that a man
+might succeed by quite different methods, and that defects, serious in
+themselves, may be outweighed by transcendent merits.
+
+Mr. Gladstone had the defects ascribed to him. His impulsiveness
+sometimes betrayed him into declarations which a cooler reflection
+would have dissuaded. The second reading of the Irish Home Rule Bill
+of 1886 might possibly have been carried had he not been goaded by his
+opponents into words which were construed as recalling or modifying
+the concessions he had announced at a meeting of the Liberal party
+held just before. More than once precious time was wasted because
+antagonists, knowing his excitable temper, brought on discussions with
+the sole object of annoying him and drawing from him some hasty
+deliverance. Nor was he an adept, like Disraeli and Disraeli's famous
+Canadian imitator, Sir John A. Macdonald, in the management of
+individuals. His aversion for the meaner side of human nature made him
+refuse to play upon it. Many of the pursuits, and most of the
+pleasures, which attract ordinary men had no interest for him, so that
+much of the common ground on which men meet was closed to him. He was,
+moreover, too constantly engrossed by the subjects he loved, and by
+enterprises which specially appealed to him, to have leisure for the
+lighter but often vitally important devices of political strategy. I
+remember hearing, soon after 1870, how Mr. Delane, then editor of the
+_Times_, had been invited to meet the Prime Minister at a moment when
+the support of that newspaper would have been specially valuable to
+the Liberal Government. Instead of using the opportunity in the way
+that had been intended, Mr. Gladstone dilated during the whole time of
+dinner upon the approaching exhaustion of the English coal-beds, to
+the surprise of the company and the unconcealed annoyance of the
+powerful guest. It was the subject then uppermost in his mind, and he
+either forgot, or disdained, to conciliate Mr. Delane. Good nature as
+well as good sense made him avoid giving offence by personal
+reflections in debate, and he usually suffered fools if not, like St.
+Paul's converts, gladly, yet patiently.[64] In the House of Commons he
+was entirely free from airs, and, indeed, from any assumption of
+superiority. The youngest member might accost him in the lobby and be
+listened to with perfect courtesy. But he had a bad memory for faces,
+seldom addressed any one outside the circle of his personal friends,
+and more than once made enemies by omitting to notice and show
+attention to recruits who, having been eminent in their own towns,
+expected to be made much of when they entered Parliament. Having
+himself plenty of pride and comparatively little vanity, he never
+realised the extent to which, and the cheapness with which, men can be
+captured and used through their vanity. Adherents were sometimes
+turned into dangerous foes because his preoccupation with graver
+matters dimmed his sense of what may be done to win support by the
+minor arts, such as an invitation to dinner or even a seasonable
+compliment. And his mind, flexible as it was in seizing new points of
+view and devising expedients to meet new circumstances, did not easily
+enter into the characters of other men. Ideas and causes interested
+him more than did personal traits; his sympathy was keener and
+stronger for the sufferings of nations or masses of men than with the
+fortunes of an individual man. With all his accessibility and
+kindliness, he was at bottom chary of real friendship, while the
+circle of his intimates became constantly smaller with advancing
+years. So it befell that though his popularity among the general body
+of his adherents went on increasing, and the admiration of his
+parliamentary followers remained undiminished, he had in the House of
+Commons few personal friends who linked him to the party at large, and
+rendered to him those confidential services which count for much in
+keeping all sections in hearty accord and enabling the commander to
+gauge the sentiment of his troops.
+
+Of parliamentary strategy in that larger sense, which covers
+familiarity with parliamentary forms and usages, care and judgment in
+arranging the business of the House, the power of seizing a
+parliamentary situation and knowing how to deal with it, the art of
+guiding a debate and choosing the right moment for reserve and for
+openness, for a dignified retreat, for a watchful defence, for a
+sudden rattling charge upon the enemy--of all this no one had a fuller
+mastery. His recollection of precedents was unrivalled, for it began
+in 1833 with the first reformed Parliament, and it seemed as fresh for
+those remote days as for last month. He enjoyed combat for its own
+sake, not so much from inborn pugnacity, for he was not disputatious
+in ordinary conversation, as because it called out his fighting force
+and stimulated his whole nature. "I am never nervous in reply," he
+once said, "though I am sometimes nervous in opening a debate." No one
+could be more tactful or adroit when a crisis arrived whose gravity he
+had foreseen. In the summer of 1881 the House of Lords made some
+amendments to the Irish Land Bill which were deemed ruinous to the
+working of the measure, and therewith to the prospects of the
+pacification of Ireland. A conflict was expected which might have
+strained the fabric of the constitution. The excitement which quickly
+arose in Parliament spread to the nation. Mr. Gladstone alone remained
+calm and confident. He devised a series of compromises, which he
+advocated in conciliatory speeches. He so played his game that by a
+few minor concessions he secured nearly all the points he cared for,
+and, while sparing the dignity of the Lords, steered his bill
+triumphantly out of the breakers which had threatened to engulf it.
+Very different was his ordinary demeanour in debate when he was off
+his guard. His face and gestures while he sat in the House of Commons
+listening to an opponent would express all the emotions that crossed
+his mind. He would follow every sentence as a hawk follows the
+movements of a small bird, would sometimes contradict half aloud,
+sometimes turn to his next neighbour to vent his displeasure at the
+groundless allegations or fallacious arguments he was listening to,
+till at last, like a hunting leopard loosed from the leash, he would
+spring to his feet and deliver a passionate reply. His warmth would
+often be in excess of what the occasion required, and quite
+disproportioned to the importance of his antagonist. It was in fact
+the unimportance of the occasion that made him thus yield to his
+feeling. As soon as he saw that bad weather was coming, and careful
+seamanship wanted, his coolness returned, his language became
+measured, while passion, though it might increase the force of his
+oratory, never made him deviate a hand's breadth from the course he
+had chosen. The Celtic heat subsided, and the shrewd self-control of
+the Lowland Scot regained command.
+
+It was by oratory that Mr. Gladstone rose to fame and power, as,
+indeed, by it most English statesmen have risen, save those to whom
+wealth and rank and family connections used to give a sort of
+presumptive claim to high office, like the Cavendishes and the
+Russells, the Bentincks and the Cecils. And for many years, during
+which Mr. Gladstone was suspected as a statesman because, while he had
+ceased to be a Tory, he had not fully become a Liberal, his eloquence
+was the main, one might almost say the sole, source of his influence.
+Oratory was a power in English politics even a century and a half ago,
+as the career of the elder Pitt shows. During the last seventy years,
+years which have seen the power of rank and family connections
+decline, it has, although less cultivated as a fine art, continued to
+be almost essential to the highest success, and it still brings a man
+quickly to the front, though it will not keep him there should he
+prove to want the other branches of statesmanlike capacity.
+
+The permanent reputation of an orator depends upon two things, the
+witness of contemporaries to the impression produced upon them, and
+the written or printed record of his speeches. Few are the famous
+speakers who would be famous if they were tried by this latter test
+alone, and Mr. Gladstone was not one of them. It is only by a rare
+combination of gifts that one who speaks with so much force and
+brilliance as to charm his listeners is also able to deliver thoughts
+so valuable in words so choice that posterity will read them as
+literature. Some of the ancient orators did this; but we seldom know
+how far those of their speeches which have been preserved are the
+speeches which they actually delivered. Among moderns, a few French
+preachers, Edmund Burke, Macaulay, and Daniel Webster are perhaps the
+only speakers whose discourses have passed into classics and find new
+generations of readers.[65] Twenty years hence Mr. Gladstone's will
+not be read, except, of course, by historians. Indeed, they ceased to
+be read even in his lifetime. They are too long, too diffuse, too
+minute in their handling of details, too elaborately qualified in
+their enunciation of general principles. They contain few epigrams and
+few of those weighty thoughts put into telling phrases which the
+Greeks called +gnômai+. The style, in short, is not sufficiently rich
+or polished to give an enduring interest to matter whose practical
+importance has vanished. The same oblivion has overtaken all but a few
+of the best speeches (or parts of speeches) of Grattan, Sheridan,
+Pitt, Fox, Erskine, Canning, Plunket, Brougham, Peel, Bright. It may,
+indeed, be said--and the examples of Burke and Macaulay show that this
+is no paradox--that the speakers whom posterity most enjoys are rarely
+those who most affected the audiences that listened to them.[66]
+
+If, on the other hand, Mr. Gladstone be judged by the impression he
+made on his own time, his place will be high in the front rank. His
+speeches were neither so concisely telling as Mr. Bright's nor so
+finished in diction; but no other man among his contemporaries--neither
+Lord Derby nor Mr. Lowe, nor Lord Beaconsfield nor Lord Cairns, nor
+Bishop Wilberforce nor Bishop Magee--taken all round, could be ranked
+beside him. And he rose superior to Mr. Bright himself in readiness,
+in variety of knowledge, in persuasive ingenuity. Mr. Bright spoke
+seldom and required time for preparation. Admirable in the breadth and
+force with which he set forth his own position, or denounced that of
+his adversaries, he was not equally qualified for instructing nor
+equally apt at persuading. Mr. Gladstone could both instruct and
+persuade, could stimulate his friends and demolish his opponents, and
+could do all these things at an hour's notice, so vast and well
+ordered was the arsenal of his mind. Pitt was superb in an expository
+or argumentative speech, but his stately periods lacked variety. Fox,
+incomparable in reply, was hesitating and confused when he had to state
+his case in cold blood. Mr. Gladstone showed as much fire in winding
+up a debate as skill in opening it.
+
+His oratory had, indeed, two faults. It wanted concentration, and it
+wanted definition. There were too many words, and the conclusion was
+sometimes left vague because the arguments had been too nicely
+balanced. I once heard Mr. Cobden say: "I always listen to Mr.
+Gladstone with pleasure and admiration, but I sometimes have to ask
+myself, when he has sat down, 'What after all was it that he meant,
+and what practical course does he recommend?'" These faults were
+balanced by conspicuous merits. There was a lively imagination, which
+enabled him to relieve even dull matter by pleasing figures, together
+with a large command of quotations and illustrations. There were
+powers of sarcasm, powers, however, which he rarely used, preferring
+the summer lightning of banter to the thunderbolts of invective. There
+was admirable lucidity and accuracy in exposition. There was art in
+the disposition and marshalling of his arguments, and finally--a gift
+now almost lost in England--there was a delightful variety and grace
+of appropriate gesture. But above and beyond everything else which
+enthralled the listener, there stood out four qualities. Two of them
+were merits of substance--inventiveness and elevation; two were merits
+of delivery--force in the manner, expressive modulation in the voice.
+
+No one showed such swift resourcefulness in debate. His readiness, not
+only at catching a point, but at making the most of it on a moment's
+notice, was amazing. Some one would lean over the back of the bench he
+sat on and show a paper or whisper a sentence to him. Apprehending the
+bearings at a glance, he would take the bare fact and so shape and
+develop it, like a potter moulding a bowl on the wheel out of a lump
+of clay, that it grew into a cogent argument or a happy illustration
+under the eye of the audience, and seemed all the more telling because
+it had not been originally a part of his case. Even in the last three
+years of his parliamentary life, when his sight had so failed that he
+read nothing, printed or written, except what it was absolutely
+necessary to read, and when his deafness had so increased that he did
+not hear half of what was said in debate, it was sufficient for a
+colleague to say into the better ear a few words explaining how the
+matter at issue stood, and he would rise to his feet and extemporise a
+long and ingenious argument, or retreat with dexterous grace from a
+position which the course of the discussion or the private warning of
+the Whips had shown to be untenable. Never was he seen at a loss
+either to meet a new point raised by an adversary or to make the best
+of an unexpected incident. Sometimes he would amuse himself by drawing
+a cheer or a contradiction from his opponents, and would then suddenly
+turn round and use this hasty expression of their opinion as the basis
+for a fresh argument of his own. Loving conflict, he loved debate,
+and, so far from being confused or worried by the strain conflict put
+upon him, his physical health was strengthened and his faculties were
+roused to higher efficiency by having to prepare and deliver a great
+speech. He had the rare faculty of thinking ahead while he was
+speaking, and could, while pouring forth a stream of glittering
+sentences, be at the same time (as one saw by watching his eye)
+composing an argument to be delivered five or ten minutes later. Once,
+at a very critical moment, when he was defending a great measure
+against the amendment--moved by a nominal supporter of his own--which
+proved fatal to it, a friend suddenly reminded him of an incident in
+the career of the mover which might be effectively used against him.
+When Mr. Gladstone sat down after delivering an impassioned speech, in
+the course of which he had several times approached and then sheered
+off from the incident, he turned round to the friend and said, "I was
+thinking all the time I was speaking whether I could properly use
+against ---- what you told me, but concluded, on the whole, that it
+would be too hard on him."
+
+The weakness of his eloquence sprang from its supersubtlety and
+superabundance. He was prone to fine distinctions. He multiplied
+arguments when it would have been better to rely upon two or three of
+the strongest. And he was sometimes so intent on refuting the
+particular adversaries opposed to him, and persuading the particular
+audience before him, that he forgot to address his reasonings to the
+public beyond the House, and make them equally applicable and equally
+convincing to the readers of next morning.
+
+As dignity is one of the rarest qualities in literature, so elevation
+is one of the rarest in oratory. It is a quality easier to feel than
+to analyse. One may call it a power of ennobling ordinary things by
+showing their relation to great things, by pouring high emotions round
+them, by bringing the worthier motives of human conduct to bear upon
+them, by touching them with the light of poetry. Ambitious writers and
+speakers strain after effects of this kind; but they are effects which
+study and straining cannot ensure. Vainly do most men flap their wings
+in the effort to soar; if they succeed in rising from the ground it is
+because some unusually strong burst of feeling makes them for the
+moment better than themselves. In Mr. Gladstone the capacity for
+feeling was at all times so strong, and the susceptibility of the
+imagination so keen, that he soared without effort. His vision seemed
+to take in the whole landscape. The points actually in question might
+be small, but the principles involved were to him far-reaching. The
+contests of to-day were ennobled by the effect they might have in a
+still distant future. There are rhetoricians skilful in playing by
+words and manner on every chord of human nature, rhetoricians who move
+you, and may even carry you away for the moment, but whose sincerity
+is doubted, because the sense of spontaneity is lacking. Mr. Gladstone
+was not of these. He never seemed to be forcing an effect or assuming
+a sentiment. To listen to him was to feel convinced of his own
+conviction and to be warmed by the warmth with which he expressed it.
+Nor was this due to the perfection of his rhetorical art. He really
+did feel what he expressed. Sometimes, of course, like all statesmen,
+he had to maintain a cause whose weakness he perceived, as, for
+instance, when it became necessary to defend the blunder of a
+colleague, or a decision reached by some Cabinet compromise which his
+own judgment disapproved. But even in such cases he did not simulate
+feeling, but reserved his earnestness for those parts of the case on
+which it could be honestly expended. As this was generally true of the
+imaginative and emotional side of his eloquence, so was it especially
+true of his unequalled power of lifting a subject from the level on
+which other speakers had treated it into the purer air of permanent
+principle, perhaps even of moral sublimity.
+
+The dignity and spontaneity which marked the substance of his speeches
+was no less conspicuous in their delivery. Nothing could be more easy
+and graceful than his manner on ordinary occasions, nothing more grave
+and stately than it became when he was making a ceremonial reference
+to some public event or bestowing a meed of praise on the departed.
+His expository discourses, such as those with which he introduced a
+complicated bill or unfolded a financial statement, were models of
+their kind, not only for lucidity, but for the pleasant smoothness,
+never lapsing into monotony, with which the stream of speech flowed
+from his lips. The task was performed so well that people thought it
+an easy task till they saw how inferior were the performances of two
+subsequent chancellors of the exchequer so able in their respective
+ways as Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Lowe. But when an occasion
+arrived which quickened men's pulses in the House of Commons, a place
+where feeling rises as suddenly as do the waves of a Highland loch
+when a squall comes rushing down the glen, the vehemence of his
+feeling found expression in the fire of his eye and the resistless
+strength of his words. His utterance did not grow swifter, nor did the
+key of his voice rise, as passion raises and sharpens the voice in
+most men. But the measured force with which every sentence was
+launched, like a shell hurtling through the air, the concentrated
+intensity of his look, as he defied antagonists in front and swept his
+glance over the ranks of his supporters around and behind him, had a
+startling and thrilling power which no other Englishman could exert,
+and which no Englishman had exerted since the days of Pitt and Fox.
+The whole proud, bold, ardent nature of the man seemed to flash out,
+and one almost forgot what the lips said in admiration of the
+towering personality.
+
+People who read next day the report in the newspapers of a speech
+delivered on such an occasion could not comprehend the impression
+it had made on the listeners. "What was there in it so to stir you?"
+they asked. They had not seen the glance and the gestures; they
+had not heard the vibrating voice rise to an organ peal of triumph or
+sink to a whisper of entreaty. Mr. Gladstone's voice was naturally
+rich and resonant. It was a fine singing voice, and a pleasant voice
+to listen to in conversation, not the less pleasant for having a
+slight trace of Liverpool accent clinging to it. But what struck one
+in listening to his speeches was not so much the quality of the
+vocal chords as the skill with which they were managed. He had a
+gift of sympathetic expression, of throwing his feeling into his
+voice, and using its modulations to accompany and convey every shade
+of meaning, like that which a great composer exerts when he puts music
+to a poem, or a great executant when he renders at once the
+composer's and the poet's thought. And just as accomplished singers
+or violinists enjoy the practice of their art, so he rejoiced,
+perhaps unconsciously, yet intensely, in putting forth this faculty
+of expression; as appeared, indeed, from the fact that whenever his
+voice failed him (which sometimes befell in later years) his
+words came less easily, and even the chariot of his argument seemed
+to drive heavily. That the voice should so seldom have failed was
+wonderful. When he had passed his seventy-fifth year, it became
+sensibly inferior in volume and depth of tone. But its variety and
+delicacy remained. In April 1886, he being then seventy-seven, it
+held out during a speech of nearly four hours in length. In
+February 1890 it enabled him to deliver with extraordinary effect an
+eminently solemn and pathetic appeal. In March 1894 those who
+listened to it the last time it was heard in Parliament--they were
+comparatively few, for the secret of his impending resignation had
+been well kept--recognised in it all the old charm. The most
+striking instance I recall of the power it could exert is to be
+found in a speech made in 1883, during one of the tiresome debates
+occasioned by the refusal of the Opposition and of some timorous
+Liberals to allow Mr. Bradlaugh to be sworn as a member of the House
+of Commons. This speech produced on those who heard it an impression
+which its perusal to-day fails to explain. That impression was chiefly
+due to the grave and reverent tone in which he delivered some
+sentences stating the view that it is not our belief in the bare
+existence of a Deity, but the realising of him as being a Providence
+ruling the world, that has moral value and significance for us. And
+it was due in particular to the solemn dignity with which he
+declaimed six lines of Lucretius, setting forth the Epicurean view
+that the gods do not concern themselves with human affairs. There
+were perhaps not twenty men in the House of Commons who could follow
+the sense of the lines so as to appreciate their bearing on his
+argument. But these sonorous hexameters--hexameters that seemed to
+have lived on through nineteen centuries to find their application
+from the lips of an orator to-day--the sense of remoteness in the
+strange language and the far-off heathen origin, the deep and moving
+note in the speaker's voice, thrilled the imagination of the
+audience and held it spellbound, lifting for a moment the whole
+subject of debate into a region far above party conflicts. Spoken by
+any one else, the passage culminating in these Lucretian lines might
+have produced little effect. It was the voice and manner, above
+all the voice, with its marvellous modulations, that made the
+speech majestic.
+
+Yet one must not forget to add that with him, as with some other
+famous statesmen, the impression made by a speech was in a measure due
+to the admiring curiosity and wonder which his personality inspired.
+He was so much the most interesting human being in the House of
+Commons that, when he withdrew, many members said that the place had
+lost half its attraction for them, and that the chamber looked empty
+because he was not in it. Plenty of able men remained. But even the
+ablest seemed ordinary when compared with the figure that had
+vanished, a figure in whom were combined, as in no other man of his
+time, an unrivalled experience, an extraordinary activity and
+versatility of intellect, a fervid imagination, and an indomitable
+will.
+
+Though Mr. Gladstone's oratory was a main source of his power, both in
+Parliament and over the people, the effort of detractors to represent
+him as a mere rhetorician will seem absurd to the historian who
+reviews his whole career. The rhetorician adorns and popularises the
+ideas which have originated with others; he advocates policies which
+others have devised; he follows and expresses the sentiments which
+already prevail in his party. Mr. Gladstone was himself a source of
+new ideas and new policies; he evoked new sentiments or turned old
+sentiments into new channels. Neither was he, as some alleged,
+primarily a destroyer. His conservative instincts were strong; he
+cherished ancient custom. When it became necessary to clear away an
+institution he sought to put something else in its place. He was a
+constructive statesman not less conspicuously than were Pitt, Canning,
+and Peel. Whether he was a philosophic statesman, basing his action on
+large views obtained by thought and study, philosophic in the sense
+in which we apply the epithet to Pericles, Machiavelli, Turgot,
+Burke, Jefferson, Hamilton, Stein--if one class can be made to include
+persons otherwise so dissimilar--may perhaps be doubted. There are few
+instances in history of men who have been great thinkers and also
+great legislators or administrators, because the two kinds of capacity
+almost exclude one another. As experts declare that a man who should
+try to operate on the Stock Exchange in reliance upon a profound
+knowledge of the inner springs of European politics and the financial
+resources of the great States, would ruin himself before his perfectly
+correct calculations had time to come true, so a practical statesman,
+though he cannot know too much, or look too far ahead, must beware of
+trusting his own forecasts, must remember that he has to deal with the
+next few months or years, and to persuade persons who cannot be
+expected to share or even to understand his views of the future. The
+habit of meditating on underlying truths, the tendency to play the
+long game, are almost certain to spoil a man for dealing effectively
+with the present. He will not be a sufficiently vigilant observer; he
+will be out of sympathy with the notions of the average man; his
+arguments will go over the head of his audience. No English prime
+minister has looked at politics with the eye of a philosopher. But Mr.
+Gladstone, if hardly to be called a thinker, showed higher
+constructive power than any one else has done since Peel. Were the
+memory of his oratorical triumphs to pass completely away, he would
+deserve to be remembered in respect of the mark he left upon the
+British statute-book and of the changes he wrought both in the
+constitution of his country and in her European policy.
+
+Three groups of measures stand out as monuments of his skill and
+energy. The first of these three includes the financial reforms
+embodied in a series of fourteen budgets between the years 1853 and
+1882, the most famous of which were the budgets of 1853 and 1860. In
+the former he continued the work begun by Peel by reducing and
+simplifying the customs duties. Deficiencies in revenue were supplied
+by the enactment of less oppressive imposts, and particularly by
+resettling the income-tax, and by the introduction of a succession
+duty on real estate. The preparation and passing of this very
+technical and intricate Succession Duty Act was a most laborious
+enterprise, of which Mr. Gladstone used to speak as the severest
+mental strain he had ever undergone:
+
+        +Kartistên dê tên ge machên phato dymenai andrôn.+[67]
+
+The budget of 1860, among other changes, abolished the paper duty, a
+boon to the press which was resisted by the House of Lords. They
+threw out the measure, but in the following year Mr. Gladstone forced
+them to submit. His achievements in the field of finance equal, if
+they do not surpass, those of Peel, and are not tarnished, as in the
+case of Pitt, by the recollection of a burden of debts incurred. To no
+minister can be ascribed so large a share in promoting the commercial
+and industrial prosperity of modern England, and in the reduction of
+her national debt to the figure at which it stood when it began to
+rise again in 1900.
+
+The second group includes the parliamentary reform bills of 1866 and
+1884 and the Redistribution Bill of 1885. The first of these was
+defeated in the House of Commons, but it led to the passing next year,
+by Mr. Disraeli, of a more sweeping measure. Taken together, these
+statutes have turned Britain into a democratic country, changing the
+character of her government almost as profoundly as did the Reform Act
+of 1832.
+
+The third group consists of a series of Irish measures, beginning with
+the Church Disestablishment Act of 1869, and including the Land Act of
+1870, the University Education Bill of 1873 (defeated in the House of
+Commons), the Land Act of 1881, and the Home Rule bills of 1886 and
+1893. All these were in a special manner Mr. Gladstone's handiwork,
+prepared as well as brought in and advocated by him. All were highly
+complicated, and of one, the Land Act of 1881, which it took three
+months to carry through the House of Commons, it was said that so
+great was its intricacy that only three men understood it--Mr.
+Gladstone himself, his Attorney-General for Ireland, and Mr. T. M.
+Healy. In preparing a bill no man could be more painstaking. He
+settled and laid down the principles himself; and when he came to work
+them out with the draughtsman and the officials who had special
+knowledge of the subject, he insisted on knowing what their effect
+would be in every particular. Indeed, he loved work for its own sake,
+in this respect unlike Mr. Bright, who once said to me with a smile,
+when asked as to his methods of working, that he had never done any
+work all his life. The value of this mastery of details was seen when
+a bill came to be debated in Committee. It was impossible to catch Mr.
+Gladstone tripping on a point of fact, or unprepared with a reply to
+the arguments of an opponent. He seemed to revel in the toil of
+mastering a tangle of technical details.
+
+It is long since England, in this respect not favoured by her
+parliamentary system, has produced a great foreign minister, nor has
+that title been claimed for Mr. Gladstone. But he showed on several
+occasions both his independence of tradition and his faith in broad
+principles as fit to be applied in international relations; and his
+action in that field, though felt only at intervals, has left abiding
+results in European history. In 1851, he being then still a Tory, his
+pamphlet denouncing the cruelties of the Bourbon government of Naples,
+and the sympathy he subsequently avowed with the national movement in
+Italy, gave that movement a new standing in Europe by powerfully
+recommending it to English opinion. In 1870 the prompt action of his
+ministry in arranging a treaty for the neutrality of Belgium on the
+outbreak of the war between France and Germany, averted the risk that
+Belgium might be drawn into the strife. In 1871, by concluding the
+treaty of Washington, which provided for the settlement by arbitration
+of the _Alabama_ claims, he not only set a precedent full of promise
+for the future, but delivered England from what would have been, in
+case of her being at war with any European power, a danger fatal to
+her ocean commerce. And, in 1876, his onslaught upon the Turks, after
+the Bulgarian massacres, roused an intense feeling in England, turning
+the current of opinion so decisively that Disraeli's ministry were
+forced to leave the Sultan to his fate, and thus became a cause of the
+ultimate deliverance of Bulgaria, Eastern Rumelia, Bosnia, and
+Thessaly from Mussulman tyranny. Few English statesmen have equally
+earned the gratitude of the oppressed.
+
+Nothing lay nearer to his heart than the protection of the Christians
+of the East. His sense of personal duty to them was partly due to the
+feeling that the Crimean War had prolonged the rule of the Turk, and
+had thus imposed a special responsibility on Britain, and on the
+members of Lord Aberdeen's cabinet which drifted into that war. Twenty
+years after the agitation of 1876, and when he had finally retired
+from Parliament and political life, the massacres perpetrated by the
+Sultan on his Armenian subjects brought him once more into the field,
+and his last speech in public (delivered at Liverpool in the autumn of
+1896) was a powerful argument in favour of British intervention to
+rescue the Eastern Christians. In the following spring he followed
+this up by a pamphlet on behalf of the freedom of Crete. In neither of
+these two cases did success crown his efforts, for the Government,
+commanding a large majority in Parliament, pursued the course upon
+which it had already entered. Poignant regrets were expressed that Mr.
+Gladstone was no longer able to take effective action in the cause of
+humanity; yet it was a consolation to be assured that age and
+infirmity had not dulled his sympathies with that cause.
+
+That he was right in 1876-78 in the view he took of the line of
+conduct England should adopt towards the Turks has been now virtually
+admitted even by his opponents. That he was also right in 1896, when
+urging action to protect the Eastern Christians, will probably be
+admitted ten years hence, when the facts of the case and the nature of
+the opportunity that existed for taking prompt action without the risk
+of a European war have become better known. In both cases it was not
+merely religious sympathy, but also a far-sighted view of policy that
+governed his judgment. He held that the faults of Turkish rule are
+incurable, and that the Powers of Western and Central Europe ought to
+aim at protecting the subject nationalities and by degrees extending
+self-government to them, so that they may grow into states, and in
+time be able to restore prosperity to regions ruined by long
+misgovernment, while constituting an effective barrier to the advance
+of Russia. The jealousies of the Powers throw obstacles in the way of
+this policy, but it is a safe policy for England, and offers the best
+hope for the peoples of the East.
+
+The facts just noted prove that he possessed and exerted a capacity
+for initiative in foreign as well as in domestic affairs. In the
+Neapolitan case, in the _Alabama_ case, in the Bulgarian case, he
+acted from his own convictions, with no previous suggestion of
+encouragement from his party; and in the last-mentioned instance he
+took a course which did not at the moment promise any political gain,
+and which seemed to the English political world so novel and even
+startling that no ordinary statesman would have ventured on it.
+
+His courage was indeed one of the most striking parts of the man.[68]
+It was not the rashness of an impetuous nature, for, impetuous as he
+was when stirred by some sudden excitement, he showed an Ulyssean
+caution whenever he took a deliberate survey of the conditions that
+surrounded him. It was the proud self-confidence of a strong
+character, which was willing to risk fame and fortune in pursuing a
+course it had once resolved upon; a character which had faith in its
+own conclusions, and in the success of a cause consecrated by
+principle; a character which obstacles did not affright, but rather
+roused to a higher combative energy. Few English statesmen have done
+anything so bold as was Mr. Gladstone's declaration for Irish Home
+Rule in 1886. He took not only his political power but the fame and
+credit of his whole past life in his hand when he set out on this new
+journey at seventy-seven years of age; for it was quite possible that
+the great bulk of his party might refuse to follow him, and he be left
+exposed to derision as the chief of an insignificant group. As it
+happened, the bulk of the party did follow him, though many of the
+most influential refused to do so. But neither he nor any one else
+could have foretold this when his intentions were first announced.
+
+We may now, before passing away from the public side of Mr.
+Gladstone's career, return for a moment to the opposite views of his
+character which were indicated some pages back. He was accused of
+sophistry, of unwisdom, of want of patriotism, of lust for power.
+Though it is difficult to sift these charges without discussing the
+conduct which gave rise to them, a task impossible here, each of them
+must be briefly examined.
+
+The first charge is the most plausible. His ingenuity in discovering
+arguments and stating fine verbal distinctions, his subtlety in
+discriminating between views or courses apparently similar, were
+excessive, and invited misconstruction. He had a tendency to persuade
+himself, quite unconsciously, that the course he desired to take was a
+course which the public interest required. His acuteness soon found
+reasons for that course; the warmth of his emotions enforced the
+reasons. It was a dangerous tendency, but it does not impeach his
+honesty of purpose, for the influence which his predilections
+unconsciously exerted upon his judgment appeared also in his
+theological and literary inquiries. I can recall no instance in which
+he wilfully misstated a fact, or simulated a feeling, or used an
+argument which he knew to be unsound. He did not, as does the sophist,
+attempt "to make the worse appear the better reason."
+
+His wisdom will be differently judged by those who condemn or approve
+the chief acts of his policy. But it deserves to be noted that all the
+legislation he passed, even the measures which, like the Irish Church
+Disestablishment Bill, exposed him to angry attacks at the time, have
+now been approved by the all but unanimous judgment of Englishmen.[69]
+The same may be said of two acts which brought much invective upon
+him--his settlement of the _Alabama_ claims, one of the wisest strokes
+of foreign policy ever accomplished by a British minister, and his
+protest against a support of the Turks in and after 1876. I pass by
+Irish Home Rule, because the wisdom of the course he took must be
+tested by results that are yet unborn, as I pass by his Egyptian
+policy in 1882-85, because it cannot be fairly judged till the facts
+have been fully made public. He may be open to blame for his
+participation in the Crimean War, for his mistaken view of the
+American Civil War, for his neglect of the Transvaal question when he
+took office in 1880, and for his omission during his earlier career to
+recognise the gravity of Irish disaffection and to study its causes. I
+have heard him lament that he had not twenty years earlier given the
+same attention to that abiding source of the difficulties of England
+which he gave from 1866 onwards. If in these instances he erred, it
+must be remembered that he erred in company with nine-tenths of
+British statesmen in both political parties.
+
+Their admiration did not prevent his friends from noting tendencies
+which sometimes led him to miscalculate the forces he had to deal
+with. Being, like the younger Pitt, extremely sanguine, he was prone
+to underrate difficulties. Hopefulness is a splendid quality. It is
+both the child and the parent of faith. Without it neither Mr. Pitt
+nor Mr. Gladstone could have done what they did. But it disposes its
+possessor not sufficiently to allow for the dulness or the prejudice
+of others. So too the intensity of Mr. Gladstone's own feeling made
+him fail to realise how many of his fellow-countrymen did not know of,
+or were not shocked by, acts of cruelty and injustice which had roused
+his indignation. If his hatred of ostentation suffered him to perceive
+that a nation, however well assured of the reality of its power and
+influence in the world, may also desire that this power and influence
+should be asserted and proclaimed to other nations, he refused to
+humour that desire. He had a contempt for what is called "playing to
+the gallery," with a deep sense of the danger of stimulating the
+passions which lead to aggression and war. To national honour, as he
+conceived it, national righteousness was vital. His spirit was that of
+Lowell's lines--
+
+           I love my country so as only they
+           Who love a mother fit to die for may.
+           I love her old renown, her ancient fame:
+           What better proof than that I loathe her shame?
+
+It was this attitude that brought on him the charge of wanting
+patriotism, a charge first, I think, insinuated at the time of the
+_Alabama_ arbitration, renewed when in 1876 he was accused of
+befriending Russia and neglecting "British interests," and sedulously
+repeated thereafter, although in those two instances the result had
+proved him right. There was this much to give a kind of colour to the
+charge, that he had scrupulously, perhaps too scrupulously, refrained
+from extolling the material power of England, preferring to insist
+upon her responsibilities; that he was known to regret the constant
+increase of naval and military expenditure, and that he had several
+times taken a course which honour and prudence seemed to him to
+recommend, but which had offended the patriots of the music-halls. But
+it was an unjust charge, for no man had a warmer pride in England, a
+higher sense of her greatness and her mission.
+
+Was he too fond of power? Like other strong men, he enjoyed it.[70]
+That to secure it he ever either adopted or renounced an opinion,
+those who understood and watched the workings of his mind could not
+believe. He was not only too conscientious, but too proud to forego
+any of his convictions, and there were not a few occasions when he
+took a course which considerations of personal interest would have
+forbidden. He did not love office, feeling himself happier without its
+cares, and when he accepted it did so, I think, in the belief that
+there was work to be done which it was laid upon him individually to
+do. His changes sprang naturally from the development of his own ideas
+or (as in the case of his Irish policy) from the teaching of facts. He
+sometimes so far yielded to his colleagues as to sanction steps which
+he thought not the best, and may in this have sometimes erred; yet
+compromises are unavoidable, for no Cabinet could be kept together if
+its members did not now and then, in matters not essential, yield to
+one another. When all the facts of his life come to be known,
+instances may be disclosed in which he was the victim of his own
+casuistry or of his deference to Peel's maxim that a minister should
+not avow a change of view until the time has come to give effect to
+it. But it will also be made clear that he strove to obey his
+conscience, that he acted with an ever-present sense of his
+responsibility to the Almighty, and that he was animated by an
+unselfish enthusiasm for humanity, enlightenment, and freedom.
+
+Whether he was a good judge of men was a question much discussed
+among his friends. With all his astuteness, he was in some ways
+curiously simple; with all his caution, he was by nature unsuspicious,
+disposed to treat all men as honest till they gave him strong reasons
+for thinking otherwise. Those who professed sympathy with his views
+and aims sometimes succeeded in inspiring more confidence than they
+deserved. But where this perturbing influence was absent he showed
+plenty of insight, and would pass shrewd judgments on the politicians
+around him, permitting neither their behaviour towards himself nor his
+opinion of their moral character to affect his estimate of their
+talents. In making appointments in the Civil Service, or in the
+Established Church, he rose to a far higher standard of public duty
+than Palmerston or Disraeli had reached or cared to reach, taking
+great pains to find the fittest men, and giving little weight to
+political considerations.[71]
+
+His public demeanour, and especially his excitability and vehemence of
+speech, made people attribute to him an overbearing disposition and an
+irritable temper. In private one did not find these faults. Masterful
+he certainly was, both in speech and in action. His ardent manner, the
+intensity of his look, the dialectical vigour with which he pressed an
+argument, were apt to awe people who knew him but slightly, and make
+them abandon resistance. A gifted though somewhat erratic politician
+of long bygone days told me how he once fared when he had risen in the
+House of Commons to censure some act of his leader. "I had not gone on
+three minutes when Gladstone turned round and gazed at me so that I
+had to sit down in the middle of a sentence. I could not help it.
+There was no standing his eye." But he neither meant nor wished to
+beat down his opponents by mere authority. One who knew him as few
+people did observed to me, "When you are arguing with Mr. Gladstone,
+you must never let him think he has convinced you unless you are
+really convinced. Persist in repeating your view, and if you are
+unable to cope with him in skill of fence, say bluntly that for all
+his ingenuity and authority you think he is wrong, and you retain your
+own opinion. If he respects you as a man who knows something of the
+subject, he will be impressed by your opinion, and it will afterwards
+have due weight with him." In his own Cabinet he was willing to listen
+patiently to everybody's views, and, indeed, in the judgment of some
+of his colleagues, was not, at least in his later years, sufficiently
+strenuous in asserting and holding to his own. It is no secret that
+some of the most important decisions of the ministry of 1880-85 were
+taken against his judgment, though, when they had been adopted, he
+was, of course, bound to defend them in Parliament as if they had
+received his individual approval. Nor, though tenacious, did he bear
+malice against those who had baffled him. He would exert his full
+force to get his own way, but if he could not get it, accepted the
+position with good temper.[72] He was too proud to be vindictive, too
+completely master of himself to be betrayed into angry words.
+Impatient he might sometimes be under a nervous strain, but never rude
+or rough. It was less easy to determine whether he was overmindful of
+injuries, but those who had watched him most closely held that mere
+opposition or even insult did not leave a permanent sting, and that
+the only thing he could not forget or forgive was faithlessness.
+Himself a model of loyalty to his colleagues, he followed his
+favourite poet in consigning the _traditori_ to the lowest pit,
+although, like all statesmen, he often found himself obliged to work
+with those whom he distrusted.
+
+He was less sensitive than Peel, as appeared from his attitude toward
+his two chief opponents. Disraeli's attacks did not seem to gall him,
+perhaps because, although he recognised the ability and admired the
+courage of his adversary, he did not respect Disraeli's character,
+remembering his behaviour to Peel, and thinking him habitually
+untruthful. Yet he never attacked Disraeli personally. There was
+another of his opponents of whom he entertained a specially
+unfavourable opinion, but no one could have told from his speeches
+what that opinion was. Against Lord Salisbury, his chief antagonist
+from 1881 onwards, he showed no resentment, though Lord Salisbury had
+more than once spoken discourteously of him. In 1890 he remarked to me
+_apropos_ of some attack, "I have never felt angry at what Salisbury
+has said about me. His mother was very kind to me when I was quite a
+young man, and I remember Salisbury as a little fellow in a red frock
+rolling about on the ottoman."
+
+That his temper was naturally hot, no one who looked at him could
+doubt. But he had it in such tight control, and it was so free from
+anything acrid or malignant, that it had become a good temper, worthy
+of a fine nature. However vehement his expressions, they did not wound
+or humiliate, and those younger men who had to deal with him were not
+afraid of a sharp answer or an impatient repulse. He was cast in too
+large a mould to have the pettiness of ruffled vanity or to abuse his
+predominance by treating any one as an inferior. His manners were the
+manners of the old time, easy but stately. Like his oratory, they
+were in what Matthew Arnold used to call the grand style; and the
+contrast in this respect between him and some of those who crossed
+swords with him in literary or theological controversy was apparent.
+His intellectual generosity was a part of the same largeness of
+nature. He cordially acknowledged his indebtedness to those who helped
+him in any piece of work, received their suggestions candidly, even
+when opposed to his own preconceived notions, did not hesitate to
+confess a mistake. Those who know the abundance of their resources,
+and have conquered fame, can doubtless afford to be generous. Julius
+Cæsar was, and George Washington, and so, in a different sphere, were
+Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. But the instances to the contrary are
+so numerous that one may say of magnanimity that it is among the
+rarest as well as the finest ornaments of character.
+
+The essential dignity of Mr. Gladstone's nature was never better seen
+than during the last few years of his life, after he had finally
+retired (in 1894) from public life. He indulged in no vain regrets,
+nor was there any foundation for the rumours, so often circulated,
+that he thought of re-entering the arena of strife. He spoke with no
+bitterness of those who had opposed, and sometimes foiled, him in the
+past. He gave vent to no criticisms of those who from time to time
+filled the place that had been his in the government of the country or
+the leadership of his party. Although his opinion on current questions
+was frequently solicited, he scarcely ever allowed it to be known,
+lest it should embarrass his successors in the leadership of the
+party, and never himself addressed the nation, except (as already
+mentioned) on behalf of what he deemed a sacred cause, altogether
+above party--the discharge by Britain of her duty to the victims of
+the Turk. As soon as an operation for cataract had enabled him to
+resume his habit of working for seven hours a day, he devoted himself
+with his old ardour to the preparation of an edition of Bishop
+Butler's works, resumed his multifarious reading, planned (as he told
+me in 1896) a treatise on the Olympian religion, and filled up the
+interstices of his working-time with studies on Homer which he had
+been previously unable to complete. No trace of the moroseness of old
+age appeared in his manners or his conversation, nor did he, though
+profoundly grieved at some of the events which he witnessed, and
+owning himself disappointed at the slow advance made by a cause dear
+to him, appear less hopeful than in earlier days of the general
+progress of the world, or less confident in the beneficent power of
+freedom to promote the happiness of his country. The stately
+simplicity which had always charmed those who saw him in private,
+seemed more beautiful than ever in this quiet evening of a long and
+sultry day. His intellectual powers were unimpaired, his thirst for
+knowledge undiminished. But a placid stillness had fallen upon him and
+his household; and in seeing the tide of his life begin slowly to ebb,
+one thought of the lines of his illustrious contemporary and
+friend:--
+
+                 Such a tide as moving seems asleep,
+                     Too full for sound and foam,
+           When that which drew from out the boundless deep
+                     Turns again home.
+
+Adding to his grace of manner a memory of extraordinary strength and
+quickness and an amazing vivacity and variety of mental force, any one
+can understand how fascinating Mr. Gladstone was in society. He
+enjoyed it to the last, talking as earnestly and joyously at
+eighty-seven as he had done at twenty on every topic that came up, and
+exerting himself with equal zest whether his interlocutor was an
+archbishop or a youthful curate. Though his party used to think that
+he overvalued the political influence of the great families, allotting
+them rather more than their share of honours and appointments, no one
+was personally more free from that taint of snobbishness which is
+frequently charged upon Englishmen. He gave the best he had to
+everybody alike, paying to men of learning and letters a respect
+which in England they seldom receive from the magnates who lead
+society. And although he was scrupulously observant of the rules of
+precedence and conventions of social life, it was easy to see that
+neither rank nor wealth had that importance in his eyes which the
+latter nowadays commands. Dispensing titles and decorations with a
+liberal hand, his pride always refused such so-called honours for
+himself.
+
+It was often said of him that he lacked humour; but this was only so
+far true that he was apt to throw into small matters more force and
+moral earnestness than were needed, and to honour with a refutation
+opponents whom a little light sarcasm would have better reduced to
+their insignificance.[73] In private he was wont both to tell and to
+enjoy good stories; while in Parliament, though his tone was generally
+earnest, he could display such effective powers of banter and ridicule
+as to make people wonder why they were so rarely put forth. Much of
+what passes in London for humour is mere cynicism, and he hated
+cynicism so heartily as to dislike even humour when it had a cynical
+flavour. Wit he enjoyed, but did not produce. The turn of his mind was
+not to brevity, point, and condensation. He sometimes struck off a
+telling phrase, but seldom polished an epigram. His conversation was
+luminous rather than sparkling; you were interested and instructed
+while you listened, but it was not so much the phrases as the general
+effect that dwelt in your memory. An acute observer once said to me
+that Mr. Gladstone showed in argument a knack of hitting the nail not
+quite on the head. The criticism was so far just that he was less
+certain to go straight to the vital issue in a controversy than one
+expected from his force and keenness.
+
+After the death of Thomas Carlyle he was probably the best talker in
+London, and a talker in one respect more agreeable than either Carlyle
+or Macaulay, inasmuch as he was no less ready to listen than to speak,
+and never wearied the dinner-table by a monologue. His simplicity, his
+spontaneity, his geniality and courtesy, as well as the fund of
+knowledge and of personal recollections at his command, made him so
+popular in society that his opponents used to say it was dangerous to
+meet him, because one might be forced to leave off hating him. He was,
+perhaps, too prone to go on talking upon the subject which filled his
+mind at the moment; nor was it easy to divert his attention to
+something else which others might deem more important.[74] Those who
+stayed with him in the same country house sometimes complained that
+the perpetual display of force and eagerness tired them, as one tires
+of watching the rush of Niagara. His guests, however, did not feel
+this, for his own home life was quiet and smooth. He read and wrote a
+good many hours daily, but never sat up late, almost always slept
+soundly, never seemed oppressed or driven to strain his strength. With
+all his impetuosity, he was regular, systematic, and deliberate in his
+habits and ways of doing business. A swift reader and a surprisingly
+swift writer, he was always occupied, and was skilful in using even
+the scraps and fragments of his time. No pressure of work made him
+fussy, nor could any one remember to have seen him in a hurry.
+
+The best proof of his swiftness, industry, and skill in economising
+time is supplied by the quantity of his literary work, which,
+considering the abstruse nature of the subjects to which much of it is
+related, would have been creditable to the diligence of a German
+professor sitting alone in his study. The merits of the work have been
+disputed. Mankind are slow to credit the same person with eminence in
+various fields. When they read the prose of a great poet, they try it
+by severer tests than would be applied to other writers. When a
+painter has won credit by his landscapes or his cattle pieces, he is
+seldom encouraged to venture into other lines. So Mr. Gladstone's
+reputation as an orator stood in his own light when he appeared as an
+author. He was read by thousands who would not have looked at the
+article or book had it borne some other name; but he was judged by the
+standard, not of his finest printed speeches, for his speeches were
+seldom models of composition, but rather by the impression which his
+finest speeches made on those who heard them. Since his warmest
+admirers could not claim for him as a writer of prose any such
+pre-eminence as belonged to him as a speaker, it followed that his
+written work was not duly appreciated. Had he been a writer and
+nothing else, he would have been eminent and powerful by his pen.
+
+He might, however, have failed to secure a place in the front rank.
+His style was forcible, copious, rich with various knowledge, warm
+with the ardour of his temperament. But it suffered from an inborn
+tendency to exuberance which the long practice of oratory had
+confirmed. It was diffuse, apt to pursue a topic into details, when
+these might have been left to the reader's own reflection. It was
+redundant, employing more words than were needed to convey the
+substance. It was unchastened, indulging too freely in tropes and
+metaphors, in quotations and adapted phrases even when the quotation
+added nothing to the sense, but was suggested merely by some
+association in his own mind. Thus it seldom reached a high level of
+purity and grace, and though one might excuse the faults as natural to
+the work of a swift and busy man, they were sufficient to reduce the
+pleasure to be derived from the form and dress of his thoughts.
+Nevertheless there are not a few passages of rare merit, both in the
+books and in the articles, among which may be cited (not as
+exceptionally good, but as typical of his strong points) the striking
+picture of his own youthful feeling toward the Church of England
+contained in the _Chapter of Autobiography_, and the refined criticism
+of _Robert Elsmere_, published in 1888. Almost the last thing he
+wrote, a pamphlet on the Greek and Cretan question, published in the
+spring of 1897, has the force and cogency of his best days. Two things
+were never wanting to him: vigour of expression and an admirable
+command of appropriate words.
+
+His writings fall into three classes: political, theological, and
+literary--the last chiefly consisting of his books and articles upon
+Homer and the Homeric question. All the political writings, except
+the books on _The State in its Relations to the Church_ and _Church
+Principles considered in their Results_, belong to the class of
+occasional literature, being pamphlets or articles produced with a
+view to some current crisis or controversy. They are valuable chiefly
+as proceeding from one who bore a leading part in the affairs they
+relate to, and as embodying vividly the opinions and aspirations of
+the moment, less frequently in respect of permanent lessons of
+political wisdom, such as one finds in Machiavelli or Tocqueville or
+Edmund Burke. Like Pitt and Peel, Mr. Gladstone had a mind which,
+whatever its original tendencies, had come to be rather practical
+than meditative. He was fond of generalisations and principles,
+but they were always directly related to the questions that came
+before him in actual politics; and the number of weighty maxims or
+illuminative suggestions to be found in his writings and speeches
+is small in proportion to the sustained vigour they display. Even
+Disraeli, though his views were often fanciful and his epigrams often
+forced, gives us more frequently a brilliant (if only half true)
+historical _aperçu_, or throws a flash of light into some corner of
+human character. Of the theological essays, which are mainly
+apologetic and concerned with the authenticity and authority of
+Scripture, it is enough to say that they were the work of an
+accomplished amateur, who had been too busy to follow the progress of
+critical inquiry. His Homeric treatises, the most elaborate piece
+of work that proceeded from Mr. Gladstone's pen, are in one sense
+worthless, in another sense admirable. Those parts of them which
+deal with early Greek mythology, genealogy, and religion, and, in a
+less degree, the theories about Homeric geography and the use of
+Homeric epithets, have been condemned by the unanimous voice of
+scholars as fantastic. The premises are assumed without sufficient
+investigation, while the reasonings are fine-drawn and flimsy.
+Extraordinary ingenuity is shown in piling up a lofty fabric, but
+the foundation is of sand, and the edifice has hardly a solid wall
+or beam in it. A conjecture is treated as a fact; then an inference,
+possible but not certain, is drawn from this conjecture; a second
+possible inference is based upon the first; and we are made to
+forget that the probability of this second is at most only half the
+probability of the first. So the process goes on; and when the
+superstructure is complete, the reader is provoked to perceive how
+much dialectical skill has been wasted upon a series of hypotheses
+which a breath of common-sense criticism dissipates. If one is
+asked to explain the weakness in this particular department of a mind
+otherwise so strong, the answer would seem to be that the element
+of fancifulness in Mr. Gladstone's intellect, and his tendency to
+mistake mere argumentation for verification, were checked in
+practical politics by constant intercourse with friends and
+colleagues as well as by the need of convincing visible audiences,
+while in theological or historical inquiries his ingenuity roamed
+with fatal freedom over wide plains where no obstacles checked its
+course. Something may also be due to the fact that his philosophical
+and historical education was received at a time when the modern
+critical spirit and the canons it recognises had scarcely begun to
+assert themselves at Oxford. Similar defects may be discerned in other
+eminent writers of his own and the preceding generation of Oxford
+men, defects from which persons of inferior power in later days might
+be free. In some of these writers, and particularly in Cardinal
+Newman, the contrast between dialectical acumen, coupled with
+surpassing rhetorical skill, and the vitiation of the argument by a
+want of the critical faculty, is scarcely less striking; and the
+example of that illustrious man suggests that the dominance of the
+theological view of literary and historical problems, a dominance
+evident in Mr. Gladstone, counts for something in producing the
+phenomenon.
+
+With these defects, Mr. Gladstone's Homeric work had the merit of
+being based on a full and thorough knowledge of the Homeric text. He
+had seen, at a time when few people in England had seen it, that the
+Homeric poems are an historical source of the highest value, a
+treasure-house of data for the study of early Greek life and thought,
+an authority all the more trustworthy because an unconscious
+authority, addressing not posterity but contemporaries. This mastery
+of the matter contained in the poems enabled him to present valuable
+pictures of the political and social life of Homeric Greece, while the
+interspersed literary criticisms are often subtle and suggestive,
+erring, when they do err, chiefly through the over-earnestness of his
+mind. He often takes the poet too seriously; reading an ethical
+purpose into descriptive or dramatic touches which are merely
+descriptive or dramatic. Passages whose moral tendency offends him are
+reprobated as later insertions with a naïveté which forgets the
+character of a primitive age. But he has for his author not only that
+sympathy which is the best basis for criticism, but a justness of
+poetic taste which the learned and painstaking German commentator
+frequently wants. That Mr. Gladstone was a sound scholar in that
+narrower sense of the word which denotes a grammatical and literary
+command of Greek and Latin, goes without saying. Men of his generation
+kept a closer hold upon the ancient classics than we do to-day; and
+his habit of reading Greek for the sake of his Homeric studies, and
+Latin for the sake of his theological, made this familiarity more than
+usually thorough. Like most Etonians, he loved and knew the poets by
+preference. Dante was his favourite poet, perhaps because Dante is the
+most theological and ethical of the great poets, and because the
+tongue and the memories of Italy had a peculiar attraction for him. He
+used to say that he found Dante's thought incomparably inspiring, but
+hard to follow, it was so high and so abstract. Theology claimed a
+place beside poetry; history came next, though he did not study it
+systematically. It seemed odd that he was sometimes at fault in the
+constitutional antiquities of England; but this subject was, until the
+day of Dr. Stubbs, pre-eminently a Whig subject, and Mr. Gladstone
+never was a Whig, never learned to think upon the lines of the great
+Whigs of former days. His historical knowledge was not exceptionally
+wide, but it was generally accurate in matters of fact, however
+fanciful he might be in reasoning from the facts, however wild his
+conjectures in the prehistoric region. In metaphysics strictly so
+called his reading did not go far beyond those companions of his
+youth, Aristotle and Bishop Butler; and philosophical speculation
+interested him only so far as it bore on Christian doctrine. Keen as
+was his interest in theology and in history, it is not certain that
+he would have produced work of permanent value in either sphere even
+had his life been wholly devoted to study. His mind seemed to need to
+be steadied, his ingenuity restrained, by having to deal with concrete
+matter for a practical end. Neither, in spite of his eminence as a
+financier and an advocate of free trade, did he show much taste for
+economic studies. On practical topics, such as the working of
+protective tariffs, the abuse of charitable endowments, the
+development of fruit-culture in England, the duty of liberal giving by
+the rich, the utility of thrift among the poor, his remarks were full
+of point, clearness, and good sense, but he seldom launched out into
+the wider sea of economic theory. He took a first-class in mathematics
+at Oxford, at the same time as his first in classics, but did not
+pursue the subject in later life. Regarding the sciences of experiment
+and observation, he seemed to feel as little curiosity as any educated
+man who notes the enormous part they play in the modern world can
+feel. Sayings of his have been quoted which show that he imperfectly
+comprehended the character of the evidence they rely upon and of the
+methods they employ. On one occasion he horrified a dinner-table of
+younger friends by refusing to accept some of the most certain
+conclusions of modern geology. No doubt he belonged, as Lord Derby
+(the Prime Minister) once said of himself, to a pre-scientific age.
+Perhaps he was unconsciously biassed by the notion that such sciences
+as geology and biology, for instance, were being used by some students
+to sap the foundations of revealed religion. But I can recall no sign
+of disposition to dissuade free inquiry either into those among the
+sciences of nature which have been supposed to touch theology, or into
+the date, authorship, and authority of the books of the Bible. He had
+faith not only in his creed, but in God as a God of truth, and in the
+power of research to elicit truth.
+
+General propositions are dangerous, yet it seems safe to observe that
+great men have seldom been obscurantists or persecutors. Either the
+sympathy with intellectual effort which is natural to a powerful
+intellect, or the sense that free inquiry, though it may be checked by
+repression for a certain time or within a certain area, will
+ultimately have its course, dissuades them from that attempt to dam up
+the stream of thought which smaller minds regard as the obvious
+expedient for saving souls or institutions.
+
+It ought to be added, for this was a remarkable feature of his
+character, that he had the deepest reverence for the great poets and
+philosophers, placing the career of the statesman on a far lower plane
+than that of those who rule the world by their thoughts enshrined in
+literature. He expressed in a striking letter to Tennyson's eldest
+son his sense of the immense superiority of the poet's life and work.
+Once, in the lobby of the House of Commons, seeing his countenance
+saddened by the troubles of Ireland, I told him, in order to divert
+his thoughts, how some one had recently discovered that Dante had in
+his last years been appointed at Ravenna to a lectureship which raised
+him above the pinch of want. Mr. Gladstone's face lit up at once, and
+he said, "How strange it is to think that these great souls whose
+words are a beacon-light to all the generations that have come after
+them, should have had cares and anxieties to vex them in their daily
+life, just like the rest of us common mortals." The phrase reminded me
+that a few days before I had heard Mr. Darwin, in dwelling upon the
+pleasure a visit paid by Mr. Gladstone had given him, say, "And he
+talked just as if he had been an ordinary person like one of
+ourselves." The two great men were alike unconscious of their
+greatness.
+
+It was an unspeakable benefit to Mr. Gladstone that his love of
+letters and learning enabled him to find in the pursuit of knowledge a
+relief from anxieties and a solace under disappointments. Without some
+such relief his fiery and restless spirit would have worn itself out.
+He lived two lives--the life of the statesman and the life of the
+student, and passed swiftly from the one to the other, dismissing when
+he sat down to his books all the cares of politics. But he led a
+third life also, the secret life of the soul. Religion was of all
+things that which had the strongest hold upon his thoughts and
+feelings. Nothing but his father's opposition prevented him from
+becoming a clergyman when he quitted the University. Never thereafter
+did he cease to take the warmest interest in everything that affected
+the Christian Church. He lost his seat for Oxford University by the
+votes of the country clergy, who formed the bulk of the constituency.
+He incurred the displeasure of four-fifths of the Anglican communion
+by disestablishing the Protestant Episcopal Church in Ireland, and
+from 1868 to the end of his life found nearly all the clerical force
+of the English establishment arrayed against him, while his warmest
+support came from the Nonconformists of England and the Presbyterians
+of Scotland. Yet nothing affected his devotion to the Church in which
+he had been brought up, nor to the body of Anglo-Catholic doctrine he
+had imbibed as an undergraduate. After an attack of influenza which
+had left him very weak in the spring of 1891, he endangered his life
+by attending a meeting on behalf of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund, for
+which he had spoken fifty years before. His theological opinions
+tinged his views upon political subjects. They filled him with dislike
+of the legalisation of marriage with a deceased wife's sister; they
+made him a vehement opponent of the bill which established the
+English Divorce Court in 1857, and a watchfully hostile critic of all
+divorce legislation in America afterwards. Some of his friends traced
+to the same cause his less than adequate appreciation of German
+literature (though he admired Goethe and Schiller) and even his
+political coldness towards Prussia and afterwards towards the German
+Empire. He could not forget that Germany had been the fountain of
+rationalism, while German Evangelical Protestantism was more
+schismatic and farther removed from the mediæval Catholic Church than
+it pleased him to deem the Church of England to be. He had an
+exceedingly high sense of the duty of purity of life and of the
+sanctity of domestic relations, and his rigid ideas of decorum
+inspired so much awe that it used to be said to a person who had told
+an anecdote with ever so slight a tinge of impropriety, "How many
+thousands of pounds would you take to tell that to Gladstone?" When
+living in the country, it was his practice to attend daily morning
+service in the parish church, and on Sunday to read in church the
+lessons for the day; and he rarely, if ever, transgressed his rule
+against Sunday labour. Religious feeling, coupled with a system of
+firm dogmatic beliefs, was the mainspring of his life, a guiding light
+in perplexities, a source of strength in adverse fortune, a
+consolation in sorrow, a beacon of hope beyond the failures and
+disappointments of this present world. He did not make what is
+commonly called a profession of religion, and talked little about it
+in general society, although always ready to plunge into a magazine
+controversy when Christianity was assailed. But those who knew him
+best knew that he was always referring current questions to, and
+trying his own conduct by, a religious standard. He believed in the
+efficacy of prayer, and sought through prayer for strength and for
+direction in the affairs of state. He was a remarkable example of the
+coexistence together with a Christian virtue of a quality which
+Catholic theologians treat as a mortal sin. He was an exceedingly
+proud man, yet an exceedingly humble Christian. With a high regard for
+his own dignity and a sensitiveness to any imputation on his honour,
+he was deeply conscious of his imperfections in the eye of God,
+realising the weakness and sinfulness of human nature with a mediæval
+intensity. The language of self-depreciation he was wont to use,
+sometimes deemed unreal, expressed his genuine sense of the contrast
+between the religious ideal he set up and his own attainment. And the
+tolerance which he extended to those who attacked him or who had (as
+he thought) behaved ill in public life was largely due to this
+pervading sense of the frailty of human character, and of the
+inextricable mixture in conduct of good and bad motives. "It is
+always best to take the charitable view," he once observed when I had
+quoted to him the saying of Dean Church that Mark Pattison had painted
+himself too black in his autobiography--"always best," adding, with
+grim emphasis, "especially in politics."
+
+In this indulgent view, more evident in his later years, and the more
+remarkable because his expressions were often too vehement, there was
+nothing of the cynical "man of the world" acceptance of a low standard
+as the only possible standard, for his moral earnestness was as
+fervent at eighty-eight as it had been at thirty, and he retained a
+simplicity and an unwillingness to suspect sinister motives, singular
+in one who had seen so much. Although accessible and frank in the
+ordinary converse of society, he was in reality a reserved man; not
+shy, stiff, and externally cold, like Peel, nor always standing on a
+pedestal of dignity, like the younger Pitt, but revealing his deepest
+thoughts only to a few intimate friends, and treating others with a
+courteous kindliness which, though it put them at their ease, did not
+encourage them to approach nearer. Thus, while he was admired by the
+mass of his followers, and beloved by the small inner group of family
+friends, the majority of his colleagues, official subordinates, and
+political or ecclesiastical associates, would have hesitated to give
+him any of friendship's confidences. Though quick to mark and
+acknowledge good service, or to offer to a junior an opportunity of
+distinction, many deemed him too much occupied with his own thoughts
+to show interest in his disciples, or to bestow those counsels which a
+young man prizes from his chief. But for the warmth of his devotion to
+a few early friends and the reverence he paid to their memory, a
+reverence touchingly shown in the article on Arthur Hallam which he
+published near the end of his own life, sixty-five years after
+Hallam's death, there might have seemed to be a measure of truth in
+the judgment that he cared less for men than for ideas and causes.
+Those, however, who marked the pang which the departure to the Roman
+Church of his friend Hope Scott caused him, those who in later days
+noted the enthusiasm with which he would speak of Lord Althorp, his
+opponent, and of Lord Aberdeen, his chief, dwelling upon the
+truthfulness and uprightness of the former and the amiability of the
+latter, knew that the impression of detachment he gave wronged the
+sensibility of his own heart. Of how few who have lived for more than
+sixty years in the full sight of their countrymen, and have been as
+party leaders exposed to angry and sometimes spiteful criticism, can
+it be said that there stands on record against them no malignant word
+and no vindictive act! This was due not perhaps entirely to natural
+sweetness of disposition, but rather to self-control and to a certain
+largeness of soul which would not condescend to anything mean or
+petty. Pride, though it may be a sin, is to most of us a useful, to
+some an indispensable, buttress of virtue. Nor should it be forgotten
+that the perfectly happy life which he led at home, cared for in
+everything by a devoted wife, kept far from him those domestic
+troubles which have soured the temper and embittered the judgments of
+not a few famous men. Reviewing his whole career, and summing up the
+concurrent impressions and recollections of those who knew him best,
+this dignity is the feature which dwells most in the mind, as the
+outline of some majestic Alp thrills one from afar when all the lesser
+beauties of glen and wood, of crag and glacier, have faded in the
+distance. As elevation was the note of his oratory, so was magnanimity
+the note of his character.
+
+The Greek maxim that no one can be called happy till his life is
+closed must, in the case of statesmen, be extended to warn us from the
+attempt to fix a man's place in history till a generation has arisen
+to whom he is a mere name, not a familiar figure to be loved or hated.
+Few reputations made in politics so far retain their lustre that
+curiosity continues to play round the person when those who can
+remember him living have departed. Dante has in immortal stanzas
+contrasted the fame of Provenzano Salvani that sounded through all
+Tuscany while he lived with the faint whispers of his name heard in
+his own Siena forty years after his death.[75] So out of all the men
+who have held a foremost place in English public life in the
+nineteenth century there are but six or seven--Pitt, Fox, Wellington,
+Peel, Disraeli, possibly Canning, or O'Connell, or Melbourne--whose
+names are to-day upon our lips. The great poet or the great artist
+lives as long as his books or his pictures; the statesman, like the
+singer or the actor, begins to be forgotten so soon as his voice is
+still, unless he has so dominated the men of his own time, and made
+himself a part of his country's history, that his personal character
+is indissolubly linked to the events the course of which he helped to
+determine. Tried by this test, Mr. Gladstone's fame seems destined to
+endure. His eloquence will soon become merely a tradition, for his
+printed speeches do not preserve its charm. If some of his books
+continue to be read, it will be rather because they are his than in
+respect of any permanent contribution they have made to knowledge. The
+wisdom of his policy, foreign and domestic, will have to be judged,
+not only by the consequences we see, but also by other consequences
+still hidden in the future. Yet among his acts there are some with
+which history cannot fail to concern herself, and which will keep
+fresh the memory of their author's energy and courage. Whoever
+follows the annals of England during the memorable years from 1843 to
+1894 will meet his name on almost every page, will feel how great must
+have been the force of an intellect that could so interpenetrate the
+story of its time, and will seek to know something of the dauntless
+figure that rose always conspicuous above the struggling throng.
+
+There is a passage in the _Odyssey_ where the seer Theoclymenus says,
+in describing a vision of death: "The sun has perished out of heaven."
+To Englishmen, Mr. Gladstone had been like a sun which, sinking
+slowly, had grown larger as he sank, and filled the sky with radiance
+even while he trembled on the verge of the horizon. There were men of
+ability and men of renown, but there was no one comparable to him in
+fame and power and honour. When he departed the light seemed to have
+died out of the sky.
+
+-----
+
+  [63] "Gled" is a kite or hawk. The name was Gladstones till Mr.
+       Gladstone's father dropped the final s.
+
+  [64] One of his most intimate friends has, I think, said that "he
+       never knew what it was to be bored." Fortunate, indeed, would
+       he have been had this been so; but that one who had watched him
+       long and closely should make the statement shows how gently
+       bores fared at his hands.
+
+       I recollect his once remarking on the capacity for boring
+       possessed by a gentleman who had been introduced and had talked
+       for some fifteen minutes to him; but his own manner through the
+       conversation had betrayed no impatience.
+
+  [65] Sermons belong to a somewhat different category, else I should
+       have to add the discourses of a few great preachers, such as
+       Robert Hall, J. H. Newman, Phillips Brooks.
+
+  [66] Though one of Macaulay's speeches (that against the exclusion of
+       the Master of the Rolls from the House of Commons) had the rare
+       honour of turning votes.
+
+  [67] "He said that this was the hardest battle of men he had entered,"
+       _Iliad_ vi. 185.
+
+  [68] His physical courage was no less evident than his moral. For two
+       or three years his life was threatened, and policemen were told
+       off to guard him wherever he went. He disliked this protection
+       so much (though the Home Office thought it necessary) that he
+       used to escape from the House of Commons by a little-frequented
+       exit, give the policemen the slip, and stroll home to his
+       residence along the Thames Embankment in the small hours of the
+       morning. Fear was not in his nature.
+
+  [69] The late Protestant Episcopal Primate of Ireland said that
+       Disestablishment had proved a blessing to his Church; and this
+       would seem to be now the general view of Irish Protestants.
+
+  [70] His abdication of leadership in 1875 was meant to be final,
+       though when the urgency of Eastern affairs had drawn him back
+       into strife, the old ardour revived, and he resumed the place
+       of Prime Minister in 1880. It has been often said that he would
+       have done better to retire from public life in 1880, or in
+       1885, yet the most striking proofs both of his courage and of
+       his physical energy were given in the latest part of his
+       career.
+
+  [71] For instance, he recommended Dr. Stubbs for a bishopric and Sir
+       John Holker for a lord justiceship, knowing both of them to be
+       Tories.
+
+  [72] His respect and regard for Mr. Bright were entirely unaffected by
+       the fact that Mr. Bright's opposition to the Home Rule Bill of
+       1886 had been the chief cause of its defeat.
+
+  [73] Usually over-anxious to vindicate his own consistency, he showed
+       on one occasion a capacity for recognising the humorous side of
+       a position into which he had been brought. In a debate which
+       arose in 1891 frequent references had been made to a former
+       speech in which he had pronounced a highly-coloured panegyric
+       upon the Church of England in Wales, the disestablishment of
+       which he had subsequently become willing to support. He
+       replied, "Many references have been made to a former speech of
+       mine on this subject, and I am not prepared to deny that in
+       that speech, when closely scrutinised, there may appear to be
+       present some element of exaggeration." The House dissolved in
+       laughter, and no further reference was made to the old speech.
+
+  [74] His Oxford contemporary and friend, the late Mr. Milnes Gaskell,
+       told me that when Mr. Gladstone was undergoing his _viva voce_
+       examination for his degree, the examiner, satisfied with the
+       candidate's answers on a particular matter, said, "And now, Mr.
+       Gladstone, we will leave that part of the subject." "No,"
+       replied the examinee, "we will, if you please, not leave it
+       yet." Whereupon he proceeded to pour forth a further flood of
+       knowledge and disquisition.
+
+  [75] _Purgat._ xi. 100-126.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+ Acton, John Edward Emerich Dalberg, Lord--
+   career of, 382-84
+   characteristics of, 399
+   critical taste of, 390
+   family of, 382
+   history, view of, 391-92;
+     view of study of, 394-95
+   learning of, 386-89, 392
+   liberty, history of, projected by, 395-96
+   libraries of, 388-89 and note
+   political opinions of, 384
+   style of, 396-97
+   thoroughness of, 390, 393-95
+   University work of, 397-98
+   writings of, 395
+
+ American Civil War, 55, 57, 90 and note. _See also_ United States
+
+ Arnold, Dr., 343, 346
+
+ Austen, Jane, 127
+
+
+ Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, Lord--
+   Cairns valued by, 186-87
+   career of, 3-16
+   characteristics of--
+     ambition, 21-22, 26, 30-31
+     _bonhomie_, 32, 34
+     courage, 11, 25-26, 65
+     cynicism, 30, 40-41
+     debating power, 47
+     intellectual congruity, 35-38, 42
+     loyalty, 33
+     self-confidence, 21, 26, 50, 65, 224
+     tactical adroitness, 48-50
+     tenacity, 11, 15, 23-24, 60, 65
+   Eastern policy of, 140, 275-76, 300, 356
+   education of, 39
+   epigrammatic phrases of, 41-42
+   estimates regarding, 1-2;
+     foreign, 54, 58
+   family of, 3
+   Gladstone compared with, 418, 429, 465;
+     contrasted with, 422;
+     Gladstone's attitude towards, 455-56
+   influence of, 66-68
+   literary works of, 4-5, 18-19, 29, 31-33, 35, 41, 43-45, 52 note;
+     quoted, 21 note, 25 note, 41, 50 note, 55
+   Lowe and, 34, 302
+   Northcote appreciated by, 21, 218
+   political views of, 6-8;
+     foreign policy of (_see also above_, Eastern policy), 15, 56, 59, 67
+   Stanley and, 81
+   suffrage extension, policy of, 305-306, 309-10, 442
+   otherwise mentioned, 107, 171, 220
+
+ Bentinck, Lord George, 9
+
+ Bishops--
+   change in type of, 196-98
+   House of Lords, presence in, 112
+   industry of, 199
+   influence of, 100-101, 103
+
+ Bismarck, Prince, 54
+
+ Black, J. Sutherland, 311 note
+
+ Bowen, Edward Ernest--
+   biography of, 343 note
+   career of, 345-46
+   characteristics of, 360-62
+   death of, 355
+   games, attitude towards, 351-52
+   influence of, 350;
+     views regarding, 353-54
+   military history, fondness for, 357-58
+   political interests of, 355-57
+   school songs of, 343 note, 359-360
+   teaching methods of, 346-47, 349-350, 354-55
+   training of teachers, views on, 348
+   travel, fondness for, 358
+   walking tours of, 355
+
+ Bowen, Lord, 345, 359
+
+ Bright, John, 30, 98, 304, 428-29, 443, 455 note
+
+ Bradlaugh, Mr., 437
+
+ Brooke, Rev. Stopford, quoted, 135-137
+
+ Brooks, Dr. Phillips, 209, 381
+
+ Brougham, Lord, 64, 428
+
+ Browning, Robert, 39, 126
+
+ Burke, Edmund, 410, 427-28, 440
+
+ Burney, Miss, 127
+
+
+ Cairns, Hugh M'Calmont, Earl--
+   American Civil War, attitude towards, 57
+   career of, 184-86
+   characteristics of, 184, 188-91
+   Disraeli compared with, 47
+   Gladstone compared with, 429
+   Jessel compared with, 180, 193
+   judicial gifts of, 192-93
+   legal manner of, 191-92
+   Mellish and, 176-78
+   parliamentary reform opposed by, 307
+   political partisanship of, 187, 194-195
+   religious views and interests of, 185-86, 193-94
+
+ Cambridge--
+   Jewish scholar at, 319 note
+   Sidgwick at, 327 _seq._
+   Smith, W. R., at, 319
+
+ Canterbury,
+   importance of See of, 101-105;
+   qualifications of archbishops of, 105-107
+
+ Carlyle, Thomas, 40, 87, 92, 126, 277, 461
+
+ Celtic temperament, 403, 405
+
+ Chancery Bar, 170;
+   famous trio at, 191
+
+ Chancery Courts, 181-82
+
+ Charity Organisation Society, 133
+
+ Church, Dean, 251-52
+
+ Church--
+   Anglican--
+     disestablishment of, 114-15, 141
+     possibilities before, 209-10
+     Stanley's view of, 78-79
+     Tractarian movement in, 252, 264 note, 406
+   Roman Catholic--
+     adaptability of, 259
+     Infallibilist claims of, 256, 385
+     modern research, attitude towards, 317
+
+ Clark, George T., quoted, 266-67
+
+ Clough, Miss A. J., 329
+
+ Clough, Arthur Hugh, 338
+
+ Cobden, Mr., quoted, 429-30
+
+ Collins, Wilkie, 116
+
+ Copleston, Dr. (Bishop of Llandaff), 197
+
+ Creighton, Bishop, 289, 387
+
+
+ Dalgairns, 251
+
+ Dante, 468-69, 471
+
+ Darwin, Charles, 457, 471-72
+
+ _De la Démocratie_, Schérer's, cited, 309 note
+
+ Delane, Mr., 422
+
+ _Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties_,
+     Ostrogorski's, cited, 309 note
+
+ Denison, Archdeacon, 133, 271 note
+
+ Derby, Lord, 10, 12, 28, 47, 57, 198, 429, 470
+
+ Dickens, Charles, 123, 127
+
+ Disraeli. _See_ Beaconsfield
+
+ Dissenters. _See_ Nonconformists
+
+ Döllinger, Dr. von, 383, 385, 392
+
+ Dupanloup, Archbishop, 209, 385
+
+
+ Eastern Question (1876), 140, 275-276, 300, 356, 419
+
+ Editors,
+   types of, 363-64;
+   temptations of, 370, 380-81
+
+ Eliot, George, 124, 328
+
+ Equity Courts, 170, 173
+
+ _Essays and Reviews_, 113, 317
+
+ _Essays on Reform_, cited, 307 and note
+
+ _Evening Post, The_, 365, 374-76
+
+
+ Forster, W. E., 234, 239 and note
+
+ Fox, Charles James, 428-29, 435
+
+ France, novelists of, 129
+
+ Franchise extension. _See_ Suffrage
+
+ Fraser, James, Bishop of Manchester--
+   biographies of, 196 note
+   career of, 196, 200-201
+   characteristics of, 204-205
+   energy of, 202
+ Fraser, James, Bishop of Manchester--
+   influence of, 206
+   new Episcopal type created by, 196, 210
+   personality of, 203-204
+   popularity of, 202, 206
+   ritualist illegalities, attitude towards, 208
+   science, attitude towards, 207
+   views of, 206-207
+
+ Freeman, Edward Augustus--
+   biography of, 262 note
+   career of, 262-63
+   friendships of, 290
+   Green influenced by, 137
+   historical work,
+     merits of, 276-84;
+     style of, 286-87
+   humour of, 287
+   interests of, 264-67, 271-72
+   kindliness of, 278, 291
+   literary preferences of, 269-70
+   methodical ways of, 285
+   military history, fondness for, 357
+   Oxford work of, 287-89
+   political views of, 272-75
+   simplicity and directness of, 270-71, 275
+   Trollope and, 120, 271 and note
+   works of, 267, 284-86, 291-92
+
+ Froude, J. A., 271 note
+
+
+ Gardiner, S. R., 357;
+   quoted, 274
+
+ Gibbon, 133, 169, 281, 284
+
+ Gladstone, William Ewart--
+   Acton, Lord, relations with, 383, 399
+   _Alabama_ claims, action regarding, 444, 446, 449, 451
+   American Civil War, attitude towards, 57
+   career of, 412
+   characteristics of--
+     breadth and keenness of interests, 400, 413, 459
+     caution, 409, 414, 419, 447, 453
+     complexity of nature, 400, 409-410, 412
+     conservatism, 401, 439
+     constructive power, 439-41
+     conversational powers, 461
+     courage, 447 and note, 451 note
+     courtesy, 423 and note, 455-456, 461
+     dignity, 457
+     emotional excitability, 405, 410-411, 433-34
+     humour, 460
+     impulsiveness, 401, 405, 421, 447
+     independence, 418-19, 450
+     ingenuity, 404, 416-17, 430-31, 466
+     insight into character, 453
+     intensity, 402, 405, 426, 435, 450, 453, 460, 462
+     loyalty, 455
+     magnanimity, 457, 477
+     memory, 404, 424, 459
+       for faces, 423
+     open-mindedness, 416, 452, 454
+     oratory, 411, 426-39, 463
+     over-subtlety, 407, 432, 448, 452
+     patriotism, 450-51
+     pride, 416, 420, 423, 452, 455, 474, 477
+     religious disposition, 472-75
+       views, 401, 406-407
+     reserve:
+       political, 409, 414-15, 419, 452
+       personal, 424, 475-476
+     Scottish temperament, 403-405
+     self-confidence, 224
+     simplicity, 453, 458, 461, 475
+     sincerity, 401
+     temper, 455-56
+     tranquillity, 462
+     voice, 430, 436-38
+   Disraeli and, 11, 33, 35
+   estimates of, 411, 417, 448
+     continental, 444
+   family of, 403
+   foreign affairs, attitude towards, 443-46, 458
+   Freeman's appointment by, 263
+   High Church appointments of, 198
+   home life of, 462, 474, 477
+   Home Rule Bill of (1886), 272
+   Homeric studies and views of, 401, 465-68
+   hostility to, 304
+   literary activities of, 401, 458, 462-68
+   Lowe compared with, 293, 299, 429, 435
+     Lowe's antagonism to, 295
+     Lowe in Cabinet of, 299
+   mistakes of, 449
+   Northcote and, 212, 216
+   Oxford training of, 406-408
+   parliamentary abilities of, 420-21, 424-26
+   Parnell's resentment against, 239-240, 247
+   Peel's influence on, 10, 409, 452
+   poetry, attitude towards, 471
+   quoted, 56
+   Reform Bill of, 13, 442
+   scholarship of, 468
+   science, attitude towards, 407-408, 470
+   suffrage qualifications, proposed reduction of, 308 note
+   theological views of, tinging political, 473
+   otherwise mentioned, 67, 113, 179, 187, 221, 260
+
+ Godkin, Edwin Lawrence--
+   career of, 365-66
+   courage of, 370-71
+   geniality of, 376
+   humour of, 368-73
+   independence of, 364, 369, 381
+   influence of, 378-80
+   sincerity of, 367, 373, 380
+   style of, 367-68, 373
+   Tammany, attitude towards, 374 and note
+   views of, 366-67, 370, 374-76
+
+ Green, John Richard--
+   biography of, 131 note
+   career of, 131-34
+   conversation of, 165-66
+   eloquence of, 166
+   gifts and qualities of, 146, 151-52, 154, 160-62, 164-67
+   ill-health of, 138, 141-46
+   interests of, 151, 154-57
+   letters of, 131 note, 152-53
+   literary work of--
+     _Saturday Review_ articles, 133, 135-37, 153;
+     historical, 138-39, 142-45, 155, 158-60, 163-64;
+     characteristics of, 139-40, 150, 152-53, 157-65, 167-69
+   military history, fondness for, 357
+   political activity of, 140-41
+   views of, 134
+
+ Green, Prof. Thomas Hill--
+   career of, 85
+   characteristics of, 86-91
+   civic activities of, 98
+   influence of, 95-97, 99
+   literary works of, 92-94, 98
+   political keenness of, 95, 97
+   views of, 93, 97, 335
+   otherwise mentioned, 265, 268, 278
+
+
+ Hardy, Gathorne, 213
+
+ Hardy, Thomas, 116
+
+ Healy, T. M., 443
+
+ Henry VIII., 271 note
+
+ Herodotus, 149-51
+
+ Historians--
+   qualifications of, 146-48, 156, 277
+   two classes of, 149
+
+ History, Freeman's view of, 268, 274
+
+ Hodgkin, Dr. Thomas, 357
+
+ Holker, Sir John, 453 note
+
+ House of Commons--
+   character of, 48
+   erroneous sketches of, 121
+   lawyers in, 172
+   leadership of, 217, 424
+   occasional detachment of, from popular sentiment, 51
+   power of, declining, 308-309
+   rhetoric unpopular with, 296
+
+ Huxley, 207
+
+
+ Iddesleigh. _See_ Northcote
+
+ Ireland--
+   Anglo-Irish Protestants, 229-30
+   Church disestablishment in, 113, 187, 273, 407, 419, 442, 449 and note
+   Disraeli's attitude towards, 56-57, 67
+   Green, J. R., views of, regarding, 141
+   Home Rule, views regarding, of
+     Acton, 384;
+     Bowen, 356;
+     Bright, 455 note;
+     Freeman, 272;
+     Gladstone, 272, 414, 447;
+     Godkin, 375
+   Land Bill of 1881, 425, 442-43
+
+
+ James, Henry, 129
+
+ Jessel, Sir George--
+   Cairns compared with, 180, 193
+   career of, 171
+   judicial methods of, 174-75, 179-181, 194
+   mental powers of, 173, 181-82
+   parliamentary manner of, 172
+   quickness of, 173, 176, 183, 193
+
+ Jews--
+   bigotry towards, 183
+   Cambridge scholar, anecdote of, 319 note
+   concentration, power of, possessed by, 23 and note
+   conservatism of, 25 note
+   detachment of, 19-20
+   distinctions gained by, 171
+   practicality of, 182
+   satirical powers of, 45
+
+ Jowett, 113, 150
+
+
+ Kelvin, Lord, 184
+
+ Kipling, Rudyard, 129
+
+
+ Lawrence, Lord, 184
+
+ Lightfoot, Bishop, 199-200, 209, 290
+
+ Louis Napoleon, 55, 64, 98
+
+ Lowe, Robert--
+   biography of, 293 note
+   Cairns compared with, 188
+   career of, 293-95, 299-300
+   characteristics of, 301-304
+   Disraeli and, 34, 302
+   eclipse of fame of, 293, 300
+   educational work of, 294-95, 304-305
+   Gladstone compared with, 293, 299, 429, 435;
+     antagonism to Gladstone, 295;
+     in Gladstone's Cabinet, 299
+   Oxford, at, 301 note 2
+   rhetorical power of, 296-97
+   shortsightedness of, 300-301
+   Utilitarianism of, 304
+
+ Lyndhurst, Lord, 29
+
+
+ Macaulay, 139, 169, 270, 274, 281, 427, 428 and note 2
+
+ Macdonald, Sir John A., 422
+
+ Maclennan, John F., 320
+
+ Magee, Archbishop, 112, 199, 429
+
+ Manning, Cardinal Henry Edward--
+   biography of, 260-61
+   career of, 250-51
+   characteristics of, 251-54, 261
+   conversions effected by, 255
+   Infallibilist cause, work for, 256
+   interests and sympathies of, 257-61
+   speeches of, 255
+
+ Maurice, F. D., 134, 408
+
+ Mellish, Lord Justice, 176-79
+
+ Meredith, George, 116, 122
+
+ Mill, John Stuart, 61, 78 note, 93, 304
+
+ Monk, Bishop, 197
+
+ Mugwumps, 375 and note
+
+
+ Napoleon Bonaparte, 238
+
+ Napoleon, Louis, 55, 64, 98
+
+ _Nation, The_, 365, 368, 371-73, 378
+
+ Newman, Cardinal, 251-52, 428 note 1, 467
+
+ Newnham College, Cambridge, 329-330
+
+ Nonconformists--
+   Disraeli's dislike of, 8, 52
+   Education Act (1870) resented by, 15
+   Fraser's attitude towards, 202, 206-208 and note
+   Gladstone trusted by, 401
+   Green's dislike of, 134
+
+ Northcote, Sir Stafford (Lord Iddesleigh)--
+   biography of, 211 note
+   career of, 212-13
+   characteristics of, 213, 222-23, 225-26
+   Gladstone compared with, 435
+   parliamentary abilities of, 214-16, 218
+
+ Novels, types of, 122
+
+
+ O'Connell, Daniel, 6, 8, 248
+
+ Oliphant, Mrs., 116
+
+ Oratory--
+   elevation in, 433
+   reputation for, nature of, 427
+
+ Oxford--
+   Green, T. H., on municipal council of, 98-99
+   Thackeray's candidature for, 120
+
+ Oxford University--
+   Tractarian movement in, 252, 264 note, 406
+   training at, characteristics of, 408, 467
+
+
+ Palmer, Roundell (Lord Selborne), 176, 191-92, 294
+
+ Palmerston, Lord, 13, 28, 49, 57, 98, 294
+
+ Parliament. _See_ House of Commons
+
+ Parnell, Charles Stewart--
+   biography of, 227 note
+   career of, 228-29
+   family of, 227
+   leadership, aptness for, 248
+   moral courage of, 239
+   parliamentary tactics of, 218-19, 244;
+     knowledge of procedure, 242-43
+   passion and self-control of, 240
+   Phoenix Park murders, demeanour after, 236, 238
+   Pigott affair, attitude towards, 239
+   practicality of, 230-33
+   pride of, 233, 235-38
+   self-confidence of, 224, 236, 238
+   speeches of, 241-42
+   unscrupulousness of, 237-38
+   unsympathetic manner of, 190
+   views of, 245-46
+
+ Peel, Sir Robert--
+   caution of, 408-409, 452
+   death of, 10
+   Disraeli's conduct towards, 28 and note
+     his view of, 55
+   financial policy of, 441-42
+   Gladstone compared with, 411, 439, 455, 475
+   separation of, from Conservatives, 9, 61
+   speeches of, 428
+
+ Pitt, William, 429, 435, 439, 442, 476
+
+ _Popular Government_, Sir H. Maine's, cited, 309 note
+
+ Psychical Research Society, 331-32
+
+ Pusey, Dr., cited, 80
+
+
+ Rhodes, Cecil, 246
+
+ Rolt, Lord Justice, 191-92
+
+ Roman Catholic Church. _See under_ Church
+
+ Russell, Lord, 13, 28, 57, 295
+
+
+ Salisbury, Lord, 186, 247, 295, 456
+
+ _Saturday Review_--
+   Bowen's contributions to, 360
+   Freeman's contributions to, 285
+     dissociation from, 275
+   Green's contributions to, 133, 135-137, 153
+
+ Schoolmasters, types of, 343, 346
+
+ Schools Inquiry Commission, 200-201
+
+ Scott, Sir Walter, 123, 125
+
+ Scottish temperament and characteristics, 315, 403-405
+
+ Selborne, Lord. _See_ Palmer, Roundell
+
+ Sherbrooke, Viscount. _See_ Lowe, Robert
+
+ Sidgwick, Henry--
+   career of, 327-29
+   characteristics of, 338-42
+   impartiality of, 334
+   literary preferences of, 338
+   psychical research, interest in, 331-332
+   views of, philosophical and political, 335-37
+   women's education promoted by, 329
+
+ Sidgwick, Henry--
+   works of, 332-34, 338
+
+ Skene, Mr., cited, 158
+
+ Smith, Professor Goldwin, 76, 281
+
+ Smith, R. Bosworth, quoted, 349-50
+
+ Smith, Prof. Robertson--
+   Acton, Lord, and, 387
+   career of, 311-12, 315, 318-320
+   characteristics of, 323-25
+   ecclesiastical trial of, 313-16
+   _Encyclopædia Britannica_, work on, 312-14
+   versatility of, 322
+   works of, 320-21;
+     characteristics of, 321
+
+ Stanley, Very Rev. Arthur Penrhyn--
+   career of, 70
+   characteristics of, 71, 73, 77, 82-84
+   debating power of, 77
+   Disraeli and, 81
+   family of, 69-70
+   Green influenced by, 132, 137
+   literary work of, 71-74
+   politics of, 78
+   sermons of, 76-77
+   theological position of, 80-81
+   Tait, attitude towards, 113
+   otherwise mentioned, 164-65, 205-206
+
+ Statesmanship, necessary qualifications for, 46
+
+ Stevenson, R. L., 129
+
+ Stubbs, Bishop, 138, 160, 289-90, 453 note
+
+ Suffrage extension--
+   Disraeli's view of, 52, 57-58, 67-68, 310
+   Lowe's opposition to, 295-98, 305-306
+   results of, 306-309
+
+
+ Tait, Archibald Campbell, Archbishop of Canterbury--
+   biography of, cited, 100 note
+   career of, 107
+   characteristics of, 108-12, 209
+   Green appointed librarian by, 133-134
+   influence of, 110-12
+   Irish Church Disestablishment Bill, attitude towards, 187
+   policy of, 112, 114
+   views of, 110
+
+ Temple, Archbishop, 113 and note, 199
+
+ Tennyson, 39, 459
+
+ Thackeray, W. M., 35, 120, 123-25
+
+ Thirlwall, Bishop, 112
+
+ Thucydides, 149-50
+
+ Tone, Wolfe, 229, 248
+
+ Tory party--
+   nature of, 218;
+     (1848-1865), 60-62
+   suffrage extension profitable to, 52, 57-58, 67, 310
+
+ Tractarian movement, 252, 264 note, 406
+
+ Trollope, Anthony--
+   biographies of, cited, 116 note
+   Freeman and, 120, 271 and note
+   literary position of, 116-18
+   personality of, 118, 126
+   political activity of, 120
+   travels of, 121-22
+   works of, 117-20, 128;
+     characteristics of, 122-30
+
+
+ United States--
+   Acton's knowledge of history of, 387
+   Freeman's visit to, 268
+   journalism in, 379
+   Presbyterianism in, 317
+   religion and politics dissociated in, 100
+   Trollope's account of, 122
+   University influence in, 378
+
+
+ Westbury, Lord, 303
+
+ Whiggism, 6, 8, 63, 298, 469
+
+ Wilberforce, Bishop Samuel, 111-12, 198, 254, 429
+
+ Women, education of, 329-31
+
+ Wordsworth, 301
+
+ Wright, William, 319 and note, 320
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+_Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+  The authors' archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation
+  are preserved.
+
+  The authors' punctuation styles are preserved.
+
+  Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter.
+
+  Typographical errors were corrected and are listed below.
+
+Transcriber's Changes: (Indicated below with =equal signs=.)
+
+ Page 218: Was 'opportunies' (in granting or refusing =opportunities=
+          for discussing topics he would prefer to have not discussed
+          at all.)
+
+
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Studies in Contemporary Biography, by James Bryce, Viscount Bryce</title>
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+<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, Studies in Contemporary Biography, by James
+Bryce, Viscount Bryce</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: Studies in Contemporary Biography</p>
+<p>Author: James Bryce, Viscount Bryce</p>
+<p>Release Date: March 17, 2010  [eBook #31677]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4 class="center">E-text prepared by David Clarke, Dan Horwood,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net/c/">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/toronto">http://www.archive.org/details/toronto</a>)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/Canadian Libaries. See
+      <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/r8548972200brycuoft">
+      http://www.archive.org/details/r8548972200brycuoft</a>
+	</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>STUDIES<br />
+<span style='font-size:0.5em;'>IN</span><br />
+CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY</h1>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_1' id='linki_1'></a>
+</div>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/i002.png' alt='' title='' width='100' height='30' /><br />
+</div>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div class='center'>
+<h1 style='margin-bottom:2em;'><span style='font-size:0.8em;'>STUDIES</span><br />
+<span style='font-size:0.5em;'>IN</span><br />
+CONTEMPORARY<br />
+BIOGRAPHY</h1>
+
+<p style='font-size:0.8em;'>BY</p>
+<p style='margin-top:0.8em; font-size:1.2em;'>JAMES BRYCE</p>
+<p style='font-size:0.7em;'>AUTHOR OF<br />
+&lsquo;THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE,&rsquo; &lsquo;THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH&rsquo;, ETC.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p style='font-weight:bold; margin-top:4em;'>London</p>
+<p>MACMILLAN AND CO., <span class='smcap'>Limited</span></p>
+<p style='font-size:0.8em;'>NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</p>
+<p style='margin-bottom:2em;'>1903</p>
+<p style='font-size:0.8em;'><i>All rights reserved</i></p>
+</div>
+<hr class='mini' />
+<p class='center'><i>Copyright in the United States of America 1903</i></p>
+<hr class='mini' />
+<div class='center' style='margin:4em auto;'>
+<p><span style='font-size:0.8em;'>TO</span><br />
+CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT<br />
+<span style='font-size:0.7em;'>PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY</span></p>
+<p style='font-size:0.8em;'>IN COMMEMORATION OF A LONG AND<br />
+VALUED FRIENDSHIP</p>
+</div>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_vii' name='page_vii'></a>vii</span>
+<a name='PREFACE' id='PREFACE'></a>
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+</div>
+<p>The first and the last of these Studies relate to
+persons whose fame has gone out into all lands, and
+about whom so much remains to be said that one
+who has reflected on their careers need not offer
+an apology for saying something. Of the other
+eighteen sketches, some deal with eminent men
+whose names are still familiar, but whose personalities
+have begun to fade from the minds of the
+present generation. The rest treat of persons
+who came less before the public, but whose
+brilliant gifts and solid services to the world
+make them equally deserve to be remembered
+with honour. Having been privileged to enjoy
+their friendship, I have felt it a duty to do what
+a friend can to present a faithful record of their
+excellence which may help to keep their memory
+fresh and green.</p>
+<p>These Studies are, however, not to be regarded
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_viii' name='page_viii'></a>viii</span>
+as biographies, even in miniature. My aim
+has rather been to analyse the character and
+powers of each of the persons described, and,
+as far as possible, to convey the impression
+which each made in the daily converse of life.
+All of them, except Lord Beaconsfield, were
+personally, and most of them intimately, known
+to me.</p>
+<p>In the six Studies which treat of politicians
+I have sought to set aside political predilections,
+and have refrained from expressing political
+opinions, though it has now and then been
+necessary to point out instances in which the
+subsequent course of events has shown the
+action of Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Lowe, and
+Mr. Gladstone to have been right or wrong (as
+the case may be) in the action they respectively
+took.</p>
+<p>The sketches of T. H. Green, E. A. Freeman,
+and J. R. Green were originally written
+for English magazines, and most of the other
+Studies have been published in the United
+States. All of those that had already appeared
+in print have been enlarged and revised, some
+indeed virtually rewritten. I have to thank the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_ix' name='page_ix'></a>ix</span>
+proprietors of the <i>English Historical Review</i>,
+the <i>Contemporary Review</i>, and the <i>New York
+Nation</i>, as also the Century Company of New
+York, for their permission to use so much of
+the matter of the volume as had appeared (in
+its original form) in the organs belonging to
+them respectively.</p>
+<p><i>March 6, 1903.</i></p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_xi' name='page_xi'></a>xi</span>
+<a name='CONTENTS' id='CONTENTS'></a>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+<table id='toc' border='0' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Contents' style='margin:1em auto;'>
+<tr>
+  <td />
+  <td />
+  <td />
+
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='font-size:0.8em;'>PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>I.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1804-1881</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#BENJAMIN_DISRAELI_EARL_OF_BEACONSFIELD1'>1</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>II.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1815-1881</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#DEAN_STANLEY16'>69</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>III.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Thomas Hill Green</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1836-1882</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#THOMAS_HILL_GREEN'>85</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>IV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1811-1882</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#ARCHBISHOP_TAIT19'>100</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>V.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Anthony Trollope</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1815-1882</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#ANTHONY_TROLLOPE21'>116</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>John Richard Green</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1837-1883</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#JOHN_RICHARD_GREEN22'>131</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Sir George Jessel</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1824-1883</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#SIR_GEORGE_JESSEL_MASTER_OF_THE_ROLLS'>170</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Hugh M&rsquo;Calmont Cairns, Earl Cairns</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1819-1885</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#LORD_CHANCELLOR_CAIRNS'>184</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>IX.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>James Fraser, Bishop of Manchester</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1818-1885</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#BISHOP_FRASER'>196</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>X.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Stafford Henry Northcote, Earl of Iddesleigh</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1818-1887</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#SIR_STAFFORD_HENRY_NORTHCOTE_EARL_OF_IDDESLEIGH34'>211</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Charles Stewart Parnell</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1846-1891</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHARLES_STEWART_PARNELL'>227</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop and Cardinal</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1808-1892</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CARDINAL_MANNING'>250</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Edward Augustus Freeman</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1823-1892</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#EDWARD_AUGUSTUS_FREEMAN37'>262</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XIV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1811-1892</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#ROBERT_LOWE_VISCOUNT_SHERBROOKE41'>293</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>William Robertson Smith</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1846-1894</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#WILLIAM_ROBERTSON_SMITH'>311</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XVI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Henry Sidgwick</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1838-1900</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#HENRY_SIDGWICK'>327</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XVII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Edward Ernest Bowen</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1836-1901</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#EDWARD_ERNEST_BOWEN53'>343</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XVIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Edwin Lawrence Godkin</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1831-1902</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#EDWIN_LAWRENCE_GODKIN'>363</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XIX.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>John Emerich Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1834-1902</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#LORD_ACTON'>382</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XX.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>William Ewart Gladstone</span></td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'>1809-1898</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#WILLIAM_EWART_GLADSTONE'>400</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_1' name='page_1'></a>1</span>
+<a name='BENJAMIN_DISRAELI_EARL_OF_BEACONSFIELD1' id='BENJAMIN_DISRAELI_EARL_OF_BEACONSFIELD1'></a>
+<h2>BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor2">[1]</a></h2>
+</div>
+<p>When Lord Beaconsfield died in 1881 we all
+wondered what people would think of him fifty
+years thereafter. Divided as our own judgments
+were, we asked whether he would still seem a
+problem. Would opposite views regarding his
+aims, his ideas, the sources of his power, still
+divide the learned, and perplex the ordinary
+reader? Would men complain that history cannot
+be good for much when, with the abundant
+materials at her disposal, she had not framed a
+consistent theory of one who played so great a
+part in so ample a theatre? People called him
+a riddle; and he certainly affected a sphinx-like
+attitude. Would the riddle be easier then than
+it was for us, from among whom the man had
+even now departed?</p>
+<p>When he died, there were many in England
+who revered him as a profound thinker and a
+lofty character, animated by sincere patriotism.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_2' name='page_2'></a>2</span>
+Others, probably as numerous, held him for no
+better than a cynical charlatan, bent through
+life on his own advancement, who permitted no
+sense of public duty, and very little human
+compassion, to stand in the way of his insatiate
+ambition. The rest did not know what to think.
+They felt in him the presence of power; they
+felt also something repellent. They could not
+understand how a man who seemed hard and
+unscrupulous could win so much attachment and
+command so much obedience.</p>
+<p>Since Disraeli departed nearly one-half of
+those fifty years has passed away. Few are
+living who can claim to have been his personal
+friends, none who were personal enemies. No
+living statesman professes to be his political
+disciple. The time has come when one may discuss
+his character and estimate his career without
+being suspected of doing so with a party bias
+or from a party motive. Doubtless those who
+condemn and those who defend or excuse some
+momentous parts of his conduct, such as, for
+instance, his policy in the East and in Afghanistan
+from 1876 to 1879, will differ in their
+judgment of his wisdom and foresight. If this
+be a difficulty, it is an unavoidable one, and
+may never quite disappear. There were in the
+days of Augustus some who blamed that sagacious
+ruler for seeking to check the expansion of the
+Roman Empire. There were in the days of King
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3' name='page_3'></a>3</span>
+Henry the Second some who censured and others
+who praised him for issuing the Constitutions of
+Clarendon. Both questions still remain open to
+argument; and the conclusion any one forms
+must affect in some measure his judgment of
+each monarch&rsquo;s statesmanship. So differences of
+opinion about particular parts of Disraeli&rsquo;s long
+career need not prevent us from dispassionately
+inquiring what were the causes that enabled him
+to attain so striking a success, and what is the
+place which posterity is likely to assign to him
+among the rulers of England.</p>
+<p>First, a few words about the salient events of
+his life, not by way of writing a biography, but
+to explain what follows.</p>
+<p>He was born in London, in 1804. His father,
+Isaac Disraeli, was a literary man of cultivated
+taste and independent means, who wrote a good
+many books, the best known of which is his
+<i>Curiosities of Literature</i>, a rambling work, full
+of entertaining matter. He belonged to that
+division of the Jewish race which is called
+the Sephardim, and traces itself to Spain and
+Portugal;<a name='FNanchor_0001' id='FNanchor_0001'></a><a href='#Footnote_0001' class='fnanchor'>[2]</a> but he had ceased to frequent the
+synagogue&mdash;had, in fact, broken with his co-religionists.
+Isaac had access to good society, so
+that the boy saw eminent and polished men from
+his early years, and, before he had reached manhood,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4' name='page_4'></a>4</span>
+began to make his way in drawing-rooms
+where he met the wittiest and best-known people
+of the day. He was articled to a firm of attorneys
+in London in 1821, but after two or three
+years quitted a sphere for which his peculiar gifts
+were ill suited.<a name='FNanchor_0002' id='FNanchor_0002'></a><a href='#Footnote_0002' class='fnanchor'>[3]</a> Samuel Rogers, the poet, took
+a fancy to him, and had him baptized at the age
+of thirteen. As he grew up, he was often to be
+seen with Count d&rsquo;Orsay and Lady Blessington,
+well-known figures who fluttered on the confines
+of fashion and Bohemia. It is worth remarking
+that he never went either to a public school or to
+a university. In England it has become the
+fashion to assume that nearly all the persons who
+have shone in public life have been educated in one
+of the great public schools, and that they owe to
+its training their power of dealing with men and
+assemblies. Such a superstition is sufficiently
+refuted by the examples of men like Pitt,
+Macaulay, Bishop Wilberforce, Disraeli, Cobden,
+Bright, and Cecil Rhodes, not to add instances
+drawn from Ireland and Scotland, where till very
+recently there have been no public schools in the
+current English sense.</p>
+<p>Disraeli first appeared before the public in
+1826, when he published <i>Vivian Grey</i>, an amazing
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5' name='page_5'></a>5</span>
+book to be the production of a youth of twenty-two.
+Other novels&mdash;<i>The Young Duke</i>, <i>Venetia</i>,
+<i>Contarini Fleming</i>, <i>Henrietta Temple</i>&mdash;maintained
+without greatly increasing his reputation
+between 1831 and 1837. Then came two
+political stories, <i>Coningsby</i> and <i>Sybil</i>, in 1844
+and 1845, followed by <i>Tancred</i> in 1847, and the
+<i>Life of Lord George Bentinck</i> in 1852; with a
+long interval of silence, till, in 1870, he produced
+<i>Lothair</i>, in 1880 <i>Endymion</i>. Besides these he
+published in 1839 the tragedy of <i>Alarcos</i>, and in
+1835 the more ambitious <i>Revolutionary Epick</i>,
+neither of which had much success. In 1828-31
+he took a journey through the East, visiting
+Constantinople, Syria, and Egypt, and it was
+then, no doubt, in lands peculiarly interesting to
+a man of his race, that he conceived those ideas
+about the East and its mysterious influences
+which figure largely in some of his stories,
+notably in <i>Tancred</i>, and which in 1878 had no
+small share in shaping his policy and that of
+England. Meanwhile, he had not forgotten the
+political aspirations which we see in <i>Vivian Grey</i>.
+In 1832, just before the passing of the Reform
+Bill, he appeared as candidate for the petty
+borough of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire,
+and was defeated by a majority of twenty-three
+to twelve, so few were the voters in many
+boroughs of those days. After the Bill had
+enlarged the constituency, he tried his luck twice
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6' name='page_6'></a>6</span>
+again, in 1833 and 1835, both times unsuccessfully,
+and came before two other boroughs also,
+Taunton and Marylebone, though in the latter
+case no contest took place. Such activity in a
+youth with little backing from friends and comparatively
+slender means marked him already as
+a man of spirit and ambition. His next attempt
+was more lucky. At the general election of 1837
+he was returned for Maidstone.</p>
+<p>His political professions during this period
+have been keenly canvassed; nor is it easy to
+form a fair judgment on them. In 1832 he
+had sought and obtained recommendations from
+Joseph Hume and Daniel O&rsquo;Connell, and people
+had therefore set him down as a Radical. Although,
+however, his professions of political
+faith included dogmas which, like triennial parliaments,
+the ballot, and the imposition of a new
+land-tax, were part of the so-called &ldquo;Radical&rdquo;
+platform, still there was a vague and fanciful
+note in his utterances, and an aversion to the
+conventional Whig way of putting things, which
+showed that he was not a thorough-going
+adherent of any of the then existing political
+parties, but was trying to strike out a new line
+and attract men by the promise of something
+fresher and bolder than the recognised schools
+offered. In 1834 his hostility to Whiggism
+was becoming more pronounced, and a tenderness
+for some Tory doctrines more discernible.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7' name='page_7'></a>7</span>
+Finally, in 1835, he appeared as an avowed
+Tory, accepting the regular creed of the party,
+and declaring himself a follower of Sir Robert
+Peel, but still putting forward a number of
+views peculiar to himself, which he thereafter
+developed not only in his speeches but in his
+novels. <i>Coningsby</i> and <i>Sybil</i> were meant to be
+a kind of manifesto of the &ldquo;Young England&rdquo;
+party&mdash;a party which can hardly be said to have
+existed outside his own mind, though a small knot
+of aristocratic youths who caught up and repeated
+his phrases seemed to form a nucleus for it.</p>
+<p>The fair conclusion from his deliverances
+during these early years is that he was at first
+much more of a Liberal than a Tory, yet with
+ideas distinctively his own which made him appear
+in a manner independent of both parties. The
+old party lines might seem to have been almost
+effaced by the struggle over the Reform Bill;
+and it was natural for a bold and inventive mind
+to imagine a new departure, and put forward a
+programme in which a sort of Radicalism was
+mingled with doctrines of a different type. But
+when it became clear after a time that the old
+political divisions still subsisted, and that such a
+distinctive position as he had conceived could not
+be maintained, he then, having to choose between
+one or other of the two recognised parties, chose
+the Tories, dropping some tenets he had previously
+advocated which were inconsistent with their
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8' name='page_8'></a>8</span>
+creed, but retaining much of his peculiar way
+of looking at political questions. How far the
+change which passed over him was a natural
+development, how far due to mere calculations of
+interest, there is little use discussing: perhaps he
+did not quite know himself. Looking back, we
+of to-day might be inclined to think that he received
+more blame for it than he deserved, but
+contemporary observers generally set it down to a
+want of principle. In one thing, however, he was
+consistent then, and remained consistent ever after&mdash;his
+hearty hatred of the Whigs. There was
+something in the dryness and coldness of the great
+Whig families, their stiff constitutionalism, their
+belief in political economy, perhaps also their
+occasional toyings with the Nonconformists
+(always an object of dislike to Disraeli), which
+roused all the antagonisms of his nature, personal
+and Oriental.</p>
+<p>When he entered the House of Commons he
+was already well known to fashionable London,
+partly by his striking face and his powers of conversation,
+partly by the eccentricities of his dress&mdash;he
+loved bright-coloured waistcoats, and decked
+himself with rings,&mdash;partly by his novels, whose
+satirical pungency had made a noise in society.
+He had also become, owing to his apparent change
+of front, the object of angry criticism. A quarrel
+with Daniel O&rsquo;Connell, in the course of which he
+challenged the great Irishman to fight a duel, each
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9' name='page_9'></a>9</span>
+party having described the other with a freedom
+of language bordering on scurrility, made him, for
+a time, the talk of the political world. Thus
+there was more curiosity evoked by his first
+speech than usually awaits a new member. It
+was unsuccessful, not from want of ability, but
+because its tone did not suit the temper of
+the House of Commons, and because a hostile
+section of the audience sought to disconcert him
+by their laughter. Undeterred by this ridicule,
+he continued to speak, though in a less
+ambitious and less artificial vein, till after a few
+years he had become one of the most conspicuous
+unofficial members. At first no one had eulogised
+Peel more warmly, but after a time he
+edged away from the minister, whether repelled
+by his coldness, which showed that in that
+quarter no promotion was to be expected, or
+shrewdly perceiving that Peel was taking a line
+which would ultimately separate him from the
+bulk of the Conservative party. This happened
+in 1846, when Peel, convinced that the import
+duties on corn were economically unsound, proposed
+their abolition. Disraeli, who, since 1843,
+had taken repeated opportunities of firing stray
+shots at the powerful Prime Minister, now bore a
+foremost part not only in attacking him, but in
+organising the Protectionist party, and prompting
+its leader, Lord George Bentinck. In embracing
+free trade, Peel carried with him his own personal
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10' name='page_10'></a>10</span>
+friends and disciples, men like Gladstone, Sidney
+Herbert, Lord Lincoln, Sir James Graham, Cardwell,
+and a good many others, the intellectual <i>&eacute;lite</i>
+of the Tory party. The more numerous section
+who clung to Protection had numbers, wealth,
+respectability, cohesion, but brains and tongues
+were scarce. An adroit tactician and incisive
+speaker was of priceless value to them. Such
+a man they found in Disraeli, while he gained,
+sooner than he had expected, an opportunity of
+playing a leading part in the eyes of Parliament
+and the country. In the end of 1848, Lord
+George Bentinck, who, though a man of natural
+force and capable of industry when he pleased,
+had been to some extent Disraeli&rsquo;s mouthpiece,
+died, leaving his prompter indisputably the keenest
+intellect in the Tory-Protectionist party. In 1850,
+Peel, who might possibly have in time brought
+the bulk of that party back to its allegiance
+to him, was killed by a fall from his horse.
+The Peelites drifted more and more towards
+Liberalism, so that when Lord Derby, who, in
+1851, had been commissioned as head of the
+Tory party to form a ministry, invited them to
+join him, they refused to do so, imagining him
+to be still in favour of the corn duties, and
+resenting the behaviour of the Protectionist
+section to their own master. Being thus unable
+to find one of them to lead his followers in
+the House of Commons, Lord Derby turned in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span>
+1852 to Disraeli, giving him, with the leadership,
+the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. The
+appointment was thought a strange one, because
+Disraeli brought to it absolutely no knowledge
+of finance and no official experience. He had
+never been so much as an Under-Secretary.
+The Tories themselves murmured that one whom
+they regarded as an adventurer should be raised
+to so high a place. After a few months Lord
+Derby&rsquo;s ministry fell, defeated on the Chancellor
+of the Exchequer&rsquo;s Budget, which had been
+vehemently attacked by Mr. Gladstone. This
+was the beginning of that protracted duel between
+him and Mr. Disraeli which lasted down till the
+end of the latter&rsquo;s life.</p>
+<p>For the following fourteen years Disraeli&rsquo;s
+occupation was that of a leader of Opposition,
+varied by one brief interval of office in 1858-59.
+His party was in a permanent minority, so that
+nothing was left for its chief but to fight with
+skill, courage, and resolution a series of losing
+battles. This he did with admirable tenacity of
+purpose. Once or twice in every session he used
+to rally his forces for a general engagement, and
+though always defeated, he never suffered himself
+to be dispirited by defeat. During the rest of the
+time he was keenly watchful, exposing all the mistakes
+in domestic affairs of the successive Liberal
+Governments, and when complications arose in
+foreign politics, always professing, and generally
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span>
+manifesting, a patriotic desire not to embarrass
+the Executive, lest national interests should suffer.
+Through all these years he had to struggle, not
+only with a hostile majority in office, but also
+with disaffection among his own followers. Many
+of the landed aristocracy could not bring themselves
+to acquiesce in the leadership of a new
+man, of foreign origin, whose career had been
+erratic, and whose ideas they found it hard to
+assimilate. Ascribing their long exclusion from
+power to his presence, they more than once
+conspired to dethrone him. In 1861 these plots
+were thickest, and Disraeli was for a time left
+almost alone. But as it happened, there never
+arose in the House of Commons any one on the
+Conservative side possessing gifts of speech and
+of strategy comparable to those which in him
+had been matured and polished by long experience,
+while he had the address to acquire
+an ascendency over the mind of Lord Derby,
+still the titular head of the party, who, being
+a man of straightforward character, high social
+position, and brilliant oratorical talent, was therewithal
+somewhat lazy and superficial, and therefore
+disposed to lean on his lieutenant in the
+Lower House, and to borrow from him those
+astute schemes of policy which Disraeli was fertile
+in devising. Thus, through Lord Derby&rsquo;s support,
+and by his own imperturbable confidence, he frustrated
+all the plots of the malcontent Tories.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span>
+New men came up who had not witnessed his
+earlier escapades, but knew him only as the bold
+and skilful leader of their party in the House of
+Commons. He made himself personally agreeable
+to them, encouraged them in their first
+efforts, diffused his ideas among them, stimulated
+the local organisation of the party, and held out
+hopes of great things to be done when fortune
+should at last revisit the Tory banner.</p>
+<p>While Lord Palmerston lived, these exertions
+seemed to bear little fruit. That minister had, in
+his later years, settled down into a sort of practical
+Toryism, and both parties acquiesced in his
+rule. But, on his death, the scene changed.
+Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone brought forward
+a Reform Bill strong enough to evoke the latent
+Conservative feeling of a House of Commons
+which, though showing a nominally Liberal
+majority, had been chosen under Palmerstonian
+auspices. The defeat of the Bill, due to the defection
+of the more timorous Whigs, was followed
+by the resignation of Lord Russell&rsquo;s Ministry.
+Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli came into power,
+and, next year, carried a Reform Bill which, as it
+was finally shaped in its passage through the House,
+really went further than Lord Russell&rsquo;s had done,
+enfranchising a much larger number of the working
+classes in boroughs. To have carried this Bill
+remains the greatest of Disraeli&rsquo;s triumphs. He
+had to push it gently through a hostile House of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span>
+Commons by wheedling a section of the Liberal
+majority, against the appeals of their legitimate
+leader. He had also to persuade his own followers
+to support a measure which they had all their lives
+been condemning, and which was, or in their view
+ought to have been, more dangerous to the Constitution
+than the one which they and the recalcitrant
+Whigs had thrown out in the preceding
+year. He had, as he happily and audaciously
+expressed it, to educate his party into doing the
+very thing which they (though certainly not he
+himself) had cordially and consistently denounced.</p>
+<p>The process was scarcely complete when the
+retirement of Lord Derby, whose health had given
+way, opened Disraeli&rsquo;s path to the post of first
+Minister of the Crown. He dissolved Parliament,
+expecting to receive a majority from the gratitude
+of the working class whom his Act had admitted
+to the suffrage. To his own surprise, and to the
+boundless disgust of the Tories, a Liberal House
+of Commons was again returned, which drove him
+and his friends once more into the cold shade of
+Opposition. He was now sixty-four years of age,
+had suffered an unexpected and mortifying discomfiture,
+and had no longer the great name of
+Lord Derby to cover him. Disaffected voices
+were again heard among his own party, while the
+Liberals, reinstalled in power, were led by the
+rival whose unequalled popularity in the country
+made him for the time omnipotent. Still Mr.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span>
+Disraeli was not disheartened. He fought the
+battle of apparently hopeless resistance with his
+old tact, wariness, and tenacity, losing no occasion
+for any criticism that could damage the measures&mdash;strong
+and large measures&mdash;which Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s
+Government brought forward.</p>
+<p>Before long the tide turned. The Dissenters
+resented the Education Act of 1870. A reaction
+in favour of Conservatism set in, which grew
+so fast that, in 1874, the general election gave, for
+the first time since 1846, a decided Conservative
+majority. Mr. Disraeli became again Prime
+Minister, and now a Prime Minister no longer
+on sufferance, but with the absolute command of
+a dominant party, rising so much above the rest
+of the Cabinet as to appear the sole author of its
+policy. In 1876, feeling the weight of age, he
+transferred himself to the House of Lords as
+Earl of Beaconsfield. The policy he followed
+(from 1876 till 1880) in the troubles which arose
+in the Turkish East out of the insurrection in
+Herzegovina and the massacres in Bulgaria, as
+well as that subsequently pursued in Afghanistan
+and in South Africa, while it received the enthusiastic
+approval of the soldiers, the stockbrokers,
+and the richer classes generally, raised no less
+vehement opposition in other sections of the
+nation, and especially in those two which, when
+heartily united and excited, have usually been
+masters of England&mdash;the Protestant Nonconformists
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span>
+and the upper part of the working class.
+An election fought with unusual heat left him in
+so decided a minority that he resigned office in
+April 1880, without waiting for an adverse vote
+in Parliament. When the result had become
+clear he observed, &ldquo;They,&rdquo; meaning his friends,
+&ldquo;will come in again, but I shall not.&rdquo; A year
+later he died.</p>
+<p>Here is a wonderful career, not less wonderful
+to those who live in the midst of English
+politics and society than it appears to observers
+in other countries. A man with few external
+advantages, not even that of education at a
+university, where useful friendships are formed,
+with grave positive disadvantages in his Jewish
+extraction and the vagaries of his first years of
+public life, presses forward, step by step, through
+slights and disappointments which retard but never
+dishearten him, assumes as of right the leadership
+of a party&mdash;the aristocratic party, the party in those
+days peculiarly suspicious of new men and poor
+men,&mdash;wins a reputation for sagacity which makes
+his early errors forgotten, becomes in old age the
+favourite of a court, the master of a great country,
+one of the three or four arbiters of Europe.
+There is here more than one problem to solve,
+or, at least, a problem with more than one aspect.
+What was the true character of the man who had
+sustained such a part? Did he hold any principles,
+or was he merely playing with them as counters?
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17' name='page_17'></a>17</span>
+By what gifts or arts did he win such a success?
+Was there really a mystery beneath the wizard&rsquo;s
+robe which he delighted to wrap around him?
+And how, being so unlike the Englishmen among
+whom his lot was cast, did he so fascinate and
+rule them?</p>
+<p>Imagine a man of strong will and brilliant
+intellectual powers, belonging to an ancient and
+persecuted race, who finds himself born in a
+foreign country, amid a people for whose ideas
+and habits he has no sympathy and scant
+respect. Suppose him proud, ambitious, self-confident&mdash;too
+ambitious to rest content in a
+private station, so self-confident as to believe that
+he can win whatever he aspires to. To achieve
+success, he must bend his pride, must use the
+language and humour the prejudices of those he
+has to deal with; while his pride avenges itself
+by silent scorn or thinly disguised irony. Accustomed
+to observe things from without, he discerns
+the weak points of all political parties, the hollowness
+of institutions and watchwords, the instability
+of popular passion. If his imagination be more
+susceptible than his emotions, his intellect more
+active than his conscience, the isolation in which
+he stands and the superior insight it affords him
+may render him cold, calculating, self-centred.
+The sentiment of personal honour may remain,
+because his pride will support it; and he will be
+tenacious of the ideas which he has struck out,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span>
+because they are his own. But for ordinary
+principles of conduct he may have small regard,
+because he has not grown up under the conventional
+morality of the time and nation, but has
+looked on it merely as a phenomenon to be
+recognised and reckoned with, because he has
+noted how much there is in it of unreality or
+pharisaism&mdash;how far it sometimes is from representing
+or expressing either the higher judgments
+of philosophy or the higher precepts of religion.
+Realising and perhaps exaggerating the power
+of his own intelligence, he will secretly revolve
+schemes of ambition wherein genius, uncontrolled
+by fears or by conscience, makes all
+things bend to its purposes, till the scruples and
+hesitations of common humanity seem to him
+only parts of men&rsquo;s cowardice or stupidity. What
+success he will win when he comes to carry out
+such schemes in practice will largely depend on
+the circumstances in which he finds himself, as
+well as on his gift for judging of them. He may
+become a Napoleon. He may fall in a premature
+collision with forces which want of sympathy has
+prevented him from estimating.</p>
+<p>In some of his novels, and most fully in the
+first of them, Mr. Disraeli sketched a character
+and foreshadowed a career not altogether unlike
+that which has just been indicated. It would be
+unfair to treat as autobiographical, though some
+of his critics have done so, the picture of Vivian
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span>
+Grey. What that singular book shows is that,
+at an age when his contemporaries were lads at
+college, absorbed in cricket matches or Latin
+verse-making, Disraeli had already meditated
+profoundly on the conditions and methods of
+worldly success, had rejected the allurements of
+pleasure and the attractions of literature, as well
+as the ideal life of philosophy, had conceived of
+a character isolated, ambitious, intense, resolute,
+untrammelled by scruples, who moulds men to
+his purposes by the sheer force of his intellect,
+humouring their foibles, using their weaknesses,
+and luring them into his chosen path by the bait
+of self-interest.</p>
+<p>To lay stress on the fact that Mr. Disraeli
+was of Hebrew birth is not, though some of his
+political antagonists stooped so to use it, to cast
+any reproach upon him: it is only to note a fact
+of the utmost importance for a proper comprehension
+of his position. The Jews were at the
+beginning of the nineteenth century still foreigners
+in England, not only on account of their religion,
+with its mass of ancient rites and usages, but also
+because they were filled with the memory of
+centuries of persecution, and perceived that in
+some parts of Europe the old spirit of hatred had
+not died out. The antiquity of their race, their
+sense of its long-suffering and isolation, their
+pride in the intellectual achievements of those
+ancestors whose blood, not largely mixed with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span>
+that of any other race, flows in their veins, lead
+the stronger or more reflective spirits to revenge
+themselves by a kind of scorn upon the upstart
+Western peoples among whom their lot is cast.
+The mockery one finds in Heinrich Heine could
+not have come from a Teuton. Even while imitating,
+as the wealthier of them have latterly begun
+to imitate, the manners and luxury of those
+nominal Christians among whom they live, they
+retain their feeling of detachment, and are apt
+to regard with a coldly observant curiosity the
+beliefs, prejudices, enthusiasms of the nations of
+Europe. The same passionate intensity which
+makes the grandeur of the ancient Hebrew
+literature still lives among them, though often
+narrowed by ages of oppression, and gives them
+the peculiar effectiveness that comes from turning
+all the powers of the mind, imaginative as well as
+reasoning, into a single channel, be that channel
+what it may. They produce, in proportion to
+their numbers, an unusually large number of able
+and successful men, as any one may prove by
+recounting the eminent Jews of the last seventy
+years. This success has most often been won in
+practical life, in commerce, or at the bar, or in
+the press (which over the European continent
+they so largely control); yet often also in the
+higher walks of literature or science, less frequently
+in art, most frequently in music.</p>
+<p>Mr. Disraeli had three of these characteristics
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span>
+of his race in full measure&mdash;detachment, intensity,
+the passion for material success. Nature gave
+him a resolute will, a keen and precociously active
+intellect, a vehement individuality; that is to
+say, a consciousness of his own powers, and a
+determination to make them recognised by his
+fellows. In some men, the passion to succeed is
+clogged by the fear of failure; in others, the
+sense of their greatness is self-sufficing and
+indisposes them to effort. But with him ambition
+spurred self-confidence, and self-confidence
+justified ambition. He grew up in a cultivated
+home, familiar not only with books but with the
+brightest and most polished men and women of
+the day, whose conversation sharpened his wits
+almost from childhood. No religious influences
+worked upon him, for his father had ceased to
+be a Jew in faith without becoming even
+nominally a Christian, and there is little in his
+writings to show that he had ever felt anything
+more than an imaginative, or what may be called an
+historical, interest in religion.<a name='FNanchor_0003' id='FNanchor_0003'></a><a href='#Footnote_0003' class='fnanchor'>[4]</a> Thus his development
+was purely intellectual. The society he moved
+in was a society of men and women of the world&mdash;witty,
+superficial in its interests, without seriousness
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span>
+or reverence. He felt himself no Englishman,
+and watched English life and politics as a
+student of natural history might watch the habits
+of bees or ants. English society was then, and
+perhaps is still, more complex, more full of inconsistencies,
+of contrasts between theory and
+practice, between appearances and realities, than
+that of any other country. Nowhere so much
+limitation of view among the fashionable, so much
+pharisaism among the respectable, so much vulgarity
+among the rich, mixed with so much real
+earnestness, benevolence, and good sense; nowhere,
+therefore, so much to seem merely ridiculous to
+one who looked at it from without, wanting the
+sympathy which comes from the love of mankind,
+or even from the love of one&rsquo;s country. It was
+natural for a young man with Disraeli&rsquo;s gifts to
+mock at what he saw. But he would not sit
+still in mere contempt. The thirst for power
+and fame gave him no rest. He must gain what
+he saw every one around him struggling for.
+He must triumph over these people whose follies
+amused him; and the sense that he perceived
+and could use their follies would add zest to
+his triumph. He might have been a great
+satirist; he resolved to become a great statesman.
+For such a career, his Hebrew detachment gave
+him some eminent advantages. It enabled him
+to take a cooler and more scientific view of the
+social and political phenomena he had to deal
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span>
+with. He was not led astray by party cries.
+He did not share vulgar prejudices. He calculated
+the forces at work as an engineer calculates
+the strength of his materials, the strain they have
+to bear from the wind, and the weights they
+must support. And what he had to plan was
+not the success of a cause, which might depend
+on a thousand things out of his ken, but his own
+success, a simpler matter.</p>
+<p>A still greater source of strength lay in his
+Hebrew intensity. It would have pleased him,
+so full of pride in the pure blood of his race,<a name='FNanchor_0004' id='FNanchor_0004'></a><a href='#Footnote_0004' class='fnanchor'>[5]</a>
+to attribute to that purity the singular power
+of concentration which the Jews undoubtedly
+possess. They have the faculty of throwing the
+whole stress of their natures into the pursuit of
+one object, fixing their eyes on it alone, sacrificing
+to it other desires, clinging to it even when
+it seems unattainable. Disraeli was only twenty-eight
+when he made his first attempt to enter
+the House of Commons. Four repulses did
+not discourage him, though his means were but
+scanty to support such contests; and the fifth
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span>
+time he succeeded. When his first speech in
+Parliament had been received with laughter, and
+politicians were congratulating themselves that
+this adventurer had found his level, he calmly
+told them that he had always ended by succeeding
+in whatever he attempted, and that
+he would succeed in this too. He received no
+help from his own side, who regarded him with
+suspicion, but forced himself into prominence,
+and at last to leadership, by his complete superiority
+to rebuffs. Through the long years in
+which he had to make head against a majority
+in the House of Commons, he never seemed
+disheartened by his repeated defeats, never relaxed
+the vigilance with which he watched his
+adversaries, never indulged himself (though he
+was physically indolent and often in poor health)
+by staying away from Parliament, even when
+business was slack; never missed an opportunity
+for exposing a blunder of his adversaries, or
+commending the good service of one of his
+own followers. The same curious tenacity was
+apparent in his ideas. Before he was twenty-two
+years of age he had, under the inspiration
+of Bolingbroke, excogitated a theory of the
+Constitution of England, of the way England
+should be governed at home and her policy
+directed abroad, from which he hardly swerved
+through all his later life. Often as he was
+accused of inconsistency, he probably believed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span>
+himself to be, and in a sense he was, substantially
+faithful, I will not say to the same
+doctrines, but to the same notions or tendencies;
+and one could discover from the phrases he employed
+how he fancied himself to be really following
+out these old notions, even when his conduct
+seemed opposed to the traditions of his party.<a name='FNanchor_0005' id='FNanchor_0005'></a><a href='#Footnote_0005' class='fnanchor'>[6]</a>
+The weakness of intense minds is their tendency
+to narrowness, and this weakness was in so far
+his that, while always ready for new expedients,
+he was not accessible to new ideas. Indeed,
+the old ideas were too much a part of himself,
+stamped with his own individuality, to be forsaken
+or even varied. He did not love knowledge, nor
+enjoy speculation for its own sake; he valued
+views as they pleased his imagination or as they
+carried practical results with them; and having
+framed his theory once for all and worked steadily
+upon its lines, he was not the man to admit that
+it had been defective, and to set himself in later
+life to repair it. His pride was involved in
+proving it correct by applying it.</p>
+<p>With this resolute concentration of purpose
+there went an undaunted courage&mdash;a quality less
+rare among English statesmen, but eminently
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span>
+laudable in him, because for great part of his
+career he had no family or party connections to
+back him up, but was obliged to face the world
+with nothing but his own self-confidence. So far
+from seeking to conceal his Jewish origin, he displayed
+his pride in it, and refused all support to
+the efforts which the Tory party made to maintain
+the exclusion of Jews from Parliament. Nobody
+showed more self-possession and (except on two
+or three occasions) more perfect self-command in
+the hot strife of Parliament than this suspected
+stranger. His opponents learnt to fear one who
+never feared for himself; his followers knew that
+their chief would not fail them in the hour of
+danger. His very face and bearing had in them
+an impassive calmness which magnetised those
+who watched him. He liked to surround himself
+with mystery, to pose as remote, majestic, self-centred,
+to appear above the need of a confidant.
+He would sit for hours on his bench in the House
+of Commons, listening with eyes half-shut to furious
+assaults on himself and his policy, not showing by
+the movement of a muscle that he had felt a
+wound; and when he rose to reply would discharge
+his sarcasms with an air of easy coolness. That
+this indifference was sometimes simulated appeared
+by the resentment he showed afterwards.</p>
+<p>Ambition such as his could not afford to be
+scrupulous, nor have his admirers ever claimed
+conscientiousness as one of his merits. One who
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span>
+sets power and fame before him as the main
+ends to be pursued may no doubt be restrained
+by pride from the use of such means as are
+obviously low and dishonourable. Other questionable
+means he may reject because he knows
+that the opinion of those whose good-will and
+good word he must secure would condemn them.
+But he will not be likely to allow kindliness or
+compassion to stand in his way; nor will he be
+very regardful of truth. To a statesman, who
+must necessarily have many facts in his knowledge,
+or many plans in his mind, which the
+interests of his colleagues, or of his party, or of
+the nation, forbid him to reveal, the temptation to
+put questioners on a false scent, and to seem to
+agree where he really dissents, is at all times a
+strong one. An honest man may sometimes be
+betrayed into yielding to it; and those who know
+how difficult are the cases of conscience that arise
+will not deal harshly with a possibly misleading
+silence, or even with the evasion of an embarrassing
+inquiry, where a real public interest can
+be pleaded, for the existence of such a public
+interest, if it does not justify, may palliate omissions
+to make a full disclosure of the facts. All
+things considered, the standard of truthfulness
+among English public men has (of course with
+some conspicuous exceptions) been a high one.
+Of that standard Disraeli fell short. People did
+not take his word for a thing as they would have
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span>
+taken the word of the Duke of Wellington, or
+Lord Althorp, or Lord Derby, or Lord Russell,
+or even of that not very rigid moralist, Lord
+Palmerston. Instances of his lapses were not
+wanting as late as 1877. His behaviour toward
+Sir Robert Peel, whom he plied with every dart
+of sarcasm, after having shortly before lavished
+praises on him, and sought office under him, has
+often been commented on.<a name='FNanchor_0006' id='FNanchor_0006'></a><a href='#Footnote_0006' class='fnanchor'>[7]</a> Disraeli was himself
+(as those who knew him have often stated) accustomed
+to justify it by observing that he was
+then an insignificant personage, to whom it was
+supremely important to attract public notice and
+make a political position; that the opportunity
+of attacking the powerful Prime Minister, at a
+moment when their altered attitude towards the
+Corn Laws had exposed the Ministry to the suspicions
+of their own party, was too good to be
+lost; and that he was therefore obliged to assail
+Peel, though he had himself no particular attachment
+to the Corn Laws, and believed Peel to have
+been a <i>bona-fide</i> convert. It was therefore no
+personal resentment against one who had slighted
+him, but merely the exigencies of his own career,
+that drove him to this course, whose fortunate
+result proved the soundness of his calculations.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span></div>
+<p>This defence will not surprise any one who
+is familiar with Disraeli&rsquo;s earlier novels. These
+stories are as far as possible from being immoral;
+that is to say, there is nothing in them unbecoming
+or corrupting. Friendship, patriotism, love, are
+all recognised as powerful and worthy motives of
+conduct. That which is wanting is the sense of
+right and wrong. His personages have for certain
+purposes the conventional sense of honour, though
+seldom a fine sense, but they do not ask whether
+such and such a course is conformable to principle.
+They move in a world which is polished, agreeable,
+dignified, averse to baseness and vulgarity,
+but in which conscience and religion scarcely
+seem to exist. The men live for pleasure or
+fame, the women for pleasure or love.</p>
+<p>Some allowance must, of course, be made for
+the circumstances of Disraeli&rsquo;s position and early
+training. He was brought up neither a Jew nor
+a Christian. The elder people who took him
+by the hand when he entered life, people like
+Samuel Rogers and Lady Blessington, were not
+the people to give lessons in morality. Lord
+Lyndhurst, the first of his powerful political
+friends, and the man whose example most affected
+him, was, with all his splendid gifts, conspicuously
+wanting in political principle. Add to this the
+isolation in which the young man found himself,
+standing outside the common stream of English
+life, not sharing its sentiments, perceiving the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span>
+hollowness of much that passed for virtue and
+patriotism, and it is easy to understand how he
+should have been as perfect a cynic at twenty-five
+as their experience of the world makes many
+at sixty. If he had loved truth or mankind, he
+might have quickly worked through his youthful
+cynicism. But pride and ambition, the pride of
+race and the pride of genius, left no room for
+these sentiments. Nor was his cynicism the fruit
+merely of a keen and sceptical intelligence. It
+came from a cold heart.</p>
+<p>The pursuit of fame and power, to which he
+gave all his efforts, is presented in his writings as
+the only alternative ideal to a life of pleasure; and
+he probably regarded those who pursued some
+other as either fools or weaklings. Early in his
+political life he said one night to Mr. Bright
+(from whom I heard the anecdote), as they took
+their umbrellas in the cloak-room of the House
+of Commons: &ldquo;After all, what is it that brings
+you and me here? Fame! This is the true
+arena. I might have occupied a literary throne;
+but I have renounced it for this career.&rdquo; The
+external pomps and trappings of life, titles, stately
+houses and far-spreading parks, all those gauds and
+vanities with which sumptuous wealth surrounds
+itself, had throughout his life a singular fascination
+for him. He liked to mock at them in his novels,
+but they fascinated him none the less. One can
+understand how they might fire the imagination
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span>
+of an ambitious youth who saw them from a
+distance&mdash;might even retain their charm for one
+who was just struggling into the society which
+possessed them, and who desired to feel himself
+the equal of the possessors. It is stranger that,
+when he had harnessed the English aristocracy
+to his chariot, and was driving them where he
+pleased, he should have continued to admire such
+things. So, however, it was. There was even
+in him a vein of inordinate deference to rank
+and wealth which would in a less eminent person
+have been called snobbishness. In his will he
+directs that his estate of Hughenden Manor, in
+Buckinghamshire, shall pass under an entail as
+strict as he could devise, that the person who
+succeeds to it shall always bear the name of
+Disraeli. His ambition is the common, not to
+say vulgar, ambition of the English <i>parvenu</i>,
+to found a &ldquo;county family.&rdquo; In his story of
+<i>Endymion</i>, published a few months before his
+death, the hero, starting from small beginnings,
+ends by becoming prime minister: this is the
+crown of his career, the noblest triumph an
+Englishman can achieve. It might have been
+thought that one who had been through it all,
+who had realised the dreams of his boyhood, who
+had every opportunity of learning what power
+and fame come to, would have liked to set forth
+some other conception of the end of human life,
+or would not have told the world so naively of his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span>
+self-content at having attained the aim he had
+worked for. With most men the flower they have
+plucked withers. It might have been expected
+that one who was in other things an ironical cynic
+would at least have sought to seem disillusionised.</p>
+<p>To say that Disraeli&rsquo;s heart was somewhat
+cold is by no means to say that he was heartless.
+He was one of those strong natures who permit
+neither persons nor principles to stand in their
+way. His doctrine was that politics had nothing
+to do with sentiment; so those who appealed to
+him on grounds of humanity appealed in vain.
+No act of his life ever so much offended English
+opinion as the airy fashion in which he tossed aside
+the news of the Bulgarian massacre of 1876. It
+incensed sections who were strong enough, when
+thoroughly roused, to bring about his fall. But
+he was far from being unkindly. He knew how
+to attach men to him by friendly deeds as well as
+friendly words. He seldom missed an opportunity
+of saying something pleasant and cheering
+to a <i>d&eacute;butant</i> in Parliament, whether of his own
+party or the opposite. He was not selfish in
+little things; was always ready to consider the
+comfort and convenience of those who surrounded
+him. Age and success, so far from making him
+morose or supercilious, softened the asperities of
+his character and developed the affectionate side
+of it. His last novel, published a few months
+before his death, contains more human kindliness,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span>
+a fuller recognition of the worth of friendship and
+the beauty of sisterly and conjugal love, than do
+the writings of his earlier manhood. What it
+wants in intellectual power it makes up for in a
+mellower and more tender tone. Of loyalty to
+his political friends he was a model, and nothing
+did more to secure his command of the party
+than its sense that his professional honour, so to
+speak, could be implicitly relied upon. To his
+wife, a warm-hearted woman older than himself,
+and inferior to him in education, he was uniformly
+affectionate and indeed devoted. The
+first use he made of his power as Prime
+Minister was to procure for her the title of
+viscountess. Being once asked point blank by a
+lady what he thought of his life-long opponent,
+Mr. Gladstone answered that two things had
+always struck him as very admirable in Lord
+Beaconsfield&rsquo;s character&mdash;his perfect loyalty to
+his wife, and his perfect loyalty to his own race.
+A story used to be told how, in Disraeli&rsquo;s earlier
+days, when his political position was still far from
+assured, he and his wife happened to be the
+guests of the chief of the party, and that chief so
+far forgot good manners as to quiz Mrs. Disraeli
+at the dinner-table. Next morning Disraeli,
+whose visit was to have lasted for some days
+longer, announced that he must leave immediately.
+The host besought him to stay, and made all
+possible apologies. But Disraeli was inexorable,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34' name='page_34'></a>34</span>
+and carried off his wife forthwith. To literary
+men, whatever their opinions, he was ready to
+give a helping hand, representing himself as one
+of their profession. In paying compliments he
+was singularly expert, and few used the art so well
+to win friends and disarm enemies. He knew how
+to please Englishmen, and especially the young,
+by showing interest in their tastes and pleasures,
+and, without being what would be called genial,
+was never wanting in <i>bonhomie</i>. In society he
+was a perfect man of the world&mdash;told his anecdote
+apropos, wound up a discussion by some
+epigrammatic phrase, talked to the guest next
+him, if he thought that guest&rsquo;s position made him
+worth talking to, as he would to an old acquaintance.
+But he had few intimates; nor did his
+apparent frankness unveil his real thoughts.</p>
+<p>He was not of those who complicate political
+opposition with private hatreds. Looking on
+politics as a game, he liked, when he took off
+his armour, to feel himself on friendly terms with
+his antagonists, and often seemed surprised to
+find that they remembered as personal affronts
+the blows which he had dealt in the tournament.
+Two or three years before his death, a friend
+asked him whether there was in London any one
+with whom he would not shake hands. Reflecting
+for a moment, he answered, &ldquo;Only one,&rdquo; and
+named Robert Lowe, who had said hard things of
+him, and to whom, when Lowe was on one occasion
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span>
+in his power, he had behaved with cruelty. Yet
+his resentments could smoulder long. In <i>Lothair</i>
+he attacked, under a thin disguise, a distinguished
+man of letters who had criticised his conduct years
+before. In <i>Endymion</i> he gratified what was evidently
+an ancient grudge by a spiteful presentation
+of Thackeray, as he had indulged his more bitter
+dislike of John Wilson Croker by portraying
+that politician in <i>Coningsby</i> under the name of
+Nicholas Rigby. For the greatest of his adversaries
+he felt, there is reason to believe,
+genuine admiration, mingled with inability to
+comprehend a nature so unlike his own. No
+passage in the striking speech which that adversary
+pronounced, one might almost say, over
+Lord Beaconsfield&rsquo;s grave&mdash;a speech which may
+possibly go down to posterity with its subject&mdash;was
+more impressive than the sentence in which
+he declared that he had the best reason to believe
+that, in their constant warfare, Lord Beaconsfield
+had not been actuated by any personal hostility.
+Brave men, if they can respect, seldom dislike, a
+formidable antagonist.</p>
+<p>His mental powers were singularly well suited
+to the rest of his character&mdash;were, so to speak,
+all of a piece with it. One sometimes sees intellects
+which are out of keeping with the active
+or emotional parts of the man. One sees persons
+whose thought is vigorous, clear, comprehensive,
+while their conduct is timid; or a comparatively
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span>
+narrow intelligence joined to an enterprising
+spirit; or a sober, reflective, sceptical turn of mind
+yoked to an ardent and impulsive temperament.
+What we call the follies of the wise often spring
+from some such source. Not so with him. His
+intelligence had the same boldness, intensity, concentration,
+directness, which we discover in the
+rest of the man. It was just the right instrument,
+not perhaps for the normal career of a
+normal Englishman seeking political success, but
+for the particular kind of work Disraeli had
+planned to do; and this inner harmony was one
+of the chief causes of his success, as the want of it
+has caused the failure of so many gifted natures.</p>
+<p>The range of his mind was not wide. All its
+products were like one another. No one of them
+gives the impression that Disraeli could, had he so
+wished, have succeeded in a wholly diverse line.
+It was a peculiar mind: there is even more variety
+in minds than in faces. It was not logical or discursive,
+liking to mass and arrange stores of knowledge,
+and draw inferences from them, nor was it
+judicial, with a turn for weighing reasons and
+reaching a decision which recognises all the facts
+and is not confused by their seeming contradictions.
+Neither was it analytically subtle. It
+reached its conclusions by a process of intuition
+or divination in which there was an imaginative
+as well as a reflective element. It might almost
+have been called an artist&rsquo;s mind, capable of deep
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span>
+meditation, but meditating in an imaginative way,
+not so much on facts as on its own views of
+facts, on the pictures which its own creative
+faculty had called up. The meditation became
+dreamy, but the dreaminess was corrected by an
+exceedingly keen and quick power of observation,
+not the scientific observation of the philosopher,
+but rather the enjoying observation of the artist
+who sees how he can use the characteristic
+details which he notes, or the observation of
+the forensic advocate (an artist, too, in his way)
+who perceives how they can be fitted into the presentation
+of his case. There are, of course, other
+qualities in Disraeli&rsquo;s work. As a statesman he
+was obliged to learn how to state facts, to argue,
+to dissect an opponent&rsquo;s arguments. But the
+characteristic note, both of his speeches and of
+his writings, is the combination of a few large
+ideas, clear, perhaps, to himself, but generally
+expressed with grandiose vagueness, and often
+quite out of relation to the facts as other people
+saw them, with a turn for acutely fastening
+upon small incidents or personal traits. In his
+speeches he used his command of sonorous
+phrases and lively illustrations, sometimes to
+support the views he was advancing, but more
+frequently to conceal the weakness of those
+views; that is, to make up for the absence of
+such solid arguments as were likely to move his
+hearers. Everybody is now and then conscious
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span>
+of holding with assured conviction theories which
+he would find it hard to prove to a given
+audience, partly because it is too much trouble
+to trace out the process by which they were
+reached, partly because uninstructed listeners
+could not be made to feel the full cogency of
+the considerations on which his own mind
+relies. Disraeli was usually in this condition
+with regard to his political and social doctrines.
+He believed them, but as he had not reached
+them by logic, he was not prepared to use
+logic to establish them; so he picked up some
+plausible illustration, or attacked the opposite
+doctrine and its supporters with a fire of raillery
+or invective. This non-ratiocinative quality of
+his thinking was a source both of strength and
+of weakness&mdash;of weakness, because he could
+not prove his propositions; of strength, because,
+stated as he stated them, it was not less hard
+to disprove them. That mark of a superior
+mind, that it must have a theory, was never
+wanting. Some one said of him that he was
+&ldquo;the ruins of a thinker.&rdquo; He could not rest
+content, like many among his followers, with a
+prejudice, a dogma delivered by tradition, a stolid
+suspicion unamenable to argument. He would
+not acquiesce in negation. He must have a
+theory, a positive theory, to show not only that
+his antagonist&rsquo;s view was erroneous, but that he
+had himself a more excellent way. These theories
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span>
+generally had in them a measure of truth and
+value for any one who could analyse them; but
+as this was exactly what the rank and file of the
+party could not do, they got into sad confusion
+when they tried to talk his language.</p>
+<p>He could hardly be called a well-read man,
+nor were his intellectual interests numerous. His
+education had consisted mainly in promiscuous
+reading during boyhood and early youth. There
+are worse kinds of education for an active intelligence
+than to let it have the run of a large
+library. The wild browsings of youth, when
+curiosity is strong as hunger, stir the mind and
+give the memory some of the best food it ever
+gets. The weak point of such a method is that it
+does not teach accuracy nor the art of systematic
+study. In middle life natural indolence and his
+political occupations had kept Disraeli from filling
+up the gaps in his knowledge, while, in conversation,
+what he liked best was persiflage. He
+was, however, tolerably familiar with the ancient
+classics, and with modern English and French
+literature; enjoyed Quintilian and Lucian, preferred
+Sophocles to &AElig;schylus and (apparently) Horace
+to Virgil, despised Browning, considered Tennyson
+the best of contemporary poets, but &ldquo;not a
+poet of a high order.&rdquo;<a name='FNanchor_0007' id='FNanchor_0007'></a><a href='#Footnote_0007' class='fnanchor'>[8]</a> Physical science seems
+never to have attracted him. Political economy
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span>
+he hated and mocked at almost as heartily as
+did Carlyle. People have measured his knowledge
+of history and geography by observing
+that he placed the Crucifixion in the lifetime
+of Augustus, and thought, down till 1878, when
+he had to make a speech about Afghanistan, that
+the Andes were the highest mountains in the
+world. But geography is a subject which a man
+of affairs does not think of reading up in later
+life: he is content if he can get information
+when he needs it. There are some bits of metaphysics
+and some historical allusions scattered
+over his novels, but these are mostly slight or
+superficial. He amused himself and the public
+by now and then propounding doctrines on agricultural
+matters, but would not appear to have
+mastered either husbandry or any other economical
+or commercial subject. Such things were not
+in his way. He had been so little in office as
+not to have been forced to apply himself to them,
+while the tide of pure intellectual curiosity had
+long since ebbed.</p>
+<p>For so-called &ldquo;sports&rdquo; he had little taste. He
+liked to go mooning in a meditative way round his
+fields and copses, and he certainly enjoyed Nature;
+but there seems to be no solid evidence that the
+primrose was his favourite flower. In his fondness
+for particular words and phrases there
+was a touch of his artistic quality, and a touch
+also of the cynical view that words are the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span>
+counters with which the wise play their game.
+There is a passage in <i>Contarini Fleming</i> (a story
+into which he has put a good deal of himself)
+where this is set out. Contarini tells his father
+that he left college &ldquo;because they taught me only
+words, and I wished to learn ideas.&rdquo; His father
+answers, &ldquo;Few ideas are correct ones, and what
+are correct, no one can ascertain; but with words
+we govern men.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He went on acting on this belief in the power
+of words till he became the victim of his own
+phrases, just as people who talk cynically for
+effect grow sometimes into real cynics. When
+he had invented a phrase which happily expressed
+the aspect he wished his view, or some part of his
+policy, to bear, he came to believe in the phrase,
+and to think that the facts were altered by the
+colour the phrase put upon them. During the
+contest for the extension of the parliamentary
+franchise, he declared himself &ldquo;in favour of
+popular privileges, but opposed to democratic
+rights.&rdquo; When he was accused of having assented,
+at the Congress of Berlin, to the dismemberment
+of the Turkish Empire, he said
+that what had been done was &ldquo;not dismemberment,
+but consolidation.&rdquo; No statesman of recent
+times has given currency to so many quasi-epigrammatic
+expressions: &ldquo;organised hypocrisy,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;England dislikes coalitions,&rdquo; &ldquo;plundering and
+blundering,&rdquo; &ldquo;peace with honour,&rdquo; &ldquo;<i>imperium
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42' name='page_42'></a>42</span>
+et libertas</i>,&rdquo; &ldquo;a scientific frontier,&rdquo; &ldquo;I am on
+the side of the angels,&rdquo; are a few, not perhaps
+the best, though the best remembered, of the
+many which issued from his fertile mint. This
+turn for epigram, not common in England,
+sometimes led him into scrapes which would
+have damaged a man of less imperturbable
+coolness. No one else could have ventured to
+say, when he had induced the Tories to pass
+a Reform Bill stronger than the one they had
+rejected from the Liberals in the preceding
+year, that it had been his mission &ldquo;to educate
+his party.&rdquo; Some of his opponents professed
+to be shocked by such audacity, and many
+old Tories privily gnashed their teeth. But the
+country received the dictum in the spirit in which
+it was spoken. &ldquo;It was Disraeli all over.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>If his intellect was not of wide range, it was
+within its range a weapon of the finest flexibility
+and temper. It was ingenious, ready, incisive.
+It detected in a moment the weak point, if not of
+an argument, yet of an attitude or of a character.
+Its imaginative quality made it often picturesque,
+sometimes even impressive. Disraeli had the
+artist&rsquo;s delight in a situation for its own sake, and
+what people censured as insincerity or frivolity was
+frequently only the zest which he felt in posing,
+not so much because there was anything to be
+gained, as because he realised his aptitude for
+improvising a new part in the drama which he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span>
+always felt himself to be playing. The humour of
+the situation was too good to be wasted. Perhaps
+this love of merry mischief may have had something
+to do with his tendency to confer honours
+on those whom the world thought least deserving.</p>
+<p>His books are not only a valuable revelation
+of his mind, but have more literary merit than
+critics have commonly allowed to them, perhaps
+because we are apt, when a man excels in one
+walk, to deem him to have failed in any other
+wherein he does not reach the same level. The
+novels foam over with cleverness; indeed, <i>Vivian
+Grey</i>, with all its youthful faults, gives as great
+an impression of intellectual brilliance as does
+anything Disraeli ever wrote or spoke. Their
+easy fertility makes them seem to be only,
+so to speak, a few sketches out of a large
+portfolio. There is some variety in the subjects&mdash;<i>Contarini
+Fleming</i> and <i>Tancred</i> are
+more romantic than the others, <i>Sybil</i> and <i>Coningsby</i>
+more political&mdash;as well as in the merits
+of the stories. The two latest, <i>Lothair</i> and
+<i>Endymion</i>, works of his old age, are markedly
+inferior in spirit and invention; but the general
+features are the same in all&mdash;a lively fancy, a
+knack of hitting characters off in a few lines and
+of catching the superficial aspects of society, a
+brisk narrative, a sprightly dialogue, a keen insight
+into the selfishness of men and the vanities of
+women, with flashes of wit lighting up the whole
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span>
+stage. It is always a stage. The brilliance
+is never open-air sunshine. There is scarcely one
+of the characters whom we feel we might have
+met and known. Heroes and heroines are
+theatrical figures; their pathos rings false, their
+love, though described as passionate, does not
+spring from the inner recesses of the soul. The
+studies of men of the world, and particularly of
+heartless ones, are the most life-like; yet, even
+here, any one who wants to feel the difference
+between the great painter and the clever sketcher
+need only compare Thackeray&rsquo;s Marquis of
+Steyne with Disraeli&rsquo;s Marquis of Monmouth,
+both of them suggested by the same original.
+There is little intensity, little dramatic power
+in these stories, as also in his play of <i>Alarcos</i>;
+and if we read them with pleasure it is not
+for the sake either of plot or of character,
+but because they contain so many sparkling
+witticisms and reflections, setting in a strong
+light, yet not always an unkindly light, the seamy
+side of politics and human nature. The slovenliness
+of their style, which is often pompous, but
+seldom pure, makes them appear to have been
+written hastily. But Disraeli seems to have
+taken the composition of them (except, perhaps,
+the two latest) quite seriously. When he wrote
+the earlier tales, he meant to achieve literary
+greatness; while the middle ones, especially
+<i>Coningsby</i> and <i>Sybil</i>, were designed as political
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span>
+manifestoes. The less they have a purpose or
+profess to be serious, the better they are; and
+the most vivacious of all are two classical burlesques,
+written at a time when that kind of
+composition had not yet become common&mdash;<i>Ixion
+in Heaven</i> and <i>The Infernal Marriage</i>&mdash;little
+pieces of funning worthy of Thackeray,
+I had almost said of Voltaire. They recall,
+perhaps they were suggested by, similar pieces
+of Lucian&rsquo;s. Is Semitic genius specially rich in
+this mocking vein? Lucian was a Syrian from
+Samosata, probably a Semite; Heinrich Heine
+was a Semite; James Russell Lowell used to
+insist, though he produced little evidence for his
+belief, that Voltaire was a Semite.</p>
+<p>Whether Disraeli could ever have taken high
+rank as a novelist if he had thrown himself completely
+into the profession may be doubted, for his
+defects were such as pains and practice would hardly
+have lessened. That he had still less the imagination
+needed by a poet, his <i>Revolutionary Epick</i>, conceived
+on the plains of Troy, and meant to make
+a fourth to the <i>Iliad</i>, the <i>&AElig;neid</i>, and the <i>Divina
+Commedia</i>, is enough to show. The literary
+vocation he was best fitted for was that of a
+journalist or pamphleteer; and in this he might
+have won unrivalled success. His dash, his
+verve, his brilliancy of illustration, his scorching
+satire, would have made the fortune of any newspaper,
+and carried dismay into the enemy&rsquo;s ranks.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span></div>
+<p>In inquiring how far the gifts I have sought to
+describe qualified Disraeli for practical statesmanship,
+it is well to distinguish the different kinds
+of capacity which an English politician needs to
+attain the highest place. They may be said to
+be four. He must be a debater. He must be a
+parliamentary tactician. He must understand the
+country. He must understand Europe. This last
+is, indeed, not always necessary; there have been
+moments when England, leaving Europe to itself,
+may look to her own affairs only; but when the
+sky grows stormy over Europe, the want of knowledge
+which English statesmen sometimes evince
+may bode disaster.</p>
+<p>An orator, in the highest sense of the word,
+Disraeli never was. He lacked ease and fluency.
+He had not Pitt&rsquo;s turn for the lucid exposition of
+complicated facts, nor for the conduct of a close
+argument. The sustained and fiery declamation of
+Fox was equally beyond his range. And least of
+all had he that truest index of eloquence, the power
+of touching the emotions. He could not make his
+hearers weep. But he could make them laugh;
+he could put them in good-humour with themselves;
+he could dazzle them with rhetoric;
+he could pour upon an opponent streams of
+ridicule more effective than the hottest indignation.
+When he sought to be profound or solemn,
+he was usually heavy and laboured&mdash;the sublimity
+often false, the diction often stilted. For wealth
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span>
+of thought or splendour of language his speeches
+will not bear to be compared&mdash;I will not say with
+those of Burke (on whom he sometimes tried to
+model himself), but with those of three or four of
+his own contemporaries. Even within his own
+party, Lord Derby, Lord Ellenborough, and Lord
+Cairns in their several ways surpassed him. There
+is not one of his longer and more finished harangues
+which can be read with interest from beginning to
+end. But there is hardly any among them which
+does not contain some striking passage, some
+image or epigram, or burst of sarcasm, which
+must have been exceedingly effective when delivered.
+It is partly upon these isolated passages,
+especially the sarcastic ones (though the witticisms
+were sometimes borrowed), and still more upon
+the aptness of the speech to the circumstances
+under which it was made, that his parliamentary
+fame rests. If he was not a great orator he was
+a superb debater, who watched with the utmost
+care the temper of the audience, and said just
+what was needed at the moment to disconcert an
+opponent or to put heart into his friends. His
+repartees were often happy, and must sometimes
+have been unpremeditated. As he had not the
+ardent temperament of the born orator, so neither
+had he the external advantages which count for
+much before large assemblies. His voice was
+not remarkable either for range or for quality.
+His manner was somewhat stiff, his gestures few,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span>
+his countenance inexpressive. Yet his delivery
+was not wanting in skill, and often added point,
+by its cool unconcern, to a stinging epigram.</p>
+<p>What he lacked in eloquence he made up
+for by tactical adroitness. No more consummate
+parliamentary strategist has been seen in
+England. He had studied the House of Commons
+till he knew it as a player knows his instrument&mdash;studied
+it collectively, for it has a collective
+character, and studied the men who compose
+it: their worse rather than their better side,
+their prejudices, their foibles, their vanities,
+their ambitions, their jealousies, above all, that
+curious corporate pride which they have, and
+which makes them resent any approach to dictation.
+He could play on every one of these
+strings, and yet so as to conceal his skill; and he
+so economised himself as to make them always
+wish to hear him. He knew how in a body of
+men obliged to listen to talk, and most of it
+tedious talk, about matters in themselves mostly
+uninteresting, the desire for a little amusement
+becomes almost a passion; and he humoured
+this desire so far as occasionally to err by
+excess of banter and flippancy. Almost always
+respectful to the House, he had a happy
+knack of appearing to follow rather than to
+lead, and when he made an official statement
+it was with the air of one who was taking
+them into his confidence. Much of this he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span>
+may have learned from observing Lord Palmerston;
+but the art came more naturally to that
+statesman, who was an Englishman all through,
+than to a man of Mr. Disraeli&rsquo;s origin, who
+looked on Englishmen from outside, and never
+felt himself, so to speak, responsible for their
+habits or ideas.</p>
+<p>As leader of his party in Opposition, he was
+at once daring and cautious. He never feared
+to give battle, even when he expected defeat,
+if he deemed it necessary, with a view to the
+future, that the judgment of his party should
+have been pronounced in a formal way. On
+the other hand, he was wary of committing himself
+to a policy of blind or obstinate resistance.
+When he perceived that the time had come to
+yield, he knew how to yield with a good grace,
+so as both to support a character for reasonableness
+and to obtain valuable concessions as
+the price of peace. If difficulties arose with
+foreign countries he claimed full liberty of
+criticising the conduct of the Ministry, but
+ostentatiously abstained from obstructing or
+thwarting their acts, declaring that England must
+always present a united front to the foreigner,
+whatever penalties she might afterwards visit
+on those who had mismanaged her concerns.
+As regards the inner discipline of his party,
+he had enormous difficulties to surmount in the
+jealousy which many Tories felt for him as a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span>
+new man, a man whom they could not understand
+and only partially trusted.<a name='FNanchor_0008' id='FNanchor_0008'></a><a href='#Footnote_0008' class='fnanchor'>[9]</a> Conspiracies
+were repeatedly formed against him; malcontents
+attacked him in the press, and sometimes even in
+Parliament. These he seldom noticed, maintaining
+a cool and self-confident demeanour which
+disheartened the plotters, and discharging the
+duties of his post with steady assiduity. He
+was always on the look-out for young men of
+promise, drew them towards him, encouraged
+them to help him in parliamentary sharp-shooting,
+and fostered in every way the spirit of party.
+The bad side of that spirit was seen when he
+came into office, for then every post in the
+public service was bestowed either by mere
+favouritism or on party grounds; and men who
+had been loyal to him were rewarded by places
+or titles to which they had no other claim.
+But the unity and martial fervour of the Tory
+party was raised to the highest point. Nor was
+Disraeli himself personally unpopular with his
+parliamentary opponents, even when he was most
+hotly attacked on the platform and in the press.</p>
+<p>To know England and watch the shifting
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span>
+currents of its opinion is a very different matter
+from knowing the House of Commons. Indeed,
+the two kinds of knowledge are in a measure
+incompatible. Men who enter Parliament soon
+begin to forget that it is not, in the last resort,
+Parliament that governs, but the people. Absorbed
+in the daily contests of their Chamber,
+they over-estimate the importance of those contests.
+They come to think that Parliament is
+in fact what it is in theory, a microcosm of
+the nation, and that opinion inside is sure to
+reflect the opinion outside. When they are in a
+minority they are depressed; when they are in
+a majority they fancy that all is well, forgetting
+their masters out-of-doors. This tendency is
+aggravated by the fact that the English Parliament
+meets in the capital, where the rich and
+luxurious congregate and give their tone to
+society. The House of Commons, though many
+of its members belong to the middle class by
+origin, belongs practically to the upper class by
+sympathy, and is prone to believe that what it
+hears every evening at dinners or receptions is
+what the country is thinking. A member of the
+House of Commons is, therefore, ill-placed for
+feeling the pulse of the nation, and in order to
+do so must know what is being said over the
+country, and must frequently visit or communicate
+with his constituents. If this difficulty is
+experienced by an ordinary private member, it
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span>
+is greater for a minister whose time is filled
+by official duties, or for a leader of Opposition,
+who has to be constantly thinking of his tactics
+in the House. In Disraeli&rsquo;s case there was a
+keenness of observation and discernment far
+beyond the common. But he was under the disadvantages
+of not being really an Englishman,
+and of having never lived among the people.<a name='FNanchor_0009' id='FNanchor_0009'></a><a href='#Footnote_0009' class='fnanchor'>[10]</a>
+The detachment I have already referred to tended
+to weaken his power of judging popular sentiment,
+and appraising at their true value the various
+tendencies that sway and divide a nation so
+complex as the English. Early in life he had
+formed theories about the relations of the different
+classes of English society&mdash;nobility, gentry,
+capitalists, workmen, peasantry, and the middle
+classes&mdash;theories which were far from containing
+the whole truth; and he adhered to them even
+when the changes of half a century had made them
+less true. He had a great aversion, not to say contempt,
+for Puritanism, and for the Dissenters among
+whom it chiefly holds its ground, and pleased himself
+with the notion that the extension of the suffrage
+which he carried in 1867 had destroyed their
+political power. The Conservative victory at the
+election of 1874 confirmed him in this belief, and
+made him also think that the working classes
+were ready to follow the lead of the rich. He
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span>
+perceived that the Liberal ministry of 1868-74
+had offended certain influential sections by appearing
+too demiss or too unenterprising in foreign
+affairs, and fancied that the bulk of the nation
+would be dazzled by a warlike mien, and an
+active, even aggressive, foreign policy. Such a
+policy was congenial to his own ideas, and to
+the society that surrounded him. It was applauded
+by some largely circulated newspapers
+which had previously been unfriendly to the
+Tory party. Thus he was more surprised than
+any other man of similar experience to find the
+nation sending up a larger majority against him
+in 1880 than it had sent up for him in 1874.
+This was the most striking instance of his miscalculation.
+But he had all through his career
+an imperfect comprehension of the English
+people. Individuals, or even an assembly, may
+be understood by dint of close and long-continued
+observation; but to understand a whole nation,
+one must also have sympathy, and this his circumstances,
+not less than his character, had denied him.</p>
+<p>It was partly the same defect that prevented
+him from mastering the general politics of Europe.
+There is a sense in which no single man can
+pretend to understand Europe. Bismarck himself
+did not. The problem is too vast, the facts
+to be known too numerous, the undercurrents
+too varying. One can speak only of more or
+less. If Europe had been in his time what it
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span>
+was a century before, Disraeli would have had
+a far better chance of being fit to become what
+it was probably his dearest wish to become&mdash;its
+guide and arbiter. He would have taken the
+measure of the princes and ministers with whom
+he had to deal, would have seen and adroitly
+played on their weaknesses. His novels show
+how often he had revolved diplomatic situations
+in his mind, and reflected on the way of handling
+them. Foreign diplomatists are agreed that at
+the Congress of Berlin he played his part to
+admiration, spoke seldom, but spoke always to
+the point and with dignity, had a perfect conception
+of what he meant to secure, and of the
+means he must employ to secure it, never haggled
+over details or betrayed any eagerness to win
+support, never wavered in his demands, even when
+they seemed to lead straight to war. Dealing
+with individuals, who represented material forces
+which he had gauged, he was perfectly at home,
+and deserved the praise he obtained from Bismarck,
+who, comparing him with other eminent
+figures at the Congress, is reported to have said,
+bluntly but heartily, &ldquo;Der alte Jude, das ist der
+Mann.&rdquo;<a name='FNanchor_0010' id='FNanchor_0010'></a><a href='#Footnote_0010' class='fnanchor'>[11]</a> But to know what the condition of
+South-Eastern Europe really was, and understand
+how best to settle its troubles, was a far more difficult
+task, and Disraeli possessed neither the knowledge
+nor the insight required. In the Europe
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span>
+of to-day, peoples count for more than the wills
+of individual rulers: one must comprehend the
+passions and sympathies of peoples if one is to
+forecast the future. This he seldom cared to
+do. He did not realise the part and the power
+of moral forces. Down to the outbreak of the
+American Civil War he maintained that the
+question between the North and the South was
+mainly a fiscal question between the Protectionist
+interests of the one and the Free Trade interests
+of the other. He always treated with contempt
+the national movement in Italy. He made no
+secret in the days before 1859 of his good-will
+to Austria and of his liking for Louis Napoleon&mdash;a
+man inferior to him in ability and in courage,
+but to whose character his own had some affinities.
+In that elaborate study of Sir Robert Peel&rsquo;s character,<a name='FNanchor_0011' id='FNanchor_0011'></a><a href='#Footnote_0011' class='fnanchor'>[12]</a>
+which is one of Disraeli&rsquo;s best literary performances,
+he observes that Peel &ldquo;was destitute
+of imagination, and wanting imagination he wanted
+prescience.&rdquo; True it is that imagination is necessary
+for prescience, but imagination is not enough
+to give prescience. It may even be a snare.</p>
+<p>Disraeli&rsquo;s imagination, his fondness for theories,
+and disposition rather to cling to them than to
+study and interpret facts, made him the victim
+of his own preconceived ideas, as his indolence
+deterred him from following the march of change
+and noting how different things were in the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span>
+&rsquo;seventies from what they had been in the
+&rsquo;thirties. Mr. Gladstone said to me in 1876,
+&ldquo;Disraeli&rsquo;s two leading ideas in foreign policy
+have always been the maintenance of the temporal
+power of the Pope, and the maintenance of the
+power of the Sultan.&rdquo; Unable to save the one, he
+clung to the hope of saving the other. He was
+possessed by the notion, seductive to a dreamy
+mind, that all the disturbances of Europe arose
+from the action of secret societies; and when the
+Eastern Question was in 1875 re-opened by the
+insurrection in Herzegovina, followed by the
+war of Servia against the Turks, he explained
+the event in a famous speech by saying, &ldquo;The
+secret societies of Europe have declared war
+against Turkey&rdquo;&mdash;the fact being that the societies
+which in Russia were promoting the Servian war
+were public societies, openly collecting subscriptions,
+while those secret &ldquo;social democratic&rdquo;
+societies of which we have since heard so much
+were strongly opposed to the interference of
+Russia, and those other secret societies in the
+rest of Europe, wherein Poles and Italians have
+played a leading part, were, if not hostile, at any
+rate quite indifferent to the movement among the
+Eastern Christians.</p>
+<p>Against these errors there must be set several
+cases in which he showed profound discernment.
+In 1843 and 1844 he delivered, in debates on the
+condition of Ireland, speeches which then constituted
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span>
+and long remained the most penetrating
+and concise diagnosis of the troubles of that country
+ever addressed to Parliament. Ireland has, he
+said, a starving peasantry, an alien church, and an
+absentee aristocracy, and he went on to add that
+the function of statesmanship was to cure by peaceful
+and constitutional methods ills which in other
+countries had usually induced, and been removed
+by, revolution. During the American Civil War of
+1861-65, Disraeli was the only leading statesman
+on his own side of politics who did not embrace and
+applaud the cause of the South. Whether this
+arose from a caution that would not commit itself
+where it recognised ignorance, or from a perception
+of the superior strength of the Northern
+States (a perception which whoever visits the
+South even to-day is astonished that so few
+people in Europe should have had), it is not easy
+to decide; but whatever the cause, the fact is an
+evidence of his prudence or sagacity all the more
+weighty because Lord Palmerston, Lord Russell,
+and Mr. Gladstone, as well as Lord Derby and
+Sir Hugh Cairns, had each of them expressed
+more or less sympathy with, or belief in, the
+success of the Southern cause.</p>
+<p>The most striking instance, however, of Disraeli&rsquo;s
+insight was his perception that an extension
+of the suffrage would not necessarily injure,
+and might end by strengthening, the Tory party.
+The Act of 1867 was described at the time as
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span>
+&ldquo;a leap in the dark.&rdquo; But Disraeli&rsquo;s eyes had
+pierced the darkness. For half a century politicians
+had assumed that the masses of the people
+were and would remain under the Liberal banner.
+Even as late as 1872 it was thought on Liberal
+platforms a good joke to say of some opinion that
+it might do for Conservative working men, if there
+were any. Disraeli had, long before 1867, seen
+deeper, and though his youthful fancies that the
+monarchy might be revived as an effective force,
+and that &ldquo;the peasantry&rdquo; would follow with
+medi&aelig;val reverence the lead of the landed gentry,
+proved illusory, he was right in discerning that
+wealth and social influence would in parliamentary
+elections count for more among the masses than
+the traditions of constitutional Whiggism or the
+dogmas of abstract Radicalism.</p>
+<p>In estimating his statesmanship as a whole,
+one must give due weight to the fact that it
+impressed many publicists abroad. No English
+minister had for a long time past so fascinated
+observers in Germany and Austria. Supposing
+that under the long reign of Liberalism Englishmen
+had ceased to care for foreign politics, they
+looked on him as the man who had given back to
+Britain her old European position, and attributed
+to him a breadth of design, a grasp and a foresight
+such as men had revered in Lord Chatham,
+greatest in the short list of ministers who have
+raised the fame of England abroad. I remember
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span>
+seeing in a Conservative club, about 1880, a
+large photograph of Lord Beaconsfield, wearing
+the well-known look of mysterious fixity, under
+which is inscribed the line of Homer: &ldquo;He alone
+is wise: the rest are fleeting shadows.&rdquo;<a name='FNanchor_0012' id='FNanchor_0012'></a><a href='#Footnote_0012' class='fnanchor'>[13]</a> It
+was a happy idea to go for a motto to the
+favourite poet of his rival, as it was an unhappy
+chance to associate the wisdom ascribed
+to Disraeli with his policy in the Turkish East
+and in Afghanistan, a policy now universally admitted
+to have been unwise and unfortunate.<a name='FNanchor_0013' id='FNanchor_0013'></a><a href='#Footnote_0013' class='fnanchor'>[14]</a>
+But whatever may be thought of the appropriateness
+of the motto, the fact remains that this was
+the belief he succeeded in inspiring. He did it
+by virtue of those very gifts which sometimes
+brought him into trouble&mdash;his taste for large and
+imposing theories, his power of clothing them in
+vague and solemn language, his persistent faith in
+them. He came, by long posing, to impose upon
+himself and to believe in his own profundity.
+Few people could judge whether his ideas of
+imperial policy were sound and feasible; but
+every one saw that he had theories, and many
+fell under the spell which a grandiose imagination
+can exercise. It is chiefly this gift, coupled with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span>
+his indomitable tenacity, which lifts him out of
+the line of mere party leaders. If he failed to see
+how much the English are sometimes moved by
+compassion, he did see that it may be worth while
+to play to their imagination.</p>
+<p>We may now ask again the question asked at
+first: How did a man, whatever his natural gifts,
+who was weighted in his course by such disadvantages
+as Disraeli&rsquo;s, by his Jewish origin, by the
+escapades of his early career, by the want of confidence
+which his habitual cynicism inspired, by the
+visionary nature of so many of his views,&mdash;how did
+he, in a conservative and aristocratic country like
+England, triumph over so many prejudices and
+enmities, and raise himself to be the head of the
+Conservative and aristocratic party, the trusted
+counsellor of the Crown, the ruler, almost the
+dictator, of a free people?</p>
+<p>However high be the estimate formed of
+Disraeli&rsquo;s gifts, secondary causes must have been
+at work to enable him to overcome the obstacles
+that blocked his path. The ancients were not
+wrong in ascribing to Fortune a great share in
+human affairs. Now, among the secondary causes
+of success, that &ldquo;general minister and leader set
+over worldly splendours,&rdquo; as Dante calls her,<a name='FNanchor_0014' id='FNanchor_0014'></a><a href='#Footnote_0014' class='fnanchor'>[15]</a>
+played no insignificant part. One of these causes
+lay in the nature of the party to which he belonged.
+The Tory party of the years between 1848 and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span>
+1865 contained a comparatively small number of
+able men. When J. S. Mill once called it the
+stupid party, it did not repudiate the name, but
+pointed to its cohesion and its resolution as
+showing how many things besides mere talent
+go to make political greatness. A man of
+shining gifts had within its ranks few competitors;
+and this was signally the case immediately
+after Peel&rsquo;s defection. That statesman
+had carried off with him the intellectual flower
+of the Conservatives. Those who were left
+behind to form the Protectionist Opposition in
+the House of Commons were broad-acred squires,
+of solid character but slender capacity. Through
+this heavy atmosphere Mr. Disraeli rose like a
+balloon. Being practically the only member of
+his party in the Commons with either strategical
+or debating power, he became indispensable, and
+soon established a supremacy which years of
+patient labour might not have given him in a
+rivalry with the distinguished band who surrounded
+Peel. During the twenty years that
+followed the great Tory schism of 1846 no
+man arose in the Tory ranks capable of disputing
+his throne. The conspiracies hatched
+against him might well have prospered could a
+candidate for the leadership have been found
+capable of crossing swords with the chieftain in
+possession. Fortune, true to her nursling, suffered
+none such to appear.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span></div>
+<p>Another favouring influence not understood
+outside England was to be found in the character
+of the party he led. In his day the Tories, being
+the party of the property-holders, and having not
+to advance but to stand still, not to propose
+changes but to resist them, having bonds of
+interest as well as of sentiment to draw them
+close together, possessed a cohesion, a loyalty
+to their chiefs, a tenacious corporate spirit, far
+exceeding what was to be found among their
+adversaries, who were usually divided into a
+moderate or Whig and an advanced or Radical
+section. He who established himself as the Tory
+leader was presently followed by the rank and file
+with a devotion, an unquestioning submission and
+confidence, which placed his character and doctrines
+under the &aelig;gis of the party, and enforced loyalty
+upon parliamentary malcontents. This corporate
+spirit was of infinite value to Disraeli. The
+historical past of the great Tory party, its associations,
+the social consideration which it enjoys, all
+went to ennoble his position and efface the remembrance
+of the less creditable parts of his career.
+And in the later days of his reign, when no one
+disputed his supremacy, every Tory was, as a
+matter of course, his advocate and admirer, and
+resented assaults on him as insults to the party.
+When a man excites hatred by his words or deeds,
+attacks on his character are an inevitable relief to
+overcharged feelings. Technically regarded, they
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span>
+are not good politics. Misrepresentation sometimes
+succeeds; vituperation seldom. Let a man
+be personally untrustworthy or dangerous, still, it
+is only his own words that damage him, at least in
+England and America. Even his own words, however
+discrediting, even his acts, however culpable,
+may, if they belong to a past unfamiliar to the voter
+of to-day, tell little, perhaps too little, on the voter&rsquo;s
+mind when they are brought up against him. The
+average citizen has a short memory, and thinks
+that the dead may be allowed to bury their dead.</p>
+<p>Let it be further noted that Disraeli&rsquo;s career
+coincided with a significant change in English
+politics, a change partly in the temper of the nation,
+partly in the balance of voting power. For thirty
+years after the Reform Act of 1832, not only had
+the middle classes constituted the majority of
+the electors, but the social influence of the great
+Whig families and the intellectual influence of
+the economic school of Cobden had been potent
+factors. These forces were, in the later part of
+Disraeli&rsquo;s life, tending to decline. The working-class
+vote was vastly increased in 1867. The
+old Whig light gradually paled, and many of the
+Whig magnates, obeying class sympathies rather
+than party traditions, drifted slowly into Toryism.
+A generation arose which had not seen the Free
+Trade struggle, or had forgotten the Free Trade
+arguments, and which was attracted by ideals other
+than those which Cobden had preached. The
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span>
+grievances which had made men reformers had
+been largely removed. The battle of liberty and
+nationality in Continental Europe had been in
+the main won, and Englishmen had lost the
+enthusiasm for freedom which had fired them in
+the days when the memory of their own struggle
+against the Crown and the oligarchy was still
+fresh. With none of these changes had Disraeli&rsquo;s
+personal action much to do, but they all enured
+to the benefit of his party, they all swelled the
+tide which bore him into office in 1874.</p>
+<p>Finally, he had the great advantage of living
+long. Many a statesman has died at fifty,
+and passed from the world&rsquo;s memory, who might
+have become a figure in history with twenty years
+more of life. Had Disraeli&rsquo;s career closed in
+1854, he would have been remembered as a
+parliamentary gladiator, who had produced a few
+incisive speeches, a crude Budget, and some
+brilliant social and political sketches. The
+stronger parts of his character might have remained
+unknown. True it is that a man must
+have greatness in order to stand the test of long
+life. Some are found out, like Louis Napoleon.
+Some lose their balance and therewith their
+influence, like Lord Brougham. Some cease to
+grow or learn, and if a statesman is not better
+at sixty than he was at thirty, he is worse.
+Some jog heavily on, like Metternich, or stiffen
+into arbitrary doctrinaires, like Guizot. Disraeli
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span>
+did not merely stand the test, he gained immensely
+by it. He gained by rising into a
+position where his strength could show itself.
+He gained also by so impressing his individuality
+upon people as to make them accept it as an
+ultimate fact, till at length they came, not so much
+to blame him for what he did in accord with his
+established reputation, as rather to relish and
+enter into the humour of his character. As they
+unconsciously took to judging him by a standard
+different from that which they applied to ordinary
+Englishmen, they hardly complained of deflections
+from veracity which would have seemed grave
+in other persons. He had given notice that
+he was not like other men, that his words must
+not be taken in their natural sense, that he was
+to be regarded as the skilful player of a great
+game, the consummate actor in a great part.
+And, once more, he gained by the many years
+during which he had opportunities of displaying
+his fortitude, patience, constancy under defeat,
+unwavering self-confidence&mdash;gifts rarer than mere
+intellectual power, gifts that deserve the influence
+they bestow. Nothing so fascinates mankind as
+to see a man equal to every fortune, unshaken
+by reverses, indifferent to personal abuse, maintaining
+a long combat against apparently hopeless
+odds with the sharpest weapons and a smiling
+face. His followers fancy he must have hidden
+resources of wisdom as well as of courage. When
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span>
+some of his predictions come true, and the
+turning tide of popular feeling begins to bear
+them toward power, they believe that he has
+been all along right and the rest of the world
+wrong. When victory at last settles on his crest,
+even his enemies can hardly help applauding a
+reward which seems so amply earned. It was
+by this quality, more perhaps than by anything
+else, by this serene surface with fathomless depths
+below, that he laid his spell upon the imagination
+of observers in Continental Europe, and received
+at his death a sort of canonisation from a large
+section of the English people.</p>
+<p>What will posterity think of him, and by
+what will he be remembered? The glamour has
+already passed away, and to few of those who on
+the 19th of April deck his statue with flowers
+is he more than a name.</p>
+<p>Parliamentary fame is fleeting: the memory of
+parliamentary conflicts soon grows dim and dull.
+Posterity fixes a man&rsquo;s place in history by asking
+not how many tongues buzzed about him in his
+lifetime, but how great a factor he was in the
+changes of the world, that is, how far different
+things would have been twenty or fifty years
+after his death if he had never lived. Tried by
+this standard, the results upon the course of events
+of Disraeli&rsquo;s personal action are not numerous,
+though some of them may be deemed momentous.
+He was an adroit parliamentary tactician who
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span>
+held his followers together through a difficult
+time. By helping to keep the Peelites from
+rejoining their old party, he gave that party a
+colour different from the sober hues which it
+had worn during the leadership of Peel. He
+became the founder of what has in later days
+been called Tory democracy, winning over a
+large section of the humbler classes to the
+banner under which the majority of the wealthy
+and the holders of vested interests already stood
+arrayed. He saved for the Turkish Empire
+a part of its territories, yet in doing so merely
+prolonged for a little the death agony of
+Turkish power. Though it cannot be said
+that he conferred any benefit on India or the
+Colonies, he certainly stimulated the imperial
+instincts of Englishmen. He had occasional
+flashes of insight, as when in 1843 he perceived
+exactly what Ireland needed, and at least one
+brilliant flash of foresight when he predicted that
+a wide extension of the suffrage would bring no
+evil to the Tory party. Yet in the case of
+Ireland he did nothing, when the chance came
+to him, to give effect to the judgment which he
+had formed, while in the case of the suffrage he
+did but follow up and carry into effect an impulse
+given by others. The Franchise Act of 1867 is
+perhaps the only part of his policy which has,
+by hastening a change that induced other changes,
+permanently affected the course of events; and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span>
+it remains the chief monument of his parliamentary
+skill. There was nothing in his career to
+set the example of a lofty soul or a noble purpose.
+He did not raise, he may even have lowered,
+the tone of English public life.</p>
+<p>Yet history will not leave him without a meed
+of admiration. When all possible explanations of
+his success have been given, what a wonderful
+career! An adventurer foreign in race, in
+ideas, in temper, without money or family
+connections, climbs, by patient and unaided
+efforts, to lead a great party, master a powerful
+aristocracy, sway a vast empire, and make himself
+one of the four or five greatest personal
+forces in the world. His head is not turned by
+his elevation. He never becomes a demagogue;
+he never stoops to beguile the multitude by
+appealing to sordid instincts. He retains through
+life a certain amplitude of view, a due sense of
+the dignity of his position, a due regard for the
+traditions of the ancient assembly which he leads,
+and when at last the destinies of England fall
+into his hands, he feels the grandeur of the
+charge, and seeks to secure what he believes to
+be her imperial place in the world. Whatever
+judgment history may ultimately pass upon
+him, she will find in the long annals of the
+English Parliament no more striking figure.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span>
+<a name='DEAN_STANLEY16' id='DEAN_STANLEY16'></a>
+<h2>DEAN STANLEY<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor2">[16]</a></h2>
+</div>
+<p>In the England of his time there was no personality
+more attractive, nor any more characteristic of
+the country, than Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean
+of Westminster. England is the only European
+country in which such a figure could have appeared,
+for it is the only country in which a man may hold
+a high ecclesiastical post and yet be regarded
+by the nation, not specially as an ecclesiastic, but
+rather as a distinguished writer, an active and
+influential man of affairs, an ornament of social
+life. But if in this respect he was typical of his
+country, he was in other respects unique. He
+was a clergyman untouched by clericalism, a
+courtier unspoiled by courts. No one could
+point to any one else in England who occupied
+a similar position, nor has any one since arisen
+who recalls him, or who fills the place which his
+departure left empty.</p>
+<p>Stanley was born in 1815. His father, then
+Rector of Alderley, in Cheshire, afterwards Bishop
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span>
+of Norwich, belonged to the family of the Stanleys
+of Alderley, a branch of that ancient and famous
+line the head of which is Earl of Derby. His
+mother, Catherine Leycester, was a woman of
+much force of character and intellectual power.
+He was educated at Rugby School under Dr.
+Arnold, the influence of whose ideas remained
+great over him all through his life, and at
+Oxford, where he became a fellow and tutor
+of University College. Passing thence to be
+Canon of Canterbury, he returned to the University
+as Professor of Ecclesiastical History,
+and remained there for seven years. In 1863
+he was appointed Dean of Westminster, and at
+the same time married Lady Augusta Bruce
+(sister of the then Lord Elgin, Governor-General
+first of Canada and afterwards of India). He
+died in 1881.</p>
+<p>He had an extraordinarily active and busy life,
+so intertwined with the history of the University of
+Oxford and the history of the Church of England
+from 1850 to 1880, that one can hardly think of any
+salient point in either without thinking also of
+him. Yet it was perhaps rather in the intensity
+of his nature and the nobility of his sentiments
+than in either the compass or the strength of his
+intellectual faculties that the charm and the force
+he exercised lay. In some directions he was
+curiously deficient. He had no turn for abstract
+reasoning, no liking for metaphysics or any other
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span>
+form of speculation. He was equally unfitted
+for scientific inquiry, and could scarcely work
+a sum in arithmetic. Indeed, in no field was
+he a logical or systematic thinker. Neither,
+although he had a retentive memory, and
+possessed a great deal of various knowledge on
+many subjects, could he be called learned, for
+he had not really mastered any branch of history,
+and was often inaccurate in details. He had never
+been trained to observe facts in natural history.
+He had absolutely no ear for music, and very
+little perception either of colour or of scent. He
+learned foreign languages with difficulty and never
+spoke them well. He was so short-sighted as to
+be unable to recognise a face passing close in the
+street. Yet with these shortcomings he was a
+born traveller, went everywhere, saw everything
+and everybody worth seeing, always seized on
+the most characteristic features of a landscape, or
+building, or a person, and described them with a
+freshness which made one feel as if they had
+never been described before. Of the hundreds
+who have published books on the Desert of
+Sinai and the Holy Land, many of them skilful
+writers or men of profound knowledge, he is
+the only one who is still read and likely to continue
+to be read, so vivid in colour, so exquisite
+in feeling, are the pictures he has given. Nature
+alone, however, nature taken by herself, did not
+satisfy him, did not, indeed, in his later days (for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span>
+in his boyhood he had been a passionate lover of
+the mountains) greatly interest him. A building
+or a landscape had power to rouse his imagination
+and call forth his unrivalled powers of description
+only when it was associated with the
+thoughts and deeds of men.</p>
+<p>The largest part of his literary work was done
+in the field of ecclesiastical history, a subject
+naturally congenial to him, and to which he was
+further drawn by the professorship which he held
+at Oxford during a time when a great revival of
+historical studies was in progress. It was work
+which critics could easily disparage, for there were
+many small errors scattered through it; and the
+picturesque method of treatment he employed
+was apt to pass into scrappiness. He fixed on
+the points which had a special interest for his
+own mind as illustrating some trait of personal
+or national character, or some moral lesson, and
+passed hastily over other matters of equal or
+greater importance. Nevertheless his work
+had some distinctive merits which have not received
+from professional critics the whole credit
+they deserved. In all that Stanley wrote one
+finds a certain largeness and dignity of view.
+He had a sense of the unity of history, of the
+constant relation of past and present, of the similarity
+of human nature in one age and country to
+human nature in another; and he never failed to
+dwell upon the permanently valuable truths which
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73' name='page_73'></a>73</span>
+history has to teach. Nothing was too small to
+attract him, because he discovered a meaning in
+everything, and he was therefore never dull,
+for even when he moralised he would light up
+his reflections by some happy anecdote. With
+this he possessed a keen eye, the eye of a
+poet, for human character, and a power of
+sympathy that enabled him to appreciate even
+those whose principles and policy he disliked.
+Herein he was not singular, for the sympathetic
+style of writing history has become fashionable
+among us. What was remarkable in him was
+that his sympathy did not betray him into the
+error, now also fashionable, of extenuating moral
+distinctions. His charity never blunted the edge
+of his justice, nor prevented him from reprobating
+the faults of the personages who had touched his
+heart. For one sin only he had little historical
+tolerance&mdash;the sin of intolerance. So there was
+one sin only which ever led him to speak severely
+of any of his contemporaries&mdash;the sin of untruthfulness.
+Being himself so simple and straightforward
+as to feel his inability to cope with
+deceitful men, deceit incensed him. But he did not
+resent the violence of his adversaries, for though
+he suffered much at their hands he knew many
+of them to be earnest, unselfish, and conscientious
+men.</p>
+<p>His pictures of historical scenes are admirable,
+for with his interest in the study of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span>
+character there went a large measure of dramatic
+power. Nothing can be better in its way
+than the description of the murder of St.
+Thomas of Canterbury given in the <i>Memorials
+of Canterbury</i>, which, after <i>Sinai and Palestine</i>
+and the <i>Life of Arnold</i>, may be deemed
+the best of Stanley&rsquo;s books. Whether he
+could, with more leisure for careful thought
+and study, have become a great historian, was
+a question which those of us who were dazzled
+by his Public Lectures at Oxford used often
+to discuss. The leisure never came, for he
+was throughout life warmly interested in every
+current ecclesiastical question, and ready to
+bear a part in discussing it, either in the
+press&mdash;for he wrote in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>,
+and often sent letters to the <i>Times</i> under
+the signature of &ldquo;Anglicanus&rdquo;&mdash;or in Convocation,
+where he had a seat during the latter
+part of his career. These interruptions not
+only checked the progress of his studies, but
+gave to his compositions an air of haste, which
+made them seem to want system and finish. The
+habit of rapid writing for magazines or other
+ephemeral purposes is alleged to tell injuriously
+upon literary men: it told the more upon Stanley
+because he was also compelled to produce sermons
+rapidly. Now sermon-writing, while it breeds a
+tendency to the making of rhetorical points, subordinates
+the habit of dispassionate inquiry to the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span>
+enforcement of a moral lesson. Stanley, who
+had a touch of the rhetorical temperament, and
+was always eager to improve an occasion, certainly
+suffered in this way. When he brings out a general
+truth he is not content with it as a truth, but
+seeks to turn it also to edification, or to make
+it illustrate and support some view for which he
+is contending at the time. When he is simply
+describing, he describes rather as a dramatic artist
+working for effect than as a historian solely
+anxious to represent men and events as they
+were. Yet if we consider how much a historian
+gains, not only from an intimate knowledge of
+his own time, but also, and even more
+largely, from playing an active part in the
+events of his own time, from swaying opinion by
+his writings and his speeches, from sitting in
+assemblies and organising schemes of attack and
+defence, we may hesitate to wish that Stanley&rsquo;s
+time had been more exclusively given to quiet
+investigation. The freshness of his historical
+portraits is notably due to the sense he carried
+about with him of moving in history and being
+a part of it. He never mounted his pulpit
+in the Abbey or walked into the Jerusalem
+Chamber when Convocation was sitting without
+feeling that he was about to do something which
+might possibly be recorded in the annals of his
+country. I remember his mentioning, to illustrate
+undergraduate ignorance, that once when he was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span>
+going to give a lecture to his class, he suddenly
+recollected that Mr. Goldwin Smith, then Regius
+Professor of Modern History, was announced to
+deliver a public lecture at the same hour. Telling
+the class that they would be better employed in
+hearing Mr. Goldwin Smith than himself, he led
+them all there. The next time the class met,
+one of them, after making some acute comments
+on the lecture, asked who the lecturer was. &ldquo;I
+was amazed,&rdquo; said Stanley, &ldquo;that an intelligent
+man should ask such a question, and then it
+occurred to me that probably he did not know
+who I was either.&rdquo; There was nothing of personal
+vanity or self-importance in this. All the
+men of mark among whom he moved were to him
+historical personages, and he would describe to
+his friends some doing or saying of a contemporary
+statesman or ecclesiastic with the same
+eagerness, the same sense of its being a fact to
+be noted and remembered, as the rest of us feel
+about a personal anecdote relating to Oliver
+Cromwell or Cardinal Richelieu.</p>
+<p>His sermons, like nearly all good sermons, will
+be inadequately appreciated by those who now
+peruse them, not only because they were composed
+for a given audience with special reference to the
+circumstances of the time, but also because the
+best of them gained so much by his impassioned
+delivery. They were all read from manuscript, and
+his handwriting was so illegible that it was a marvel
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span>
+how he contrived to read them. I once asked
+him, not long after he had been promoted to the
+Deanery of Westminster, whether he found it
+easy to make himself heard in the enormous nave
+of the Abbey church. His frame, it ought to
+be stated, was spare as well as small, and his
+voice not powerful. He answered: &ldquo;That depends
+on whether I am interested in what I
+am saying. If the sermon is on something
+which interests me deeply I can fill the nave;
+otherwise I cannot.&rdquo; When he had got a worthy
+theme, or one which stimulated his own emotions,
+the power of his voice and manner was wonderful.
+His tiny body seemed to swell, his chest
+vibrated as he launched forth glowing words.
+The farewell sermon he delivered when quitting
+Oxford for Westminster lives in the memory of
+those who heard it as a performance of extraordinary
+power, the power springing from the
+intensity of his own feeling. No sermon has
+ever since so moved the University.</p>
+<p>He was by nature shy and almost timid, and he
+was not supposed to possess any gift for extempore
+speaking. But when in his later days he found
+himself an almost solitary champion in Convocation
+of the principles of universal toleration and
+comprehension which he held, he developed a debating
+power which surprised himself as well as
+his friends. It was to him a matter of honour and
+conscience to defend his principles, and to defend
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span>
+them all the more zealously because he stood
+alone on their behalf in a hostile assembly. His
+courage was equal to the occasion, and his faculties
+responded to the call his courage made.</p>
+<p>In civil politics he was all his life a Liberal, belonging
+by birth to the Whig aristocracy, and disposed
+on most matters to take rather the Whiggish
+than the Radical view, yet drawn by the warmth
+of his sympathy towards the working classes,
+and popular with them. One of his chief
+pleasures was to lead parties of humble visitors
+round the Abbey on public holidays. Like most
+members of the Whig families, he had no great
+liking for Mr. Gladstone, not so much, perhaps,
+on political grounds as because he distrusted the
+High Churchism and anti-Erastianism of the
+Liberal leader. However, he never took any
+active part in general politics, reserving his
+strength for those ecclesiastical questions which
+seemed to lie within his peculiar province.<a name='FNanchor_0015' id='FNanchor_0015'></a><a href='#Footnote_0015' class='fnanchor'>[17]</a>
+Here he had two leading ideas: one, that the
+Church of England must at all hazards continue
+to be an Established Church, in alliance with, or
+subjection to, the State (for his Erastianism was
+unqualified), and recognising the Crown as her
+head; the other, that she must be a comprehensive
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span>
+Church, finding room in her bosom for
+every sort or description of Christian, however
+much or little he believed of the dogmas contained
+in the Thirty-nine Articles and the Prayer-Book,
+to which she is bound by statute. The
+former view cut him off from the Nonconformists
+and the Radicals; the latter exposed him to the fire
+not only of those who, like the High Churchmen
+and the Evangelicals, attach the utmost importance
+to these dogmas, but of those also among
+the laity who hold that a man ought under no
+circumstances to sign any test or use any form of
+prayer which does not express his own convictions.
+Stanley would, of course, have greatly preferred
+that the laws which regulate the Church of England
+should be so relaxed as to require little or
+no assent to any doctrinal propositions from her
+ministers. He strove for this; and he continued
+to hope that this might be ultimately won. But
+he conceived that in the meantime it was a less
+evil that men should be technically bound by
+subscriptions they objected to than that the
+National Church should be narrowed by the
+exclusion of those whose belief fell short of her
+dogmatic standards. It was remarkable that
+not only did he maintain this unpopular view of
+his with unshaken courage on every occasion,
+pleading the cause of every supposed heretic
+against hostile majorities with a complete forgetfulness
+of his own peace and ease, but that no
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span>
+one ever thought of attributing the course he
+took to any selfish or sinister motive. It was
+generally believed that his own opinions were
+what nine-tenths of the Church of England would
+call unorthodox. But the honesty and uprightness
+of his character were so patent that nobody
+supposed that this fact made any difference, or
+that it was for the sake of keeping his own place
+that he fought the cause of others.</p>
+<p>What his theological opinions were it might
+have puzzled Stanley himself to explain. His
+mind was not fitted to grasp abstract propositions.
+His historical imagination and his early
+associations attached him to the doctrines of the
+Nicene Creed; but when he came to talk of
+Christianity, he laid so much more stress on
+its ethics than on its dogmatic side that his
+clerical antagonists thought he held no creed at
+all. Dr. Pusey once said that he and Stanley did
+not worship the same God. The point of difference
+between him and them was not so much that he
+consciously disbelieved the dogmas they held&mdash;probably
+he did not&mdash;as that he did not, like them,
+think that true religion and final salvation depended
+on believing them. And the weak point in his
+imagination was that he seemed never to understand
+their position, nor to realise how sacred and
+how momentous to them were statements which
+he saw in a purely imaginative light. He never
+could be got to see that a Church without any
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span>
+dogmas would not be a Church at all in the sense
+either of mankind in the past or of mankind in
+the present. An anecdote was current that once
+when he had in Disraeli&rsquo;s presence been descanting
+on the harm done by the enforcement of dogmatic
+standards, Disraeli had observed, &ldquo;But pray
+remember, Mr. Dean, no dogma, no Dean.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Those who thought him a heathen would have
+assailed him less bitterly if he had been content
+to admit his own differences from them. What
+most incensed them was his habit of assuming
+that, except in mere forms of expression, there
+were really no differences at all, and that they
+also held Christianity to consist not in any body
+of doctrines, but in reverence for God and purity
+of life. They would have preferred heathenism
+itself to this kind of Universalism.</p>
+<p>As ecclesiastical preferment had not discoloured
+the native hue of his simplicity, so neither did the
+influences of royal favour. It says little for
+human nature that few people should be proof
+against what the philosopher deems the trivial
+and fleeting fascinations of a court. Stanley&rsquo;s
+elevation of mind was proof. Intensely interested
+in the knowledge of events passing behind the
+scenes which his relations with the reigning family
+opened to him, he scarcely ever referred to those
+relations, and seemed neither to be affected
+thereby, nor to care a whit more for the pomps
+and vanities of power or wealth, a whit less for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span>
+the friends and the causes he had learned to value
+in his youth.</p>
+<p>In private, that which most struck one in his
+intellect was the quick eagerness with which his
+imagination fastened upon any new fact, caught
+its bearings, and clothed it with colour. His
+curiosity remained inexhaustible. His delight in
+visiting a new country was like that of an
+American scholar landing for the first time in
+Europe. A friend met him a year before his
+death at a hotel in the North of England,
+and found he was going to the Isle of Man.
+He had mastered its geography and history,
+and talked about it and what he was to
+explore there as one might talk of Rome or
+Athens when visiting them for the first time.
+When anybody told him an anecdote his susceptible
+imagination seized upon points which the
+narrator had scarcely noticed, and discovered a
+whole group of curious analogies from other times
+or countries. Whatever you planted in this fertile
+soil struck root and sprouted at once. Morally,
+he impressed those who knew him not only by
+his kindness of heart, but by a remarkable
+purity and nobleness of aim. Nothing mean or
+small or selfish seemed to harbour in his mind.
+You might think him right or wrong, but you
+never doubted that he was striving after the
+truth. He was not merely a just man; he
+loved justice with passion. It was partly, perhaps,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span>
+because justice, goodness, honour, charity,
+seemed to him of such paramount importance in
+life that he made little of doctrinal differences,
+having perceived that these virtues may exist, and
+may also be found wanting, in every form of
+religious creed or philosophical profession. When
+the Convocation of the Anglican Church met at
+Westminster, it was during many years his habit
+to invite a great number of its leading members to
+the deanery, the very men who had been attacking
+him most hotly in debate, and who would
+go on denouncing his latitudinarianism till Convocation
+met again. They yielded&mdash;sometimes
+reluctantly, but still they yielded&mdash;to the kindliness
+of his nature and the charm of his
+manner. He used to dart about among them,
+introducing opponents to one another, as indeed
+on all occasions he delighted to bring the most
+diverse people together, so that some one said
+the company you met at the deanery were either
+statesmen and duchesses or starving curates and
+briefless barristers.</p>
+<p>He had on the whole a happy life. It is
+true that the intensity of his attachments exposed
+him to correspondingly intense grief when he
+lost those who were dearest to him; true also
+that, being by temperament a man of peace, he
+was during the latter half of his life almost constantly
+at war. But his home, first in the lifetime
+of his mother and then in that of his wife, had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span>
+a serene and unclouded brightness; and the care
+of the Abbey, rich with the associations of nearly
+a thousand years of history, provided a function
+which exactly suited him and which constituted
+a never-failing source of enjoyment. To dwell in
+the centre of the life of the Church of England,
+and to dwell close to the Houses of Parliament,
+in the midst of the making of history, knowing
+and seeing those who were principally concerned
+in making it, was in itself a pleasure to his
+quenchless historical curiosity. His cheerfulness
+and animation, although to some extent revived
+by his visit to America and the reception he met
+with there, were never the same after his wife&rsquo;s
+death in 1876. But the sweetness of his disposition
+and his affection for his friends knew
+no diminution. He remembered everything that
+concerned them; was always ready with sympathy
+in sorrow or joy; and gave to all alike,
+high or low, famous or unknown, the same impression,
+that his friendship was for themselves,
+and not for any gifts or rank or other worldly
+advantage they might enjoy. The art of friendship
+is the greatest art in life. To enjoy his was
+to be educated in that art.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span>
+<a name='THOMAS_HILL_GREEN' id='THOMAS_HILL_GREEN'></a>
+<h2>THOMAS HILL GREEN</h2>
+</div>
+<p>The name of Thomas Green, Professor of Moral
+Philosophy in the University of Oxford, was not,
+during his lifetime, widely known outside the
+University itself. But he is still remembered by
+students of metaphysics and ethics as one of the
+most vigorous thinkers of his time; and his personality
+was a striking one, which made a deep
+and lasting impression on those with whom he
+came in contact.</p>
+<p>He was born in Yorkshire in 1836, the son
+of a country clergyman; was educated at Rugby
+School and at Balliol College, Oxford, of which
+he became a fellow in 1860, and a tutor in 1869.
+In 1867 he was an unsuccessful candidate for a
+chair of philosophy at St. Andrews, and in 1878
+was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in his
+own University, which he never thereafter quitted.
+He was married in 1869 and died in 1882. It
+was a life externally uneventful, but full of
+thought and work, and latterly crowned by great
+influence over the younger and great respect from
+the senior members of the University.</p>
+<p>I can best describe Green as he was in his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span>
+undergraduate days, for it was then that I saw
+most of him. His appearance was striking,
+and made him a familiar figure even to those
+who did not know him personally. Thick
+black hair, a sallow complexion, dark eyebrows,
+deep-set eyes of rich brown with a peculiarly
+steadfast look, were the features which first
+struck one; and with these there was a remarkable
+seriousness of expression, an air of
+solidity and quiet strength. He knew comparatively
+few people, and of these only a very few
+intimately, having no taste or turn for those
+sports in which university acquaintances are most
+frequently made, and seldom appearing at breakfast
+or wine parties. This caused him to pass
+for harsh or unsocial; and I remember having
+felt a slight sense of alarm the first time I found
+myself seated beside him. Though we belonged
+to different colleges I had heard a great deal
+about him, for Oxford undergraduates are warmly
+interested in one another, and at the time I am
+recalling they had an inordinate fondness for
+measuring the intellectual gifts and conjecturing
+the future of those among their contemporaries
+who seemed likely to attain eminence.</p>
+<p>Those who came to know Green intimately,
+soon perceived that under his reserve there
+lay not only a capacity for affection&mdash;no
+man was more tenacious in his friendships&mdash;but
+qualities that made him an attractive companion.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span>
+His tendency to solitude sprang less
+from pride or coldness, than from the occupation
+of his mind by subjects which seldom weigh on
+men of his age. He had, even when a boy
+at school (where he lived much by himself, but
+exercised considerable moral influence), been
+grappling with the problems of metaphysics and
+theology, and they had given a tinge of gravity
+to his manner. The relief to that gravity lay in
+his humour, which was not only abundant but
+genial and sympathetic. It used to remind us
+of Carlyle&mdash;he had both the sense of humour
+and an underlying Puritanism in common with
+Carlyle, one of the authors who (with Milton
+and Wordsworth) had most influenced him&mdash;but
+in Green the Puritan tinge was more kindly,
+and, above all, more lenient to ordinary people.
+While averse, perhaps too severely averse, to
+whatever was luxurious or frivolous in undergraduate
+life, he had the warmest interest in, and
+the strongest sympathy for, the humbler classes.
+Loving social equality, and filled with a sense of
+the dignity of simple human nature, he liked to
+meet farmers and tradespeople on their own level,
+and knew how to do so without seeming to condescend;
+indeed nothing pleased him better, than
+when they addressed him as one of themselves,
+the manner of his talk to them, as well as the
+extreme plainness of his dress, conducing to such
+mistakes. The belief in the duty of approaching
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span>
+the people directly and getting them to think and
+to form and express their own views in their own
+way was at the root of all his political doctrines.</p>
+<p>Though apt to be silent in general company,
+no one could be more agreeable when
+you were alone with him. We used to say
+of him&mdash;and his seniors said the same&mdash;that
+one never talked to him without carrying
+away something to ponder over. On everything
+he said or wrote there was stamped the
+impress of a strong individuality, a mind that
+thought for itself, a character ruggedly original,
+wherein grimness was mingled with humour, and
+practical shrewdness with a love for abstract
+speculation. His independence appeared even in
+the way he pursued his studies. With abilities of
+the highest order, he cared comparatively little
+for the distinctions which the University offers;
+choosing rather to follow out his own line of
+reading in the way he judged permanently useful
+than to devote himself to the pursuit of honours
+and prizes.</p>
+<p>He was constitutionally lethargic, found it hard
+to rouse himself to exertion, and was apt to let
+himself be driven to the last moment in finishing
+a piece of work. There was a rule in his College
+that an essay should be given in every Friday
+evening. His was, to the great annoyance of
+the dons, never ready till Saturday. But when
+it did go in, it was the weightiest and most
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span>
+thoughtful, as well as the most eloquent, that the
+College produced. This indolence had one good
+result. It disposed him to brood over subjects,
+while others were running quickly through many
+books and getting up subjects for examination.
+It contributed to that depth and systematic
+quality which struck us in his thinking, and
+made him seem mature beside even the ablest
+of his contemporaries. When others were
+being, so to speak, blown hither and thither,
+picking up and fascinated by new ideas, which
+they did not know how to fit in with their old
+ones, he seemed to have already formed for himself,
+at least in outline, a scheme of philosophy and
+life coherent and complete. There was nothing
+random or scattered in his ideas; his mind, like
+his style of writing, which ran into long and complicated
+sentences, had a singular connectedness.
+You felt that all its principles were in relation with
+one another. This maturity in his mental attitude
+gave him an air of superiority, just as the
+strength of his convictions gave a dogmatic quality
+to his deliverances. Yet in spite of positiveness
+and tenacity he had the saving grace of a humility
+which distrusted human nature in himself at least
+as much as he distrusted it in others. Leading
+an introspective life, he had many &ldquo;wrestlings,&rdquo;
+and often seemed conscious of the struggle between
+the natural man and the spiritual man, as
+described in the Epistle to the Romans.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span></div>
+<p>In these early days, before, and to a less
+extent after, taking his degree, he used to
+speak a good deal, mostly on political topics,
+at the University Debating Society, where so
+many generations of young men have sharpened
+their wits upon one another. His speaking
+was vigorous, shrewd, and full of matter, yet
+it could not be called popular. It was, in a
+certain sense, too good for a debating society,
+too serious, and without the dash and sparkle
+which tell upon audiences of that kind. Sometimes,
+however, and notably in a debate on the
+American War of Secession in 1863, he produced,
+by the concentrated energy of his language and
+the fierce conviction with which he spoke, a
+powerful effect.<a name='FNanchor_0016' id='FNanchor_0016'></a><a href='#Footnote_0016' class='fnanchor'>[18]</a> In a business assembly, discussing
+practical questions, he would soon have
+become prominent, and would have been capable
+on occasions of an oratorical success.</p>
+<p>Retired as was Green&rsquo;s life, he became by
+degrees more and more widely known beyond the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span>
+circle of his own intimates; and became also, I
+think, more willing to make new friends. His
+truthfulness appeared in this that, though powerful
+in argument, he did not argue for victory.
+When he felt the force of what was urged against
+him, his admissions were candid. Thus people
+came to respect his character, with its high sense
+of duty, its simplicity, its uprightness, its earnest
+devotion to an ideal, even more than they admired
+his intellectual powers. I remember one friend of
+my own, himself eminent in undergraduate Oxford,
+and belonging to another college, between which
+and Green&rsquo;s there existed much rivalry, who,
+having been defeated by Green in competition
+for a University prize, said, &ldquo;If it had been
+any one else, I should have been vexed, but I
+don&rsquo;t mind being beaten by a man I respect so
+much.&rdquo; My friend knew Green very slightly,
+and had been at one time strongly prejudiced
+against him by rumours of his heterodox opinions.</p>
+<p>So much for those undergraduate days on
+which recollection loves to dwell, but which were
+not days of unmixed happiness to Green, for his
+means were narrow and the future rose cloudy
+before him. When anxiety was removed by the
+income which a fellowship secured, he still hesitated
+as to his course in life. At one time he
+thought of journalism, or of seeking a post in the
+Education Office. More frequently his thoughts
+turned to the clerical profession. His theological
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span>
+opinions would not have permitted him to enter
+the service of the Church of England, but he
+did seriously consider whether he should become
+a Unitarian minister. It was not till he found
+that his college needed him as a teacher that
+these difficulties came to an end. Similarly he
+had doubted whether to devote himself to history,
+to theology, or to metaphysics. For history
+he had unquestionable gifts. With no exceptional
+capacity for mastering or retaining facts,
+he had a remarkable power of penetrating at once
+to the dominant facts, of grasping their connection,
+and working out their consequences. He had also
+a keen sense of the dramatic aspect of events, and
+a turn, not unlike Carlyle&rsquo;s, partly perhaps formed
+on Carlyle, of fastening on the details in which
+character shows itself, and illumining narrative by
+personal touches. On the problems of theology
+he had meditated even at school, and after taking
+his degree he set himself to a systematic study of
+the German critics, and I remember that when
+we were living together at Heidelberg he had
+begun to prepare a translation of C. F. Baur&rsquo;s
+principal treatise. As he worked slowly, the translation
+was never finished. Though not professing
+to be an adherent of the T&uuml;bingen school,
+he had been fascinated by Baur&rsquo;s ingenuity and
+constructive power.</p>
+<p>Ultimately he settled down to metaphysical
+and ethical inquiries, and devoted to these the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span>
+last thirteen years of his life. During his undergraduate
+years the two intellectual forces most
+powerful at Oxford had been the writings of
+J. H. Newman in the religious sphere, though
+their influence was already past its meridian, and
+the writings of John Stuart Mill in the sphere
+of logic and philosophy. By neither of these,
+save in the way of antagonism, had Green been
+influenced. He heartily hated all the Utilitarian
+school, and had an especial scorn for Buckle, who,
+now almost forgotten, enjoyed in those days, as
+being supposed to be a philosophic historian, a brief
+term of popularity. Green had been led by Carlyle
+to the Germans, and his philosophic thinking was
+determined chiefly by Kant and Hegel, more
+perhaps by the former than by the latter, for it
+was always upon ethical rather than upon purely
+metaphysical problems that his mind was bent.
+His religious vein and his hold upon practical
+life made him more interested in morals than
+in abstract speculation. Thus he became the
+leader in Oxford of a new philosophic school
+which looked to Kant as its master, and which
+for a time, partly perhaps because it effectively
+attacked the school of Mill, received the adhesion
+of some among the most thoughtful of the younger
+High Churchmen. Like Kant, he set himself to
+answer David Hume, and the essay prefixed to
+his edition of Hume&rsquo;s <i>Treatise on Human Nature</i>.
+along with his <i>Prolegomena to Ethics</i>, are the only
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span>
+books in which his doctrines have been given to
+the world, for he did not live to write the more
+systematic exposition he had planned. These
+two essays are hard reading, for his philosophical
+style was usually technical, and sometimes verged
+on obscurity. But when he wrote on less abstruse
+matters he was intelligible as well as weighty, full
+of thought, and with an occasional underglow
+of restrained eloquence. The force of character
+and convictions makes itself felt through the
+language.</p>
+<p>His mind, though constructive, was not, having
+regard to its general power, either fertile or
+versatile. Like most of those who prefer solitary
+musings to the commerce of men, he had little
+facility, and found it hard to express his thoughts
+in any other words than those into which his
+musings had first flowed. Thus even his oral
+teaching was not easy to follow. An anecdote was
+current how when one day he had been explaining
+to a small class his theory of the origin of our
+ideas, the class listened in rapt attention to
+his forcible rhetoric, admiring each sentence as
+it fell, and thinking that all their difficulties
+were being removed. When he ended they
+expressed their gratitude for the pleasure he
+had given them, and were quitting the room,
+when one, halting at the door, said timidly,
+&ldquo;But, Mr. Green, what did you say was really
+the origin of our ideas?&rdquo; However, whether
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span>
+they were or were not capable of assimilating
+his doctrines, his pupils all joined in their respect
+for him. They felt the loftiness of his character,
+they recognised the fervour of his belief. He
+was the most powerful ethical influence, and
+perhaps also the most stimulative intellectual
+influence, that in those years played upon the
+minds of the ablest youth of the University.
+But it was a singular fact, which those who
+have never lived in Oxford or Cambridge may
+find it hard to understand, that when he rose
+from the post of a college tutor to that of a
+University professor, his influence declined, not
+that his powers or his earnestness waned, but
+because as a professor he had fewer auditors
+and less personal relation with them than he
+had commanded as a college teacher. Such is
+the working of the collegiate system in Oxford,
+curiously unfortunate when it deprives the ablest
+men, as they rise naturally to the highest positions,
+of the opportunities for usefulness they had previously
+enjoyed.</p>
+<p>As his powers developed and came to be
+recognised, so did those slight asperities which
+had been observed in undergraduate days soften
+down and disappear. Though he lived a retired
+life, his work brought him into contact with
+a good many people, and he became more
+genial in general company. I remember his
+saying with a smile when I had lured him into
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span>
+Wales for a short excursion, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know
+whether it is a sign of declining virtue, but I find
+as I grow older that I am less and less fond of
+my own company.&rdquo; From the first he had won
+the confidence and affection of his pupils. Many of
+them used long afterwards to say that his conduct
+and his teaching had been the one great example
+or one great influence they had found and felt in
+Oxford. The unclouded happiness of his married
+life made it easier for him to see the bright side of
+things, and he could not but enjoy the sense that
+the seed he sowed was falling on ground fit to
+receive it. Even when ill-health had fastened
+on him, and was checking both his studies and
+his public work, it did not affect the evenness of
+his temper nor sharpen the edge of his judgments
+of others. In earlier days these had been sometimes
+austere, though expressed in temperate and
+measured terms.</p>
+<p>I must not forget to add that although
+Green&rsquo;s opinions were by no means orthodox, the
+influence he exerted while he remained a college
+tutor was in large measure a religious influence.
+As the clergyman used to be in the English Universities
+less of a clergyman than he was anywhere
+else, so conversely it caused no surprise there that
+a lay teacher should concern himself with the
+religious life of his pupils. Green, however, did
+more, for he on two occasions at least delivered
+to his pupils, before the celebration of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span>
+communion in the college chapel, addresses which
+were afterwards privately printed, and which present
+his view of the relations of ethics and religion
+in a way impressive even to those who may find
+it hard to follow the philosophical argument.</p>
+<p>Metaphysicians are generally as little interested
+in practical politics as poets are, and not better
+suited for political life. Green was a remarkable
+exception. Politics were in a certain sense the
+strongest of his interests. To him metaphysics
+were not only the basis of theology, but also the
+basis of politics. Everything was to converge
+on the free life of the individual in a free State;
+rational faith and reason inspired by emotion
+were to have their perfect work in making the
+good citizen.</p>
+<p>His interest in politics was perhaps less
+active in later years than it had been in his
+youth, but his principles stood unchanged. He
+was a thoroughgoing Liberal, or what used to be
+called a Radical, full of faith in the people, an
+advocate of pretty nearly every measure that
+tended to democratise English institutions, a
+friend of peace and of non-intervention. In
+our days he would have been called a Little
+Englander, for though his ideal of national life
+was lofty, the wellbeing of the masses was to
+him a more essential part of that ideal than any
+extension of territory or power. He once said
+that he would rather see the flag of England
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span>
+trailed in the dirt than add sixpence to the taxes
+that weigh upon the poor. In foreign politics
+Louis Napoleon, as the corrupter of France and
+the disturber of Europe, was his favourite aversion;
+in home politics, Lord Palmerston, as the
+chief obstacle to parliamentary reform. The
+statesman whom he most admired and trusted
+was Mr. Bright. A strong sense of civic duty
+led him to enter the City Council of Oxford,
+although he could ill spare from his study and
+his lecture-room the time which the discharge of
+municipal duties required. He was the first tutor
+who had ever offered himself to a ward for election.
+The townsfolk, between whom and the University
+there had generally been little love, the former
+thinking themselves looked down upon by the
+latter, warmly appreciated his action in coming
+out of his seclusion to help them, and his influence
+in the Council contributed to secure some useful
+reforms, among others, the establishment of a
+&ldquo;grammar&rdquo; or secondary school for the city.</p>
+<p>One of the last things he wrote was a short
+pamphlet on freedom of contract, intended to
+justify the interference with bargains between
+landlord and tenant which was proposed by Mr.
+Gladstone&rsquo;s Irish Land Bill of 1881. It is a
+vigorous piece of reasoning, which may still be
+read with interest in respect of its application
+of philosophical principles to a political controversy.
+Had he desired it he might have gone
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span>
+to the House of Commons as member for the city
+of Oxford. But he had found in the Council a
+field for local public work, and apart from his
+constitutional indolence and his declining health,
+he had concluded that his first duty lay in expounding
+his philosophical system.</p>
+<p>Green will be long remembered in the English
+Universities as the strongest force in the sphere
+of ethical philosophy that they have seen in the
+second half of the nineteenth century, and remembered
+also as a singular instance of a metaphysician
+with a bent towards politics and practical
+life, no less than as a thinker far removed from
+orthodoxy who exerted over orthodox Christians
+a potent and inspiring religious influence.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100' name='page_100'></a>100</span>
+<a name='ARCHBISHOP_TAIT19' id='ARCHBISHOP_TAIT19'></a>
+<h2>ARCHBISHOP TAIT<a name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor2">[19]</a></h2>
+</div>
+<p>England is now the only Protestant country in
+which bishops retain some relics of the dignity
+and influence which belonged to the episcopal
+office during the Middle Ages. Even in Roman
+Catholic countries they have been sadly shorn
+of their ancient importance, though the prelates
+of Hungary still hold vast possessions, while in
+France, or Spain, or the Catholic parts of
+Germany a man of eminent talents and energy
+may occasionally use his official position to become,
+through his influence over Catholic electors
+or Catholic deputies, a considerable political
+factor. This happens even in the United States
+and Canada, though in the United States the
+general feeling that religion must be kept out of
+politics obliges ecclesiastics to use their spiritual
+powers cautiously and sparingly. England stands
+alone in the fact that although the Protestant
+Episcopal Church is, in so far as she is established
+by law, the creature and subject of the State,
+she is nevertheless so far independent as a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span>
+religious organisation that she retains a greater
+power than in other Protestant nations. State
+establishment, though it may have depressed, has
+not stifled her ecclesiastical life, and an interest
+in ecclesiastical questions is shown by a larger
+proportion of her laity than one finds in Germany
+or the Scandinavian kingdoms. A man of shining
+parts has, as an English bishop, a wide field of
+action and influence open to him outside the
+sphere of theology or of purely official duty. And
+the opportunities of the position attain their maximum
+when he reaches the primatial chair of
+Canterbury, which is now the oldest and the most
+dignified of all the metropolitan sees in countries
+that have accepted the Reformation of the sixteenth
+century.</p>
+<p>Ever since there was a bishop at Canterbury
+at all, that is to say, ever since the conversion of
+the English began in the seventh century of our
+era, the holder of that see has been the greatest
+ecclesiastical personage in these islands, with a
+recognised authority over all England, as well
+as an influence and dignity to which, in the
+Middle Ages, the Archbishops of Armagh and
+St. Andrews (primates of the Irish and Scottish
+Churches) practically bowed, even while refusing
+to admit his legal supremacy. To be the most
+highly placed and officially the most powerful
+man in the churches of Britain, in days when
+the Church was better organised, and in some
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span>
+ways stronger, than the State, meant a vast deal.
+The successor of Augustine was often called a
+Pope of his own world&mdash;that world of Britain
+which lay apart from the larger world of the
+European continent. Down to the Reformation,
+the English primates possessed a power which
+made some of them almost a match for the
+English kings. Dunstan, Lanfranc, Anselm,
+Thomas (Becket), Hubert, Stephen Langton,
+Arundel, Warham, were among the foremost
+statesmen of their time. After Henry VIII.&rsquo;s
+breach with Rome, the Primate of England received
+some access of dignity in becoming independent
+of the Pope; but, in reality, the loss
+of church power and church wealth which the
+Reformation caused lowered his political importance.
+In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
+however, there were still some conspicuous and
+influential prelates at Canterbury&mdash;Cranmer, Pole,
+Whitgift, and Laud the best remembered among
+them. After the Revolution of 1688, a time of
+smaller men begins. The office retained its
+dignity as the highest place open to a subject,
+ranking above the Lord Chancellor or the Lord
+President of the Council, but the Church of
+England, having no fightings within, nor anything
+to fear from without, was lapped in placid
+ease, so it mattered comparatively little who her
+chief pastor was.</p>
+<p>Bishoprics were in those days regarded chiefly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span>
+as pieces of rich preferment with which prime
+ministers bought the support of powerful adherents.
+But since the middle of the nineteenth
+century, as the Anglican Church has become at
+once more threatened and more energetic, as
+more of the life of the nation has flowed into
+her and round her, the office of a bishop
+has risen in importance. People show more
+interest in the appointments to be made, and
+ministers have become proportionately careful
+in making them. Bishops work harder and are
+more in the public eye now than they were
+eighty, or even fifty, years ago. They have
+lost something of the antique dignity and social
+consideration which they enjoyed. They no
+longer wear wigs or ride in State coaches. They
+may be seen in third-class railway carriages,
+or sitting on the tops of omnibuses. But they
+have gained by having countless opportunities
+opened up to them for exerting influence in
+philanthropic as well as in religious movements;
+and the more zealous among them turn these
+opportunities to excellent account.</p>
+<p>Whatever is true of an ordinary bishop is true
+<i>a fortiori</i> of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He
+is still a great personage, but he is great in a new
+way, with less of wealth and power but larger
+opportunities of influence. He is also a kind
+of Pope in a new way, because he is the central
+figure of the Anglican communion over the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span>
+whole world, with no legal jurisdiction outside
+England (except in India), but far over-topping
+all the prelates of that communion in the United
+States or the British Colonies. Less deference is
+paid to the office, considered simply as an office,
+than it received in the Middle Ages, because
+society and thought have been tinged by the
+spirit of democratic equality, and people realise
+that offices are only artificial creations, whose
+occupants are human beings like themselves. But
+if he is himself a man of ability and force, he may
+make his headship of an ancient and venerated
+church a vantage-ground whence to address the
+nation as well as the members of his own communion.
+He is sure of being listened to, which is
+of itself no small matter in a country where many
+voices are striving to make themselves heard at
+the same time. The world takes his words into
+consideration; the newspapers repeat them. His
+position gives him easy access to the ministers of
+the Crown, and implies a confidential intercourse
+with the Crown itself. He is, or can be, &ldquo;in
+touch&rdquo; with all the political figures who can in
+any way influence the march of events, and is
+able to enforce his views upon them. All his
+conduct is watched by the nation; so that if it
+is discreet, provident, animated by high and
+consistent principle, he gets full credit for
+whatever he does well, and acquires that influence
+to which masses of men are eager to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span>
+bow whenever they can persuade themselves
+that it is deserved. During the first half of
+the nineteenth century the English people was
+becoming more interested in ecclesiastical and in
+theological matters than it had been during the
+century preceding. It grew by slow degrees
+more inclined to observe ecclesiastical persons,
+to read and think about theological subjects, to
+reflect upon the relations which the Church
+ought to bear to civil life and moral progress.
+Thus a leader of the Church of England
+became relatively a more important factor than
+he had been a century ago, and an archbishop,
+strong by his character, rectitude, and
+powers of utterance, rose to occupy a more
+influential, if not more conspicuous, position than
+his predecessors in the days of the Georges had
+done.</p>
+<p>These changes naturally made the selection
+of an archbishop a more delicate and troublesome
+business than it was in those good old
+days. Nobody then blamed a Prime Minister
+for preferring an aspirant who had the support
+of powerful political connections. Blameless in
+life he must be: even the eighteenth century
+demanded that from candidates for English, if
+not, according to Dean Swift, for Irish sees.
+If he was also a man of courtly grace and
+dignity, and a finished scholar, so much the
+better. If he was a man of piety, that also was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span>
+well. By the time of Queen Victoria the possession
+of piety and of gifts of speech had become
+more important qualifications, but the main thing
+was tactful moderation. Even in apostolic days
+it was required that a bishop should rule his own
+house well, and the Popes esteemed most saintly
+have not always been the best, as the famous case
+of Celestine the Fifth attests. An archbishop
+must first and foremost be a discreet and guarded
+man, expressing few opinions, and those not extreme
+ones. His chief virtue came to be, if not
+the purely negative one of offending no section by
+expressing the distinctive views of any other, yet
+that of swerving so little from the <i>via media</i> between
+Rome and Geneva that neither the Tractarian
+party, who began to be feared after 1837,
+nor the pronounced Low Churchmen could claim
+the Primate as disposed to favour their opinions.
+In the case of ordinary bishops the plan could
+be adopted, and has since the days of Lord
+Palmerston been mostly followed, of giving every
+party its turn, while choosing from every party
+men of the safer sort. This method, however,
+was less applicable to the See of Canterbury, for
+a man on whose action much might turn could
+not well be taken from any particular section.
+The acts and words of a Primate, who is expected
+to &ldquo;give a line&rdquo; to the clergy generally and to
+speak on behalf of the bench of bishops as a
+whole, are so closely scrutinised that he must
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span>
+be prudent and wary, yet not so wary as to seem
+timid. He ought to be both firm and suave,
+conciliatory and decided. That he may do
+justice to all sections of the Church of England,
+he ought not to be an avowed partisan
+of any. Yet he must be able and eminent, and
+of course able and eminent men are apt to throw
+themselves into some one line of action or set
+of views, and so come to be considered partisans.
+The position which the Archbishop of Canterbury
+holds as the representative in Parliament
+of the whole Established Church, makes statesmanship
+the most important of all qualifications.
+Learning, energy, eloquence, piety would
+none of them, nor all of them together, make
+up for the want of calmness and wisdom. Yet
+all those qualities are obviously desirable, because
+they strengthen as well as adorn the primate&rsquo;s
+position.</p>
+<p>Archibald Campbell Tait (born in Scotland in
+1811, died 1882) was educated at Glasgow University
+and at Balliol College, Oxford; worked at
+his college for some years as a tutor, succeeded
+Dr. Arnold as headmaster of Rugby School in
+1843, became Dean of Carlisle and then Bishop
+of London, and was translated to Canterbury
+in 1868. It has been generally understood that
+Mr. Disraeli, then Prime Minister, suggested
+another prelate for the post, but the Queen,
+who did not share her minister&rsquo;s estimate of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span>
+that prelate, expressed a preference for Tait.
+Her choice was amply justified, for Tait united,
+and indeed possessed in a high degree, the
+qualifications which have just been enumerated.
+He was, if it be not a paradox to say so, more
+remarkable as an archbishop than as a man. He
+had no original power as a thinker. He was
+not a striking preacher, and the more pains he
+took with his sermons the less interesting did they
+become. He was so far from being learned that
+you could say no more of him than that he was
+a sound scholar and a well-informed man. He
+was deeply and earnestly pious, but in a quiet,
+almost dry way, which lacked what is called
+unction, though it impressed those who were
+in close contact with him. He showed slight
+interest either in the historical or in the speculative
+side of theology. Though a good headmaster,
+he was not a stimulating teacher. Had
+he remained all his life in a subordinate position,
+as a college tutor at Oxford, or as canon of
+some cathedral, he would have discharged the
+duties of the position in a thoroughly satisfactory
+way, and would have acquired influence
+among his colleagues, but no one would have
+felt that Fate had dealt unfairly with him in
+depriving him of some larger career and loftier
+post. No one, indeed, who knew him when he
+was a college tutor seems to have predicted
+the dignities he was destined to attain, although
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span>
+he had shown in the theological strife that then
+raged at Oxford the courage and independence
+of his character.</p>
+<p>In what, then, did the secret of his success
+lie&mdash;the secret, that is, of his acquitting himself
+so excellently in those dignities as to have
+become almost a model to his own and the
+next generation of what an Archbishop of Canterbury
+ought to be? In the statesmanlike quality
+of his mind. He had not merely moderation,
+but what, though often confounded with moderation,
+is something rarer and better, a steady
+balance of mind. He was carried about by
+no winds of doctrine. He seldom yielded to
+impulses, and was never so seduced by any one
+theory as to lose sight of other views and conditions
+which had to be regarded. He was, I think,
+the first man of Scottish birth who ever rose to
+be Primate of England, and he had the cautious
+self-restraint which is deemed characteristic of his
+nation. He knew how to be dignified without
+assumption, firm without vehemence, prudent
+without timidity, judicious without coldness.
+He was, above all things, a singularly just
+man, who recognised every one&rsquo;s rights, and
+did not seek to overbear them by an exercise
+of authority. He was as ready to listen to his
+opponents as to his friends. Indeed, he so held
+himself as to appear to have no opponents, but
+to be rather a judge before whom different
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span>
+advocates were stating their respective cases,
+than a leader seeking to make his own views
+or his own party prevail. Genial he could
+hardly be called, for there was little warmth,
+little display of emotion, in his manner; and the
+clergy noted, at least in his earlier episcopal
+days, a touch of the headmaster in his way of
+receiving them. But he was simple and kindly,
+capable of seeing the humorous side of things,
+desiring to believe the good rather than the
+evil, and to lead people instead of driving them.
+With all his caution he was direct and straightforward,
+saying no more than was necessary,
+but saying nothing he had occasion to be ashamed
+of. He sometimes made mistakes, but they were
+not mistakes of the heart, and, being free from
+vanity or self-conceit, he was willing in his quiet
+way to admit them and to alter his course accordingly.
+So his character by degrees gained upon
+the nation, and so even ecclesiastical partisanship,
+proverbially more bitter than political,
+because it springs from deeper wells of feeling,
+grew to respect and spare him. The influence
+he obtained went far to strengthen the position
+of the Established Church, and to keep its
+several parties from breaking out into more open
+hostility with one another. He himself inclined
+to what might be called a moderate Broad
+Church attitude, leaning more to Evangelical
+than to Tractarian or Romanising views in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span>
+matters of doctrine. At one time the extreme
+High Churchmen regarded him as an enemy.
+But this unfriendliness had almost died away
+when the death of his wife and his only son
+(a young man of singularly winning character),
+followed by his own long illness, stilled the voices
+of criticism.</p>
+<p>He exerted great influence in the House
+of Lords by his tact, by his firmness of
+character, and by the consistency of his public
+course, as well as by powers of speech, which,
+matured by long practice, had risen to a
+high level. Without eloquence, without either
+imagination or passion, which are the chief
+elements in eloquence, he had a grave, weighty,
+thoughtful style which impressed that fastidious
+audience. His voice was strong and sonorous,
+his diction plain yet pure and dignified, his
+matter well considered. His thought moved
+on a high plane; he spoke as one who fully
+believed every word he said. The late Bishop
+of Winchester, the famous Dr. Samuel Wilberforce,
+was incomparably his superior not only
+as a talker but as an orator, but no less inferior
+in his power over the House of Lords, for
+so little does rhetorical brilliance count in a
+critical and practical assembly. Next to courage,
+the quality which gains trust and regard in a
+deliberative body is that which is familiarly
+described when it is said of a man, &ldquo;You always
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span>
+know where to find him.&rdquo; Tait belonged to no
+party. But his principles, though not rigid, were
+fixed and settled; his words and votes were the
+expression of his principles.</p>
+<p>The presence of bishops in the House of
+Lords is disapproved by some sections of English
+opinion, and there are those among the temporal
+peers who, quite apart from any political feeling,
+are said to regard them with little favour. But
+every one must admit that they have raised
+and adorned the debates in that chamber.
+Besides Tait and Wilberforce, two other prelates
+of the same generation stood in the front
+rank of speakers, Dr. Magee, whose wit and
+fire would have found a more fitting theatre
+in the House of Commons, and Dr. Thirlwall,
+a scholar and historian whose massive intellect
+and stately diction were too rarely used to raise
+great political issues above the dust-storms of
+party controversy.</p>
+<p>Perhaps no Archbishop since the Revolution
+of 1688 has exercised so much influence as Dr.
+Tait, and certainly none within living memory
+is so well entitled to be credited with a definite
+ecclesiastical policy. His aim was to widen the
+bounds of the Church of England, so far as the law
+could, without evasion, be stretched for that purpose.
+He bore a leading part in obtaining an Act of
+Parliament which introduced a new and less strict
+form of clerical subscription. He realised that the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span>
+Church of England can maintain her position
+as a State Church only by adapting herself to
+the movements of opinion, and accordingly he
+voted for the Divorce Bill of 1859, and for the
+Burials Bill, which relieved Dissenters from a
+grievance that exposed the Established Church
+to odium. The Irish Church Disestablishment
+Bill of 1869 threw upon him, at the critical
+moment when it went from the House of
+Commons, where it had passed by a large
+majority, to the House of Lords, where a still
+larger majority was hostile, a duty delicate in
+itself, and such as seldom falls to the lot of a
+prelate. The Queen wrote to him suggesting
+that he should endeavour to effect a compromise
+between Mr. Gladstone, then head of the
+Liberal Ministry, and the leading Tory peers
+who were opposing the Bill. He conducted the
+negotiation with tact and judgment, and succeeded
+in securing good pecuniary terms for the Protestant
+Episcopal Establishment. Though he
+had joined in the Letter of the Bishops which
+conveyed their strong disapproval of the book
+called <i>Essays and Reviews</i> (whose supposed
+heretical tendencies roused such a storm in
+1861), and had thereby displeased his friends,
+Temple (afterwards archbishop), Jowett, and
+Stanley,<a name='FNanchor_0017' id='FNanchor_0017'></a><a href='#Footnote_0017' class='fnanchor'>[20]</a> he joined in the judgment of the Privy
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span>
+Council which in 1863 dismissed the charges
+against the impugned Essayists. Despite his
+advocacy of the Bill which in 1874 provided a
+new procedure to be used against clergymen
+transgressing the ritual prescribed by law, he
+discouraged prosecutions, and did his utmost
+to keep Ritualists as well as moderate Rationalists
+within the pale of the Church of England.
+He did not succeed&mdash;no one could have succeeded,
+even though he had spoken with the
+tongues of men and of angels&mdash;in stilling ecclesiastical
+strife. The controversies of his days still
+rage, though in a slightly different form. But
+in refusing to yield to the pressure of any section,
+in regarding the opinion of the laity rather than
+that of the clergy, in keeping close to the law
+yet giving it the widest possible interpretation,
+he laid down the lines on which the Anglican
+Established Church can best be defended and
+upheld. That she will last, as an Establishment,
+for any very long time, will hardly be
+expected by those who mark the direction in
+which thought tends to move all over the civilised
+world. But Tait&rsquo;s policy and personality
+have counted for something in prolonging the
+time-honoured connection of the Anglican Church
+with the English State.</p>
+<p>Perhaps a doubtful service either to the Church
+or to the State. Yet even those who regret
+the connection, and who, surveying the long
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span>
+course of Christian history from the days of the
+Emperor Constantine down to our own, believe
+that the Christian Church would have been
+spiritually purer and morally more effective had
+she never become either the mistress or the
+servant or the ally of the State, but relied on
+her divine commission only, may wish that, when
+the day arrives for the ancient bond to be unloosed,
+it should be unloosed not through an embittered
+political struggle, but because the general sentiment
+of the nation, and primarily of religious
+men throughout the nation, has come to approve
+the change.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span>
+<a name='ANTHONY_TROLLOPE21' id='ANTHONY_TROLLOPE21'></a>
+<h2>ANTHONY TROLLOPE<a name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor2">[21]</a></h2>
+</div>
+<p>When Mr. Anthony Trollope died (December
+11, 1882) at the age of sixty-seven, he was the
+best known of our English writers of fiction,
+and stood foremost among them if the double
+test of real merit and wide popularity be applied.
+Some writers, such as Wilkie Collins, may have
+commanded a larger sale. One writer at least, Mr.
+George Meredith, had produced work of far deeper
+insight and higher imaginative power. But the
+gifts of Mr. Meredith had then scarcely begun
+to win recognition, and not one reader knew his
+name for five who knew Trollope&rsquo;s. So Mr.
+Thomas Hardy had published what many continue
+to think his two best stories, but they had not
+yet caught the eye of the general public. Mrs.
+Oliphant, high as was the general level of her
+work, and inexhaustible as her fertility appeared,
+had not cut her name so deep upon the time
+as Trollope did. Everything she did was good,
+nothing superlatively good. No one placed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span>
+Trollope in the first rank of creative novelists
+beside Dickens or Thackeray, or beside George
+Eliot, who had died two years before. But in
+the second rank he stood high; and though
+other novelists may have had as many readers
+as he, none was in so many ways representative
+of the general character and spirit
+of English fiction. He had established his
+reputation nearly thirty years before, when
+Thackeray and Dickens were still in the fulness
+of their fame; and had maintained it during
+the zenith of George Eliot&rsquo;s. For more than
+a generation his readers had come from the
+best-educated classes as well as from those who
+lack patience or taste for anything heavier
+than a story of adventure. In this respect
+he stood above Miss Braddon, Mrs. Henry
+Wood, Ouida, and other heroines of the circulating
+libraries, and also above such more
+artistic or less sensational writers as William
+Black, Walter Besant, James Payn, and Whyte
+Melville. (The school of so-called realistic
+fiction had scarcely begun to appear.) None
+of these had, like Trollope, succeeded in making
+their creations a part of the common thought of
+cultivated Englishmen; none had, like him, given
+us characters which we treat as typical men and
+women, and discuss at a dinner-table as though
+they were real people. Mrs. Proudie, for instance,
+the Bishop of Barchester&rsquo;s wife, to take the most
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span>
+obvious instance (though not that most favourable
+to Trollope, for he produced better portraits than
+hers), or Archdeacon Grantly, was when Trollope
+died as familiar a name to English men and
+women between sixty and thirty years of age
+as Wilkins Micawber, or Blanche Amory, or
+Rosamond Lydgate. There was no other living
+novelist of whose personages the same could be
+said, and perhaps none since has attained this
+particular kind of success.</p>
+<p>Personally, Anthony Trollope was a bluff,
+genial, hearty, vigorous man, typically English
+in his face, his talk, his ideas, his tastes. His
+large eyes, which looked larger behind his large
+spectacles, were full of good-humoured life and
+force; and though he was neither witty nor
+brilliant in conversation, he was what is called
+very good company, having travelled widely,
+known all sorts of people, and formed views,
+usually positive views, on all the subjects of
+the day, views which he was prompt to declare
+and maintain. There was not much novelty in
+them&mdash;you were disappointed not to find so
+clever a writer more original&mdash;but they were
+worth listening to for their solid common-sense,
+tending rather to commonplace sense, and you
+enjoyed the ardour with which he threw himself
+into a discussion. Though boisterous and
+insistent in his talk, he was free from assumption
+or conceit, and gave the impression of liking the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span>
+world he lived in, and being satisfied with his
+own place in it. Neither did one observe in him
+that erratic turn which is commonly attributed to
+literary men. He was a steady and regular worker,
+who rose every morning between five and six to
+turn out a certain quantity of copy for the printer
+before breakfast, enjoying his work, and fond of
+his own characters&mdash;indeed he declared that he
+filled his mind with them and saw them moving
+before him&mdash;yet composing a novel just as other
+people might compose tables of statistics. These
+methodical habits were to some extent due to his
+training as a clerk in the Post Office, where he
+spent the earlier half of his working life, having
+retired in 1864. He did not neglect his duties
+there, even when occupied in writing, and claimed
+to have been the inventor of the pillar letter-box.
+It was probably in his tours as an inspector of
+postal deliveries that he obtained that knowledge
+of rural life which gives reality to his pictures
+of country society. He turned his Civil Service
+experiences to account in some of his stories,
+giving faithful and characteristic sketches, in
+<i>The Three Clerks</i> and <i>The Small House at
+Allington</i>, of different types of Government
+officials, a class which is much more of a class in
+England than it is in America, though less of
+a class than it is in Germany or France. His
+favourite amusement was hunting, as readers of
+his novels know, and until his latest years he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span>
+might have been seen, though a heavy weight,
+following the hounds in Essex once or twice a
+week.</p>
+<p>When E. A. Freeman wrote a magazine
+article denouncing the cruelty of field sports,
+Trollope replied, defending the amusement he
+loved. Some one said it was a collision of two
+rough diamonds. But the end was that Freeman
+invited Trollope to come and stay with him at
+Wells, and they became great friends.</p>
+<p>Like most of his literary contemporaries, he
+was a politician, and indeed a pretty keen one.
+He once contested in the Liberal interest&mdash;in
+those days literary men were mostly Liberals&mdash;the
+borough of Beverley in Yorkshire, a corrupt little
+place, where bribery proved too strong for him.
+It was thereafter disfranchised as a punishment
+for its misdeeds; and his costly experiences doubtless
+suggested the clever electioneering sketches
+in the story of <i>Ralph the Heir</i>. Thackeray also
+was once a Liberal candidate. He stood for the
+city of Oxford, and the story was current there for
+years afterwards how the freemen of the borough
+(not an exemplary class of voters) rose to an unwonted
+height of virtue by declaring that though
+they did not understand his speeches or know
+who he was, they would vote for him, expecting
+nothing, because he was a friend of Mr. Neate&rsquo;s.
+Trollope showed his continued interest in public
+affairs by appearing on the platform at the great
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span>
+meeting in St. James&rsquo;s Hall in December 1876,
+which was the beginning of a vehement party
+struggle over the Eastern Question that only
+ended at the general election of 1880. He was
+a direct and forcible speaker, who would have
+made his way had he entered Parliament. But
+as he had no practical experience of politics
+either in the House of Commons or as a working
+member of a party organisation in a city where
+contests are keen, the pictures of political life
+which are so frequent in his later tales have
+not much flavour of reality. They are sketches
+obviously taken from the outside. Very rarely
+do even the best writers of fiction succeed in reproducing
+any special and peculiar kind of life and
+atmosphere. Of the various stories that purport
+to describe what goes on in the English Parliament,
+none gives to those who know the social
+conditions and habits of the place an impression
+of truth to nature, and the same has often been
+remarked with regard to tales of English University
+life. Trollope, however, with his quick
+eye for the superficial aspects of any society,
+might have described the House of Commons
+admirably had he sat in it himself. He was
+fond of travel, and between 1862 and 1880
+visited the United States, the West Indies,
+Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa,
+about all of which he wrote books which, if
+hardly of permanent value, were fresh, vigorous,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span>
+and eminently readable, conveying a definite and
+generally correct impression of the more obvious
+social and economic phenomena he found then
+existing. His account of the United States,
+for instance, is excellent, and did something to
+make the Americans forgive the asperity with
+which his mother had described her experiences
+there many years before. Trollope&rsquo;s travel
+sketches are as much superior in truthfulness to
+Froude&rsquo;s descriptions of the same regions as
+they are inferior in the allurements of style.</p>
+<p>The old classification of novels, based on the
+two most necessary elements of a drama, divided
+them into novels of plot and novels of character.
+To these we have of late years added novels of
+incident or adventure, novels of conversation,
+novels of manners, not to speak of &ldquo;novels
+with a purpose,&rdquo; which are sermons or pamphlets
+in disguise. No one doubted to which of these
+categories Trollope&rsquo;s work should be referred.
+There was in his stories as little plot as a story
+can well have. The conversations never beamed
+with humour like that of Scott, nor glittered
+with aphorisms like those of George Meredith.
+The incidents carried the reader pleasantly along,
+but seldom surprised him by any ingenuity of
+contrivance. Character there was, and, indeed,
+great fertility in the creation of character, for
+there is hardly one of the tales in which three
+or four at least of the personages do not stand
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span>
+out as people whom you would know again if
+you met them years after. But the conspicuous
+merit of Trollope&rsquo;s novels, in the eyes of his
+own countrymen, is their value as pictures of
+contemporary manners. Here he may claim
+to have been surpassed by no writer of his
+own generation. Dickens, with all his great
+and splendid gifts, did not describe the society
+he lived in. His personages were too unusual
+and peculiar to speak and act and think
+like the ordinary men and women of the nineteenth
+century; nor would a foreigner, however
+much he might enjoy the exuberant humour and
+dramatic power with which they are presented,
+learn from them much about the ways and habits
+of the average Englishman. The everyday life
+to which the stories are most true is the life
+of the lower middle class in London; and some
+one has observed that although this class changes
+less quickly than the classes above it, it is already
+unlike that which Dickens saw when in the
+&rsquo;thirties he was a police-court reporter. Critics
+have, indeed, said that Dickens was too great
+a painter to be a good photographer, but the
+two arts are not incompatible, as appears from
+the skill with which Walter Scott, for instance,
+portrayed the peasantry of his own country in
+<i>The Antiquary</i>. Thackeray, again, though he
+has described certain sections of the upper or
+upper middle class with far more power and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span>
+delicacy than Trollope ever reached, does not
+go beyond those sections, and has little to tell
+us about the middle class generally, still less
+about the classes beneath them. Trollope
+was thoroughly at home in the English middle
+class and also (though less perfectly) in the
+upper class; and his pictures are all the more
+true to life because there is not that vein of
+stern or cynical reflection which runs through
+Thackeray, and makes us think less of the
+story than of the moral. Trollope usually has
+a moral, but it is so obvious, so plainly and
+quietly put, that it does not distract attention
+from the minor incidents and little touches of
+every day which render the sketches lifelike. If
+even his best-drawn characters are not far removed
+from the commonplace this helps to make them
+fairly represent the current habits and notions of
+their time. They are the same people we meet
+in the street or at a dinner-party; and they are
+mostly seen under no more exciting conditions than
+those of a hunting meet, or a lawn-tennis match,
+or an afternoon tea. They are flirting or talking
+for effect, or scheming for some petty temporary
+end; they are not under the influence of strong
+passions, or forced into striking situations, like
+the leading characters in Charlotte Bront&euml;&rsquo;s or
+George Eliot&rsquo;s novels; and for this reason again
+they represent faithfully the ordinary surface of
+English upper and upper middle class society:
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span>
+its prejudices, its little pharisaisms and hypocrisies,
+its snobbishness, its worship of conventionalities,
+its aloofness from or condescension to those
+whom it deems below its own level; and therewith
+also its public spirit, its self-helpfulness,
+its neighbourliness, its respect for honesty and
+straightforwardness, its easy friendliness of manner
+towards all who stand within the sacred pale
+of social recognition. Nor, again, has any one
+more skilfully noted and set down those transient
+tastes and fashions which are, so to speak, the
+trimmings of the dress, and which, transient
+though they are, and quickly forgotten by contemporaries,
+will have an interest for one who,
+a century or two hence, feels the same curiosity
+about our manners as we feel about those of
+the subjects of King George the Third. That
+Trollope will be read at all fifty years after
+his death one may hesitate to predict, considering
+how comparatively few in the present
+generation read Richardson, or Fielding, or Miss
+Edgeworth, or Charlotte Bront&euml;, and how much
+reduced is the number of those who read even
+Walter Scott and Thackeray. But whoever
+does read Trollope in 1930 will gather from his
+pages better than from any others an impression
+of what everyday life was like in England in the
+&ldquo;middle Victorian&rdquo; period. The aspects of that
+life were already, when his latest books were
+written, beginning to change, and the features he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span>
+drew are fast receding into history. Even the
+clergy of 1852-1862 are no longer, except in
+quiet country districts, the same as the clergy
+we now see.</p>
+<p>People have often compared the personal impressions
+which eminent writers make on those
+who talk to them with the impressions previously
+derived from their works. Thomas Carlyle and
+Robert Browning used to be taken as two
+instances representing opposite extremes. Carlyle
+always talked in character: had there been phonographs
+in his days, the phonographed &ldquo;record&rdquo;
+might have been printed as part of one of his
+books. Browning, on the other hand, seemed
+unlike what his poems had made a reader
+expect: it was only after a long <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> with
+him that the poet whose mind had been learned
+through his works stood revealed. Trollope at
+first caused a similar though less marked surprise.
+This bluff burly man did not seem the kind of
+person who would trace with a delicate touch
+the sunlight sparkling on, or a gust of temper
+ruffling, the surface of a youthful soul in love.
+Upon further knowledge one perceived that
+the features of Trollope&rsquo;s talent, facile invention,
+quick observation, and a strong common-sense
+view of things, with little originality or
+intensity, were really the dominant features of his
+character as expressed in talk. Still, though the
+man was more of a piece with his books than he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span>
+had seemed, one could never quite recognise in
+him the delineator of Lily Dale.</p>
+<p>As a painter of manners he recalls two of his
+predecessors&mdash;one greater, one less great than
+himself. In his limitations and in his fidelity
+to the aspects of daily life as he saw them, he
+resembles Miss Austen. He is inferior to her
+in delicacy of portraiture, in finish, in atmosphere.
+No two of his books can be placed on a level
+with <i>Emma</i> and <i>Persuasion</i>. On the other hand,
+while he has done for the years 1850-1870 what
+Miss Burney did for 1770-1790, most critics will
+place him above her both in fertility and in
+naturalness. Her characters are apt either to
+want colour, like the heroines of <i>Evelina</i> and
+<i>Cecilia</i>, or to be so exaggerated, like Mr. Briggs
+and Miss Larolles, as to approach the grotesque.
+Trollope is a realist in the sense of being, in all
+but a few of his books, on the lines of normal
+humanity, though he is seldom strong enough to
+succeed, when he pierces down to the bed-rock of
+human nature, in rendering the primal passions
+either solemn or terrible. Like Miss Austen, he
+attains actuality by observation rather than by
+imagination, hardly ever entering the sphere of
+poetry.</p>
+<p>His range was not wide, for he could not
+present either grand characters or tragical situations,
+any more than he could break out into
+the splendid humour of Dickens. His wings
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span>
+never raised him far above the level floor of
+earth. But within that limited range he had
+surprising fertility. His clerical portrait-gallery
+is the most complete that any English novelist
+has given us. No two faces are exactly alike,
+and yet all are such people as one might see
+any day in the pulpit. So, again, there is
+scarcely one of his stories in which a young
+lady is not engaged, formally or practically, to
+two men at the same time, or one man more
+or less committed to two women; yet no story
+repeats exactly the situation, or raises the
+problem of honour and duty in quite the same
+form as it appears in the stories that went
+before. Few people who have written so much
+have so little appeared to be exhausting their
+invention.</p>
+<p>It must, however, be admitted that Trollope&rsquo;s
+fame might have stood higher if he had written
+less. The public which had been delighted with
+his earlier groups of novels, and especially
+with that group in which <i>The Warden</i> comes
+first and <i>Barchester Towers</i> second, began
+latterly to tire of what they had come to deem
+the mannerisms of their favourite, and felt that
+they now knew the compass of his gifts.
+Partly, perhaps, because he feared to be always
+too like himself, he once or twice attempted
+to represent more improbable situations and exceptional
+personages. But the attempt was not
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span>
+successful. He lost his touch of ordinary life
+without getting into any higher region of poetical
+truth; and in his latest stories he had begun to
+return to his earlier and better manner.</p>
+<p>New tendencies, moreover, embodying themselves
+in new schools, were already beginning to
+appear. R. L. Stevenson as leader of the school
+of adventure, Mr. Henry James as the apostle of
+the school of psychological analysis, soon to be
+followed by Mr. Kipling with a type of imaginative
+directness distinctively his own, were beginning to
+lead minds and tastes into other directions. The
+influence of France was more felt than it had
+been when Trollope began to write. And what a
+contrast between Trollope&rsquo;s manner and that of
+his chief French contemporaries, such as Octave
+Feuillet or Alphonse Daudet or Guy de Maupassant!
+The French novelists, be their faculty of
+invention greater or less, at any rate studied their
+characters with more care than English writers
+had usually shown. The characters were fewer,
+almost as few as in a classical drama; and
+the whole action of the story is carefully subordinated
+to the development of these characters,
+and the placing of them in a critical
+position which sets their strength and weakness
+in the fullest light. There was more of a
+judicious adaptation of the parts to the whole
+in French fiction than in ours, and therefore more
+unity of impression was attained. Trollope, no
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span>
+doubt, set a bad example in this respect. He
+crowded his canvas with figures; he pursued the
+fortunes of three or four sets of people at the same
+time, caring little how the fate of the one set
+affected that of the others; he made his novel a
+sort of chronicle which you might open anywhere
+and close anywhere, instead of a drama animated
+by one idea and converging towards one centre.
+He neglected the art which uses incidents small
+in themselves to lead up to the <i>d&eacute;no&ucirc;ment</i> and make
+it more striking. He took little pains with his
+diction, seeming not to care how he said what he
+had to say. These defects strike those who turn
+over his pages to-day. But to those who read
+him in the &rsquo;fifties or &rsquo;sixties, the carelessness was
+redeemed by, or forgotten in, the vivacity with
+which the story moved, the freshness and faithfulness
+of its pictures of character and manners.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span>
+<a name='JOHN_RICHARD_GREEN22' id='JOHN_RICHARD_GREEN22'></a>
+<h2>JOHN RICHARD GREEN<a name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor2">[22]</a></h2>
+</div>
+<p>John Richard Green was born in Oxford
+on 12th December 1837, and educated first
+at Magdalen College School, and afterwards,
+for a short time, at a private tutor&rsquo;s. He
+was a singularly quick and bright boy, and at
+sixteen obtained by competition a scholarship
+at Jesus College, Oxford, where he began to
+reside in 1856. The members of that college
+were in those days almost entirely Welshmen, and
+thereby somewhat cut off from the rest of the
+University. They saw little of men in other
+colleges, so that a man might have a reputation
+for ability in his own society without
+gaining any in the larger world of Oxford. It
+so happened with Green. Though his few
+intimate friends perceived his powers, they had
+so little intercourse with the rest of the University,
+either by way of breakfasts and wine-parties,
+or at the University debating society,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span>
+or in athletic sports, that he remained unknown
+even to those among his contemporaries who
+were interested in the same things, and would
+have most enjoyed his acquaintance. The only
+eminent person who seems to have appreciated
+and influenced him was Dean Stanley, then
+Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Canon of
+Christ Church. Green had attended Stanley&rsquo;s
+lectures, and Stanley, whose kindly interest in
+young men never failed, was struck by him, and
+had some share in turning his studies towards
+history. He graduated in 1860, having refused
+to compete for honours, because he had not
+received from those who were then tutors of the
+college the recognition to which he was entitled.</p>
+<p>In 1860 he was ordained, and became curate
+in London at St. Barnabas, King&rsquo;s Square,
+whence, after two years&rsquo; experience, and one or
+two temporary engagements, including the sole
+charge of a parish in Hoxton, he was appointed
+in 1865 to the incumbency of St. Philip&rsquo;s, Stepney,
+a district church in one of the poorest parts of
+London, where the vicar&rsquo;s income was ill-proportioned
+to the claims which needy parishioners
+made upon him. Here he worked with zeal
+and assiduity for about three years, gaining an
+insight into the condition and needs of the poor
+which scholars and historians seldom obtain.
+He learnt, in fact, to know men, and the real
+forces that sway them; and he used to say in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span>
+later life that he was conscious how much this
+had helped him in historical writing. Gibbon,
+as every one knows, makes a similar remark
+about his experience as a captain in the Hampshire
+militia.</p>
+<p>Green threw the whole force of his nature
+into the parish schools, spending some part of
+every day in them; he visited incessantly, and
+took an active part in the movement for regulating
+and controlling private charity which led
+to the formation of the Charity Organisation
+Society. An outbreak of cholera and period
+of distress among the poor which occurred
+during his incumbency drew warm-hearted men
+from other parts of London to give their
+help to the clergy of the East End. Edward
+Denison, who was long affectionately remembered
+by many who knew him in Oxford and
+London, chose Green&rsquo;s parish to work in, and
+the two friends confirmed one another in their
+crusade against indiscriminate and demoralising
+charity. It was at this time that Green, who
+spent upon the parish nearly all that he received
+as vicar, found himself obliged to earn some
+money by other means, and began to write
+for the <i>Saturday Review</i>. The addition of
+this labour to the daily fatigues of his parish
+duties told on his health, which had always
+been delicate, and made him willingly accept
+from Archbishop Tait, who had early marked
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span>
+and learned to value his abilities, the post of
+librarian at Lambeth. He quitted Stepney, and
+never took any other clerical work.</p>
+<p>Although physical weakness was one of the
+causes which compelled this step, there was also
+another. He had been brought up in Tractarian
+views, and is said to have been at one time on
+the point of entering the Church of Rome. This
+tendency passed off, and before he went to St.
+Philip&rsquo;s he had become a Broad Churchman, and
+was much influenced by the writings of Mr. F.
+D. Maurice, whom he knew and used frequently
+to meet, and whose pure and noble character,
+even more perhaps than his preaching, had
+profoundly impressed him. However, his restless
+mind did not stop long at that point. The same
+tendency which had carried him away from
+Tractarianism made him feel less and less at
+home in the ministry of the Church of England,
+and would doubtless have led him, even had his
+health been stronger, to withdraw from clerical
+duties. After a few years his friends ceased to
+address letters to him under the usual clerical
+epithet; but he continued to interest himself in
+ecclesiastical affairs, and always retained a marked
+dislike to Nonconformity. Aversions sometimes
+outlive attachments.</p>
+<p>On leaving Stepney he went to live in lodgings
+in Beaumont Street, Marylebone, and divided
+his time between Lambeth and literary work.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span>
+He now during several years wrote a good deal
+for the <i>Saturday Review</i>, and his articles were
+among the best which then appeared in that
+organ. The most valuable of them were reviews
+of historical books, and descriptions from
+the historical point of view of cities or other remarkable
+places, especially English and French
+towns. Some of these are masterpieces. Other
+articles were on social, or what may be called
+occasional, topics, and attracted much notice at
+the time from their gaiety and lightness of touch,
+which sometimes seemed to pass into flippancy.
+He never wrote upon politics, nor was he in the
+ordinary sense of the word a journalist, for with
+the exception of these social articles, his work
+was all done in his own historical field, and done
+with as much care and pains as others would
+bestow on the composition of a book. Upon
+this subject I may quote the words of one of his
+oldest and most intimate friends (Mr. Stopford
+Brooke), who knew all he did in those days.</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p>The real history of this writing for the <i>Saturday Review</i>
+has much personal, pathetic, and literary interest.</p>
+<p>It was when he was vicar of St. Philip&rsquo;s, Stepney, that he
+wrote the most. The income of the place was, I think,
+&pound;300 a year, and the poverty of the parish was very great.
+Mr. Green spent every penny of this income on the parish.
+And he wrote&mdash;in order to live, and often when he was
+wearied out with the work of the day and late into the night&mdash;two,
+and often three, articles a week for the <i>Saturday
+Review</i>. It was less of a strain to him than it would have
+been to many others, because he wrote with such speed, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span>
+because his capacity for rapidly throwing his subject into
+form and his memory were so remarkable. But it was a
+severe strain, nevertheless, for one who, at the time, had in
+him the beginnings of the disease of which he died.</p>
+<p>I was staying with him once for two days, and the first
+night he said to me, &ldquo;I have three articles to write for the
+<i>Saturday Review</i>, and they must all be done in thirty-six
+hours.&rdquo; &ldquo;What are they?&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;and how have you found
+time to think of them?&rdquo; &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;one is on
+a volume of Freeman&rsquo;s <i>Norman Conquest</i>, another is a &lsquo;light
+middle,&rsquo; and the last on the history of a small town in
+England; and I have worked them all into form as I was
+walking to-day about the parish and in London.&rdquo; One of
+these studies was finished before two o&rsquo;clock in the morning,
+and while I talked to him; the other two were done the next
+day. It is not uncommon to reach such speed, but it is very
+uncommon to combine this speed with literary excellence of
+composition, and with permanent and careful knowledge.
+The historical reviews were of use to, and gratefully acknowledged
+by, his brother historians, and frequently extended, in
+two or three numbers of the <i>Saturday Review</i>, to the length
+of an article in a magazine. I used to think them masterpieces
+of reviewing, and their one fault was the fault which
+was then frequent in that <i>Review</i>&mdash;over-vehemence in
+slaughtering its foes. Such reviewing cannot be fairly
+described as journalism. It was an historical scholar speaking
+to scholars.</p>
+<p>Another class of articles written by Mr. Green were articles
+on towns in England, France, or Italy. I do not know
+whether it was he or Mr. Freeman who introduced this
+custom of bringing into a short space the historical aspect of
+a single town or of a famous building, and showing how the
+town or the building recorded its own history, and how it
+was linked to general history, but Mr. Green, at least, began
+it very early in his articles on Oxford. At any rate, it was
+his habit, at this time, whenever he travelled in England,
+France, or Italy, to make a study of any town he visited.</p>
+<p>Articles of this kind&mdash;and he had them by fifties in his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137' name='page_137'></a>137</span>
+head&mdash;formed the second line of what has been called his
+journalism. I should prefer to call them contributions to
+history. They are totally different in quality from ordinary
+journalism. They are short historical essays.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>As his duties at Lambeth made no great
+demands on his time, he was now able to devote
+himself more steadily to historical work. His
+first impulse in that direction seems, as I have
+said, to have been received from Dean Stanley
+at Oxford. His next came from E. A. Freeman,
+who had been impressed by an ingenious
+paper of his at a meeting of the Somerset
+Arch&aelig;ological Society, and who became from that
+time his steadfast friend. Green was a born
+historian, who would have been eminent without
+any help except that of books. But he was wise
+enough to know the value of personal counsel
+and direction, and generous enough to be heartily
+grateful for what he received. He did not belong
+in any special sense to what has been called
+Freeman&rsquo;s school, differing widely from that distinguished
+writer in many of his views, and still
+more in style and manner. But he learnt much
+from Freeman, and he delighted to acknowledge
+his debt. He learnt among other things the value
+of accuracy, the way to handle original authorities,
+the interpretation of architecture, and he received,
+during many years of intimate intercourse, the
+constant sympathy and encouragement of a friend
+whose affection was never blind to faults, while
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span>
+his admiration was never clouded by jealousy.
+It was his good fortune to win the regard and
+receive the advice of another illustrious historian,
+Dr. Stubbs, who has expressed in language
+perhaps more measured, but not less emphatic
+than Freeman&rsquo;s, his sense of Green&rsquo;s services
+to English history. These two he used to call
+his masters; but no one who has read him and
+them needs to be told that his was one of those
+strong and rich intelligences which, in becoming
+more perfect by the study of others, loses nothing
+of its originality.</p>
+<p>His first continuous studies had lain among the
+Angevin kings of England, and the note-books still
+exist in which he had accumulated materials for
+their history. However, the book he planned
+was never written, for when the state of his lungs
+(which forced him to spend the winter of 1870-71
+at San Remo) had begun to alarm his friends,
+they urged him to throw himself at once into
+some treatise likely to touch the world more than
+a minute account of so remote a period could
+do. Accordingly he began, and in two or three
+years, his winters abroad sadly interrupting work,
+he completed the <i>Short History of the English
+People</i>. When a good deal of it had gone
+through the press, he felt, and his friends agreed
+with him, that the style of the earlier chapters
+was too much in the eager, quick, sketchy,
+&ldquo;point-making&rdquo; manner of his <i>Saturday Review</i>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span>
+articles, &ldquo;and did not possess&rdquo; (says the friend
+whom I have already quoted) &ldquo;enough historical
+dignity for a work which was to take in the whole
+history of England. It was then, being convinced
+of this, that he cancelled a great deal of what
+had been stereotyped, and re-wrote it, re-creating,
+with his passionate facility, his whole style.&rdquo; In
+order to finish it he gave up the <i>Saturday
+Review</i> altogether, though he could ill spare what
+his writing there brought him in. It is seldom
+that one finds such swiftness and ease in composition
+as his, united to so much fastidiousness.
+He went on remoulding and revising till his
+friends insisted that the book should be published
+anyhow, and published it accordingly was, in
+1874. Feeling that his time on earth might be
+short, for he was often disabled even by a catarrh,
+he was the readier to yield.</p>
+<p>The success of the <i>Short History</i> was rapid
+and overwhelming. Everybody bought it. It was
+philosophical enough for scholars, and popular
+enough for schoolboys. No historical book since
+Macaulay&rsquo;s <i>History</i> has made its way so fast, or
+been read with so much avidity. And Green was
+under disadvantages from which his great predecessor
+did not suffer. Macaulay&rsquo;s name was
+famous before his <i>History of England</i> appeared,
+and Macaulay&rsquo;s scale was so large that he could
+enliven his pages with a multitude of anecdotes
+and personal details. Green was known only to a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span>
+small circle of friends, having written nothing under
+his own signature except one or two papers in
+magazines or in the Transactions of arch&aelig;ological
+societies; and the plan of his book, which dealt, in
+eight hundred and twenty pages, with the whole
+fourteen centuries of English national life, obliged
+him to handle facts in the mass, and touch
+lightly and briefly on personal traits. A summary
+is of all kinds of writing that which it is hardest
+to make interesting, because one must speak
+in general terms, one must pack facts tightly
+together, one must be content to give those facts
+without the delicacies of light and shade, or the
+subtler tints of colour. Yet such was his skill,
+both literary and historical, that his outlines gave
+more pleasure and instruction than other people&rsquo;s
+finished pictures.</p>
+<p>In 1876 he took, for the only time in his life,
+except when he had supported a working-man&rsquo;s
+candidate for the Tower Hamlets at the general
+election of 1868, an active part in practical
+politics. Towards the end of that year, when
+war seemed impending between Russia and
+the Turks, fears were entertained that England
+might undertake the defence of the Sultan, and
+a body called the Eastern Question Association
+was formed to organise opposition to the pro-Turkish
+policy of Lord Beaconsfield&rsquo;s Ministry.
+Green threw himself warmly into the movement,
+was chosen to serve on the Executive Committee
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span>
+of the Association, and was one of a sub-committee
+of five (which included also Mr. Stopford Brooke
+and Mr. William Morris the poet<a name='FNanchor_0018' id='FNanchor_0018'></a><a href='#Footnote_0018' class='fnanchor'>[23]</a>) appointed to
+draw up the manifesto convoking the meeting of
+delegates from all parts of the country, which was
+held in December 1876, under the title of the
+Eastern Question Conference. The sub-committee
+met at my house and spent the whole
+day on its work. It was a new and curious
+experience to see these three great men of
+letters drafting a political appeal. Morris and
+Green were both of them passionately anti-Turkish,
+and Morris indeed acted for the next
+two years as treasurer of the Association, doing
+his work with a business-like efficiency such as
+poets seldom possess. Green continued to attend
+the general committee until, after the Treaty of
+Berlin, it ceased to meet, and took the keenest
+interest in its proceedings. But his weak health
+and frequent winter absences made public appearances
+impossible to him. He was all his
+life an ardent Liberal. His sympathy with
+national movements did not confine itself to
+Continental Europe, but embraced Ireland and
+made him a Home Ruler long before Mr.
+Gladstone and the Liberal party adopted that
+policy. It ought to be added that though he
+had ceased to belong to the Church of England,
+he remained strongly opposed to disestablishment.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span></div>
+<p>When he had completed the re-casting of his
+<i>Short History</i> in the form of a larger book, which
+appeared under the title of <i>A History of the
+English People</i>, he addressed himself with characteristic
+activity to a new project. He had for a
+long time meditated upon the <i>origines</i> of English
+history, the settlement of the Teutonic invaders
+in Britain, followed by the consolidation of their
+tribes into a nation with definite institutions and a
+settled order; and his desire to treat this topic
+was stimulated by the way in which some critics
+had sought to disparage his <i>Short History</i>
+as a mere popularising of other people&rsquo;s ideas.
+The criticism was unjust, for, if there had been
+no rummaging in MS. sources for the <i>Short
+History</i>, there was abundant originality in the
+views the book contained. However, these
+carpings disposed his friends to recommend an enterprise
+which would lead him to deal chiefly with
+original authorities, and to put forth those powers
+of criticism and construction which they knew him
+to possess. Thus he set to work afresh at the
+very beginning, at Roman Britain and the Saxon
+Conquest. He had not advanced far when, having
+gone to spend the winter in Egypt, he caught an
+illness which so told on his weak frame that he was
+only just able to return to London in April, and
+would not have reached it at all but for the care
+with which he was tended by his wife. (He had
+married Miss Alice Stopford in 1877.) In a few
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span>
+weeks he so far recovered as to be able to resume
+his studies, though now forbidden to give to them
+more than two or three hours a day. However,
+what he could not do alone he did with and through
+his wife, who consulted the original sources for
+him, investigated obscure points, and wrote at
+his dictation. In this way, during the summer
+and autumn months of 1881, when often some
+slight change of weather would throw him back
+and make work impossible for days or weeks,
+the book was prepared, which he published in
+February 1882, under the title of <i>The Making of
+England</i>. Even in those few months it was incessantly
+rewritten; no less than ten copies were
+made of the first chapter. It was warmly received
+by the few persons who were capable of judging
+its merits. But he was himself far from satisfied
+with it as a literary performance, thinking that a
+reader would find it at once too speculative and
+too dry, deficient in the details needed to make
+the life of primitive England real and instructive.
+If this had been so it would have been due to no
+failing in his skill, but to the scantiness of the
+materials available for the first few centuries of
+our national history. But he felt it so strongly
+that he was often disposed to recur to his idea of
+writing a history of the last seventy or eighty
+years, and was only induced by the encouragement
+of a few friends to pursue the narrative
+which, in <i>The Making of England</i>, he had carried
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span>
+down to the reign of Egbert. The winter of 1881
+was spent at Mentone, and the following summer
+in London. He continued very weak, and was
+sometimes unable for weeks together to go out
+driving or to work at home. But the moment
+that an access of strength returned, the note-books
+were brought out, and he was again busy
+going through what his wife&rsquo;s industry had
+tabulated, and dictating for an hour or two till
+fatigue forced him to desist. Those who saw
+him during that summer were amazed, not only
+at the brave spirit which refused to yield to
+physical feebleness, but at the brightness and
+clearness of his intellect, which was not only
+as active as it had ever been before, but as
+much interested in whatever passed in the world.
+When one saw him sitting propped up with
+cushions on the sofa, his tiny frame worn to
+skin and bone, his voice interrupted by frequent
+fits of coughing, it seemed wrong to stay, but,
+after a little, all was forgotten in the fascination
+of his talk, and one found it hard to
+realise that where thought was strong speech
+might be weak.</p>
+<p>In October, when he returned to Mentone,
+the tale of early English history had been completed,
+and was in type down to the death of
+Earl Godwine in <span class='smcaplc'>A.D.</span> 1052. He had hesitated
+as to the point at which the book should end,
+but finally decided to carry it down to <span class='smcaplc'>A.D.</span> 1085,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span>
+the date of the dispersion of the last great Scandinavian
+armament which threatened England. As
+the book dealt with both the Danish and Norman
+invasions, he called it <i>The Conquest of England</i>.
+It appeared after his death, wanting, indeed,
+those expansions in several places which he had
+meant to give it, but still a book such as few but he
+could have produced, full of new light, and equal
+in the parts which have been fully handled to the
+best work of his earlier years.</p>
+<p>Soon after he returned to Mentone he became
+rapidly worse, and unfit for any continuous exertion.
+He could barely sit in the garden during
+an hour or two of morning sunshine. There
+I saw him in the end of December, fresh and
+keen as ever, aware that the most he could
+hope for was to live long enough to complete
+his <i>Conquest</i>, but eagerly reading every new
+book that came to him from England, starting
+schemes for various historical treatises sufficient
+to fill three life-times, and ranging in talk over
+the whole field of politics, literature, and history.
+It seemed as if the intellect and will, which strove
+to remain till their work was done, were the only
+things which held the weak and wasted body
+together. The ardour of his spirit prolonged
+life amid the signs of death. In January there
+came a new attack, and in February another
+unexpected rally. On the 2nd of March he
+remarked that it was no use fighting longer,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span>
+and expired five days afterwards at the age of
+forty-six.</p>
+<p>Short as his life was, maimed and saddened
+by an ill-health which gave his powers no fair
+chance, it was not an unhappy life, for he had
+that immense power of enjoyment which so often
+belongs to a vivacious intelligence. He delighted
+in books, in travel, in his friends&rsquo; company, in the
+constant changes and movements of the world.
+No satiety dulled his taste for these things, nor was
+his spirit, except for passing moments, darkened
+by the shadows which to others seemed to lie
+so thick around his path. He enjoyed, though
+without boasting, the fame his books had won,
+and the sense of creative power. And the last
+six years of his life were brightened by the
+society and affection of one who entered into
+all his tastes and pursuits with the fullest
+sympathy, and enabled him, by her unwearied
+diligence, to prosecute labours which physical
+weakness must otherwise have arrested.</p>
+<p>He might have won fame as a preacher or as
+a political journalist. It was, however, towards
+historical study that the whole current of his
+intellect set, and as it is by what he did in that
+sphere that he will be remembered, his special
+gifts for it deserve to be examined.</p>
+<p>A historian needs four kinds of capacity.
+First of all, accuracy, and a desire for the exact
+truth, which will grudge no time and pains in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span>
+tracing out even what might seem a trivial
+matter. Secondly, keen observation, which can
+fasten upon small points, and discover in isolated
+data the basis for some generalisation, or the
+illustration of some principle. Thirdly, a sound
+and calm judgment, which will subject all
+inferences and generalisations, both one&rsquo;s own
+and other people&rsquo;s, to a searching review,
+and weigh in delicate scales their validity.
+These two last-mentioned qualifications taken
+together make up what we call the critical
+faculty, <i>i.e.</i> the power of dealing with evidence
+as tending to establish or discredit statements
+of fact, and those general conclusions which
+are built on the grouping of facts. Neither
+acuteness alone nor the judicial balance alone is
+enough to make the critic. There are men quick
+in observation and fertile in suggestion whose
+conclusions are worthless, because they cannot
+weigh one argument against another, just as
+there are solid and well-balanced minds that
+never enlighten a subject because, while detecting
+the errors of others, they cannot combine the
+data and propound a luminous explanation. To
+the making of a true critic, in history, in philosophy,
+in literature, in psychology, even largely
+in the sciences of nature, there should go not only
+judgment, but also a certain measure of creative
+power. Fourthly, the historian must have imagination,
+not indeed with that intensity which
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span>
+makes the poet, but in sufficient volume to let him
+feel the men of other ages and countries to be
+living and real like those among whom he moves,
+to present to him a large and full picture of a
+world remote from himself in time&mdash;as a world
+moving, struggling, hoping, fearing, enjoying, believing,
+like the near world of to-day&mdash;a world in
+which there went on a private life of thousands or
+millions of men and women, vaster, more complex,
+more interesting than that public life which is
+sometimes all that the records of the past have
+transmitted to us. Our imaginative historian
+may or may not be able to reconstruct for us the
+private and personal as well as the public or
+political life of the past. If he can, he will. If
+the data are too scanty, he may cautiously forbear.
+Yet he will still feel that those whose
+movements on the public stage he chronicles
+were steeped in an environment of natural
+and human influences which must have affected
+them at every turn; and he will so describe
+them as to make us feel them human, and give
+life to the pallid figures of far-off warriors and
+lawgivers.</p>
+<p>To these four aptitudes one need hardly add
+the faculty of literary exposition, for whoever
+possesses in large measure the last three, or
+even the last alone, cannot fail to interest his
+readers; and what more does literary talent
+mean?</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span></div>
+<p>Distinguishing these several aptitudes, historians
+will be found to fall into two classes,
+according as there predominates in them the
+critical or the imaginative faculty. Though no
+one can attain greatness without both gifts, still
+they may be present in very unequal degrees.
+Some will investigate tangible facts and their
+relations with special care, occupying themselves
+chiefly with that constitutional and diplomatic
+side of history in which positive conclusions are
+(from the comparative abundance of records) most
+easily reached. Others will be drawn towards
+the dramatic and personal elements in history,
+primarily as they appear in the lives of famous
+individual men, secondarily as they are seen,
+more dimly but not less impressively, in groups
+and masses of men, and in a nation at large,
+and will also observe and dwell upon incidents
+of private life or features of social and
+religious custom, which the student of stately
+politics passes by.</p>
+<p>As Coleridge, when he divided thinkers into
+two classes, took Plato as the type of one, Aristotle
+of the other, so we may take as representatives of
+these two tendencies among historians Thucydides
+for the critical and philosophical, Herodotus for the
+imaginative and picturesque. The former does not
+indeed want a sense of the dramatic grandeur of a
+situation; his narrative of the later part of the
+Athenian expedition against Syracuse is like a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span>
+piece of &AElig;schylus in prose. So too Herodotus
+is by no means without a philosophical view of
+things, nor without a critical instinct, although
+his generalisations are sometimes vague or
+fanciful, and his critical apparatus rudimentary.
+Each is so splendid because each is wide, with
+the great gifts largely, although not equally,
+developed.</p>
+<p>Green was an historian of the Herodotean
+type. He possessed capacities which belong to
+the other type also; he was critical, sceptical,
+perhaps too sceptical, and philosophical. Yet
+the imaginative quality was the leading and distinctive
+quality in his mind and writing. An
+ordinary reader, if asked what was the main
+impression given by the <i>Short History of the
+English People</i>, would answer that it was the
+impression of picturesqueness and vividity&mdash;picturesqueness
+in attention to the externals of
+the life described, vividity in the presentation
+of that life itself.</p>
+<p>I remember to have once, in talking with
+Green about Greek history, told him how I
+had heard Mr. Jowett, in discussing the ancient
+historians, disparage Herodotus and declare him
+unworthy to be placed near Thucydides. Green
+answered, almost with indignation, that to say
+such a thing showed that eminent scholars might
+have little feeling for history. &ldquo;Great as Thucydides
+is,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Herodotus is far greater, or
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span>
+at any rate far more precious. His view was so
+much wider.&rdquo; I forget the rest of the conversation,
+but what he meant was that Herodotus, to
+whom everything in the world was interesting,
+and who has told us something about every
+country he visited or heard of, had a more fruitful
+conception of history than his Athenian successor,
+who practically confined himself to politics in the
+narrower sense of the term, and that even the
+wisdom of the latter is not so valuable to us as the
+flood of miscellaneous information which Herodotus
+pours out about everything in the early world&mdash;a
+world about which we should know comparatively
+little if his book had not been preserved.</p>
+<p>This deliverance was thoroughly characteristic
+of Green&rsquo;s own view of history. Everything was
+interesting to him because his imagination laid
+hold of everything. When he travelled, nothing
+escaped his quick eye, perpetually ranging over
+the aspects of places and society. When he went
+out to dinner, he noted every person present whom
+he had not known before, and could tell you afterwards
+something about them. He had a theory,
+so to speak, about each of them, and indeed about
+every one with whom he exchanged a dozen
+words. When he read the newspaper, he seemed
+to squeeze all the juice out of it in a few minutes.
+Nor was it merely the large events that fixed his
+mind; he drew from stray notices of minor current
+matters evidence of principles or tendencies
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span>
+which escaped other people&rsquo;s eyes. You never
+left him without having new light thrown upon
+the questions of the hour. His memory was retentive,
+but more remarkable was the sustained
+keenness of apprehension with which he read,
+and which made him fasten upon everything in
+a book or in talk which was significant, and
+could be made the basis for an illustration of
+some view. He had the Herodotean quality of
+reckoning nothing, however small or apparently
+remote from the main studies of his life, to
+be trivial or unfruitful. His imagination vitalised
+the small things, and found a place for them
+in the pictures he was always sketching out.</p>
+<p>As this faculty of discerning hidden meanings
+and relations was one index and consequence
+of his imaginative power, so another was found
+in that artistic gift to which I have referred. To
+give literary form to everything was a necessity
+of his intellect. He could not tell an anecdote
+or repeat a conversation without unconsciously
+dramatising it, putting into people&rsquo;s mouths better
+phrases than they would have themselves employed,
+and giving a finer point to the moral
+which the incident expressed. Verbal accuracy
+suffered, but what he thought the inner truth
+came out the more fully.</p>
+<p>Though he wrote very fast, and in the most
+familiar way, the style of his more serious letters
+was as good, I might say as finished, as that of his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span>
+books. Every one of them had a beginning,
+middle, and end. The ideas were developed in an
+apt and graceful order, the sentences could all be
+construed, the diction was choice. It was the
+same with the short articles which he at one time
+used to write for the <i>Saturday Review</i>. They
+are little essays, some of them worthy to live not
+only for the excellent matter they contain, but
+for the delicate refinement of their form. Yet
+they were all written swiftly, and sometimes in
+the midst of physical exhaustion. The friend I
+have previously quoted describes the genesis of
+one. Green had reached the town of Troyes
+early one morning with two companions, and
+immediately started off to explore it, darting
+hither and thither through the streets like a dog
+trying to find a scent. In two or three hours the
+examination was complete. The friends lunched
+together, took the train on to Basel, got there
+late, and went off to bed. Green, however, wrote
+before he slept, and laid on the breakfast-table
+next morning, an article on Troyes, in which its
+characteristic features were brought out and connected
+with its fortunes and those of the Counts
+of Champagne during some centuries, an article
+which was really a history in miniature. Then they
+went out together to look at Basel, and being asked
+some question about that city he gave on the spur
+of the moment a sketch of its growth and character
+equally vivid and equally systematic, grouping all
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span>
+he had to say round two or three leading theories.
+Yet he had never been in either place before, and
+had not made a special study of either. He could
+apparently have done the same for many another
+town in France or the Rhineland.</p>
+<p>Nothing struck one so much in daily intercourse
+with him as his passionate interest in
+human life. The same quickness of sympathy
+which had served him well in his work among
+the East End poor, enabled him to pour feeling
+into the figures of a bygone age, and become
+the most human, and in so far the most real and
+touching, of all who have dealt with English
+history. Whether or not his portraits are true,
+they always seem to breathe.</p>
+<p>Men and women&mdash;that is to say, such of them
+as have characteristics pronounced enough to
+make them classifiable&mdash;may be divided into
+those whose primary interests are in nature and
+what relates to nature, and those whose primary
+interests are in and for man. Green was the most
+striking type I have known of the latter class,
+not merely because his human interests were
+strong, but also because they excluded, to a
+degree singular in a mind so versatile, interests
+in purely natural things. He did not seem to
+care for or seek to know any of the sciences of
+nature<a name='FNanchor_0019' id='FNanchor_0019'></a><a href='#Footnote_0019' class='fnanchor'>[24]</a> except in so far as they bore directly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span>
+upon man&rsquo;s life, and were capable of explaining
+it or of serving it. He had a keen eye for
+country, for the direction and character of hills,
+the position and influence of rivers, forests, and
+marshes, of changes in the line of land and sea.
+Readers of <i>The Making of England</i> will recall
+the picture of the physical aspects of Britain when
+the Teutonic invaders entered it as an unsurpassed
+piece of reconstructive description. So
+on a battle-field or in an historical town, his
+vision of the features of the ground or the site
+was unerring. But he perceived and enjoyed
+natural beauty chiefly in reference to human life.
+The study of the battle-field and the town site
+were aids to the comprehension of historical
+events. The exquisite landscape was exquisite
+because it was associated with the people dwelling
+there, with the processes of their political growth,
+with their ideas or their social usages. I remember
+to have had from him the most vivid
+descriptions of the towns of the Riviera and
+of Capri, where he used to pass the winter, but
+he never touched on anything which did not
+illustrate or intertwine itself with the life of the
+people, leaving one uninformed on matters purely
+physical. Facts about the character of the
+mountains, the relation of their ranges to one
+another, or their rocks, or the trees and flowers
+of their upper regions, the prospects their
+summits command, the scenes of beauty in their
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span>
+glens, or beside their wood-embosomed lakes,
+all, in fact, which the mountain lover delights
+in, and which are to him a part of the mountain
+ardour, of the passion for pure nature unsullied
+by the presence of man&mdash;all this was cold to
+him. But as soon as a touch of human life fell
+like a sunbeam across the landscape, all became
+warm and lovable.</p>
+<p>It was the same with art. With an historian&rsquo;s
+delight in the creative ages and their work, he
+had a fondness for painting and sculpture, and
+could so describe what he saw in the galleries and
+churches of Italy as to bring out meanings one
+had not perceived before. But here, too, it was
+the human element that fascinated him. Technical
+merits, though he observed them, as he observed
+most things, were forgotten; he dwelt only on
+what the picture expressed or revealed. Pure
+landscape painting gave him little pleasure.</p>
+<p>It seems a truism to say that one who writes
+history ought to care for all that bears upon
+man in the present in order that he may comprehend
+what bore upon him in the past. This
+roaring loom of Time, these complex physical
+and moral forces playing round us, and driving
+us hither and thither by such a strange and
+intricate interlacement of movements that we
+seem to perceive no more than what is next us,
+and are unable to say whither we are tending,
+ought to be always before the historian&rsquo;s mind.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span>
+But there are few who have tried, as Green
+tried, to follow every flash of the shuttle, and to
+discover a direction and a relation amidst apparent
+confusion, for there are few who have taken
+so wide a view of the historian&rsquo;s functions, and
+have so distinctly set before them as their object
+the comprehension and realisation and description
+of the whole field of bygone human life.
+The Past was all present to him in this sense,
+that he saw and felt in it not only those large
+events which annalists or state papers have recorded,
+but the everyday life of the people, their
+ideas, their habits, their external surroundings.
+And the Present was always as if past to him
+in this sense, that in spite of his strong political
+feelings, he looked at it with the eye of a
+philosophical observer, trying to disengage principles
+from details, permanent tendencies from
+passing outbursts. His imagination visualised,
+so to speak, the phenomena as in a picture; his
+speculative faculty tried to harmonise them,
+measure them, and forecast their effects. Hence
+it was a necessity to him to know what was
+passing in the world. The first thing he did
+every day, whatever other pressure there might
+be on him, was to read the daily newspaper.
+The last thing that he ceased to read, when what
+remained of life began to be counted by hours,
+was the daily newspaper. This warm interest in
+mankind is the keynote of his <i>History of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span>
+English People</i>. It is the whole people that is
+ever present to him, as it had been present before
+to few other historians.</p>
+<p>Such power of imagination and sympathy as I
+have endeavoured to describe is enough to make
+a brilliant writer, yet not necessarily a great
+historian. One must see how far the other
+qualifications, accuracy, acuteness of observation,
+and judgment, are also brought into action.</p>
+<p>His accuracy has been much impeached. When
+the first burst of applause that welcomed the
+<i>Short History</i> had subsided, several critics began
+to attack it on the score of minor errors. They
+pointed out a number of statements of fact which
+were doubtful, and others which were incorrect,
+and spread in some quarters the impression that
+Green was a careless and untrustworthy writer.
+I do not deny that there are in the first editions
+of the <i>Short History</i> some assertions made
+more positively than the evidence warrants,
+some pictures drawn from exceedingly slender
+materials. Mr. Skene remarks of the account
+given of the battle between the Jutes and the
+Britons which took place in the middle of the fifth
+century, somewhere near Aylesford in Kent, and
+about which we really know scarcely anything,
+&ldquo;Mr. Green describes it as if he had been present.&rdquo;
+The temptation to such liberties is strong where
+the treatment of a period is summary. A writer
+who compresses the whole history of England
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span>
+into eight hundred pages of small octavo, making
+his narrative not a bare narrative but a picture
+full of colour and incident&mdash;incident which, for
+brevity&rsquo;s sake, must often be given by allusion&mdash;cannot
+be always interrupting the current of the
+story to indicate doubts or quote authorities for
+every statement in which there may be an
+element of conjecture; and it is probable that
+when the authorities are scrutinised their result
+will sometimes appear different from that which
+the author has presented. On this head the
+<i>Short History</i> may be admitted to have occasionally
+purchased vividity at the price of exactitude.
+Of mistakes, strictly so called&mdash;<i>i.e.</i> statements
+demonstrably incorrect and therefore ascribable
+to haste or carelessness&mdash;there are enough to
+make a show under the hands of a hostile critic,
+yet not more than one is prepared to expect
+from any but the most careful scholars. The
+book falls far short of the accuracy of Thirlwall
+or Ranke or Stubbs, short even of the accuracy
+of Gibbon or Carlyle; but it is not greatly
+below the standard of Grote or Macaulay or
+Robertson, it is equal to the standard of Milman,
+above that of David Hume. I take famous
+names, and could put a better face on the matter
+by choosing for comparison divers contemporary
+writers whose literary eminence is higher than
+their historical. And Green&rsquo;s mistakes, although
+pretty numerous, were (for they have been corrected
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span>
+in later editions) nearly all in small matters.
+He puts an event, let us say, in 1340 which
+happened in the November of 1339; he calls a
+man John whose name was William. These are
+mistakes to the eye of a civil service examiner,
+but they seldom make any difference to the
+general reader, for they do not affect the doctrines
+and pictures which the book contains, and in
+which lies its permanent value as well as its literary
+charm. As Bishop Stubbs says, &ldquo;Like other
+people, Green makes mistakes sometimes; but
+scarcely ever does the correction of his mistakes
+affect either the essence of the picture or the
+force of the argument.... All his work was
+real and original work; few people besides those
+who knew him well would see under the charming
+ease and vivacity of his style the deep research
+and sustained industry of the laborious student.&rdquo;
+It may be added that Green&rsquo;s later and more
+detailed works, <i>The Making of England</i> and
+<i>The Conquest of England</i>, though they contain
+plenty of debatable matter, as in the paucity
+of authentic data any such book must do, have
+been charged with few errors in matters of
+fact.</p>
+<p>In considering his critical gift, it is well to distinguish
+those two elements of acute perception
+and sober judgment which I have already specified,
+for he possessed the former in larger measure than
+the latter. The same activity of mind which made
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span>
+him notice everything while travelling or entering
+a company of strangers, played incessantly
+upon the historical data of his work, and supplied
+him with endless theories as to the meaning of
+a statement, the source it came from, the way it
+had been transmitted, the conditions under which
+it was made. No one could be more acute and
+penetrating in what the Germans call <i>Quellenforschung</i>,
+the collection and investigation and
+testing of the sources of history, nor could any
+one be more painstaking. Errors of view, apart
+from those trivial inaccuracies already referred to,
+did not arise from an indolence that left any
+stone unturned, but rather from an occupation
+with the leading idea which had drawn his
+attention away from the details of time and place.
+The ingenuity with which he built up theories
+was as admirable as the art with which he
+stated them. People whom that art fascinated
+sometimes fancied that the charm lay entirely in
+the style. But the style was only a part of the
+craftsmanship. The facility in theorising, the
+power of grouping facts under new aspects, the
+skill in gathering and sifting evidence, were
+as remarkable as those artistic qualities which
+expressed themselves in the paragraphs and
+sentences and phrases. What danger there was
+arose from this fecundity. His mind was so
+fertile, could see so much in a theory and apply
+it so dexterously, that his judgment was sometimes
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span>
+dazzled by the brilliance of his ingenuity.
+I do not think he loved his theories specially
+because they were his own, for he often modified
+them, and was ready to consider any one else&rsquo;s
+suggestions; but he had a passion for light, and
+when a new view seemed to him to explain things
+previously dark, he wanted the patience to suspend
+his judgment and abide in uncertainty.
+Some of his hypotheses he himself dropped.
+Some others he probably would have dropped,
+as the authorities he respected have not embraced
+them. Others have made their way into general
+acceptance, and may become still more useful as
+future research works them out. But, whether
+right or wrong, they were instructive. Every
+one of them is based upon facts whose importance
+had not been so fully seen before, and
+suggests a point of view worth considering.
+Green&rsquo;s view may sometimes appear fanciful: it
+is never foolish, or superficial, or perverse. And
+so far from being credulous, his natural tendency
+was towards doubt.</p>
+<p>Inventive as his mind was, it was also solvent
+and sceptical. Seldom is a strong imagination
+coupled with so unsparing a criticism as that
+which he applied to the materials on which the
+constructive faculty had to work. His later
+tendencies were rather towards scepticism, and
+towards what one may call a severe and ascetic
+view of history. While writing <i>The Making of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span>
+England</i> and <i>The Conquest of England</i>, he used
+to lament the scantiness of the data and the
+barren dryness which he feared the books would
+consequently show. &ldquo;How am I to make anything
+of these meagre entries of marches and
+battles which are the only materials for the history
+of whole centuries? Here are the Norsemen
+and Danes ravaging and occupying the country;
+we learn hardly anything about them from English
+sources, and nothing at all from Danish. How
+can one conceive and describe them? how have
+any comprehension of what England was like in
+the districts the Northmen took and ruled?&rdquo; I
+tried to get him to work at the Norse Sagas, and
+remember in particular to have entreated him
+when he came to the battle of Brunanburh to
+eke out the pitifully scanty records of that fight
+from the account given of it in the story of
+the Icelandic hero, Egil, son of Skallagrim.
+But he answered that the Saga was unhistorical,
+a bit of legend written down more than a
+century after the events, and that he could not,
+by using it in the text, appear to trust it, or to
+mix up authentic history with what was possibly
+fable. It was urged that he could guard himself
+in a note from being supposed to take it
+for more than what it was, a most picturesque
+embellishment of his tale. But he stood firm.
+Throughout these two last books, he steadily
+refrained from introducing any matter, however
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span>
+lively or romantic, which could not stand the
+test of his stringent criticism, and used laughingly
+to tell how Dean Stanley had long ago said to
+him, after reading one of his earliest pieces, &ldquo;I
+see you are in danger of growing picturesque.
+Beware of it. I have suffered for it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>If in these later years he reined in his
+imagination more tightly, the change was due
+to no failing in his ingenuity. Nothing in
+his work shows higher constructive ability than
+<i>The Making of England</i>. He had to deal
+with a time which has left us scarcely any
+authentic records, and to piece together his narrative
+and his picture of the country out of these
+records, and the indications, faint and scattered,
+and often capable of several interpretations, which
+are supplied by the remains of Roman roads and
+villas, the names of places, the boundaries of local
+divisions, the casual statements of writers many
+centuries later. What he has given us remains
+an enduring witness to his historical power.
+For here it is not a question of mere brilliance
+of style. The result is due to patience, penetration,
+and the careful weighing of evidence,
+joined to that faculty of realising things in
+the concrete by which a picture is conjured up
+out of a mass of phenomena, everything falling
+into its place under laws which seem to prove
+themselves as soon as they are stated.</p>
+<p>Of his style nothing need be said, for his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span>
+readers have felt its charm. But it deserves
+to be remarked that this accomplished master
+of words had little verbal memory. He used
+to say that he could never recollect a phrase in
+its exact form, and in his books he often unconsciously
+varied, writing from memory, some expression
+whose precise form is on record. Nor
+had he any turn for languages. German he knew
+scarcely at all, a fact which makes the range of his
+historical knowledge appear more striking; and
+though he had spent several winters in Italy, he
+could not speak Italian except so far as he
+needed it for the inn or the railway. The want
+of mere verbal memory partly accounts for this
+deficiency, but it was not unconnected with the
+vehemence of his interest in the substance of
+things. He was so anxious to get at the kernel
+that he could not stop to examine the nut. In
+this absence of linguistic gifts, as well as in the
+keenness of his observation (and in his shortsightedness),
+he resembled Dean Stanley, who,
+though he had travelled in and brought back all
+that was best worth knowing from every country
+in Europe, had no facility in any language but his
+own.</p>
+<p>Green was not one of those whose personality
+is unlike their books, for there was in both the
+same fertility, the same vivacity, the same quickness
+of sympathy. Nevertheless, his conversation
+seemed to give an even higher impression
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span>
+of intellectual power than did his writings,
+because it was so swift and so spontaneous.
+Such talk has rarely been heard in our time, so
+gay was it, so vivid, so various, so full of anecdote
+and illustration, so acute in criticism, so
+candid in consideration, so graphic in description,
+so abundant in sympathy, so flashing in
+insight, so full of colour and emotion as well as
+of knowledge and thought. One had to forbid
+one&rsquo;s self to visit him in the evening, because
+it was impossible to get away before two o&rsquo;clock
+in the morning. And, unlike many famous
+talkers, he was just as willing to listen as to
+speak. One of the charms of his company
+was that it made a man feel better than his
+ordinary self. His appreciation of whatever had
+any worth in it, his comments and replies,
+so stimulated the interlocutor&rsquo;s mind that it
+moved faster and could hit upon apter expressions
+than at any other time. The same
+gifts which shone in his conversation, lucid
+arrangement of ideas, ready command of words,
+and a power in perceiving the tendencies of
+those whom he addressed, would have made
+him an admirable public speaker. I do not
+remember that he ever did speak, in his later
+years, to any audience larger than a committee
+of twenty. But he was an eloquent preacher.
+The first time I ever saw him was in St. Philip&rsquo;s
+Church at Stepney about 1866, and I shall never
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span>
+forget the impression made on me by the impassioned
+sentences that rang through the church
+from the fiery little figure in the pulpit with its
+thin face and bright black eyes.</p>
+<p>What Green accomplished seems to those who
+used to listen to him little in comparison with
+what he might have done had longer life and a
+more robust body been granted him. Some of
+his finest gifts would not have found their full
+scope till he came to treat of a period where the
+materials for history are ample, and where he
+could have allowed himself space to deal with
+them&mdash;such a period, for instance, as that of his
+early choice, the Angevin kings of England.
+Yet, even basing themselves on what he has
+done, they may claim for him a place among the
+foremost writers of his time. He left behind him
+no one who combined so many of the best gifts.
+There were among his contemporaries historians
+more learned and equally industrious. There were
+two or three whose accuracy was more scrupulous,
+their judgment more uniformly sober and cautious.
+But there was no one in whom so much knowledge
+and so wide a range of interests were united
+to such ingenuity, acuteness, and originality, as
+well as to such a power of presenting results in
+rich, clear, pictorial language. A master of style
+may be a worthless historian. We have instances.
+A skilful investigator and sound reasoner may be
+unreadable. The conjunction of fine gifts for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span>
+investigation with fine gifts for exposition is a
+rare conjunction, which cannot be prized too
+highly, for while it advances historical science, it
+brings historical methods, as well as historical
+facts, within the horizon of the ordinary reader.</p>
+<p>Of the services Green rendered to English
+history, the first, and that which was most
+promptly appreciated, was the intensity with
+which he realised, and the skill with which he
+portrayed, the life of the people of England as
+a whole, and taught his readers that the exploits
+of kings and the intrigues of ministers, and the
+struggles of parties in Parliament, are, after all,
+secondary matters, and important chiefly as they
+affect the welfare or stimulate the thoughts and
+feelings of the great mass of undistinguished
+humanity in whose hands the future of a nation
+lies. He changed the old-fashioned distribution
+of our annals according to reigns and dynasties
+into certain periods, showing that such divisions
+often obscure the true connection of events, and
+suggesting new and better conceptions of the
+periods into which the record of English progress
+naturally falls. And, lastly, he laid, in his latest
+books, a firm and enduring foundation for our
+medi&aelig;val history by that account of the Teutonic
+occupation of England, of the state of the country
+as they found it, and the way they conquered and
+began to organise it, which I have already dwelt
+on as a signal proof of his constructive faculty.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span></div>
+<p>Many readers will be disposed to place him
+near Macaulay, for though he was less weighty
+he was more subtle, and not less fascinating. To
+fewer perhaps will it occur to compare him with
+Gibbon, yet I am emboldened by the opinion of
+one of our greatest contemporary historians to
+venture on the comparison. There are indeed
+wide differences between the two. Green is
+as completely a man of the nineteenth century
+as Gibbon was a man of the eighteenth. Green&rsquo;s
+style has not the majestic march of Gibbon: it
+is quick and eager almost to restlessness. Nor
+is his judgment so uniformly grave and sound.
+But one may find in his genius what was
+characteristic of Gibbon&rsquo;s also, the combination
+of a mastery of multitudinous details, with a large
+and luminous view of those far-reaching forces
+and relations which govern the fortunes of peoples
+and guide the course of empire. This width and
+comprehensiveness, this power of massing for the
+purposes of argument the facts which his literary
+art has just been clothing in its most brilliant
+hues, is the highest of a historian&rsquo;s gifts, and is
+the one which seems most surely to establish
+Green&rsquo;s position among the leading historical
+minds of his time.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span>
+<a name='SIR_GEORGE_JESSEL_MASTER_OF_THE_ROLLS' id='SIR_GEORGE_JESSEL_MASTER_OF_THE_ROLLS'></a>
+<h2>SIR GEORGE JESSEL, MASTER OF THE ROLLS</h2>
+</div>
+<p>There is hardly any walk of English life in
+which brilliant abilities win so little fame for
+their possessor among the public at large as
+that of practice at the Chancery bar. A
+leading ecclesiastic, or physician, or surgeon,
+or financier, or manufacturer, or even a great
+man of science, unless his work is done in some
+sphere which, like pure mathematics, is far
+removed from the comprehension of ordinary
+educated men, is sure, in a time like ours, to
+become well known to the world and acquire
+influence in it. A great advocate practising in
+the Common-law Courts is, of course, still more
+certain to become a familiar figure. But the cases
+which are dealt with by the Courts of Equity,
+though they often involve vast sums of money
+and raise intricate and important points of
+law, mostly turn on questions of a technical
+kind, and are seldom what the newspapers call
+sensational. Thus it may happen that a practitioner
+or a judge in these Courts enjoys an
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span>
+extraordinary reputation within his profession,
+and is by them regarded as one of the ornaments
+of his time, while the rest of his fellow-countrymen
+know nothing at all about his merits.</p>
+<p>This was the case with Sir George Jessel,
+though towards the end of his career the admiration
+which the Bar felt for his powers began so
+far to filter through to the general public that
+his premature death was felt to be a national
+misfortune.</p>
+<p>Jessel (born in 1824, died in 1883) was only
+one among many instances England has lately
+seen of men of Jewish origin climbing to the
+highest distinction. But he was the first instance
+of a Jew who, continuing to adhere to the creed of
+his forefathers, received a very high office; for Mr.
+Disraeli, as every one knows, had been baptized
+as a boy, and always professed to be a Christian.
+Jessel&rsquo;s career was not marked by any remarkable
+incidents. He rose quickly to eminence at the bar,
+being in this aided by his birth; for the Jews in
+London, as elsewhere, hold together. There are
+among them many solicitors in large practice, and
+these take a natural pleasure in pushing forward
+any specially able member of their community.
+His powers were more fully seen and appreciated
+when he became (in 1865) a Queen&rsquo;s Counsel,
+and brought him with unusual speed to the front
+rank. He came into Parliament at the general
+election of 1868 on the Liberal side, and three
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span>
+years later was made Solicitor-General in Mr.
+Gladstone&rsquo;s first Government, retaining, as was
+then usual, his private practice, which had become
+so large that there was scarcely any case of
+first-rate importance brought into the Chancery
+Courts in which he did not appear. Although
+a decided Liberal, as the Jews mostly were
+until Lord Beaconsfield&rsquo;s foreign policy had
+begun to lead them into other paths, he had
+borne little part in politics till he took his
+seat in the House of Commons; and when
+he spoke there, he obtained no great success.
+Lawyers in the English Parliament are under
+the double disadvantage of having had less leisure
+than most other members to study and follow
+political questions, and of having contracted a
+manner and style of speaking not suited to an
+assembly which, though deliberative, is not deliberate,
+and which listens with impatience to a
+technical or forensic method of treating the topics
+which come before it.</p>
+<p>Jessel&rsquo;s ability would have soon overcome
+the former difficulty, but less easily the latter.
+Though he was lucid and powerful in his treatment
+of legal topics, and made a quite admirable
+law officer in the way of advising ministers and
+the public departments, he was never popular
+with the House of Commons, for he presented
+his views in a hard, dry, dogmatic form, with no
+graces of style or delivery. However, he did
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span>
+not long remain in that arena, but on the retirement
+of Lord Romilly from the office of Master
+of the Rolls, was in 1873 appointed to succeed him.
+In this post his extraordinary gifts found their
+amplest sphere. The equity judges in England
+used always to sit, and in nearly all cases do still
+sit, without a jury to hear causes, with or without
+witnesses, and they despatch a great deal of the
+heaviest business that is brought into the courts.
+Commercial causes of the first importance come
+before them, no less than those which relate to
+trusts or to real property; and the granting of
+injunctions, a specially serious matter, rests chiefly
+in their hands. Each equity judge sits alone, and
+the suitor may choose before which of them he will
+bring his case. Among the four&mdash;a number subsequently
+increased to five&mdash;equity judges of first
+instance, Jessel immediately rose to the highest
+reputation, so that most of the heavy and difficult
+cases were brought into his court. He possessed
+a wonderfully quick, as well as powerful, mind,
+which got to the kernel of a matter while other
+people were still hammering at the shell, and
+which applied legal principles just as swiftly and
+surely as it mastered a group of complicated facts.</p>
+<p>The Rolls Court used to present, while he
+presided over it, a curious and interesting sight,
+which led young counsel, who had no business
+to do there, to frequent it for the mere sake of
+watching the Judge. When the leading counsel
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span>
+for the plaintiff was opening his case, Jessel
+listened quietly for the first few minutes only,
+and then began to address questions to the
+counsel, at first so as to guide his remarks in a
+particular direction, then so as to stop his course
+altogether and turn his speech into a series of
+answers to the Judge&rsquo;s interrogatories. When,
+by a short dialogue of this kind, Jessel had
+possessed himself of the vital facts, he would
+turn to the leading counsel for the defendant
+and ask him whether he admitted such and such
+facts alleged by the plaintiff to be true. If these
+facts were admitted, the Judge proceeded to
+indicate the view he was disposed to take of the
+law applicable to the facts, and, by a few more
+questions to the counsel on the one side or the
+other, as the case might be, elicited their respective
+legal grounds of contention. If the facts
+were not admitted, it of course became necessary
+to call the witnesses or read the affidavits,
+processes which the vigorous impatience of
+the Judge considerably shortened, for it was a
+dangerous thing to read to him any irrelevant
+or loosely-drawn paragraph. But more generally
+his searching questions and the sort of pressure
+he applied so cut down the issues of fact that
+there was little or nothing left in controversy
+regarding which it was necessary to examine the
+evidence in detail, since the counsel felt that
+there was no use in putting before him a contention
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span>
+which they could not sustain under the fire
+of his criticism. Then Jessel proceeded to deliver
+his opinion and dispose of the case. The affair
+was from beginning to end far less an argument
+and counter-argument by counsel than an investigation
+directly conducted by the Judge himself,
+in which the principal function of the counsel
+was to answer the Judge&rsquo;s questions concisely
+and exactly, so that the latter might as soon as
+possible get to the bottom of the matter. The
+Bar in a little while came to learn and adapt
+themselves to his ways, and few complained of
+being stopped or interrupted by him, because
+his interruptions, unlike those of some judges,
+were neither inopportune nor superfluous. The
+counsel (with scarcely an exception) felt themselves
+his inferiors, and recognised not only that
+he was better able to handle the case than they
+were, but that the manner and style in which they
+presented their facts or arguments would make
+little difference to the result, because his penetration
+was sure to discover the merits of each contention,
+and neither eloquence nor pertinacity
+would have the slightest effect on his resolute
+and self-confident mind. Thus business was
+despatched before him with unexampled speed,
+and it became a maxim among barristers that,
+however low down in the cause-list at the
+Rolls your cause might stand, it was never
+safe to be away from the court, so rapidly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span>
+were cases &ldquo;crumpled up&rdquo; or &ldquo;broken down&rdquo;
+under the blows of this vigorous intellect.
+It was more surprising that the suitors, as well
+as the Bar and the public generally, acquiesced,
+after the first few months, in this way of
+doing business. Nothing breeds more discontent
+than haste and heedlessness in a judge.
+But Jessel&rsquo;s speed was not haste. He did as
+much justice in a day as others could do in a
+week; and those few who, dissatisfied with these
+rapid methods, tried to reverse his decisions before
+the Court of Appeal, were very seldom successful,
+although that court then contained in Lord Justice
+James and Lord Justice Mellish two unusually
+strong men, who would not have hesitated to
+differ even from the redoubtable Master of the
+Rolls.</p>
+<p>As I have mentioned Lord Justice Mellish, I
+may turn aside for a moment to say a word regarding
+that extraordinary man, who stood along
+with Cairns and Roundell Palmer in the foremost
+rank of Jessel&rsquo;s professional contemporaries.
+Mellish held for some years before his elevation
+to the Bench in 1869 a position unique at the
+English Common-law Bar as a giver of opinions
+on points of law. As the Israelites in King
+David&rsquo;s day said of Ahithophel that his counsel
+was as if a man had inquired at the oracle of
+God,<a name='FNanchor_0020' id='FNanchor_0020'></a><a href='#Footnote_0020' class='fnanchor'>[25]</a> so the legal profession deemed Mellish
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span>
+practically infallible, and held an opinion signed
+by him to be equal in weight to a judgment of
+the Court of Exchequer Chamber (the then court
+of appeal in common-law cases). He was not
+effective as an advocate addressing a jury, being
+indeed far too good for any jury; but in arguing
+a point of law his unerring logic, the lucidity
+with which he stated his position, the cogency
+and precision with which he drew his inferences,
+made it a delight to listen to him. The chain of
+ratiocination seemed irrefragable:</p>
+<table summary=''><tr><td>
+<p class='cg'><span class='greek' title="en d' ethet' akmothet&ocirc; megan akmona, kopte de desmous">&#x1F10;&nu; &delta;&#x1FBD; &#x1F14;&theta;&epsilon;&tau;&#x1FBD; &#x1F00;&kappa;&mu;&omicron;&theta;&#x3AD;&tau;&#x1FF3; &mu;&#x3AD;&gamma;&alpha;&nu; &#x1F04;&kappa;&mu;&omicron;&nu;&alpha;, &kappa;&#x3CC;&pi;&tau;&epsilon; &delta;&#x1F72; &delta;&epsilon;&sigma;&mu;&omicron;&#x1F7A;&sigmaf;</span><br />
+<span class='greek' title="arrh&ecirc;ktous alutous, ophr' empedon authi menoien">&#x1F00;&rho;&rho;&#x3AE;&kappa;&tau;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigmaf; &#x1F00;&lambda;&#x3CD;&tau;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigmaf;, &#x1F44;&phi;&rho;&#x1FBD; &#x1F14;&mu;&pi;&epsilon;&delta;&omicron;&nu; &alpha;&#x1F56;&theta;&iota; &mu;&#x3AD;&nu;&omicron;&iota;&epsilon;&nu;.</span><a name='FNanchor_0021' id='FNanchor_0021'></a><a href='#Footnote_0021' class='fnanchor'>[26]</a></p>
+</td></tr></table>
+<p>He had, indeed, but one fault as an arguer.
+He could not argue a point whose soundness he
+doubted as effectively as one in which he had
+faith; and when it befell that several points arose
+in a case, and the Court seemed disposed to lay
+more stress on the one for which he cared little
+than on the one he deemed conclusive, he refused
+to fall in with their view and continued to insist
+upon that which his own mind approved.</p>
+<p>I remember to have once heard him and
+Cairns argue before the House of Lords (sitting
+as the final Court of Appeal) a case relating
+to a vessel called the <i>Alexandra</i>&mdash;it was a case
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span>
+arising out of an attempt of the Confederates,
+during the American War of Secession, to get
+out of a British port a cruiser they had ordered.
+Cairns spoke first with all his usual power, and
+seemed to have left nothing to be added. But
+when Mellish followed on the same side, he set
+his points in so strong a light, and placed his
+contention on so solid a basis, that even Cairns&rsquo;s
+speech was forgotten, and it seemed impossible
+that any answer could be found to Mellish&rsquo;s
+arguments. One felt as if the voice of pure
+reason were speaking through his lips.</p>
+<p>Such an intellect might seem admirably qualified
+for judicial work. But as a judge, Mellish,
+admirable though he was in temper, in fairness,
+in learning, and in logic, did not win so exceptional
+a reputation as he had won at the Bar. People used
+to ascribe this partly to his weak health, partly
+to the fact that he, who had been a common-law
+practitioner, was sitting in a court which heard
+equity appeals, and alongside of a quick and
+strong colleague reared in the equity courts.<a name='FNanchor_0022' id='FNanchor_0022'></a><a href='#Footnote_0022' class='fnanchor'>[27]</a>
+But something may have been due to the fact
+that he needed the stimulus of conflict to bring
+out the full force of his splendid intelligence.
+A circumstance attending the appointment of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span>
+Mellish illustrates the remark already made
+that a great counsel whose work lies apart
+from so-called &ldquo;sensation cases&rdquo; may remain
+unknown to his contemporaries. When Mr.
+Gladstone, being then Prime Minister, and
+having to select a Lord Justice of Appeal,
+was told that Mellish was the fittest man for
+the post, he asked, &ldquo;Can that be the boy
+who was my fag at Eton?&rdquo; He had not
+heard of Mellish during the intervening forty
+years!</p>
+<p>However, I return to the Master of the Rolls.
+In dealing with facts, Jessel has never had a
+superior, and in our days, perhaps, no rival. He
+knew all the ways of the financial and commercial
+world. In his treatment of points of law, every
+one admitted and admired both an extraordinary
+knowledge and mastery of reported cases, and
+an extremely acute and exact appreciation of
+principles, a complete power of extracting them
+from past cases and fitting them to the case in
+hand. He had a memory which forgot nothing, and
+which, indeed, wearied him by refusing to forget
+trivial things. When he delivered an elaborate
+judgment it was his delight to run through a long
+series of cases, classifying and distinguishing
+them. His strength made him bold; he went
+further than most judges in readiness to carry
+a principle somewhat beyond any decided case,
+and to overrule an authority which he did not
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span>
+respect. The fault charged on him was his
+tendency, perhaps characteristic of the Hebrew
+mind, to take a somewhat hard and dry view
+of a legal principle, overlooking its more delicate
+shades, and, in the interpretation of
+statutes or documents, to adhere too strictly to
+the letter, overlooking the spirit. An eminent
+lawyer said, &ldquo;If all judges had been like
+Jessel, there might have been no equity.&rdquo; In
+that respect many deemed him inferior to
+Lord Cairns, the greatest judge among his contemporaries,
+who united to an almost equally
+wide and accurate knowledge of the law a grasp
+of principles even more broad and philosophical
+than Jessel&rsquo;s was. Be this as it may, the
+judgments of the Master of the Rolls, which
+fill so many pages of the recent English Law
+Reports, are among the best that have ever gone
+to build up the fabric of the English law. Except
+on two occasions, when he reserved judgment
+at the request of his colleagues in the Court
+of Appeal, they were delivered on the spur of
+the moment, after the conclusion of the arguments,
+or of so much of the arguments as he
+allowed counsel to deliver; but they have all the
+merits of carefully-considered utterances, so clear
+and direct is their style, so concisely as well as
+cogently are the authorities discussed and the
+grounds of decision stated. The bold and sweeping
+character which often belongs to them makes
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span>
+them more instructive as well as more agreeable
+reading than the judgments of most modern
+judges, whose commonest fault is a timidity
+which tries to escape, by dwelling on the details
+of the particular case, from the enunciation
+of a definite general principle. Positive and
+definite Jessel always was. As he put it himself:
+&ldquo;I may be wrong, but I never have any
+doubts.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At the Bar, Jessel had been far from popular;
+for his manners were unpolished, and his conduct
+towards other counsel overbearing. On the
+Bench he improved, and became liked as well as
+respected. There was a sort of rough <i>bonhomie</i>
+about him, and though he could be disagreeable
+on occasions to a leading counsel, especially if
+brought from the common-law bar into his court,
+he showed a good-humoured wish to deal gently
+with young or inexperienced barristers. There
+was also an obvious anxiety to do justice, an
+impatience of mere technicalities, and a readiness,
+remarkable in so strong-willed a man, to hear
+what could be said against his own opinion, and to
+reconsider it. Besides, a profession is naturally
+proud of any one whose talents adorn it, and
+whose eminence seems to be communicated to
+the whole body.</p>
+<p>Ever since, under the Plantagenet kings, the
+Chancery became a law court, the office of Master
+of the Rolls had been that of a judge of first
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span>
+instance. In 1881 its character was changed,
+and its occupant placed at the head of the
+Court of Appeal. Thus it was as an appellate
+judge that Jessel latterly sat, giving no less
+satisfaction in that capacity than in his former
+one, and being indeed confessedly the strongest
+judicial intellect (except Lord Cairns) on the
+Bench. Outside his professional duties, his chief
+interest was in the University of London, at
+which he had himself graduated. He was a
+member of its senate, and busied himself with its
+examinations, being up till the last excessively
+fond of work, and finding that of a judge who
+sits for five or six hours daily insufficient to
+satisfy his appetite. He was not what would
+be called a highly cultivated man, although he
+knew a great deal beyond the field of law,
+mathematics, for instance, and Hebrew literature
+and botany, for he had been brought up in
+a not very refined circle, and had been absorbed
+in legal work during the best years of his life.
+But his was an intelligence of extraordinary power
+and flexibility, eminently practical, as the Semitic
+intellect generally is, and yet thoroughly scientific.
+And he was also one of those strong natures who
+make themselves disliked while they are fighting
+their way to the top, but grow more genial and
+more tolerant when they have won what they
+sought, and perceive that others admit their pre-eminence.
+The services which he rendered as a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span>
+judge illustrate not only the advantage of throwing
+open all places to all comers&mdash;the bigotry of
+an elder day excluded the Jews from judicial office
+altogether&mdash;but also the benefit of having a judge
+at least equal in ability to the best of those who
+practise before him. It was because Jessel was
+so easily master in his court that so large and
+important a part of the judicial business of the
+country was, during many years, despatched with
+a swiftness and a success seldom equalled in the
+annals of the English Courts.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span>
+<a name='LORD_CHANCELLOR_CAIRNS' id='LORD_CHANCELLOR_CAIRNS'></a>
+<h2>LORD CHANCELLOR CAIRNS</h2>
+</div>
+<p>Hugh M&rsquo;Calmont Cairns, afterwards Earl
+Cairns (born 1819, died 1885), was one of three
+remarkable Scoto-Irishmen whom the north-east
+corner of Ulster gave to the United Kingdom
+in one generation, and each of whom was foremost
+in the career he entered. Lord Lawrence
+was the strongest of Indian or Colonial administrators,
+and did more than any other man to
+save India for England in the crisis of the great
+Mutiny of 1857. Lord Kelvin has been, since the
+death of Charles Darwin, the first among British
+men of science. Lord Cairns was unquestionably
+the greatest judge of the Victorian epoch, perhaps
+of the nineteenth century.<a name='FNanchor_0023' id='FNanchor_0023'></a><a href='#Footnote_0023' class='fnanchor'>[28]</a> His name and family
+were of Scottish origin, but he combined with the
+shrewd sense and grim persistency of Scotland
+some measure of the keen partisanship which
+marks the Irish Orangeman. Born an Episcopalian,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span>
+he grew up a Tory in politics, an earnest
+Low-Church Evangelical in religion; nor did his
+opinions in either respect ever seem to alter
+during his long life. His great abilities were
+perceived both at school (he was educated at
+the Academy in Belfast) and at college (Trinity
+College, Dublin), and so much impressed the
+counsel in whose chambers he studied for a
+year in London, that he strongly dissuaded the
+young man from returning to Dublin to practise
+at the Irish bar, promising him a brilliant career
+on the wider theatre of England. The prediction
+was verified by the rapidity with which Cairns,
+who had, no doubt, the advantage of influential
+connections in the City of London, rose into
+note. He obtained (as a Conservative) a seat
+in Parliament for his native town of Belfast
+when only thirty-three years of age, and was
+appointed Solicitor-General to Lord Derby&rsquo;s
+second Ministry six years later&mdash;a post which
+few eminent lawyers have reached before fifty.
+In the House of Commons, though at first
+somewhat diffident and nervous, he soon proved
+himself a powerful as well as ready speaker, and
+would doubtless have remained in an assembly
+where he was rendering such valuable services
+to his party but for the weakness of his lungs
+and throat, which had threatened his life since
+boyhood. He therefore accepted, in 1867, the
+office of Lord Justice of Appeal, with a seat in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span>
+the House of Lords, and next year was made
+Lord Chancellor by Mr. Disraeli, then Prime
+Minister, who dismissed Lord Chelmsford, then
+Chancellor, in order to have the benefit of Cairns&rsquo;s
+help as a colleague. Disraeli subsequently caused
+him to be raised to an earldom.</p>
+<p>After Lord Derby&rsquo;s death, Cairns led the
+Tory party in the House of Lords for a time
+(replacing the Duke of Richmond when the latter
+quitted the leadership), but his very pronounced
+Low-Church proclivities, coupled perhaps with a
+certain jealousy felt toward him as a newcomer,
+prevented him from becoming popular there, so
+that ultimately the leadership of that House settled
+itself in the hands of Lord Salisbury, a statesman
+not superior to Cairns in political judgment or
+argumentative power, but without the disadvantage
+of being a lawyer, possessing a wider range
+of political experience, and in closer sympathy
+with the feelings and habits of the titled order.
+There were, however, some peers who, when
+Lord Beaconsfield died in 1881, desired to see
+Cairns chosen to succeed him in the leadership
+of the Tory party, then in opposition, in the
+Upper Chamber. Whether in opposition or in
+power, Cairns took a prominent part in all &ldquo;full-dress&rdquo;
+political debates in the House of Lords
+and in the discussion of legal measures, and was
+indeed so absolutely master of the Chamber when
+such measures came under discussion, that the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span>
+Liberal Government, during the years from 1868
+to 1874, and again from 1880 till 1885, could
+carry no legal reforms through the House of
+Lords except by his permission, which, of
+course, was never given when such reforms
+could seem to affect any political issue. Yet
+the vehemence of his party feeling did not overcast
+his judgment. It was mainly through his
+interposition (aided by that of Archbishop Tait)
+that the House of Lords consented to pass the
+Irish Church Bill of 1869, a measure which
+Cairns, of course heartily disliking it, accepted
+for the sake of saving to the disestablished
+Church a part of her funds, since these might
+have been lost had the Bill been rejected then
+and passed next year by an angrier House of
+Commons. Of all the members of Disraeli&rsquo;s
+two Cabinets, he was the one whom Disraeli
+himself had been wont most to trust and
+most to rely on. In January 1874, when Mr.
+Gladstone&rsquo;s suddenly announced dissolution of
+Parliament startled all England one Saturday
+morning, Disraeli, who heard of it while still in
+bed, was at first frightened, thinking that the
+Liberal leader had played his cards boldly and
+well, and would carry the elections. When his
+chief party manager came to see him he was
+found restless and dejected, and cried out, &ldquo;Send
+for Cairns at once.&rdquo; Lord Cairns was sent for,
+came full of vigour, hope, and counsel, and after
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span>
+an hour&rsquo;s talk so restored the confidence of his
+ally that Disraeli sat down in the best spirits to
+compose his electoral manifesto. As everybody
+knows, Cairns&rsquo;s forecast was right, and the Tories
+won the general election by a large majority.</p>
+<p>For political success Cairns had several qualities
+of the utmost value&mdash;a stately presence, a clear
+head, a resolute will, and splendid oratorical gifts.
+He was not an imaginative speaker, nor fitted
+to touch the emotions; but he had a matchless
+power of statement, and a no less matchless
+closeness and cogency in argument. In the
+famous controversies of 1866, he showed himself
+the clearest and most vigorous thinker among
+the opponents of reform, more solid, if less
+brilliant, than was Robert Lowe. His diction,
+without being exceptionally choice, was pure and
+precise, and his manner had a dignity and weight
+which seemed to compel your attention even
+when the matter was uninteresting. A voice
+naturally neither strong nor musical, and sometimes
+apt to sound hollow (for the chest was weak),
+was managed with great skill; action and gesture
+were used sparingly but effectively, and the tall
+well-built figure and strongly-marked, somewhat
+Roman features, with their haughty and distant
+air, deepened the impression of power, courage,
+and resolution which was characteristic of the
+whole man.</p>
+<p>The qualities of oratory I have described
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span>
+may seem better fitted to a comparatively sober
+and sedate assembly like the House of Lords
+than to a changeful and excitable assembly
+like the House of Commons. Yet, in point of
+fact, Cairns spoke better in the Commons than he
+did afterwards in the Lords, and would have left
+an even higher oratorical reputation had his
+career in the popular House been longer and his
+displays more numerous. The reason seems to be
+that the heat of that House warmed his somewhat
+chilly temperament, and roused him to a more
+energetic and ardent style of speaking than was
+needed in the Upper Chamber, where he and
+his friends, commanding a large majority, had
+things all their own way. In the House of
+Commons he confronted a crowd of zealous
+adversaries, and put forth all the forces of his
+logic and rhetoric to overcome them. In the more
+languid House of Lords he was apt to be didactic,
+sometimes even prolix. He overproved his own
+case without feeling the need, which he would have
+felt in the Commons, of overthrowing the case of
+the other side; his manner wanted animation and
+his matter variety. Still, he was a great speaker,
+greater as a speaker upon legal topics, where a
+power of exact statement and lucid exposition is
+required, than any one he left behind him.</p>
+<p>Why, it may be asked, with these gifts, and
+with so much firmness and energy of character,
+did he not play an even more conspicuous part
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span>
+in politics, and succeed, after Lord Beaconsfield&rsquo;s
+death, to the chieftaincy of the Tory party?
+The answer is to be found partly in the prejudice
+which still survives in England against legal
+politicians, partly in certain defects of his own
+personality. Although sincerely pious, and exemplary
+in all the relations of domestic life, he
+was ungenial and unbending in social intercourse.
+Few equally eminent men of our time have had so
+narrow a circle of personal friends. There was a
+dryness, a coldness, and an appearance of reserve
+and hauteur about his manner which repelled
+strangers, and kept acquaintanceship from ripening
+into friendship. To succeed as a political leader, a
+man must usually (I do not say invariably, because
+there are a few remarkable instances&mdash;Mr. Parnell&rsquo;s
+would appear to be one of them&mdash;to the contrary)
+at least seem sympathetic; must be able to enter
+into the feelings of his followers, and show himself
+interested in them not merely as party
+followers, but as human beings. There must be
+a certain glow, a certain effluence of feeling about
+him, which makes them care for him and rally
+to him as a personality. Whether Lord Cairns
+wanted warmth of heart, or whether it was that an
+inner warmth failed to pierce the cloak of reserve
+and pride which he habitually wore, I do not
+attempt to determine. But the defect told heavily
+against him. He never became a familiar figure
+to the mass of his party, a person whose features
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span>
+they knew, at whose name they would cheer;
+and nowadays all leaders, to whatever party they
+belong, find a source of strength in winning this
+kind of popularity. The quality which Americans
+call magnetism is perhaps less essential
+in England than in the country which distinguished
+and named it; but it is helpful even
+in England. Cairns, though an Irishman, was
+wholly without it.</p>
+<p>In the field of law, where passion has no
+place, and even imagination must be content
+to move with clipped wings along the ground,
+the merits of Lord Cairns&rsquo;s intellect showed
+to the best advantage. At the Chancery bar he
+was one of a trio who had not been surpassed, if
+ever equalled, during the nineteenth century, and
+whom none of our now practising advocates rivals.
+The other two were Mr., afterwards Lord Justice,
+Rolt, and Mr. Roundell Palmer, afterwards Lord
+Chancellor Selborne. All were admirable lawyers,
+but, of the three, Rolt excelled in his spirited presentation
+of a case and in the lively vigour of his
+arguments. Palmer was conspicuous for exhaustless
+ingenuity, and for a subtlety which sometimes
+led him away into reasonings too fine for the
+court to follow. Cairns was broad, massive,
+convincing, with a robust urgency of logic which
+seemed to grasp and fix you, so that while he
+spoke you could fancy no conclusion possible save
+that toward which he moved. His habit was to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span>
+seize upon what he deemed the central and vital
+point of the case, throwing the whole force of
+his argument upon that one point, and holding
+the judge&rsquo;s mind fast to it.</p>
+<p>All these famous men were raised to the judicial
+bench. Rolt remained there for a few months
+only, so his time was too short to permit him to
+enrich our jurisprudence and leave a memory of
+himself in the Reports. Palmer sat in the House
+of Lords from his accession to the Chancellorship
+in 1872 till his death in 1896, and, while fully
+sustaining his reputation as a man of eminent
+legal capacity, was, on the whole, less brilliant as a
+judge than he had been as an advocate, because a
+tendency to over-refinement is more dangerous
+in the judicial than in the forensic mind. He
+made an admirable Chancellor, and showed himself
+more industrious and more zealous for law
+reform than did Cairns. But Cairns was the
+greater judge, and became to the generation
+which argued before him a model of judicial excellence.
+In hearing a cause he was singularly
+patient, rarely interrupting counsel, and then only
+to put some pertinent question. His figure was
+so still, his countenance so impassive, that people
+sometimes doubted whether he was really attending
+to all that was urged at the bar. But when
+the time came for him to deliver judgment,
+which in the House of Lords is done in the form
+of a speech addressed to the House in moving
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span>
+or supporting a motion that is to become the judgment
+of the tribunal, it was seen how fully he had
+apprehended the case in all its bearings. His
+deliverances were never lengthy, but they were
+exhaustive. They went straight to the vital principles
+on which the question turned, stated these
+in the most luminous way, and applied them with
+unerring exactitude to the particular facts. It is
+as a storehouse of fundamental doctrines that his
+judgments are so valuable. They disclose less
+knowledge of case-law than do those of some other
+judges; but Cairns was not one of the men who
+love cases for their own sake, and he never cared
+to draw upon, still less to display, more learning
+than was needed for the matter in hand. It
+was in the grasp of the principles involved, in
+the breadth of view which enabled him to see
+these principles in their relation to one another, in
+the precision of the logic which drew conclusions
+from the principles, in the perfectly lucid language
+in which the principles were expounded and
+applied, that his strength lay. Herein he surpassed
+the most eminent of contemporary judges,
+the then Master of the Rolls, for while Jessel had
+perhaps a quicker mind than Cairns, he had not so
+wide a mind, nor one so thoroughly philosophical
+in the methods by which it moved.</p>
+<p>Outside the spheres of law and politics, Cairns&rsquo;s
+only interest was in religion. He did not seem,
+although a good classical scholar and a competent
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span>
+mathematician, to care either for letters or for
+science. But he was a Sunday-school teacher
+nearly all his life. Prayer-meetings were held
+at his house, at which barristers, not otherwise
+known for their piety, but believed to desire
+county court judgeships, were sometimes seen.
+He used to take the chair at missionary and
+other philanthropic meetings. He was surrounded
+by evangelisers and clergymen. But
+nothing softened the austerity or melted the ice
+of his manners. Neither did the great position
+he had won seem to give a higher and broader
+quality to his statesmanship. It is true that in
+law he was wholly free from the partisanship
+which tinged his politics. No one was more
+perfectly fair upon the bench; no one more
+honestly anxious to arrive at a right decision.
+And as a law reformer, although he effected less
+than might have been hoped from his abilities or
+expected from the absolute sway which he exercised
+while Chancellor in Lord Beaconsfield&rsquo;s
+Government from 1874 to 1880, he was free from
+prejudice, and willing to sweep away antiquated
+rules or usages if they seemed to block the
+channel of speedy justice. But in politics this
+impartiality and elevation vanished even after he
+had risen so high that he did not need to humour
+the passions or confirm the loyalty of his own
+associates. He seemed to be not merely a party
+man, which an English politician is forced to be,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span>
+because if he stands outside party he cannot effect
+anything, but a partisan&mdash;that is, a man wholly
+devoted to his party, who sees everything through
+its eyes, and argues every question in its interests.
+He gave the impression of being either unwilling
+or unable to rise to a higher and more truly
+national view, and sometimes condescended to
+arguments whose unsoundness his penetrating
+intellect could hardly have failed to detect. His
+professional tone had been blameless, but at the
+bar the path of rectitude is plain and smooth, and
+a scrupulous mind finds fewer cases of conscience
+present themselves in a year than in Parliament
+within a month. Yet if in this respect Cairns
+failed to reach a level worthy of his splendid
+intellect, the defect was due not to any selfish
+view of his own interest, but rather to the narrowness
+of the groove into which his mind had fallen,
+and to the atmosphere of Orange sentiment in
+which he had grown up. As a politician he is
+already beginning to be forgotten; but as a judge
+he will be held in honourable remembrance as
+one of the five or six most brilliant luminaries
+that have adorned the English bench since those
+remote days<a name='FNanchor_0024' id='FNanchor_0024'></a><a href='#Footnote_0024' class='fnanchor'>[29]</a> in which the beginning of legal
+memory is placed.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196' name='page_196'></a>196</span>
+<a name='BISHOP_FRASER' id='BISHOP_FRASER'></a>
+<h2>BISHOP FRASER</h2>
+</div>
+<p>James Fraser, Bishop of Manchester from 1870
+till 1885, was born in Gloucestershire, of a Scottish
+family, in 1818, and died at Manchester in 1885.<a name='FNanchor_0025' id='FNanchor_0025'></a><a href='#Footnote_0025' class='fnanchor'>[30]</a>
+He took no prominent part in ecclesiastical politics,
+and no part at all in general politics. Though
+a sound classical scholar in the old-fashioned
+sense of the term&mdash;he won the Ireland University
+Scholarship at Oxford, then and still the most
+conspicuous prize in the field of classics&mdash;he was
+not an exceptionally cultivated man, and he never
+wrote anything except official reports and episcopal
+charges. Neither was he, although a ready
+and effective speaker, gifted with the highest
+kind of eloquence. Neither was he a profound
+theologian. Yet his character and career are of
+permanent interest, for he created not merely a
+new episcopal type, but (one may almost say)
+a new ecclesiastical type within the Church of
+England.</p>
+<p>Till some sixty or seventy years ago the
+normal English bishop was a rich, dignified, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span>
+rather easy-going magnate, aristocratic in his
+tastes and habits, moderate in his theology, sometimes
+to the verge of indifferentism, quite as much
+a man of the world as a pastor of souls. He had
+usually obtained his preferment by his family connections,
+or by some service rendered to the court
+or a political chief&mdash;perhaps even by solicitation
+or intrigue. Now and then eminence in learning
+or literature raised a man to the bench: there
+were, for instance, the &ldquo;Greek play&rdquo; bishops,
+such as Dr. Monk of Gloucester, whose fame
+rested on their editions of the Attic dramatists;
+and the <i>Quarterly Review</i> bishops, such as
+Dr. Copleston, of Llandaff, whose powerful pen,
+as well as his wise administration of the great
+Oxford College over which he long presided,
+amply justified his promotion. So even in the
+eighteenth century the illustrious Butler had
+been Bishop of Durham, as in Ireland the
+illustrious Berkeley had been Bishop of Cloyne.
+But, on the whole, the bishops of our grandfathers&rsquo;
+days were more remarkable for their
+prudence and tact, their adroitness or suppleness,
+than for intellectual or moral superiority to
+the rest of the clergy. Their own upper-class
+world, and the middle class which, in the main,
+took its view of English institutions from the
+upper class, respected them as a part of the solid
+fabric of English society, but they were a mark
+for Radical invective and for literary sneers.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span>
+Their luxurious pomp and ease were incessantly
+contrasted with the simplicity of the apostles and
+the poverty of curates, and the abundance among
+them of the gifts that befit the senate or the
+drawing-room was compared with the rarity of the
+graces that adorn a saint. The comparison was
+hardly fair, for saints are scarce, and a good bishop
+needs some qualities which a saint may lack.</p>
+<p>That revival within the Church of England
+which went on in various forms from 1800 till
+1870, at first Low Church or Evangelical in its
+tendencies, latterly more conspicuously High
+Church and Ritualist, began from below and
+worked upwards till at length it reached the
+bishops. Lord Palmerston, influenced by Lord
+Shaftesbury, filled the vacant sees that fell to him
+with earnest men, sometimes narrow, sometimes
+deficient in learning, but often good preachers, and
+zealous for the doctrines they held. When the
+High Churchmen found their way to the Bench,
+as they did very largely under Lord Derby&rsquo;s and
+Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s rule, they showed as much theological
+zeal as the Evangelicals, and perhaps more
+talent for administration. The popular idea of
+what may be expected from a bishop rose, and the
+bishops rose with the idea. As Bishop of Oxford,
+Dr. Samuel Wilberforce was among the first to
+make himself powerfully felt through his diocese.
+His example told upon other prelates, and prime
+ministers grew more anxious to select energetic
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span>
+and popular men. So it came to pass that the
+bishops began to be among the foremost men in
+the Church of England. Some, like Dr. Magee
+of Peterborough, and afterwards of York, were
+brilliant orators; some, like Dr. Lightfoot of
+Durham, profound scholars; some, like Dr.
+Temple of Exeter, able and earnest administrators.
+There remained but few who had not
+some good claim to the dignity they enjoyed.
+So it may be said, when one compares the later
+Victorian bishops with their Georgian predecessors,
+that no class in the country has improved
+more. Few now sneer at them, for no set of men
+take a more active and more creditable part in the
+public business of the country. Their incomes,
+curtailed of late years in the case of the richer
+sees, are no more than sufficient for the expenses
+which fall upon them, and they work as hard as
+any other men for their salaries. Though the
+larger sees have been divided, the reduction of
+the toil of bishops thus effected has been less than
+the addition to it due to the growth of population
+and the increased activity of the clergy. The
+only defect which the censorious still impute to
+them is a certain episcopal conventionality, a disposition
+to try to please everybody by the use of
+vague professional language, a tendency to think
+too much about the Church as a church establishment,
+and to defer to clerical opinion when they
+ought to speak and act with an independence
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span>
+born of their individual opinions. Some of them,
+as, for instance, the three I have just mentioned,
+were not open to this reproach. It was one
+of the merits and charms of Fraser that he was
+absolutely free from any such tendency. Other
+men, such as Bishop Lightfoot, have been not
+less eminent models of the virtues which ought
+to characterise a great Christian pastor; but
+Fraser (appointed some time before Lightfoot)
+was the first to be an absolutely unconventional
+and, so to speak, unepiscopal bishop. His career
+marked a new departure and set a new example.</p>
+<p>Fraser spent the earlier years of his manhood
+in Oxford, as a tutor in Oriel College, teaching
+Thucydides and Aristotle. Like many of his
+Oxford contemporaries, he continued through life
+to think on Aristotelian lines, and one could trace
+them in his sermons. He then took in succession
+two college livings, both in quiet nooks in the
+South of England, and discharged for nearly
+twenty years the simple duties of a parish priest,
+unknown to the great world, but making himself
+beloved by the people, and doing his best to
+improve their condition. The zeal he had shown
+in promoting elementary education caused him to
+be appointed (in 1865) by the Schools Inquiry
+Commissioners to be their Assistant Commissioner
+to examine the common-school system of
+the United States, and the excellence of his report
+thereon attracted the notice of the late Lord
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span>
+Lyttelton, one of those Commissioners who were
+then sitting to investigate the state of secondary
+education in England. His report long remained
+by far the best general picture of American
+schools, conspicuous for its breadth of view, its
+clearness of statement, its sympathetic insight
+into conditions unlike those he had known in
+England. On the recommendation (as has been
+generally believed) of Lord Lyttelton and of the
+then Bishop of Salisbury, who was a friend of
+Dr. Fraser&rsquo;s, Mr. Gladstone, at that time Prime
+Minister, appointed him Bishop of Manchester
+in 1870. The diocese of Manchester, which
+included all Lancashire except Liverpool and a
+small district in the extreme north of the county,
+had been under a bishop who, although an able
+and learned man, capable of making himself
+agreeable when he pleased, was personally unpopular,
+and had done little beyond his formal
+duties. He lived in a large and handsome
+country-house some miles from the city, and was
+known by sight to very few of its inhabitants.
+(I was familiar with Lancashire in those days, for
+I had visited all its grammar-schools as Assistant
+Commissioner to the Commission just referred
+to, and there was hardly a trace to be found in
+it of the bishop&rsquo;s action.) Fraser had not been
+six months in the county before everything was
+changed. The country mansion was sold, and he
+procured a modest house in one of the less fashionable
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span>
+suburbs of the city. He preached twice
+every Sunday, usually in some parish church, and
+spent the week in travelling up and down his
+diocese, so that the days were few in which he
+was not on the railway. He stretched out the
+hand of friendship to the Dissenters (numerous
+and powerful in the manufacturing districts), who
+had hitherto regarded a bishop as a sort of natural
+enemy, gained their confidence, and soon became
+as popular with them as with the laity of his
+own Church. He associated himself with all
+the works of benevolence or public utility which
+were in progress, subscribed to all so far as his
+means allowed, and was always ready to speak
+at a meeting on behalf of any good enterprise.
+He dealt in his sermons with the topics of the
+day, avoiding party politics, but speaking his
+mind on all social and moral questions with a
+freedom which sometimes involved him in passing
+difficulties, but stimulated the minds of his hearers,
+and gave the impression of his own perfect
+candour and perfect courage. He used to say
+that as he felt it his duty to speak wherever he
+was asked to do so, he must needs speak without
+preparation, and must therefore expect sometimes
+to get into hot water; that this was a pity, but
+it was not his fault that he was reported, and
+that it was better to run the risk of making
+mistakes and suffering for them than to refuse
+out of self-regarding caution to give the best of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span>
+himself to the diocese. He had that true modesty
+which makes a man willing to do a thing imperfectly,
+at the risk of lowering his intellectual
+reputation. He knew that he was neither a deep
+thinker nor a finished preacher, and was content
+to be what he was, so long as he could perform
+the work which it was in him to do. He lost
+no opportunity of meeting the working men,
+would go and talk to them in the yards of the
+mills or at the evening gatherings of mechanics&rsquo;
+institutes; and when any misfortune befell, such
+as a colliery accident, he was often among the
+first who reached the spot to help the survivors
+and comfort the widows. He made no difference
+between rich and poor, showed no wish to be a
+guest in the houses of the great, and treated the
+poorest curate with as much courtesy as the most
+pompous county magnate. His work in Lancashire
+seldom allowed him to appear in the House
+of Lords; and this he regretted, not that he
+desired to speak there, but because, as he said,
+&ldquo;Whether or not bishops do Parliament good,
+Parliament does bishops good.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Such a simple, earnest, active course of conduct
+told upon the feelings of the people who read of
+his words and doings. But even greater was the
+impression made by his personality upon those
+who saw him. He was a tall, well-built man,<a name='FNanchor_0026' id='FNanchor_0026'></a><a href='#Footnote_0026' class='fnanchor'>[31]</a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204' name='page_204'></a>204</span>
+erect in figure, with a quick eye, a firm step, a
+ruddy face, an expression of singular heartiness
+and geniality. He seemed always cheerful, and,
+in spite of his endless labours, always fresh and
+strong. His smile and the grasp of his hand
+put you into good-humour with yourself and the
+world; if you were dispirited, they led you out
+of shadow into sunlight. He was not a great
+reader, and had no time for sustained and searching
+thought; yet he seemed always abreast of
+what was passing in the world, and to know what
+the books and articles and speeches of the day
+contained, although he could not have found time
+to peruse them. With strong opinions of his own,
+he was anxious to hear yours; a ready and eager
+talker, yet a willing listener. His oratory was
+plain, with few flights of rhetoric, but it was direct
+and vigorous, free from conventional phrases,
+charged with clear good sense and genuine feeling,
+and capable, when his feeling was exceptionally
+strong, of rising to eloquence. He had a
+ready sense of humour, the best proof of which
+was that he relished a joke against himself.<a name='FNanchor_0027' id='FNanchor_0027'></a><a href='#Footnote_0027' class='fnanchor'>[32]</a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span>
+However, the greatest charm, both of his public
+and private talk, was the transparent sincerity
+and honesty that shone through it. His mind
+was like a crystal pool of water in a mountain
+stream. You saw everything that was in it, and
+saw nothing that was mean or unworthy. This
+sincerity and freshness made his character not
+only manly, but lovable and beautiful, beautiful
+in its tenderness, its loyalty to his friends, its
+devotion to truth.</p>
+<p>His conscientious anxiety to say nothing more
+than he thought was apt to make him an embarrassing
+ally. It happened more than once
+that when he came to speak at a public meeting
+on behalf of some enterprise, he was not content,
+like most men, to set forth its merits and claims,
+but went on to dwell upon possible drawbacks
+or dangers, so that the more ardent friends of
+the scheme thought he was pouring cold water
+on them, and called him a Balaam reversed. In
+a political assembly he would have been an <i>enfant
+terrible</i> whom his party would have feared to put
+up to speak; but as people in the diocese got to
+know that this was his way, they only smiled at
+his too ingenuous honesty. As he spoke with no
+preparation, and was naturally impulsive, he now
+and then spoke unadvisedly, and received a good
+deal of newspaper censure. But he was never
+involved in real trouble by these speeches. As
+Dean Stanley wrote to him, &ldquo;You have a singular
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206' name='page_206'></a>206</span>
+gift of going to the very verge of imprudence and
+yet never crossing it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>No one will wonder that such a character, set
+in a conspicuous place, and joined to extraordinary
+activity and zeal, should have produced an immense
+effect on the people of his city and diocese.
+Since Nonconformity arose in England in the
+seventeenth century, no bishop, perhaps, indeed
+no man, whether cleric or layman, had done so
+much to draw together people of different religious
+persuasions and help them to realise their common
+Christianity. Densely populated South Lancashire
+is practically one huge town, and he was its
+foremost citizen; the most instant in all good
+works; the one whose words were most sure to
+find attentive listeners. This was because he
+spoke, I will not say as a layman, but simply
+as a Christian, never claiming for himself any
+special authority in respect either of his sacerdotal
+character or his official position. No English
+prelate before him had been so welcome to all
+classes and sections; none was so much lamented
+by the masses of the people. But it is a significant
+fact that he was from first to last more
+popular with the laity than with the clergy. Not
+that there was ever any slur on his orthodoxy.
+He began life as a moderate High Churchman,
+and gradually verged, half unconsciously, toward
+what would be called a Broad-Church position;
+maintaining the claim of the Anglican Church to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207' name='page_207'></a>207</span>
+undertake, and her duty to hold herself responsible
+for, the education of the people, and upholding
+her status as an establishment, but dwelling little
+on minor points of doctrinal difference, and seeming
+to care still less for external observances or
+points of ritual. This displeased the Anglo-Catholic
+party, and even among other sections of
+the clergy there was a kind of feeling that the
+Bishop was not sufficiently clerical, did not set full
+store by the sacerdotal side of his office, and did
+not think enough about ecclesiastical questions.</p>
+<p>He was, I think, the first bishop who greeted
+men of science as fellow-workers for truth, and
+declared that Christianity had not, and could not
+have, anything to fear from scientific inquiry.
+This has often been said since, but in 1870 it was
+so novel that it drew from Huxley a singularly
+warm and impressive recognition. He was one
+of the first bishops to condemn the system of
+theological tests in the English universities. He
+even declared that &ldquo;it was an evil hour when
+the Church thought herself obliged to add to or
+develop the simple articles of the Apostles&rsquo; Creed.&rdquo;
+These deliverances, which any one can praise
+now, alarmed a large section of the Church of
+England then; nor was the bishop&rsquo;s friendliness
+to Dissenters favourably regarded by those who
+deny to Dissenting pastors the title of Christian
+ministers.<a name='FNanchor_0028' id='FNanchor_0028'></a><a href='#Footnote_0028' class='fnanchor'>[33]</a></p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208' name='page_208'></a>208</span></div>
+<p>The gravest trouble of his life arose in connection
+with legal proceedings which he felt bound
+to take in the case of a Ritualist clergyman
+who had persisted in practices apparently illegal.
+Fraser, though personally the most tolerant of
+men to those who differed from his own theological
+views, felt bound to enforce the law, because
+it was the law, and was at once assailed unjustly,
+as well as bitterly, by those who sympathised with
+the offending clergyman, and who could not, or
+would not, understand that a bishop, like other
+persons in an official position, may hold it his
+absolute duty to carry out the directions of the
+law whether or no he approves the law, and at
+whatever cost to himself. These attacks were
+borne with patience and dignity. He was never
+betrayed into recriminations, and could the more
+easily preserve his calmness, because he felt no
+animosity.</p>
+<p>A bishop may be a power outside his own
+religious community even in a country where
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209' name='page_209'></a>209</span>
+the clergy are separated as a caste from the lay
+people. Such men as Dupanloup in France show
+that. So too he may be a mighty moral and
+religious force outside his own religious community
+in a country where there is no church
+established or endowed by the State. The
+example of Dr. Phillips Brooks in the United
+States shows that. But Dupanloup would have
+been eminent and influential had he not been a
+clergyman at all; and Dr. Brooks was the most
+inspiring preacher and the most potent leader of
+religious thought in America long before, in
+the last years of his life, he reluctantly consented
+to accept the episcopal office. Fraser, not so
+gifted by nature as either of those men, would
+have had little chance of doing the work he did
+save in a country where the existence of an
+ancient establishment secures for one of its dignitaries
+a position of far-reaching influence. When
+the gains and losses to a nation of the retention
+of a church establishment are reckoned up, this
+may be set down among the gains.</p>
+<p>If the Church of England possessed more
+leaders like Tait, Fraser, and Lightfoot&mdash;the
+statesman, the citizen, and the scholar&mdash;in the
+characters and careers of all of whom one finds
+the common mark of a catholic and pacific spirit,
+she would have no need to fear any assaults of
+political foes, no temptation to ally herself with
+any party, but might stand as an establishment
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210' name='page_210'></a>210</span>
+until, after long years, by the general wish of her
+own people, as well as of those who are without,
+she passed peaceably into the position of being
+the first in honour, numbers, and influence among
+a group of Christian communities, all equally free
+from State control.</p>
+<p>Fraser&rsquo;s example showed how much an attitude
+of unpretending simplicity and friendliness to all
+sects and classes may do to mitigate the jealousy
+and suspicion which still embitter the relations of
+the different religious bodies in England, and
+which work for evil even in its politics. He
+created, as Dean Stanley said, a new type of
+episcopal excellence: and why should not originality
+be shown in the conception and discharge of
+an office as well as in the sphere of pure thought
+or of literary creation?</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211' name='page_211'></a>211</span>
+<a name='SIR_STAFFORD_HENRY_NORTHCOTE_EARL_OF_IDDESLEIGH34' id='SIR_STAFFORD_HENRY_NORTHCOTE_EARL_OF_IDDESLEIGH34'></a>
+<h2>SIR STAFFORD HENRY NORTHCOTE, EARL OF IDDESLEIGH<a name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor2">[34]</a></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Sir Stafford Northcote (born 1818, died 1887)
+belonged to a type of politician less common
+among us than it used to be, and likely to
+become still more rare as England grows more
+democratic&mdash;the county gentleman of old family
+and good estate, who receives and profits by a
+classical education at one of the ancient universities,
+who is at an early age returned to
+Parliament in respect of his social position in
+his county, who has leisure to cultivate himself
+for statesmanship, who has tastes and
+resources outside the sphere of politics. Devonshire,
+whence he came, has preserved more
+of the old features of English country life
+than the central and northern parts of England,
+where manufactures and the growth of population
+have swept away the venerable remains of
+feudalism. In Devonshire the old families are
+still deeply respected by the people. They are
+so intermarried that most of them have ties of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212' name='page_212'></a>212</span>
+kinship with all their neighbours. Few rich
+parvenus have intruded among them; society is
+therefore exceptionally easy, simple, and unostentatious.
+There is still a strong local patriotism,
+which makes every Devonshire man, whatever
+his political prepossessions, proud of other Devonshire
+men who rise to eminence, and which
+exerts a wholesome influence on the tone of
+manners and social intercourse. Northcote was a
+thorough Devonshire man, who loved his county
+and knew its dialect: his Devonshire stories,
+told with the strong accent he could assume,
+were the delight of any company that could
+tempt him to repeat them. He was immensely
+popular in the county, and had well earned his
+popularity by his pleasant neighbourly ways, as
+well as by his attention to county business and
+to the duties of a landowner.</p>
+<p>He had the time-honoured training of the
+good old English type, was a schoolboy at
+Eton, went thence to Oxford, won the highest
+distinctions as a scholar, and laid the foundations
+of a remarkably wide knowledge of modern
+as well as ancient literature. He served his
+apprenticeship to statesmanship as private secretary
+to Mr. Gladstone, who was then (1843)
+a member of Sir Robert Peel&rsquo;s Government.
+When the great schism in the Tory party took
+place over the question of free trade in corn, he
+was not yet in Parliament, and therefore was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213' name='page_213'></a>213</span>
+not driven to choose between Peel and the
+Protectionists. In 1855, when he first entered
+the House of Commons, that question was settled
+and gone, so there was no inconsistency in his
+entering the Tory ranks although himself a
+decided Free Trader. He was not a man who
+would have elbowed his way upward. But elbows
+were not needed. His abilities, as well as his
+industry and the confidence he inspired, speedily
+brought him to the top. He was appointed
+Secretary to the Treasury in 1859, entered the
+Cabinet in 1866, when a new Tory Ministry
+was formed under Lord Derby; and when in
+1876 Mr. Disraeli retired to the House of Lords,
+he became, being then Chancellor of the Exchequer,
+leader of the majority in the House
+of Commons, while Mr. Gathorne Hardy, the
+only other person who had been thought of
+as suitable for that post, received a peerage.
+Mr. Hardy was a more forcible and rousing
+speaker, but Northcote had more varied accomplishments
+and a fuller mastery of official work.
+Disraeli said that he had &ldquo;the largest parliamentary
+knowledge of any man he had met.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As an administrator, Sir Stafford Northcote
+was diligent, judicious, and free from any taint
+of jobbery. He sought nothing for himself;
+did not abuse his patronage; kept the public
+interests steadily before his mind. He was considerate
+to his subordinates, and gracious to all
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214' name='page_214'></a>214</span>
+men. He never grudged labour, although there
+might be no prospect of winning credit by it.
+Scrupulous in discharging his duties to his
+party, he overtaxed his strength by speaking
+constantly at public meetings in the country, a
+kind of work he must have disliked, and for
+which he was ill fitted by the moderation of his
+views and of his language. Parliament is not a
+good place for the pursuit of pure truth, but the
+platform is still less favourable to that quest. It
+was remarked of him that even in party gatherings,
+where invective against political opponents
+is apt to be expected and relished, he argued
+fairly, and never condescended to abuse.</p>
+<p>As a Parliamentarian he had two eminent
+merits&mdash;immense knowledge and admirable
+readiness. He had been all his life a keen
+observer and a diligent student; and as his
+memory was retentive, all that he had observed
+or read stood at his command. In
+questions of trade and finance, questions which,
+owing, perhaps, to their increasing intricacy,
+seem to be less and less frequently mastered
+by practical politicians in England, he was
+especially strong. No other man on his own
+side in politics spoke on such matters with equal
+authority, and the brunt of the battle fell on
+him whenever they came up for discussion.
+As he had now his old master for his chief
+antagonist, the conflict was no easy one; but he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215' name='page_215'></a>215</span>
+never shrank from it. Not less remarkable was
+his alertness in debate. His manner was indeed
+somewhat ineffective, for it wanted both force
+and variety. Sentence followed sentence in a
+smooth and easy stream, always clear, always
+grammatically correct, but with a flow too equably
+unbroken. There were few impressive phrases,
+few brilliant figures, few of those appeals to
+passion with which it is necessary to warm and
+rouse a large assembly. When the House grew
+excited at the close of a long full-dress debate,
+and Sir Stafford rose in the small hours of the
+morning to wind it up on behalf of his party, men
+felt that the ripple of his sweet voice, the softness
+of his gentle manner, were not what the occasion
+called for. But what he said was always to the
+point and well worth hearing. No facts or
+arguments suddenly thrown at him by opponents
+disconcerted him; for there was sure to
+be an answer ready. However weak his own
+case might seem, his ingenuity could be relied
+upon to strengthen it; however powerfully the
+hostile case had been presented, he found weak
+places in it and shook it down by a succession
+of well-planted criticisms, each apparently small,
+but damaging when taken all together, because
+no one of them could be dismissed as irrelevant.</p>
+<p>It was interesting to watch him as he sat on
+the front bench, with his hat set so low on his brow
+that it hid all the upper part of his face, while the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216' name='page_216'></a>216</span>
+lower part was covered by a thick yellowish-brown
+beard, perfectly motionless, rarely taking a note
+of what was said, and, to all appearance, the most
+indifferent figure in the House. The only sign
+of feeling which he gave was to be found in
+his habit of thrusting each of his hands up the
+opposite sleeve of his coat when Mr. Gladstone,
+the only assailant whom he needed to fear, burst
+upon him in a hailstorm of declamation. But
+when he rose, one perceived that nothing had
+escaped him. Every point which an antagonist
+had made was taken up and dealt with; no point
+that could aid his own contention was neglected;
+and the fluent grace with which his discourse
+swept along, seldom aided by a reference to
+notes, was not more surprising than the unfailing
+skill with which he shunned dangerous ground,
+and put his propositions in a form which made
+it difficult to contradict them. I remember to
+have heard a member of the opposite party
+remark, that nothing was more difficult than to
+defend your argument from Northcote, because
+he had the art of nibbling it away, admitting
+a little in order to evade or overthrow the rest.</p>
+<p>So much for his parliamentary aptitudes, which
+were fully recognised before he rose to leadership.
+But as it was his leadership that has given him a
+place in history, I may dwell for a little upon the
+way in which he filled that most trying as well
+as most honourable post. He led the House&mdash;that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217' name='page_217'></a>217</span>
+is to say, the Ministerial majority&mdash;for four
+sessions (1877-1880), and the Tory Opposition for
+five and a half sessions (1880 to middle of 1885).
+To lead the House of Commons a man must have,
+over and above the qualities which make a good
+debater, an unusual combination of talents. He
+must be both bold and cautious, combative and
+cool. He must take, on his own responsibility,
+and on the spur of the moment, decisions which
+commit the whole Ministry, and yet, especially if
+he be not Prime Minister, he must consider how
+far his colleagues will approve and implement his
+action. He must put enough force and fire
+into his speeches to rouse his own ranks and
+intimidate (if he can) his opponents, yet must
+have regard to the more timorous spirits among
+his own supporters, going no further than he
+feels they will follow, and must sometimes throw
+a crafty fly over those in the Opposition whom
+he thinks wavering or disaffected. Under the
+fire of debate, perhaps while composing the
+speech he has to make in reply, he must
+consider not merely the audience before him
+but also the effect his words will have when
+they are read next morning in cold blood,
+and, it may be, the effect not only in England
+but abroad. Being responsible for the whole
+conduct of parliamentary business, he must keep
+a close watch upon every pending bill, and determine
+how much of Government time shall be
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218' name='page_218'></a>218</span>
+allotted to each, and in what order they shall be
+taken, and how far the general feeling of the
+House will let him go in seizing the hours usually
+reserved for private members, and in granting or
+refusing <a name='TC_1' id='TC_1'></a><ins class="trchange" title="Was 'opportunies'">opportunities</ins> for discussing topics he would
+prefer to have not discussed at all.</p>
+<p>So far as prudence, tact, and knowledge of
+business could enable him to discharge these
+duties, Northcote discharged them admirably.
+It was his good fortune to have behind him in
+Lord Beaconsfield, who had recently gone to the
+House of Lords, a chief of the whole party who
+trusted him, and with whom he was on the best
+terms. The immense authority of that chief
+secured his own authority. His party was&mdash;as
+the Tory party usually is&mdash;compact and loyal;
+and his majority ample, so he had no reason
+to fear defeat. In the conflicts that arose
+over Eastern affairs in 1877-79, affairs at some
+moments highly critical, he was cautious and
+adroit, more cautious than Lord Beaconsfield,
+sometimes repairing by moderate language the
+harm which the latter&rsquo;s theatrical utterances
+had done. When a group of Irish Nationalist
+members, among whom Mr. Parnell soon came
+to the front, began to evade the rules and
+paralyse the action of the House by obstructive
+tactics, he was less successful. Their
+ingenuity baffled the Ministry, and brought the
+House into sore straits. But it may be doubted
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219' name='page_219'></a>219</span>
+whether any leader could have overcome the
+difficulties of the position. It was a new
+position. The old rules framed under quite
+different conditions were not fit to check members
+who, far from regarding the sentiments of
+the House, avowed their purpose to reduce it to
+impotence, and thereby obtain that Parliament
+of their own, which could alone, as they held,
+cure the ills of Ireland.</p>
+<p>After ten years of struggle and experiment,
+drastic remedies for obstruction were at last
+devised; but in the then state of opinion within
+the House, those remedies could not have been
+carried. Members accustomed to the old state of
+things could not for a good while make up their
+minds to sacrifice part of their own privileges in
+order to deal with a difficulty the source of which
+they would not attempt to cure. On the whole,
+therefore, though he was blamed at the time,
+Northcote may be deemed to have passed creditably
+through his first period of leadership.</p>
+<p>It was when he had to lead his party in
+Opposition, after April 1880, that his severest
+trial came. To lead the minority is usually easier
+than to lead the majority. A leader of the
+Opposition also must, no doubt, take swift decisions
+in the midst of a debate, must consider
+how far he is pledging his party to a policy
+which they may be required to maintain when
+next they come into power, must endeavour to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220' name='page_220'></a>220</span>
+judge, often on scanty data, how many of his usual
+or nominal supporters will follow him into the
+lobby when a division is called, and how best he
+can draw off some votes from among his opponents.
+Still, delicate as this work is, it is not so hard as
+that of the leader of the Government, for it is
+rather critical than constructive, and a mistake
+can seldom do irreparable mischief. Northcote,
+however, had special difficulties to face. Mr.
+Gladstone, still full of energy and fire, was
+leading the majority. After a few months
+Lord Beaconsfield&rsquo;s mantle no longer covered
+Northcote (that redoubtable strategist died
+in April 1881), and a small but active group
+of Tory members set up an irregular skirmishing
+Opposition on their own account, paying
+little heed to his moderate counsels. The Tory
+party was then furious at its unexpected defeat
+at the election of 1880. It was full of fight, burning
+for revenge, eager to denounce every trifling
+error of the Ministry, and to give battle on small
+as well as great occasions. Hence it resented
+the calm and cautiously critical attitude which
+Northcote took up. He had plenty of courage;
+but he thought, as indeed most impartial observers
+thought, that little was to be gained
+by incessantly worrying an enemy so superior
+in force and flushed with victory; that premature
+assaults might consolidate a majority within
+which there existed elements of discord; and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221' name='page_221'></a>221</span>
+that it was wiser to wait till the Ministry should
+begin to make mistakes and incur misfortunes in
+the natural course of events, before resuming the
+offensive against them. There is a natural tendency
+to reaction in English popular opinion, and
+a tendency to murmur against whichever party
+may be in power. This tendency must soon
+have told in favour of the Tories, with little
+effort on their own part; and when it was already
+manifest, a Parliamentary attack could have been
+delivered with effect. Northcote&rsquo;s view and plan
+were probably right, but, being too prone to yield
+to pressure, and finding his hand forced, he
+allowed himself to be drawn by the clamour of
+his followers into aggressive operations, which,
+nevertheless, himself not quite approving them,
+he conducted in a half-hearted way. He had
+not Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s power of doing excellently
+what he hated to have to do. And it must be
+admitted that from 1882 onwards, when troubles
+in Ireland and oscillations in Egyptian policy
+had begun to shake the credit of the Liberal
+Ministry, he showed less fire and pugnacity than
+the needs of the time required from a party
+leader. In one thing the young men, who,
+like Zulu warriors, wished to wash their spears,
+were right and he was wrong. He conceived
+that frequent attacks and a resort to obstructive
+tactics would damage the Opposition in the eyes
+of the country. Experience has shown that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222' name='page_222'></a>222</span>
+parties do not greatly suffer from the way they
+fight their Parliamentary battles. Few people
+follow the proceedings closely enough to know
+when an Opposition deserves blame for prolonging
+debate, or a Ministry for abuse of the closure.
+So, too, in the United States it would seem that
+neither the tyrannical action of a majority nor
+filibustering by a minority shocks the nation.</p>
+<p>Not only was Northcote&rsquo;s own temper pacific,
+but he was too sweetly reasonable and too dispassionate
+to be a successful leader in Opposition.
+He felt that he was never quite a
+party man. His mind was almost too judicial,
+his courtesy too unfailing, his temper too unruffled,
+his manner too unassuming. He did not
+inspire awe or fear. Not only did he never
+seek to give pain, even where pain might have
+been a wholesome discipline for pushing selfishness&mdash;he
+seemed incapable of irritation, and
+bore with vexatious obstruction from some
+members of the House, and mutinous attacks
+from others who belonged to his own party,
+when a spirit less kindly and forgiving might have
+better secured his own authority and the dignity
+of the assembly. He proceeded on the assumption,
+an unsafe one, as he had too much reason
+to know, that every one else was a gentleman
+like himself, penetrated by the old traditions of
+the House of Commons.</p>
+<p>While superior to the prejudices of the old-fashioned
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223' name='page_223'></a>223</span>
+wing of his party, he was too cautious
+and conscientious to join those who sought to
+lead it into demagogic courses. So far as
+political opinions went, he might, had fortune
+sent him into the world as the son of a Whig
+family, have made an excellent Whig, removed
+as far from high Toryism on the one hand as
+from Radicalism on the other. There was, therefore,
+a certain incompatibility between the man
+and the position. Average partisans felt that a
+leader so very reasonable was not in full sympathy
+with them. Even his invincible optimism
+displeased them. &ldquo;Hang that fellow Northcote!&rdquo;
+said one of them; &ldquo;he&rsquo;s always seeing blue sky.&rdquo;
+The militant partisans, whatever their opinions,
+desired a pugnacious chief. That a leader
+should draw the enemy&rsquo;s fire does him good with
+his followers, and makes them rally to him. But
+the fire of his opponents was hardly ever directed
+against Northcote, even when controversy was
+hottest. Had he possessed a more imperious
+will, he might have overcome these difficulties,
+because his abilities and experience were of
+the highest value to his party, and his character
+stood so high that the mass of sensible
+Tories all over the country might perhaps have
+rallied to him, if he had appealed to them
+against the intrigues by which it was sought to
+supplant him. He did not lack courage. But
+he lacked what men call &ldquo;backbone.&rdquo; For
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224' name='page_224'></a>224</span>
+practical success, it is less fatal to fail in wisdom
+than to fail in resolution. He had not that unquenchable
+self-confidence which I have sought
+to describe in Disraeli, and shall have to describe
+in Parnell and in Gladstone. He yielded to pressure,
+and people came to know that he would
+yield to pressure.</p>
+<p>The end of it was that the weakened prestige
+and final fall of the Liberal Ministry were not
+credited to his generalship, but rather to those
+who had skirmished in advance of the main army.
+That fall was in reality due neither to him nor to
+them, but partly to the errors or internal divisions
+of the Ministry itself, partly to causes such as the
+condition of Ireland and the revolt of Arabi in
+Egypt, for which Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s Cabinet was
+no more, perhaps less, to blame than many of
+its predecessors. No Ministry of recent years
+seemed, when it was formed, to have such a
+source of strength in the abilities of the men who
+composed it as did the Ministry of 1880. None
+proved so persistently unlucky.</p>
+<p>The circumstances under which Northcote&rsquo;s
+leadership came to an end by his elevation to the
+Upper House (June 1885) as Earl of Iddesleigh,
+as well as those under which he was subsequently
+(1887) removed from the post of Foreign Secretary
+in the then Tory Ministry, evoked much
+comment at the time, but some of the incidents
+attending them have not yet been disclosed, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225' name='page_225'></a>225</span>
+they could not be discussed without bringing in
+other persons with whom I am not here concerned.
+Conscious of his own loyalty to his party, and
+remembering his long and laborious services, he
+felt those circumstances deeply; and they may have
+hastened his death, which came very suddenly in
+February 1887, and called forth a burst of sympathy
+such as had not been seen since Peel perished by
+an accident nearly forty years before.</p>
+<p>In private life Northcote had the charm of
+unpretending manners, coupled with abundant
+humour, a store of anecdote, and a geniality
+which came straight from the heart. No man
+was a more agreeable companion. In 1884,
+when the University of Edinburgh celebrated
+its tercentenary, he happened to be Lord Rector,
+and in that capacity had to preside over the
+festivities. Although a stranger to Scotland,
+and as far removed (for he was a decided
+High Churchman) from sympathy with Scottish
+Presbyterianism as he was removed in politics
+from the Liberalism then dominant in Edinburgh,
+he won golden opinions from the Scotch,
+as well as from the crowd of foreign visitors, by
+the tact and grace he showed in the discharge of
+his duties, and the skill with which, putting off
+the politician, he entered into the spirit of the
+occasion as a lover of letters and learning.
+Though political eminence had secured his election
+to the office, every one felt that it would have been
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226' name='page_226'></a>226</span>
+hard to find in the ranks of literature and science
+any one fitter to preside over such a gathering.</p>
+<p>He left behind few in whom the capacities
+of the administrator were so happily blended with
+a philosophic judgment and a wide culture. It is
+a combination which was inadequately appreciated
+in his own person. Vehemence in controversy,
+domineering audacity of purpose, the power of
+moving crowds by incisive harangues, were the
+qualities which the younger generation seemed
+disposed to cultivate. They are qualities apt to be
+valued in times of strife and change, times when
+men are less concerned to study and apply principles
+than to rouse the passions and consolidate
+the organisation of their party, while dazzling the
+nation by large promises or bold strokes of policy.
+For such courses Northcote was not the man.
+Were it to be observed of him that he was too
+good for the work he had to do, it might be
+answered that political leadership is work for
+which no man can be too good, and that it was
+rather because his force of will and his combativeness
+were not commensurate with his other gifts,
+that those other gifts did not have their full effect
+and win their due success. Yet this at least may
+be said, that if he had been less amiable, less fair-minded,
+and less open-minded, he would have
+retained his leadership to the end.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227' name='page_227'></a>227</span>
+<a name='CHARLES_STEWART_PARNELL' id='CHARLES_STEWART_PARNELL'></a>
+<h2>CHARLES STEWART PARNELL</h2>
+</div>
+<p>Though I do not propose to write even the briefest
+narrative of Parnell&rsquo;s life, but only to note certain
+salient features of his intellect and character, it
+may be well to state a few facts and dates; for in
+these days of rapid change and hasty reading,
+facts soon pass out of most men&rsquo;s memories,
+leaving only vague impressions behind.<a name='FNanchor_0029' id='FNanchor_0029'></a><a href='#Footnote_0029' class='fnanchor'>[35]</a></p>
+<p>He belonged to a family which, established at
+Congleton in Cheshire, had at the time of the
+Restoration migrated to Ireland, had settled on
+an estate in Wicklow, and had produced in every
+subsequent generation a person of distinction.
+Thomas Parnell, the friend of Pope and Swift,
+is still remembered by his poem of <i>The Hermit</i>.
+Another Parnell (Sir John) was Chancellor of
+the Irish Exchequer in the days of Henry
+Grattan, whose opinions he shared. Another
+(Sir Henry) was a leading Irish Liberal member
+of the House of Commons, and died by his
+own hand in 1842. Charles&rsquo;s father and grandfather
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228' name='page_228'></a>228</span>
+figured less in the public eye. But
+his mother was a remarkable woman, and
+the daughter of a remarkable man, Commodore
+Charles Stewart, one of the most brilliant naval
+commanders on the American side in the war of
+1812. Stewart was the son of a Scoto-Irishman
+from Ulster, who had emigrated to America in
+the middle of the eighteenth century; so there
+was a strain of Scottish as well as a fuller strain
+of English blood in the most powerful Irish
+leader of recent times.</p>
+<p>Parnell was born at Avondale, the family estate
+in Wicklow, in 1846, and was educated mostly at
+private schools in England. He spent some
+months at Magdalene College, Cambridge, but,
+having been rusticated for an affray in the street,
+refused to return to the College, and finished his
+education for himself at home. It was a very imperfect
+education. He cared nothing for study,
+and indeed showed interest only in mathematics
+and cricket. In 1874 he stood as a candidate for
+Parliament, but without success. When he had to
+make a speech he broke down utterly. In 1875 he
+was returned as member for the county of Meath,
+and within two years had made his mark in the
+House of Commons. In 1880 he was elected leader
+of the Irish Parliamentary party, and ruled it and
+his followers in Ireland with a rod of iron until
+he was deposed, in 1890, at the instance of
+the leaders of the English Liberal party, who
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229' name='page_229'></a>229</span>
+thought that the verdict against him in a divorce
+suit in which he was co-respondent had fatally
+discredited him in the eyes of the bulk of the
+English Liberal party, and made co-operation
+with him impossible. Refusing to resign his
+leadership, he conducted a campaign in Ireland
+against the majority of his former followers with
+extraordinary energy till November 1891, when
+he died of rheumatic fever after a short illness.
+A constitution which had never been strong was
+worn out by the ceaseless exertions and mental
+tension of the last twelve months.</p>
+<p>The whole of his political activity was comprised
+within a period of sixteen years, during
+ten of which he led the Irish Nationalist party,
+exercising an authority more absolute than any
+Irish leader had exercised before.</p>
+<p>It has often been observed that he was not
+Irish, and that he led the Irish people with success
+just because he did not share their characteristic
+weaknesses. But it is equally true that he was
+not English. One always felt the difference
+between his temperament and that of the normal
+Englishman. The same remark applies to some
+other famous Irish leaders. Wolfe Tone, for
+instance, and Fitzgibbon (afterwards Lord Clare)
+were unlike the usual type of Irishman&mdash;that is,
+the Irishman in whom the Celtic element predominates;
+but they were also unlike Englishmen.
+The Anglo-Irish Protestants, a strong race
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230' name='page_230'></a>230</span>
+who have produced a number of remarkable men
+in excess of the proportion they bear to the
+whole population of the United Kingdom, fall
+into two classes&mdash;the men of North-Eastern
+Ulster, in whom there is so large an infusion
+of Scottish blood that they may almost be called
+&ldquo;Scotchmen with a difference,&rdquo; and the men
+of Leinster and Munster, who are true Anglo-Celts.
+It was to this latter class that Parnell
+belonged. They are a group by themselves, in
+whom some of the fire and impulsiveness of the
+Celt has been blended with some of the firmness,
+the tenacity, and the close hold upon facts which
+belong to the Englishman. Mr. Parnell, however,
+though he might be reckoned to the Anglo-Irish
+type, was not a normal specimen of it. He
+was a man whom you could not refer to any
+category, peculiar both in his intellect and in his
+character generally.</p>
+<p>His intellect was eminently practical. He
+did not love speculation or the pursuit of
+abstract truth, nor had he a taste for literature,
+still less a delight in learning for its own sake.
+Even of the annals of Ireland his knowledge
+was most slender. He had no grasp of constitutional
+questions, and was not able to give any
+help in the construction of a Home Rule scheme
+in 1886. His general reading had been scanty,
+and his speeches show no acquaintance either
+with history, beyond the commonest facts, or with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231' name='page_231'></a>231</span>
+any other subject connected with politics. Very
+rarely did they contain a maxim or reflection of
+general applicability, apart from the particular
+topic he was discussing. Nor did he ever
+attempt to give to them the charm of literary
+ornament. All was dry, direct, and practical,
+without so much as a graceful phrase or a
+choice epithet. Sometimes, when addressing a
+great public meeting, he would seek to rouse the
+audience by vehement language; but though there
+might be a glow of suppressed passion, there were
+no flashes of imaginative light. Yet he never
+gave the impression of an uneducated man.
+His language, though it lacked distinction, was
+clear and grammatical. His taste was correct.
+It was merely that he did not care for any of
+those things which men of ability comparable to
+his usually do care for. His only interests, outside
+politics, lay in mechanics and engineering
+and in the development of the material resources
+of his country. He took pains to manage his
+estate well, and was specially anxious to make
+something out of his stone quarries, and to learn
+what could be done in the way of finding and
+working minerals.</p>
+<p>Those who observed that he was almost
+always occupied in examining and attacking the
+measures or the conduct of those who governed
+Ireland were apt to think his talent a purely
+critical one. They were mistaken. Critical,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232' name='page_232'></a>232</span>
+indeed, it was, in a remarkable degree; keen,
+penetrating, stringently dissective of the arguments
+of an opponent, ingenious in taking advantage of
+a false step in administration or of an admission
+imprudently made in debate. But it had also a
+positive and constructive quality. From time to
+time he would drop his negative attitude and
+sketch out plans of legislation which were always
+consistent and weighty, though not made attractive
+by any touch of imagination. They were the
+schemes not so much of a statesman as of an able
+man of business, who saw the facts, especially
+the financial facts, in a sharp, cold light, and
+they seldom went beyond what the facts could be
+made to prove. And his ideas struck one as
+being not only forcible but independent, the fruit
+of his own musings. Although he freely used
+the help of others in collecting facts or opinions,
+he did not seem to be borrowing the ideas,
+but rather to have looked at things for himself,
+and seen them as they actually were, in
+their true perspective, not (like many Irishmen)
+through the mists of sentiment or party feeling.
+The impression made by one of his more elaborate
+speeches might be compared to that which
+one receives from a grey sunless day with an east
+wind, a day in which everything shows clear, but
+also hard and cold.</p>
+<p>To call his mind a narrow one, as people sometimes
+did, was to wrong it. If the range of his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233' name='page_233'></a>233</span>
+interests was limited, his intelligence was not.
+Equal to any task it undertook, it judged soundly,
+appreciating the whole phenomena of the case,
+men and things that had no sort of attraction
+for it. There was less pleasure in watching its
+activities than the observation of a superior
+mind generally affords, for it was always directed
+to immediate aims, and it wanted the originality
+which is fertile in ideas and analogies. It
+was not discursive, not versatile, not apt to
+generalise. It did not rejoice in the exercise of
+thought for thought&rsquo;s sake, but felt itself to be
+merely a useful instrument for performing the
+definite practical work which the will required
+of it.</p>
+<p>If, however, the intellect of the man could
+not be called interesting, his character had at
+least this interest, that it gave one many
+problems to solve, and could not easily be
+covered by any formul&aelig;. An observer who
+followed the old method of explaining every
+man by ascribing to him a single ruling passion,
+would have said that his ruling passion was
+pride. The pride was so strong that it
+almost extinguished vanity. Parnell did not
+appear to seek occasions for display, frequently
+neglecting those which other men would have
+chosen, seldom seeming to be elated by the
+applause of crowds, and treating the House of
+Commons with equal coolness whether it cheered
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234' name='page_234'></a>234</span>
+him or howled at him. He cared nothing for
+any social compliments or attentions, rarely
+accepted an invitation to dinner, dressed with
+little care and often in clothes whose style and
+colour seemed unworthy of his position. He
+was believed to be haughty and distant to his
+followers; and although he could occasionally
+be kindly and even genial, scarcely any were
+admitted to intimacy, and few of the ordinary
+signs of familiarity could be observed between
+him and them. Towards other persons he was
+sufficiently polite but warily reserved, showing
+no desire for the cultivation of friendship,
+or, indeed, for any relations but those
+of business. Of some ordinary social duties,
+such as opening and answering letters, he was,
+especially in later years, more neglectful than
+good breeding permits; and men doubted
+whether to ascribe this fault to indolence or to
+a superb disregard of everybody but himself.
+Such disregard he often showed in greater
+matters, taking no notice of attacks made
+upon him which he might have refuted, and
+intimating to the English his indifference to
+their praise or blame. On one remarkable
+occasion, at the beginning of the session of
+1883, he was denounced by Mr. W. E. Forster
+in a long and bitter speech, which told powerfully
+upon the House. Many instances were
+given in which Irish members had palliated
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_235' name='page_235'></a>235</span>
+or failed to condemn criminal acts, and Parnell
+was arraigned as the head and front of this line
+of conduct, and thus virtually responsible for the
+outrages that had occurred. The Irish leader,
+who had listened in impassive silence, broken
+only by one interjected contradiction, to this
+fierce invective, did not rise to reply, and was
+with difficulty induced by his followers to deliver
+his defence on the following day. To the
+astonishment of every one, that defence consisted
+in a declaration, delivered in a cold,
+careless, almost scornful way, that for all he
+said or did in Ireland he held himself responsible
+to his countrymen only, and did not in
+the least regard what Englishmen thought of
+him. It was an answer not of defence but of
+defiance.</p>
+<p>Even to his countrymen he could on occasion
+be disdainful, expecting them to defer to his own
+judgment of his own course. He would sometimes
+remain away from Parliament for weeks
+together, although important business might be
+under consideration, perhaps would vanish altogether
+from public ken. Yet this lordly attitude
+and the air of mystery which surrounded him
+did not seem to be studied with a view to effect.
+They were due to his habit of thinking first
+and chiefly of himself. If he desired to indulge
+his inclinations, he indulged them. Some extremely
+strong motive of passion or interest might
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236' name='page_236'></a>236</span>
+interpose to restrain this desire and stimulate
+him to an unwelcome exertion; but no respect
+for the opinion of others, nor fear of censure
+from his allies or friends, would be allowed to
+do so.</p>
+<p>This boundless self-confidence and independence
+greatly contributed to his success as a leader.
+His faith in his star inspired a conviction that
+obstacles whose reality his judgment recognised
+would ultimately yield to his will, and gave him in
+moments of crisis an undismayed fortitude which
+only once forsook him&mdash;in the panic which was
+suddenly created by the Ph&oelig;nix Park murders of
+May 1882. The confidence which he felt, or appeared
+to feel, reacted upon his party, and became
+a chief ground of their obedience to him and their
+belief in his superior wisdom. His calmness, his
+tenacity, his patience, his habit of listening quietly
+to every one, but deciding for himself, were all
+evidences of that resolute will which imposed
+itself upon the Irish masses no less than upon
+his Parliamentary following, and secured for him
+a loyalty in which there was little or nothing of
+personal affection.</p>
+<p>In these several respects his overweening pride
+was a source of strength. In another direction,
+however, it proved a source of weakness. There
+are men in whom the want of moral principle,
+of noble emotions, or of a scrupulous conscience
+and nice sense of honour, is partly replaced by
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237' name='page_237'></a>237</span>
+deference to the opinion of their class or of the
+world. Such men may hold through life a
+tolerably upright course, neither from the love
+of virtue nor because they are ambitious and
+anxious to stand well with those whom they
+aspire to influence or rule, but because, having
+a sense of personal dignity, combined with a
+perception of what pleases or offends mankind,
+they are resolved to do nothing whereby
+their good name can be tarnished or an opening
+given to malicious tongues. But when pride
+towers to such a height as to become a law to
+itself, disregarding the judgment of others, it
+may not only lead its possessor into an attitude
+of defiance which the world resents, but may
+make him stoop to acts of turpitude which discredit
+his character. Mr. Parnell was certainly
+not a scrupulous man. Without dwelling upon
+the circumstances attending the divorce case
+already referred to, or upon his betrayal of Mr.
+Gladstone&rsquo;s confidences, and his reckless appeals
+during the last year of his life to the most inflammable
+elements in Ireland, there are facts
+enough in his earlier career to show that he had
+little regard for truth and little horror for crime.
+A revolution may extenuate some sins, but even
+in a revolution there are men (and sometimes
+the strongest men) whose moral excellence shines
+through the smoke of conflict and the mists of
+detraction. In Mr. Parnell&rsquo;s nature the moral
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238' name='page_238'></a>238</span>
+element was imperfectly developed. He seemed
+cynical and callous; and it was probably his
+haughty self-reliance which prevented him from
+sufficiently deferring to the ordinary moralities
+of mankind. His pride, which ought to have
+kept him free from the suspicion of dishonour,
+made him feel himself dispensed from the usual
+restraints. Whatever he did was right in his
+own eyes, and no other eyes need be regarded.
+Phenomena somewhat similar were observable in
+Napoleon. But Napoleon, though he came of a
+good family, was obviously not a gentleman in
+the common sense of the term. Mr. Parnell
+was a gentleman in that sense. He had the
+bearing, the manners, the natural easy dignity
+of a man of birth who has always moved in
+good society. He rarely permitted any one to
+take liberties with him, even the innocent liberties
+of familiar intercourse. This made his
+departures from what may be called the inner
+and higher standard of gentlemanly conduct all
+the more remarkable.</p>
+<p>He has been accused of a want of physical
+courage. He did no doubt after the Ph&oelig;nix
+Park murders ask the authorities in England for
+police protection, being, not unnaturally, in fear
+for his life; and he habitually carried firearms.
+He was at times in danger, and there was every
+reason why he should be prepared to defend himself.
+An anecdote was told of another member
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239' name='page_239'></a>239</span>
+of the House of Commons whose initials were the
+same as his own, and who, taking what he supposed
+to be his own overcoat from the peg on
+which it hung in the cloakroom of the House,
+was startled when he put his hand into the pocket
+to feel in it the cold iron of a pistol. Moral
+courage he showed in a high degree during
+his whole public career, facing his antagonists
+with an unshaken front, even when they were
+most numerous and bitter. Though he intensely
+disliked imprisonment, the terms on which he
+came out of Kilmainham Gaol left no discredit
+upon him. He behaved with perfect dignity
+under the attacks of the press in 1887, and in
+the face of the use made of letters attributed to
+him which turned out to have been forged by
+Richard Pigott&mdash;letters which the bulk of the
+English upper classes had greedily swallowed.
+With this courage and dignity there was, however,
+little trace of magnanimity. He seldom said a
+generous word, or showed himself responsive to
+such a word spoken by another. Accustomed to
+conceal his feelings, except in his most excited
+moments, he rarely revealed, but he certainly
+cherished, vindictive sentiments. He never forgave
+either Mr. W. E. Forster or Mr. Gladstone
+for having imprisoned him in 1881;<a name='FNanchor_0030' id='FNanchor_0030'></a><a href='#Footnote_0030' class='fnanchor'>[36]</a> and though
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240' name='page_240'></a>240</span>
+he stood in some awe of the latter, whom he
+considered the only really formidable antagonist
+he had ever had to confront, he bore a grudge
+which smouldered under the reconciliation of 1886
+and leapt into flame in the manifesto of November
+1890.</p>
+<p>The union in Mr. Parnell of intense passion
+with strenuous self-control struck all who watched
+him closely, though it was seldom that passion
+so far escaped as to make the contrast visibly
+dramatic. Usually he was cold, grave, deliberate,
+repelling advances with a sort of icy courtesy.
+He hardly ever lost his temper in the House of
+Commons, even in his last session under the
+sarcasms of his former friends, though the low,
+almost hissing tones of his voice sometimes
+betrayed an internal struggle. But during the
+electoral campaign in Kilkenny, in December
+1890, when he was fighting for his life, he was
+more than once so swept away by anger that
+those beside him had to hold him back from
+jumping off the platform into the crowd to strike
+down some one who had interrupted him. Suspended
+for a moment, his mastery of himself
+quickly returned. Men were astonished to
+observe how, after some of the stormy passages
+at the meetings of Irish members held in one
+of the House of Commons committee-rooms in
+December 1890, he would address quietly, perhaps
+lay his hand upon the shoulder of, some one
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241' name='page_241'></a>241</span>
+of the colleagues who had just been denouncing
+him, and on whom he had poured all the vitriol
+of his fierce tongue. As this could not have
+been good-nature, it must have been either
+calculated policy or a pride that would not
+accept an injury from those whom he had been
+wont to deem his subjects. Spontaneous kindliness
+was never ascribed to him; nor had he,
+so far as could be known, a single intimate
+friend.</p>
+<p>Oratory is the usual avenue to leadership in a
+democratic movement, and Mr. Parnell is one of
+the very few who have arrived at power neither
+by that road nor by military success. So far
+from having by nature any of the gifts or graces
+of a popular speaker, he was at first conspicuously
+deficient in them, and became at last effective
+only by constant practice, and by an intellectual
+force which asserted itself through commonplaceness
+of language and a monotonous delivery.
+Fluency was wanting, and even moderate ease
+was acquired only after four or five years&rsquo; practice.
+His voice was neither powerful nor delicate in its
+modulations, but it was clear, and the enunciation
+deliberate and distinct, quiet when the matter
+was ordinary, slow and emphatic when an important
+point arrived. With very little action of the
+body, there was often an interesting and obviously
+unstudied display of facial expression. So far from
+glittering with the florid rhetoric supposed to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242' name='page_242'></a>242</span>
+characterise Irish eloquence, his speeches were
+singularly plain, bare, and dry. Neither had
+they any humour. If they ever raised a smile,
+which seldom happened, it was by some touch of
+sarcasm or adroit thrust at a point left unguarded
+by an adversary. Their merit lay in their
+lucidity, in their aptness to the matter in hand,
+in the strong practical sense which ran through
+them, coupled with the feeling that they came
+from one who led a nation, and whose forecasts
+had often fulfilled themselves. They were carefully
+prepared, and usually made from pretty
+full notes; but the preparation had been given
+rather to the matter and the arrangement than to
+the diction, which had rarely any ornament or
+literary finish. Of late years he spoke infrequently,
+whether from indolence or from weak
+health, or because he thought little was to be
+done in the face of a hostile majority, now that
+the tactics of obstruction had been abandoned.
+When he interposed without preparation in a
+debate which had arisen unexpectedly, he was
+short, pithy, and direct; indeed, nothing was
+more characteristic of Parnell than his talent
+for hitting the nail on the head, a talent which
+always commands attention in deliberative assemblies.
+No one saw more clearly or conveyed in
+terser language the course which the circumstances
+of the moment required; and as his mastery of
+parliamentary procedure and practice came next
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243' name='page_243'></a>243</span>
+to that of Mr. Gladstone, any advice that he
+gave to the House on a point of order carried
+weight. It would indeed be no exaggeration to
+say that during the sessions of 1889 and 1890
+he was distinctly the second man in the House
+of Commons, surpassed in debating power by
+five or six others, but inferior to Mr. Gladstone
+alone in the interest which his speeches excited
+and in the impression they produced. Along
+with this access of influence his attitude and the
+spirit of his policy appeared to rise and widen.
+There was less of that hard attorneyism which
+had marked his criticisms of the Tory Government
+and their measures up to March 1880, and of the
+Liberal Government and their measures during
+the five following years. He seemed to grow
+more and more to the full stature of a statesman,
+with constructive views and a willingness to make
+the best of the facts as he found them. Yet even
+in this later and better time one note of greatness
+was absent from his speeches. There was
+nothing genial or generous or elevated about
+them. They never soared into an atmosphere
+of lofty feeling, worthy of the man who was by
+this time deemed to be leading his nation to
+victory, and who had begun to be admired and
+honoured by one of the two great historic English
+parties.</p>
+<p>Parnell was not only versed in the rules of
+parliamentary procedure, but also a consummate
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244' name='page_244'></a>244</span>
+master of parliamentary tactics. Soon after he
+entered the House of Commons he detected its
+weak point, and perfected a system of obstruction
+which so destroyed the efficiency of its time-honoured
+modes of doing business that new sets
+of rules, each more stringent than the preceding,
+had to be devised between 1878 and 1888. The
+skill with which he handled his small but well-disciplined
+battalion was admirable. He was
+strict with individuals, requiring absolute obedience
+to the party rules, but ready to gratify any
+prevailing current of feeling when he saw that
+this could be done without harm to the cause.
+More than once, when English members who
+happened to be acting with him on some particular
+question pressed him to keep his men quiet and
+let a division be taken at once, he answered that
+they were doubtless right in thinking that the
+moment for securing a good division had arrived,
+but that he must not muzzle his followers when
+they wanted to have their fling. The best
+proof of the tact with which he ruled a section
+comprising many men of brilliant talents lies
+in the fact that there was no serious revolt,
+or movement towards revolt, against him until
+the breach of 1890 between himself and the
+Liberal party had led to the belief that his continued
+leadership would mean defeat at the polls
+in Great Britain, and the postponement, perhaps
+for many years, of Home Rule for Ireland.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245' name='page_245'></a>245</span></div>
+<p>Parnell&rsquo;s political views and tendencies were
+eagerly canvassed by those who had studied
+him closely. Many, among both Englishmen
+and Irishmen, held that he was at heart a Conservative,
+valuing strong government and attached
+to the rights of property. They predicted that
+if an Irish Parliament had been established, as
+proposed by Mr. Gladstone in 1886, and an
+Irish cabinet formed to administer the affairs of
+the island, Parnell would have been the inevitable
+and somewhat despotic leader of the
+party of authority and order. His co-operation
+with the agrarian agitators from 1879 onwards
+was in this view merely a politic expedient to
+gain support for the Home Rule campaign. For
+this theory there is much to be said. Though
+he came to lead a revolution, and was willing,
+as appeared in the last few months of his life, to
+appeal to the genuine revolutionary party, Parnell
+was not by temper or conviction a revolutionist.
+Those who were left in Ireland of the old Fenian
+group, and especially that section of the extreme
+Fenians out of which the secret insurrectionary
+and dynamitard societies were formed, never
+liked or trusted him. The passion which originally
+carried him into public life was hatred of
+England, and a wish to restore to Ireland, if
+possible her national independence (though he
+rarely if ever avowed this), or at least her
+own Parliament. But he was no democratic
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246' name='page_246'></a>246</span>
+leveller, and still less inclined to those socialistic
+doctrines which the section influenced by Mr.
+Davitt had espoused. He did not desire the
+&ldquo;extinction of landlordism,&rdquo; and would probably
+have been a restraining and moderating
+force in an Irish legislature. That he was
+genuinely attached to his native country need not
+be doubted. But his patriotism had little of a
+sentimental quality, and seemed to spring as
+much from dislike of England as from love of
+Ireland.</p>
+<p>It may excite surprise that a man such as has
+been sketched, with so cool a judgment and so
+complete a self-control, a man (as his previous
+career had shown) able to endure temporary
+reverses in the confidence of ultimate success,
+should have committed the fatal error, which
+blasted his fame and shortened his life, of clinging
+to the headship of his party when prudence
+prescribed retirement. When he sought
+the advice of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, retirement for
+a time was the counsel he received. His
+absence need not have been of long duration.
+Had he, after the sentence of the Divorce
+Court in November 1890, gone abroad for
+eight or ten months, allowing some one to
+be chosen in his place chairman of the Irish
+party for the session, he might thereafter have
+returned to the House of Commons, and would
+doubtless, after a short lapse of time, have
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247' name='page_247'></a>247</span>
+naturally recovered the leadership. No one else
+could have resisted his claims. Unfortunately,
+the self-reliant pride which had many a time
+stood him in good stead, made him refuse to
+bow to the storm. Probably he could not
+understand the indignation which the proceedings
+in the divorce case had awakened in
+England, being morally somewhat callous, and
+knowing that his offence had been no secret to
+many persons in the House of Commons. He
+had been accustomed to despise English opinion,
+and had on former occasions suffered little
+for doing so. He bitterly resented both Mr.
+Gladstone&rsquo;s letter and the movement to depose
+him which it roused in his own party. Having
+often before found defiant resolution lead to
+success, he determined again to rely on the
+maxim which has beguiled so many to ruin, just
+because it has so much truth in it&mdash;&ldquo;<i>De l&rsquo;audace,
+encore de l&rsquo;audace, toujours de l&rsquo;audace.</i>&rdquo; The
+affront to his pride disturbed the balance of his
+mind, and made him feel as if even a temporary
+humiliation would destroy the prestige that had
+been won by his haughty self-confidence. It
+was soon evident that he had overestimated his
+power in Ireland, but when the schism began
+there were many besides Lord Salisbury&mdash;many
+in Ireland as well as in England&mdash;who predicted
+triumph for him. Nor must it be thought that
+it was pure selfishness which made him resolve
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248' name='page_248'></a>248</span>
+rather to break with the English Liberals than
+allow the Nationalist bark to be steered by any
+hands but his own. He was a fatalist, and had
+that confidence in his star and his mission which
+is often characteristic of minds in which superstition&mdash;for
+he was superstitious&mdash;and a certain
+morbid taint may be discerned. There were
+others who believed that no one but himself could
+hold the Irish party together and carry the Irish
+cause to triumph. No wonder that this belief
+should have filled and perhaps disordered his
+own brain.</p>
+<p>The swiftness of his rise is a striking instance
+of the power which intellectual concentration and a
+strenuous will can exert, for he had no adventitious
+help from wealth or family connection or from
+the reputation of having suffered for his country.
+<i>Ergo vivida vis animi pervicit.</i> When he entered
+Parliament he was only thirty, with no experience
+of affairs and no gift of speech; but the quality
+that was in him of leading and ruling men, of
+taking the initiative, of seeing and striking at the
+weak point of the enemy, and fearlessly facing the
+brunt of an enemy&rsquo;s attack, made itself felt in a
+few months, and he rose without effort to the first
+place. With some intellectual limitations and
+some great faults, he will stand high in the long
+and melancholy series of Irish leaders: less
+lofty than Grattan, less romantic than Wolfe
+Tone, less attractive than O&rsquo;Connell, less brilliant
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249' name='page_249'></a>249</span>
+than any of these three, yet entitled to be
+remembered as one of the most remarkable
+characters that his country has produced in her
+struggle of many centuries against the larger
+isle.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250' name='page_250'></a>250</span>
+<a name='CARDINAL_MANNING' id='CARDINAL_MANNING'></a>
+<h2>CARDINAL MANNING</h2>
+</div>
+<p>Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop of Westminster
+and Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church,
+was born in 1808, eight years after Cardinal
+Newman, and died in 1892. He was one of the
+most notable figures of his generation; and, indeed,
+in a sense, an unique figure, for he contributed
+a new type to the already rich and
+various ecclesiastical life of England. If he
+could scarcely be described as intellectually a man
+of the first order, he held a considerable place
+in the history of his time, having effected what
+greater men might perhaps have failed to effect,
+for the race is not always to the swift, and time
+and chance favoured Manning.</p>
+<p>He was the son of wealthy parents, his father
+a City of London merchant; was educated at
+Harrow and at Oxford, where he obtained high
+classical honours and a Fellowship at Merton
+College; was ordained a clergyman, and soon rose
+to be Archdeacon of Chichester; and, having by
+degrees been led further and further from his
+original Low Church position into the Tractarian
+movement, ultimately, at the age of forty-three,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251' name='page_251'></a>251</span>
+went over to the Church of Rome. Having
+some time before lost his wife, he was at once
+re-ordained a priest, was appointed Archbishop
+of Westminster on Cardinal Wiseman&rsquo;s death in
+1865, and raised to the Cardinalate by Pope
+Pius IX. in 1875.</p>
+<p>He was not a great thinker nor a man of
+wide learning. His writings show no trace of
+originality, nor indeed any conspicuous philosophical
+acuteness or logical power. So far as
+purely intellectual gifts are concerned, he was
+not to be named with Cardinal Newman or with
+several other of the ablest members of the
+English Tractarian party, such as were the two
+metaphysicians W. G. Ward and Dalgairns, both
+of whom passed over to Rome, or such as was
+Dean Church, an accomplished historian, and a
+man of singularly beautiful character, who remained
+an Anglican till his death in 1890. Nor,
+though he had won a high reputation at his
+University, was Manning a leading spirit in the
+famous &ldquo;Oxford Movement.&rdquo; It was by his winning
+manners, his graceful rhetoric, and his zealous
+discharge of clerical duties, rather than by any
+commanding talents that he rose to eminence in
+the Church of England. Neither had his character
+the same power either to attract or to awe as that
+of Newman. Nobody in those days called him
+great, as men called Newman. Nobody felt
+compelled to follow where he led. There was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252' name='page_252'></a>252</span>
+not, either in his sermons or in his writings, or
+in his bodily presence and conversation, anything
+which could be pronounced majestic, or
+lofty, or profound. In short, he was not in the
+grand style, either as a man or as a preacher, and
+wanted that note of ethereal purity or passionate
+fervour which marks the two highest forms of
+religious character.</p>
+<p>Intelligent, however, skilful, versatile he was
+in the highest degree; cultivated, too, with a
+knowledge of all that a highly educated man
+ought to know; dexterous rather than forcible
+in theological controversy; an admirable rhetorician,
+handling language with something of that
+kind of art which Roman ecclesiastics most
+cultivate, and in their possession of which the
+leading Tractarians showed their affinity to
+Rome, an exact precision of phrase and a subtle
+delicacy of suggestion. Newman had it in the
+fullest measure. Dean Church had it, with less
+brilliance than Newman, but with no less grace and
+dignity. Manning equalled neither of these, but
+we catch in him the echo. He wrote abundantly
+and on many subjects, always with cleverness
+and with the air of one who claimed to belong
+to the <i>&acirc;mes d&rsquo;&eacute;lite</i>, yet his style never attained
+the higher kind of literary merit. There was no
+imaginative richness about it, neither were there
+the weight and penetration that come from sustained
+and vigorous thinking. Similarly, with a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253' name='page_253'></a>253</span>
+certain parade of references to history and to
+out-of-the-way writers, he gave scant evidence of
+solid learning. He was an accomplished disputant
+in the sense of knowing thoroughly the more
+obvious weaknesses of the Protestant (and especially
+of the Anglican) position, and of being able
+to contrast them effectively with the external
+completeness and formal symmetry of the Roman
+system. But he never struck out a new or
+illuminative thought; and he seldom ventured
+to face&mdash;one could indeed sometimes mark him
+seeking to elude&mdash;a real difficulty.</p>
+<p>What, then, was the secret of his great and
+long-sustained reputation and influence? It lay
+in his power of dealing with men. For the work
+of an ecclesiastical ruler he had three inestimable
+gifts&mdash;a resolute will, captivating manners, and a
+tact equally acute and vigilant, by which he
+seemed not only to read men&rsquo;s characters, but to
+discern the most effective means of playing on
+their motives. To call him an intriguer would be
+unjust, because the word, if it does not imply the
+pursuit of some mean or selfish object, does
+generally connote a resort to unworthy arts; and
+the Cardinal was neither dishonourable nor selfish.
+But he had the talents which an intriguer needs,
+though he used them in a spirit of absolute
+devotion to the interests of his Church, and though
+he was too much of a gentleman to think that
+the interests of the Church, which might justify
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254' name='page_254'></a>254</span>
+a good deal, could be made to justify any and
+every means. In conversation he had the art
+of seeming to lay his mind alongside of yours,
+wishful to know what you had to say, and
+prepared to listen respectfully to it, even though
+you might be much younger and of no personal
+consequence. Yet you sometimes felt, if your
+own power of observation had not been lulled to
+sleep by the winning manner, that he was watching
+you, and watching, in conformity to a settled
+habit, the effect upon you of whatever he said. It
+was hard not to be flattered by this air of kindly
+deference, and natural to admire the great man
+who condescended without condescension, even
+though one might be secretly disappointed at the
+want of freshness and insight in his conversation.
+Like his famous contemporary, Bishop
+Samuel Wilberforce, Manning was all things to
+all men. He was possessed, no doubt, of far
+less wit and far less natural eloquence than that
+brilliant but variable creature. But he gave
+a more distinct impression of earnest and unquestioning
+loyalty to the cause he had made his
+own.</p>
+<p>In the government of his diocese, Manning
+showed himself a finished ruler and manager of
+men, flexible in his power of adapting himself to
+any character or society, yet inflexible when firmness
+was needed, usually tactful if not always
+gentle in his methods, but tenacious in his purposes,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255' name='page_255'></a>255</span>
+demanding rightfully from others the
+simplicity of life and the untiring industry
+of which he set an example himself. Over
+women his influence was still greater than over
+men, because women are more susceptible to
+the charm of presence and address; nor could
+any other ecclesiastic count so many conversions
+among ladies of high station, his dignified carriage
+and ascetic face according admirably with
+his sacerdotal rank and his life of strict observance.
+For some years it was his habit to go to
+Rome early in Lent and remain till after Easter.
+Promising subjects, who had doubts as to their
+probabilities of salvation in the Anglican communion,
+used to be invited to dinner to meet
+him, and they fell in swift succession before his
+skilful presentation of the peace and bliss to be
+found within the Roman fold.</p>
+<p>In his public appearances, it was neither
+the solid substance of his discourses nor the
+literary quality of their style that struck one, but
+their judicious adaptation to the audience, and
+the grace with which they were delivered. For
+this reason&mdash;originality being rarer and therefore
+more precious in the pulpit, where well-worn
+themes have to be handled, than on a platform,
+where the topic is one of the moment&mdash;his
+addresses at public meetings were better than his
+sermons, and won for him the reputation of a
+speaker whom it was well worth while to secure
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256' name='page_256'></a>256</span>
+at any social or philanthropic gathering. At the
+Vatican &OElig;cumenical Council of 1870 it was less
+by his speeches than by his work in private among
+the assembled prelates that he served the Infallibilist
+cause. Himself devoted, and, no doubt,
+honestly devoted, to Ultramontane principles, he
+did not hesitate to do violence to history and join
+in destroying what freedom the Church at large
+had retained, in order to exalt the Chair of Peter
+to a position unheard of even at Trent, not to say
+in the Middle Ages. His activity, his assiduity,
+and his tireless powers of persuasion contributed
+largely to the satisfaction at that Council
+of the wishes of Pius IX., who presently rewarded
+him with the Cardinalate. But the opponents of
+the new dogma, who were as superior in learning
+to the Infallibilists as they proved inferior in
+numbers, carried back with them to Germany and
+North America an undying distrust of the astute
+Englishman who had shown more than a convert&rsquo;s
+proverbial eagerness for rushing to extremes
+and forcing others to follow. I remember to
+have met some of the anti-Infallibilist prelates
+returning to America in the autumn of 1870;
+and in our many talks on shipboard they spoke of
+the Archbishop in terms no more measured than
+Nestorius may have used of St. Cyril after the
+Council of Ephesus.</p>
+<p>But Manning&rsquo;s powers shone forth most fully
+in the course he gave to his policy as Archbishop
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257' name='page_257'></a>257</span>
+of Westminster and head of the Roman
+hierarchy in Britain. He had two difficulties
+to confront. One was the suspicion of the
+old English Roman Catholic families, who distrusted
+him as a recent recruit from Protestantism,
+a man brought up in ideas unfamiliar to their
+conservative minds. The other was the aversion
+of the ruling classes in England, and indeed of
+Englishmen generally, to the pretensions of Rome
+an aversion which, among the Tories, sprang
+from deep-seated historical associations, and among
+the Whigs drew further strength from dislike to
+the reactionary tendencies of the Popedom on the
+European continent, and especially its resistance
+to the freedom and unity of Italy. In 1850
+the creation by the Pope of a Roman Catholic
+hierarchy in England, followed by Cardinal
+Wiseman&rsquo;s letter dated from the Flaminian Gate,
+had evoked a burst of anti-papal feeling which
+never quite subsided during Wiseman&rsquo;s lifetime.
+Both these enmities Manning overcame. The
+old Catholic families rallied to a prelate who
+supported with dignity and vigour the pretensions
+of their church; while the suspicions of Protestants
+were largely, if not universally, allayed
+when they noted the attitude of a patriotic
+Englishman, zealous for the greatness of his
+country, which the Archbishop assumed, as well
+as the heartiness with which he threw himself
+into moral and philanthropic causes. Loyalty to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258' name='page_258'></a>258</span>
+Rome never betrayed him into any apparent
+disloyalty to England. Too prudent to avow
+sympathy with either political party, he seemed
+less opposed to Liberalism than his predecessor
+had been or than most of the English Catholics
+were. While, of course, at issue with the Liberal
+party upon educational questions, he was believed
+to lean to Home Rule, and maintained good relations
+with the Irish leaders. He joined those
+who worked for the better protection of children
+and the repression of vice, advocated total abstinence
+by precept and example, and did much to
+promote it among the poorer Roman Catholic
+population. Discerning the growing magnitude
+of what are called labour questions, he did not
+recoil from proposals to limit by legislation the
+hours of toil, and gladly exerted himself to settle
+differences between employers and workmen,
+showing his own sympathy with the needs and
+hardships of the latter. Thus he won a popularity
+with the London masses greater than any
+prelate of the Established Church had enjoyed,
+while the middle and upper classes noted with
+pleasure that, however Ultramontane in his
+theology, he always spoke and wrote as an
+Englishman upon non-theological subjects.</p>
+<p>In this there was no playing of a part, for he
+sincerely cared about temperance, the welfare of
+children, the advancement of the labouring class,
+and the greatness of England. But there was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259' name='page_259'></a>259</span>
+also a sage perception of the incidental service
+which his attitude in these matters could render
+to his church; and he relished opportunities of
+proving that a Catholic prelate could be not only
+a philanthropist but also a patriot. He saw the
+value of the attitude, though he used it honestly,
+and if he was not artful, he was full of art.
+Truth, for its own sake, he neither loved nor
+sought, but, having once adopted certain conclusions,
+doctrinal and practical, subordinated everything
+else to them. Power he loved, yet not wholly
+for the pleasure which he found in exerting it, but
+also because he knew that he was fit to use it,
+and could use it, to promote the aims he cherished.
+To his church he was devoted heart and soul; nor
+could any one have better served it so far as
+England was concerned. No one in our time,
+hardly even Cardinal Newman, has done so much
+to sap and remove the old Protestant fears and
+jealousies of Rome, fears and jealousies which
+had descended from days when they were less
+unreasonable than the liberality or indifference
+of our times will allow. Truly the Roman
+Church is a wonderful institution, fertile beyond
+any other, since in each succeeding age she has
+given birth to new types of force suited to the
+conditions she has to deal with. In Manning she
+developed a figure full of a kind of charm and
+strength which could hardly have found due
+scope within a Protestant body: a man who never
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260' name='page_260'></a>260</span>
+obtruded a claim, yet never yielded one; who
+was the loyal servant of a spiritual despotism,
+yet apparently in sympathy with democratic ideas
+and movements; equally welcome among the
+poorest Irish of his diocese and at the gatherings
+of the great; ready to join in every good work
+with those most opposed to his own doctrines,
+yet standing detached as the austere and unbending
+representative of a world-embracing power.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Since these pages were written there has
+appeared a Life of Cardinal Manning which, for
+the variety and interest of its contents, and for the
+flood of light which it throws upon its subject,
+deserves to rank among the best biographies in
+the English language. It reveals the inner life
+of Manning, his high motives and his tortuous
+methods, his piety and his aspirations, his occasional
+lapses from sincerity and rectitude, with a
+fulness to which one can scarcely find a parallel.
+As was remarked by Mr. Gladstone, who was so
+keenly interested in the book that for months he
+could talk of little else, it leaves nothing for the
+Day of Judgment.</p>
+<p>It would be idle to deny that Manning&rsquo;s
+reputation did in some measure suffer. Yet it
+must in fairness be remembered that an ordeal
+such as that to which he has been thus subjected
+is seldom applied, and might, if similarly applied,
+have lowered many another reputation. Cicero
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261' name='page_261'></a>261</span>
+has suffered in like manner. We should have
+thought more highly of him, though I do not
+know that we should have liked him better, if his
+letters had not survived to reveal weaknesses
+which other men, or their biographers, were discreet
+enough to conceal.</p>
+<p>I have not attempted to rewrite the preceding
+pages in the light of Mr. Purcell&rsquo;s biography, for
+to do so would have extended them beyond the
+limits of a sketch. I have, moreover, found that
+the disclosures contained in the biography do not
+oblige me to darken the colours of the sketch
+itself. Taken all in all, these intimate records of
+Manning&rsquo;s life tend to confirm the view that, along
+with his love of power and pre-eminence, along
+with his carelessness about historic truth, along
+with the questionable methods he sometimes
+allowed himself to use, there lay deep in his heart
+a genuine and unfailing sympathy with many
+good causes, such as the cause of temperance,
+and a real tenderness for the poor and for
+children. If he was far removed from a saint,
+still less was he the mere worldly ecclesiastic,
+crafty and ambitious, who has in all ages been
+a familiar and unlovely type of character.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262' name='page_262'></a>262</span>
+<a name='EDWARD_AUGUSTUS_FREEMAN37' id='EDWARD_AUGUSTUS_FREEMAN37'></a>
+<h2>EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN<a name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor2">[37]</a></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Edward Freeman was born at Harborne in
+South Staffordshire on 2nd August 1823, and
+died at Alicante on 16th March 1892, in the
+course of an arch&aelig;ological and historical journey
+to the east and south of Spain, whither he had
+gone to see the sites of the early Carthaginian
+settlements. His life was comparatively uneventful,
+as that of learned men in our time
+usually is. He was educated at home and at a
+private school till he went to Oxford at the age
+of eighteen. There he was elected a scholar of
+Trinity College in 1841, took his degree (second
+class in <i>literae humaniores</i>) in 1845, and was
+elected a fellow of Trinity shortly afterwards.
+Marrying in 1847, he lost his fellowship, and
+settled in 1848 in Gloucestershire, and at a later
+time went to live in Monmouthshire, whence
+he migrated in 1860 to Somerleaze, a pretty
+spot about a mile and a half to the north-west
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263' name='page_263'></a>263</span>
+of Wells in Somerset. Here he lived
+till 1884, when he was appointed (on the recommendation
+of Mr. Gladstone) to the Regius
+Professorship of Modern History at Oxford.
+Thenceforth he spent the winter and spring in
+the University, returning for the long vacation
+to Somerleaze, a place he dearly loved, not only
+in respect of the charm of the surrounding
+scenery, but from its proximity to the beautiful
+churches of Wells and to many places of historical
+interest. For the greater part of his manhood
+his surroundings were those of a country gentleman,
+nor did he ever reconcile himself to town
+life, for he loved the open sky, the fields and hills,
+and all wild creatures, though he detested what
+are called field sports, knew nothing of natural
+history, and had neither taste nor talent for
+farming. As he began life with an income sufficient
+to make a gainful profession unnecessary,
+he did not prepare himself for any, but gave free
+scope from the first to his taste for study and
+research. Thus the record of his life is, with the
+exception of one or two incursions into the field
+of practical politics, a record of his historical work
+and of the journeys he undertook in connection
+with it.</p>
+<p>History was the joy as well as the labour of
+his life. But the conception he took of it was
+peculiar enough to deserve some remark. The
+keynote of his character was the extraordinary
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264' name='page_264'></a>264</span>
+warmth of his interest in the persons, things, and
+places which he cared for, and the scarcely less
+conspicuous indifference to matters which lay
+outside the well-defined boundary line of his sympathies.
+If any branch of inquiry seemed to him
+directly connected with history, he threw himself
+heartily into it, and drew from it all it could be
+made to yield for his purpose. About other subjects
+he would neither read nor talk, no matter
+how completely they might for the time be filling
+the minds of others. While an undergraduate,
+and influenced, like most of the abler men among
+his Oxford contemporaries, by the Tractarian
+opinions and sentiments then in their full force
+and freshness,<a name='FNanchor_0031' id='FNanchor_0031'></a><a href='#Footnote_0031' class='fnanchor'>[38]</a> he became interested in church
+architecture, discerned the value which architecture
+has as a handmaid to historical research, set
+to work to study medi&aelig;val buildings, and soon
+acquired a wonderfully full and exact knowledge
+of the most remarkable churches and castles all
+over England. He taught himself to sketch, not
+artistically, but sufficiently well to record characteristic
+points, and by the end of his life he had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265' name='page_265'></a>265</span>
+accumulated a collection of hundreds of drawings
+made by himself of notable buildings in France,
+Germany, Italy, and Dalmatia, as well as in the
+British Isles. Architecture was always thenceforward
+to him the prime external record and
+interpreter of history. But it was the only art in
+which he took the slightest interest. He cared
+nothing for pictures or statuary; was believed
+to have once only, when his friend J. R. Green
+dragged him thither, visited a picture-gallery in
+the course of his numerous journeys; and did not
+seem to perceive the significance which paintings
+have as revealing the thoughts and social condition
+of the time which produced them. Another
+branch of inquiry cognate to history which he
+prized was comparative philology. With no
+great turn for the refinements of classical
+scholarship, and indeed with some contempt for
+the practice of Latin and Greek verse-making
+which used to absorb much of the time and
+labour of undergraduates and their tutors at
+Oxford and Cambridge, he was extremely fond
+of tracing words through different languages so
+as to establish the relations of the peoples who
+spoke them, and, indeed, used to argue that all
+teaching of languages ought to begin with
+Grimm&rsquo;s law, and to base his advocacy of the
+retention of Greek as a <i>sine qua non</i> for an Arts
+degree in the University on the importance of
+that law. But with this love for philology as an
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266' name='page_266'></a>266</span>
+instrument in the historian&rsquo;s hands, he took little
+pleasure in languages simply as languages&mdash;that
+is to say, he did not care to master, and was not
+apt at mastering, the grammar and idioms of a
+tongue. French was the only foreign language
+he spoke with any approach to ease, though he
+could read freely German, Italian, and modern
+Greek, and on his tour in Greece made some
+vigorous speeches to the people in their own
+tongue. He had learnt to pronounce Greek in the
+modern fashion, which few Englishmen can do;
+but how much of his classically phrased discourses
+did the crowds that acclaimed the distinguished
+Philhellene understand? So too he was a keen
+and well-trained arch&aelig;ologist, but only because
+arch&aelig;ology was to him a priceless adjunct&mdash;one
+might almost say the most trustworthy source&mdash;of
+the study of early history. As evidence of
+his accomplishments as an antiquary I cannot do
+better than quote the words of a master of that
+subject, who was also one of his oldest friends.
+Mr. George T. Clark says:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p>He was an accurate observer, not only of the broad
+features of a country but of its ancient roads and earthworks,
+its prehistoric monuments, and its earlier and especially its
+ecclesiastical buildings. No man was better versed in the
+distinctive styles of Christian architecture, or had a better
+general knowledge of the earthworks from the study of which
+he might hope to correct or corroborate any written records,
+and by the aid of which he often infused life and reality into
+otherwise obscure narrations.... He visited every spot upon
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267' name='page_267'></a>267</span>
+which the Conqueror is recorded to have set his foot, compared
+many of the strongholds of his followers with those
+they left behind them in Normandy, and studied the evidence
+of Domesday for their character and possessions. When
+writing upon Rufus he spent some time in examining the
+afforested district of the New Forest, and sought for traces of
+the villages and churches said to have been depopulated or
+destroyed. And for us arch&aelig;ologists he did more than this.
+When he attended a provincial congress and had listened to
+the description of some local antiquity, some mound, or
+divisional earthbank, or semi-Saxon church, he at once strove
+to show the general evidence to be deduced from them, and
+how it bore upon the boundaries or formation of some Celtic
+or Saxon province or diocese, if not upon the general history
+of the kingdom itself.... He thus did much to elevate the
+pursuits of the arch&aelig;ologist, and to show the relation they
+bore to the far superior labours of the historian.</p>
+<p>Freeman was always at his best when in the field. It was
+then that the full force of his personality came into play: his
+sturdy upright figure, sharp-cut features, flowing beard, well-modulated
+voice, clear enunciation, and fluent and incisive
+speech. None who have heard him hold forth from the steps
+of some churchyard cross, or from the top stone of some half-demolished
+cromlech, can ever cease to have a vivid recollection
+of both the orator and his theme.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Freeman took endless pains to master the topography
+of any place he had to deal with. When
+at work in his later years on Sicilian history he
+visited, and he has minutely described, the site of
+nearly every spot in that island where a battle
+or a siege took place in ancient times, so that
+his volumes have become an elaborate historical
+guide-book for the student or tourist.</p>
+<p>But while he thus delighted in whatever bore
+upon history as he conceived it, his conception
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268' name='page_268'></a>268</span>
+was one which belonged to the eighteenth century
+rather than to our own time. It was to him not
+only primarily but almost exclusively a record
+of political events&mdash;that is to say, of events in
+the sphere of war, diplomacy, and government.
+He expressed this view with concise vigour in
+the well-known dictum, &ldquo;History is past politics,
+and politics is present history&rdquo;; and though his
+friends remonstrated with him against this view
+as far too narrow, excluding from the sphere
+of history many of its deepest sources of interest,
+he would never give way. That historians
+should care as much (or more) for the
+religious or philosophical opinions of an age, or
+for its ethical and social phenomena, or for the
+study of its economic conditions, as for forms
+of government or battles and sieges, seemed to
+him strange. He did not argue against the
+friends who differed from him, for he was ready
+to believe that there must be something true and
+valuable in the views of a man whom he respected;
+but he could not be induced to devote
+his own labours to the elucidation of these
+matters. He would say to Green, &ldquo;You may
+bring in all that social and religious kind of
+thing, Johnny, but I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo; So when he went
+to deliver lectures in the United States, he delighted
+in making new acquaintances there, and
+was interested in the Federal system and in all
+institutions which he could trace to their English
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269' name='page_269'></a>269</span>
+originals, but did not care to see anything or
+hear anything about the economic development
+or social life of the country.</p>
+<p>The same predominant liking for the political
+element in history made him indifferent to many
+kinds of literature. It may indeed be said that
+literature, simply as literature, did not attract
+him. In his later years, at any rate, he seldom
+read a book except for the sake of the political or
+historical information it contained. Among the
+writers whom he most disliked were Plato, Carlyle,
+and Ruskin, in no one of whom could he see
+any merit. Plato, he said, was the only author
+he had ever thrown to the other end of the room.
+Neither, although very fond of the Greek and
+Roman classics generally, did he seem to enjoy
+any of the Greek poets except Homer and Pindar
+and, to some extent, Aristophanes. His liking
+for Pindar used to surprise us, because Pindar is
+peculiarly the favourite poet of poetical minds;
+and I suspect it was not so much the splendour of
+Pindar&rsquo;s style and the wealth of his imagination
+that Freeman enjoyed, as rather the profusion of
+historical and mythological references. He was
+impatient with the Greek tragedians, and still
+more impatient with Virgil, because (as he said)
+&ldquo;Virgil cannot or will not say a thing simply.&rdquo;
+Among English poets his preference was for
+the old heroic ballads, such as the songs of
+Brunanburh and Maldon, and, among recent
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270' name='page_270'></a>270</span>
+writers, for Macaulay&rsquo;s <i>Lays</i>. The first thing
+he ever published (1850) was a volume of verse,
+consisting mainly of ballads, some of them very
+spirited, on events in Greek and Moorish history.
+It may be doubted if he remembered a line of
+Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, or Tennyson. He
+blamed Walter Scott for misrepresenting history
+in <i>Ivanhoe</i>, but constantly read the rest of his
+stories, taking special pleasure in <i>Peveril of the
+Peak</i>. He bestowed warm praise upon <i>Romola</i>,
+on one occasion reading it through twice in a
+single journey. Mrs. Gaskell&rsquo;s <i>Mary Barton</i>,
+Marryatt&rsquo;s <i>Peter Simple</i>, Trollope&rsquo;s <i>The Warden</i>
+and <i>Barchester Towers</i>, were amongst his
+favourites. Among the moderns, Macaulay was
+his favourite prose author, and he was wont to
+say that from Macaulay he had learned never
+to be afraid of using the same word to describe
+the same thing, and that no one was a better
+model to follow in the choice of pure English.
+Limitations of taste are not uncommon among
+eminent men. What was uncommon in Freeman
+was the perfect frankness with which he
+avowed his aversions, and the absence of any
+pretence of caring for things which he did not
+really care for. He was in this, as in all other
+matters, a singularly simple and truthful man,
+never seeking to appear different from what he
+was, and finding it hard to understand why other
+people should not be equally simple and direct.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271' name='page_271'></a>271</span>
+This directness made him express himself with
+an absence of reserve which often gave offence.
+Positive and definite, with a strong broad logic
+which every one could follow, he was a formidable
+controversialist even on subjects outside
+history. A good specimen of his powers was
+given in the argument against the cruelty of
+field sports which he carried on with Anthony
+Trollope. His cause was not a popular one in
+England, but he stated it so well as to carry off
+the honours of the fray.<a name='FNanchor_0032' id='FNanchor_0032'></a><a href='#Footnote_0032' class='fnanchor'>[39]</a></p>
+<p>The restriction of his interest to a few topics&mdash;wide
+ones, to be sure&mdash;seemed to increase the
+intensity of his devotion to those few; and thus
+even the two chief practical interests he had in
+life connected themselves with his conception of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272' name='page_272'></a>272</span>
+history. One was the discharge of his duties as
+a magistrate in the local government of his county.
+While he lived at Somerleaze he rarely missed
+Quarter Sessions, speaking seldom, but valuing
+the opportunity of taking part in the rule of the
+shire. The other was the politics of the time,
+foreign politics even more than domestic. He
+was from an early age a strong Liberal, throwing
+himself into every question which bore on
+the Constitution, either in state or in church, for
+(as has been said) topics of the social or economic
+kind lay rather out of his sphere. When Mr.
+Gladstone launched his Irish Home Rule scheme
+in 1886, Freeman espoused it warmly, and praised
+it for the very point which drew most censure
+even from Liberals, the removal of the Irish
+members from Parliament. He was intensely
+English and Teutonic, and wished the Gael to
+be left to settle, or fight over, their own affairs in
+their own island, as they had done eight centuries
+ago. Even the idea of separating Ireland altogether
+from the English Crown would not have
+alarmed him, for he did not thank Strongbow
+and Henry II. for having invaded it; while, on
+the other hand, the plan of turning the United
+Kingdom into a federation, giving to England,
+Scotland, Ireland, and Wales each a local parliament
+of its own, with an imperial parliament
+for common concerns, shocked all his historical
+instincts.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273' name='page_273'></a>273</span></div>
+<p>In 1859 he was on the point of coming
+forward as a parliamentary candidate for the
+borough of Newport in Monmouthshire, and
+again at the election of 1868 he actually did
+stand for one of the divisions of Somerset, and
+showed in his platform speeches a remarkable gift
+of eloquence, and occasionally, also, of humour,
+coupled with a want of those minor arts which
+usually contribute more than eloquence does to
+success in electioneering. I went round with
+him, along with his and my friend Mr. Albert
+Dicey, and few are the candidates who get so
+much pleasure out of a contest as Freeman did.
+He was a strenuous advocate of disestablishment
+in Ireland, the question chiefly at issue in the
+election of 1868, because he thought the Roman
+Catholic Church was of right, and ought by law
+to be, the national Church there; but no less
+decidedly opposed to disestablishment in England,
+where it would have pained him to see the uprooting
+of a system entwined with the ideas and
+events of the Middle Ages. In his later years
+he told me that if the Liberal party took up the
+policy of disestablishment in Wales, he did not
+know whether he could adhere to them, much as
+he desired to do so.</p>
+<p>Similarly he disliked all schemes for drawing
+the colonies into closer relations with the United
+Kingdom, and even seemed to wish that they
+should sever themselves from it, as the United
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274' name='page_274'></a>274</span>
+States had done. This view sprang partly from
+his feeling that they were very recent acquisitions,
+with which the old historic England had nothing
+to do, partly also from the impression made
+on him by the analogy of the Greek colonies.
+He held that the precedent of the Greek
+settlements showed the true and proper relation
+between a &ldquo;metropolis,&rdquo; or mother-city, and her
+colonies to be one not of political dependence or
+interdependence, but of cordial friendliness and a
+disposition to render help, nothing more. These
+instances are worth citing because they illustrate
+a remarkable difference between his way of looking
+historically at institutions and Macaulay&rsquo;s way.
+A friend of his (the late Mr. S. R. Gardiner),
+like Freeman a distinguished historian, and like
+him a strong Home Ruler, wrote to me upon this
+point as follows:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p>Freeman and Macaulay are alike in the high value they
+set upon parliamentary institutions. On the other hand, when
+Macaulay wants to make you understand a thing, he compares
+it with that which existed in his own day. The standard
+of the present is always with him. Freeman traces it to
+its origin, and testifies to its growth. The strength of this
+mode of proceeding in an historian is obvious. Its weakness
+is that it does not help him to appreciate statesmanship
+looking forward and trying to find a solution of difficult
+problems. Freeman&rsquo;s attitude is that of the people who
+cried out for the good laws of King Edward, trying to revive
+the past.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Freeman was apt to go beyond his own
+dictum about history and politics, for he sometimes
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275' name='page_275'></a>275</span>
+made history present politics as well as
+past.</p>
+<p>By far the strongest political interest&mdash;indeed
+it rose to a passion&mdash;of his later years was his
+hatred of the Turk. In it his historical and
+religious sentiment, for there was a good deal
+of the Crusader about him, was blended with
+his abhorrence of despotism and cruelty. Ever
+since the beginning of the Crimean war he had
+been opposed to the traditional English policy of
+supporting the Sultan. Ever since he had thought
+about foreign politics at all he had sympathised
+with the Christians of the East. So when Lord
+Beaconsfield seemed on the point of carrying the
+country into a war with Russia in defence of the
+Turks, no voice rose louder or bolder than his in
+denouncing the policy then popular with the
+upper classes in England. On this occasion he
+gave substantial proof of his earnestness by
+breaking off his connection with the <i>Saturday
+Review</i> because it had espoused the Turkish
+cause. This cost him &pound;600 a year, a sum
+he could ill spare, and took from him what had
+been the joy of his heart, opportunities of delivering
+himself upon all sorts of current questions.
+But his sense of duty forbade him to write for a
+journal which was supporting a misguided policy
+and a minister whom he thought unscrupulous.</p>
+<p>His habit of speaking out his whole mind
+with little regard to the effect his words might
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276' name='page_276'></a>276</span>
+produce, or to the way in which they might
+be twisted, sometimes landed him in difficulties.
+One utterance raised an outcry at the time, because
+it was made at a conference held in London
+in December 1876 to oppose Lord Beaconsfield&rsquo;s
+Eastern policy. The Duke of Westminster and
+Lord Shaftesbury presided at the forenoon and
+afternoon sessions, and the meeting, which told
+powerfully on the country, was wound up by Mr.
+Gladstone. Freeman&rsquo;s speech, only ten minutes
+long, but an oratorical success at the moment, contained
+the words, &ldquo;Perish the interests of England,
+perish our dominion in India, rather than that we
+should strike one blow or speak one word on behalf
+of the wrong against the right.&rdquo; This flight
+of rhetoric was perverted by his opponents into
+&ldquo;Perish India&rdquo;; and though he indignantly
+repudiated the misrepresentation, it continued to
+be repeated against him for years thereafter, and
+to be cited as an instance of the irresponsible
+violence of the friends of the Eastern Christians.</p>
+<p>The most conspicuous and characteristic merits
+of Freeman as an historian may be summed up
+in six points: love of truth, love of justice, industry,
+common sense, breadth of view, and
+power of vividly realising the political life of the
+past.</p>
+<p>Every one knows the maxim, <i>pectus facit
+theologum</i>,<a name='FNanchor_0033' id='FNanchor_0033'></a><a href='#Footnote_0033' class='fnanchor'>[40]</a> a maxim accountable, by the way,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277' name='page_277'></a>277</span>
+for a good deal of weak theology. More truly
+may it be said that the merits of a great historian
+are far from lying wholly in his intellectual
+powers. Among the highest of such merits,
+merits which the professional student has even
+more reason to appreciate than the general reader,
+because he more frequently discerns the disturbing
+causes, are two moral qualities. One is the zeal
+for truth, with the willingness to undertake, in a
+search for it, a toil by which no credit will ever
+be gained. The other is a clear view of, and
+loyal adherence to, the permanent moral standards.
+In both these points Freeman stood in the front
+rank. He was kindly and fair in his judgments,
+and ready to make all the allowances for any
+man&rsquo;s conduct which the conditions of his time
+suggested, but he hated cruelty, falsehood, oppression,
+whether in Syracuse twenty-four centuries
+ago or in the Ottoman empire to-day. That
+conscientious industry which spares no pains to
+get as near as possible to the facts never failed
+him. Though he talked less about facts and
+verities than Carlyle did, Carlyle was not so
+assiduous and so minutely careful in sifting every
+statement before he admitted it into his pages.
+That he was never betrayed by sentiment into
+partisanship it would be too much to say.
+Scottish critics have accused him, perhaps not
+without justice, of being led by his English
+patriotism to over-state the claims of the English
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278' name='page_278'></a>278</span>
+Crown to suzerainty over Scotland. J. R. Green,
+as well as the late Mr. C. H. Pearson, thought
+that the same cause disposed him to overlook
+the weak points in the character of Harold son
+of Godwin, one of his favourite heroes. But
+there have been few writers who have so seldom
+erred in this way; few who have striven so
+earnestly to do full justice to every cause and
+every person. Even the race prejudices which
+he allowed himself to indulge, in letters and talk,
+against Irishmen, Frenchmen, and Jews, scarcely
+ever appear in his books. The characters he
+has drawn of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, William
+the Conqueror and William the Red, St. Thomas
+of Canterbury (none of whom he liked), and, in
+his <i>History of Sicily</i>, of Nicias, are models of the
+fairness which historical portraiture requires. It
+is especially interesting to compare his picture
+of the unfortunate Athenian with the equally
+vigorous but harsher view of Grote. Freeman,
+whom many people thought fierce, was one of
+the most soft-hearted of men, and tolerant of
+everything but perfidy and cruelty. Though
+disposed to be positive in his opinions, he was
+always willing to reconsider a point when any
+new evidence was discovered or any new argument
+brought to his notice, and not unfrequently
+modified his view in the light of such evidence
+or arguments. It was this passion for accuracy
+and for that lucidity of statement which is the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279' name='page_279'></a>279</span>
+necessary adjunct of real accuracy, that made him
+deal so sternly with confused thinkers and careless
+writers. Carelessness seemed to him a moral
+fault, because a fault which true conscientiousness
+excludes. So also clearness of conception and
+exact precision in the use of words were so
+natural to him, and appeared so essential to good
+work, that he would set down the want of them
+rather to indolence than to incapacity, and apply
+to them a proportionately severe censure. Mere
+ignorance he could pardon, but when it was, as
+often happens, even in persons of considerable
+pretensions, joined to presumption, his wrath was
+the hotter because he deemed it a wholly righteous
+wrath. Never touching any subject which he had
+not mastered, he thought it his duty as a critic to
+expose impostors, and rendered in this way, during
+the years when he wrote for the <i>Saturday Review</i>,
+services to English scholarship second only to
+those which were embodied in his own treatises.
+It must be confessed that he enjoyed the work,
+and, like Samuel Johnson, was not displeased
+to be told that he had &ldquo;tossed and gored several
+persons.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His determination to get to the bottom of a
+question was the cause of the censure he so freely
+bestowed both on lawyers, who were wont to
+rest content with their technicalities, and not go
+back to the historical basis on which those technicalities
+rested, and on politicians who fell into
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280' name='page_280'></a>280</span>
+the habit of using stock phrases which muddled
+or misrepresented the principles involved. The
+expression &ldquo;national property,&rdquo; as applied to
+tithes, incensed him, and gave occasion for some
+of his most vigorous writing. So the commonplace
+grumblings against the presence of bishops
+in the House of Lords, which may be heard from
+people who acquiesce in the presence of hereditary
+peers, led him to give the most clear and forcible
+statement of the origin and character of that House
+which our time has produced. Here he was on
+ground he knew thoroughly. But his habits of
+accuracy were not less fully illustrated by his attitude
+towards branches of history he had not explored.
+With a profound and minute knowledge
+of English history down to the fourteenth century,
+so far as his aversion to the employment of
+manuscript authorities would allow, and a scarcely
+inferior knowledge of foreign European history
+during the same period, with a less full but very
+sound knowledge down to the middle of the
+sixteenth century, and with a thorough mastery
+of pretty nearly all ancient history, his familiarity
+with later European history, and with the history
+of such outlying regions as India or America,
+was not much beyond that of the average educated
+man. He used to say when questioned on these
+matters that &ldquo;he had not come down to that
+yet.&rdquo; But when he had occasion to refer to those
+periods or countries, he hardly ever made a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281' name='page_281'></a>281</span>
+mistake. If he did not know, he did not refer;
+if he referred, he had seized, as if by instinct,
+something which was really important and serviceable
+for his purpose. The same remark applies
+(speaking generally) to Gibbon and to Macaulay,
+and I have heard Freeman make it of the writings
+of Mr. Goldwin Smith, for whom he had a warm
+admiration.</p>
+<p>Freeman&rsquo;s abstention from the use of manuscript
+sources was virtually prescribed by his
+persistence in refusing to work out of his own
+library, or, as he used to say, out of a room
+which he could consider to be his library for the
+time being. As, however, the original authorities
+for the times with which he chiefly dealt
+are, with few or unimportant exceptions, all in
+print, this habit can hardly be considered a
+defect in his historical qualifications. In handling
+the sources he was a judicious critic and a
+sound scholar, thoroughly at home in Greek and
+Latin, and sufficiently equipped in Anglo-Saxon,
+or, as he called it, Old English. Of his breadth
+of view, of the command he had of the whole
+sweep of his knowledge, of his delight in bringing
+together things the most remote in place or time,
+it is superfluous to speak. These merits are
+perhaps most conspicuously seen in the plan of
+his treatise on Federal Government, as well as
+in the execution of that one volume which unfortunately
+was all he produced of what might
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282' name='page_282'></a>282</span>
+have been, if completed, a book of the utmost
+value. But one or two trifling illustrations
+of this habit of living in an atmosphere in
+which the past was no less real to him than
+the present may be forgiven. When careless
+friends directed letters to him at &ldquo;Somerleaze,
+Wookey, Somerset,&rdquo; Wookey being a village a
+quarter of a mile from his house, but on the other
+side of the river Axe, he would write back complaining
+that they were &ldquo;confusing the England
+and Wales of the seventh century.&rdquo; When his
+attention had been called to a discussion in the
+weekly journals about Shelley&rsquo;s first wife he wrote
+to me, &ldquo;Why will they worry us with this
+<i>Harrietfrage</i>? You and I have quite enough
+to do with Helen, and Theodora, and Mary
+Stuart.&rdquo; So in addressing Somersetshire rustics
+during his election campaign in 1868, he could
+not help on one occasion referring to Ptolemy
+Euergetes, and on another launching out into an
+eloquent description of the Landesgemeinde of
+Uri.</p>
+<p>Industry came naturally to Freeman, because
+he was fond of his own studies and did not
+think of his work as task work. The joy in
+reading and writing about bygone times sprang
+from the intensity with which he realised them.
+He had no geographical imagination, finding
+no more pleasure in books of travel than in
+dramatic poetry. But he loved to dwell in the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283' name='page_283'></a>283</span>
+past, and seemed to see and feel and make himself
+a part of the events he described. Next
+to their worth as statements of carefully investigated
+facts, the chief merit of his books lies in
+the sense of reality which fills them. The politics
+of Corinth or Sicyon, the contest of William the
+Red with St. Anselm, interested him as keenly
+as a general election in which he was himself
+a candidate. Looking upon current events with
+an historian&rsquo;s eye, he was fond, on the other
+hand, of illustrating features of Roman history
+from incidents he had witnessed when taking part
+in local government as a magistrate; and in
+describing the relations of Hermocrates and
+Athenagoras at Syracuse he drew upon observations
+which he had made in watching the discussions
+of the Hebdomadal Council at Oxford.
+This power of realising the politics of ancient
+or medi&aelig;val times was especially useful to him
+as a writer, because without it his minuteness
+might have verged on prolixity, seeing that he
+cared exclusively for the political part of history.
+It was one of the points in which he rose superior
+to most of those German students with whom it
+is natural to compare him. Many of them have
+equalled him in industry and diligence; some have
+surpassed him in the ingenuity which they bring
+to bear upon obscure problems; but few of them
+have shown the same gift for understanding
+what the political life of remote times really was.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284' name='page_284'></a>284</span>
+Like Gibbon, Freeman was not a mere student,
+but also a man with opportunities of mixing in
+affairs, accustomed to bear his share in the world&rsquo;s
+work, and so better able than the mere student
+can be to comprehend how that work goes forward.
+Though he was too peculiar in his views and his
+way of stating them to have been adapted either
+to the House of Commons or to a local assembly,
+and would indeed have been wasted upon nineteen-twentieths
+of the business there transacted,
+he loved politics and watched them with a
+shrewdly observant eye. Though he indulged
+his foibles in some directions, he could turn upon
+history a stream of clear common sense which
+sometimes made short work of German conjectures.
+And he was free from the craving to
+have at all hazards something new to advance,
+be it a trivial fact or an unsupported guess. He
+was accustomed of late years to complain that
+German scholarship seemed to be suffering from
+the passion for <i>etwas Neues</i>, and the consequent
+disposition to disparage work which did not
+abound with novelties, however empty or transient
+such novelties might be.</p>
+<p>To think of the Germans is to think of
+industry. Freeman was a true Teuton in the
+mass of his production. Besides the seven thick
+volumes devoted to the Norman Conquest and
+William Rufus, the four thick volumes to Sicily,
+four large volumes of collected essays, and nine or
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285' name='page_285'></a>285</span>
+ten smaller volumes on architectural subjects, on
+the English constitution, on the United States,
+on the Slavs and the Turks, he wrote an even
+greater quantity of matter which appeared in the
+<i>Saturday Review</i> during the twenty years from
+1856 to 1876, and it was by these articles, not
+less than by his books, that he succeeded in
+dispelling many current errors and confusions,
+and in establishing some of his own doctrines
+so firmly that we now scarcely remember what
+iteration and reiteration, in season and out of
+season, and much to the impatience of those
+who remembered that they had heard these
+doctrines often before, were needed to make them
+accepted by the public. Freeman&rsquo;s swift facility
+was due to his power of concentration. He
+always knew what he meant an article to contain
+before he sat down to his desk; and in his
+historical researches he made each step so certain
+that he seldom required to reinvestigate a point
+or to change, in revising for the press, the substance
+of what he had written.</p>
+<p>In his literary habits he was so methodical
+and precise that he could carry on three undertakings
+at the same time, keeping on different
+tables in his working rooms the books he needed
+for each, and passing at stated hours from one
+to the other. It is often remarked that the
+growth of journalism, forcing men to write
+hastily and profusely, tends to injure literature
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286' name='page_286'></a>286</span>
+both in matter and in manner. In point of
+matter, Freeman, though for the best part of
+his life a very prolific journalist, did not seem
+to suffer. He was as exact, clear, and thorough
+at the end as he had been at the beginning.
+On his style, however, the results were unfortunate.
+It retained its force and its point,
+but it became diffuse, not that each particular
+sentence was weak, or vague, or wordy, but that
+what was substantially the same idea was
+apt to be reiterated, with slight differences of
+phrase, in several successive sentences or paragraphs.
+He was fond of the Psalter, great part
+of which he knew by heart, and we told him
+that he had caught too much of the manner of
+Psalm cxix. This tendency to repetition caused
+some of his books, and particularly the <i>Norman
+Conquest</i> and <i>William Rufus</i>, to swell to a portentous
+bulk. Those treatises, which constitute
+a history of England from <span class='smcaplc'>A.D.</span> 1042 to 1100,
+would be more widely read if they had been,
+as they ought to have been, reduced to three or
+four volumes; and as he came to perceive this,
+he resolved in the last year of his life to
+republish the <i>Norman Conquest</i> in a condensed
+form. To be obliged to compress was a wholesome,
+though unwelcome, discipline, and the
+result is seen in some of his smaller books, such
+as the historical essays, and the sketches of
+English towns, often wonderfully fresh and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287' name='page_287'></a>287</span>
+vigorous bits of work. Anxiety to be scrupulously
+accurate runs into prolixity, and Freeman
+so loved his subjects that it pained him
+to omit any characteristic detail a chronicler
+had preserved; as he once observed to a distinguished
+writer who was dealing with a much
+later period, &ldquo;You know so much about your
+people that you have to leave out a great deal,
+I know so little that I must tell all I know.&rdquo;
+The tendency to repeat the same word too frequently
+sprang from his preference for words of
+Teutonic origin and his pride in what he
+deemed the purity of his English. His pages
+would have been livelier had he felt free to
+indulge in the humour with which his private
+letters sparkled; for he was full of fun, though it
+often turned on points too recondite for the public.
+But it was only in the notes to his histories, and
+seldom even there, that he gave play to one of
+the merits that most commended him to his
+friends.</p>
+<p>So far of his books. He was, however, also
+Regius Professor of History at Oxford during
+the last eight years of his life, and thus the head
+of the historical faculty in his own university
+which he dearly loved. That he was less
+effective as a teacher than as a writer may be
+partly ascribed to his having come too late to
+a new kind of work, and one which demands
+the freshness of youth; partly also to the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288' name='page_288'></a>288</span>
+cramping conditions under which professors
+have to teach at Oxford, where everything is
+governed by a system of examinations which
+Freeman was never tired of denouncing as
+ruinous to study. His friends, however, doubted
+whether the natural bent of his mind was
+towards oral teaching. It was a peculiar
+mind, which ran in a deep channel of its
+own, and could not easily, if the metaphor
+be permissible, be drawn off to irrigate the
+adjoining fields. He was always better at
+putting his own views in a clear and telling
+way than at laying his intellect alongside of
+yours, apprehending your point of view, and
+setting himself to meet it. Or, to put the same
+thing differently, you learned more by listening
+to him than by conversing with him. He
+had not the quick intellectual sympathy and
+effusion which feels its way to the heart of an
+audience, and indeed derives inspiration from the
+sight of an audience. In his election meetings
+I noticed that the temper and sentiment of the
+listeners did not in the least affect him; what
+he said was what he himself cared to say, not
+what he felt they would wish to hear. So
+also in his lecturing he pleased himself, and
+chose the topics he liked best rather than those
+which the examination scheme prescribed to the
+students. Perhaps he was right, for he was of those
+whose excellence in performance depends upon
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_289' name='page_289'></a>289</span>
+the enjoyment they find in the exercise of their
+powers. But even on the topics he selected, he
+did not take hold of and guide the mind of the
+students, realising their particular difficulties and
+needs, but simply delivered his own message in
+his own way. Admitting this deficiency, the fact
+remains that he was not only an ornament to the
+University by the example he set of unflagging
+zeal, conscientious industry, loyalty to truth, and
+love of freedom, but also a stimulating influence
+upon those who were occupied with history.
+He delighted to surround himself with the most
+studious of the younger workers, gave them
+abundant encouragement and recognition, and
+never grudged the time to help them by his
+knowledge or his counsel.</p>
+<p>Much the same might be said of his lifelong
+friend and illustrious predecessor in the chair of
+history (Dr. Stubbs), whom Freeman had been
+generously extolling for many years before the
+merits of that admirable scholar became known to
+the public. Stubbs disliked lecturing; and though
+once a year he delivered a &ldquo;public lecture&rdquo; full of
+wisdom, and sometimes full of wit also, he was not
+effective as a teacher, not so effective, for instance,
+as Bishop Creighton, who won his reputation
+at Merton College long before he became Professor
+of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge.
+But Stubbs, by his mere presence in the University,
+and by the inexhaustible kindness with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290' name='page_290'></a>290</span>
+which he answered questions and gave advice,
+rendered great services to the studies of the place.
+It may be doubted whether, when he was raised
+to the episcopal bench, history did not lose more
+than the Church of England gained. Other men
+of far less ability could have discharged five-sixths
+of a bishop&rsquo;s duties equally well, but there was no
+one else in England, if indeed in Europe, capable
+of carrying on his historical researches. So
+Dr. Lightfoot was, as Professor at Cambridge,
+doing work for Christian learning even more
+precious than the work which is still affectionately
+remembered in his diocese of Durham.</p>
+<p>Few men have had a genius for friendship
+equal to Freeman&rsquo;s. The names of those he
+cared for were continually on his lips, and their
+lives in his thoughts; their misfortunes touched
+him like his own; he was always ready to
+defend them, always ready to give any aid they
+needed. No differences of opinion affected his
+regard. Sensitive as he was to criticism, he
+received their censure on any part of his work
+without offence. The need he felt for knowing
+how they fared and for sharing his thoughts with
+them expressed itself in the enormous correspondence,
+not of business, but of pure affection, which
+he kept up with his many friends, and which
+forms, for his letters were so racy that many of
+them were preserved, the fullest record of his
+life.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_291' name='page_291'></a>291</span></div>
+<p>This warmth of feeling deserves to be dwelt
+on, because it explains the tendency to vehemence
+in controversy which brought some enmities
+upon him. There was an odd contrast between
+his fondness for describing wars and battles and
+that extreme aversion to militarism which made
+him appear to dislike the very existence of a
+British army and navy. So his combativeness,
+and the zest with which he bestowed shrewd
+blows on those who encountered him, though
+due to his wholesome scorn for pretenders, and
+his hatred of falsehood and injustice, seemed
+inconsistent with the real kindliness of his nature.
+The kindliness, however, no one who knew him
+could doubt; it showed itself not only in his
+care for dumb creatures and for children, but in
+the depth and tenderness of his affections. Of
+religion he spoke little, and only to his most
+intimate friends. In opinion he had drifted a
+long way from the Anglo-Catholic position of
+his early manhood; but he remained a sincerely
+pious Christian.</p>
+<p>Though his health had been infirm for some
+years before his death, his literary activity did
+not slacken, nor did his powers show signs of
+decline. There is nothing in his writings, nor
+in any writings of our time, more broad, clear,
+and forcible than many chapters of the <i>History
+of Sicily</i>. Much of his work has effected its
+purpose, and will, by degrees, lose its place in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292' name='page_292'></a>292</span>
+the public eye. But much will live on into a
+yet distant future, because it has been done so
+thoroughly, and contains so much sound and
+vigorous thinking, that coming generations of
+historical students will need it and value it almost
+as our own has done.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_293' name='page_293'></a>293</span>
+<a name='ROBERT_LOWE_VISCOUNT_SHERBROOKE41' id='ROBERT_LOWE_VISCOUNT_SHERBROOKE41'></a>
+<h2>ROBERT LOWE VISCOUNT SHERBROOKE<a name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor2">[41]</a></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Had Robert Lowe died in 1868, when he became
+a Cabinet Minister, his death would have been a
+political event of the first magnitude; but when
+he died in 1892 (in his eighty-second year) hardly
+anybody under forty years of age knew who Lord
+Sherbrooke was, and the new generation wondered
+why their seniors should feel any interest in the
+disappearance of a superannuated peer whose
+name had long since ceased to be heard in either
+the literary or the political world. It requires
+an effort to believe that he was at one time held
+the equal in oratory and the superior in intellect
+of Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone. There are few
+instances in our annals of men who have been
+equally famous and whose fame has been bounded
+by so short a span out of a long life.</p>
+<p>No one who knew Lowe ever doubted his
+abilities. He made a brilliant reputation, first at
+Winchester (where, as his autobiography tells us,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_294' name='page_294'></a>294</span>
+he was miserable) and then at Oxford, where he was
+the contemporary and fully the peer of Roundell
+Palmer (afterwards Lord Chancellor Selborne)
+and of Archibald Tait (afterwards Archbishop of
+Canterbury). He was much sought after and
+wonderfully effective as a private tutor or &ldquo;coach&rdquo;
+in classical subjects, being not only an excellent
+scholar but extremely clear and stimulating as a
+teacher. He retained his love of literature all
+through life, and made himself, <i>inter alia permulta</i>,
+a good Icelandic scholar and a fair Sanskrit
+scholar. For mathematics he had no turn at all.
+Active sports, he tells us, he enjoyed, characteristically
+adding, &ldquo;they open to dulness also its road
+to fame.&rdquo; When he left the University, where
+anecdotes of his caustic wit were long current, he
+tried his fortune at the Bar, but with such scant
+success that he presently emigrated to New
+South Wales, soon rose to prominence and unpopularity
+there, returned in ten years with a
+tolerable fortune and a detestation of democracy,
+became a leading-article writer on the <i>Times</i>,
+entered Parliament, but was little heard of till
+Lord Palmerston gave him (in 1859) the place of
+Vice-President of the Committee of Council on
+Education. His function in that office was to
+administer the grants made from the national
+treasury to elementary schools, and as he found
+the methods of inspection rather lax, and noted a
+tendency to superficiality and a neglect of backward
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295' name='page_295'></a>295</span>
+children, he introduced new rules for the
+distribution of the grant (the so-called &ldquo;Revised
+Code&rdquo;) which provoked violent opposition. The
+motive was good, but the rules were too mechanical
+and rigid and often worked harshly; so he
+was presently driven from office by an attack led
+by Lord Robert Cecil (now Lord Salisbury).</p>
+<p>Though Lowe became known by this struggle,
+his conspicuous fame dates from 1865, when he
+appeared as the trenchant critic of a measure for
+extending the parliamentary franchise in boroughs,
+introduced by a private member. Next year
+his powers shone forth in their full lustre. The
+Liberal Ministry of Lord Russell, led in the
+House of Commons by Mr. Gladstone, had
+brought in a Franchise Extension Bill (applying
+to boroughs only) which excited the dislike
+of the more conservative or more timid among
+their supporters. This dislike might not have gone
+beyond many mutterings and a few desertions
+but for the vehemence with which Lowe opposed
+the measure. He fought against it in a series of
+speeches which produced a greater impression in
+the House of Commons, and roused stronger
+feelings of admiration and hostility in the
+country, than any political addresses had done
+since 1832. The new luminary rose so suddenly
+to the zenith, and cast so unexpected a
+light that everybody was dazzled; and though
+many dissented, and some attacked him bitterly,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_296' name='page_296'></a>296</span>
+few ventured to meet him in argument on the
+ground he had selected. The effect of these
+speeches of 1866 can hardly be understood by
+any one who reads them to-day unless he knows
+how commonplace and &ldquo;practical,&rdquo; that is to
+say, averse to general reasonings and historical
+illustrations, the character of parliamentary debating
+was becoming even in Lowe&rsquo;s time. It
+is still more practical and still less ornate in our
+own day.</p>
+<p>The House of Commons then contained,
+and has indeed usually contained (though some
+Houses are much better than others), many capable
+lawyers, capable men of business, capable
+country gentlemen; many men able to express
+themselves with clearness, fluency, and that sort
+of temperate good sense which Englishmen
+especially value. Few, however, were able to
+produce finished rhetoric; still fewer had a range
+of thought and knowledge extending much beyond
+the ordinary education of a gentleman and
+the ordinary ideas of a politician; and the assembly
+was one so intolerant of rhetoric, and so much inclined
+to treat, as unpractical, facts and arguments
+drawn from recondite sources, that even those who
+possessed out-of-the-way learning were disposed,
+and rightly so, to use it sparingly. In Robert
+Lowe, however, a remarkable rhetorical and dialectical
+power was combined with a command
+of branches of historical, literary, and economic
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297' name='page_297'></a>297</span>
+knowledge so unfamiliar to the average member
+as to have for him all the charm of novelty.
+The rhetoric was sometimes too elaborate. The
+political philosophy was not always sound. But
+the rhetoric was so polished that none could fail
+to enjoy it; and the political philosophy was put
+in so terse, bright, and pointed a form that it
+made the ordinary country gentleman fancy himself
+a philosopher while he listened to it in the
+House or repeated it to his friends at the club.
+The speeches, which, though directed against
+a particular measure, constituted an indictment
+of democratic government in general, had the
+advantages of expressing what many felt but
+few had ventured to say, and of being delivered
+from one side of the House and cheered by
+the other side. No position gives a debater in
+the House of Commons such a vantage ground
+for securing attention. Its rarity makes it remarkable.
+If the speaker who attacks his own
+party is supposed to do so from personal motives,
+the personal element gives piquancy. If he may
+be credited with conscientious conviction, his
+shafts strike with added weight, for how strong
+must conviction be when it turns a man against
+his former friends. Accordingly, nothing so
+much annoys a party and gratifies its antagonists
+as when one of its own recalcitrant
+members attacks it in flank. When one looks
+back now at the contents of these speeches&mdash;there
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_298' name='page_298'></a>298</span>
+were only five or six of them&mdash;and finds
+one&rsquo;s self surprised at their success, this favouring
+circumstance and the whole temper of the
+so-called &ldquo;upper classes&rdquo; need to be remembered.
+The bulk of the wealthier commercial
+class and a large section of the landed class had
+theretofore belonged to the Liberal party. Most
+of them, however, were then already beginning
+to pass through what was called Whiggism into
+habits of thought that were practically Tory.
+They did not know how far they had gone till
+Lowe&rsquo;s speeches told them, and they welcomed
+his ideas as justifying their own tendencies.</p>
+<p>In themselves, as pieces either of rhetoric or
+of &ldquo;civil wisdom,&rdquo; the speeches are not first-rate.
+No one would dream of comparing them to
+Burke&rsquo;s, in originality, or in richness of diction,
+or in weight of thought. But for the moment
+they were far more appreciated than Burke&rsquo;s
+were by the House of his time, which thought of
+dining while he thought of convincing. Robert
+Lowe was for some months the idol of a large
+part of the educated class, and indeed of that
+part chiefly which plumed itself upon its culture.
+I recollect to have been in those days at a
+breakfast party given by an eminent politician
+and nominal supporter of the Liberal Ministry,
+and to have heard Mr. G. S. Venables, the leader
+of the <i>Saturday Review</i> set, an able and copious
+writer who was a sort of literary and political
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299' name='page_299'></a>299</span>
+oracle among his friends, deliver, amid general
+applause, including that of the host, the opinion
+that Lowe was an intellectual giant compared to
+Mr. Gladstone, and that the reputation of the
+latter had been extinguished for ever.</p>
+<p>This period of glory, which was enhanced by
+the fall of Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone from
+power in June 1866&mdash;the defeat came on a minor
+point, but was largely due to Lowe&rsquo;s speeches&mdash;lasted
+till Lowe, who had now become a force to
+be counted with, obtained office as Chancellor of
+the Exchequer in the Liberal Ministry which
+Mr. Gladstone formed in the end of 1868. From
+that moment his position declined. He lost popularity
+and influence both with the country and in
+the House of Commons. His speeches were
+always able, but they did not seem to tell when
+delivered from the ministerial bench. His financial
+proposals, though ingenious, were thought
+too ingenious, and showed a deficient perception
+of the tendencies of the English mind. No
+section likes being taxed, but Lowe&rsquo;s budgets
+met with a more than usually angry opposition.
+His economies and retrenchments, so far from
+bringing him the credit he deserved, exposed
+him to the charge of cheese-paring parsimony,
+and did much to render the Ministry unpopular.
+Before that ministry fell in 1874, Lowe, who
+had in 1873 exchanged the Exchequer for the
+Home Office, had almost ceased to be a personage
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_300' name='page_300'></a>300</span>
+in politics. He did nothing to retrieve his fame
+during the six years of Opposition that followed,
+seldom spoke, took little part in the denunciation
+of Lord Beaconsfield&rsquo;s Eastern and Afghan policy,
+which went on from 1876 till 1880, and once at
+least gave slight signs of declining mental power.
+So in 1880 he was relegated to the House of
+Lords, because the new Liberal Government of
+that year could not make room for him. Very
+soon thereafter his memory began to fail, and for
+the last ten years of his life he had been practically
+forgotten, though sometimes seen, a pathetic
+figure, at evening parties. There is hardly a
+parallel in our parliamentary annals to so complete
+an eclipse of so brilliant a luminary.</p>
+<p>This rapid obscuration of a reputation which
+was genuine, for Lowe&rsquo;s powers had been amply
+proved, was due to no accident, and was apparent
+long before mental decay set in. The causes lay
+in himself. One cause was purely physical. He
+was excessively short-sighted, so much so that
+when he was writing a letter, his nose was apt to
+rub out the words his pen had traced; and this
+defect shut him out from all that knowledge of
+individual men and of audiences which is to be
+obtained by watching their faces. Mr. Gladstone,
+who never seemed to resent Lowe&rsquo;s attacks, and
+greatly admired his gifts&mdash;it was not so clear
+that Lowe reciprocated the admiration&mdash;used to
+relate that on one occasion when a foreign potentate
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_301' name='page_301'></a>301</span>
+met the Minister in St. James&rsquo;s Park and put
+out his hand in friendly greeting, Lowe repelled
+his advances, and when the King said, &ldquo;But, Mr.
+Lowe, you know me quite well,&rdquo; he answered,
+&ldquo;Yes, indeed, I know you far too well, and I don&rsquo;t
+want to have anything more to do with you.&rdquo;
+He had mistaken the monarch for a prominent
+politician with whom he had had a sharp encounter
+on a deputation a few days before! For
+social purposes Lowe might almost as well have
+been blind; yet he did not receive that kind of
+indulgence which is extended to the blind. In
+the interesting fragment of autobiography which
+he left, he attributes his unpopularity entirely to
+this cause, declaring that he was really of a kindly
+nature, liking his fellow-men just as well as most
+of them like one another.<a name='FNanchor_0034' id='FNanchor_0034'></a><a href='#Footnote_0034' class='fnanchor'>[42]</a> But in truth his own
+character had something to answer for. Without
+being ill-natured, he was deemed a hard-natured
+man, who did not appear to consider the feelings
+of others. He had indeed a love of mischief,
+and gleefully tells in his autobiography how,
+when travelling in his youth through the Scottish
+Highlands, he drove the too self-conscious Wordsworth
+wild by his incessant praise of Walter Scott.<a name='FNanchor_0035' id='FNanchor_0035'></a><a href='#Footnote_0035' class='fnanchor'>[43]</a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302' name='page_302'></a>302</span>
+He had not in political life more than his fair
+share of personal enmities. One of them was
+Disraeli&rsquo;s. They were not unequally matched.
+Lowe was intellectually in some respects stronger,
+but he wanted Disraeli&rsquo;s skill in managing men
+and assemblies. Disraeli resented Lowe&rsquo;s sarcasms,
+and on one occasion, when the latter had
+made an indiscreet speech, went out of his way
+to inflict on him a personal humiliation.</p>
+<p>Nor was this Lowe&rsquo;s only defect. Powerful
+in attack, he was feeble in defence. Terrible as
+a critic, he had, as his official career showed, little
+constructive talent, little tact in shaping or recommending
+his measures. Unsteady or inconstant
+in purpose, he was at one moment headstrong,
+at another timid or vacillating. These faults,
+scarcely noticed when he was in Opposition,
+sensibly reduced his value as a minister and as a
+Cabinet colleague.</p>
+<p>In private Lowe was good company, bright,
+alert, and not unkindly. He certainly did not,
+as was alleged of another famous contemporary,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303' name='page_303'></a>303</span>
+Lord Westbury, positively enjoy the giving of
+pain. But he had a most unchristian scorn for the
+slow and the dull and the unenlightened, and never
+restrained his scorching wit merely for the sake of
+sparing those who came in his way. If the distinction
+be permissible, he was not cruel but he
+was merciless, that is to say, unrestrained by compassion.
+Instances are not wanting of men who
+have maintained great influence in spite of their
+rough tongues and the enmities which rough
+tongues provoke. But such men have usually
+also possessed some of the arts of popularity, and
+have been able to retain the adherence of their
+party at large, even when they had alienated
+many who came into personal contact with them.
+This was not Lowe&rsquo;s case. He did not conceal
+his contempt for the multitude, and had not the
+tact needed for humouring it, any more than for
+managing the House of Commons. The very
+force and keenness of his intellect kept him aloof
+from other people and prevented him from understanding
+their sentiments. He saw things so
+clearly that he could not tolerate mental confusion,
+and was apt to reach conclusions so fast
+that he missed perceiving some of the things
+which are gradually borne in upon slower minds.
+There are also instances of strong men who,
+though they do not revile their opponents, incur
+hatred because their strength and activity make
+them feared. Hostility concentrates itself on the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304' name='page_304'></a>304</span>
+opponents deemed most formidable, and a political
+leader who is spared while his fellows are attacked
+cannot safely assume that this immunity is a
+tribute to his virtues. Incessant abuse fell to
+the lot of Mr. Bright, who was not often, and of
+Mr. Gladstone, who was hardly ever, personally
+bitter in invective. But in compensation Mr.
+Bright and Mr. Gladstone received enthusiastic
+loyalty from their followers. For Lowe there was
+no such compensation. Even his own side did
+not love him. There was also a certain harshness,
+perhaps a certain narrowness, about his views.
+Even in those days of rigid economics, he took
+an exceptionally rigid view of all economic problems,
+refusing to make allowance for any motives
+except those of bare self-interest. Though he
+did not belong by education or by social
+ties to the Utilitarian group, and gave an ungracious
+reception to J. S. Mill&rsquo;s first speeches
+in the House of Commons, he was a far more
+stringent and consistent exponent of the harder
+kind of Benthamism than was Mill himself. He
+professed, and doubtless to some extent felt, a
+contempt for appeals to historical or literary
+sentiment, and relished nothing more than deriding
+his own classical training as belonging to an
+effete and absurd scheme of education. He left
+his mark on our elementary school system by
+establishing the system of payment by results,
+but nearly every change made in that system
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_305' name='page_305'></a>305</span>
+since his day has tended to destroy the alterations
+he made and to bring back the older condition
+of things, though no doubt in an amended form.
+His ideas of University reform were crude and
+barren, limited, indeed, to the substitution of what
+the Germans call &ldquo;bread studies&rdquo; for mental cultivation,
+and to the extension of the plan of competitive
+examinations for honours and money
+prizes, a plan which more and more displeases
+the most enlightened University teachers, and
+is felt to have done more harm than good to
+Oxford and Cambridge, where it has had the
+fullest play. He had also, and could give good
+reasons for his opinion, a hearty dislike to endowments
+of all kinds; and once, when asked
+by a Royal Commission to suggest a mode of
+improving their application, answered in his
+trenchant way, &ldquo;Get rid of them. Throw them
+into the sea.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It would not be fair to blame Lowe for the
+results which followed his vigorous action against
+the extension of the suffrage in 1866, for no one
+could then have predicted that in the following
+year the Tories, beguiled by Mr. Disraeli, would
+reverse their former attitude and carry a suffrage
+bill far wider than that which they had rejected a
+year before. But the sequel of the successful
+resistance of 1866 may stand as a warning to
+those who think that the course of thoroughgoing
+opposition to a measure they dislike is, because
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306' name='page_306'></a>306</span>
+it seems courageous, likely to be the right and
+wise course for patriotic men. Had the moderate
+bill of 1866 been suffered to pass, the question of
+further extending the suffrage might possibly have
+slept for another thirty years, for there was no
+very general or urgent cry for it among the working
+people, and England would have continued
+to be ruled in the main by voters belonging to
+the middle class and the upper section of the
+working class. The consequence of the heated
+contest of 1866 was not only to bring about
+a larger immediate change in 1867, but to
+create an interest in the question which soon
+prompted the demand for the extension of household
+suffrage to the counties, and completed in
+1884-85 the process by which England has become
+virtually a democracy, though a plutocratic
+democracy, still affected by the habits and notions
+of oligarchic days. Thus Robert Lowe, as much
+as Disraeli and Gladstone, may in a sense be
+called an author of the tremendous change which
+has passed upon the British Constitution since
+1866, and the extent of which was not for a
+long while realised. Lowe himself never recanted
+his views, but never repeated his declaration
+of them, feeling that he had incurred
+unpopularity enough, and probably feeling also
+that the case was hopeless.</p>
+<p>People who disliked his lugubrious forecasts
+used to call him a Cassandra, perhaps forgetting
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307' name='page_307'></a>307</span>
+that, besides the distinctive feature of Cassandra&rsquo;s
+prophecies that nobody believed them, there was
+another distinctive feature, viz. that they came
+true. Did Lowe&rsquo;s? It is often profitable and
+sometimes amusing to turn back to the predictions
+through which eminent men relieved their
+perturbed souls, and see how far these superior
+minds were able to discern the tendencies, already
+at work in their time, which were beginning to
+gain strength, and were destined to determine
+the future. Whoever reads Lowe&rsquo;s speeches of
+1865-67 may do worse than glance at the same
+time at a book,<a name='FNanchor_0036' id='FNanchor_0036'></a><a href='#Footnote_0036' class='fnanchor'>[44]</a> long since forgotten, which contains
+the efforts of a group of young University
+Liberals to refute the arguments used by him
+and by Lord Cairns, the strongest of his allies,
+in their opposition to schemes of parliamentary
+reform.</p>
+<p>To compare the optimism of these young
+writers and Lowe&rsquo;s pessimism with what has
+actually come to pass is a not uninstructive
+task. True it is that England has had only
+thirty-five years&rsquo; experience of the Reform Act
+of 1867, and only seventeen years&rsquo; experience
+of that even greater step towards pure democracy
+which was effected by the Franchise and
+Redistribution Acts of 1884-85. We are still
+far from knowing what sorts of Parliaments and
+policies the enlarged suffrage will end by giving.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_308' name='page_308'></a>308</span>
+But some at least of the mischiefs Lowe foretold
+have not arrived. He expected first of all a
+rapid increase in corruption and intimidation at
+parliamentary elections. The quality of the
+House of Commons would decline, because money
+would rule, and small boroughs would no longer
+open the path by which talent could enter.
+Members would be either millionaires or demagogues,
+and they would also become far more
+subservient to their constituents. Universal
+suffrage would soon arrive, because no halting-place
+between the &pound;10 franchise<a name='FNanchor_0037' id='FNanchor_0037'></a><a href='#Footnote_0037' class='fnanchor'>[45]</a> and universal
+suffrage could be found. Placed on a democratic
+basis, the House of Commons would not be able
+to retain its authority over the Executive. The
+House of Lords, the Established Church, the
+judicial bench (in that dignity and that independence
+which are essential to its usefulness), would
+be overthrown as England passed into &ldquo;the bare
+and level plain of democracy where every ant-hill
+is a mountain and every thistle a forest tree.&rdquo;
+These and the other features characteristic of
+popular government on which Lowe savagely
+descanted were pieced together out of Plato and
+Tocqueville, coupled with his own disagreeable
+experiences of Australian politics. None of the
+predicted evils can be said to have as yet become
+features of the polity and government of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_309' name='page_309'></a>309</span>
+England,<a name='FNanchor_0038' id='FNanchor_0038'></a><a href='#Footnote_0038' class='fnanchor'>[46]</a> though the power of the House relatively
+to the Cabinet does seem to be declining.
+Yet some of Lowe&rsquo;s incidental remarks are true,
+and not least true is his prediction that democracies
+will be found just as prone to war, just as apt to
+be swept away by passion, as other kinds of
+government have been. Few signs herald the
+approach of that millennium of peace and enlightenment
+which Cobden foretold and for which
+Gladstone did not cease to hope.</p>
+<p>No one since Lowe has taken up the part of
+<i>advocatus diaboli</i> against democracy which he
+played in 1866.<a name='FNanchor_0039' id='FNanchor_0039'></a><a href='#Footnote_0039' class='fnanchor'>[47]</a> Since Disraeli passed the Household
+Suffrage in Boroughs Bill in 1867, a nullification
+of Lowe&rsquo;s triumph which incensed him
+more than ever against Disraeli, no one has ever
+come forward in England as the avowed enemy
+of changes designed to popularise our government.
+Parties have quarrelled over the time and
+the manner of extensions of the franchise, but the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_310' name='page_310'></a>310</span>
+issue of principle raised in 1866 has not been
+raised again. Even in 1884, when Mr. Gladstone
+carried his bill for assimilating the county franchise
+to that existing in boroughs, the Tory party did
+not oppose the measure in principle, but confined
+themselves to insisting that it should be accompanied
+by a scheme for the redistribution of seats.
+The secret, first unveiled by Disraeli, that the
+masses will as readily vote for the Tory party as
+for the Liberal, is now common property, and
+universal suffrage, when it comes to be offered, is
+as likely to be offered by the former party as by
+the latter. This gives a touch of historical interest
+to Lowe&rsquo;s speeches of 1866. They are the
+swan-song of the old constitutionalism. The
+changes which came in 1867 and 1884 must have
+come sooner or later, for they were in the natural
+line of development as we see it all over the
+world; but they might have come much later
+had not Lowe&rsquo;s opposition wrecked the moderate
+scheme of 1866. Apart from that episode Lowe&rsquo;s
+career would now be scarcely remembered, or
+would be remembered by those who knew his
+splendid gifts as an illustration of the maxim that
+mere intellectual power does not stand first among
+the elements of character that go to the winning
+of a foremost place.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_311' name='page_311'></a>311</span>
+<a name='WILLIAM_ROBERTSON_SMITH' id='WILLIAM_ROBERTSON_SMITH'></a>
+<h2>WILLIAM ROBERTSON SMITH</h2>
+</div>
+<p>Robertson Smith,<a name='FNanchor_0040' id='FNanchor_0040'></a><a href='#Footnote_0040' class='fnanchor'>[48]</a> the most widely learned and
+one of the most powerful teachers that either
+Cambridge or Oxford could show during the
+years of his residence in England, died at the
+age of forty-seven on the 31st of March 1894.
+To the English public generally his name was
+little known, or was remembered only in connection
+with the theological controversy and ecclesiastical
+trial of which he had been the central figure
+in Scotland fifteen years before. But on the
+Continent of Europe and by Orientalists generally
+he was regarded as the foremost Semitic scholar
+of Britain, and by those who knew him as one of
+the most remarkable men of his time.</p>
+<p>He was born in 1846 in the quiet pastoral
+valley of the Don, in Aberdeenshire. His father,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_312' name='page_312'></a>312</span>
+who was a minister of the Scottish Free Church
+in the parish of Keig, possessed high mathematical
+talent, and his mother, who survived him six years,
+was a woman of great force of character, who
+retained till her death, at seventy-six years of
+age, the full exercise of her keen intelligence.
+Smith went straight from his father&rsquo;s teaching to
+the University of Aberdeen, and after graduating
+there, continued his studies first at Bonn in 1865,
+and afterwards at G&ouml;ttingen (1869). When only
+twenty-four he became Professor of Oriental
+Languages in the College or Divinity School of
+the Free Church at Aberdeen, and two years
+later was chosen one of the revisers of the Old
+Testament, a striking honour for so young a
+man. In 1881 he became first assistant-editor
+and then editor-in-chief of the ninth edition of the
+<i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica</i>. He was exceptionally
+qualified for the post by the variety of his attainments
+and by the extreme quickness of his mind,
+which rapidly acquired knowledge on almost any
+kind of subject. Those who knew him are agreed
+that among all the eminent men who have been
+connected with this great <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia</i> from its
+first beginning nearly a century and a half ago until
+now, he was surpassed by none, if equalled by any,
+in the range of his learning and in the capacity to
+bring learning to bear upon editorial work. He
+took infinite pains to find the most competent
+writers, and was able to exercise effective personal
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_313' name='page_313'></a>313</span>
+supervision over a very large proportion of
+the articles. The ninth edition was much fuller
+and more thorough than any of its predecessors;
+and good as the first twelve volumes were, a still
+higher level of excellence was attained in the latter
+half, a result due to his industry and discernment.
+Not a few of the articles on subjects connected
+with the Old Testament were from his own pen;
+and they were among the best in the work.</p>
+<p>The appearance of one of them, that entitled
+&ldquo;Bible,&rdquo; which contained a general view of the
+history of the canonical books of Scripture, their
+dates, authorship, and reception by the Christian
+Church, became a turning-point in his life. The
+propositions he stated regarding the origin of
+parts of the Old Testament, particularly the
+Pentateuch, excited alarm and displeasure in
+Scotland, where few persons had become aware
+of the conclusions reached by recent Biblical
+scholars in Continental Europe. The article
+was able, clear, and fearless, plainly the work
+of a master hand. The views it advanced were
+not for the most part due to Smith&rsquo;s own investigations,
+but were to be found in the writings
+of other learned men. Neither would they now
+be thought extreme; they are in fact accepted to-day
+by many writers of unquestioned orthodoxy
+in Britain and a (perhaps smaller) number in the
+United States. In 1876, however, these views
+were new and startling to those who had not
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_314' name='page_314'></a>314</span>
+studied in Germany or followed the researches of
+such men as Ewald, Kuenen, and Wellhausen.
+The Scottish Free Church had theretofore prided
+itself upon the rigidity of its orthodoxy; and while
+among the younger ministers there were a good
+many able and learned scholars holding what used
+to be called &ldquo;advanced views,&rdquo; the mass of the
+elder and middle-aged clergy had gone on in the
+old-fashioned traditions of verbal inspiration, and
+took every word in the Five Books (except the
+last chapter of Deuteronomy) to have been written
+down by Moses. It was only natural that their
+anger should be kindled against the young professor,
+whose theories seemed to cut away the
+ground from under their feet. Proceedings were
+(1876) taken against him before the Presbytery
+of Aberdeen, and the case found its way thence
+to the Synod of Aberdeen, and ultimately to the
+General Assembly of the Free Church. In one
+form or another (for the flame was lit anew by
+other articles published by him in the <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia</i>)
+it lingered on for five years. So far from
+yielding to the storm, Robertson Smith defied it,
+maintaining not only the truth of his views, but
+their compatibility with the Presbyterian standards
+as contained in the Confession of Faith and the
+Longer and Shorter Catechisms. In this latter
+contention he was successful, proving that the
+divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
+had not committed themselves to any specific
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_315' name='page_315'></a>315</span>
+doctrine of inspiration, still less to any dogmatic
+deliverance as to the authorship of particular
+books of Scripture. The standards simply declared
+that the Word of God was contained in the
+canonical books, and as there had been little or
+no controversy between Protestants and Roman
+Catholics regarding the date or the authorship or
+the divine authority of those books (apart of
+course from disputes regarding the Apocrypha),
+had not dealt specifically with those last mentioned
+matters. As it was by reference to the
+Confession of Faith that the offence alleged had
+to be established, Smith made good his defence;
+so in the end, finding it impossible to convict him
+of deviation from the standards, and thereby to
+deal with him as an ordained minister of the
+Church, his adversaries fell back on the plan
+of depriving him, by an executive rather than
+judicial vote, not indeed of his clerical status,
+but of his professorship, on the ground of the
+alleged &ldquo;unsettling character&rdquo; of his teaching.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, however, there had been an immense
+rally to him of the younger clergy and
+of the less conservative among the laity. The
+main current of Scottish popular thought and
+life had ever since the Reformation flowed in
+an ecclesiastical channel; and even nowadays,
+when Scotland is rapidly becoming Anglicised,
+a theological or ecclesiastical question excites a
+wider and keener interest there than a similar
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_316' name='page_316'></a>316</span>
+question would do in England. So in Scotland
+for four years &ldquo;the Robertson Smith case&rdquo; was
+the chief topic of discussion outside as well as
+inside the Free Church. The sympathy felt for
+the accused was heightened by the ingenuity,
+energy, and courage with which he defended his
+position, showing a power of argument and
+repartee which made it plain that he would
+have held a distinguished place in any assembly
+whatever. If his debating had a fault, it was
+that of being almost too dialectically cogent, so
+that his antagonists felt that they were being
+foiled on the form of the argument before they
+could get to the issues they sought to raise.
+But while he was an accomplished lawyer in
+matters of form, he was no less an accomplished
+theologian in matters of substance. Although the
+party of repression triumphed so far as to deprive
+him of his chair, the victory virtually remained
+with him, not only because he had shown that the
+Scottish Presbyterian standards did not condemn
+the views he held, but also because his defence
+and the discussions which it occasioned had, in
+bringing those views to the knowledge of a great
+number of thoughtful laymen, led such persons
+to reconsider their own position. Some of them
+found themselves forced to agree with Smith.
+Others, who distrusted their capacity for arriving
+at a conclusion, came at least to think that the
+questions involved did not affect the essentials of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_317' name='page_317'></a>317</span>
+faith, and must be settled by the ordinary canons
+of historical and philological criticism. Thus the
+trial proved to be a turning-point for the Scottish
+Churches, much as the <i>Essays and Reviews</i> case
+had been for the Church of England eighteen
+years earlier. Opinions formerly proscribed were
+thereafter freely expressed. Nearly all the doctrinal
+prosecutions subsequently attempted in
+the Scottish Presbyterian Churches have failed.
+Much feeling has been excited, but the result
+has been to secure a greater latitude than was
+dreamt of forty years ago. At first the rigidly
+orthodox section of the Free Church, now
+almost confined to the Highlands, thought of
+seceding from the main body on the ground
+that tolerance was passing into indifference or
+unbelief. But the new ideas continued to grow,
+and the sentiment in favour of letting clergymen
+as well as lay church members put a lax construction
+on the doctrinal standards drawn up in the
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has spread
+as widely in Scotland as in England. The Presbyterian
+Churches in America and the Roman
+Catholic Church now stand almost alone among
+the larger Christian bodies in retaining something
+of the ancient rigidity. Even the Roman
+Church begins to feel the solvent power of these
+researches. It may be conjectured that as the
+process of adjusting the letter of Scripture to the
+conclusions of science which Galileo was not
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_318' name='page_318'></a>318</span>
+permitted to apply in the field of astronomy has
+now been generally applied in the fields of geology
+and biology, so all the churches will presently reconcile
+themselves to the conclusions of historical
+and linguistic criticism, now that such criticism
+has become truly scientific in its methods.</p>
+<p>Having no longer any tie to Scotland, as he
+had never desired a pastoral charge there, since
+he felt his vocation to lie in study and teaching,
+Smith was hesitating which way to turn, when the
+offer of the Lord Almoner&rsquo;s Readership in Arabic,
+which had become vacant in 1883, determined
+him to settle in Cambridge. He had travelled
+in Arabia a few years earlier, thereby adding a
+colloquial familiarity to his grammatical mastery
+of the language. He was an ardent student of
+Arabic literature, and indeed devoted more time
+to it than to Hebrew. Though he had felt
+deeply the attacks made upon him, and was
+indignant at the mode of his dismissal, he was
+not in the least dispirited; and his self-control
+was shown by the way in which he resisted the
+temptation, to which controversialists are prone,
+of going further than they originally meant and
+thereby damaging the position of their supporters.
+Still, he was weary of controversy, and pleased to
+see before him a prospect of learned quiet and
+labour, although the salary of the Readership
+was less than &pound;100 a year. Fortunately he
+had come to a place where gifts like his were
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_319' name='page_319'></a>319</span>
+appreciated. The Master and Fellows of Christ&rsquo;s
+College elected him to a fellowship with no
+duties of tuition attached to it&mdash;a wise and graceful
+recognition of his merits which did them the
+more credit because they had very little personal
+knowledge of him, while he had possessed no
+prior tie with the University. Christ&rsquo;s is one of
+the smaller colleges, but has almost always had
+men of distinction among its fellows, and has maintained
+a high standard of teaching. In the list of
+its alumni stand the names of John Milton, Isaac
+Barrow, Ralph Cudworth, and Charles Darwin.
+Robertson Smith dwelt in it for the rest of his
+days, entering into the life of hall and common-room
+with great zest, for he was of an extremely
+sociable turn, and the College became proud of
+him. When a vacancy occurred in the office of
+University Librarian, he was chosen to fill it.
+His knowledge of and fondness for books fitted
+him excellently for the place, but the details of
+administration worried him, and it was a change
+for the better when (in 1889), on the death
+of his friend, William Wright, he became Professor
+of Arabic.<a name='FNanchor_0041' id='FNanchor_0041'></a><a href='#Footnote_0041' class='fnanchor'>[49]</a> His efforts to build up a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_320' name='page_320'></a>320</span>
+school of Oriental studies on the foundations laid
+by Wright, and with the help of an eminent
+Syriac scholar, Bensley, were proving successful,
+and a considerable number of able young men
+were gathering round him, when (in 1890) the
+hand of disease fell upon him, obliging him first
+to curtail and afterwards to intermit his lectures.
+The last year of his life was a year of suffering,
+borne with uncomplaining fortitude.</p>
+<p>What with work on the <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica</i>,
+with the distractions of his prolonged trial,
+with the time spent in oral teaching, and with
+the physical weakness of his latest years, Smith&rsquo;s
+leisure available for literary production was not
+large, and the books he has left do not adequately
+represent either his accumulated knowledge or
+his faculty of investigation. The earlier books&mdash;<i>The
+Old Testament in the Jewish Church</i> and
+<i>The Prophets of Israel</i> (the latter a series of
+lectures delivered at Glasgow)&mdash;are comparatively
+popular in handling. The two later&mdash;<i>Kinship
+and Marriage in Early Arabia</i> and <i>The Religion
+of the Semites</i>&mdash;are more abstruse and technical,
+and also more original, dealing with topics in
+which their author was a pioneer, though he
+had been influenced by, and acknowledged in
+the amplest way his obligations to, his friend
+John F. Maclennan, the author of <i>Primitive
+Marriage</i>. <i>The Religion of the Semites</i>, though
+masterly in plan and execution, and though it
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_321' name='page_321'></a>321</span>
+has excited the admiration of the few Oriental
+scholars competent to appraise its substantial
+merit, suffers from its incompleteness. Only
+the first volume was published, for death overtook
+the author before he could put into
+final shape the materials he had collected for the
+full development of his theories. As the second
+volume would have traced the connection between
+the primitive religion of the Arab branches of the
+Semitic stock (including Israel) and the Hebrew
+religion as we have it in the earlier books of the Old
+Testament, the absence of this finished statement
+is a loss to science. Changes had passed upon
+his views since he wrote the incriminated articles,
+and he said to me (I think about 1888) that he
+would no longer undertake any clerical duties.
+He had a sensitive conscience, and held that no
+clergyman ought to use language in the pulpit
+which did not express his personal convictions.</p>
+<p>What struck one most in Robertson Smith&rsquo;s
+writings was the easy command wherewith he
+handled his materials. His generalisations were
+based on an endlessly patient and careful study of
+details, a study in which he never lost sight of
+guiding principles. With perfect lucidity and an
+unstrained natural vigour, there was a sense of
+abounding and overflowing knowledge which inspired
+confidence in the reader, making him feel
+he was in the hands of a master. On all that
+pertained to the languages and literature of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_322' name='page_322'></a>322</span>
+Arabic branch of the Semitic races, ancient and
+modern (for he did not claim to be an Assyriologist),
+his knowledge was accurate no less than
+comprehensive. Full of deference to the great
+scholars&mdash;no one spoke with a warmer admiration
+of N&ouml;ldeke, Wellhausen, and Lagarde than he did&mdash;he
+was a stringent critic of unscientific work in
+the sphere of history and physics as well as in
+that of philology, quick to expose the uncritical
+assumptions or loose hypotheses of less careful
+though more pretentious students. He used to
+say that when he had disposed of the <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia
+Britannica</i>, he might undertake a &ldquo;Dictionary of
+European Impostors.&rdquo; Oriental lore was only
+one of many subjects in which he might have
+achieved distinction. His mathematical talents
+were remarkable, and during two sessions he
+taught with conspicuous success the class of
+Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh
+as assistant professor. He had a competent
+acquaintance with not a few other practical
+arts, including navigation, and once, when the
+compasses of the vessel on which he was sailing
+in the Red Sea got out of order, he proved to be
+the person on board most competent to set them
+right. In metaphysics and theology, in ancient
+history and many departments of modern history,
+he was thoroughly at home. Few, indeed, were
+the subjects that came up in the course of conversation
+on which he was not able to throw light,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_323' name='page_323'></a>323</span>
+for the range of his acquirements was not more
+striking than the swiftness and precision with
+which he brought knowledge to bear wherever
+it was wanted.</p>
+<p>There was hardly a line of practical life in
+which he might not have attained a brilliant
+success. But the passion for knowledge made
+him prefer the life of a scholar, and seemed to
+have quenched any desire even for literary fame.</p>
+<p>Learning is commonly thought of as a weight
+to be carried, which makes men dull, heavy, or
+pedantic. With Robertson Smith the effect seemed
+to be exactly the opposite. Because he knew so
+much, he was interested in everything, and threw
+himself with a joyous freshness and keenness into
+talk alike upon the most serious and the lightest
+topics. He was combative, apt to traverse a proposition
+when first advanced, even though he might
+come round to it afterwards; and a discussion
+with him taxed the defensive acumen of his
+companions. Having once spent five weeks
+alone with him in a villa at Alassio on the
+Riviera, I observed to him when we parted
+that we had had (as the Americans say) &ldquo;a
+lovely time&rdquo; together, and that there was not
+an observation I had made during those weeks
+which he had not contested. He laughed
+and did not contest that observation. Yet this
+tendency, while it made his society more stimulating,
+did not make it less agreeable, because
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_324' name='page_324'></a>324</span>
+he never seemed to seek to overthrow an
+adversary, but only to get at the truth of the
+case, and his manner, though positive, had about
+it nothing either acrid or conceited. One could
+imagine no keener intellectual pleasure than his
+company afforded, for there was, along with an
+exuberant wealth of thought and knowledge, an
+intensity and ardour which lit up every subject
+which it touched. I once invited him and John
+Richard Green (the historian) to meet at dinner.
+They took to one another at once, nor was it easy
+to say which lamp burned the brighter. Smith
+had wider and more accurate learning, and stronger
+logical power, but Green was just as swift, just as
+fertile, just as ingenious. In stature Smith, like
+Green, was small, almost diminutive; his dark
+brown eyes bright and keen; his speech rapid;
+his laugh ready and merry, for he had a quick
+sense of humour and a power of enjoying things
+as they came. The type of intellect suggested
+a Teutonic Scot of the Lowlands, but in appearance
+and temperament he was rather a Scottish
+Celt of the Highlands, with a fire and a gaiety,
+an abounding vivacity and vitality, which made
+him a conspicuous figure wherever he lived, in
+Aberdeen, in Edinburgh, in Cambridge. Even
+by his walk, with its quick, irregular roll, one could
+single him out at a distance in the street.</p>
+<p>When a man is attractive personally, he is
+all the more attractive for being unlike other
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_325' name='page_325'></a>325</span>
+men, and he often becomes the centre of a
+group. This was the case with Smith. His
+numerous friends were so much interested by
+him that when they met their talk was largely
+of him, and many friendships were based on
+a common knowledge of this one person. Indeed,
+the geniality, elevation, and simplicity of
+his character gave him a quite unusual hold on
+those who had come to know him well. Few
+men, leading an equally quiet and studious life,
+have inspired so much regard and affection in so
+large a number of persons; few teachers have had
+an equal power of stimulating and attracting their
+pupils. He loved teaching hardly less than he
+loved the investigation of truth, and he was the
+most faithful and sympathetic of friends, one
+who was felt to be unique while he lived and
+irreplaceable when he had departed.</p>
+<p>I have spoken of the courage he had shown
+in confronting his antagonists in the ecclesiastical
+courts. That courage did not fail him in the
+severer trials of his last illness. The nature of
+the disease of which he died was disclosed to
+him by his physician in September 1892, while
+an international Congress of Orientalists, in which
+he presided over the Semitic section, was holding
+its meetings. A festival dinner was being given
+in honour of the Congress the same afternoon.
+When the physician had spoken, Smith simply
+remarked, &ldquo;This means the death my brother
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_326' name='page_326'></a>326</span>
+died&rdquo; (one of his brothers had been struck by
+the same malady a few years before). He went
+straight to the dinner, and was throughout the
+evening the gayest and brightest of the guests.</p>
+<p>Fancy sometimes indulges herself in imagining
+what part the eminent men one has known would
+have played had their lot been cast in some other
+age. So I have fancied that Archbishop Tait
+(described in an earlier chapter) ought to have
+been Primate of England under Edward the
+Sixth or Elizabeth. He would have guided the
+course of reform more prudently and more firmly
+than Cranmer did; he would have shown a broader
+spirit than did Parker or Whitgift. So Cardinal
+Manning, had he lived in the seventeenth century,
+might haply have become General of the Jesuit
+Order, and enjoyed the secret control of the politics
+of the Catholic world. So Robertson Smith, had
+he been born in the great age of the medi&aelig;val
+universities, might, like the bold dialectician of
+whom Dante speaks, have &ldquo;syllogised invidious
+truths&rdquo;<a name='FNanchor_0042' id='FNanchor_0042'></a><a href='#Footnote_0042' class='fnanchor'>[50]</a> in the University of Paris; or had Fortune
+placed him two centuries later among the scholars
+of the Italian Renaissance in its glorious prime,
+the fame of his learning might have filled half
+Europe.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_327' name='page_327'></a>327</span>
+<a name='HENRY_SIDGWICK' id='HENRY_SIDGWICK'></a>
+<h2>HENRY SIDGWICK</h2>
+</div>
+<p>Henry Sidgwick was born at Skipton, in Yorkshire,
+where his father was headmaster of the
+ancient grammar school of the town, on 31st
+May 1838.<a name='FNanchor_0043' id='FNanchor_0043'></a><a href='#Footnote_0043' class='fnanchor'>[51]</a> The family belonged to Yorkshire.
+He was a precocious boy, and used to delight his
+brothers and sister by the fertility of his imagination
+in inventing games and stories. Educated
+at Rugby School under Goulburn (afterwards
+Dean of Norwich), he was sent at an unusually
+early age to Trinity College, Cambridge. His
+brilliant University career was crowned by the
+first place in the classical tripos and by a first
+class in the mathematical tripos, and he was
+speedily elected a Fellow of Trinity. Intellectual
+curiosity and an interest in the problems
+of theology presently drew him to Germany,
+where he worked at Hebrew and Arabic under
+Ewald at G&ouml;ttingen, as well as with other
+eminent teachers. After hesitating for a time
+whether to devote himself to Oriental studies
+or to classical scholarship, he was drawn back to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_328' name='page_328'></a>328</span>
+philosophy by his desire to investigate questions
+bearing on natural theology, and finally settled
+down to the pursuit of what are called in Cambridge
+the moral sciences&mdash;metaphysics, ethics, and
+psychology; becoming first a College Lecturer
+and then (in 1875) a University Pr&aelig;lector in
+these subjects. In 1869 he resigned his fellowship,
+feeling that he could no longer consider
+himself a &ldquo;<i>bona fide</i> member of the Church of
+England,&rdquo; that being the condition then attached
+by law to the holding of fellowships in the
+Colleges at Cambridge. This step caused surprise,
+for the test was deemed a very vague and light
+one, having been recently substituted for a more
+stringent requirement, and there had been many
+holders of fellowships who were at least as little
+entitled to call themselves <i>bona fide</i> members
+of the Established Church as he was. But,
+as was afterwards said of him by Mrs. Cross
+(George Eliot), Sidgwick was expected by his
+intimate friends to conform to standards higher
+than average men prescribe for their own conduct.
+Taken in conjunction with the fact that
+several English Dissenters and Scottish Presbyterians
+had won the distinction of a Senior
+Wranglership and been debarred from fellowships,
+though they were in theological opinion more
+orthodox than some nominal members of the
+Established Church who were holding fellowships,
+Sidgwick&rsquo;s conscientious act made a great impression
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_329' name='page_329'></a>329</span>
+in Cambridge and did much to hasten
+that total abolition of tests in the Universities
+which was effected by statute in 1871; for in
+England concrete instances of hardship and injustice
+are more powerful incitements to reform
+than the strongest abstract arguments, and Sidgwick
+was already so eminent and so respected
+a figure that all Cambridge felt the absurdity of
+excluding such a man from its honours and emoluments.
+In 1883 he was appointed Professor of
+Moral Philosophy, and continued to hold that post
+till three months before his death in 1900, when
+failing health determined him to resign it.</p>
+<p>His life was the still and tranquil life of the
+thinker, teacher, and writer, varied by no events
+more exciting than those controversies over
+reforms in the studies and organisation of the
+University in which his sense of public duty
+frequently led him to bear a part.</p>
+<p>These I pass over, but there is one branch of
+his active work to which special reference ought
+to be made, viz. the part he took in promoting the
+University education of women. In or about the
+year 1868 he joined with the late Miss Anne
+Jane Clough (sister of the poet Arthur Clough)
+and a few other friends in establishing a course
+of lectures and a hall of residence for women
+at Cambridge, which grew into the institution
+called Newnham College. It and Girton College,
+founded by other friends of the same cause
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_330' name='page_330'></a>330</span>
+about the same time, were the first two institutions
+in England which provided for women,
+together with residential accommodation, a complete
+University training equivalent and similar
+to that provided by the two ancient English
+universities for men. The teaching was mainly
+given by the University professors and lecturers,
+the curriculum was the same as the University
+prescribed, and the women students, though not
+legally admitted to the University, were examined
+by the University examiners at the same
+time as the other students. Henry Sidgwick
+was, from the foundation of Newnham onwards,
+the moving spirit and the guiding hand among
+its University friends, the spirit which inspired
+the policy and the hand which piloted the
+fortunes of the College. Its growth to its present
+dimensions, and its usefulness, not only directly,
+but through the example it has set, have been
+largely due to his assiduous care and temperate
+wisdom. He had married (in 1876) Miss Eleanor
+Mildred Balfour, and when she accepted the principalship
+of Newnham after Miss Clough&rsquo;s death, in
+1889, he and she transferred their residence to
+the College, and lived thenceforward at it. The
+England of our time has seen no movement of
+opinion more remarkable or more beneficial than
+that which has recognised the claims of women
+to the highest kind of education, and secured a
+substantial, if still incomplete, provision therefor.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_331' name='page_331'></a>331</span>
+The change has come so quietly and unobtrusively
+that few people realise how great it
+is. Few, indeed, remember what things were
+forty years ago, as few realise when waste lands
+have been stubbed and drained and tilled what
+they were like in their former state. No one did
+more than Sidgwick to bring about this change.
+Besides his work for Newnham, he took a lead
+in all the movements that have been made to
+obtain for women a fuller admission to University
+privileges, and well deserved the gratitude of
+Englishwomen for his unceasing efforts on their
+behalf.</p>
+<p>The obscure problems of psychology had a
+great attraction for him, and he spent much time
+in investigating them, being one of the founders,
+and remaining all through his later life a leading
+and guiding member, of the Society for Psychical
+Research, which has for the last twenty years
+cultivated this field with an industry and ability
+which have deserved larger harvests than have
+yet been reaped. Two remarkable men, both
+devoted friends of his, worked with him, Edmund
+Gurney and Frederic Myers the poet, the latter
+of whom survived him a few months only. It
+was characteristic of Sidgwick that he never committed
+himself to any of the bold and possibly
+over-sanguine anticipations formed by some of
+the other members of the Society, while yet he
+never was deterred by failure, or by the discovery
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_332' name='page_332'></a>332</span>
+of deceptions, sometimes elaborate and long sustained,
+from pursuing inquiries which seemed to
+him to have an ultimate promise of valuable
+results. The phenomena, he would say, may be
+true or false; anyhow they deserve investigation.
+The mere fact that so many persons believe them
+to be genuine is a problem fit to be investigated.
+If they are false, it will be a service to have
+proved them so. If they contain some truth,
+it is truth of a kind so absolutely new as to be
+worth much effort and long effort to reach it. In
+any case, science ought to take the subject out of
+the hands of charlatans.</p>
+<p>The main business of his life, however, was
+teaching and writing. Three books stand out as
+those by which he will be best remembered&mdash;his
+<i>Methods of Ethics</i>, his <i>Principles of Political
+Economy</i>, and his <i>Elements of Politics</i>. All three
+have won the admiration of those who are experts
+in the subjects to which they respectively relate,
+and they continue to be widely read in universities
+both in Britain and in America. All
+three bear alike the peculiar impress of his mind.</p>
+<p>It was a mind of singular subtlety, fertility,
+and ingenuity, which applied to every topic an
+extremely minute and patient analysis. Never
+satisfied with the obvious view of a question,
+it seemed unable to acquiesce in any broad and
+sweeping statement. It discovered objections to
+every accepted doctrine, exceptions to every rule.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_333' name='page_333'></a>333</span>
+It perceived minute distinctions and qualifications
+which had escaped the notice of previous writers.
+These qualities made Sidgwick&rsquo;s books somewhat
+difficult reading for a beginner, who was apt to
+ask what, after all, was the conclusion to which he
+had been led by an author who showed him the
+subject in various lights, and added not a few minor
+propositions to that which had seemed to be the
+governing one. But the student who had already
+some knowledge of the topic, who, though he
+apprehended its main principles, had not followed
+them out in detail or perceived the difficulties in
+applying them, gained immensely by having so
+many fresh points presented to him, so many
+fallacies lurking in currently accepted notions
+detected, so many conditions indicated which
+might qualify the amplitude of a general proposition.
+The method of discussion was stimulating.
+Sometimes it reminded one of the Socratic
+method as it appears in Plato, but more frequently
+it was the method of Aristotle, who
+discusses a subject first from one side, then from
+another, throws out a number of remarks, not
+always reconcilable, but always suggestive, regarding
+it, and finally arrives at a view which he
+delivers as being probably the best, but one
+which must be taken subject to the remarks
+previously made. The reader often feels in
+Sidgwick&rsquo;s treatment of a subject as he often
+feels in Aristotle&rsquo;s, that he would like to be left
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_334' name='page_334'></a>334</span>
+with something more definite and positive, something
+that can be easily delivered to learners as
+an established truth. He desires a bolder and
+broader sweep of the brush. But he also feels
+how much he is benefited by the process of
+sifting and analysing to which every conception
+or dogma is subjected, and he perceives that
+he is more able to handle it afterwards in his
+own way when his attention has been called to
+all these distinctions and qualifications or antinomies
+which would have escaped any vision less
+keen than his author&rsquo;s. For those who, in an age
+prone to hasty reading and careless thinking, are
+disposed to underrate the difficulties of economic
+and political questions, and to walk in a vain
+conceit of knowledge because they have picked
+up some large generalisations, no better discipline
+can be prescribed than to follow patiently such
+a treatment as Sidgwick gives; nor can any
+reader fail to profit from the candour and the
+love of truth which illumine his discussion of a
+subject.</p>
+<p>The love of truth and the sense of duty guided
+his life as well as his pen. Though always
+warmly interested in politics, he was of all the
+persons I have known the least disposed to be
+warped by partisanship, for he examined each
+political issue as it arose on its own merits, apart
+from predilections for either party or for the
+views of his nearest friends. We used to wonder
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_335' name='page_335'></a>335</span>
+how such splendid impartiality would have stood a
+practical test such as that of the House of Commons.
+His loyalty to civic duty was so strong as
+on one occasion to bring him, in the middle of
+his vacation, all the way from Davos, in the
+easternmost corner of Switzerland, to Cambridge,
+solely that he might record his vote at a parliamentary
+election, although the result of the election
+was already virtually certain.</p>
+<p>Sidgwick&rsquo;s attitude toward the Benthamite
+system of Utilitarianism illustrates the cautiously
+discriminative habit of mind I have sought to
+describe. If he had been required to call himself
+by any name, he would not have refused that
+of Utilitarian, just as in mental philosophy he
+leaned to the type of thought represented by the
+two Mills rather than to the Kantian idealism of
+his friend and school contemporary, the Oxford
+professor T. H. Green. But the system of
+Utility takes in his hands a form so much more
+refined and delicate than was given to it by
+Bentham and James Mill, and is expounded with
+so many qualifications unknown to them, that it
+has become a very different thing, and is scarcely,
+if at all, assailable by the arguments which moralists
+of the idealistic type have brought against
+the older doctrine. Something similar may be
+said of his treatment of bimetallism in his book
+on political economy. While assenting to some of
+the general propositions on which the bimetallic
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_336' name='page_336'></a>336</span>
+theory rests, he points out so many difficulties in
+the application of that theory to the actual conditions
+of currency that his assent cannot be cited
+as a deliverance in favour of trying to turn theory
+into practice. He told me in 1896 that he held
+the political and other practical objections to an
+attempt to establish a bimetallic system to be virtually
+insuperable. When he treats of free trade, he
+is no less guarded and discriminating. He points
+out various circumstances or conditions under
+which a protective tariff may become, at least
+for a time, justifiable, but never abandons the
+free trade principle as being generally true and
+sound, a principle not to be departed from
+save for strong reasons of a local or temporary
+kind. His general economic position is equally
+removed from the &ldquo;high and dry&rdquo; school of
+Ricardo on the one hand, and from the &ldquo;Katheder-Sozialisten&rdquo;
+and the modern &ldquo;sentimental&rdquo; school
+on the other. In all his books one notes a tendency
+to discover what can be said for the view
+which is in popular disfavour, even often for
+that which he does not himself adopt, and to
+set forth all the objections to the view which
+is to receive his ultimate adhesion. There is a
+danger with such a method of losing breadth and
+force of effect. One is ready to cry, &ldquo;Do lapse
+for a moment into dogmatism.&rdquo; Yet it ought to be
+added that Sidgwick&rsquo;s subtlety is always restrained
+by practical good sense, as well as by the desire to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_337' name='page_337'></a>337</span>
+reconcile opposite views. His arguments, though
+they often turn on minute distinctions, are not
+bits of fine-drawn ingenuity, but have weight and
+substance in them.<a name='FNanchor_0044' id='FNanchor_0044'></a><a href='#Footnote_0044' class='fnanchor'>[52]</a></p>
+<p>One book of his which has not yet (December
+1902) been published, but which I have had the
+privilege of reading in proof, displays his constructive
+power in another light. It is a course
+of lectures on the development of political institutions
+in Europe from early times down to our
+own. Here, as he is dealing with concrete matter,
+the treatment is more broad, and the line of
+exposition and argument more easy to follow, than
+in the treatises already referred to. It is a masterly
+piece of work, and reveals a wider range of
+historical knowledge and a more complete mastery
+of historical method than had been shown in his
+earlier books, or indeed than some of his friends
+had known him to possess.</p>
+<p>The tendency to analysis rather than to construction,
+the abstention from the deliverance of
+doctrines easy to comprehend and repeat, which
+belong to his writings on ethics and economics,
+do not impair the worth of his literary criticisms.
+In this field his fine perception and discriminative
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_338' name='page_338'></a>338</span>
+taste had full scope. He was an incessant reader,
+especially of poetry and novels, with a retentive
+memory for poetry, as well as a finely modulated
+and expressive voice in reciting it. His literary
+judgments had less of a creative quality, if the
+expression be permissible, than Matthew Arnold&rsquo;s,
+but are not otherwise inferior to those of that
+brilliant though sometimes slightly prejudiced
+critic. No one of his contemporaries has surpassed
+Sidgwick in catholicity and reasonableness,
+in the power of delicate appreciation, or in an
+exquisite precision of expression. His essay on
+Arthur Hugh Clough, prefixed to the latest edition
+of Clough&rsquo;s collected poems, is a good specimen
+of this side of his talent. Clough was one of
+his favourites, and has indeed been called the
+pet poet of University men. Sidgwick&rsquo;s literary
+essays, which appeared occasionally in magazines,
+were few, but they well deserve to be collected and
+republished, for this age of ours, though largely
+occupied in talking about literature, has produced
+comparatively little criticism of the first order.</p>
+<p>Sidgwick did not write swiftly or easily, because
+he weighed carefully everything he wrote.
+But his mind was alert and nimble in the highest
+degree. Thus he was an admirable talker, seeing
+in a moment the point of an argument, seizing on
+distinctions which others had failed to perceive,
+suggesting new aspects from which a question
+might be regarded, and enlivening every topic
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_339' name='page_339'></a>339</span>
+by a keen yet sweet and kindly wit. Wit,
+seldom allowed to have play in his books,
+was one of the characteristics which made his
+company charming. Its effect was heightened
+by a hesitation in his speech which often
+forced him to pause before the critical word
+or phrase of the sentence had been reached.
+When that word or phrase came, it was sure
+to be the right one. Though fond of arguing,
+he was so candid and fair, admitting all that
+there was in his opponent&rsquo;s case, and obviously
+trying to see the point from his opponent&rsquo;s side,
+that nobody felt annoyed at having come off
+second best, while everybody who cared for good
+talk went away feeling not only that he knew
+more about the matter than he did before, but
+that he had enjoyed an intellectual pleasure of a
+rare and high kind. The keenness of his penetration
+was not formidable, because it was joined
+to an indulgent judgment: the ceaseless activity
+of his intellect was softened rather than reduced
+by the gaiety of his manner. His talk was conversation,
+not discourse, for though he naturally
+became the centre of nearly every company in
+which he found himself, he took no more than
+his share. It was like the sparkling of a brook
+whose ripples seem to give out sunshine.</p>
+<p>Though Sidgwick&rsquo;s writings are a mine of
+careful and suggestive thinking, he was even
+more remarkable than his books. Though his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_340' name='page_340'></a>340</span>
+conversation was delightful, the impression of its
+fertility and its wit was the least part of the
+impression which his personality produced. An
+eminent man is known to the world at large by
+what he gives them in the way of instruction or
+of pleasure. A man is prized and remembered
+by his friends for what he was in the intercourse
+of life. Few men of our time have influenced
+so wide or so devoted a circle of friends as did
+Henry Sidgwick; few could respond to the calls
+of friendship with a like sympathy or wisdom.
+His advice was frequently asked in delicate
+questions of conduct, and he was humorously
+reminded that, by his own capacity as well as
+by the title of his chair, he was a professor of
+casuistry. His stores of knowledge and helpful
+criticism were always at the service of his pupils
+or his fellow-workers.</p>
+<p>From his earliest college days he had been
+just, well-balanced, conscientious alike in the pursuit
+of truth and in the regulation of his own life,
+appearing to have neither prejudices nor enmities,
+and when he had to convey censure, choosing the
+least cutting words in which to convey it. Yet
+in earlier years there had been in him a touch
+of austerity, a certain remoteness or air of detachment,
+which confined to a very few persons
+the knowledge of his highest qualities. As he
+grew older his purity lost its coldness, his keenness
+of discernment mellowed into a sweet and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_341' name='page_341'></a>341</span>
+persuasive wisdom. A life excellently conducted,
+a life which is the expression of fine qualities, and
+in which the acts done are in harmony with the
+thoughts and words of the man, is itself a beautiful
+product, whether of untutored nature or of
+thought and experience turning every faculty to
+the best account. In the modern world the two
+types of excellence which we are chiefly bidden
+to admire are that of the active philanthropist
+and that of the saint. The ancient world produced
+and admired another type, to which some
+of its noblest characters conformed, and which, in
+its softer and more benignant aspect, Sidgwick
+presented. In his indifference to wealth and
+fame and the other familiar objects of human
+desire, in the almost ascetic simplicity of his daily
+life, in his pursuit of none but the purest pleasures,
+in his habit of subjecting all impulses to the law
+of reason, the will braced to patience, the soul
+brought into harmony with the divinely appointed
+order, he seemed to reproduce one of those philosophers
+of antiquity who formed a lofty conception
+of Nature and sought to live in conformity
+with her precepts. But the gravity of a Stoic
+was relieved by the humour and vivacity which
+belonged to his nature, and the severity of a Stoic
+was softened by the tenderness and sympathy
+which seemed to grow and expand with every
+year. In Cambridge, where, though the society
+is a large one, all the teachers become personally
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_342' name='page_342'></a>342</span>
+known to one another, and the students have
+opportunities of familiar intercourse with the
+teachers, affection as well as admiration gathered
+round him. His thoughts quickened and his
+example inspired generation after generation of
+young men passing through the University out
+into the life of England, as a light set high upon
+the bank beams on the waves of a river gliding
+swiftly to the sea.</p>
+<p>It was a life of single-minded devotion to truth
+and friendship, a life serene and gentle, free alike
+from vanity and from ambition, bearing without
+complaint the ill-health which sometimes checked
+his labours, viewing with calm fortitude those
+problems of man&rsquo;s life on which his mind was
+always fixed, untroubled in the presence of death.</p>
+<table summary=''><tr><td>
+<p class='cg'>Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas<br />
+Quique metus omnes et inexorabile fatum<br />
+Subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari.</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+<p>When his friends heard of his departure there
+rose to mind the words in which the closing scene of
+the life of Socrates is described by the greatest of
+his disciples, and we thought that among all those
+we had known there was none of whom we could
+more truly say that in him the spirit of philosophy
+had its perfect work in justice, in goodness, and
+in wisdom.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_343' name='page_343'></a>343</span>
+<a name='EDWARD_ERNEST_BOWEN53' id='EDWARD_ERNEST_BOWEN53'></a>
+<h2>EDWARD ERNEST BOWEN<a name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor2">[53]</a></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Ever since the publication of Stanley&rsquo;s Life of
+Dr. Arnold that eminent headmaster has been
+taken as the model of a great teacher and ruler
+of boys, the man who, while stimulating the intelligence
+of his pupils, was even more concerned
+to discipline and mould their moral natures.
+Arnold has become the type of what Carlyle
+might have called &ldquo;The Hero as Schoolmaster.&rdquo;
+Though there have been many able men at the
+head of large schools since his time, including
+three who afterwards rose to be Archbishops of
+Canterbury, as well as a good many who have
+become bishops, his fame remains unrivalled, and
+the type created by his career, or rather perhaps by
+his biographer&rsquo;s account of it, still holds the field.
+Moreover, during the sixty years that have passed
+since Arnold&rsquo;s death scarcely a word has been
+said regarding any other masters than the head.
+During those years the English universities have
+sent into the great schools a large proportion of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_344' name='page_344'></a>344</span>
+their most capable graduates as assistant teachers;
+and some of the strongest men among these
+graduates have never, from various causes, and
+often because they preferred to remain laymen,
+been raised to the headships of the schools.
+Every one knows that a school depends for its
+wellbeing and success more largely on the assistants
+taken together than it does on the headmaster.
+Most people also know that individual
+assistant masters are not unfrequently better
+scholars, better teachers, and more influential
+with the boys than is their official superior. Yet
+the assistant masters have remained unhonoured
+and unsung in the general chorus of praise of the
+great schools which has been resounding over
+England for nearly two generations.</p>
+<p>Edward Bowen was all his life an assistant
+master, and never cared to be anything else. As
+he had determined not to take orders in the Church
+of England, he was virtually debarred from many
+of the chief headmasterships, which are, some few
+of them by law, many more by custom, confined
+to Anglican clergymen. But even when other
+headships to which this condition was not attached
+were known to be practically open to his acceptance,
+were, indeed, in one or two instances almost
+tendered to him, he refused to become a candidate,
+preferring his own simple and easy way of life
+to the pomp and circumstance which convention
+requires a headmaster to maintain. This
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_345' name='page_345'></a>345</span>
+abstention, however, did not prevent his eminence
+from becoming known to those who had opportunities
+of judging. In his later years he would,
+I think, have been generally recognised by the
+teaching profession as the most brilliant, and in
+his own peculiar line the most successful, man
+among the schoolmasters of Britain.</p>
+<p>He was born on 30th March 1836, of an Irish
+family (originally from Wales) holding property
+in the county of Mayo. His father was a clergyman
+of the Church of England; his mother,
+who survived him a few months (dying at the
+age of ninety-four) and whom he tended with
+watchful care during her years of widowhood,
+was partly of Irish, partly of French extraction.
+Like his more famous but perhaps not more
+remarkable elder brother, Charles Bowen, who
+became Lord Bowen, and is remembered as
+one of the most acute and subtle judges as
+well as one of the most winning personalities
+of our time, he had a gaiety, wit, and versatility
+which suggested the presence of Celtic blood.
+He was educated at Blackheath School, and
+afterwards at King&rsquo;s College in London, whence
+he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge.
+In 1860, after a career at the University, distinguished
+both in the way of honours and in
+respect of the reputation he won among his
+contemporaries, he became a master at Harrow,
+and thenceforth remained there, leading an
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_346' name='page_346'></a>346</span>
+uneventful and externally a monotonous life,
+but one full of unceasing and untiring activity
+in play and work. He died on Easter Monday
+1901.</p>
+<p>Nothing could be less like the traditional
+Arnoldine methods of teaching and ruling boys
+than Bowen&rsquo;s method was. The note of those
+methods was what used to be called moral
+earnestness. Arnold was grave and serious,
+distant and awe-inspiring, except perhaps to a
+few specially favoured pupils. Bowen was light,
+cheerful, vivacious, humorous, familiar, and, above
+all things, ingenious and full of variety. His
+leading principles were two&mdash;that the boy must
+at all hazards be interested in the lessons and
+that he should be at ease with the teacher.</p>
+<p>A Harrow boy once said to his master,
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how it is, sir, but if Mr. Bowen
+takes a lesson he makes you work twice as hard
+as other masters, but you like it twice as much
+and you learn far more.&rdquo; He was the most
+unexpected man in conversation that could be
+imagined, always giving a new turn to talk by
+saying something that seemed remote from the
+matter in hand until he presently showed the
+connection. So his teaching kept the boys
+alert, because its variety was inexhaustible. He
+seemed to think that it did not greatly matter
+what the lesson was so long as the pupil could be
+got to enjoy it. The rules of the school and the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_347' name='page_347'></a>347</span>
+requirements of the examinations for which boys
+had to be prepared would not have permitted
+him to try to any great extent the experiment
+of varying subjects to suit individual tastes; but
+he was fond of giving lessons in topics outside
+the regular course, on astronomy for instance, of
+which he had acquired a fair knowledge, and on
+recent military history, which he knew wonderfully
+well, better probably than any man in England outside
+the military profession. When the so-called
+&ldquo;modern side&rdquo; was established at Harrow, in 1869,
+he became head of it, having taken this post, not
+from any want of classical taste and learning,
+for he was an admirable scholar, and to the
+end of his life wrote charming Latin verses, but
+because he felt that this line of teaching needed
+to be developed in a school which had been formerly
+almost wholly classical. For grammatical
+minuti&aelig;, for learning rules by heart, and indeed
+for the old style of grammar-teaching generally,
+he had an unconcealed contempt. He thought it
+unkind and wasteful to let a boy go on puzzling
+over difficulties of language in an author, and
+permitted, under restrictions, the use of English
+translations, or (as boys call them) &ldquo;cribs.&rdquo;
+Teaching was in his view a special gift of
+the individual, which depended on the aptitude
+for getting hold of the pupil&rsquo;s mind, and
+enlisting his interest in the subject. He
+had accordingly no faith in the doctrine that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_348' name='page_348'></a>348</span>
+teaching is a science which can be systematically
+studied, or an art in which the apprentice ought to
+be systematically trained. When he was summoned
+as a witness before the Secondary Education
+Commission in 1894 he adhered, under cross-examination,
+to this view (so far as it affected
+schools like Harrow or Eton), refusing to be
+moved by the arguments of those among the
+Commissioners who cited the practice of Germany,
+where P&auml;dagogik, as they call it, is elaborately
+taught in the universities. &ldquo;I am unable,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;to conceive any machinery by which the art of
+teaching can be given practically to masters. That
+art is so much a matter of personal power and experience,
+and of various social and moral gifts,
+that I cannot conceive a good person made a good
+master by merely seeing a class of boys taught,
+unless he was allowed to take a real and serious
+part in it himself, unless he became a teacher himself.
+I can understand that at a primary school you
+can learn by going in and hearing a good teacher at
+work; but the teaching of a class of older boys is
+so different, and has so much of the social element
+in it, and it may vary so much, that I should
+despair of teaching a young man how to take a
+class unless he was a long time with me.... A
+master at a large public school is chiefly a moral
+and social force; a master is this to a much less
+extent at a primary school or in the ordinary day-schools,
+the grammar-schools of the country. To
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_349' name='page_349'></a>349</span>
+deal with boys when you have them completely
+under your control for the whole of every day is
+an altogether different thing, and requires different
+virtues in the teacher from those that are required
+in the case of day-schools.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Bowen may possibly have been mistaken, even
+as regards the teachers in the great public boarding
+schools. His view seems to overlook or
+disregard that large class of persons who have no
+marked natural aptitude for teaching, but are capable
+of being, by special instruction and supervised
+practice, kneaded and moulded into better teachers
+than they would otherwise have grown to be. He
+felt so strongly that no one ought to teach without
+having a real gift and fondness for teaching that
+he thought such difference as training could make
+insignificant in comparison with the inborn talent.
+Perhaps he generalised too boldly from himself,
+for he had an enjoyment of his work, and a conscientiousness
+in always putting the very best of
+himself into it&mdash;how much was conscientiousness
+and how much was enjoyment, no one could tell&mdash;as
+well as a quickness and vivacity which no
+study of methods could have improved. As one
+of his most eminent colleagues,<a name='FNanchor_0045' id='FNanchor_0045'></a><a href='#Footnote_0045' class='fnanchor'>[54]</a> who was also his
+life-long friend, observes: &ldquo;The humdrum and
+routine which must form so large a part of a
+teacher&rsquo;s life were never humdrum or routine to
+him, for he put the whole of his abounding
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_350' name='page_350'></a>350</span>
+energies into his work, and round its driest details
+there played and flickered, as with a lambent
+flame, his joyous spirit, finding expression now
+perhaps in a striking parallel, now in a startling
+paradox, now in a touch of humour, and once
+again in a note of pathos.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The personal influence he exerted on the boys
+who lived in his House was quite as remarkable
+as his &ldquo;form-teaching.&rdquo; Stoicism and honour
+were the qualities it was mainly directed to form.
+Every boy was expected to show manliness and
+endurance, and to utter no complaint. Where
+physical health was concerned he was indulgent;
+his House was the first which gave the boys meat
+at breakfast in addition to tea with bread and
+butter. But otherwise the discipline was Spartan,
+though not more Spartan than that he prescribed
+to himself, and the House was trained to scorn the
+slightest approach to luxury. Arm-chairs were
+forbidden except to sixth-form boys. A pupil
+relates that when Bowen found he was in the habit
+of taking two hot baths a week the transgression
+was reproved with the words: &ldquo;Oh boy, that&rsquo;s
+like the later Romans, boy.&rdquo; His maxims were:
+&ldquo;Take sweet and bitter as sweet and bitter come&rdquo;
+and &ldquo;Always play the game.&rdquo; He never preached
+to the boys or lectured them; and if he had to
+convey a reproof, conveyed it in a single sentence.
+But he dwelt upon honour as the foundation of
+character, and made every boy feel that he was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_351' name='page_351'></a>351</span>
+expected to reach the highest standard of truthfulness,
+courage, and duty to the little community
+of the House, or the cricket eleven, or the football
+team.</p>
+<p>Some have begun to think that in English
+schools and universities too much time is given to
+athletic sports, and that they absorb too largely
+the thoughts and interests of the English youth.
+Bowen, however, attached the utmost value to
+games as a training in character. He used to
+descant upon the qualities of discipline, good-fellowship,
+good-humour, mutual help, and postponement
+of self which they are calculated to
+foster. Though some of his friends thought that
+his own intense and unabated fondness for these
+games&mdash;for he played cricket and football up to
+the end of his life&mdash;might have biassed his judgment,
+they could not deny that the games ought
+to develop the qualities aforesaid.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Consider the habit of being in public, the forbearance,
+the subordination of the one to the many,
+the exercise of judgment, the sense of personal
+dignity. Think again of the organising faculty that
+our games develop. Where can you get command
+and obedience, choice with responsibility, criticism
+with discipline, in any degree remotely approaching
+that in which our social games supply them?
+Think of the partly moral, partly physical side of it,
+temper, of course, dignity, courtesy.... When the
+match has really begun, there is education, there
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_352' name='page_352'></a>352</span>
+is enlargement of horizon, self sinks, the common
+good is the only good, the bodily faculties exhilarate
+in functional development, and the make-believe
+ambition is glorified into a sort of ideality.
+Here is boyhood at its best, or very nearly at its
+best. <i>Sursum crura!...</i> When you have a lot
+of human beings, in highest social union and
+perfect organic action, developing the law of their
+race and falling in unconsciously with its best
+inherited traditions of brotherhood and common
+action, you are not far from getting a glimpse of
+one side of the highest good. There lives more
+soul in honest play, believe me, than in half the
+hymn-books.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>These words, taken from a half-serious essay on
+Games written for a private society, give some part
+of Bowen&rsquo;s views. The whole essay is well worth
+reading.<a name='FNanchor_0046' id='FNanchor_0046'></a><a href='#Footnote_0046' class='fnanchor'>[55]</a> Its arguments do not, however, quite
+settle the matter. The playing of games may have,
+and indeed ought to have, the excellent results
+Bowen claimed for it, and yet it may be doubted
+whether the experience of life shows that boys so
+brought up do in fact turn out substantially more
+good-humoured, unselfish, and fit for the commerce
+of the world than others who have lacked this training.
+And the further question remains whether the
+games are worth their costly candle. That they
+occupy a good deal of time at school and at college
+is not necessarily an evil, seeing that the time left
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_353' name='page_353'></a>353</span>
+for lessons or study is sufficient if well spent.
+The real drawback incident to the excessive
+devotion games inspire in our days is that they
+leave little room in the boy&rsquo;s or collegian&rsquo;s mind
+either for interest in his studies or for the love
+of nature. They fill his thoughts, they divert
+his ambition into channels of no permanent value
+to his mind or life; they continue to absorb his
+interest and form a large part of his reading long
+after he has left school or college. Nevertheless,
+be these things as they may, the opinion
+of a man so able and so experienced as Bowen
+was, deserves to be recorded; and his success in
+endearing himself to and guiding his boys was
+doubtless partly due to the use he made of their
+liking for games.</p>
+<p>He was never married, so the school became
+the sole devotion of his life, and he bequeathed to
+it the bulk of his property, directing an area of
+land which he had purchased on the top of the
+Hill to be always kept as an open space for the
+benefit of boys and masters.</p>
+<p>It need hardly be said that he loved boys as
+he loved teaching. He took them with him in
+the holidays on walking tours. He kept up correspondence
+with many of his pupils after they
+left Harrow, and advised them as occasion rose.
+To many of them he remained through life the
+model whom they desired to imitate. But he
+was very chary of the exercise of influence. &ldquo;A
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_354' name='page_354'></a>354</span>
+boy&rsquo;s character,&rdquo; he once wrote, &ldquo;grows like the
+Temple of old, without sound of mallet and
+trowel. What we can do is to arrange matters
+so as to give Virtue her best chance. We can
+make the right choice sometimes a little easier,
+we can prevent tendencies from blossoming into
+acts, and render pitfalls visible. How much indirectly
+and unconsciously we can do, none but
+the recording angel knows. &lsquo;You can and you
+should,&rsquo; said Chiffers,<a name='FNanchor_0047' id='FNanchor_0047'></a><a href='#Footnote_0047' class='fnanchor'>[56]</a> &lsquo;go straight to the heart of
+every individual boy.&rsquo; Well, a fellow-creature&rsquo;s
+mind is a sacred thing. You may enter into that
+arcanum once a year, shoeless. And in the effort
+to control the spirit of a pupil, to make one&rsquo;s own
+approval his test and mould him by the stress of
+our own presence, in the ambition to do this, the
+craving for moral power and visible guiding, the
+subtle pride of effective agency, lie some of the
+chief temptations of a schoolmaster&rsquo;s work.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Such ways and methods as I have endeavoured
+to describe are less easy to imitate than those
+which belong to the Arnoldine type of schoolmaster.
+In Bowen&rsquo;s gaiety, in his vivacity, in the
+humour which interpenetrated everything he said
+or did, there was something individual. Teachers
+who do not possess a like vivacity, versatility, and
+humour cannot hope to apply with like success
+the method of familiarity and sympathy. Not
+indeed that Bowen stood altogether alone in his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_355' name='page_355'></a>355</span>
+use of that method. There were others among
+his contemporaries who shared his view, and whose
+practice was not dissimilar. He was, however, the
+earliest and most brilliant exponent of the view,
+so his career may be said to open a new line, and
+to mark a new departure in the teacher&rsquo;s art.</p>
+<p>I have mentioned his walking tours. He
+was a pedestrian of extraordinary force, rather
+tall, but spare and light, swift of foot, and tireless
+in his activity. As an undergraduate he
+had walked from Cambridge to Oxford, nearly
+ninety miles, in twenty-four hours, scarcely halting.
+At one time or another he had traversed
+on foot all the coast-line and great part of the
+inland regions of England. He was an accomplished
+Alpine climber. His passion for exercise
+of body as well as of mind was so salient a
+feature in his character that his friends wondered
+how he would be able to support old age. He
+was spared the trial, for he was gay and joyous as
+ever on the last morning of his life, and he died
+in a moment, while mounting his bicycle after a
+long ascent, among the lonely forests of Burgundy,
+then bursting into leaf under an April sun.</p>
+<p>His interest in politics provided him with
+a short and strenuous interlude of public action,
+which varied the even tenor of his life at Harrow.
+At the general election of 1880 he stood as a
+candidate for the little borough of Hertford (which
+has since been merged in the county) against
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_356' name='page_356'></a>356</span>
+Mr. Arthur Balfour, now (1902) First Lord of the
+Treasury in England. The pro-Turkish policy
+of Lord Beaconsfield, followed by the Afghan
+War of 1878, had roused many Liberals who
+usually took little part in political action. Bowen
+felt the impulse to denounce the conduct of the
+Ministry, and went into the contest with his usual
+airy suddenness. He had little prospect of success
+at such a place, for, like many of the so-called
+Academic Liberals of those days, he made the
+mistake of standing for a small semi-rural constituency,
+overshadowed by a neighbouring magnate,
+instead of for a large town, where both his
+opinions and his oratory would have been better
+appreciated. However, he enjoyed the contest
+thoroughly, amusing himself as well as the electors
+by his lively and sometimes impassioned speeches,
+and he looked back to it as a pleasant episode in
+his usually smooth and placid life. He was all his
+life a strong Liberal <i>vieille roche</i>, a lover of freedom
+and equality as well as of economy in public
+finance, a Free Trader, an individualist, an enemy
+of all wars and all aggressions, and in later years
+growingly indignant at the rapid increase of
+military and naval expenditure. He was also,
+like the Liberals of 1850-60 in general, a sympathiser
+with oppressed nationalities, though this
+feeling did not carry him the length of accepting
+the policy of Home Rule for Ireland, as
+to which he had grave doubts, yet doubts not
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_357' name='page_357'></a>357</span>
+quite so serious as to involve his separation from
+the Liberal party. Twice after 1880 he was on
+the point of becoming a candidate for a seat in
+the House of Commons, but whether his love for
+Harrow would have suffered him to remain in
+Parliament had he entered it may be doubted. One
+could not even tell whether he was really disappointed
+that his political aspirations remained unfulfilled.
+Had he given himself to parliamentary life,
+his readiness, ingenuity, and wit would have soon
+made him valued by his own side, while his sincerity
+and engaging manners would have commended
+him to both sides alike. His delivery was always
+too rapid, and his voice not powerful, yet these
+defects would have been forgotten in the interest
+which so peculiar a figure must have aroused.</p>
+<p>His peace principles contrasted oddly with
+his passion for military history, a passion which
+prompted many vacation journeys to battlefields
+all over Europe, from Salamanca to Austerlitz.
+He had followed the campaigns of Napoleon
+through Piedmont and Lombardy, through Germany
+and Austria, as well as those of Wellington
+in Spain and Southern France.<a name='FNanchor_0048' id='FNanchor_0048'></a><a href='#Footnote_0048' class='fnanchor'>[57]</a> This taste is
+not uncommon in men of peace. Freeman had
+it; J. R. Green and S. R. Gardiner had it; and
+the historical works of Sir George Trevelyan
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_358' name='page_358'></a>358</span>
+and Dr. Thomas Hodgkin prove that it lives in
+those genial breasts also. It was a pleasure to
+be led over a battlefield by Bowen, for he had
+a good eye for ground, he knew the movements
+of the armies down to the smallest detail, and he
+could explain with perfect lucidity the positions of
+the combatants and the tactical moves in the game.</p>
+<p>Twice only did he come across actual fighting,
+once at D&uuml;ppel in 1864, during the Schleswig-Holstein
+war, and again in Paris during the siege
+of the Communards by the forces that obeyed
+Thiers and the Assembly sitting at Versailles.
+He maintained that the Commune had been unfairly
+judged by Englishmen, and wrote a singularly
+interesting description of what he saw while
+risking his life in the beleaguered city. There
+was in him a great spirit of adventure, though the
+circumstances of his life gave it little scope.</p>
+<p>Travel was one of his chief pleasures, but it
+was, if possible, a still greater pleasure to his
+fellow-travellers, for he was the most agreeable
+of companions, fertile in suggestion, candid in
+discussion, swift in decision. He cared nothing
+for luxury and very little for comfort; he was
+absolutely unselfish and imperturbably good-humoured;
+he could get enjoyment out of the
+smallest incidents of travel, and his curiosity to
+see the surface of the earth as well as the cities
+of men was inexhaustible. He loved the unexpected,
+and if one had written proposing an
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_359' name='page_359'></a>359</span>
+expedition to explore Tibet, he would have
+telegraphed back, &ldquo;Start to-night: do we meet
+Charing Cross or Victoria?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I have dwelt on Bowen&rsquo;s gifts and methods
+as a teacher, because teaching was the joy and
+the business of his life, and because he showed
+a new way in which boys might be stimulated
+and guided. But he was a great deal besides
+a teacher, just as his brother Charles was a
+great deal besides a lawyer. Both had talents
+for literature of a very high order. Charles
+published a verse translation of Virgil&rsquo;s <i>Eclogues</i>
+and the first six books of the <i>&AElig;neid</i>, full of
+ingenuity and refinement, as well as of fine poetic
+taste. Edward&rsquo;s vein expressed itself in the
+writing of songs. His school songs, composed
+for the Harrow boys, became immensely popular
+with them, and their use at school celebrations
+of various kinds has passed from Harrow to
+the other great schools of England, even
+to some of the larger girls&rsquo; schools. The
+songs are unique in their fanciful ingenuity and
+humorous extravagance, full of a boyish joy in
+life, in the exertion of physical strength, in the
+mimic strife of games, yet with an occasional
+touch of sadness, like the shadow of a passing
+cloud as it falls on the cricket field over which
+the shouts of the players are ringing. The metres
+are various: all show rhythmical skill, and in all
+the verse has a swing which makes it singularly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_360' name='page_360'></a>360</span>
+effective when sung by a mass of voices. Most
+of the songs are dedicated to cricket or football,
+but a few are serious, and two or three of these
+have a beauty of thought and perfection of form
+which make the reader ask why a poetic gift so
+true and so delicate should have been rarely used.
+These songs were the work of his middle or later
+years, and he never wrote except when the impulse
+came upon him. The stream ran pure but
+it ran seldom. In early days he had been for a
+while, like many other brilliant young University
+men of his time, a contributor to the <i>Saturday
+Review</i>. (There surely never was a journal which
+enlisted so much and such varied literary talent
+as the <i>Saturday</i> did between 1855 and 1863.)
+Bowen&rsquo;s articles were, like his elder brother&rsquo;s,
+extremely witty. In later life he could seldom
+be induced to write, having fallen out of the habit,
+and being, indeed, too busy to carry on any large
+piece of work; but the occasional papers on educational
+subjects he produced showed no decline in
+his vivacity or in the abundance of his humour.
+Those who knew the range and the resources
+of his mind sometimes regretted that he would do
+nothing to let the world know them. But he
+was, to a degree most unusual among men of real
+power, absolutely indifferent, not only to fame, but
+to opportunities for exercising power or influence.</p>
+<p>The stoicism which he sought to form in his
+pupils was inculcated by his own example. It
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_361' name='page_361'></a>361</span>
+was a genial and cheerful stoicism, which checked
+neither his affection for them nor his brightness
+in society, and which permitted him to draw as
+much enjoyment from small things as most
+people can from great ones. But if he had
+the gaiety of an Irishman, he had a double portion
+of English reserve. He never gave expression
+in words to his emotions. He never seemed
+either elated or depressed. He never lost his
+temper and never seemed to be curbing it. His
+tastes and way of life were simple to the verge of
+austerity; nor did he appear to desire anything
+more than what he had obtained.</p>
+<p>It is natural&mdash;possibly foolish, yet almost
+inevitable&mdash;that those who perceive in a friend
+the presence of rare and brilliant gifts should
+desire that his gifts should not only be turned
+to full account for the world&rsquo;s benefit, but
+should become so known and appreciated as
+to make others admire and value what they
+admire and value. When such a man prefers to
+live his life in his own way, and do the plain
+duties that lie near him, with no thought of
+anything further, they feel, though they may try
+to repress, a kind of disappointment, as though
+greatness or virtue had missed its mark because
+known to few besides themselves. Yet there is
+a sense in which that friend is most our own who
+has least belonged to the world, who has least
+cared for what the world has to offer, who has
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_362' name='page_362'></a>362</span>
+chosen the simplest and purest pleasures, who
+has rendered the service that his way of life
+required with no longing for any wider theatre
+or any applause to be there won. Is there indeed
+anything more beautiful than a life of quiet self-sufficing
+yet beneficent serenity, such as the
+ancient philosophers inculcated, a life which is
+now more rarely than ever led by men of shining
+gifts, because the inducements to bring such gifts
+into the dusty thoroughfares of the world have
+grown more numerous? Bowen had the best
+equipment for a philosopher. He knew the things
+that gave him pleasure, and sought no others. He
+knew what he could do well. He followed his
+own bent. His desires were few, and he could
+gratify them all. He had made life exactly what
+he wished it to be. Intensely as he enjoyed
+travel, he never uttered a note of regret when the
+beginning of a Harrow school term stopped a
+journey at its most interesting point, so dearly
+did he love his boys. What more can we desire
+for our friends than this&mdash;that in remembering
+them there should be nothing to regret, that all
+who came under their influence should feel themselves
+for ever thereafter the better for that influence,
+that a happy and peaceful life should be
+crowned by a sudden and painless death?</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_363' name='page_363'></a>363</span>
+<a name='EDWIN_LAWRENCE_GODKIN' id='EDWIN_LAWRENCE_GODKIN'></a>
+<h2>EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN</h2>
+</div>
+<p>As with the progress of science new arts emerge
+and new occupations and trades are created, so
+with the progress of society professions previously
+unknown arise, evolve new types of
+intellectual excellence, and supply a new theatre
+for the display of peculiar and exceptional gifts.
+Such a profession, such a type, and the type
+which is perhaps most specially characteristic of
+our times, is that of the Editor. It scarcely
+existed before the French Revolution, and is, as
+now fully developed, a product of the last eighty
+years. Various are its forms. There is the
+Business Editor, who runs his newspaper as a
+great commercial undertaking, and may neither
+care for politics nor attach himself to any political
+party. America still recollects the familiar
+example set by James Gordon Bennett, the
+founder of the <i>New York Herald</i>. There is
+the Selective Editor, who may never pen a line,
+but shows his skill in gathering an able staff
+round him, and in allotting to each of them the
+work he can do best. Such an one was John
+Douglas Cook, a man of slender cultivation
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_364' name='page_364'></a>364</span>
+and few intellectual interests, but still remembered
+in England by those who forty years
+ago knew the staff of the <i>Saturday Review</i>,
+then in its brilliant prime, as possessed of an
+extraordinary instinct for the topics which caught
+the public taste, and for the persons capable of
+handling those topics. John T. Delane, of the
+<i>Times</i>, had the same gift, with talents and
+knowledge far surpassing Cook&rsquo;s. A third and
+usually more interesting form is found in the
+Editor who is himself an able writer, and who
+imparts his own individuality to the journal he
+directs. Such an one was Horace Greeley,
+who, in the days before the War of Secession,
+made the <i>New York Tribune</i> a power in
+America. Such another, of finer natural quality,
+was Michael Katkoff, who in his short career
+did much to create and to develop the spirit
+of nationality and imperialism in Russia thirty
+years ago.</p>
+<p>It was to this third form of the editorial profession
+that Mr. Godkin belonged. He is the
+most remarkable example of it that has appeared
+in our time&mdash;perhaps, indeed, in any time since
+the profession rose to importance; and all the
+more remarkable because he was never, like
+Greeley or Katkoff, the exponent of any widespread
+sentiment or potent movement, but was
+frequently in opposition to the feeling for the
+moment dominant.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_365' name='page_365'></a>365</span></div>
+<p>Edwin Lawrence Godkin, the son of a Protestant
+clergyman and author, was born in the
+county of Wicklow, in Ireland, in 1831. He
+was educated at Queen&rsquo;s College, Belfast, read
+for a short time for the English bar, but drifted
+into journalism by accepting the post of correspondent
+to the London <i>Daily News</i> during the
+Crimean War in 1853-54. The horror of war which
+he retained through his life was due to the glimpse
+of it he had in the Crimea. Soon afterwards he
+went to America, was admitted to the bar in New
+York, but never practised, spent some months in
+travelling through the Southern States on horseback,
+learning thereby what slavery was, and
+what its economic and social consequences, was
+for two or three years a writer on the <i>New York
+Times</i>, and ultimately, in 1865, established in
+New York a weekly journal called the <i>Nation</i>.
+This he continued to edit, writing most of it
+himself, till 1881, when he accepted the editorship
+of the <i>New York Evening Post</i>, an old and
+respectable paper, but with no very large circulation.
+The <i>Nation</i> continued to appear, but became
+practically a weekly edition of the <i>Evening
+Post</i>, or rather, as some one said, the <i>Evening
+Post</i> became a daily edition of the <i>Nation</i>, for
+the tone and spirit that had characterised the
+<i>Nation</i> now pervaded the <i>Post</i>. In 1900 failing
+health compelled him to retire from active work,
+and in May 1902 he died in England. Journalism
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_366' name='page_366'></a>366</span>
+left him little leisure for any other kind of literary
+production; but he wrote in early life a short
+history of Hungary; and a number of articles
+which he had in later years contributed to the
+<i>Nation</i> or to magazines were collected and published
+in three volumes between 1895 and 1900.
+They are clear and wise articles, specially instructive
+where they deal with the most recent
+aspects of democracy. But as they convey a less
+than adequate impression of the peculiar qualities
+which established his fame, I pass on to the work
+by which he will be remembered, his work as a
+weekly and daily public writer.</p>
+<p>He was well equipped for this career by
+considerable experience of the world, by large
+reading, for though not a learned man, he had
+assimilated a great deal of knowledge on economical
+and historical subjects, and by a stock
+of positive principles which he saw clearly and
+held coherently. In philosophy and economics
+he was a Utilitarian of the school of J. S.
+Mill, and in politics what used to be called a
+philosophical Radical, a Radical of the less
+extreme type, free from sentiment and from
+prejudices, but equally free from any desire to
+destroy for the sake of destroying. Like the
+other Utilitarians of those days, he was a
+moderate optimist, expecting the world to grow
+better steadily, though not swiftly; and he went
+to America in the belief that he should there find
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_367' name='page_367'></a>367</span>
+more progress secured, and more of further progress
+in prospect, than any European country
+could show. It was the land of promise, in
+which all the forces making for good on which
+the school of Mill relied were to be found at
+work, hampered only by the presence of slavery.
+I note this fact, because it shows that the pessimism
+of Mr. Godkin&rsquo;s later years was not due to a
+naturally querulous or despondent temperament.</p>
+<p>So too was his mind admirably fitted for the
+career he had chosen. It was logical, penetrating,
+systematic, yet it was also quick and
+nimble. His views were definite, not to say
+dogmatic, and as they were confidently held,
+so too they were confidently expressed. He
+never struck a doubtful note. He never slurred
+over a difficulty, nor sought, when he knew
+himself ignorant, to cover up his ignorance.
+Imagination was kept well in hand, for his constant
+aim was to get at and deal with the vital
+facts of every case. If he was not original in the
+way of thinking out doctrines distinctively his
+own, nor in respect of any exuberance of ideas
+bubbling up in the course of discussion, there was
+fertility as well as freshness in his application of
+principles to current questions, and in the illustrations
+by which he enforced his arguments.</p>
+<p>As his thinking was exact, so his style was
+clear-cut and trenchant. Even when he was
+writing most swiftly, it never sank below a high
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_368' name='page_368'></a>368</span>
+level of form and finish. Every word had its
+use and every sentence told. There was no
+doubt about his meaning, and just as little about
+the strength of his convictions. He had a gift
+for terse vivacious paragraphs commenting on
+some event of the day or summing up the effect of
+a speech or a debate. The touch was equally
+light and firm. But if the manner was brisk, the
+matter was solid: you admired the keenness of
+the insight and the weight of the judgment just
+as much as the brightness of the style. Much
+of the brightness lay in the humour. That is a
+plant which blossoms so much more profusely on
+Transatlantic soil that English readers of the
+<i>Nation</i> had usually a start of surprise when told
+that this most humorous of American journalists
+was not an American at all but a European,
+and indeed a European who never became
+thoroughly Americanised. It was humour of
+a pungent and sarcastic quality, usually directed
+to the detection of tricks or the exposure of
+shams, but it was eminently mirth-provoking and
+never malicious. Frequently it was ironical, and
+the irony sometimes so fine as to be mistaken
+for seriousness.</p>
+<p>The <i>Nation</i> was from its very first numbers
+so full of force, keenness, and knowledge, and so
+unusually well written, that it made its way rapidly
+among the educated classes of the Eastern States.
+It soon became a power, but a power of a new
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_369' name='page_369'></a>369</span>
+kind. Mr. Godkin wanted most of the talents
+or interests of the ordinary journalist. He
+gave no thought to the organisation of the
+paper as a business undertaking. He scarcely
+heeded circulation, either when his livelihood
+depended upon the <i>Nation</i> of which he was the
+chief owner, or when he was associated with
+others in the ownership of the <i>Evening Post</i>.
+He refused to allow any news he disapproved,
+including all scandal and all society gossip, to
+appear. He was prepared at any moment to
+incur unpopularity from his subscribers, or even
+to offend one half of his advertisers. He took
+no pains to get news before other journals, and
+cared nothing for those &ldquo;beats&rdquo; and &ldquo;scoops&rdquo; in
+which the soul of the normal newspaper man
+finds a legitimate source of pride. He was not
+there, he would have said, to please either advertisers
+or subscribers, but to tell the American
+people the truths they needed to hear, and if
+those truths were distasteful, so much the more
+needful was it to proclaim them. He was absolutely
+independent not only of all personal but
+of all party ties. A public man was never
+either praised or suffered to escape censure because
+he was a private acquaintance. He once
+told me that the being obliged to censure those
+with whom he stood in personal relations was
+the least agreeable feature of his profession.
+Whether an act was done by the Republicans
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_370' name='page_370'></a>370</span>
+or by the Democrats made no difference to his
+judgment, or to the severity with which his
+judgment was expressed. His distrust of Mr.
+James G. Blaine had led him to support Mr.
+Cleveland at the election of 1884, and he continued
+to give a general approval to the latter
+statesman during both his presidential terms. But
+when Mr. Cleveland&rsquo;s Venezuelan message with
+its menaces to England appeared in December
+1895, Mr. Godkin vehemently denounced it, as
+indeed he had frequently before blamed particular
+acts of the Cleveland administrations. He sometimes
+voted for the Republicans, sometimes for
+the Democrats, according to the merits of the
+transitory issue or the particular candidate, but
+after 1884 no one could have called him either a
+Republican or a Democrat.</p>
+<p>Independence of party is less rare among
+American than among European newspapers;
+but courage such as Godkin&rsquo;s is rare everywhere.
+The editor of a century ago had in most
+countries to fear press censorship, or the law of
+political libel, or the frowns of the great. The
+modern editor, delivered from these risks, is
+exposed to the more insidious temptations of
+financial influence, of social pressure, of the
+fear of injuring the business interests of the
+paper, which are now sometimes enormous.
+Godkin&rsquo;s conscientiousness and pride made him
+equally indifferent to influence and to threats. As
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_371' name='page_371'></a>371</span>
+some one said, you might as well have tried to
+frighten the east wind. Clear, prompt, and self-confident,
+judging everything by a high standard
+of honour and public spirit, he distributed censure
+with no regard either to the official position
+or to the party affiliations of politicians. The
+&ldquo;Weekly Day of Judgment&rdquo; was the title
+bestowed upon the <i>Nation</i> by Charles Dudley
+Warner, who himself admired it. As Godkin
+expected&mdash;or at least demanded&mdash;righteousness
+from every one, he was more a terror to evildoers
+than a praise to them that do well, and
+the fact that, having no private ends to serve,
+he thought only of truth and the public interest,
+made him all the more stringent. Because
+he was, and found it easy to be, fearless and independent,
+he scarcely allowed enough for the
+timidity of others, and sometimes chastised the
+weak as sternly as the wicked. An editor who
+smites all the self-seekers and all the time-servers
+whom he thinks worth smiting, is sure to become
+a target for many arrows. But as Godkin
+was an equally caustic critic of the sentimental
+vagaries or economic heresies of well-meaning
+men or sections of opinion, he incurred hostility
+from quarters where the desire for honest administration
+and the purity of public life was hardly
+less strong than in the pages of the <i>Nation</i> itself.
+Though he took no personal part in politics, never
+appeared on platforms nor in any way put himself
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_372' name='page_372'></a>372</span>
+forward, his paper was so markedly himself that
+people talked of it as him. It was not &ldquo;the
+<i>Nation</i> says&rdquo; or &ldquo;the <i>Post</i> says,&rdquo; but &ldquo;Godkin
+says.&rdquo; Even his foreign birth was charged
+against him&mdash;a rare charge in a country so
+tolerant and catholic as the United States, where
+every office except that of President is open to
+newcomers as freely as to the native born.</p>
+<p>He was called &ldquo;un-American,&rdquo; and I have
+heard men who admired and read the <i>Nation</i>
+nevertheless complain that they did not want
+&ldquo;to be taught by a European how to run this
+Republic.&rdquo; True it is that he did not see things
+or write about them quite as an American would
+have done. But was this altogether a misfortune?
+The Italian cities of the Middle Ages used to call
+in a man of character and mark from some other
+place and make him Podest&aacute; just because he stood
+outside the family ties and the factions of the
+city. Godkin&rsquo;s foreign education gave him detachment
+and perspective. It never reduced his
+ardour to see administration and public life in
+America made worthy of the greatness of the
+American people.</p>
+<p>No journal could have maintained its circulation
+and extended its influence in the face of so
+much hostility except by commanding merits.
+The merits of the <i>Nation</i> were incontestable.
+It was the best weekly not only in America
+but in the world. The editorials were models
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_373' name='page_373'></a>373</span>
+of style. The book reviews, many of them
+in earlier days also written by Godkin himself,
+were finished in point of form, and, when not
+his own, came from the ablest specialist hands
+in the country. The &ldquo;current notes&rdquo; of progress
+in such subjects as geography, natural history,
+and arch&aelig;ology were instructive and accurate.
+So it was that people had to read the <i>Nation</i>
+whether they liked it or not. It could not be
+ignored. It was a necessity even where it was a
+terror.</p>
+<p>Yet neither the force of his reasoning nor
+the brilliance of his style would have secured
+Godkin&rsquo;s influence but for two other elements of
+strength he possessed. One was the universal
+belief in his disinterestedness and sincerity.
+He was often charged with prejudice or bitterness,
+but never with any sinister motive; enemies
+no less than friends respected him. The
+other was his humour. An austere moralist
+who is brimful of fun is rare in any country.
+Relishing humour more than does any other
+people, the Americans could not be seriously
+angry with a man who gave them so abundant a
+feast.</p>
+<p>To trace the course he took in the politics of
+the United States since 1860 would almost be
+to outline the history of forty years, for there
+was no great issue in the discussion of which
+he did not bear a part. He was a strong
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_374' name='page_374'></a>374</span>
+supporter of the Northern cause during the War
+of Secession, and by his letters to the London
+<i>Daily News</i> did something to enlighten English
+readers. When the problems of reconstruction
+emerged after the war, he suggested lines of
+action more moderate than those followed by
+the Republican leaders, and during many subsequent
+years denounced the &ldquo;carpet-baggers,&rdquo; and
+advocated the policy of restoring self-government
+to the Southern States and withdrawing
+Federal troops. Incensed at the corruption of
+some of the men who surrounded President
+Grant during his first term, he opposed Grant&rsquo;s
+re-election, as did nearly all the reformers of
+those days. By this time he had begun to attack
+the &ldquo;spoils system,&rdquo; and to demand a reform of
+the civil service, and he had also become engaged
+in that campaign against the Tammany organisation
+in New York City which he maintained
+with unabated energy till the end of his editorial
+career.<a name='FNanchor_0049' id='FNanchor_0049'></a><a href='#Footnote_0049' class='fnanchor'>[58]</a> In 1884 he led the opposition to the
+candidacy of Mr. Blaine for President, and it was
+mainly the persistency with which the <i>Evening
+Post</i> set forth the accusations brought against
+that statesman that secured his defeat in New
+York State, and therewith his defeat in the
+election. It was on this occasion that the nickname
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_375' name='page_375'></a>375</span>
+of Mugwump<a name='FNanchor_0050' id='FNanchor_0050'></a><a href='#Footnote_0050' class='fnanchor'>[59]</a> was first applied to Mr.
+Godkin by the ablest of his antagonists in the
+press, Mr. Dana of the <i>New York Sun</i>, a title
+before long extended to the Independents whom
+the <i>Post</i> led, and who constituted, during the
+next ten or twelve years, a section of opinion
+important, if not by its numbers, yet by the
+intellectual and moral weight of the men who
+composed it. When currency questions became
+prominent, Mr. Godkin was a strong opponent
+of bimetallism and of &ldquo;silverism&rdquo; in all its
+forms, and a not less strenuous opponent of all
+socialistic theories and movements. It need
+hardly be added that he had always been an
+upholder of the principles of Free Trade. Like
+a sound Cobdenite, he was an advocate of
+peace, and disliked territorial extension. He
+opposed President Grant&rsquo;s scheme for the acquisition
+of San Domingo, as he afterwards opposed
+the annexation of Hawaii. His close study of
+Irish history, and his old faith in the principle of
+nationality, had made him a strenuous advocate of
+Home Rule for Ireland. But no one was farther
+than he from sharing the feelings of the American
+Irish towards England. He condemned the
+threats addressed in 1895 to Great Britain over
+the Venezuela question; and glad as he was to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_376' name='page_376'></a>376</span>
+see that question settled by England&rsquo;s acceptance
+of an arbitration which she had previously
+denied the right of the United States to
+demand, he held that England must beware of
+yielding too readily to pressure from the United
+States, because such compliance would encourage
+that aggressive spirit in the latter whose consequences
+for both countries he feared. Never,
+perhaps, did he incur so much obloquy as in
+defending, almost single-handed, the British position
+in the Venezuelan affair. The attacks made
+all over the country on the <i>Evening Post</i> were,
+he used to say, like storms of hail lashing against
+his windows. At the very end of his career, he
+resisted the war with Spain and the annexation
+of the Philippine Islands, deeming the acquisition
+of trans-Oceanic territories, inhabited by
+inferior races, a dangerous new departure, opposed
+to the traditions of the Fathers of the Republic,
+and inconsistent with the principles on which the
+Republic was founded. No public writer has left
+a more consistent record.</p>
+<p>In private life Mr. Godkin was a faithful
+friend and a charming companion, genial as well
+as witty, considerate of others, and liked no less
+than admired by his staff on the <i>Evening Post</i>,
+free from cynicism, and more indulgent in his
+views of human nature than might have been
+gathered from his public utterances. He never
+despaired of democratic government, yet his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_377' name='page_377'></a>377</span>
+spirits had been damped by the faint fulfilment
+of those hopes for the progress of free nations,
+and especially of the United States, which
+had illumined his youth. The slow advance
+of economic truths, the evils produced by
+the increase of wealth, the growth of what he
+called &ldquo;chromo-civilisation,&rdquo; the indifference of
+the rich and educated to politics, the want of
+nerve among politicians, the excitability of the
+masses, the tenacity with which corruption and
+misgovernment held their ground, in spite of
+repeated exposures, in cities like New York,
+Philadelphia, and Chicago&mdash;all these things had
+so sunk into his soul that it became hard to induce
+him to look at the other side, and to appreciate
+the splendid recuperative forces which are
+at work in America. Thus his friends were
+driven to that melancholy form of comfort which
+consists in pointing out that other countries are
+no better. They argued that England in particular,
+to which he had continued to look as the
+home of political morality and enlightened State
+wisdom, was suffering from evils, not indeed the
+same as those which in his judgment afflicted
+America, but equally serious. They bade him
+remember that moral progress is not continuous,
+but subject to ebbs of reaction, and that America
+is a country of which one should never despair,
+because in it evils have often before worked out
+their cure. He did regretfully own, after his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_378' name='page_378'></a>378</span>
+latest visits to Europe, that England had sadly
+declined from the England of his earlier days,
+and he admitted that the clouds under which his
+own path had latterly lain might after a time be
+scattered by a burst of sunshine; but his hopes for
+the near future of America were not brightened by
+these reflections. Sometimes he seemed to feel&mdash;though
+of his own work he never spoke&mdash;as
+though he had laboured in vain for forty years.</p>
+<p>If he so thought, he did his work far less than
+justice. It had told powerfully upon the United
+States, and that in more than one way. Though
+the circulation of the <i>Nation</i> was never large, it
+was read by the two classes which in America have
+most to do with forming political and economic
+opinion&mdash;I mean editors and University teachers.
+(The Universities and Colleges, be it remembered,
+are far more numerous, relatively to the population,
+in America than in England, and a more
+important factor in the thought of the country.)
+From the editors and the professors Mr. Godkin&rsquo;s
+views filtered down into the educated class generally,
+and affected its opinion. He instructed and
+stimulated the men who instructed and stimulated
+the rest of the people. To those young men
+in particular who thought about public affairs and
+were preparing themselves to serve their country,
+his articles were an inspiration. The great hope
+for American democracy to-day lies in the growing
+zeal and the ripened intelligence with which the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_379' name='page_379'></a>379</span>
+generation now come to manhood has begun to
+throw itself into public work. Many influences
+have contributed to this result, and Mr. Godkin&rsquo;s
+has been among the most potent.</p>
+<p>Nor was his example less beneficial to the
+profession of journalism. There has always
+been a profusion of talent in the American press,
+talent more alert and versatile than is to be found
+in the press of any European country. But in
+1865 there were three things which the United
+States lacked. Literary criticism did not maintain
+a high standard, nor duly distinguish thorough from
+flashy or superficial performances. Party spirit was
+so strong and so pervasive that journalists were
+content to denounce or to extol, and seldom subjected
+the character of men or measures to a
+searching and impartial examination. There was
+too much sentimentalism in politics, with too little
+reference of current questions to underlying principles,
+too little effort to get down to what Americans
+call the &ldquo;hard pan&rdquo; of facts. In all these
+respects the last forty years have witnessed prodigious
+advances; and, so far as the press is
+concerned&mdash;for much has been due to the Universities
+and to the growth of a literary class&mdash;Mr.
+Godkin&rsquo;s writings largely contributed to the
+progress made. His finished criticism, his exact
+method, his incisive handling of economic problems,
+his complete detachment from party, helped
+to form a new school of journalists, as the example
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_380' name='page_380'></a>380</span>
+he set of a serious and lofty conception of an editor&rsquo;s
+duties helped to add dignity to the position. He
+had not that disposition to enthrone the press
+which made a great English newspaper once claim
+for itself that it discharged in the modern world the
+functions of the medi&aelig;val Church. But he brought
+to his work as an anonymous writer a sense of responsibility
+and a zeal for the welfare of his country
+which no minister of State could have surpassed.</p>
+<p>His friends may sometimes have wished that
+he had more fully recognised the worth of sentiment
+as a motive power in politics, that he had
+more frequently tried to persuade as well as to convince,
+that he had given more credit for partial
+instalments of honest service and for a virtue less
+than perfect, that he had dealt more leniently
+with the faults of the good and the follies of the
+wise. Defects in these respects were the almost
+inevitable defects of his admirable qualities, of
+his passion for truth, his hatred of wrong and
+injustice, his clear vision, his indomitable spirit.</p>
+<p>The lesson of his editorial career is a lesson
+not for America only. Among the dangers that
+beset democratic communities, none are greater
+than the efforts of wealth to control, not only
+electors and legislators, but also the organs of
+public opinion, and the disposition of statesmen
+and journalists to defer to and flatter the majority,
+adopting the sentiment dominant at the moment,
+and telling the people that its voice is the voice
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_381' name='page_381'></a>381</span>
+of God. Mr. Godkin was not only inaccessible
+to the lures of wealth&mdash;the same may happily be
+still said of many of his craft-brethren&mdash;he was
+just as little accessible to the fear of popular
+displeasure. Nothing more incensed him than
+to see a statesman or an editor with his &ldquo;ear to
+the ground&rdquo; (to use an American phrase), seeking
+to catch the sound of the coming crowd. To
+him, the less popular a view was, so much the
+more did it need to be well weighed and, if
+approved, to be strenuously and incessantly
+preached. Democracies will always have demagogues
+ready to feed their vanity and stir their
+passions and exaggerate the feeling of the
+moment. What they need is men who will swim
+against the stream, will tell them their faults, will
+urge an argument all the more forcibly because it
+is unwelcome. Such an one was Edwin Godkin.
+Since the death of Abraham Lincoln, America
+has been generally more influenced by her writers,
+preachers, and thinkers than by her statesmen.
+In the list of those who have during the last forty
+years influenced her for good and helped by their
+pens to make her history, a list illustrated by such
+names as those of R. W. Emerson and Phillips
+Brooks and James Russell Lowell, his name
+will find its place and receive its well-earned
+meed of honour.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_382' name='page_382'></a>382</span>
+<a name='LORD_ACTON' id='LORD_ACTON'></a>
+<h2>LORD ACTON</h2>
+</div>
+<p>When Lord Acton died on 19th June 1902, at
+Tegern See in Bavaria, England lost the most truly
+cosmopolitan of her children, and Europe lost one
+who was, by universal consent, in the foremost rank
+of her men of learning. He belonged to an old
+Roman Catholic family of Shropshire, a branch
+of which had gone to Southern Italy, where his
+grandfather, General Acton, had been chief
+minister of the King of Naples in the great
+war, at the time when the Bourbon dynasty
+maintained itself in Sicily by the help of
+the British fleet, while all Italy lay under the
+heel of Napoleon. His father, Sir Ferdinand
+Acton, married a German lady, heiress of the
+ancient and famous house of Dalberg, one of the
+great families of the middle Rhineland; so John
+Edward Emerich Dalberg-Acton was born half a
+German, and connected by blood with the highest
+aristocracy of Germany. He was educated at
+Oscott, one of the two chief Roman Catholic
+colleges of England, under Dr. Wiseman, afterwards
+Archbishop of Westminster and Cardinal;
+but the most powerful influence on the development
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_383' name='page_383'></a>383</span>
+of his mind and principles came from
+that glory of Catholic learning, a beautiful
+soul as well as a capacious intellect, Dr. von
+D&ouml;llinger, with whom Acton studied during some
+years at Munich. He sat for a short time in
+the House of Commons as member for Carlow
+(1859); and was afterwards elected for Bridgnorth
+(1865), but lost his seat (which he had
+gained by one vote only) on a scrutiny. In
+those days it was not easy for a Roman Catholic
+to find an English constituency, so in 1869 Mr.
+Gladstone procured his elevation to the peerage.
+He made a successful speech in the House
+of Lords in 1893, but took no prominent part in
+parliamentary life in either House, feeling himself
+too much of a student, and looking at current
+questions from a point of view unlike that of
+English politicians. Neither as a philosopher,
+nor as a historian, nor as a product of German
+training, could he find either Lords or Commons
+a congenial audience. When he was asked soon
+after he entered Parliament why he did not speak,
+he answered that he agreed with nobody and nobody
+agreed with him. But since he regarded politics as
+history in the course of making under his eyes, he
+continued to be all his life keenly interested in
+public affairs, watching and judging every move
+in the game. Mr. Gladstone, whose trusted
+friend he had been for many years, was believed
+to have on one occasion wished to place him in an
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_384' name='page_384'></a>384</span>
+important office; but political exigencies made
+this impossible, and the only public post he ever
+held was that of Lord-in-Waiting in the Ministry
+of 1892. In this capacity he was brought into
+frequent contact with Queen Victoria, who felt
+the warmest respect and admiration for him. He
+was one of the very few persons surrounding her
+who was familiar with most of the courts of Continental
+Europe, and could discuss with her from
+direct knowledge the men who figured in those
+courts. At Windsor he spent in the library of
+the Castle all the time during which he was not
+required to be in actual attendance on the Queen,
+a singular phenomenon among Lords-in-Waiting.</p>
+<p>Unlike most English Roman Catholics, he was
+a strong Liberal, a Liberal of that orthodox type,
+individualist, free-trade, and peace-loving, which
+prevailed from 1846 till 1885. He was also a
+convinced Home Ruler, and had, indeed, adopted
+the principle of Home Rule for Ireland long
+before Mr. Gladstone himself was converted to it.
+His faith in that principle rested on the value he
+attached to self-government as a means of training
+and developing the political aptitudes of a
+people, and to the recognition of national sentiment,
+which he held to be, like other natural forces,
+useful when guided but formidable when repressed.
+So too his Liberalism was based on the love of
+freedom for its own sake, joined to the conviction
+that freedom is the best foundation for the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_385' name='page_385'></a>385</span>
+stability of a constitution and the happiness of
+a people. Reliance on the power of freedom
+was, he used to say, one of the broadest of all the
+lessons he had learned from history. He applied
+it in ecclesiastical as well as in political affairs.
+At the time of the Vatican Council of 1870 he
+was, though a layman, prominent among those
+who constituted the opposition maintained by the
+Liberal section of the Roman Catholic Church
+to the affirmation of the dogma of papal infallibility.
+His full and accurate knowledge of ecclesiastical
+history was placed at the disposal of the
+prelates, such as Archbishop Dupanloup, Bishop
+Strossmayer, and Archbishop Conolly (of Halifax,
+Nova Scotia), who combated the Ultramontane
+party in the animated and protracted debates
+which illumined that &OElig;cumenical Council. One,
+at least, of the treatises, and many of the letters
+in the press which the Council called forth were
+written either by him or from materials which he
+supplied, and he was recognised by the Ultramontanes,
+and in particular by Archbishop Manning,
+as being, along with D&ouml;llinger, the most
+formidable of their opponents behind the scenes.
+As every one knows, the Infallibilists triumphed,
+and the schism which led to the formation of the
+Old Catholic Church in Germany and Switzerland
+was the result. D&ouml;llinger was excommunicated;
+but against Lord Acton no action was
+taken, and he remained all his life a faithful
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_386' name='page_386'></a>386</span>
+member of the Roman communion, while adhering
+to the views he had advocated in 1870.</p>
+<p>With this close hold upon practical life and
+this constant interest in the politics of the world,
+especially of England and the United States, no
+one could be less like that cloistered student who
+is commonly taken as the typical man of learning.
+But Lord Acton was a miracle of learning. Of
+the sciences of nature and their practical applications
+in the arts he had indeed no more knowledge
+than any cultivated man of the world is
+expected to possess. But of all the so-called
+&ldquo;human subjects&rdquo; his mastery was unequalled.
+Learning was the business of his life. He was
+gifted with a singularly tenacious memory. His
+industry was untiring. Wherever he was&mdash;in
+London, at Cannes in winter, at Tegern See in
+summer, at Windsor or Osborne with the Queen,
+latterly (till his health failed) at Cambridge during
+the University terms&mdash;he never worked less
+than eight hours a day. Yet, even after making
+every allowance for his memory and his industry,
+his friends stood amazed at the range and exactness
+of his knowledge. It was as various as it was
+profound, and much of it bore on recondite matters
+which few men study to-day. Though less minute
+where it touched the ancient and the early medi&aelig;val
+world than as respected more recent times,
+it might be said to cover the whole field of history,
+both civil and ecclesiastical, and became wonderfully
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_387' name='page_387'></a>387</span>
+full and exact when it reached the Renaissance and
+Reformation periods. It included not only the
+older theology, but modern Biblical criticism. It
+included metaphysics; and not only metaphysics in
+the more special sense, but the abstract side of
+economics and that philosophy of law on which
+the Germans set so much store. Most of the
+prominent figures who have during the last
+half-century led the march of inquiry in these
+subjects, men like Ranke and Fustel de
+Coulanges in history, Wilhelm Roscher in
+economic science, Adolf Harnack in theology,
+were his personal friends, and he could meet
+them as an equal on their own ground. On
+one occasion I had invited to meet him at dinner
+the late Dr. (afterwards Bishop) Creighton, who
+was then writing his <i>History of the Popes</i>, and the
+late Professor Robertson Smith, the most eminent
+Hebrew and Arabic scholar in Britain. The conversation
+turned first upon the times of Pope Leo
+the Tenth, and then upon recent controversies
+regarding the dates of the books of the Old
+Testament, and it soon appeared that Lord
+Acton knew as much about the former as Dr.
+Creighton, and as much about the latter as
+Robertson Smith. The constitutional history of
+the United States is a topic far removed from
+those philosophical and ecclesiastical or theological
+lines of inquiry to which most of his time had
+been given; yet he knew it more thoroughly than
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_388' name='page_388'></a>388</span>
+any other living European, at least in England
+and France, for of the Germans I will not venture
+to speak, and he continued to read most of the
+books of importance dealing with it which from
+time to time were published. So, indeed, he
+kept abreast of nearly all the literature of possible
+utility bearing on history (especially ecclesiastical
+history) and political theory that appeared in
+Europe or America, reading much which his less
+diligent or less eager friends thought scarcely
+worthy of his perusal. And it need hardly be
+said that his friends found him an invaluable guide
+to the literature of any subject. In the sphere
+of history more especially, one might safely
+assume that a book which he did not know was
+not worth knowing, while he was often able to
+indicate, as being the right book to consult, some
+work of which the person who consulted him,
+albeit not unversed in the subject, had never
+heard. He had at one time four libraries, the
+largest at his family seat, Aldenham in Shropshire,
+others at Tegern See, at Cannes, and in
+London; and he could usually tell in which of
+these the particular book he named was to be
+found. Unlike most men who value their
+libraries, he was fond of lending books, and
+would sometimes put a friend to shame by asking
+some weeks afterwards what the latter thought
+of the volumes he had almost forced on the
+borrower, and which the borrower had not found
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_389' name='page_389'></a>389</span>
+time to read. After saying this, I need scarcely
+add that he was not a book collector in the usual
+sense of the word. He did not care for rare
+editions, and still less did he care about bindings.</p>
+<p>His Aldenham library was itself a monument
+of learning and industry.<a name='FNanchor_0051' id='FNanchor_0051'></a><a href='#Footnote_0051' class='fnanchor'>[60]</a> In forming it he sought
+to bring together the books needed for tracing
+and elucidating the growth of formative ideas
+and of institutions in the sphere of ecclesiastical
+and civil polity, and to attain this he made it
+include not only all the best treatises handling
+these large and complex subjects, but a mass of
+original records bearing as well on the local
+histories of the cities and provinces of such
+countries as Italy and France as on the general
+history of the great European States and of the
+Church. This magnificent design he accomplished
+by his own efforts before he was forty. What was
+still more surprising, he had found time to use the
+books. Nearly all of them show by notes pencilled
+or marks placed in them that he had read some
+part of them, and knew (so far as was needed for
+his purpose) their contents.</p>
+<p>Vast as his stores of knowledge were, they
+were opened only to his few intimate friends.
+It was not merely that he, as Tennyson said of
+Edmund Lushington, &ldquo;bore all that weight of
+learning lightly, like a flower.&rdquo; No one could
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_390' name='page_390'></a>390</span>
+have known in general society that he had any
+weight of learning to bear. He seemed to be
+merely a cultivated and agreeable man of the
+world, interested in letters and politics, but disposed
+rather to listen than to talk. He was
+sometimes enigmatic and &ldquo;not incapable of casting
+a pearl of irony in the way of those who would
+mistake it for pebbly fact.&rdquo;<a name='FNanchor_0052' id='FNanchor_0052'></a><a href='#Footnote_0052' class='fnanchor'>[61]</a> A great capacity
+for cynicism remained a capacity only, because
+joined to a greater reverence for virtue. In a
+large company he seldom put forth the fulness
+of his powers; it was in familiar converse
+with persons whose tastes resembled his own
+that the extraordinary finesse and polish of his
+mind revealed themselves. His critical taste was
+not only delicate, but exacting; his judgments
+leaned to the side of severity. No one applied
+a more stringent moral standard to the conduct
+of men in public affairs, whether to-day or in
+past ages. He insisted upon this, in his inaugural
+lecture at Cambridge, as the historian&rsquo;s first duty.
+&ldquo;It is,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the office of historical science to
+maintain morality as the sole impartial criterion
+of men and things.&rdquo; When he came to estimate
+the value of literary work he seemed no less
+hard to satisfy. His ideal, both as respected
+thoroughness in substance and finish in form,
+was impossibly high, and he noted every failure
+to reach it. No one appreciated merit more
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_391' name='page_391'></a>391</span>
+cordially. No one spoke with warmer admiration
+of such distinguished historians and theologians
+as the men whom I have just named. But the
+precision of his thinking and the fastidiousness
+of his taste gave more than a tinge of austerity
+to his judgment. His opinions were peculiarly
+instructive and illuminative to Englishmen, because
+he was only half an Englishman in blood,
+less than half an Englishman in his training and
+mental habits. He was as much at home in Paris
+or Berlin or Rome as he was in London, speaking
+the four great languages with almost equal
+facility, and knowing the men who in each of these
+capitals were best worth knowing. He viewed
+our insular literature and politics with the detachment
+not only of a Roman Catholic among
+Protestants, of a pupil of D&ouml;llinger and Roscher
+among Oxford and Cambridge men, but also of
+a citizen of the world, whose mastery of history
+and philosophy had given him an unusually wide
+outlook over mankind at large.</p>
+<p>His interest in the great things, so far from
+turning him away from the small things, seemed
+to quicken his sense of their significance. It was
+a noteworthy feature of his view of history that
+he should have held that the explanation of most
+of what has passed in the light is to be found in
+what has passed in the dark. He was always
+hunting for the key to secret chambers, preferring
+to believe that the grand staircase is only for show,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_392' name='page_392'></a>392</span>
+and meant to impose upon the multitude, while the
+real action goes on in hidden passages behind. No
+one knew so much of the gossip of the past; no
+one was more intensely curious about the gossip
+of the present, though in his hands it ceased
+to be gossip and became unwritten history. One
+was sometimes disposed to wonder whether he did
+not think too much about the backstairs. But he
+had seen a great deal of history in the making.</p>
+<p>The passion for acquiring knowledge which
+his German education had fostered ended by
+becoming a snare to him, because it checked his
+productive powers. Not that learning burdened
+him, or clogged the soaring pinions of his mind.
+He was master of all he knew. But acquisition
+absorbed so much of his time that little was left
+for literary composition. (D&ouml;llinger saw the
+danger, for he observed that if Acton did not
+write a great book before he reached the age
+of forty, he would never do so.) It made him
+think that he could not write on a subject till
+he had read everything, or nearly everything,
+that others had written about it. It developed
+the habit of making extracts from the books he
+read, a habit which took the form of accumulating
+small slips of paper on which these
+extracts were written in his exquisitely neat and
+regular hand, the slips being arranged in cardboard
+boxes according to their subjects. He
+had hundreds of these boxes; and though much
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_393' name='page_393'></a>393</span>
+of their contents must no doubt be valuable, the
+time spent in distilling and bottling the essence
+of the books whence they came, might have been
+better spent in giving to the world the ideas
+which they had helped to evoke in his own mind.
+If one may take the quotations appended to
+his inaugural lecture as a sample of those he
+had collected, many of them were not exceptionally
+valuable, and did little more than show
+how the same idea, perhaps no recondite one,
+might be expressed in different words by different
+persons. When one read some article he had
+written, garnished and even overloaded with
+citations, one often felt that his own part was
+better, both in substance and in form, than the
+passages which he had culled from his predecessors.
+It becomes daily more than ever true
+that the secret of historical composition is to
+know what to neglect, since in our time it has
+become impossible to exhaust the literature of
+most subjects, and, as respects the last two
+centuries, to exhaust even the original authorities.
+Yet how shall one know what to neglect without
+at least a glance of inspection? Acton was unwilling
+to neglect anything; and his ardour for completeness
+drew him into a policy fit only for one
+who could expect to live three lives of mortal men.</p>
+<p>The love of knowledge grew upon him till
+it became a passion of the intellect, a thirst like
+the thirst for water in a parching desert. What
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_394' name='page_394'></a>394</span>
+he sought to know was not facts only, but facts
+in their relations to principles, facts so disposed
+and fitly joined together as to become the causeway
+over which the road to truth shall pass.
+For this purpose events were in his view not
+more important than the thoughts of men, because
+discursive and creative thought was to him the
+ruling factor in history. Hence books must be
+known&mdash;books of philosophic creation, books of
+philosophic reflection, no less than those which
+record what has happened. The danger of this
+conception is that everything men have said or
+written, as well as everything they have done,
+becomes a possibly significant fact; and thus the
+search for truth becomes endless because the
+materials are inexhaustible.</p>
+<p>He expressed in striking words, prefixed to
+a list of books suggested for a young man&rsquo;s
+perusal, his view of the aim of a course of
+historical reading. It is &ldquo;to give force and
+fulness and clearness and sincerity and independence
+and elevation and generosity and serenity
+to his mind, that he may know the method and
+law of the process by which error is conquered
+and truth is won, discerning knowledge from
+probability and prejudice from belief, that he
+may learn to master what he rejects as fully as
+what he adopts, that he may understand the
+origin as well as the strength and vitality of
+systems and the better motive of men who are
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_395' name='page_395'></a>395</span>
+wrong ... and to steel him against the charm
+of literary beauty and talent.&rdquo;<a name='FNanchor_0053' id='FNanchor_0053'></a><a href='#Footnote_0053' class='fnanchor'>[62]</a></p>
+<p>Neither his passion for facts nor his appreciation
+of style and form made him decline to the
+right hand or to the left from the true position
+of a historian. He set little store upon what is
+called literary excellence, and would often reply,
+when questioned as to the merits of some book
+bearing an eminent name, &ldquo;You need not read
+it: it adds nothing to what we knew.&rdquo; He valued
+facts only so far as they went to establish a principle
+or explained the course of events. It was really
+not so much in the range of his knowledge as in
+the profundity and precision of his thought that
+his greatness lay.</p>
+<p>His somewhat overstrained conscientiousness,
+coupled with the practically unattainable ideal of
+finish and form which he set before himself, made
+him less and less disposed to literary production.
+No man of first-rate powers has in our time left
+so little by which posterity may judge those
+powers. In his early life, when for a time he
+edited the <i>Home and Foreign Review</i>, and when
+he was connected with the <i>Rambler</i> and the
+<i>North British Review</i>, he wrote frequently; and
+even between 1868 and 1890 he contributed
+to the press some few historical essays and a
+number of anonymous letters. But the aversion
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_396' name='page_396'></a>396</span>
+to creative work seemed to grow on him. About
+1890 he so far yielded to the urgency of a few
+friends as to promise to reissue a number of his
+essays in a volume, but, after rewriting and polishing
+these essays during several years, he abandoned
+the scheme altogether. In 1882 he had
+already drawn out a plan for a comprehensive
+history of Liberty. But this plan also he
+dropped, because the more he read with a view
+to undertaking it the more he wished to read,
+and the vaster did the enterprise seem to loom up
+before him. With him, as with many men who
+cherish high literary ideals, the Better proved
+to be the enemy of the Good.</p>
+<p>Twenty years ago, late at night, in his library
+at Cannes, he expounded to me his view of how
+such a history of Liberty might be written, and
+in what wise it might be made the central thread
+of all history. He spoke for six or seven minutes
+only; but he spoke like a man inspired, seeming
+as if, from some mountain summit high in air, he
+saw beneath him the far-winding path of human
+progress from dim Cimmerian shores of prehistoric
+shadow into the fuller yet broken and
+fitful light of the modern time. The eloquence
+was splendid, but greater than the eloquence was
+the penetrating vision which discerned through
+all events and in all ages the play of those moral
+forces, now creating, now destroying, always
+transmuting, which had moulded and remoulded
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_397' name='page_397'></a>397</span>
+institutions, and had given to the human spirit
+its ceaselessly-changing forms of energy. It was
+as if the whole landscape of history had been
+suddenly lit up by a burst of sunlight. I have
+never heard from any other lips any discourse like
+this, nor from his did I ever hear the like again.</p>
+<p>His style suffered in his later days from
+the abundance of the interspersed citations, and
+from the overfulness and subtlety of the thought,
+which occasionally led to obscurity. But when
+he handled a topic in which learning was not
+required, his style was clear, pointed and incisive,
+sometimes epigrammatic. Several years ago he
+wrote in a monthly magazine a short article upon
+a biography of one of his contemporaries which
+showed how admirable a master he was of polished
+diction and penetrating analysis, and made one
+wish that he had more frequently consented to
+dash off light work in a quick unstudied way.</p>
+<p>To the work of a University professor he came
+too late to acquire the art of fluent and forcible
+oral discourse, nor was the character of his mind,
+with its striving after a flawless exactitude of
+statement, altogether fitted for the function of
+presenting broad summaries of facts to a youthful
+audience. His predecessor in the Cambridge
+chair of history, Sir John Seeley, with less knowledge,
+less subtlety, and less originality, had in
+larger measure the gift of oral exposition and
+the power of putting points, whether by speech
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_398' name='page_398'></a>398</span>
+or by writing, in a clear and telling way. No one,
+indeed, since Macaulay has been a better point-putter
+than Seeley was. But Acton&rsquo;s lectures
+(read from MS.) were models of lucid and stately
+narrative informed by fulness of thought; and
+they were so delivered as to express the feeling
+which each event had evoked in his own mind.
+That sternness of character which revealed itself
+in his judgments of men and books never affected
+his relations to his pupils. Precious as his time
+was, he gave it generously, encouraging them
+to come to him for help and counsel. They
+were awed by the majesty of his learning. Said
+one of them to me, &ldquo;When Lord Acton answers
+a question put to him, I feel as if I were looking
+at a pyramid. I see the point of it clear
+and sharp, but I see also the vast subjacent
+mass of solid knowledge.&rdquo; They perceived,
+moreover, that to him History and Philosophy
+were not two things but one, and perceived that
+of History as well as of divine Philosophy it may
+be said that she too is &ldquo;charming, and musical as
+is Apollo&rsquo;s lute.&rdquo; Thus the impression produced in
+the University by the amplitude of Lord Acton&rsquo;s
+views, by the range of his learning, by the liberality
+of his spirit and his unfailing devotion to
+truth and to truth alone, was deep and fruitful.</p>
+<p>When they wished that he had given to the world
+more of his wisdom, his friends did not undervalue
+a life which was in itself a rare and exquisite
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_399' name='page_399'></a>399</span>
+product of favouring nature and unwearied diligence.
+They only regretted that the influence of
+his ideas, of his methods, and of his spirit, had
+not been more widely diffused in an enduring
+form. It was as when a plant unknown elsewhere
+grows on some remote isle where ships seldom
+touch. Few see the beauty of the flower, and
+here death came before the seed could be gathered
+to be scattered in receptive soil.</p>
+<p>To most men Lord Acton seemed reserved as
+well as remote, presenting a smooth and shining
+surface beneath which it was hard to penetrate.
+He avoided publicity and popularity with the
+tranquil dignity of one for whom the world of
+knowledge and speculation was more than sufficient.
+But he was a loyal friend, affectionate to
+his intimates, gracious in his manners, blameless
+in all the relations of life. Comparatively few
+of his countrymen knew his name, and those who
+did thought of him chiefly as the confidant of Mr.
+Gladstone, and as the most remarkable instance
+of a sincere and steadfast Roman Catholic who
+was a Liberal alike in politics and in theology.
+But those who had been admitted to his friendship
+recognised him as one of the finest intelligences
+of his generation, an unsurpassed,
+and indeed a scarcely rivalled, master of every
+subject which he touched.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_400' name='page_400'></a>400</span>
+<a name='WILLIAM_EWART_GLADSTONE' id='WILLIAM_EWART_GLADSTONE'></a>
+<h2>WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE</h2>
+</div>
+<p>Of no man who has lived in our times is it so
+hard to speak in a concise and summary fashion
+as of Mr. Gladstone. For fifty years he was so
+closely associated with the public affairs of his
+country that the record of his parliamentary life
+is virtually an outline of English political history
+during those years. His activity spread itself out
+over many fields. He was the author of several
+learned and thoughtful books, and of a multitude
+of articles upon all sorts of subjects. He showed
+himself as eagerly interested in matters of classical
+scholarship and Christian doctrine and ecclesiastical
+history as in questions of national finance
+and foreign policy. No account of him could be
+complete without reviewing his actions and
+estimating the results of his work in all these
+directions.</p>
+<p>But the difficulty of describing and judging
+him goes deeper. His was a singularly complex
+nature, whose threads it was hard to unravel.
+His individuality was extremely strong. All that
+he said or did bore its impress. Yet it was an
+individuality so far from being self-consistent
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_401' name='page_401'></a>401</span>
+as sometimes to seem a bundle of opposite
+qualities capriciously united in a single person.
+He might with equal truth have been called, and
+he was in fact called, a conservative and a revolutionary.
+He was dangerously impulsive, and had
+frequently to suffer for his impulsiveness; yet
+he was also not merely prudent and cautious,
+but so astute as to have been accused of craft
+and dissimulation. So great was his respect
+for tradition that he clung to views regarding
+the authorship of the Homeric poems and
+the date of the books of the Old Testament
+which nearly all competent specialists
+have now rejected. So bold was he in practical
+matters that he carried through sweeping
+changes in the British constitution, changed the
+course of English policy in the nearer East,
+overthrew an established church in one part of
+the United Kingdom, and committed himself
+in principle to the overthrow of two other
+established churches in other parts. He came
+near to being a Roman Catholic in his religious
+opinions, yet was for the last twenty years
+of his life the trusted leader of the English
+Protestant Nonconformists and the Scottish
+Presbyterians. No one who knew him intimately
+doubted his conscientious sincerity and earnestness,
+yet four-fifths of the English upper classes
+were in his later years wont to regard him as a
+self-interested schemer who would sacrifice his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_402' name='page_402'></a>402</span>
+country to his ambition. Though he loved
+general principles, and often soared out of the
+sight of his audience when discussing them, he
+generally ended by deciding upon points of detail
+the question at issue. He was at different times
+of his life the defender and the assailant of the
+same institutions, yet scarcely seemed inconsistent
+in doing opposite things, because his
+methods and his arguments preserved the same
+type and colour throughout. Those who had
+at the beginning of his career discerned in him
+the capacity for such diversities and contradictions
+would probably have predicted that they
+must wreck it by making his purposes fluctuating
+and his course erratic. Such a prediction might
+have proved true of any one with less firmness of
+will and less intensity of temper. It was the
+persistent heat and vehemence of his character,
+the sustained passion which he threw into the
+pursuit of the object on which he was for the
+moment bent, that fused these dissimilar qualities
+and made them appear to contribute to and
+increase the total force which he exerted.</p>
+<p>The circumstances of Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s political
+career help to explain, or, at any rate, will furnish
+occasion for the attempt to explain, this complexity
+and variety of character. But before I
+come to his manhood it is convenient to advert
+to three conditions whose influence on him was
+profound&mdash;the first his Scottish blood, the second
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_403' name='page_403'></a>403</span>
+his Oxford education, the third his apprenticeship
+to public life under Sir Robert Peel.</p>
+<p>Theories of character based on race differences
+are dangerous, because they are as hard to
+test as they are easy to form. Still, we all
+know that there are specific qualities and tendencies
+usually found in the minds of men of
+certain stocks, just as there are peculiarities in
+their faces or in their speech. Mr. Gladstone
+was born and brought up in Liverpool, and
+always retained a touch of Lancashire accent.
+But, as he was fond of saying, every drop of
+blood in his veins was Scotch. His father&rsquo;s
+family belonged to the Scottish Lowlands, and
+came from the neighbourhood of Biggar, in the
+Upper Ward of Lanarkshire, where the ruined
+walls of Gledstanes<a name='FNanchor_0054' id='FNanchor_0054'></a><a href='#Footnote_0054' class='fnanchor'>[63]</a>&mdash;&ldquo;the kite&rsquo;s rock&rdquo;&mdash;may
+still be seen. His mother was of Highland extraction,
+by name Robertson, from Dingwall, in
+Ross-shire. Thus he was not only a Scot, but a
+Scot with a strong infusion of the Celtic element,
+the element whence the Scotch derive most of
+what distinguishes them from the northern English.
+The Scot is more excitable, more easily
+brought to a glow of passion, more apt to be
+eagerly absorbed in one thing at a time. He
+is also more fond of exerting his intellect on
+abstractions. It is not merely that the taste for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_404' name='page_404'></a>404</span>
+metaphysical theology is commoner in Scotland
+than in England, but that the Scotch have a
+stronger relish for general principles. They
+like to set out by ascertaining and defining such
+principles, and then to pursue a series of logical
+deductions from them. They are, therefore,
+bolder reasoners than the English, less content
+to remain in the region of concrete facts, more
+prone to throw themselves into the construction
+of a body of speculative doctrine. The
+Englishman is apt to plume himself on being
+right in spite of logic; the Scotchman likes
+to think that it is through logic he has reached
+his results, and that he can by logic defend
+them. These are qualities which Mr. Gladstone
+drew from his Scottish blood. He had a keen
+enjoyment of the processes of dialectic. He
+loved to get hold of an abstract principle and to
+derive all sorts of conclusions from it. He was
+wont to begin the discussion of a question by
+laying down two or three sweeping propositions
+covering the subject as a whole, and would then
+proceed to draw from these others which he
+could apply to the particular matter in hand.
+His well-stored memory and boundless ingenuity
+made the discovery of such general propositions
+so easy a task that a method in itself agreeable
+sometimes appeared to be carried to excess. He
+frequently arrived at conclusions which the judgment
+of the common-sense auditor did not
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_405' name='page_405'></a>405</span>
+approve, because, although they seemed to have
+been legitimately deduced from the general
+principles just enunciated, they were somehow
+at variance with the plain teaching of the facts.
+At such moments one felt that the man who
+was fascinating but perplexing Englishmen by
+his subtlety was not himself an Englishman
+in mental quality, but had the love for abstractions
+and refinements and dialectical analysis
+which characterises the Scotch intellect. He
+had also a large measure of that warmth and
+vehemence, called in the sixteenth century the
+<i>perfervidum ingenium Scotorum</i>, which belong to
+the Scottish temperament, and particularly to the
+Celtic Scot. He kindled quickly, and when
+kindled, he shot forth a strong and brilliant flame.
+To any one with less power of self-control such
+intensity of emotion as he frequently showed
+would have been dangerous; nor did this excitability
+fail, even with him, to prompt words
+and acts which a cooler judgment would have
+disapproved. But it gave that spontaneity which
+was one of the charms of his nature; it produced
+that impression of profound earnestness and of
+resistless force which raised him out of the rank
+of ordinary statesmen. The rush of emotion
+swelling fast and full seemed to turn the whole
+stream of intellectual effort into whatever channel
+lay at the moment nearest.</p>
+<p>With these Scottish qualities, Mr. Gladstone
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_406' name='page_406'></a>406</span>
+was brought up at school and college (Eton and
+Christ Church) among Englishmen, and received
+at Oxford, then lately awakened from a long
+torpor, a bias and tendency which never thereafter
+ceased to affect him. The so-called
+&ldquo;Oxford Movement,&rdquo; which afterwards obtained
+the name of Tractarianism and carried Newman
+and Manning, together with other less famous
+leaders, on to Rome, had not yet, in 1831, when
+Mr. Gladstone obtained his degree with double
+first-class honours, taken visible shape, or
+become, so to speak, conscious of its own purposes.
+But its doctrinal views, its peculiar vein
+of religious sentiment, its respect for antiquity
+and tradition, its proneness to casuistry, its taste
+for symbolism, were already in the air as influences
+working on the more susceptible of the
+younger minds. On Mr. Gladstone they told
+with full force. He became, and never ceased
+to be, not merely a High-churchman, but what
+may be called an Anglo-Catholic, in his theology,
+deferential not only to ecclesiastical tradition,
+but to the living voice of the Visible Church,
+revering the priesthood as the recipients (if
+duly ordained) of a special grace and peculiar
+powers, attaching great importance to the sacraments,
+feeling himself nearer to the Church of
+Rome, despite what he deemed her corruptions,
+than to any of the non-Episcopal Protestant
+churches. Henceforth his interests in life were
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_407' name='page_407'></a>407</span>
+as much ecclesiastical as political. For a time
+he desired to be ordained a clergyman. Had
+this wish, abandoned in deference to his father&rsquo;s
+advice, been carried out, he must eventually have
+become a leading figure in the Church of England
+and have sensibly affected her recent history.
+The later stages in his career drew him away
+from the main current of political opinion within
+that church. He who had been the strongest
+advocate of the principle of the State establishment
+of religion came to be the chief actor in
+the disestablishment of the Protestant Episcopal
+Church in Ireland, and a supporter of the policy
+of disestablishment in Scotland and in Wales.
+But the colour which these Oxford years gave
+to his mind and thoughts was never effaced.
+While they widened the range of his interests
+and deepened his moral earnestness, they at the
+same time confirmed his natural bent toward
+over-subtle distinctions and fine-drawn reasonings,
+and put him out of sympathy not only with the
+attitude of the average Englishman, who is essentially
+a Protestant&mdash;that is to say, averse to sacerdotalism,
+and suspicious of any other religious
+authority than that of the Bible and the individual
+conscience&mdash;but also with two of the
+strongest influences of our time, the influence
+of the sciences of nature, and the influence of
+historical criticism. Mr. Gladstone, though too
+wise to rail at science, as many religious men
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_408' name='page_408'></a>408</span>
+did till within the last few years, could never
+quite reconcile himself either to the conclusions
+of geology and zoology regarding the history of
+the physical world and the creatures which inhabit
+it, or to modern methods of critical inquiry
+as applied to Scripture and to ancient literature
+generally. The training which Oxford then
+gave, stimulating as it was, and free from the
+modern error of over-specialisation, was defective
+in omitting the experimental sciences, and in
+laying undue stress upon the study of language.
+A proneness to dwell on verbal distinctions and
+to trust overmuch to the analysis of terms as a
+means of reaching the truth of things is noticeable
+in many eminent Oxford writers of that and
+the next succeeding generation&mdash;some of them,
+like the illustrious F. D. Maurice, far removed
+from Cardinal Newman and Mr. Gladstone in
+theological opinion.</p>
+<p>When, bringing with him a brilliant University
+reputation, he entered the House of Commons at
+the age of twenty-three, Sir Robert Peel was
+leading the Tory party with an authority and
+ability rarely surpassed in the annals of parliament.
+Within two years the young man was
+admitted into the short-lived Tory ministry of
+1834, and soon proved himself a promising
+lieutenant of the experienced chief. Peel was an
+eminently wary man, alive to the necessity of
+watching the signs of the times, of studying and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_409' name='page_409'></a>409</span>
+interpreting the changeful phases of public
+opinion. Yet he always kept his own counsel.
+Even when he perceived that the policy he
+had hitherto followed would need to be modified,
+Peel continued to use guarded language and did
+not publicly commit himself to change till it
+was plain that the fitting moment had arrived.
+He was, moreover, a master of detail, slow to
+propound a plan until he had seen how its outlines
+were to be filled up by appropriate devices
+for carrying it out in practice. These qualities
+and habits of the minister profoundly affected
+his disciple. They became part of the texture of
+Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s political character, and in his
+case, as in that of Peel, they sometimes brought
+censure upon him, as having locked up too long
+within his breast views or purposes which he
+thought it unwise to disclose till effect could be
+forthwith given to them. Such reserve, such a
+guarded attitude and tenderness for existing
+institutions, may have been not altogether natural
+to Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s mind, but due partly to the
+influence of Peel, partly to the tendency to
+hold by tradition and the established order
+which reverence for Christian antiquity and faith
+in the dogmatic teachings of the Church had
+planted deep in his soul. The contrast between
+Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s caution and respect for facts on
+the one hand, and his reforming fervour on the
+other, like the contrast which ultimately appeared
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_410' name='page_410'></a>410</span>
+between his sacerdotal tendencies and his political
+liberalism, contributed to make his character
+perplexing and to expose his conduct to the
+charge of inconsistency. Inconsistent, in the
+proper sense of the word, he was not, much
+less changeable. He was really, in his fundamental
+convictions and the main habits of his
+mind, one of the most tenacious and persistent
+of men. But there were always at work in him
+two tendencies. One was the speculative desire
+to probe everything to the bottom, to try it
+by the light of general principles and logic, and
+when it failed to stand this test, to reject it.
+The other was the sense of the complexity of
+existing social and political arrangements, and of
+the risk of disturbing any one part of them until
+the time had arrived for resettling other parts
+also. Every statesman feels both these sides to
+every concrete question of reform. No one has
+set them forth more cogently, and in particular
+no one has more earnestly dwelt on the necessity
+for the latter side, than the most profound
+thinker among British statesmen, Edmund Burke.
+When Mr. Gladstone stated either side with his
+incomparable force, people forgot that there was
+another side which would be no less vividly present
+to him at some other moment. He was not only,
+like all successful parliamentarians, necessarily
+something of an opportunist, though perhaps less
+so than his master, but was moved by emotion
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_411' name='page_411'></a>411</span>
+more than most statesmen, and certainly more
+than Peel. The relative strength with which
+the need for drastic reform or the need for watchful
+conservatism, as the case might be, presented
+itself to his mind depended largely upon the
+weight which his emotions cast into one or
+other scale, and this emotional element made it
+difficult to forecast his course. Thus his action
+in public life was the result of influences differing
+widely in their origin, influences, moreover, which
+could be duly appreciated only by those who knew
+him intimately.</p>
+<p>Whoever has followed his political career has
+been struck by the sharp divergence of the views
+entertained by his fellow-countrymen about one
+who had been for so long a period under their
+observation. That he was possessed of boundless
+energy and brilliant eloquence all agreed.
+But agreement went no further. One section of
+the nation accused him of sophistry, of unwisdom,
+of a want of patriotism, of a lust for power. The
+other section not only repelled these charges,
+but admired in him a conscientiousness and a
+moral enthusiasm such as no political leader had
+shown for centuries. When the qualities of his
+mind and the aptitudes for politics which he
+showed have been briefly examined, it will be
+fitting to return to these divergent views of his
+character, and endeavour to discover which of
+them contains the larger measure of truth.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_412' name='page_412'></a>412</span>
+Meantime let it suffice to say that among the
+reasons that led men to misjudge him, this union
+in one person of opposite qualities was the chief.
+He was rather two men than one. Passionate
+and impulsive on the emotional side of his nature,
+he was cautious and conservative on the intellectual.
+Few understood the conjunction; still
+fewer saw how much of what was perplexing in
+his conduct it explained.</p>
+<p>Mr. Gladstone sat for sixty-three years (1833-1895)
+in Parliament, was for twenty-eight years
+(1866-1894) the leader of his party, and was four
+times Prime Minister. He began as a high
+Tory, remained about fifteen years in that camp,
+was then led by the split between Peel and the
+Protectionists to take up an intermediate position,
+and finally was forced to cast in his lot with the
+Liberals, for in England, as in America, third
+parties seldom endure. No parliamentary career
+in English annals is comparable to his for its
+length and variety; and of those who saw its
+close in the House of Commons, there was only
+one man, Mr. Villiers (who died in January 1898),
+who could remember its beginning. Mr. Gladstone
+had been opposed in 1833 to men who might
+have been his grandfathers; he was opposed in
+1894 to men who might have been his grandchildren.
+It is no part of my design to describe
+or comment on the events of such a life. All that
+can be done here is to indicate the more salient
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_413' name='page_413'></a>413</span>
+characteristics which a study of his career as a
+statesman and a parliamentarian sets before us.</p>
+<p>The most remarkable of these characteristics
+was the openness, freshness, and eagerness of
+mind which he preserved down to the end of
+his life. Most men form few new opinions
+after thirty-five, just as they form few new
+intimacies. Intellectual curiosity may remain
+even after fifty, but its range narrows as a man
+abandons the hope of attaining any thorough
+knowledge of subjects other than those which
+make the main business of his life. It is impossible
+to follow the progress of all the new ideas
+that are set afloat in the world, impossible to
+be always examining the foundations of one&rsquo;s
+political or religious beliefs. Repeated disappointments
+and disillusionments make a man
+expect less from changes the older he grows;
+while indolence deters him from entering upon
+new enterprises. None of these causes seemed
+to affect Mr. Gladstone. He was as much
+excited over a new book (such as Cardinal
+Manning&rsquo;s Life) at eighty-four as when at
+fourteen he insisted on compelling little Arthur
+Stanley (afterwards Dean of Westminster, and
+then aged nine) forthwith to procure and study
+Gray&rsquo;s poems, which he had just perused himself.
+His reading covered almost the whole field
+of literature, except physical and mathematical
+science. While frequently declaring that he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_414' name='page_414'></a>414</span>
+must confine his political thinking and leadership
+to a few subjects, he was so observant
+of current events that the course of talk
+brought up scarcely any topic in which he did
+not seem to know what was the latest thing that
+had been said or done. Neither the lassitude
+nor the prejudices that usually accompany old age
+prevented him from giving a fair consideration to
+any new doctrines. But though his intellect was
+restlessly at work, and though his curiosity disposed
+him to relish novelties, except in theology,
+that bottom rock in his mind of caution and reserve,
+which has already been referred to, made
+him refuse to part with old views even when he
+was beginning to accept new ones. He allowed
+both to &ldquo;lie on the table&rdquo; together, and while
+declaring himself open to conviction, felt it
+safer to speak and act on the old lines till the
+process of conviction had been completed. It
+took fourteen years, from 1846 to 1860, to carry
+him from the Conservative into the Liberal camp.
+It took five stormy years to bring him round to
+Irish Home Rule, though his mind was constantly
+occupied with the subject from 1880 to 1885,
+and those who watched him closely saw that
+the process had advanced a long way even in
+1882. And as regards ecclesiastical establishments,
+having written a book in 1838 as a warm
+advocate of State churches, it was not till 1867
+that he adopted the policy of disestablishment
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_415' name='page_415'></a>415</span>
+for Ireland, not till 1890 that he declared himself
+ready to apply that policy in Wales and Scotland
+also.</p>
+<p>Both these qualities&mdash;his disposition to revise
+his opinions in the light of new arguments and
+changing conditions, and the silence he maintained
+till the process of revision had been
+completed&mdash;exposed him to misconstruction.
+Commonplace men, unwont to give serious
+scrutiny to their opinions, ascribed his changes
+to self-interest, or at best regarded them as the
+index of an unstable purpose. Dull men could
+not understand why he should have forborne to
+set forth all that was passing in his mind, and saw
+little difference between reticence and dishonesty.
+In so far as they shook public confidence, these
+characteristics injured him in his statesman&rsquo;s
+work. Yet the loss was outweighed by the gain.
+In a country where opinion is active and changeful,
+where the economic conditions that legislation
+has to deal with are in a state of perpetual flux,
+where the balance of power between the upper,
+the middle, and the poorer classes has been swiftly
+altering during the last seventy years, no statesman
+can continue to serve the public if he adheres
+obstinately to the doctrines with which he started
+in life. He must&mdash;unless, of course, he stands
+aloof in permanent isolation&mdash;either subordinate
+his own views to the general sentiment of his
+party, and be driven to advocate courses he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_416' name='page_416'></a>416</span>
+secretly mislikes, or else, holding himself ready
+to quit his party, if need be, must be willing
+to learn from events, and to reconsider his
+opinions in the light of emergent tendencies
+and insistent facts. Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s pride as
+well as his conscience forbade the former alternative;
+it was fortunate that the tireless activity
+of his intellect made the latter natural to him.
+He was accustomed to say that the capital fault
+of his earlier days had been his failure adequately
+to recognise the worth and power of liberty, and
+the tendency which things have to work out for
+good when left to themselves. The application
+of this principle gave room for many developments,
+and many developments there were. He
+may have shown less than was needed of that
+prescience which is, after integrity and courage,
+the highest gift of a statesman, but which can
+seldom be expected from an English minister,
+too engrossed to find time for the patient reflection
+from which alone sound forecasts can
+issue. But he had the next best quality, that
+of remaining accessible to new ideas and learning
+from the events which passed under his eyes.</p>
+<p>With this openness and flexibility of mind
+there went a not less remarkable ingenuity
+and resourcefulness. Fertile in expedients, he
+was still more fertile in reasonings by which
+to recommend the expedients. The gift had
+its dangers, for he was apt to be carried away
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_417' name='page_417'></a>417</span>
+by the dexterity of his own dialectic, and to
+think that a scheme must be sound in whose
+support he could muster a formidable array
+of arguments. He never seemed at a loss, in
+public or in private, for a criticism, or for an
+answer to the criticisms of others. If his power
+of adapting his own mind to the minds of those
+whom he had to convince had been equal to the
+skill and swiftness with which he accumulated a
+mass of matter persuasive to those who looked
+at things in his own way, no one would have
+exercised so complete a control over the political
+opinion of his time. But his intellect
+lacked this power of adaptation. It moved on
+lines of its own, which were often misconceived,
+even by those who sought to follow him loyally.
+Thus, as already observed, he was blamed for
+two opposite faults. Some, pointing to the fact
+that he had frequently altered his views, denounced
+him as a demagogue profuse of promises,
+ready to propose whatever he thought
+likely to catch the people&rsquo;s ear. Others complained
+that there was no knowing where to
+have him; that he had an erratic mind, whose
+currents ran underground and came to the
+surface in unexpected places; that he did not
+consult his party, but followed his own impulses;
+that his guidance was unsafe because
+his decisions were unpredictable. Much of
+the suspicion with which he was regarded,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_418' name='page_418'></a>418</span>
+especially after 1885, arose from this view of
+his character.</p>
+<p>It was an unfair view, yet nearer to the truth
+than that which charged him with seeking to flatter
+and follow the people. No great popular leader
+had in him less of the demagogue. He saw,
+of course, that a statesman cannot oppose the
+general will beyond a certain point, and may
+have to humour it in small things that he may
+direct it in great ones. He was obliged, as
+others have been, to take up and settle questions
+he deemed unimportant because they were
+troubling the body politic. Now and then, in
+his later days, he so far yielded to his party
+advisers as to express his approval of proposals
+in which his own interest was slight. But he
+was ever a leader, not a follower, and erred
+rather in not keeping his finger closely and
+constantly upon the pulse of public opinion. In
+this point, at least, one may discover in him a
+likeness to Disraeli. Slow as he was in maturing
+his opinions, Mr. Gladstone was liable to forget
+that the minds of his followers might not be
+moving along with his own, and hence his
+decisions sometimes took his party as well as
+the nation by surprise. But he was too self-absorbed,
+too eagerly interested in the ideas that
+suited his own cast of thought, to be able to
+watch and gauge the tendencies of the multitude.
+The three most remarkable instances in which
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_419' name='page_419'></a>419</span>
+his new departures startled the world were his
+declarations against the Irish Church establishment
+in 1867, against the Turks and the traditional
+English policy of supporting them in 1876,
+and in favour of Irish Home Rule in 1886, and
+in none of these did any popular demand suggest
+his pronouncement. It was the masses who took
+their view from him, not he who took a mandate
+from the masses. In each of these cases he may,
+perhaps, be blamed for not having sooner perceived,
+or at any rate for not having sooner announced,
+the need for a change of policy. But it was very
+characteristic of him not to give the full strength
+of his mind to a question till he felt that it pressed
+for a solution. Those who listened to his private
+talk were scarcely more struck by the range of
+his vision than by his unwillingness to commit
+himself on matters whose decision he could
+postpone. Reticence and caution were sometimes
+carried too far, not merely because they
+exposed him to misconstruction, but because
+they withheld from his party the guidance it
+needed. This was true in the three instances
+just mentioned; and in the last of them it is
+possible that earlier and fuller communications
+might have averted the separation of some of
+his former colleagues. Nor did he always
+rightly divine the popular mind. His proposal
+(in 1874) to extinguish the income-tax
+fell completely flat, because the nation was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_420' name='page_420'></a>420</span>
+becoming indifferent to that economy in public
+expenditure which both parties had in the days
+of Peel and Lord John Russell vied in demanding.
+Cherishing his old financial ideals, Mr. Gladstone
+had not marked the change. So he failed to
+perceive how much the credit of his party was
+suffering (after 1871) from the belief of large
+sections of the people, that he was indifferent
+to the interests of England outside England.
+Perhaps, knowing the charge of indifference to
+be groundless, he underrated the effect which the
+iteration of it produced: perhaps his pride would
+not let him stoop to dissipate it.</p>
+<p>Though the power of reading the signs of
+the times and swaying the mind of the nation
+may be now more essential to an English
+statesman than the skill which manages a legislature
+or holds together a cabinet, that skill
+counts for much, and must continue to do so
+while the House of Commons remains the
+governing authority of the country. A man
+can hardly reach high place, and certainly cannot
+retain high place, without possessing this
+kind of art. Mr. Gladstone was at one time
+thought to want it. In 1864, when Lord Palmerston&rsquo;s
+end was approaching, and Mr. Gladstone
+had shown himself the strongest man among
+the Liberal ministers in the House of Commons,
+people speculated about the succession
+to the headship of the party; and the wiseacres
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_421' name='page_421'></a>421</span>
+of the day were never tired of repeating
+that Mr. Gladstone could not possibly lead the
+House of Commons. He wanted tact, they said,
+he was too excitable, too impulsive, too much
+absorbed in his own ideas, too unversed in the
+arts by which individuals are conciliated. But
+when, after twenty-five years of his unquestioned
+reign, the time for his own departure drew nigh,
+men asked how the Liberal party in the House
+of Commons would ever hold together after it
+had lost a leader of such consummate capacity.
+The Whig critics of 1864 had grown so accustomed
+to Palmerston&rsquo;s way of handling the House
+as to forget that a man might succeed by quite
+different methods, and that defects, serious in
+themselves, may be outweighed by transcendent
+merits.</p>
+<p>Mr. Gladstone had the defects ascribed to
+him. His impulsiveness sometimes betrayed
+him into declarations which a cooler reflection
+would have dissuaded. The second reading
+of the Irish Home Rule Bill of 1886 might
+possibly have been carried had he not been
+goaded by his opponents into words which
+were construed as recalling or modifying the
+concessions he had announced at a meeting
+of the Liberal party held just before. More
+than once precious time was wasted because antagonists,
+knowing his excitable temper, brought
+on discussions with the sole object of annoying
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_422' name='page_422'></a>422</span>
+him and drawing from him some hasty deliverance.
+Nor was he an adept, like Disraeli and Disraeli&rsquo;s
+famous Canadian imitator, Sir John A.
+Macdonald, in the management of individuals.
+His aversion for the meaner side of human
+nature made him refuse to play upon it. Many
+of the pursuits, and most of the pleasures,
+which attract ordinary men had no interest for
+him, so that much of the common ground on
+which men meet was closed to him. He was,
+moreover, too constantly engrossed by the subjects
+he loved, and by enterprises which specially
+appealed to him, to have leisure for the lighter
+but often vitally important devices of political
+strategy. I remember hearing, soon after 1870,
+how Mr. Delane, then editor of the <i>Times</i>, had
+been invited to meet the Prime Minister at a
+moment when the support of that newspaper
+would have been specially valuable to the Liberal
+Government. Instead of using the opportunity
+in the way that had been intended, Mr. Gladstone
+dilated during the whole time of dinner upon
+the approaching exhaustion of the English coal-beds,
+to the surprise of the company and the unconcealed
+annoyance of the powerful guest. It
+was the subject then uppermost in his mind, and
+he either forgot, or disdained, to conciliate Mr.
+Delane. Good nature as well as good sense
+made him avoid giving offence by personal reflections
+in debate, and he usually suffered fools
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_423' name='page_423'></a>423</span>
+if not, like St. Paul&rsquo;s converts, gladly, yet
+patiently.<a name='FNanchor_0055' id='FNanchor_0055'></a><a href='#Footnote_0055' class='fnanchor'>[64]</a> In the House of Commons he was
+entirely free from airs, and, indeed, from any
+assumption of superiority. The youngest member
+might accost him in the lobby and be listened
+to with perfect courtesy. But he had a bad
+memory for faces, seldom addressed any one
+outside the circle of his personal friends, and
+more than once made enemies by omitting
+to notice and show attention to recruits who,
+having been eminent in their own towns, expected
+to be made much of when they entered Parliament.
+Having himself plenty of pride and comparatively
+little vanity, he never realised the extent to which,
+and the cheapness with which, men can be captured
+and used through their vanity. Adherents were
+sometimes turned into dangerous foes because
+his preoccupation with graver matters dimmed his
+sense of what may be done to win support by the
+minor arts, such as an invitation to dinner or even a
+seasonable compliment. And his mind, flexible as
+it was in seizing new points of view and devising
+expedients to meet new circumstances, did not
+easily enter into the characters of other men.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_424' name='page_424'></a>424</span>
+Ideas and causes interested him more than did
+personal traits; his sympathy was keener and
+stronger for the sufferings of nations or masses
+of men than with the fortunes of an individual
+man. With all his accessibility and kindliness,
+he was at bottom chary of real friendship,
+while the circle of his intimates became constantly
+smaller with advancing years. So it befell that
+though his popularity among the general body
+of his adherents went on increasing, and the
+admiration of his parliamentary followers remained
+undiminished, he had in the House of Commons
+few personal friends who linked him to the party
+at large, and rendered to him those confidential
+services which count for much in keeping all
+sections in hearty accord and enabling the commander
+to gauge the sentiment of his troops.</p>
+<p>Of parliamentary strategy in that larger sense,
+which covers familiarity with parliamentary forms
+and usages, care and judgment in arranging the
+business of the House, the power of seizing a
+parliamentary situation and knowing how to
+deal with it, the art of guiding a debate and
+choosing the right moment for reserve and for
+openness, for a dignified retreat, for a watchful
+defence, for a sudden rattling charge upon the
+enemy&mdash;of all this no one had a fuller mastery.
+His recollection of precedents was unrivalled, for
+it began in 1833 with the first reformed Parliament,
+and it seemed as fresh for those remote
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_425' name='page_425'></a>425</span>
+days as for last month. He enjoyed combat for
+its own sake, not so much from inborn pugnacity,
+for he was not disputatious in ordinary
+conversation, as because it called out his fighting
+force and stimulated his whole nature. &ldquo;I am
+never nervous in reply,&rdquo; he once said, &ldquo;though I
+am sometimes nervous in opening a debate.&rdquo; No
+one could be more tactful or adroit when a crisis
+arrived whose gravity he had foreseen. In the
+summer of 1881 the House of Lords made some
+amendments to the Irish Land Bill which were
+deemed ruinous to the working of the measure,
+and therewith to the prospects of the pacification
+of Ireland. A conflict was expected which might
+have strained the fabric of the constitution. The
+excitement which quickly arose in Parliament
+spread to the nation. Mr. Gladstone alone
+remained calm and confident. He devised a
+series of compromises, which he advocated in conciliatory
+speeches. He so played his game that
+by a few minor concessions he secured nearly all
+the points he cared for, and, while sparing the
+dignity of the Lords, steered his bill triumphantly
+out of the breakers which had threatened to
+engulf it. Very different was his ordinary demeanour
+in debate when he was off his guard.
+His face and gestures while he sat in the House
+of Commons listening to an opponent would
+express all the emotions that crossed his mind.
+He would follow every sentence as a hawk follows
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_426' name='page_426'></a>426</span>
+the movements of a small bird, would sometimes
+contradict half aloud, sometimes turn to
+his next neighbour to vent his displeasure at the
+groundless allegations or fallacious arguments he
+was listening to, till at last, like a hunting leopard
+loosed from the leash, he would spring to his
+feet and deliver a passionate reply. His warmth
+would often be in excess of what the occasion
+required, and quite disproportioned to the importance
+of his antagonist. It was in fact the
+unimportance of the occasion that made him thus
+yield to his feeling. As soon as he saw that
+bad weather was coming, and careful seamanship
+wanted, his coolness returned, his language
+became measured, while passion, though it might
+increase the force of his oratory, never made him
+deviate a hand&rsquo;s breadth from the course he
+had chosen. The Celtic heat subsided, and the
+shrewd self-control of the Lowland Scot regained
+command.</p>
+<p>It was by oratory that Mr. Gladstone rose to
+fame and power, as, indeed, by it most English
+statesmen have risen, save those to whom wealth
+and rank and family connections used to give a
+sort of presumptive claim to high office, like the
+Cavendishes and the Russells, the Bentincks and
+the Cecils. And for many years, during which Mr.
+Gladstone was suspected as a statesman because,
+while he had ceased to be a Tory, he had not fully
+become a Liberal, his eloquence was the main, one
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_427' name='page_427'></a>427</span>
+might almost say the sole, source of his influence.
+Oratory was a power in English politics even a
+century and a half ago, as the career of the
+elder Pitt shows. During the last seventy years,
+years which have seen the power of rank and
+family connections decline, it has, although
+less cultivated as a fine art, continued to be
+almost essential to the highest success, and it
+still brings a man quickly to the front, though it
+will not keep him there should he prove to want
+the other branches of statesmanlike capacity.</p>
+<p>The permanent reputation of an orator depends
+upon two things, the witness of contemporaries
+to the impression produced upon them, and the
+written or printed record of his speeches. Few
+are the famous speakers who would be famous
+if they were tried by this latter test alone, and
+Mr. Gladstone was not one of them. It is only
+by a rare combination of gifts that one who
+speaks with so much force and brilliance as
+to charm his listeners is also able to deliver
+thoughts so valuable in words so choice that
+posterity will read them as literature. Some
+of the ancient orators did this; but we seldom
+know how far those of their speeches which
+have been preserved are the speeches which
+they actually delivered. Among moderns, a few
+French preachers, Edmund Burke, Macaulay, and
+Daniel Webster are perhaps the only speakers
+whose discourses have passed into classics and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_428' name='page_428'></a>428</span>
+find new generations of readers.<a name='FNanchor_0056' id='FNanchor_0056'></a><a href='#Footnote_0056' class='fnanchor'>[65]</a> Twenty years
+hence Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s will not be read, except, of
+course, by historians. Indeed, they ceased to be
+read even in his lifetime. They are too long,
+too diffuse, too minute in their handling of details,
+too elaborately qualified in their enunciation of
+general principles. They contain few epigrams
+and few of those weighty thoughts put into telling
+phrases which the Greeks called <span class='greek' title='gn&ocirc;mai'>&gamma;&nu;&#x1FF6;&mu;&alpha;&iota;</span>. The
+style, in short, is not sufficiently rich or polished
+to give an enduring interest to matter whose
+practical importance has vanished. The same
+oblivion has overtaken all but a few of the
+best speeches (or parts of speeches) of Grattan,
+Sheridan, Pitt, Fox, Erskine, Canning, Plunket,
+Brougham, Peel, Bright. It may, indeed, be
+said&mdash;and the examples of Burke and Macaulay
+show that this is no paradox&mdash;that the speakers
+whom posterity most enjoys are rarely those who
+most affected the audiences that listened to them.<a name='FNanchor_0057' id='FNanchor_0057'></a><a href='#Footnote_0057' class='fnanchor'>[66]</a></p>
+<p>If, on the other hand, Mr. Gladstone be judged
+by the impression he made on his own time, his
+place will be high in the front rank. His speeches
+were neither so concisely telling as Mr. Bright&rsquo;s
+nor so finished in diction; but no other man
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_429' name='page_429'></a>429</span>
+among his contemporaries&mdash;neither Lord Derby
+nor Mr. Lowe, nor Lord Beaconsfield nor Lord
+Cairns, nor Bishop Wilberforce nor Bishop Magee&mdash;taken
+all round, could be ranked beside him.
+And he rose superior to Mr. Bright himself in
+readiness, in variety of knowledge, in persuasive
+ingenuity. Mr. Bright spoke seldom and required
+time for preparation. Admirable in the breadth
+and force with which he set forth his own position,
+or denounced that of his adversaries, he was
+not equally qualified for instructing nor equally
+apt at persuading. Mr. Gladstone could both
+instruct and persuade, could stimulate his friends
+and demolish his opponents, and could do all
+these things at an hour&rsquo;s notice, so vast and well
+ordered was the arsenal of his mind. Pitt was
+superb in an expository or argumentative speech,
+but his stately periods lacked variety. Fox, incomparable
+in reply, was hesitating and confused
+when he had to state his case in cold blood.
+Mr. Gladstone showed as much fire in winding
+up a debate as skill in opening it.</p>
+<p>His oratory had, indeed, two faults. It wanted
+concentration, and it wanted definition. There
+were too many words, and the conclusion was
+sometimes left vague because the arguments had
+been too nicely balanced. I once heard Mr.
+Cobden say: &ldquo;I always listen to Mr. Gladstone
+with pleasure and admiration, but I sometimes
+have to ask myself, when he has sat down, &lsquo;What
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_430' name='page_430'></a>430</span>
+after all was it that he meant, and what practical
+course does he recommend?&rsquo;&rdquo; These faults
+were balanced by conspicuous merits. There
+was a lively imagination, which enabled him
+to relieve even dull matter by pleasing figures,
+together with a large command of quotations
+and illustrations. There were powers of sarcasm,
+powers, however, which he rarely used, preferring
+the summer lightning of banter to the
+thunderbolts of invective. There was admirable
+lucidity and accuracy in exposition. There was
+art in the disposition and marshalling of his
+arguments, and finally&mdash;a gift now almost lost
+in England&mdash;there was a delightful variety and
+grace of appropriate gesture. But above and
+beyond everything else which enthralled the
+listener, there stood out four qualities. Two of
+them were merits of substance&mdash;inventiveness and
+elevation; two were merits of delivery&mdash;force in
+the manner, expressive modulation in the voice.</p>
+<p>No one showed such swift resourcefulness in
+debate. His readiness, not only at catching a
+point, but at making the most of it on a moment&rsquo;s
+notice, was amazing. Some one would lean over
+the back of the bench he sat on and show a
+paper or whisper a sentence to him. Apprehending
+the bearings at a glance, he would take
+the bare fact and so shape and develop it, like
+a potter moulding a bowl on the wheel out of
+a lump of clay, that it grew into a cogent
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_431' name='page_431'></a>431</span>
+argument or a happy illustration under the eye of
+the audience, and seemed all the more telling
+because it had not been originally a part of his
+case. Even in the last three years of his parliamentary
+life, when his sight had so failed that he
+read nothing, printed or written, except what it
+was absolutely necessary to read, and when his
+deafness had so increased that he did not hear
+half of what was said in debate, it was sufficient for
+a colleague to say into the better ear a few
+words explaining how the matter at issue stood,
+and he would rise to his feet and extemporise
+a long and ingenious argument, or retreat with
+dexterous grace from a position which the course
+of the discussion or the private warning of the
+Whips had shown to be untenable. Never was
+he seen at a loss either to meet a new point
+raised by an adversary or to make the best of
+an unexpected incident. Sometimes he would
+amuse himself by drawing a cheer or a contradiction
+from his opponents, and would then suddenly
+turn round and use this hasty expression of their
+opinion as the basis for a fresh argument of his
+own. Loving conflict, he loved debate, and,
+so far from being confused or worried by the
+strain conflict put upon him, his physical health
+was strengthened and his faculties were roused
+to higher efficiency by having to prepare and
+deliver a great speech. He had the rare faculty
+of thinking ahead while he was speaking, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_432' name='page_432'></a>432</span>
+could, while pouring forth a stream of glittering
+sentences, be at the same time (as one saw by
+watching his eye) composing an argument to be
+delivered five or ten minutes later. Once, at a
+very critical moment, when he was defending a
+great measure against the amendment&mdash;moved
+by a nominal supporter of his own&mdash;which proved
+fatal to it, a friend suddenly reminded him of
+an incident in the career of the mover which might
+be effectively used against him. When Mr. Gladstone
+sat down after delivering an impassioned
+speech, in the course of which he had several
+times approached and then sheered off from the
+incident, he turned round to the friend and said,
+&ldquo;I was thinking all the time I was speaking
+whether I could properly use against &mdash;&mdash; what
+you told me, but concluded, on the whole, that
+it would be too hard on him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The weakness of his eloquence sprang from its
+supersubtlety and superabundance. He was prone
+to fine distinctions. He multiplied arguments when
+it would have been better to rely upon two or
+three of the strongest. And he was sometimes
+so intent on refuting the particular adversaries
+opposed to him, and persuading the particular
+audience before him, that he forgot to address
+his reasonings to the public beyond the House,
+and make them equally applicable and equally
+convincing to the readers of next morning.</p>
+<p>As dignity is one of the rarest qualities in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_433' name='page_433'></a>433</span>
+literature, so elevation is one of the rarest in
+oratory. It is a quality easier to feel than to
+analyse. One may call it a power of ennobling
+ordinary things by showing their relation to great
+things, by pouring high emotions round them,
+by bringing the worthier motives of human
+conduct to bear upon them, by touching them
+with the light of poetry. Ambitious writers and
+speakers strain after effects of this kind; but
+they are effects which study and straining
+cannot ensure. Vainly do most men flap their
+wings in the effort to soar; if they succeed
+in rising from the ground it is because some
+unusually strong burst of feeling makes them
+for the moment better than themselves. In
+Mr. Gladstone the capacity for feeling was at
+all times so strong, and the susceptibility of the
+imagination so keen, that he soared without
+effort. His vision seemed to take in the whole
+landscape. The points actually in question
+might be small, but the principles involved were
+to him far-reaching. The contests of to-day
+were ennobled by the effect they might have in
+a still distant future. There are rhetoricians
+skilful in playing by words and manner on every
+chord of human nature, rhetoricians who move
+you, and may even carry you away for the
+moment, but whose sincerity is doubted, because
+the sense of spontaneity is lacking. Mr. Gladstone
+was not of these. He never seemed to be
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_434' name='page_434'></a>434</span>
+forcing an effect or assuming a sentiment. To
+listen to him was to feel convinced of his own
+conviction and to be warmed by the warmth with
+which he expressed it. Nor was this due to the
+perfection of his rhetorical art. He really did
+feel what he expressed. Sometimes, of course,
+like all statesmen, he had to maintain a cause
+whose weakness he perceived, as, for instance,
+when it became necessary to defend the blunder
+of a colleague, or a decision reached by some
+Cabinet compromise which his own judgment
+disapproved. But even in such cases he did
+not simulate feeling, but reserved his earnestness
+for those parts of the case on which it could be
+honestly expended. As this was generally true
+of the imaginative and emotional side of his eloquence,
+so was it especially true of his unequalled
+power of lifting a subject from the level on which
+other speakers had treated it into the purer air
+of permanent principle, perhaps even of moral
+sublimity.</p>
+<p>The dignity and spontaneity which marked the
+substance of his speeches was no less conspicuous
+in their delivery. Nothing could be more easy and
+graceful than his manner on ordinary occasions,
+nothing more grave and stately than it became
+when he was making a ceremonial reference
+to some public event or bestowing a meed of
+praise on the departed. His expository discourses,
+such as those with which he introduced
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_435' name='page_435'></a>435</span>
+a complicated bill or unfolded a financial statement,
+were models of their kind, not only for
+lucidity, but for the pleasant smoothness, never
+lapsing into monotony, with which the stream
+of speech flowed from his lips. The task was
+performed so well that people thought it an
+easy task till they saw how inferior were the
+performances of two subsequent chancellors of
+the exchequer so able in their respective
+ways as Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Lowe.
+But when an occasion arrived which quickened
+men&rsquo;s pulses in the House of Commons, a place
+where feeling rises as suddenly as do the waves
+of a Highland loch when a squall comes rushing
+down the glen, the vehemence of his feeling
+found expression in the fire of his eye and the
+resistless strength of his words. His utterance
+did not grow swifter, nor did the key of his
+voice rise, as passion raises and sharpens the
+voice in most men. But the measured force with
+which every sentence was launched, like a shell
+hurtling through the air, the concentrated intensity
+of his look, as he defied antagonists in
+front and swept his glance over the ranks of his
+supporters around and behind him, had a startling
+and thrilling power which no other Englishman
+could exert, and which no Englishman had
+exerted since the days of Pitt and Fox. The
+whole proud, bold, ardent nature of the man
+seemed to flash out, and one almost forgot what
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_436' name='page_436'></a>436</span>
+the lips said in admiration of the towering
+personality.</p>
+<p>People who read next day the report in the
+newspapers of a speech delivered on such an
+occasion could not comprehend the impression
+it had made on the listeners. &ldquo;What was there
+in it so to stir you?&rdquo; they asked. They had not
+seen the glance and the gestures; they had not
+heard the vibrating voice rise to an organ peal
+of triumph or sink to a whisper of entreaty. Mr.
+Gladstone&rsquo;s voice was naturally rich and resonant.
+It was a fine singing voice, and a pleasant voice
+to listen to in conversation, not the less pleasant
+for having a slight trace of Liverpool accent
+clinging to it. But what struck one in listening
+to his speeches was not so much the quality of
+the vocal chords as the skill with which they were
+managed. He had a gift of sympathetic expression,
+of throwing his feeling into his voice,
+and using its modulations to accompany and convey
+every shade of meaning, like that which a
+great composer exerts when he puts music to a
+poem, or a great executant when he renders at
+once the composer&rsquo;s and the poet&rsquo;s thought. And
+just as accomplished singers or violinists enjoy
+the practice of their art, so he rejoiced, perhaps
+unconsciously, yet intensely, in putting forth this
+faculty of expression; as appeared, indeed, from
+the fact that whenever his voice failed him
+(which sometimes befell in later years) his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_437' name='page_437'></a>437</span>
+words came less easily, and even the chariot of
+his argument seemed to drive heavily. That
+the voice should so seldom have failed was
+wonderful. When he had passed his seventy-fifth
+year, it became sensibly inferior in volume
+and depth of tone. But its variety and delicacy
+remained. In April 1886, he being then seventy-seven,
+it held out during a speech of nearly
+four hours in length. In February 1890 it
+enabled him to deliver with extraordinary effect
+an eminently solemn and pathetic appeal. In
+March 1894 those who listened to it the last time
+it was heard in Parliament&mdash;they were comparatively
+few, for the secret of his impending
+resignation had been well kept&mdash;recognised in it
+all the old charm. The most striking instance I
+recall of the power it could exert is to be found
+in a speech made in 1883, during one of the
+tiresome debates occasioned by the refusal of
+the Opposition and of some timorous Liberals
+to allow Mr. Bradlaugh to be sworn as a member
+of the House of Commons. This speech produced
+on those who heard it an impression
+which its perusal to-day fails to explain. That
+impression was chiefly due to the grave and
+reverent tone in which he delivered some
+sentences stating the view that it is not our
+belief in the bare existence of a Deity, but the
+realising of him as being a Providence ruling
+the world, that has moral value and significance
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_438' name='page_438'></a>438</span>
+for us. And it was due in particular to the solemn
+dignity with which he declaimed six lines of
+Lucretius, setting forth the Epicurean view that
+the gods do not concern themselves with human
+affairs. There were perhaps not twenty men
+in the House of Commons who could follow the
+sense of the lines so as to appreciate their bearing
+on his argument. But these sonorous hexameters&mdash;hexameters
+that seemed to have lived on
+through nineteen centuries to find their application
+from the lips of an orator to-day&mdash;the
+sense of remoteness in the strange language and
+the far-off heathen origin, the deep and moving
+note in the speaker&rsquo;s voice, thrilled the imagination
+of the audience and held it spellbound, lifting
+for a moment the whole subject of debate
+into a region far above party conflicts. Spoken
+by any one else, the passage culminating in
+these Lucretian lines might have produced
+little effect. It was the voice and manner,
+above all the voice, with its marvellous modulations,
+that made the speech majestic.</p>
+<p>Yet one must not forget to add that with him,
+as with some other famous statesmen, the impression
+made by a speech was in a measure due
+to the admiring curiosity and wonder which his
+personality inspired. He was so much the most
+interesting human being in the House of Commons
+that, when he withdrew, many members
+said that the place had lost half its attraction for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_439' name='page_439'></a>439</span>
+them, and that the chamber looked empty because
+he was not in it. Plenty of able men remained.
+But even the ablest seemed ordinary when compared
+with the figure that had vanished, a figure
+in whom were combined, as in no other man of
+his time, an unrivalled experience, an extraordinary
+activity and versatility of intellect, a fervid imagination,
+and an indomitable will.</p>
+<p>Though Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s oratory was a main
+source of his power, both in Parliament and over
+the people, the effort of detractors to represent
+him as a mere rhetorician will seem absurd
+to the historian who reviews his whole career.
+The rhetorician adorns and popularises the ideas
+which have originated with others; he advocates
+policies which others have devised; he follows
+and expresses the sentiments which already prevail
+in his party. Mr. Gladstone was himself a
+source of new ideas and new policies; he evoked
+new sentiments or turned old sentiments into
+new channels. Neither was he, as some alleged,
+primarily a destroyer. His conservative instincts
+were strong; he cherished ancient custom.
+When it became necessary to clear away an
+institution he sought to put something else in
+its place. He was a constructive statesman not
+less conspicuously than were Pitt, Canning, and
+Peel. Whether he was a philosophic statesman,
+basing his action on large views obtained by
+thought and study, philosophic in the sense in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_440' name='page_440'></a>440</span>
+which we apply the epithet to Pericles, Machiavelli,
+Turgot, Burke, Jefferson, Hamilton, Stein&mdash;if
+one class can be made to include persons
+otherwise so dissimilar&mdash;may perhaps be doubted.
+There are few instances in history of men who
+have been great thinkers and also great legislators
+or administrators, because the two kinds of
+capacity almost exclude one another. As experts
+declare that a man who should try to operate on
+the Stock Exchange in reliance upon a profound
+knowledge of the inner springs of European
+politics and the financial resources of the great
+States, would ruin himself before his perfectly
+correct calculations had time to come true, so a
+practical statesman, though he cannot know too
+much, or look too far ahead, must beware of trusting
+his own forecasts, must remember that he
+has to deal with the next few months or years,
+and to persuade persons who cannot be expected
+to share or even to understand his views of the
+future. The habit of meditating on underlying
+truths, the tendency to play the long game, are
+almost certain to spoil a man for dealing effectively
+with the present. He will not be a sufficiently
+vigilant observer; he will be out of sympathy
+with the notions of the average man; his arguments
+will go over the head of his audience.
+No English prime minister has looked at politics
+with the eye of a philosopher. But Mr. Gladstone,
+if hardly to be called a thinker, showed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_441' name='page_441'></a>441</span>
+higher constructive power than any one else
+has done since Peel. Were the memory of his
+oratorical triumphs to pass completely away, he
+would deserve to be remembered in respect of
+the mark he left upon the British statute-book and
+of the changes he wrought both in the constitution
+of his country and in her European policy.</p>
+<p>Three groups of measures stand out as monuments
+of his skill and energy. The first of these
+three includes the financial reforms embodied in
+a series of fourteen budgets between the years
+1853 and 1882, the most famous of which were
+the budgets of 1853 and 1860. In the former he
+continued the work begun by Peel by reducing
+and simplifying the customs duties. Deficiencies
+in revenue were supplied by the enactment of
+less oppressive imposts, and particularly by resettling
+the income-tax, and by the introduction
+of a succession duty on real estate. The preparation
+and passing of this very technical and
+intricate Succession Duty Act was a most
+laborious enterprise, of which Mr. Gladstone
+used to speak as the severest mental strain he
+had ever undergone:</p>
+<table summary=''><tr><td>
+<p class='cg'><span class='greek' title='Kartist&ecirc;n d&ecirc; t&ecirc;n ge mach&ecirc;n phato dymenai andr&ocirc;n'>&kappa;&alpha;&rho;&tau;&#x3AF;&sigma;&tau;&eta;&nu; &delta;&#x1F74; &tau;&#x3AE;&nu; &gamma;&epsilon; &mu;&#x3AC;&chi;&eta;&nu; &phi;&#x3AC;&tau;&omicron; &delta;&#x3CD;&mu;&epsilon;&nu;&alpha;&iota; &#x1F00;&nu;&delta;&rho;&#x1FF6;&nu;.</span><a name='FNanchor_0058' id='FNanchor_0058'></a><a href='#Footnote_0058' class='fnanchor'>[67]</a></p>
+</td></tr></table>
+<p>The budget of 1860, among other changes,
+abolished the paper duty, a boon to the press
+which was resisted by the House of Lords.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_442' name='page_442'></a>442</span>
+They threw out the measure, but in the following
+year Mr. Gladstone forced them to submit.
+His achievements in the field of finance equal, if
+they do not surpass, those of Peel, and are not
+tarnished, as in the case of Pitt, by the recollection
+of a burden of debts incurred. To no
+minister can be ascribed so large a share in
+promoting the commercial and industrial prosperity
+of modern England, and in the reduction
+of her national debt to the figure at which it
+stood when it began to rise again in 1900.</p>
+<p>The second group includes the parliamentary
+reform bills of 1866 and 1884 and the Redistribution
+Bill of 1885. The first of these was defeated
+in the House of Commons, but it led to the
+passing next year, by Mr. Disraeli, of a more
+sweeping measure. Taken together, these statutes
+have turned Britain into a democratic country,
+changing the character of her government almost
+as profoundly as did the Reform Act of 1832.</p>
+<p>The third group consists of a series of Irish
+measures, beginning with the Church Disestablishment
+Act of 1869, and including the Land
+Act of 1870, the University Education Bill of
+1873 (defeated in the House of Commons), the
+Land Act of 1881, and the Home Rule bills of
+1886 and 1893. All these were in a special
+manner Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s handiwork, prepared as
+well as brought in and advocated by him. All
+were highly complicated, and of one, the Land
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_443' name='page_443'></a>443</span>
+Act of 1881, which it took three months to carry
+through the House of Commons, it was said
+that so great was its intricacy that only three
+men understood it&mdash;Mr. Gladstone himself, his
+Attorney-General for Ireland, and Mr. T. M.
+Healy. In preparing a bill no man could be
+more painstaking. He settled and laid down the
+principles himself; and when he came to work them
+out with the draughtsman and the officials who had
+special knowledge of the subject, he insisted on
+knowing what their effect would be in every
+particular. Indeed, he loved work for its own
+sake, in this respect unlike Mr. Bright, who once
+said to me with a smile, when asked as to his
+methods of working, that he had never done any
+work all his life. The value of this mastery of
+details was seen when a bill came to be debated
+in Committee. It was impossible to catch Mr.
+Gladstone tripping on a point of fact, or unprepared
+with a reply to the arguments of an
+opponent. He seemed to revel in the toil of
+mastering a tangle of technical details.</p>
+<p>It is long since England, in this respect not
+favoured by her parliamentary system, has produced
+a great foreign minister, nor has that title
+been claimed for Mr. Gladstone. But he showed
+on several occasions both his independence of
+tradition and his faith in broad principles as fit to
+be applied in international relations; and his
+action in that field, though felt only at intervals,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_444' name='page_444'></a>444</span>
+has left abiding results in European history. In
+1851, he being then still a Tory, his pamphlet
+denouncing the cruelties of the Bourbon government
+of Naples, and the sympathy he subsequently
+avowed with the national movement in
+Italy, gave that movement a new standing in
+Europe by powerfully recommending it to English
+opinion. In 1870 the prompt action of his ministry
+in arranging a treaty for the neutrality of Belgium
+on the outbreak of the war between France and
+Germany, averted the risk that Belgium might
+be drawn into the strife. In 1871, by concluding
+the treaty of Washington, which provided for the
+settlement by arbitration of the <i>Alabama</i> claims,
+he not only set a precedent full of promise for
+the future, but delivered England from what
+would have been, in case of her being at war with
+any European power, a danger fatal to her ocean
+commerce. And, in 1876, his onslaught upon the
+Turks, after the Bulgarian massacres, roused an
+intense feeling in England, turning the current of
+opinion so decisively that Disraeli&rsquo;s ministry were
+forced to leave the Sultan to his fate, and thus
+became a cause of the ultimate deliverance of
+Bulgaria, Eastern Rumelia, Bosnia, and Thessaly
+from Mussulman tyranny. Few English statesmen
+have equally earned the gratitude of the
+oppressed.</p>
+<p>Nothing lay nearer to his heart than the protection
+of the Christians of the East. His sense
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_445' name='page_445'></a>445</span>
+of personal duty to them was partly due to the
+feeling that the Crimean War had prolonged the
+rule of the Turk, and had thus imposed a special
+responsibility on Britain, and on the members
+of Lord Aberdeen&rsquo;s cabinet which drifted into
+that war. Twenty years after the agitation of
+1876, and when he had finally retired from
+Parliament and political life, the massacres perpetrated
+by the Sultan on his Armenian subjects
+brought him once more into the field, and
+his last speech in public (delivered at Liverpool
+in the autumn of 1896) was a powerful argument
+in favour of British intervention to rescue the
+Eastern Christians. In the following spring he
+followed this up by a pamphlet on behalf of the
+freedom of Crete. In neither of these two cases
+did success crown his efforts, for the Government,
+commanding a large majority in Parliament,
+pursued the course upon which it had already
+entered. Poignant regrets were expressed
+that Mr. Gladstone was no longer able to take
+effective action in the cause of humanity; yet
+it was a consolation to be assured that age and
+infirmity had not dulled his sympathies with
+that cause.</p>
+<p>That he was right in 1876-78 in the view he
+took of the line of conduct England should adopt
+towards the Turks has been now virtually
+admitted even by his opponents. That he was
+also right in 1896, when urging action to protect
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_446' name='page_446'></a>446</span>
+the Eastern Christians, will probably be admitted
+ten years hence, when the facts of the case and
+the nature of the opportunity that existed for
+taking prompt action without the risk of a
+European war have become better known. In
+both cases it was not merely religious sympathy,
+but also a far-sighted view of policy that governed
+his judgment. He held that the faults of Turkish
+rule are incurable, and that the Powers of Western
+and Central Europe ought to aim at protecting
+the subject nationalities and by degrees extending
+self-government to them, so that they may
+grow into states, and in time be able to restore
+prosperity to regions ruined by long misgovernment,
+while constituting an effective barrier to
+the advance of Russia. The jealousies of the
+Powers throw obstacles in the way of this policy,
+but it is a safe policy for England, and offers the
+best hope for the peoples of the East.</p>
+<p>The facts just noted prove that he possessed
+and exerted a capacity for initiative in foreign as
+well as in domestic affairs. In the Neapolitan case,
+in the <i>Alabama</i> case, in the Bulgarian case, he
+acted from his own convictions, with no previous
+suggestion of encouragement from his party; and
+in the last-mentioned instance he took a course
+which did not at the moment promise any political
+gain, and which seemed to the English political
+world so novel and even startling that no ordinary
+statesman would have ventured on it.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_447' name='page_447'></a>447</span></div>
+<p>His courage was indeed one of the most
+striking parts of the man.<a name='FNanchor_0059' id='FNanchor_0059'></a><a href='#Footnote_0059' class='fnanchor'>[68]</a> It was not the rashness
+of an impetuous nature, for, impetuous as
+he was when stirred by some sudden excitement,
+he showed an Ulyssean caution whenever he took a
+deliberate survey of the conditions that surrounded
+him. It was the proud self-confidence of a strong
+character, which was willing to risk fame and
+fortune in pursuing a course it had once resolved
+upon; a character which had faith in its own
+conclusions, and in the success of a cause consecrated
+by principle; a character which obstacles
+did not affright, but rather roused to a higher
+combative energy. Few English statesmen have
+done anything so bold as was Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s
+declaration for Irish Home Rule in 1886. He
+took not only his political power but the fame
+and credit of his whole past life in his hand when
+he set out on this new journey at seventy-seven
+years of age; for it was quite possible that the
+great bulk of his party might refuse to follow
+him, and he be left exposed to derision as the
+chief of an insignificant group. As it happened,
+the bulk of the party did follow him, though
+many of the most influential refused to do so.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_448' name='page_448'></a>448</span>
+But neither he nor any one else could have foretold
+this when his intentions were first announced.</p>
+<p>We may now, before passing away from the
+public side of Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s career, return
+for a moment to the opposite views of his
+character which were indicated some pages back.
+He was accused of sophistry, of unwisdom, of
+want of patriotism, of lust for power. Though it
+is difficult to sift these charges without discussing
+the conduct which gave rise to them, a task impossible
+here, each of them must be briefly examined.</p>
+<p>The first charge is the most plausible. His ingenuity
+in discovering arguments and stating fine
+verbal distinctions, his subtlety in discriminating
+between views or courses apparently similar, were
+excessive, and invited misconstruction. He had a
+tendency to persuade himself, quite unconsciously,
+that the course he desired to take was a course
+which the public interest required. His acuteness
+soon found reasons for that course; the warmth
+of his emotions enforced the reasons. It was a
+dangerous tendency, but it does not impeach his
+honesty of purpose, for the influence which his
+predilections unconsciously exerted upon his
+judgment appeared also in his theological and
+literary inquiries. I can recall no instance in
+which he wilfully misstated a fact, or simulated a
+feeling, or used an argument which he knew to be
+unsound. He did not, as does the sophist, attempt
+&ldquo;to make the worse appear the better reason.&rdquo;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_449' name='page_449'></a>449</span></div>
+<p>His wisdom will be differently judged by
+those who condemn or approve the chief acts of
+his policy. But it deserves to be noted that all
+the legislation he passed, even the measures
+which, like the Irish Church Disestablishment
+Bill, exposed him to angry attacks at the time,
+have now been approved by the all but unanimous
+judgment of Englishmen.<a name='FNanchor_0060' id='FNanchor_0060'></a><a href='#Footnote_0060' class='fnanchor'>[69]</a> The same
+may be said of two acts which brought much
+invective upon him&mdash;his settlement of the
+<i>Alabama</i> claims, one of the wisest strokes of
+foreign policy ever accomplished by a British
+minister, and his protest against a support of the
+Turks in and after 1876. I pass by Irish Home
+Rule, because the wisdom of the course he took
+must be tested by results that are yet unborn,
+as I pass by his Egyptian policy in 1882-85,
+because it cannot be fairly judged till the facts
+have been fully made public. He may be open
+to blame for his participation in the Crimean War,
+for his mistaken view of the American Civil War,
+for his neglect of the Transvaal question when
+he took office in 1880, and for his omission during
+his earlier career to recognise the gravity of Irish
+disaffection and to study its causes. I have heard
+him lament that he had not twenty years earlier
+given the same attention to that abiding source of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_450' name='page_450'></a>450</span>
+the difficulties of England which he gave from 1866
+onwards. If in these instances he erred, it must be
+remembered that he erred in company with nine-tenths
+of British statesmen in both political parties.</p>
+<p>Their admiration did not prevent his friends
+from noting tendencies which sometimes led him
+to miscalculate the forces he had to deal with.
+Being, like the younger Pitt, extremely sanguine,
+he was prone to underrate difficulties. Hopefulness
+is a splendid quality. It is both the child
+and the parent of faith. Without it neither Mr.
+Pitt nor Mr. Gladstone could have done what they
+did. But it disposes its possessor not sufficiently
+to allow for the dulness or the prejudice of others.
+So too the intensity of Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s own feeling
+made him fail to realise how many of his fellow-countrymen
+did not know of, or were not shocked
+by, acts of cruelty and injustice which had roused
+his indignation. If his hatred of ostentation
+suffered him to perceive that a nation, however
+well assured of the reality of its power
+and influence in the world, may also desire that
+this power and influence should be asserted and
+proclaimed to other nations, he refused to humour
+that desire. He had a contempt for what is
+called &ldquo;playing to the gallery,&rdquo; with a deep sense
+of the danger of stimulating the passions which
+lead to aggression and war. To national honour,
+as he conceived it, national righteousness was vital.
+His spirit was that of Lowell&rsquo;s lines&mdash;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_451' name='page_451'></a>451</span></div>
+<table summary=''><tr><td>
+<p class='cg'>I love my country so as only they<br />
+Who love a mother fit to die for may.<br />
+I love her old renown, her ancient fame:<br />
+What better proof than that I loathe her shame?</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+<p>It was this attitude that brought on him the
+charge of wanting patriotism, a charge first, I think,
+insinuated at the time of the <i>Alabama</i> arbitration,
+renewed when in 1876 he was accused of befriending
+Russia and neglecting &ldquo;British interests,&rdquo; and
+sedulously repeated thereafter, although in those
+two instances the result had proved him right.
+There was this much to give a kind of colour to
+the charge, that he had scrupulously, perhaps too
+scrupulously, refrained from extolling the material
+power of England, preferring to insist upon her
+responsibilities; that he was known to regret the
+constant increase of naval and military expenditure,
+and that he had several times taken a course
+which honour and prudence seemed to him to
+recommend, but which had offended the patriots
+of the music-halls. But it was an unjust charge,
+for no man had a warmer pride in England, a
+higher sense of her greatness and her mission.</p>
+<p>Was he too fond of power? Like other
+strong men, he enjoyed it.<a name='FNanchor_0061' id='FNanchor_0061'></a><a href='#Footnote_0061' class='fnanchor'>[70]</a> That to secure it
+he ever either adopted or renounced an opinion,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_452' name='page_452'></a>452</span>
+those who understood and watched the workings
+of his mind could not believe. He was not only
+too conscientious, but too proud to forego any of
+his convictions, and there were not a few occasions
+when he took a course which considerations of
+personal interest would have forbidden. He did
+not love office, feeling himself happier without its
+cares, and when he accepted it did so, I think, in
+the belief that there was work to be done which
+it was laid upon him individually to do. His
+changes sprang naturally from the development of
+his own ideas or (as in the case of his Irish policy)
+from the teaching of facts. He sometimes so far
+yielded to his colleagues as to sanction steps which
+he thought not the best, and may in this have
+sometimes erred; yet compromises are unavoidable,
+for no Cabinet could be kept together if its
+members did not now and then, in matters not
+essential, yield to one another. When all the facts
+of his life come to be known, instances may be disclosed
+in which he was the victim of his own casuistry
+or of his deference to Peel&rsquo;s maxim that a
+minister should not avow a change of view until
+the time has come to give effect to it. But it will
+also be made clear that he strove to obey his conscience,
+that he acted with an ever-present sense
+of his responsibility to the Almighty, and that he
+was animated by an unselfish enthusiasm for
+humanity, enlightenment, and freedom.</p>
+<p>Whether he was a good judge of men was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_453' name='page_453'></a>453</span>
+a question much discussed among his friends.
+With all his astuteness, he was in some ways
+curiously simple; with all his caution, he was by
+nature unsuspicious, disposed to treat all men as
+honest till they gave him strong reasons for thinking
+otherwise. Those who professed sympathy
+with his views and aims sometimes succeeded in
+inspiring more confidence than they deserved.
+But where this perturbing influence was absent
+he showed plenty of insight, and would pass
+shrewd judgments on the politicians around him,
+permitting neither their behaviour towards himself
+nor his opinion of their moral character to
+affect his estimate of their talents. In making
+appointments in the Civil Service, or in the
+Established Church, he rose to a far higher
+standard of public duty than Palmerston or
+Disraeli had reached or cared to reach, taking
+great pains to find the fittest men, and giving
+little weight to political considerations.<a name='FNanchor_0062' id='FNanchor_0062'></a><a href='#Footnote_0062' class='fnanchor'>[71]</a></p>
+<p>His public demeanour, and especially his
+excitability and vehemence of speech, made
+people attribute to him an overbearing disposition
+and an irritable temper. In private one did
+not find these faults. Masterful he certainly
+was, both in speech and in action. His ardent
+manner, the intensity of his look, the dialectical
+vigour with which he pressed an argument, were
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_454' name='page_454'></a>454</span>
+apt to awe people who knew him but slightly,
+and make them abandon resistance. A gifted
+though somewhat erratic politician of long bygone
+days told me how he once fared when he had risen
+in the House of Commons to censure some act of
+his leader. &ldquo;I had not gone on three minutes
+when Gladstone turned round and gazed at me
+so that I had to sit down in the middle of a
+sentence. I could not help it. There was no
+standing his eye.&rdquo; But he neither meant nor
+wished to beat down his opponents by mere
+authority. One who knew him as few people
+did observed to me, &ldquo;When you are arguing
+with Mr. Gladstone, you must never let him
+think he has convinced you unless you are really
+convinced. Persist in repeating your view, and
+if you are unable to cope with him in skill of
+fence, say bluntly that for all his ingenuity and
+authority you think he is wrong, and you retain
+your own opinion. If he respects you as a man
+who knows something of the subject, he will be
+impressed by your opinion, and it will afterwards
+have due weight with him.&rdquo; In his own Cabinet
+he was willing to listen patiently to everybody&rsquo;s
+views, and, indeed, in the judgment of some of
+his colleagues, was not, at least in his later
+years, sufficiently strenuous in asserting and
+holding to his own. It is no secret that some
+of the most important decisions of the ministry
+of 1880-85 were taken against his judgment,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_455' name='page_455'></a>455</span>
+though, when they had been adopted, he was, of
+course, bound to defend them in Parliament as if
+they had received his individual approval. Nor,
+though tenacious, did he bear malice against those
+who had baffled him. He would exert his full
+force to get his own way, but if he could not
+get it, accepted the position with good temper.<a name='FNanchor_0063' id='FNanchor_0063'></a><a href='#Footnote_0063' class='fnanchor'>[72]</a>
+He was too proud to be vindictive, too completely
+master of himself to be betrayed into
+angry words. Impatient he might sometimes
+be under a nervous strain, but never rude or
+rough. It was less easy to determine whether
+he was overmindful of injuries, but those who
+had watched him most closely held that mere
+opposition or even insult did not leave a permanent
+sting, and that the only thing he could
+not forget or forgive was faithlessness. Himself
+a model of loyalty to his colleagues, he followed
+his favourite poet in consigning the <i>traditori</i>
+to the lowest pit, although, like all statesmen,
+he often found himself obliged to work with
+those whom he distrusted.</p>
+<p>He was less sensitive than Peel, as appeared
+from his attitude toward his two chief opponents.
+Disraeli&rsquo;s attacks did not seem to gall him,
+perhaps because, although he recognised the
+ability and admired the courage of his adversary,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_456' name='page_456'></a>456</span>
+he did not respect Disraeli&rsquo;s character, remembering
+his behaviour to Peel, and thinking him
+habitually untruthful. Yet he never attacked
+Disraeli personally. There was another of his
+opponents of whom he entertained a specially
+unfavourable opinion, but no one could have
+told from his speeches what that opinion was.
+Against Lord Salisbury, his chief antagonist
+from 1881 onwards, he showed no resentment,
+though Lord Salisbury had more than once
+spoken discourteously of him. In 1890 he remarked
+to me <i>apropos</i> of some attack, &ldquo;I have
+never felt angry at what Salisbury has said about
+me. His mother was very kind to me when I
+was quite a young man, and I remember Salisbury
+as a little fellow in a red frock rolling about
+on the ottoman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That his temper was naturally hot, no one
+who looked at him could doubt. But he had it
+in such tight control, and it was so free from
+anything acrid or malignant, that it had become
+a good temper, worthy of a fine nature. However
+vehement his expressions, they did not wound
+or humiliate, and those younger men who had to
+deal with him were not afraid of a sharp answer or
+an impatient repulse. He was cast in too large
+a mould to have the pettiness of ruffled vanity
+or to abuse his predominance by treating any
+one as an inferior. His manners were the
+manners of the old time, easy but stately. Like
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_457' name='page_457'></a>457</span>
+his oratory, they were in what Matthew Arnold
+used to call the grand style; and the contrast in
+this respect between him and some of those
+who crossed swords with him in literary or
+theological controversy was apparent. His intellectual
+generosity was a part of the same
+largeness of nature. He cordially acknowledged
+his indebtedness to those who helped him in
+any piece of work, received their suggestions
+candidly, even when opposed to his own preconceived
+notions, did not hesitate to confess a
+mistake. Those who know the abundance of
+their resources, and have conquered fame, can
+doubtless afford to be generous. Julius C&aelig;sar
+was, and George Washington, and so, in a
+different sphere, were Isaac Newton and Charles
+Darwin. But the instances to the contrary are
+so numerous that one may say of magnanimity
+that it is among the rarest as well as the finest
+ornaments of character.</p>
+<p>The essential dignity of Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s nature
+was never better seen than during the last few
+years of his life, after he had finally retired
+(in 1894) from public life. He indulged in no
+vain regrets, nor was there any foundation for
+the rumours, so often circulated, that he thought
+of re-entering the arena of strife. He spoke
+with no bitterness of those who had opposed,
+and sometimes foiled, him in the past. He
+gave vent to no criticisms of those who from
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_458' name='page_458'></a>458</span>
+time to time filled the place that had been
+his in the government of the country or the
+leadership of his party. Although his opinion
+on current questions was frequently solicited, he
+scarcely ever allowed it to be known, lest it
+should embarrass his successors in the leadership
+of the party, and never himself addressed the
+nation, except (as already mentioned) on behalf
+of what he deemed a sacred cause, altogether
+above party&mdash;the discharge by Britain of her
+duty to the victims of the Turk. As soon as an
+operation for cataract had enabled him to resume
+his habit of working for seven hours a day, he
+devoted himself with his old ardour to the preparation
+of an edition of Bishop Butler&rsquo;s works,
+resumed his multifarious reading, planned (as he
+told me in 1896) a treatise on the Olympian religion,
+and filled up the interstices of his working-time
+with studies on Homer which he had been
+previously unable to complete. No trace of the
+moroseness of old age appeared in his manners or
+his conversation, nor did he, though profoundly
+grieved at some of the events which he witnessed,
+and owning himself disappointed at the slow advance
+made by a cause dear to him, appear less
+hopeful than in earlier days of the general progress
+of the world, or less confident in the beneficent
+power of freedom to promote the happiness
+of his country. The stately simplicity which had
+always charmed those who saw him in private,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_459' name='page_459'></a>459</span>
+seemed more beautiful than ever in this quiet
+evening of a long and sultry day. His intellectual
+powers were unimpaired, his thirst for knowledge
+undiminished. But a placid stillness had
+fallen upon him and his household; and in seeing
+the tide of his life begin slowly to ebb, one
+thought of the lines of his illustrious contemporary
+and friend:&mdash;</p>
+<table summary=''><tr><td>
+<p class='cg'><span class='indent6'>&nbsp;</span>Such a tide as moving seems asleep,<br />
+<span class='indent10'>&nbsp;</span>Too full for sound and foam,<br />
+When that which drew from out the boundless deep<br />
+<span class='indent10'>&nbsp;</span>Turns again home.</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+<p>Adding to his grace of manner a memory
+of extraordinary strength and quickness and an
+amazing vivacity and variety of mental force, any
+one can understand how fascinating Mr. Gladstone
+was in society. He enjoyed it to the last,
+talking as earnestly and joyously at eighty-seven as
+he had done at twenty on every topic that came
+up, and exerting himself with equal zest whether
+his interlocutor was an archbishop or a youthful
+curate. Though his party used to think that he
+overvalued the political influence of the great
+families, allotting them rather more than their share
+of honours and appointments, no one was personally
+more free from that taint of snobbishness
+which is frequently charged upon Englishmen.
+He gave the best he had to everybody alike,
+paying to men of learning and letters a respect
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_460' name='page_460'></a>460</span>
+which in England they seldom receive from the
+magnates who lead society. And although he
+was scrupulously observant of the rules of precedence
+and conventions of social life, it was
+easy to see that neither rank nor wealth had
+that importance in his eyes which the latter
+nowadays commands. Dispensing titles and
+decorations with a liberal hand, his pride always
+refused such so-called honours for himself.</p>
+<p>It was often said of him that he lacked
+humour; but this was only so far true that he
+was apt to throw into small matters more force
+and moral earnestness than were needed, and to
+honour with a refutation opponents whom a
+little light sarcasm would have better reduced
+to their insignificance.<a name='FNanchor_0064' id='FNanchor_0064'></a><a href='#Footnote_0064' class='fnanchor'>[73]</a> In private he was wont
+both to tell and to enjoy good stories; while
+in Parliament, though his tone was generally
+earnest, he could display such effective powers
+of banter and ridicule as to make people
+wonder why they were so rarely put forth.
+Much of what passes in London for humour
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_461' name='page_461'></a>461</span>
+is mere cynicism, and he hated cynicism so
+heartily as to dislike even humour when it
+had a cynical flavour. Wit he enjoyed, but
+did not produce. The turn of his mind was
+not to brevity, point, and condensation. He
+sometimes struck off a telling phrase, but seldom
+polished an epigram. His conversation was
+luminous rather than sparkling; you were
+interested and instructed while you listened,
+but it was not so much the phrases as the
+general effect that dwelt in your memory.
+An acute observer once said to me that Mr.
+Gladstone showed in argument a knack of hitting
+the nail not quite on the head. The criticism
+was so far just that he was less certain to go
+straight to the vital issue in a controversy than
+one expected from his force and keenness.</p>
+<p>After the death of Thomas Carlyle he was
+probably the best talker in London, and a talker
+in one respect more agreeable than either Carlyle
+or Macaulay, inasmuch as he was no less ready
+to listen than to speak, and never wearied the
+dinner-table by a monologue. His simplicity,
+his spontaneity, his geniality and courtesy, as well
+as the fund of knowledge and of personal recollections
+at his command, made him so popular
+in society that his opponents used to say it was
+dangerous to meet him, because one might be
+forced to leave off hating him. He was, perhaps,
+too prone to go on talking upon the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_462' name='page_462'></a>462</span>
+subject which filled his mind at the moment;
+nor was it easy to divert his attention to something
+else which others might deem more important.<a name='FNanchor_0065' id='FNanchor_0065'></a><a href='#Footnote_0065' class='fnanchor'>[74]</a>
+Those who stayed with him in the
+same country house sometimes complained that
+the perpetual display of force and eagerness
+tired them, as one tires of watching the rush
+of Niagara. His guests, however, did not feel
+this, for his own home life was quiet and smooth.
+He read and wrote a good many hours daily, but
+never sat up late, almost always slept soundly,
+never seemed oppressed or driven to strain
+his strength. With all his impetuosity, he
+was regular, systematic, and deliberate in his
+habits and ways of doing business. A swift
+reader and a surprisingly swift writer, he was
+always occupied, and was skilful in using even
+the scraps and fragments of his time. No pressure
+of work made him fussy, nor could any one
+remember to have seen him in a hurry.</p>
+<p>The best proof of his swiftness, industry, and
+skill in economising time is supplied by the
+quantity of his literary work, which, considering
+the abstruse nature of the subjects to which
+much of it is related, would have been creditable
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_463' name='page_463'></a>463</span>
+to the diligence of a German professor
+sitting alone in his study. The merits of the
+work have been disputed. Mankind are slow to
+credit the same person with eminence in various
+fields. When they read the prose of a great
+poet, they try it by severer tests than would be
+applied to other writers. When a painter has
+won credit by his landscapes or his cattle pieces,
+he is seldom encouraged to venture into other
+lines. So Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s reputation as an
+orator stood in his own light when he appeared
+as an author. He was read by thousands
+who would not have looked at the article
+or book had it borne some other name; but he
+was judged by the standard, not of his finest
+printed speeches, for his speeches were seldom
+models of composition, but rather by the impression
+which his finest speeches made on those
+who heard them. Since his warmest admirers
+could not claim for him as a writer of prose any
+such pre-eminence as belonged to him as a
+speaker, it followed that his written work was
+not duly appreciated. Had he been a writer and
+nothing else, he would have been eminent and
+powerful by his pen.</p>
+<p>He might, however, have failed to secure a place
+in the front rank. His style was forcible, copious,
+rich with various knowledge, warm with the
+ardour of his temperament. But it suffered from
+an inborn tendency to exuberance which the long
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_464' name='page_464'></a>464</span>
+practice of oratory had confirmed. It was diffuse,
+apt to pursue a topic into details, when these might
+have been left to the reader&rsquo;s own reflection. It
+was redundant, employing more words than were
+needed to convey the substance. It was unchastened,
+indulging too freely in tropes and
+metaphors, in quotations and adapted phrases
+even when the quotation added nothing to the
+sense, but was suggested merely by some association
+in his own mind. Thus it seldom reached
+a high level of purity and grace, and though one
+might excuse the faults as natural to the work
+of a swift and busy man, they were sufficient
+to reduce the pleasure to be derived from the
+form and dress of his thoughts. Nevertheless
+there are not a few passages of rare merit,
+both in the books and in the articles, among
+which may be cited (not as exceptionally good,
+but as typical of his strong points) the striking
+picture of his own youthful feeling toward
+the Church of England contained in the <i>Chapter
+of Autobiography</i>, and the refined criticism of
+<i>Robert Elsmere</i>, published in 1888. Almost
+the last thing he wrote, a pamphlet on the
+Greek and Cretan question, published in the
+spring of 1897, has the force and cogency of his
+best days. Two things were never wanting to
+him: vigour of expression and an admirable
+command of appropriate words.</p>
+<p>His writings fall into three classes: political,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_465' name='page_465'></a>465</span>
+theological, and literary&mdash;the last chiefly consisting
+of his books and articles upon Homer
+and the Homeric question. All the political
+writings, except the books on <i>The State in its
+Relations to the Church</i> and <i>Church Principles
+considered in their Results</i>, belong to the class
+of occasional literature, being pamphlets or
+articles produced with a view to some current
+crisis or controversy. They are valuable
+chiefly as proceeding from one who bore a
+leading part in the affairs they relate to, and
+as embodying vividly the opinions and aspirations
+of the moment, less frequently in respect
+of permanent lessons of political wisdom, such
+as one finds in Machiavelli or Tocqueville or
+Edmund Burke. Like Pitt and Peel, Mr. Gladstone
+had a mind which, whatever its original
+tendencies, had come to be rather practical than
+meditative. He was fond of generalisations and
+principles, but they were always directly related
+to the questions that came before him in actual
+politics; and the number of weighty maxims or
+illuminative suggestions to be found in his writings
+and speeches is small in proportion to the
+sustained vigour they display. Even Disraeli,
+though his views were often fanciful and his
+epigrams often forced, gives us more frequently
+a brilliant (if only half true) historical <i>aper&ccedil;u</i>, or
+throws a flash of light into some corner of human
+character. Of the theological essays, which are
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_466' name='page_466'></a>466</span>
+mainly apologetic and concerned with the authenticity
+and authority of Scripture, it is enough to
+say that they were the work of an accomplished
+amateur, who had been too busy to follow the progress
+of critical inquiry. His Homeric treatises,
+the most elaborate piece of work that proceeded
+from Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s pen, are in one sense worthless,
+in another sense admirable. Those parts of
+them which deal with early Greek mythology,
+genealogy, and religion, and, in a less degree, the
+theories about Homeric geography and the use
+of Homeric epithets, have been condemned by
+the unanimous voice of scholars as fantastic.
+The premises are assumed without sufficient investigation,
+while the reasonings are fine-drawn
+and flimsy. Extraordinary ingenuity is shown
+in piling up a lofty fabric, but the foundation is
+of sand, and the edifice has hardly a solid wall
+or beam in it. A conjecture is treated as a fact;
+then an inference, possible but not certain, is
+drawn from this conjecture; a second possible
+inference is based upon the first; and we are
+made to forget that the probability of this second
+is at most only half the probability of the first.
+So the process goes on; and when the superstructure
+is complete, the reader is provoked
+to perceive how much dialectical skill has been
+wasted upon a series of hypotheses which a breath
+of common-sense criticism dissipates. If one is
+asked to explain the weakness in this particular
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_467' name='page_467'></a>467</span>
+department of a mind otherwise so strong, the
+answer would seem to be that the element of
+fancifulness in Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s intellect, and his
+tendency to mistake mere argumentation for
+verification, were checked in practical politics by
+constant intercourse with friends and colleagues
+as well as by the need of convincing visible
+audiences, while in theological or historical inquiries
+his ingenuity roamed with fatal freedom
+over wide plains where no obstacles checked
+its course. Something may also be due to the
+fact that his philosophical and historical education
+was received at a time when the modern
+critical spirit and the canons it recognises had
+scarcely begun to assert themselves at Oxford.
+Similar defects may be discerned in other eminent
+writers of his own and the preceding generation
+of Oxford men, defects from which persons of
+inferior power in later days might be free. In
+some of these writers, and particularly in Cardinal
+Newman, the contrast between dialectical acumen,
+coupled with surpassing rhetorical skill, and the
+vitiation of the argument by a want of the critical
+faculty, is scarcely less striking; and the example
+of that illustrious man suggests that the dominance
+of the theological view of literary and
+historical problems, a dominance evident in Mr.
+Gladstone, counts for something in producing the
+phenomenon.</p>
+<p>With these defects, Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s Homeric
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_468' name='page_468'></a>468</span>
+work had the merit of being based on a full
+and thorough knowledge of the Homeric text.
+He had seen, at a time when few people in
+England had seen it, that the Homeric poems
+are an historical source of the highest value, a
+treasure-house of data for the study of early
+Greek life and thought, an authority all the more
+trustworthy because an unconscious authority,
+addressing not posterity but contemporaries.
+This mastery of the matter contained in the
+poems enabled him to present valuable pictures
+of the political and social life of Homeric Greece,
+while the interspersed literary criticisms are often
+subtle and suggestive, erring, when they do err,
+chiefly through the over-earnestness of his mind.
+He often takes the poet too seriously; reading
+an ethical purpose into descriptive or dramatic
+touches which are merely descriptive or dramatic.
+Passages whose moral tendency offends him are
+reprobated as later insertions with a na&iuml;vet&eacute; which
+forgets the character of a primitive age. But he
+has for his author not only that sympathy which is
+the best basis for criticism, but a justness of poetic
+taste which the learned and painstaking German
+commentator frequently wants. That Mr. Gladstone
+was a sound scholar in that narrower sense of
+the word which denotes a grammatical and literary
+command of Greek and Latin, goes without saying.
+Men of his generation kept a closer hold
+upon the ancient classics than we do to-day; and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_469' name='page_469'></a>469</span>
+his habit of reading Greek for the sake of his
+Homeric studies, and Latin for the sake of his
+theological, made this familiarity more than
+usually thorough. Like most Etonians, he loved
+and knew the poets by preference. Dante was
+his favourite poet, perhaps because Dante is the
+most theological and ethical of the great poets,
+and because the tongue and the memories of Italy
+had a peculiar attraction for him. He used to say
+that he found Dante&rsquo;s thought incomparably inspiring,
+but hard to follow, it was so high and so
+abstract. Theology claimed a place beside poetry;
+history came next, though he did not study it
+systematically. It seemed odd that he was sometimes
+at fault in the constitutional antiquities of
+England; but this subject was, until the day of
+Dr. Stubbs, pre-eminently a Whig subject, and
+Mr. Gladstone never was a Whig, never learned
+to think upon the lines of the great Whigs of
+former days. His historical knowledge was not
+exceptionally wide, but it was generally accurate
+in matters of fact, however fanciful he might be
+in reasoning from the facts, however wild his
+conjectures in the prehistoric region. In metaphysics
+strictly so called his reading did not go
+far beyond those companions of his youth, Aristotle
+and Bishop Butler; and philosophical speculation
+interested him only so far as it bore on
+Christian doctrine. Keen as was his interest
+in theology and in history, it is not certain that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_470' name='page_470'></a>470</span>
+he would have produced work of permanent
+value in either sphere even had his life been
+wholly devoted to study. His mind seemed to
+need to be steadied, his ingenuity restrained,
+by having to deal with concrete matter for a
+practical end. Neither, in spite of his eminence
+as a financier and an advocate of free
+trade, did he show much taste for economic
+studies. On practical topics, such as the working
+of protective tariffs, the abuse of charitable
+endowments, the development of fruit-culture in
+England, the duty of liberal giving by the rich,
+the utility of thrift among the poor, his remarks
+were full of point, clearness, and good sense, but
+he seldom launched out into the wider sea of
+economic theory. He took a first-class in mathematics
+at Oxford, at the same time as his first
+in classics, but did not pursue the subject in
+later life. Regarding the sciences of experiment
+and observation, he seemed to feel as little
+curiosity as any educated man who notes the
+enormous part they play in the modern world
+can feel. Sayings of his have been quoted which
+show that he imperfectly comprehended the character
+of the evidence they rely upon and of the
+methods they employ. On one occasion he
+horrified a dinner-table of younger friends by
+refusing to accept some of the most certain conclusions
+of modern geology. No doubt he belonged,
+as Lord Derby (the Prime Minister) once said of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_471' name='page_471'></a>471</span>
+himself, to a pre-scientific age. Perhaps he was
+unconsciously biassed by the notion that such
+sciences as geology and biology, for instance, were
+being used by some students to sap the foundations
+of revealed religion. But I can recall
+no sign of disposition to dissuade free inquiry
+either into those among the sciences of nature
+which have been supposed to touch theology, or
+into the date, authorship, and authority of the
+books of the Bible. He had faith not only in his
+creed, but in God as a God of truth, and in the
+power of research to elicit truth.</p>
+<p>General propositions are dangerous, yet it
+seems safe to observe that great men have
+seldom been obscurantists or persecutors. Either
+the sympathy with intellectual effort which is
+natural to a powerful intellect, or the sense that
+free inquiry, though it may be checked by repression
+for a certain time or within a certain
+area, will ultimately have its course, dissuades
+them from that attempt to dam up the stream of
+thought which smaller minds regard as the obvious
+expedient for saving souls or institutions.</p>
+<p>It ought to be added, for this was a remarkable
+feature of his character, that he had the deepest
+reverence for the great poets and philosophers,
+placing the career of the statesman on a far lower
+plane than that of those who rule the world by
+their thoughts enshrined in literature. He expressed
+in a striking letter to Tennyson&rsquo;s eldest son
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_472' name='page_472'></a>472</span>
+his sense of the immense superiority of the poet&rsquo;s
+life and work. Once, in the lobby of the House
+of Commons, seeing his countenance saddened by
+the troubles of Ireland, I told him, in order to
+divert his thoughts, how some one had recently
+discovered that Dante had in his last years been
+appointed at Ravenna to a lectureship which
+raised him above the pinch of want. Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s
+face lit up at once, and he said, &ldquo;How
+strange it is to think that these great souls whose
+words are a beacon-light to all the generations
+that have come after them, should have had
+cares and anxieties to vex them in their daily
+life, just like the rest of us common mortals.&rdquo;
+The phrase reminded me that a few days before
+I had heard Mr. Darwin, in dwelling upon the
+pleasure a visit paid by Mr. Gladstone had
+given him, say, &ldquo;And he talked just as if he had
+been an ordinary person like one of ourselves.&rdquo;
+The two great men were alike unconscious of
+their greatness.</p>
+<p>It was an unspeakable benefit to Mr. Gladstone
+that his love of letters and learning enabled him
+to find in the pursuit of knowledge a relief from
+anxieties and a solace under disappointments.
+Without some such relief his fiery and restless
+spirit would have worn itself out. He lived two
+lives&mdash;the life of the statesman and the life of the
+student, and passed swiftly from the one to the
+other, dismissing when he sat down to his books
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_473' name='page_473'></a>473</span>
+all the cares of politics. But he led a third
+life also, the secret life of the soul. Religion
+was of all things that which had the strongest
+hold upon his thoughts and feelings. Nothing
+but his father&rsquo;s opposition prevented him from
+becoming a clergyman when he quitted the University.
+Never thereafter did he cease to take
+the warmest interest in everything that affected
+the Christian Church. He lost his seat for Oxford
+University by the votes of the country clergy,
+who formed the bulk of the constituency. He incurred
+the displeasure of four-fifths of the Anglican
+communion by disestablishing the Protestant
+Episcopal Church in Ireland, and from 1868 to the
+end of his life found nearly all the clerical force
+of the English establishment arrayed against him,
+while his warmest support came from the Nonconformists
+of England and the Presbyterians of
+Scotland. Yet nothing affected his devotion to
+the Church in which he had been brought up, nor
+to the body of Anglo-Catholic doctrine he had
+imbibed as an undergraduate. After an attack
+of influenza which had left him very weak in the
+spring of 1891, he endangered his life by attending
+a meeting on behalf of the Colonial Bishoprics
+Fund, for which he had spoken fifty years before.
+His theological opinions tinged his views upon
+political subjects. They filled him with dislike of
+the legalisation of marriage with a deceased wife&rsquo;s
+sister; they made him a vehement opponent of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_474' name='page_474'></a>474</span>
+the bill which established the English Divorce
+Court in 1857, and a watchfully hostile critic of
+all divorce legislation in America afterwards.
+Some of his friends traced to the same cause his
+less than adequate appreciation of German literature
+(though he admired Goethe and Schiller) and
+even his political coldness towards Prussia and
+afterwards towards the German Empire. He
+could not forget that Germany had been the
+fountain of rationalism, while German Evangelical
+Protestantism was more schismatic and farther
+removed from the medi&aelig;val Catholic Church than
+it pleased him to deem the Church of England to
+be. He had an exceedingly high sense of the
+duty of purity of life and of the sanctity of
+domestic relations, and his rigid ideas of decorum
+inspired so much awe that it used to be said to a
+person who had told an anecdote with ever so
+slight a tinge of impropriety, &ldquo;How many thousands
+of pounds would you take to tell that to
+Gladstone?&rdquo; When living in the country, it was
+his practice to attend daily morning service in
+the parish church, and on Sunday to read in
+church the lessons for the day; and he rarely, if
+ever, transgressed his rule against Sunday labour.
+Religious feeling, coupled with a system of firm
+dogmatic beliefs, was the mainspring of his life, a
+guiding light in perplexities, a source of strength
+in adverse fortune, a consolation in sorrow, a
+beacon of hope beyond the failures and disappointments
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_475' name='page_475'></a>475</span>
+of this present world. He did not
+make what is commonly called a profession of
+religion, and talked little about it in general
+society, although always ready to plunge into a
+magazine controversy when Christianity was
+assailed. But those who knew him best knew
+that he was always referring current questions to,
+and trying his own conduct by, a religious
+standard. He believed in the efficacy of prayer,
+and sought through prayer for strength and for
+direction in the affairs of state. He was a remarkable
+example of the coexistence together
+with a Christian virtue of a quality which
+Catholic theologians treat as a mortal sin. He
+was an exceedingly proud man, yet an exceedingly
+humble Christian. With a high regard for
+his own dignity and a sensitiveness to any imputation
+on his honour, he was deeply conscious of
+his imperfections in the eye of God, realising the
+weakness and sinfulness of human nature with
+a medi&aelig;val intensity. The language of self-depreciation
+he was wont to use, sometimes
+deemed unreal, expressed his genuine sense of
+the contrast between the religious ideal he set
+up and his own attainment. And the tolerance
+which he extended to those who attacked him
+or who had (as he thought) behaved ill in public
+life was largely due to this pervading sense of the
+frailty of human character, and of the inextricable
+mixture in conduct of good and bad motives.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_476' name='page_476'></a>476</span>
+&ldquo;It is always best to take the charitable view,&rdquo;
+he once observed when I had quoted to him the
+saying of Dean Church that Mark Pattison had
+painted himself too black in his autobiography&mdash;&ldquo;always
+best,&rdquo; adding, with grim emphasis,
+&ldquo;especially in politics.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In this indulgent view, more evident in his
+later years, and the more remarkable because
+his expressions were often too vehement, there
+was nothing of the cynical &ldquo;man of the world&rdquo;
+acceptance of a low standard as the only possible
+standard, for his moral earnestness was as fervent
+at eighty-eight as it had been at thirty, and he
+retained a simplicity and an unwillingness to suspect
+sinister motives, singular in one who had
+seen so much. Although accessible and frank in
+the ordinary converse of society, he was in reality
+a reserved man; not shy, stiff, and externally
+cold, like Peel, nor always standing on a pedestal
+of dignity, like the younger Pitt, but revealing
+his deepest thoughts only to a few intimate
+friends, and treating others with a courteous
+kindliness which, though it put them at their
+ease, did not encourage them to approach nearer.
+Thus, while he was admired by the mass of his
+followers, and beloved by the small inner group
+of family friends, the majority of his colleagues,
+official subordinates, and political or ecclesiastical
+associates, would have hesitated to give him any of
+friendship&rsquo;s confidences. Though quick to mark
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_477' name='page_477'></a>477</span>
+and acknowledge good service, or to offer to a junior
+an opportunity of distinction, many deemed him
+too much occupied with his own thoughts to
+show interest in his disciples, or to bestow those
+counsels which a young man prizes from his
+chief. But for the warmth of his devotion to a
+few early friends and the reverence he paid to
+their memory, a reverence touchingly shown in
+the article on Arthur Hallam which he published
+near the end of his own life, sixty-five years after
+Hallam&rsquo;s death, there might have seemed to be
+a measure of truth in the judgment that he cared
+less for men than for ideas and causes. Those,
+however, who marked the pang which the departure
+to the Roman Church of his friend Hope
+Scott caused him, those who in later days noted
+the enthusiasm with which he would speak of
+Lord Althorp, his opponent, and of Lord Aberdeen,
+his chief, dwelling upon the truthfulness and
+uprightness of the former and the amiability of
+the latter, knew that the impression of detachment
+he gave wronged the sensibility of his own
+heart. Of how few who have lived for more than
+sixty years in the full sight of their countrymen,
+and have been as party leaders exposed to angry
+and sometimes spiteful criticism, can it be said
+that there stands on record against them no
+malignant word and no vindictive act! This
+was due not perhaps entirely to natural sweetness
+of disposition, but rather to self-control
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_478' name='page_478'></a>478</span>
+and to a certain largeness of soul which would
+not condescend to anything mean or petty.
+Pride, though it may be a sin, is to most of us a
+useful, to some an indispensable, buttress of virtue.
+Nor should it be forgotten that the perfectly happy
+life which he led at home, cared for in everything
+by a devoted wife, kept far from him those domestic
+troubles which have soured the temper and embittered
+the judgments of not a few famous men.
+Reviewing his whole career, and summing up the
+concurrent impressions and recollections of those
+who knew him best, this dignity is the feature
+which dwells most in the mind, as the outline of
+some majestic Alp thrills one from afar when all
+the lesser beauties of glen and wood, of crag and
+glacier, have faded in the distance. As elevation
+was the note of his oratory, so was magnanimity
+the note of his character.</p>
+<p>The Greek maxim that no one can be called
+happy till his life is closed must, in the case of
+statesmen, be extended to warn us from the
+attempt to fix a man&rsquo;s place in history till a
+generation has arisen to whom he is a mere
+name, not a familiar figure to be loved or
+hated. Few reputations made in politics so far
+retain their lustre that curiosity continues to
+play round the person when those who can remember
+him living have departed. Dante has
+in immortal stanzas contrasted the fame of Provenzano
+Salvani that sounded through all Tuscany
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_479' name='page_479'></a>479</span>
+while he lived with the faint whispers of his name
+heard in his own Siena forty years after his death.<a name='FNanchor_0066' id='FNanchor_0066'></a><a href='#Footnote_0066' class='fnanchor'>[75]</a>
+So out of all the men who have held a foremost
+place in English public life in the nineteenth
+century there are but six or seven&mdash;Pitt, Fox,
+Wellington, Peel, Disraeli, possibly Canning, or
+O&rsquo;Connell, or Melbourne&mdash;whose names are to-day
+upon our lips. The great poet or the great
+artist lives as long as his books or his pictures;
+the statesman, like the singer or the actor,
+begins to be forgotten so soon as his voice is
+still, unless he has so dominated the men of
+his own time, and made himself a part of his
+country&rsquo;s history, that his personal character
+is indissolubly linked to the events the course
+of which he helped to determine. Tried by
+this test, Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s fame seems destined
+to endure. His eloquence will soon become
+merely a tradition, for his printed speeches do not
+preserve its charm. If some of his books continue
+to be read, it will be rather because they are his
+than in respect of any permanent contribution they
+have made to knowledge. The wisdom of his
+policy, foreign and domestic, will have to be judged,
+not only by the consequences we see, but also by
+other consequences still hidden in the future.
+Yet among his acts there are some with which
+history cannot fail to concern herself, and which
+will keep fresh the memory of their author&rsquo;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_480' name='page_480'></a>480</span>
+energy and courage. Whoever follows the annals
+of England during the memorable years from 1843
+to 1894 will meet his name on almost every page,
+will feel how great must have been the force of an
+intellect that could so interpenetrate the story of
+its time, and will seek to know something of
+the dauntless figure that rose always conspicuous
+above the struggling throng.</p>
+<p>There is a passage in the <i>Odyssey</i> where the
+seer Theoclymenus says, in describing a vision
+of death: &ldquo;The sun has perished out of heaven.&rdquo;
+To Englishmen, Mr. Gladstone had been like a
+sun which, sinking slowly, had grown larger as he
+sank, and filled the sky with radiance even while
+he trembled on the verge of the horizon. There
+were men of ability and men of renown, but there
+was no one comparable to him in fame and power
+and honour. When he departed the light seemed
+to have died out of the sky.</p>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<p style='font-family:sans-serif; margin-top:1.4em;'>Footnotes</p>
+<div class='footnote'>
+<a name='Footnote_1' id='Footnote_1'></a><a href='#FNanchor_1'><span class='label'>[1]</span></a>
+<p>No &ldquo;authorised&rdquo; life of Lord Beaconsfield, nor indeed any life commensurate
+with the part he played in English politics, has yet appeared.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0001' id='Footnote_0001'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0001'><span class='label'>[2]</span></a>
+<p>Disraeli&rsquo;s family claimed to be of Spanish origin, but had come from
+Italy to England shortly before 1748.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0002' id='Footnote_0002'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0002'><span class='label'>[3]</span></a>
+<p>There are few legal allusions in his novels, fewer in proportion than
+in Shakespeare&rsquo;s plays, but an ingenious travesty of the English use of
+legal fictions may be found in the <i>Voyage of Captain Popanilla</i>, a satire
+on the English constitution and government. Popanilla, who is to be
+tried for treason, is, to his astonishment, indicted for killing a camelopard.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0003' id='Footnote_0003'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0003'><span class='label'>[4]</span></a>
+<p>That historical interest he did feel deeply. One might almost say
+of him that he was a Christian because he was a Jew, for Christianity was
+to him the proper development of the ancient religion of Israel. &ldquo;The
+Jews,&rdquo; he observes in the <i>Life of Lord George Bentinck</i>, &ldquo;represent the
+Semitic principle, all that is most spiritual in our nature.... It is deplorable
+that several millions of Jews still persist in believing only a part of
+their religion.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0004' id='Footnote_0004'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0004'><span class='label'>[5]</span></a>
+<p>Though it has been maintained that in the Dark and Middle Ages a
+considerable number of Gentiles found their way into Jewish communities
+and became Judaised.</p>
+<p>The high average of intellectual power among the Jews need not be
+attributed to purity of race; it is sufficiently explained by their history.
+Nor is it clear that where two of the more advanced races are mixed by
+intermarriage, the product is inferior to either of the parent stocks. On
+the contrary, such a mixture, <i>e.g.</i> of Teutonic and Slavonic blood, or of
+Celtic and Teutonic, gives a result at least equal in capacity to either of
+the pure-blooded races which have been so commingled.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0005' id='Footnote_0005'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0005'><span class='label'>[6]</span></a>
+<p>He had an intellectual arrogance, which made him dislike what
+may be called the Radical conception of human equality. In the <i>Life
+of Lord George Bentinck</i> he remarks, &ldquo;The Jews are a living and the
+most striking evidence of the falsity of that pernicious doctrine of modern
+times, the natural equality of man.... All the tendencies of the Jewish
+race are conservative. Their bias is to religion, property, and natural
+aristocracy.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0006' id='Footnote_0006'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0006'><span class='label'>[7]</span></a>
+<p>On one occasion he went so far as to deny that he had asked Peel for
+office, relying on the fact that the letter which contained the request was
+marked &ldquo;private,&rdquo; so that Peel could not use it to disprove his statement
+(<i>Letters of Sir Robert Peel</i>, by C. S. Parker, vol. ii. p. 486; vol.
+iii. pp. 347, 348).</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0007' id='Footnote_0007'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0007'><span class='label'>[8]</span></a>
+<p>See Sir S. Northcote&rsquo;s report of a conversation with Disraeli in his
+last years (<i>Life of Sir Stafford Northcote</i>, vol. ii.).</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0008' id='Footnote_0008'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0008'><span class='label'>[9]</span></a>
+<p>In the <i>Life of Lord George Bentinck</i> (written shortly after Peel&rsquo;s
+death), Disraeli, after dilating upon the loyalty which the Tory aristocracy
+had displayed towards Peel, observes, &ldquo;An aristocracy hesitates before it
+yields its confidence, but it never does so grudgingly.... In political
+connections the social feeling mingles with the principle of honour which
+governs gentlemen.... Such a following is usually cordial and faithful.
+An aristocracy is rather apt to exaggerate the qualities and magnify the
+importance of a plebeian leader.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0009' id='Footnote_0009'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0009'><span class='label'>[10]</span></a>
+<p>When he did set himself to examine the condition of the people, the
+diagnosis, if not always correct, was always suggestive, <i>e.g.</i> the account of
+the manufacturing districts given in <i>Sybil, or the Two Nations</i>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0010' id='Footnote_0010'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0010'><span class='label'>[11]</span></a>
+<p>&ldquo;The old Jew, that is the man.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0011' id='Footnote_0011'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0011'><span class='label'>[12]</span></a>
+<p>In the <i>Life of Lord George Bentinck</i>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0012' id='Footnote_0012'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0012'><span class='label'>[13]</span></a>
+<p><span class='greek' title='Oi&ocirc; pepnusthai, toi de skiai a&iuml;ssousin'>&Omicron;&#x1F34;&#x1FF3; &pi;&epsilon;&pi;&nu;&#x1FE6;&sigma;&theta;&alpha;&iota;, &tau;&omicron;&#x1F76; &delta;&#x1F72; &sigma;&kappa;&iota;&alpha;&#x1F76; &#x1F00;&#x3AF;&sigma;&sigma;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigma;&iota;&nu;</span> (<i>Od.</i> x. 495). Used of Tiresias,
+in the world of disembodied spirits.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0013' id='Footnote_0013'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0013'><span class='label'>[14]</span></a>
+<p>To defend Disraeli by arguing that his policy had not a fair chance
+because his colleagues did not allow him to carry it through is to admit
+another error not less grave, for the path he took was one on which no
+minister ought to have entered unless satisfied that the Cabinet and the
+country would let him follow it to the end.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0014' id='Footnote_0014'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0014'><span class='label'>[15]</span></a>
+<p><i>Inf.</i> vii. 77.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'>
+<a name='Footnote_16' id='Footnote_16'></a><a href='#FNanchor_16'><span class='label'>[16]</span></a>
+<p>A <i>Life of Dean Stanley</i>, in two volumes, begun by Theodore
+Walrond, continued by Dean Bradley, and completed by Mr. R. E.
+Prothero, appeared in 1893.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0015' id='Footnote_0015'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0015'><span class='label'>[17]</span></a>
+<p>When J. S. Mill was a candidate for Westminster in 1868, Stanley
+published a letter announcing his support, partly out of personal respect
+for Mill, partly because it gave him an opportunity of expressing an
+opinion on the Irish Church question, and of reprobating the charge of
+atheism which had been brought against Mill.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0016' id='Footnote_0016'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0016'><span class='label'>[18]</span></a>
+<p>As I have referred to the American Civil War, it is worth adding
+that there were no places in England where the varying fortunes of that
+tremendous struggle were followed with a more intense interest than in
+Oxford and Cambridge, and none in which so large a proportion of the
+educated class sympathised with the cause of the North. Mr. Goldwin
+Smith led the section which took that view, and which included three-fourths
+of the best talent in Oxford. Among the younger men Green was
+the most conspicuous for his ardour on behalf of the principles of human
+equality and freedom. He followed and watched every move in the
+military game. No Massachusetts Abolitionist welcomed the fall of
+Vicksburg with a keener joy. He used to say that the whole future of
+humanity was involved in the triumph of the Federal arms.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'>
+<a name='Footnote_19' id='Footnote_19'></a><a href='#FNanchor_19'><span class='label'>[19]</span></a>
+<p>An admirable life of Archbishop Tait by his son-in-law, Dr. R. T.
+Davidson (now Archbishop of Canterbury), and Canon Benham appeared
+in 1891.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0017' id='Footnote_0017'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0017'><span class='label'>[20]</span></a>
+<p>They thought his public action scarcely consistent with the language
+he had used to Temple in private.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'>
+<a name='Footnote_21' id='Footnote_21'></a><a href='#FNanchor_21'><span class='label'>[21]</span></a>
+<p>Trollope&rsquo;s autobiography, published in 1883, is a good specimen of
+self-portraiture, candid, straightforward, and healthy, and leaves an
+agreeable impression of the writer. Dr. Richard Garnett has written well
+of him in the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'>
+<a name='Footnote_22' id='Footnote_22'></a><a href='#FNanchor_22'><span class='label'>[22]</span></a>
+<p>This sketch was written in 1883. A volume of Green&rsquo;s Letters, with
+a short connecting biography by Sir Leslie Stephen, was published in
+1901. The letters are extremely good reading, the biography faithful and
+graceful.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0018' id='Footnote_0018'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0018'><span class='label'>[23]</span></a>
+<p>Sir George Young and I were the other members.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0019' id='Footnote_0019'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0019'><span class='label'>[24]</span></a>
+<p>At one time, however, he learnt a little geology from his friend
+Professor Dawkins, perceiving its bearings on history.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0020' id='Footnote_0020'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0020'><span class='label'>[25]</span></a>
+<p>2 Sam. xvi. 23.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0021' id='Footnote_0021'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0021'><span class='label'>[26]</span></a>
+<p><i>Odyss.</i> viii. 274: &ldquo;And upon the anvil-stand he set the mighty
+anvil; and he forged the links that could be neither broken nor loosed, so
+that they should stay firm in their place.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0022' id='Footnote_0022'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0022'><span class='label'>[27]</span></a>
+<p>Lord Justice James said of his colleague that he had only one
+defect as a judge: &ldquo;He was too anxious to convince counsel that they
+were wrong, when he thought their contention unsound, seeming to
+forget that counsel are paid not to be convinced.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0023' id='Footnote_0023'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0023'><span class='label'>[28]</span></a>
+<p>No biography of Lord Cairns has (so far as I know) appeared&mdash;a
+singular fact, considering the brilliancy of his career, and considering the
+tendency which now prevails to bestow this kind of honour on many
+persons of the second or even the third rank. One reason may be that
+Cairns, great though he was, never won personal popularity even with his
+own political party or among his contemporaries at the bar, and was to the
+general public no more than a famous name.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0024' id='Footnote_0024'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0024'><span class='label'>[29]</span></a>
+<p>The reign of King Richard the First.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0025' id='Footnote_0025'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0025'><span class='label'>[30]</span></a>
+<p>Two Lives of Dr. Fraser have been published, one (in 1887) by
+the late Judge Hughes, the other, which gives a fuller impression of his
+personal character, by the Rev. J. W. Diggle (1891).</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0026' id='Footnote_0026'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0026'><span class='label'>[31]</span></a>
+<p>He was a good judge of horses, and had in his youth been fond of
+hunting.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0027' id='Footnote_0027'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0027'><span class='label'>[32]</span></a>
+<p>A clergyman of his diocese had once, under the greatest provocation,
+knocked down a person who had insulted him, and the bishop wrote
+him a letter of reproof pointing out (among other things) that, exposed as
+the Church of England was to much criticism on all hands, her ministers
+ought to be very careful in their demeanour. The offender replied by
+saying, &ldquo;I must regretfully admit that being grossly insulted, and forgetting
+in the heat of the moment the critical position of the Church of
+England, I did knock the man down, etc.&rdquo; Fraser, delighted with this
+turning of the tables on himself, told me the anecdote with great glee, and
+invited the clergyman to stay with him not long afterwards.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0028' id='Footnote_0028'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0028'><span class='label'>[33]</span></a>
+<p>He was himself aware that this caused displeasure. In his latest
+Charge, delivered some months before his death, he said: &ldquo;I am
+charged, amongst other grievous sins, with that of thinking not unkindly,
+and speaking not unfavourably, of Dissenters. I don&rsquo;t profess to love
+dissent, but I have received innumerable kindnesses from Dissenters.
+Why should I abuse them? Why should I call them hard names?
+Remembering how Nonconformity was made&mdash;no doubt sometimes by
+self-will and pride and prejudice and ignorance, but far more often by the
+Church&rsquo;s supineness, neglect, and intolerance in days long since gone by,
+of which we have not yet paid the full penalty&mdash;though, as I have said,
+I love not the thing, I cannot speak harshly of it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>That a defence was needed may seem strange to those who do not
+know England.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'>
+<a name='Footnote_34' id='Footnote_34'></a><a href='#FNanchor_34'><span class='label'>[34]</span></a>
+<p>A <i>Life of Lord Iddesleigh</i>, written by Mr. Andrew Lang, presents
+Northcote&rsquo;s character and career with fairness and discrimination.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0029' id='Footnote_0029'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0029'><span class='label'>[35]</span></a>
+<p>The <i>Life of Parnell</i>, by Mr. R. Barry O&rsquo;Brien, has taken rank among
+the best biographies of the last half-century.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0030' id='Footnote_0030'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0030'><span class='label'>[36]</span></a>
+<p>An anecdote was told at the time that when he found himself in the
+prison yard at Kilmainham, he said, in a sort of soliloquy, &ldquo;I shall live
+yet to dance upon those two old men&rsquo;s graves.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'>
+<a name='Footnote_37' id='Footnote_37'></a><a href='#FNanchor_37'><span class='label'>[37]</span></a>
+<p>An excellent Life of Freeman has been written by his friend Mr.
+W. R. W. Stephens, afterwards Dean of Winchester, whose death while
+these pages were passing through the press has caused the deepest regret
+to all who had the opportunity of knowing his literary gifts and his
+lovable character.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0031' id='Footnote_0031'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0031'><span class='label'>[38]</span></a>
+<p>The scholars of Trinity were then (1843) all High Churchmen,
+and never dined in hall on Fridays. Fourteen years later there was not a
+single High Churchman among them. Ten or fifteen years afterwards
+Anglo-Catholic sentiment was again strong. Freeman said that his revulsion
+against Tractarianism began from a conversation with one of his
+fellow-scholars, who had remarked that it was a pity there had been a
+flaw in the consecration of some Swedish bishops in the sixteenth century,
+for this had imperilled the salvation of all Swedes since that time. He
+was startled, and began to reconsider his position.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0032' id='Footnote_0032'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0032'><span class='label'>[39]</span></a>
+<p>Having had about the same time a brush with George Anthony
+Denison (Archdeacon of Taunton), and a less friendly passage of arms with
+James Anthony Froude, he wrote to me in 1870: &ldquo;I am greater than
+Cicero, who was smiter of one Antonius. I venture to think that I have
+whopped the whole <i>Gens Antonia</i>&mdash;first Anthony pure and simple, which
+is Trollope; secondly, James Anthony, whom I believe myself to have
+smitten, as Cnut did Eadric swi&eth;e rihtlice, in the matter of St. Hugh;
+thirdly, George Anthony, with whom I fought again last Tuesday, carrying
+at our Education Board a resolution in favour of Forster&rsquo;s bill.&rdquo; Trollope
+and he became warm friends. Froude he heartily disliked, not, I think,
+on any personal grounds, but because he thought Froude indifferent to
+truth, and was incensed by the defence of Henry VIII.&rsquo;s crimes.</p>
+<p>It may be added that Freeman, much as he detested Henry VIII., used
+to observe that Henry had a sort of legal conscience, because he always
+wished his murders to be done by Act of Parliament, and that the earlier
+and better part of Henry&rsquo;s reign ought not to be forgotten. He was fond of
+quoting the euphemism with which an old Oxford professor of ecclesiastical
+history concluded his account of the sovereign whom, in respect of his relation
+to the Church of England, it seemed proper to handle gently: &ldquo;The
+later years of this great monarch were clouded by domestic troubles.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0033' id='Footnote_0033'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0033'><span class='label'>[40]</span></a>
+<p>&ldquo;The heart makes the theologian.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'>
+<a name='Footnote_41' id='Footnote_41'></a><a href='#FNanchor_41'><span class='label'>[41]</span></a>
+<p>A carefully written life of Lord Sherbrooke (in two volumes) by Mr.
+Patchett Martin was published in 1896. The most interesting part of
+it is the short fragment of autobiography with which it begins, and which
+carries the story down to Lowe&rsquo;s arrival in Australia.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0034' id='Footnote_0034'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0034'><span class='label'>[42]</span></a>
+<p>In his autobiography he writes, &ldquo;With a quiet temper and a real
+wish to please, I have been obliged all my life to submit to an amount of
+unpopularity which I really did not deserve, and to feel myself condemned
+for what were really physical rather than moral deficiencies.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0035' id='Footnote_0035'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0035'><span class='label'>[43]</span></a>
+<p>There was an anecdote current in the University of Oxford down to
+my time that when Lowe was examining in the examination which the
+statutes call &ldquo;Responsions,&rdquo; the dons &ldquo;Little-go,&rdquo; and the undergraduates
+&ldquo;Smalls,&rdquo; a friend coming in while the <i>viva voce</i> was in progress, asked
+him how he was getting on. &ldquo;Excellently,&rdquo; said Lowe; &ldquo;five men
+plucked already, and the sixth very shaky.&rdquo; Another tale, not likely to
+have been invented, relates that when he and several members of the
+then Liberal Ministry were staying in Dublin with the Lord Lieutenant,
+and had taken an excursion into the Wicklow hills, they found themselves
+one afternoon obliged to wait for half an hour at a railway station. To
+pass the time, Lowe forthwith engaged in a dispute about the charge with
+the car-drivers who had brought them, a dispute which soon became hot
+and noisy, to the delight of Lowe, but to the horror of the old Lord
+Chancellor, who was one of the party.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0036' id='Footnote_0036'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0036'><span class='label'>[44]</span></a>
+<p><i>Essays on Reform</i>, published in 1867.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0037' id='Footnote_0037'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0037'><span class='label'>[45]</span></a>
+<p>The then borough qualification, which Mr. Gladstone&rsquo;s Bill proposed
+to reduce to &pound;7.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0038' id='Footnote_0038'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0038'><span class='label'>[46]</span></a>
+<p>Mr. Gladstone said to me in 1897 that the extension of the suffrage
+had, in his judgment, improved the quality of legislation, making it more
+regardful of the interests of the body of the people, but had not improved
+the quality of the House of Commons.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0039' id='Footnote_0039'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0039'><span class='label'>[47]</span></a>
+<p>Sir H. S. Maine&rsquo;s <i>Quarterly Review</i> articles, published in a volume
+under the title of <i>Popular Government</i>, come nearest to being a literary
+presentation of the case against democracy, but they are, with all their
+ingenuity and grace of style, so provokingly vague and loosely expressed
+that there can seldom be found in them a proposition with which one can
+agree, or from which one can differ. E. de Laveleye&rsquo;s well-known book
+is not much more substantial, but instruction may (as respects France)
+be found in the late Edmond Sch&eacute;rer&rsquo;s <i>De la D&eacute;mocratie</i>, and (as respects
+England and the United States) in M. Ostrogorski&rsquo;s recent book, <i>Democracy
+and the Organisation of Political Parties</i>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0040' id='Footnote_0040'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0040'><span class='label'>[48]</span></a>
+<p>No life of Robertson Smith has yet been written, but it is hoped that
+one may be prepared by his intimate friend, Mr. J. Sutherland Black. A
+portrait of him (by his friend Sir George Reid, late President of the Royal
+Scottish Academy) hangs in the library of Christ&rsquo;s College, Cambridge, to
+which Smith&rsquo;s collection of Oriental books was presented by his friends,
+and another has been placed in the Divinity College of the United Free
+Presbyterian Church at Aberdeen. A memorial window has been set up
+in the chapel of the University of Aberdeen, where he won his first distinctions.
+I have to thank my friend Mr. Black for some suggestions he
+has kindly made after perusing this sketch.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0041' id='Footnote_0041'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0041'><span class='label'>[49]</span></a>
+<p>There was an aged Jewish scholar who came now and then to
+Cambridge in those days, and who, as sometimes happens, disliked
+other scholars labouring in the same field. He was (so it used to be said)
+one of the few who knew exactly how the word which we write Jehovah
+or Iahve ought to be pronounced, and it was believed that he had
+solemnly cursed Wright, Smith, and a third Semitic scholar in the Sacred
+Name. All three died soon afterwards.</p>
+<p>What would have been thought of this in the Middle Ages!</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0042' id='Footnote_0042'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0042'><span class='label'>[50]</span></a>
+<p><i>Parad.</i> x. 136, of Sigier, &ldquo;Sillogizz&oacute; invidiosi veri.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0043' id='Footnote_0043'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0043'><span class='label'>[51]</span></a>
+<p>It is hoped that a life of Sidgwick, together with a selection from
+his letters, may before long be published.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0044' id='Footnote_0044'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0044'><span class='label'>[52]</span></a>
+<p>It was his aim to avoid as much as possible technical terms or phrases
+whose meaning was not plain to the average reader. An anecdote was
+current that once when, in conducting a university examination, he was
+perusing the papers of a candidate who had darkened the subject by the
+use of extreme Hegelian phraseology, he turned to his co-examiner and
+said, &ldquo;I can see that this is nonsense, but is it the right kind of nonsense?&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'>
+<a name='Footnote_53' id='Footnote_53'></a><a href='#FNanchor_53'><span class='label'>[53]</span></a>
+<p>Since this sketch was written a very interesting <i>Life of Edward
+Bowen</i> by his nephew (the Hon. and Rev. W. E. Bowen) has appeared.
+Some of his (too few) essays and a collection of his school-songs are
+appended to it.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0045' id='Footnote_0045'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0045'><span class='label'>[54]</span></a>
+<p>Mr. R. Bosworth Smith.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0046' id='Footnote_0046'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0046'><span class='label'>[55]</span></a>
+<p>It is printed in the <i>Life</i>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0047' id='Footnote_0047'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0047'><span class='label'>[56]</span></a>
+<p>&ldquo;Chiffers&rdquo; is the typical would-be imitator of Arnold.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0048' id='Footnote_0048'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0048'><span class='label'>[57]</span></a>
+<p>He remarked once that he had so nearly exhausted the battlefields
+of the past that he must begin to devote himself to the battlefields of the
+future.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0049' id='Footnote_0049'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0049'><span class='label'>[58]</span></a>
+<p>The Tammany leaders had him repeatedly arrested, usually on
+Sunday mornings (that being the day on which it was least easy to find
+bail) for alleged criminal libels upon them. These prosecutions, threatened
+in the hope of intimidating him, never went further.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0050' id='Footnote_0050'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0050'><span class='label'>[59]</span></a>
+<p>A Mugwump is in the Algonquin tongue an aged chief or wise man,
+and the name was meant to ridicule the <i>ex cathedra</i> manner ascribed to
+the <i>Evening Post</i>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0051' id='Footnote_0051'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0051'><span class='label'>[60]</span></a>
+<p>This library, bought by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, was presented by him
+to Mr. John Morley, and by the latter to the University of Cambridge.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0052' id='Footnote_0052'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0052'><span class='label'>[61]</span></a>
+<p>The phrase is Professor Maitland&rsquo;s.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0053' id='Footnote_0053'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0053'><span class='label'>[62]</span></a>
+<p>I owe this quotation to a letter of Sir M. E. Grant Duff&rsquo;s published
+soon after Lord Acton&rsquo;s death.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0054' id='Footnote_0054'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0054'><span class='label'>[63]</span></a>
+<p>&ldquo;Gled&rdquo; is a kite or hawk. The name was Gladstones till Mr.
+Gladstone&rsquo;s father dropped the final s.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0055' id='Footnote_0055'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0055'><span class='label'>[64]</span></a>
+<p>One of his most intimate friends has, I think, said that &ldquo;he never
+knew what it was to be bored.&rdquo; Fortunate, indeed, would he have been
+had this been so; but that one who had watched him long and closely
+should make the statement shows how gently bores fared at his hands.</p>
+<p>I recollect his once remarking on the capacity for boring possessed by
+a gentleman who had been introduced and had talked for some fifteen
+minutes to him; but his own manner through the conversation had betrayed
+no impatience.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0056' id='Footnote_0056'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0056'><span class='label'>[65]</span></a>
+<p>Sermons belong to a somewhat different category, else I should have
+to add the discourses of a few great preachers, such as Robert Hall, J. H.
+Newman, Phillips Brooks.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0057' id='Footnote_0057'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0057'><span class='label'>[66]</span></a>
+<p>Though one of Macaulay&rsquo;s speeches (that against the exclusion of the
+Master of the Rolls from the House of Commons) had the rare honour of
+turning votes.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0058' id='Footnote_0058'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0058'><span class='label'>[67]</span></a>
+<p>&ldquo;He said that this was the hardest battle of men he had entered,&rdquo;
+<i>Iliad</i> vi. 185.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0059' id='Footnote_0059'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0059'><span class='label'>[68]</span></a>
+<p>His physical courage was no less evident than his moral. For two
+or three years his life was threatened, and policemen were told off to
+guard him wherever he went. He disliked this protection so much
+(though the Home Office thought it necessary) that he used to escape from
+the House of Commons by a little-frequented exit, give the policemen the
+slip, and stroll home to his residence along the Thames Embankment in
+the small hours of the morning. Fear was not in his nature.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0060' id='Footnote_0060'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0060'><span class='label'>[69]</span></a>
+<p>The late Protestant Episcopal Primate of Ireland said that Disestablishment
+had proved a blessing to his Church; and this would seem
+to be now the general view of Irish Protestants.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0061' id='Footnote_0061'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0061'><span class='label'>[70]</span></a>
+<p>His abdication of leadership in 1875 was meant to be final, though
+when the urgency of Eastern affairs had drawn him back into strife, the
+old ardour revived, and he resumed the place of Prime Minister in 1880.
+It has been often said that he would have done better to retire from public
+life in 1880, or in 1885, yet the most striking proofs both of his courage
+and of his physical energy were given in the latest part of his career.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0062' id='Footnote_0062'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0062'><span class='label'>[71]</span></a>
+<p>For instance, he recommended Dr. Stubbs for a bishopric and Sir
+John Holker for a lord justiceship, knowing both of them to be Tories.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0063' id='Footnote_0063'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0063'><span class='label'>[72]</span></a>
+<p>His respect and regard for Mr. Bright were entirely unaffected by the
+fact that Mr. Bright&rsquo;s opposition to the Home Rule Bill of 1886 had been
+the chief cause of its defeat.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0064' id='Footnote_0064'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0064'><span class='label'>[73]</span></a>
+<p>Usually over-anxious to vindicate his own consistency, he showed on
+one occasion a capacity for recognising the humorous side of a position
+into which he had been brought. In a debate which arose in 1891
+frequent references had been made to a former speech in which he had
+pronounced a highly-coloured panegyric upon the Church of England in
+Wales, the disestablishment of which he had subsequently become willing
+to support. He replied, &ldquo;Many references have been made to a former
+speech of mine on this subject, and I am not prepared to deny that in that
+speech, when closely scrutinised, there may appear to be present some
+element of exaggeration.&rdquo; The House dissolved in laughter, and no
+further reference was made to the old speech.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0065' id='Footnote_0065'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0065'><span class='label'>[74]</span></a>
+<p>His Oxford contemporary and friend, the late Mr. Milnes Gaskell, told
+me that when Mr. Gladstone was undergoing his <i>viva voce</i> examination for
+his degree, the examiner, satisfied with the candidate&rsquo;s answers on a particular
+matter, said, &ldquo;And now, Mr. Gladstone, we will leave that part
+of the subject.&rdquo; &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied the examinee, &ldquo;we will, if you please, not
+leave it yet.&rdquo; Whereupon he proceeded to pour forth a further flood of
+knowledge and disquisition.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote'><a name='Footnote_0066' id='Footnote_0066'></a><a href='#FNanchor_0066'><span class='label'>[75]</span></a>
+<p><i>Purgat.</i> xi. 100-126.</p>
+</div>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_481' name='page_481'></a>481</span>
+<a name='INDEX' id='INDEX'></a>
+<h2>INDEX</h2>
+</div>
+<div style='font-size:0.9em;'>
+<p class='lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Acton, John Edward Emerich Dalberg, Lord&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_382'>382&ndash;84</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_399'>399</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>critical taste of, <a href='#page_390'>390</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>family of, <a href='#page_382'>382</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>history, view of, <a href='#page_391'>391&ndash;92</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>view of study of, <a href='#page_394'>394&ndash;95</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>learning of, <a href='#page_386'>386&ndash;89</a>, <a href='#page_392'>392</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>liberty, history of, projected by, <a href='#page_395'>395&ndash;96</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>libraries of, <a href='#page_388'>388&ndash;89</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0051'>note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>political opinions of, <a href='#page_384'>384</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>style of, <a href='#page_396'>396&ndash;97</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>thoroughness of, <a href='#page_390'>390</a>, <a href='#page_393'>393&ndash;95</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>University work of, <a href='#page_397'>397&ndash;98</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>writings of, <a href='#page_395'>395</a><br />
+<br />
+American Civil War, <a href='#page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#page_90'>90</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0016'>note</a>. <i>See also</i> <a href='#Index_United_States'>United States</a><br />
+<br />
+Arnold, Dr., <a href='#page_343'>343</a>, <a href='#page_346'>346</a><br />
+<br />
+Austen, Jane, <a href='#page_127'>127</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em"><a name='Index_Beaconsfield' id='Index_Beaconsfield'></a>Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, Lord&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Cairns valued by, <a href='#page_186'>186&ndash;87</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_3'>3&ndash;16</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>ambition, <a href='#page_21'>21&ndash;22</a>, <a href='#page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#page_30'>30&ndash;31</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span><i>bonhomie</i>, <a href='#page_32'>32</a>, <a href='#page_34'>34</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>courage, <a href='#page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#page_25'>25&ndash;26</a>, <a href='#page_65'>65</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>cynicism, <a href='#page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#page_40'>40&ndash;41</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>debating power, <a href='#page_47'>47</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>intellectual congruity, <a href='#page_35'>35&ndash;38</a>, <a href='#page_42'>42</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>loyalty, <a href='#page_33'>33</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>self-confidence, <a href='#page_21'>21</a>, <a href='#page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#page_50'>50</a>, <a href='#page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#page_224'>224</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>tactical adroitness, <a href='#page_48'>48&ndash;50</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>tenacity, <a href='#page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#page_23'>23&ndash;24</a>, <a href='#page_60'>60</a>, <a href='#page_65'>65</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Eastern policy of, <a href='#page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#page_275'>275&ndash;76</a>, <a href='#page_300'>300</a>, <a href='#page_356'>356</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>education of, <a href='#page_39'>39</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>epigrammatic phrases of, <a href='#page_41'>41&ndash;42</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>estimates regarding, <a href='#page_1'>1&ndash;2</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>foreign, <a href='#page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#page_58'>58</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>family of, <a href='#page_3'>3</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Gladstone compared with, <a href='#page_418'>418</a>, <a href='#page_429'>429</a>, <a href='#page_465'>465</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>contrasted with, <a href='#page_422'>422</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Gladstone&rsquo;s attitude towards, <a href='#page_455'>455&ndash;56</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>influence of, <a href='#page_66'>66&ndash;68</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>literary works of, <a href='#page_4'>4&ndash;5</a>, <a href='#page_18'>18&ndash;19</a>, <a href='#page_29'>29</a>, <a href='#page_31'>31&ndash;33</a>, <a href='#page_35'>35</a>, <a href='#page_41'>41</a>, <a href='#page_43'>43&ndash;45</a>, <a href='#Footnote_0009'>52 note</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>quoted, <a href='#Footnote_0003'>21 note</a>, <a href='#Footnote_0005'>25 note</a>, <a href='#page_41'>41</a>, <a href='#Footnote_0008'>50 note</a>, <a href='#page_55'>55</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Lowe and, <a href='#page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#page_302'>302</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Northcote appreciated by, <a href='#page_21'>21</a>, <a href='#page_218'>218</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>political views of, <a href='#page_6'>6&ndash;8</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>foreign policy of (<i>see also above</i>, Eastern policy), <a href='#page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#page_56'>56</a>, <a href='#page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#page_67'>67</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Stanley and, <a href='#page_81'>81</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>suffrage extension, policy of, <a href='#page_305'>305&ndash;306</a>, <a href='#page_309'>309&ndash;10</a>, <a href='#page_442'>442</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>otherwise mentioned, <a href='#page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#page_171'>171</a>, <a href='#page_220'>220</a><br />
+<br />
+Bentinck, Lord George, <a href='#page_9'>9</a><br />
+<br />
+Bishops&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>change in type of, <a href='#page_196'>196&ndash;98</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>House of Lords, presence in, <a href='#page_112'>112</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>industry of, <a href='#page_199'>199</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>influence of, <a href='#page_100'>100&ndash;101</a>, <a href='#page_103'>103</a><br />
+<br />
+Bismarck, Prince, <a href='#page_54'>54</a><br />
+<br />
+Black, J. Sutherland, <a href='#Footnote_0040'>311 note</a><br />
+<br />
+Bowen, Edward Ernest&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>biography of, <a href='#Footnote_53'>343 note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_345'>345&ndash;46</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_360'>360&ndash;62</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>death of, <a href='#page_355'>355</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>games, attitude towards, <a href='#page_351'>351&ndash;52</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>influence of, <a href='#page_350'>350</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>views regarding, <a href='#page_353'>353&ndash;54</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>military history, fondness for, <a href='#page_357'>357&ndash;58</a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_482' name='page_482'></a>482</span><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>political interests of, <a href='#page_355'>355&ndash;57</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>school songs of, <a href='#Footnote_53'>343 note</a>, <a href='#page_359'>359&ndash;360</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>teaching methods of, <a href='#page_346'>346&ndash;47</a>, <a href='#page_349'>349&ndash;350</a>, <a href='#page_354'>354&ndash;55</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>training of teachers, views on, <a href='#page_348'>348</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>travel, fondness for, <a href='#page_358'>358</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>walking tours of, <a href='#page_355'>355</a><br />
+<br />
+Bowen, Lord, <a href='#page_345'>345</a>, <a href='#page_359'>359</a><br />
+<br />
+Bright, John, <a href='#page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#page_98'>98</a>, <a href='#page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#page_428'>428&ndash;29</a>, <a href='#page_443'>443</a>, <a href='#Footnote_0063'>455 note</a><br />
+<br />
+Bradlaugh, Mr., <a href='#page_437'>437</a><br />
+<br />
+Brooke, Rev. Stopford, quoted, <a href='#page_135'>135&ndash;137</a><br />
+<br />
+Brooks, Dr. Phillips, <a href='#page_209'>209</a>, <a href='#page_381'>381</a><br />
+<br />
+Brougham, Lord, <a href='#page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#page_428'>428</a><br />
+<br />
+Browning, Robert, <a href='#page_39'>39</a>, <a href='#page_126'>126</a><br />
+<br />
+Burke, Edmund, <a href='#page_410'>410</a>, <a href='#page_427'>427&ndash;28</a>, <a href='#page_440'>440</a><br />
+<br />
+Burney, Miss, <a href='#page_127'>127</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Cairns, Hugh M&rsquo;Calmont, Earl&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>American Civil War, attitude towards, <a href='#page_57'>57</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_184'>184&ndash;86</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#page_188'>188&ndash;91</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Disraeli compared with, <a href='#page_47'>47</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Gladstone compared with, <a href='#page_429'>429</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Jessel compared with, <a href='#page_180'>180</a>, <a href='#page_193'>193</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>judicial gifts of, <a href='#page_192'>192&ndash;93</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>legal manner of, <a href='#page_191'>191&ndash;92</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Mellish and, <a href='#page_176'>176&ndash;78</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>parliamentary reform opposed by, <a href='#page_307'>307</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>political partisanship of, <a href='#page_187'>187</a>, <a href='#page_194'>194&ndash;195</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>religious views and interests of, <a href='#page_185'>185&ndash;86</a>, <a href='#page_193'>193&ndash;94</a><br />
+<br />
+Cambridge&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Jewish scholar at, <a href='#Footnote_0041'>319 note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Sidgwick at, <a href='#page_327'>327</a> <i>seq.</i><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Smith, W. R., at, <a href='#page_319'>319</a><br />
+<br />
+Canterbury,<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>importance of See of, <a href='#page_101'>101&ndash;105</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>qualifications of archbishops of, <a href='#page_105'>105&ndash;107</a><br />
+<br />
+Carlyle, Thomas, <a href='#page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#page_126'>126</a>, <a href='#page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#page_461'>461</a><br />
+<br />
+Celtic temperament, <a href='#page_403'>403</a>, <a href='#page_405'>405</a><br />
+<br />
+Chancery Bar, <a href='#page_170'>170</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>famous trio at, <a href='#page_191'>191</a><br />
+<br />
+Chancery Courts, <a href='#page_181'>181&ndash;82</a><br />
+<br />
+Charity Organisation Society, <a href='#page_133'>133</a><br />
+<br />
+Church, Dean, <a href='#page_251'>251&ndash;52</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name='Index_Church' id='Index_Church'></a>Church&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Anglican&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>disestablishment of, <a href='#page_114'>114&ndash;15</a>, <a href='#page_141'>141</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>possibilities before, <a href='#page_209'>209&ndash;10</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Stanley&rsquo;s view of, <a href='#page_78'>78&ndash;79</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Tractarian movement in, <a href='#page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Footnote_0031'>264 note</a>, <a href='#page_406'>406</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Roman Catholic&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>adaptability of, <a href='#page_259'>259</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Infallibilist claims of, <a href='#page_256'>256</a>, <a href='#page_385'>385</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>modern research, attitude towards, <a href='#page_317'>317</a><br />
+<br />
+Clark, George T., quoted, <a href='#page_266'>266&ndash;67</a><br />
+<br />
+Clough, Miss A. J., <a href='#page_329'>329</a><br />
+<br />
+Clough, Arthur Hugh, <a href='#page_338'>338</a><br />
+<br />
+Cobden, Mr., quoted, <a href='#page_429'>429&ndash;30</a><br />
+<br />
+Collins, Wilkie, <a href='#page_116'>116</a><br />
+<br />
+Copleston, Dr. (Bishop of Llandaff), <a href='#page_197'>197</a><br />
+<br />
+Creighton, Bishop, <a href='#page_289'>289</a>, <a href='#page_387'>387</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Dalgairns, <a href='#page_251'>251</a><br />
+<br />
+Dante, <a href='#page_468'>468&ndash;69</a>, <a href='#page_471'>471</a><br />
+<br />
+Darwin, Charles, <a href='#page_457'>457</a>, <a href='#page_471'>471&ndash;72</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>De la D&eacute;mocratie</i>, Sch&eacute;rer&rsquo;s, cited, <a href='#Footnote_0039'>309 note</a><br />
+<br />
+Delane, Mr., <a href='#page_422'>422</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties</i>,<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Ostrogorski&rsquo;s, cited, <a href='#Footnote_0039'>309 note</a><br />
+<br />
+Denison, Archdeacon, <a href='#page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#Footnote_0032'>271 note</a><br />
+<br />
+Derby, Lord, <a href='#page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#page_12'>12</a>, <a href='#page_28'>28</a>, <a href='#page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#page_429'>429</a>, <a href='#page_470'>470</a><br />
+<br />
+Dickens, Charles, <a href='#page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#page_127'>127</a><br />
+<br />
+Disraeli. <i>See</i> <a href='#Index_Beaconsfield'>Beaconsfield</a><br />
+<br />
+Dissenters. <i>See</i> <a href='#Index_Nonconformists'>Nonconformists</a><br />
+<br />
+D&ouml;llinger, Dr. von, <a href='#page_383'>383</a>, <a href='#page_385'>385</a>, <a href='#page_392'>392</a><br />
+<br />
+Dupanloup, Archbishop, <a href='#page_209'>209</a>, <a href='#page_385'>385</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Eastern Question (1876), <a href='#page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#page_275'>275&ndash;276</a>, <a href='#page_300'>300</a>, <a href='#page_356'>356</a>, <a href='#page_419'>419</a><br />
+<br />
+Editors,<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>types of, <a href='#page_363'>363&ndash;64</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>temptations of, <a href='#page_370'>370</a>, <a href='#page_380'>380&ndash;81</a><br />
+<br />
+Eliot, George, <a href='#page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#page_328'>328</a><br />
+<br />
+Equity Courts, <a href='#page_170'>170</a>, <a href='#page_173'>173</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Essays and Reviews</i>, <a href='#page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#page_317'>317</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Essays on Reform</i>, cited, <a href='#page_307'>307</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0036'>note</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Evening Post, The</i>, <a href='#page_365'>365</a>, <a href='#page_374'>374&ndash;76</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Forster, W. E., <a href='#page_234'>234</a>, <a href='#page_239'>239</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0030'>note</a><br />
+<br />
+Fox, Charles James, <a href='#page_428'>428&ndash;29</a>, <a href='#page_435'>435</a><br />
+<br />
+France, novelists of, <a href='#page_129'>129</a><br />
+<br />
+Franchise extension. <i>See</i> <a href='#Index_Suffrage'>Suffrage</a><br />
+<br />
+Fraser, James, Bishop of Manchester&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>biographies of, <a href='#Footnote_0025'>196 note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#page_200'>200&ndash;201</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_204'>204&ndash;205</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>energy of, <a href='#page_202'>202</a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_483' name='page_483'></a>483</span><br />
+Fraser, James, Bishop of Manchester&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>influence of, <a href='#page_206'>206</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>new Episcopal type created by, <a href='#page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#page_210'>210</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>personality of, <a href='#page_203'>203&ndash;204</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>popularity of, <a href='#page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#page_206'>206</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>ritualist illegalities, attitude towards, <a href='#page_208'>208</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>science, attitude towards, <a href='#page_207'>207</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>views of, <a href='#page_206'>206&ndash;207</a><br />
+<br />
+Freeman, Edward Augustus&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>biography of, <a href='#Footnote_37'>262 note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_262'>262&ndash;63</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>friendships of, <a href='#page_290'>290</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Green influenced by, <a href='#page_137'>137</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>historical work,<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>merits of, <a href='#page_276'>276&ndash;84</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>style of, <a href='#page_286'>286&ndash;87</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>humour of, <a href='#page_287'>287</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>interests of, <a href='#page_264'>264&ndash;67</a>, <a href='#page_271'>271&ndash;72</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>kindliness of, <a href='#page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#page_291'>291</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>literary preferences of, <a href='#page_269'>269&ndash;70</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>methodical ways of, <a href='#page_285'>285</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>military history, fondness for, <a href='#page_357'>357</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Oxford work of, <a href='#page_287'>287&ndash;89</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>political views of, <a href='#page_272'>272&ndash;75</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>simplicity and directness of, <a href='#page_270'>270&ndash;71</a>, <a href='#page_275'>275</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Trollope and, <a href='#page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#page_271'>271</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0032'>note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>works of, <a href='#page_267'>267</a>, <a href='#page_284'>284&ndash;86</a>, <a href='#page_291'>291&ndash;92</a><br />
+<br />
+Froude, J. A., <a href='#Footnote_0032'>271 note</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Gardiner, S. R., <a href='#page_357'>357</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>quoted, <a href='#page_274'>274</a><br />
+<br />
+Gibbon, <a href='#page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#page_169'>169</a>, <a href='#page_281'>281</a>, <a href='#page_284'>284</a><br />
+<br />
+Gladstone, William Ewart&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Acton, Lord, relations with, <a href='#page_383'>383</a>, <a href='#page_399'>399</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span><i>Alabama</i> claims, action regarding, <a href='#page_444'>444</a>, <a href='#page_446'>446</a>, <a href='#page_449'>449</a>, <a href='#page_451'>451</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>American Civil War, attitude towards, <a href='#page_57'>57</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_412'>412</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>breadth and keenness of interests, <a href='#page_400'>400</a>, <a href='#page_413'>413</a>, <a href='#page_459'>459</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>caution, <a href='#page_409'>409</a>, <a href='#page_414'>414</a>, <a href='#page_419'>419</a>, <a href='#page_447'>447</a>, <a href='#page_453'>453</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>complexity of nature, <a href='#page_400'>400</a>, <a href='#page_409'>409&ndash;410</a>, <a href='#page_412'>412</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>conservatism, <a href='#page_401'>401</a>, <a href='#page_439'>439</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>constructive power, <a href='#page_439'>439&ndash;41</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>conversational powers, <a href='#page_461'>461</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>courage, <a href='#page_447'>447</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0059'>note</a>, <a href='#Footnote_0061'>451 note</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>courtesy, <a href='#page_423'>423</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0055'>note</a>, <a href='#page_455'>455&ndash;456</a>, <a href='#page_461'>461</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>dignity, <a href='#page_457'>457</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>emotional excitability, <a href='#page_405'>405</a>, <a href='#page_410'>410&ndash;411</a>, <a href='#page_433'>433&ndash;34</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>humour, <a href='#page_460'>460</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>impulsiveness, <a href='#page_401'>401</a>, <a href='#page_405'>405</a>, <a href='#page_421'>421</a>, <a href='#page_447'>447</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>independence, <a href='#page_418'>418&ndash;19</a>, <a href='#page_450'>450</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>ingenuity, <a href='#page_404'>404</a>, <a href='#page_416'>416&ndash;17</a>, <a href='#page_430'>430&ndash;31</a>, <a href='#page_466'>466</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>insight into character, <a href='#page_453'>453</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>intensity, <a href='#page_402'>402</a>, <a href='#page_405'>405</a>, <a href='#page_426'>426</a>, <a href='#page_435'>435</a>, <a href='#page_450'>450</a>, <a href='#page_453'>453</a>, <a href='#page_460'>460</a>, <a href='#page_462'>462</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>loyalty, <a href='#page_455'>455</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>magnanimity, <a href='#page_457'>457</a>, <a href='#page_477'>477</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>memory, <a href='#page_404'>404</a>, <a href='#page_424'>424</a>, <a href='#page_459'>459</a><br />
+<span class='indent6'>&nbsp;</span>for faces, <a href='#page_423'>423</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>open-mindedness, <a href='#page_416'>416</a>, <a href='#page_452'>452</a>, <a href='#page_454'>454</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>oratory, <a href='#page_411'>411</a>, <a href='#page_426'>426&ndash;39</a>, <a href='#page_463'>463</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>over-subtlety, <a href='#page_407'>407</a>, <a href='#page_432'>432</a>, <a href='#page_448'>448</a>, <a href='#page_452'>452</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>patriotism, <a href='#page_450'>450&ndash;51</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>pride, <a href='#page_416'>416</a>, <a href='#page_420'>420</a>, <a href='#page_423'>423</a>, <a href='#page_452'>452</a>, <a href='#page_455'>455</a>, <a href='#page_474'>474</a>, <a href='#page_477'>477</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>religious disposition, <a href='#page_472'>472&ndash;75</a><br />
+<span class='indent6'>&nbsp;</span>views, <a href='#page_401'>401</a>, <a href='#page_406'>406&ndash;407</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>reserve:<br />
+<span class='indent6'>&nbsp;</span>political, <a href='#page_409'>409</a>, <a href='#page_414'>414&ndash;15</a>, <a href='#page_419'>419</a>, <a href='#page_452'>452</a><br />
+<span class='indent6'>&nbsp;</span>personal, <a href='#page_424'>424</a>, <a href='#page_475'>475&ndash;476</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Scottish temperament, <a href='#page_403'>403&ndash;405</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>self-confidence, <a href='#page_224'>224</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>simplicity, <a href='#page_453'>453</a>, <a href='#page_458'>458</a>, <a href='#page_461'>461</a>, <a href='#page_475'>475</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>sincerity, <a href='#page_401'>401</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>temper, <a href='#page_455'>455&ndash;56</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>tranquillity, <a href='#page_462'>462</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>voice, <a href='#page_430'>430</a>, <a href='#page_436'>436&ndash;38</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Disraeli and, <a href='#page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#page_33'>33</a>, <a href='#page_35'>35</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>estimates of, <a href='#page_411'>411</a>, <a href='#page_417'>417</a>, <a href='#page_448'>448</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>continental, <a href='#page_444'>444</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>family of, <a href='#page_403'>403</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>foreign affairs, attitude towards, <a href='#page_443'>443&ndash;46</a>, <a href='#page_458'>458</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Freeman&rsquo;s appointment by, <a href='#page_263'>263</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>High Church appointments of, <a href='#page_198'>198</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>home life of, <a href='#page_462'>462</a>, <a href='#page_474'>474</a>, <a href='#page_477'>477</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Home Rule Bill of (1886), <a href='#page_272'>272</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Homeric studies and views of, <a href='#page_401'>401</a>, <a href='#page_465'>465&ndash;68</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>hostility to, <a href='#page_304'>304</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>literary activities of, <a href='#page_401'>401</a>, <a href='#page_458'>458</a>, <a href='#page_462'>462&ndash;68</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Lowe compared with, <a href='#page_293'>293</a>, <a href='#page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#page_429'>429</a>, <a href='#page_435'>435</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Lowe&rsquo;s antagonism to, <a href='#page_295'>295</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Lowe in Cabinet of, <a href='#page_299'>299</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>mistakes of, <a href='#page_449'>449</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Northcote and, <a href='#page_212'>212</a>, <a href='#page_216'>216</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Oxford training of, <a href='#page_406'>406&ndash;408</a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_484' name='page_484'></a>484</span><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>parliamentary abilities of, <a href='#page_420'>420&ndash;21</a>, <a href='#page_424'>424&ndash;26</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Parnell&rsquo;s resentment against, <a href='#page_239'>239&ndash;240</a>, <a href='#page_247'>247</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Peel&rsquo;s influence on, <a href='#page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#page_409'>409</a>, <a href='#page_452'>452</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>poetry, attitude towards, <a href='#page_471'>471</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>quoted, <a href='#page_56'>56</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Reform Bill of, <a href='#page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#page_442'>442</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>scholarship of, <a href='#page_468'>468</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>science, attitude towards, <a href='#page_407'>407&ndash;408</a>, <a href='#page_470'>470</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>suffrage qualifications, proposed reduction of, <a href='#Footnote_0037'>308 note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>theological views of, tinging political, <a href='#page_473'>473</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>otherwise mentioned, <a href='#page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#page_187'>187</a>, <a href='#page_221'>221</a>, <a href='#page_260'>260</a><br />
+<br />
+Godkin, Edwin Lawrence&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_365'>365&ndash;66</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>courage of, <a href='#page_370'>370&ndash;71</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>geniality of, <a href='#page_376'>376</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>humour of, <a href='#page_368'>368&ndash;73</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>independence of, <a href='#page_364'>364</a>, <a href='#page_369'>369</a>, <a href='#page_381'>381</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>influence of, <a href='#page_378'>378&ndash;80</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>sincerity of, <a href='#page_367'>367</a>, <a href='#page_373'>373</a>, <a href='#page_380'>380</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>style of, <a href='#page_367'>367&ndash;68</a>, <a href='#page_373'>373</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Tammany, attitude towards, <a href='#page_374'>374</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0049'>note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>views of, <a href='#page_366'>366&ndash;67</a>, <a href='#page_370'>370</a>, <a href='#page_374'>374&ndash;76</a><br />
+<br />
+Green, John Richard&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>biography of, <a href='#Footnote_22'>131 note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_131'>131&ndash;34</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>conversation of, <a href='#page_165'>165&ndash;66</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>eloquence of, <a href='#page_166'>166</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>gifts and qualities of, <a href='#page_146'>146</a>, <a href='#page_151'>151&ndash;52</a>, <a href='#page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#page_160'>160&ndash;62</a>, <a href='#page_164'>164&ndash;67</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>ill-health of, <a href='#page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#page_141'>141&ndash;46</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>interests of, <a href='#page_151'>151</a>, <a href='#page_154'>154&ndash;57</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>letters of, <a href='#Footnote_22'>131 note</a>, <a href='#page_152'>152&ndash;53</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>literary work of&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span><i>Saturday Review</i> articles, <a href='#page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#page_135'>135&ndash;37</a>, <a href='#page_153'>153</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>historical, <a href='#page_138'>138&ndash;39</a>, <a href='#page_142'>142&ndash;45</a>, <a href='#page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#page_158'>158&ndash;60</a>, <a href='#page_163'>163&ndash;64</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_139'>139&ndash;40</a>, <a href='#page_150'>150</a>, <a href='#page_152'>152&ndash;53</a>, <a href='#page_157'>157&ndash;65</a>, <a href='#page_167'>167&ndash;69</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>military history, fondness for, <a href='#page_357'>357</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>political activity of, <a href='#page_140'>140&ndash;41</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>views of, <a href='#page_134'>134</a><br />
+<br />
+Green, Prof. Thomas Hill&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_85'>85</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_86'>86&ndash;91</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>civic activities of, <a href='#page_98'>98</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>influence of, <a href='#page_95'>95&ndash;97</a>, <a href='#page_99'>99</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>literary works of, <a href='#page_92'>92&ndash;94</a>, <a href='#page_98'>98</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>political keenness of, <a href='#page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#page_97'>97</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>views of, <a href='#page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#page_97'>97</a>, <a href='#page_335'>335</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>otherwise mentioned, <a href='#page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#page_278'>278</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Hardy, Gathorne, <a href='#page_213'>213</a><br />
+<br />
+Hardy, Thomas, <a href='#page_116'>116</a><br />
+<br />
+Healy, T. M., <a href='#page_443'>443</a><br />
+<br />
+Henry VIII., <a href='#Footnote_0032'>271 note</a><br />
+<br />
+Herodotus, <a href='#page_149'>149&ndash;51</a><br />
+<br />
+Historians&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>qualifications of, <a href='#page_146'>146&ndash;48</a>, <a href='#page_156'>156</a>, <a href='#page_277'>277</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>two classes of, <a href='#page_149'>149</a><br />
+<br />
+History, Freeman&rsquo;s view of, <a href='#page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#page_274'>274</a><br />
+<br />
+Hodgkin, Dr. Thomas, <a href='#page_357'>357</a><br />
+<br />
+Holker, Sir John, <a href='#Footnote_0062'>453 note</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name='Index_House_of_Commons' id='Index_House_of_Commons'></a>House of Commons&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>character of, <a href='#page_48'>48</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>erroneous sketches of, <a href='#page_121'>121</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>lawyers in, <a href='#page_172'>172</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>leadership of, <a href='#page_217'>217</a>, <a href='#page_424'>424</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>occasional detachment of, from popular sentiment, <a href='#page_51'>51</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>power of, declining, <a href='#page_308'>308&ndash;309</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>rhetoric unpopular with, <a href='#page_296'>296</a><br />
+<br />
+Huxley, <a href='#page_207'>207</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Iddesleigh. <i>See</i> <a href='#Index_Northcote'>Northcote</a><br />
+<br />
+Ireland&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Anglo-Irish Protestants, <a href='#page_229'>229&ndash;30</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Church disestablishment in, <a href='#page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#page_187'>187</a>, <a href='#page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#page_407'>407</a>, <a href='#page_419'>419</a>, <a href='#page_442'>442</a>, <a href='#page_449'>449</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0060'>note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Disraeli&rsquo;s attitude towards, <a href='#page_56'>56&ndash;57</a>, <a href='#page_67'>67</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Green, J. R., views of, regarding, <a href='#page_141'>141</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Home Rule, views regarding, of<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Acton, <a href='#page_384'>384</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Bowen, <a href='#page_356'>356</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Bright, <a href='#Footnote_0063'>455 note</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Freeman, <a href='#page_272'>272</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Gladstone, <a href='#page_272'>272</a>, <a href='#page_414'>414</a>, <a href='#page_447'>447</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>Godkin, <a href='#page_375'>375</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Land Bill of 1881, <a href='#page_425'>425</a>, <a href='#page_442'>442&ndash;43</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">James, Henry, <a href='#page_129'>129</a><br />
+<br />
+Jessel, Sir George&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Cairns compared with, <a href='#page_180'>180</a>, <a href='#page_193'>193</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_171'>171</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>judicial methods of, <a href='#page_174'>174&ndash;75</a>, <a href='#page_179'>179&ndash;181</a>, <a href='#page_194'>194</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>mental powers of, <a href='#page_173'>173</a>, <a href='#page_181'>181&ndash;82</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>parliamentary manner of, <a href='#page_172'>172</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>quickness of, <a href='#page_173'>173</a>, <a href='#page_176'>176</a>, <a href='#page_183'>183</a>, <a href='#page_193'>193</a><br />
+<br />
+Jews&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>bigotry towards, <a href='#page_183'>183</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Cambridge scholar, anecdote of, <a href='#Footnote_0041'>319 note</a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_485' name='page_485'></a>485</span><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>concentration, power of, possessed by, <a href='#page_23'>23</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0004'>note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>conservatism of, <a href='#Footnote_0005'>25 note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>detachment of, <a href='#page_19'>19&ndash;20</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>distinctions gained by, <a href='#page_171'>171</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>practicality of, <a href='#page_182'>182</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>satirical powers of, <a href='#page_45'>45</a><br />
+<br />
+Jowett, <a href='#page_113'>113</a>, <a href='#page_150'>150</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Kelvin, Lord, <a href='#page_184'>184</a><br />
+<br />
+Kipling, Rudyard, <a href='#page_129'>129</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Lawrence, Lord, <a href='#page_184'>184</a><br />
+<br />
+Lightfoot, Bishop, <a href='#page_199'>199&ndash;200</a>, <a href='#page_209'>209</a>, <a href='#page_290'>290</a><br />
+<br />
+Louis Napoleon, <a href='#page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#page_98'>98</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name='Index_Lowe_Robert' id='Index_Lowe_Robert'></a>Lowe, Robert&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>biography of, <a href='#Footnote_41'>293 note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Cairns compared with, <a href='#page_188'>188</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_293'>293&ndash;95</a>, <a href='#page_299'>299&ndash;300</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_301'>301&ndash;304</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Disraeli and, <a href='#page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#page_302'>302</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>eclipse of fame of, <a href='#page_293'>293</a>, <a href='#page_300'>300</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>educational work of, <a href='#page_294'>294&ndash;95</a>, <a href='#page_304'>304&ndash;305</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Gladstone compared with, <a href='#page_293'>293</a>, <a href='#page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#page_429'>429</a>, <a href='#page_435'>435</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>antagonism to Gladstone, <a href='#page_295'>295</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>in Gladstone&rsquo;s Cabinet, <a href='#page_299'>299</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Oxford, at, <a href='#Footnote_0035'>301 note <span class='super'>2</span></a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>rhetorical power of, <a href='#page_296'>296&ndash;97</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>shortsightedness of, <a href='#page_300'>300&ndash;301</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Utilitarianism of, <a href='#page_304'>304</a><br />
+<br />
+Lyndhurst, Lord, <a href='#page_29'>29</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Macaulay, <a href='#page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#page_169'>169</a>, <a href='#page_270'>270</a>, <a href='#page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#page_281'>281</a>, <a href='#page_427'>427</a>, <a href='#page_428'>428</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0057'>note <span class='super'>2</span></a><br />
+<br />
+Macdonald, Sir John A., <a href='#page_422'>422</a><br />
+<br />
+Maclennan, John F., <a href='#page_320'>320</a><br />
+<br />
+Magee, Archbishop, <a href='#page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#page_429'>429</a><br />
+<br />
+Manning, Cardinal Henry Edward&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>biography of, <a href='#page_260'>260&ndash;61</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_250'>250&ndash;51</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_251'>251&ndash;54</a>, <a href='#page_261'>261</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>conversions effected by, <a href='#page_255'>255</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Infallibilist cause, work for, <a href='#page_256'>256</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>interests and sympathies of, <a href='#page_257'>257&ndash;61</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>speeches of, <a href='#page_255'>255</a><br />
+<br />
+Maurice, F. D., <a href='#page_134'>134</a>, <a href='#page_408'>408</a><br />
+<br />
+Mellish, Lord Justice, <a href='#page_176'>176&ndash;79</a><br />
+<br />
+Meredith, George, <a href='#page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#page_122'>122</a><br />
+<br />
+Mill, John Stuart, <a href='#page_61'>61</a>, <a href='#Footnote_0015'>78 note</a>, <a href='#page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#page_304'>304</a><br />
+<br />
+Monk, Bishop, <a href='#page_197'>197</a><br />
+<br />
+Mugwumps, <a href='#page_375'>375</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0050'>note</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Napoleon Bonaparte, <a href='#page_238'>238</a><br />
+<br />
+Napoleon, Louis, <a href='#page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#page_98'>98</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Nation, The</i>, <a href='#page_365'>365</a>, <a href='#page_368'>368</a>, <a href='#page_371'>371&ndash;73</a>, <a href='#page_378'>378</a><br />
+<br />
+Newman, Cardinal, <a href='#page_251'>251&ndash;52</a>, <a href='#Footnote_0056'>428 note <span class='super'>1</span></a>, <a href='#page_467'>467</a><br />
+<br />
+Newnham College, Cambridge, <a href='#page_329'>329&ndash;330</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name='Index_Nonconformists' id='Index_Nonconformists'></a>Nonconformists&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Disraeli&rsquo;s dislike of, <a href='#page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#page_52'>52</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Education Act (1870) resented by, <a href='#page_15'>15</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Fraser&rsquo;s attitude towards, <a href='#page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#page_206'>206&ndash;208</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0028'>note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Gladstone trusted by, <a href='#page_401'>401</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Green&rsquo;s dislike of, <a href='#page_134'>134</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name='Index_Northcote' id='Index_Northcote'></a>Northcote, Sir Stafford (Lord Iddesleigh)&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>biography of, <a href='#Footnote_34'>211 note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_212'>212&ndash;13</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_213'>213</a>, <a href='#page_222'>222&ndash;23</a>, <a href='#page_225'>225&ndash;26</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Gladstone compared with, <a href='#page_435'>435</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>parliamentary abilities of, <a href='#page_214'>214&ndash;16</a>, <a href='#page_218'>218</a><br />
+<br />
+Novels, types of, <a href='#page_122'>122</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">O&rsquo;Connell, Daniel, <a href='#page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#page_248'>248</a><br />
+<br />
+Oliphant, Mrs., <a href='#page_116'>116</a><br />
+<br />
+Oratory&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>elevation in, <a href='#page_433'>433</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>reputation for, nature of, <a href='#page_427'>427</a><br />
+<br />
+Oxford&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Green, T. H., on municipal council of, <a href='#page_98'>98&ndash;99</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Thackeray&rsquo;s candidature for, <a href='#page_120'>120</a><br />
+<br />
+Oxford University&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Tractarian movement in, <a href='#page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Footnote_0031'>264 note</a>, <a href='#page_406'>406</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>training at, characteristics of, <a href='#page_408'>408</a>, <a href='#page_467'>467</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em"><a name='Index_Palmer_Roundell' id='Index_Palmer_Roundell'></a>Palmer, Roundell (Lord Selborne), <a href='#page_176'>176</a>, <a href='#page_191'>191&ndash;92</a>, <a href='#page_294'>294</a><br />
+<br />
+Palmerston, Lord, <a href='#page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#page_28'>28</a>, <a href='#page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#page_98'>98</a>, <a href='#page_294'>294</a><br />
+<br />
+Parliament. <i>See</i> <a href='#Index_House_of_Commons'>House of Commons</a><br />
+<br />
+Parnell, Charles Stewart&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>biography of, <a href='#Footnote_0029'>227 note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_228'>228&ndash;29</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>family of, <a href='#page_227'>227</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>leadership, aptness for, <a href='#page_248'>248</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>moral courage of, <a href='#page_239'>239</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>parliamentary tactics of, <a href='#page_218'>218&ndash;19</a>, <a href='#page_244'>244</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>knowledge of procedure, <a href='#page_242'>242&ndash;43</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>passion and self-control of, <a href='#page_240'>240</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Ph&oelig;nix Park murders, demeanour after, <a href='#page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#page_238'>238</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Pigott affair, attitude towards, <a href='#page_239'>239</a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_486' name='page_486'></a>486</span><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>practicality of, <a href='#page_230'>230&ndash;33</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>pride of, <a href='#page_233'>233</a>, <a href='#page_235'>235&ndash;38</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>self-confidence of, <a href='#page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#page_238'>238</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>speeches of, <a href='#page_241'>241&ndash;42</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>unscrupulousness of, <a href='#page_237'>237&ndash;38</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>unsympathetic manner of, <a href='#page_190'>190</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>views of, <a href='#page_245'>245&ndash;46</a><br />
+<br />
+Peel, Sir Robert&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>caution of, <a href='#page_408'>408&ndash;409</a>, <a href='#page_452'>452</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>death of, <a href='#page_10'>10</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Disraeli&rsquo;s conduct towards, <a href='#page_28'>28</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0006'>note</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>his view of, <a href='#page_55'>55</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>financial policy of, <a href='#page_441'>441&ndash;42</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Gladstone compared with, <a href='#page_411'>411</a>, <a href='#page_439'>439</a>, <a href='#page_455'>455</a>, <a href='#page_475'>475</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>separation of, from Conservatives, <a href='#page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#page_61'>61</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>speeches of, <a href='#page_428'>428</a><br />
+<br />
+Pitt, William, <a href='#page_429'>429</a>, <a href='#page_435'>435</a>, <a href='#page_439'>439</a>, <a href='#page_442'>442</a>, <a href='#page_476'>476</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Popular Government</i>, Sir H. Maine&rsquo;s, cited, <a href='#Footnote_0039'>309 note</a><br />
+<br />
+Psychical Research Society, <a href='#page_331'>331&ndash;32</a><br />
+<br />
+Pusey, Dr., cited, <a href='#page_80'>80</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Rhodes, Cecil, <a href='#page_246'>246</a><br />
+<br />
+Rolt, Lord Justice, <a href='#page_191'>191&ndash;92</a><br />
+<br />
+Roman Catholic Church. <i>See under</i> <a href='#Index_Church'>Church</a><br />
+<br />
+Russell, Lord, <a href='#page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#page_28'>28</a>, <a href='#page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#page_295'>295</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Salisbury, Lord, <a href='#page_186'>186</a>, <a href='#page_247'>247</a>, <a href='#page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#page_456'>456</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Saturday Review</i>&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Bowen&rsquo;s contributions to, <a href='#page_360'>360</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Freeman&rsquo;s contributions to, <a href='#page_285'>285</a><br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>dissociation from, <a href='#page_275'>275</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Green&rsquo;s contributions to, <a href='#page_133'>133</a>, <a href='#page_135'>135&ndash;137</a>, <a href='#page_153'>153</a><br />
+<br />
+Schoolmasters, types of, <a href='#page_343'>343</a>, <a href='#page_346'>346</a><br />
+<br />
+Schools Inquiry Commission, <a href='#page_200'>200&ndash;201</a><br />
+<br />
+Scott, Sir Walter, <a href='#page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#page_125'>125</a><br />
+<br />
+Scottish temperament and characteristics, <a href='#page_315'>315</a>, <a href='#page_403'>403&ndash;405</a><br />
+<br />
+Selborne, Lord. <i>See</i> <a href='#Index_Palmer_Roundell'>Palmer, Roundell</a><br />
+<br />
+Sherbrooke, Viscount. <i>See</i> <a href='#Index_Lowe_Robert'>Lowe, Robert</a><br />
+<br />
+Sidgwick, Henry&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_327'>327&ndash;29</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_338'>338&ndash;42</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>impartiality of, <a href='#page_334'>334</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>literary preferences of, <a href='#page_338'>338</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>psychical research, interest in, <a href='#page_331'>331&ndash;332</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>views of, philosophical and political, <a href='#page_335'>335&ndash;37</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>women&rsquo;s education promoted by, <a href='#page_329'>329</a><br />
+<br />
+Sidgwick, Henry&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>works of, <a href='#page_332'>332&ndash;34</a>, <a href='#page_338'>338</a><br />
+<br />
+Skene, Mr., cited, <a href='#page_158'>158</a><br />
+<br />
+Smith, Professor Goldwin, <a href='#page_76'>76</a>, <a href='#page_281'>281</a><br />
+<br />
+Smith, R. Bosworth, quoted, <a href='#page_349'>349&ndash;50</a><br />
+<br />
+Smith, Prof. Robertson&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Acton, Lord, and, <a href='#page_387'>387</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_311'>311&ndash;12</a>, <a href='#page_315'>315</a>, <a href='#page_318'>318&ndash;320</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_323'>323&ndash;25</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>ecclesiastical trial of, <a href='#page_313'>313&ndash;16</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span><i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica</i>, work on, <a href='#page_312'>312&ndash;14</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>versatility of, <a href='#page_322'>322</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>works of, <a href='#page_320'>320&ndash;21</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_321'>321</a><br />
+<br />
+Stanley, Very Rev. Arthur Penrhyn&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_70'>70</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#page_73'>73</a>, <a href='#page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#page_82'>82&ndash;84</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>debating power of, <a href='#page_77'>77</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Disraeli and, <a href='#page_81'>81</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>family of, <a href='#page_69'>69&ndash;70</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Green influenced by, <a href='#page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#page_137'>137</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>literary work of, <a href='#page_71'>71&ndash;74</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>politics of, <a href='#page_78'>78</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>sermons of, <a href='#page_76'>76&ndash;77</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>theological position of, <a href='#page_80'>80&ndash;81</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Tait, attitude towards, <a href='#page_113'>113</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>otherwise mentioned, <a href='#page_164'>164&ndash;65</a>, <a href='#page_205'>205&ndash;206</a><br />
+<br />
+Statesmanship, necessary qualifications for, <a href='#page_46'>46</a><br />
+<br />
+Stevenson, R. L., <a href='#page_129'>129</a><br />
+<br />
+Stubbs, Bishop, <a href='#page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#page_289'>289&ndash;90</a>, <a href='#Footnote_0062'>453 note</a><br />
+<br />
+<a name='Index_Suffrage' id='Index_Suffrage'></a>Suffrage extension&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Disraeli&rsquo;s view of, <a href='#page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#page_57'>57&ndash;58</a>, <a href='#page_67'>67&ndash;68</a>, <a href='#page_310'>310</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Lowe&rsquo;s opposition to, <a href='#page_295'>295&ndash;98</a>, <a href='#page_305'>305&ndash;306</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>results of, <a href='#page_306'>306&ndash;309</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Tait, Archibald Campbell, Archbishop of Canterbury&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>biography of, cited, <a href='#Footnote_19'>100 note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>career of, <a href='#page_107'>107</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_108'>108&ndash;12</a>, <a href='#page_209'>209</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Green appointed librarian by, <a href='#page_133'>133&ndash;134</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>influence of, <a href='#page_110'>110&ndash;12</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Irish Church Disestablishment Bill, attitude towards, <a href='#page_187'>187</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>policy of, <a href='#page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#page_114'>114</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>views of, <a href='#page_110'>110</a><br />
+<br />
+Temple, Archbishop, <a href='#page_113'>113</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0017'>note</a>, <a href='#page_199'>199</a><br />
+<br />
+Tennyson, <a href='#page_39'>39</a>, <a href='#page_459'>459</a><br />
+<br />
+Thackeray, W. M., <a href='#page_35'>35</a>, <a href='#page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#page_123'>123&ndash;25</a><br />
+
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_487' name='page_487'></a>487</span><br />
+Thirlwall, Bishop, <a href='#page_112'>112</a><br />
+<br />
+Thucydides, <a href='#page_149'>149&ndash;50</a><br />
+<br />
+Tone, Wolfe, <a href='#page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#page_248'>248</a><br />
+<br />
+Tory party&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>nature of, <a href='#page_218'>218</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>(1848-1865), <a href='#page_60'>60&ndash;62</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>suffrage extension profitable to, <a href='#page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#page_57'>57&ndash;58</a>, <a href='#page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#page_310'>310</a><br />
+<br />
+Tractarian movement, <a href='#page_252'>252</a>, <a href='#Footnote_0031'>264 note</a>, <a href='#page_406'>406</a><br />
+<br />
+Trollope, Anthony&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>biographies of, cited, <a href='#Footnote_21'>116 note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Freeman and, <a href='#page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#page_271'>271</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0032'>note</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>literary position of, <a href='#page_116'>116&ndash;18</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>personality of, <a href='#page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#page_126'>126</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>political activity of, <a href='#page_120'>120</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>travels of, <a href='#page_121'>121&ndash;22</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>works of, <a href='#page_117'>117&ndash;20</a>, <a href='#page_128'>128</a>;<br />
+<span class='indent4'>&nbsp;</span>characteristics of, <a href='#page_122'>122&ndash;30</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em"><a name='Index_United_States' id='Index_United_States'></a>United States&mdash;<br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Acton&rsquo;s knowledge of history of, <a href='#page_387'>387</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Freeman&rsquo;s visit to, <a href='#page_268'>268</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>journalism in, <a href='#page_379'>379</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Presbyterianism in, <a href='#page_317'>317</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>religion and politics dissociated in, <a href='#page_100'>100</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>Trollope&rsquo;s account of, <a href='#page_122'>122</a><br />
+<span class='indent2'>&nbsp;</span>University influence in, <a href='#page_378'>378</a></p>
+<p class='padtop lalign' style="margin-left:0.5em">Westbury, Lord, <a href='#page_303'>303</a><br />
+<br />
+Whiggism, <a href='#page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#page_63'>63</a>, <a href='#page_298'>298</a>, <a href='#page_469'>469</a><br />
+<br />
+Wilberforce, Bishop Samuel, <a href='#page_111'>111&ndash;12</a>, <a href='#page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#page_254'>254</a>, <a href='#page_429'>429</a><br />
+<br />
+Women, education of, <a href='#page_329'>329&ndash;31</a><br />
+<br />
+Wordsworth, <a href='#page_301'>301</a><br />
+<br />
+Wright, William, <a href='#page_319'>319</a> and <a href='#Footnote_0041'>note</a>, <a href='#page_320'>320</a></p>
+</div>
+<p class='center' style='margin:4em auto;'>THE END</p>
+<p class='center' style='margin:auto 4em'><i>Printed by</i> <span class='smcap'>R. &amp; R. Clark, Limited</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</p>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div class="trnote">
+<p><b>Transcriber&rsquo;s Note:</b></p>
+<p style='margin-left:1.0em'>The authors&rsquo; archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation are preserved.</p>
+<p style='margin-left:1.0em'>The authors&rsquo; punctuation styles are preserved.</p>
+<p style='margin-left:1.0em'>Footnotes have been collected and placed at the end of this HTML version.</p>
+<p style='margin-left:1.0em'>Any missing page numbers in this HTML version refer to blank or un-numbered pages in the original.</p>
+<p style='margin-left:1.0em'>Typographical errors were corrected, and these are
+<ins class="trchange" title="Was 'hgihligthed'">highlighted</ins>.</p>
+<p style='margin-left:1.0em'>Passages in Greek show transliterations with mouse-hover popups, e.g., <span class='greek' title='gn&ocirc;mai'>&gamma;&nu;&#x1FF6;&mu;&alpha;&iota;</span></p>
+<p><b>Transcriber&rsquo;s Changes:</b></p>
+<p style='margin-left:1.0em'><a href='#TC_1'>Page 218</a>: Was &rsquo;opportunies&rsquo; (in granting or refusing <b>opportunities</b> for discussing topics he would prefer to have not discussed at all.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Studies in Contemporary Biography, by James
+Bryce, Viscount Bryce
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+
+
+Title: Studies in Contemporary Biography
+
+
+Author: James Bryce, Viscount Bryce
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 17, 2010  [eBook #31677]
+
+Language: English
+
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+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY
+BIOGRAPHY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Clarke, Dan Horwood, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page
+images generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/Canadian Libaries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/r8548972200brycuoft
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+  Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
+
+  Text transcribed from Greek is enclosed by plus signs
+  (+Greek transliteration+).
+
+
+
+
+
+STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHY
+
+by
+
+JAMES BRYCE
+
+Author of
+'The Holy Roman Empire,' 'The American Commonwealth', etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Macmillan and Co., Limited
+New York: The Macmillan Company
+1903
+
+All rights reserved
+
+Copyright in the United States of America 1903
+
+
+
+
+  To
+
+  CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
+  President of Harvard University
+
+  IN COMMEMORATION OF A LONG AND VALUED FRIENDSHIP
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The first and the last of these Studies relate to persons whose fame
+has gone out into all lands, and about whom so much remains to be said
+that one who has reflected on their careers need not offer an apology
+for saying something. Of the other eighteen sketches, some deal with
+eminent men whose names are still familiar, but whose personalities
+have begun to fade from the minds of the present generation. The rest
+treat of persons who came less before the public, but whose brilliant
+gifts and solid services to the world make them equally deserve to be
+remembered with honour. Having been privileged to enjoy their
+friendship, I have felt it a duty to do what a friend can to present a
+faithful record of their excellence which may help to keep their
+memory fresh and green.
+
+These Studies are, however, not to be regarded as biographies, even
+in miniature. My aim has rather been to analyse the character and
+powers of each of the persons described, and, as far as possible, to
+convey the impression which each made in the daily converse of life.
+All of them, except Lord Beaconsfield, were personally, and most of
+them intimately, known to me.
+
+In the six Studies which treat of politicians I have sought to set
+aside political predilections, and have refrained from expressing
+political opinions, though it has now and then been necessary to point
+out instances in which the subsequent course of events has shown the
+action of Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Lowe, and Mr. Gladstone to have been
+right or wrong (as the case may be) in the action they respectively
+took.
+
+The sketches of T. H. Green, E. A. Freeman, and J. R. Green were
+originally written for English magazines, and most of the other
+Studies have been published in the United States. All of those that
+had already appeared in print have been enlarged and revised, some
+indeed virtually rewritten. I have to thank the proprietors of the
+_English Historical Review_, the _Contemporary Review_, and the _New
+York Nation_, as also the Century Company of New York, for their
+permission to use so much of the matter of the volume as had appeared
+(in its original form) in the organs belonging to them respectively.
+
+_March 6, 1903._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                  Page
+      I. Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield      1804-1881      1
+     II. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of
+             Westminster                              1815-1881     69
+    III. Thomas Hill Green                            1836-1882     85
+     IV. Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of
+             Canterbury                               1811-1882    100
+      V. Anthony Trollope                             1815-1882    116
+     VI. John Richard Green                           1837-1883    131
+    VII. Sir George Jessel                            1824-1883    170
+   VIII. Hugh M'Calmont Cairns, Earl
+             Cairns                                   1819-1885    184
+     IX. James Fraser, Bishop of Manchester           1818-1885    196
+      X. Stafford Henry Northcote, Earl of
+             Iddesleigh                               1818-1887    211
+     XI. Charles Stewart Parnell                      1846-1891    227
+    XII. Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop and
+             Cardinal                                 1808-1892    250
+   XIII. Edward Augustus Freeman                      1823-1892    262
+    XIV. Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke             1811-1892    293
+     XV. William Robertson Smith                      1846-1894    311
+    XVI. Henry Sidgwick                               1838-1900    327
+   XVII. Edward Ernest Bowen                          1836-1901    343
+  XVIII. Edwin Lawrence Godkin                        1831-1902    363
+    XIX. John Emerich Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton       1834-1902    382
+     XX. William Ewart Gladstone                      1809-1898    400
+
+
+
+
+BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD[1]
+
+
+When Lord Beaconsfield died in 1881 we all wondered what people would
+think of him fifty years thereafter. Divided as our own judgments
+were, we asked whether he would still seem a problem. Would opposite
+views regarding his aims, his ideas, the sources of his power, still
+divide the learned, and perplex the ordinary reader? Would men
+complain that history cannot be good for much when, with the abundant
+materials at her disposal, she had not framed a consistent theory of
+one who played so great a part in so ample a theatre? People called
+him a riddle; and he certainly affected a sphinx-like attitude. Would
+the riddle be easier then than it was for us, from among whom the man
+had even now departed?
+
+When he died, there were many in England who revered him as a profound
+thinker and a lofty character, animated by sincere patriotism.
+Others, probably as numerous, held him for no better than a cynical
+charlatan, bent through life on his own advancement, who permitted no
+sense of public duty, and very little human compassion, to stand in
+the way of his insatiate ambition. The rest did not know what to
+think. They felt in him the presence of power; they felt also
+something repellent. They could not understand how a man who seemed
+hard and unscrupulous could win so much attachment and command so much
+obedience.
+
+Since Disraeli departed nearly one-half of those fifty years has
+passed away. Few are living who can claim to have been his personal
+friends, none who were personal enemies. No living statesman professes
+to be his political disciple. The time has come when one may discuss
+his character and estimate his career without being suspected of doing
+so with a party bias or from a party motive. Doubtless those who
+condemn and those who defend or excuse some momentous parts of his
+conduct, such as, for instance, his policy in the East and in
+Afghanistan from 1876 to 1879, will differ in their judgment of his
+wisdom and foresight. If this be a difficulty, it is an unavoidable
+one, and may never quite disappear. There were in the days of Augustus
+some who blamed that sagacious ruler for seeking to check the
+expansion of the Roman Empire. There were in the days of King Henry
+the Second some who censured and others who praised him for issuing
+the Constitutions of Clarendon. Both questions still remain open to
+argument; and the conclusion any one forms must affect in some measure
+his judgment of each monarch's statesmanship. So differences of
+opinion about particular parts of Disraeli's long career need not
+prevent us from dispassionately inquiring what were the causes that
+enabled him to attain so striking a success, and what is the place
+which posterity is likely to assign to him among the rulers of
+England.
+
+First, a few words about the salient events of his life, not by way of
+writing a biography, but to explain what follows.
+
+He was born in London, in 1804. His father, Isaac Disraeli, was a
+literary man of cultivated taste and independent means, who wrote a
+good many books, the best known of which is his _Curiosities of
+Literature_, a rambling work, full of entertaining matter. He belonged
+to that division of the Jewish race which is called the Sephardim, and
+traces itself to Spain and Portugal;[2] but he had ceased to frequent
+the synagogue--had, in fact, broken with his co-religionists. Isaac
+had access to good society, so that the boy saw eminent and polished
+men from his early years, and, before he had reached manhood, began
+to make his way in drawing-rooms where he met the wittiest and
+best-known people of the day. He was articled to a firm of attorneys
+in London in 1821, but after two or three years quitted a sphere for
+which his peculiar gifts were ill suited.[3] Samuel Rogers, the poet,
+took a fancy to him, and had him baptized at the age of thirteen. As
+he grew up, he was often to be seen with Count d'Orsay and Lady
+Blessington, well-known figures who fluttered on the confines of
+fashion and Bohemia. It is worth remarking that he never went either
+to a public school or to a university. In England it has become the
+fashion to assume that nearly all the persons who have shone in public
+life have been educated in one of the great public schools, and that
+they owe to its training their power of dealing with men and
+assemblies. Such a superstition is sufficiently refuted by the
+examples of men like Pitt, Macaulay, Bishop Wilberforce, Disraeli,
+Cobden, Bright, and Cecil Rhodes, not to add instances drawn from
+Ireland and Scotland, where till very recently there have been no
+public schools in the current English sense.
+
+Disraeli first appeared before the public in 1826, when he published
+_Vivian Grey_, an amazing book to be the production of a youth of
+twenty-two. Other novels--_The Young Duke_, _Venetia_, _Contarini
+Fleming_, _Henrietta Temple_--maintained without greatly increasing
+his reputation between 1831 and 1837. Then came two political stories,
+_Coningsby_ and _Sybil_, in 1844 and 1845, followed by _Tancred_ in
+1847, and the _Life of Lord George Bentinck_ in 1852; with a long
+interval of silence, till, in 1870, he produced _Lothair_, in 1880
+_Endymion_. Besides these he published in 1839 the tragedy of
+_Alarcos_, and in 1835 the more ambitious _Revolutionary Epick_,
+neither of which had much success. In 1828-31 he took a journey
+through the East, visiting Constantinople, Syria, and Egypt, and it
+was then, no doubt, in lands peculiarly interesting to a man of his
+race, that he conceived those ideas about the East and its mysterious
+influences which figure largely in some of his stories, notably in
+_Tancred_, and which in 1878 had no small share in shaping his policy
+and that of England. Meanwhile, he had not forgotten the political
+aspirations which we see in _Vivian Grey_. In 1832, just before the
+passing of the Reform Bill, he appeared as candidate for the petty
+borough of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, and was defeated by a
+majority of twenty-three to twelve, so few were the voters in many
+boroughs of those days. After the Bill had enlarged the constituency,
+he tried his luck twice again, in 1833 and 1835, both times
+unsuccessfully, and came before two other boroughs also, Taunton and
+Marylebone, though in the latter case no contest took place. Such
+activity in a youth with little backing from friends and comparatively
+slender means marked him already as a man of spirit and ambition. His
+next attempt was more lucky. At the general election of 1837 he was
+returned for Maidstone.
+
+His political professions during this period have been keenly
+canvassed; nor is it easy to form a fair judgment on them. In 1832 he
+had sought and obtained recommendations from Joseph Hume and Daniel
+O'Connell, and people had therefore set him down as a Radical.
+Although, however, his professions of political faith included dogmas
+which, like triennial parliaments, the ballot, and the imposition of a
+new land-tax, were part of the so-called "Radical" platform, still
+there was a vague and fanciful note in his utterances, and an
+aversion to the conventional Whig way of putting things, which showed
+that he was not a thorough-going adherent of any of the then existing
+political parties, but was trying to strike out a new line and
+attract men by the promise of something fresher and bolder than the
+recognised schools offered. In 1834 his hostility to Whiggism was
+becoming more pronounced, and a tenderness for some Tory doctrines
+more discernible. Finally, in 1835, he appeared as an avowed Tory,
+accepting the regular creed of the party, and declaring himself a
+follower of Sir Robert Peel, but still putting forward a number of
+views peculiar to himself, which he thereafter developed not only
+in his speeches but in his novels. _Coningsby_ and _Sybil_ were
+meant to be a kind of manifesto of the "Young England" party--a party
+which can hardly be said to have existed outside his own mind, though
+a small knot of aristocratic youths who caught up and repeated his
+phrases seemed to form a nucleus for it.
+
+The fair conclusion from his deliverances during these early years is
+that he was at first much more of a Liberal than a Tory, yet with
+ideas distinctively his own which made him appear in a manner
+independent of both parties. The old party lines might seem to have
+been almost effaced by the struggle over the Reform Bill; and it was
+natural for a bold and inventive mind to imagine a new departure, and
+put forward a programme in which a sort of Radicalism was mingled with
+doctrines of a different type. But when it became clear after a time
+that the old political divisions still subsisted, and that such a
+distinctive position as he had conceived could not be maintained, he
+then, having to choose between one or other of the two recognised
+parties, chose the Tories, dropping some tenets he had previously
+advocated which were inconsistent with their creed, but retaining
+much of his peculiar way of looking at political questions. How far
+the change which passed over him was a natural development, how far
+due to mere calculations of interest, there is little use discussing:
+perhaps he did not quite know himself. Looking back, we of to-day
+might be inclined to think that he received more blame for it than he
+deserved, but contemporary observers generally set it down to a want
+of principle. In one thing, however, he was consistent then, and
+remained consistent ever after--his hearty hatred of the Whigs. There
+was something in the dryness and coldness of the great Whig families,
+their stiff constitutionalism, their belief in political economy,
+perhaps also their occasional toyings with the Nonconformists (always
+an object of dislike to Disraeli), which roused all the antagonisms of
+his nature, personal and Oriental.
+
+When he entered the House of Commons he was already well known to
+fashionable London, partly by his striking face and his powers of
+conversation, partly by the eccentricities of his dress--he loved
+bright-coloured waistcoats, and decked himself with rings,--partly by
+his novels, whose satirical pungency had made a noise in society. He
+had also become, owing to his apparent change of front, the object of
+angry criticism. A quarrel with Daniel O'Connell, in the course of
+which he challenged the great Irishman to fight a duel, each party
+having described the other with a freedom of language bordering on
+scurrility, made him, for a time, the talk of the political world.
+Thus there was more curiosity evoked by his first speech than usually
+awaits a new member. It was unsuccessful, not from want of ability,
+but because its tone did not suit the temper of the House of Commons,
+and because a hostile section of the audience sought to disconcert him
+by their laughter. Undeterred by this ridicule, he continued to speak,
+though in a less ambitious and less artificial vein, till after a few
+years he had become one of the most conspicuous unofficial members. At
+first no one had eulogised Peel more warmly, but after a time he edged
+away from the minister, whether repelled by his coldness, which showed
+that in that quarter no promotion was to be expected, or shrewdly
+perceiving that Peel was taking a line which would ultimately separate
+him from the bulk of the Conservative party. This happened in 1846,
+when Peel, convinced that the import duties on corn were economically
+unsound, proposed their abolition. Disraeli, who, since 1843, had
+taken repeated opportunities of firing stray shots at the powerful
+Prime Minister, now bore a foremost part not only in attacking him,
+but in organising the Protectionist party, and prompting its leader,
+Lord George Bentinck. In embracing free trade, Peel carried with him
+his own personal friends and disciples, men like Gladstone, Sidney
+Herbert, Lord Lincoln, Sir James Graham, Cardwell, and a good many
+others, the intellectual _elite_ of the Tory party. The more numerous
+section who clung to Protection had numbers, wealth, respectability,
+cohesion, but brains and tongues were scarce. An adroit tactician and
+incisive speaker was of priceless value to them. Such a man they found
+in Disraeli, while he gained, sooner than he had expected, an
+opportunity of playing a leading part in the eyes of Parliament and
+the country. In the end of 1848, Lord George Bentinck, who, though a
+man of natural force and capable of industry when he pleased, had been
+to some extent Disraeli's mouthpiece, died, leaving his prompter
+indisputably the keenest intellect in the Tory-Protectionist party. In
+1850, Peel, who might possibly have in time brought the bulk of that
+party back to its allegiance to him, was killed by a fall from his
+horse. The Peelites drifted more and more towards Liberalism, so that
+when Lord Derby, who, in 1851, had been commissioned as head of the
+Tory party to form a ministry, invited them to join him, they refused
+to do so, imagining him to be still in favour of the corn duties, and
+resenting the behaviour of the Protectionist section to their own
+master. Being thus unable to find one of them to lead his followers in
+the House of Commons, Lord Derby turned in 1852 to Disraeli, giving
+him, with the leadership, the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
+The appointment was thought a strange one, because Disraeli brought to
+it absolutely no knowledge of finance and no official experience. He
+had never been so much as an Under-Secretary. The Tories themselves
+murmured that one whom they regarded as an adventurer should be raised
+to so high a place. After a few months Lord Derby's ministry fell,
+defeated on the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Budget, which had been
+vehemently attacked by Mr. Gladstone. This was the beginning of that
+protracted duel between him and Mr. Disraeli which lasted down till
+the end of the latter's life.
+
+For the following fourteen years Disraeli's occupation was that of a
+leader of Opposition, varied by one brief interval of office in
+1858-59. His party was in a permanent minority, so that nothing was
+left for its chief but to fight with skill, courage, and resolution a
+series of losing battles. This he did with admirable tenacity of
+purpose. Once or twice in every session he used to rally his forces
+for a general engagement, and though always defeated, he never
+suffered himself to be dispirited by defeat. During the rest of the
+time he was keenly watchful, exposing all the mistakes in domestic
+affairs of the successive Liberal Governments, and when complications
+arose in foreign politics, always professing, and generally
+manifesting, a patriotic desire not to embarrass the Executive, lest
+national interests should suffer. Through all these years he had to
+struggle, not only with a hostile majority in office, but also with
+disaffection among his own followers. Many of the landed aristocracy
+could not bring themselves to acquiesce in the leadership of a new
+man, of foreign origin, whose career had been erratic, and whose ideas
+they found it hard to assimilate. Ascribing their long exclusion from
+power to his presence, they more than once conspired to dethrone him.
+In 1861 these plots were thickest, and Disraeli was for a time left
+almost alone. But as it happened, there never arose in the House of
+Commons any one on the Conservative side possessing gifts of speech
+and of strategy comparable to those which in him had been matured and
+polished by long experience, while he had the address to acquire an
+ascendency over the mind of Lord Derby, still the titular head of the
+party, who, being a man of straightforward character, high social
+position, and brilliant oratorical talent, was therewithal somewhat
+lazy and superficial, and therefore disposed to lean on his lieutenant
+in the Lower House, and to borrow from him those astute schemes of
+policy which Disraeli was fertile in devising. Thus, through Lord
+Derby's support, and by his own imperturbable confidence, he
+frustrated all the plots of the malcontent Tories. New men came up
+who had not witnessed his earlier escapades, but knew him only as the
+bold and skilful leader of their party in the House of Commons. He
+made himself personally agreeable to them, encouraged them in their
+first efforts, diffused his ideas among them, stimulated the local
+organisation of the party, and held out hopes of great things to be
+done when fortune should at last revisit the Tory banner.
+
+While Lord Palmerston lived, these exertions seemed to bear little
+fruit. That minister had, in his later years, settled down into a sort
+of practical Toryism, and both parties acquiesced in his rule. But, on
+his death, the scene changed. Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone brought
+forward a Reform Bill strong enough to evoke the latent Conservative
+feeling of a House of Commons which, though showing a nominally
+Liberal majority, had been chosen under Palmerstonian auspices. The
+defeat of the Bill, due to the defection of the more timorous Whigs,
+was followed by the resignation of Lord Russell's Ministry. Lord Derby
+and Mr. Disraeli came into power, and, next year, carried a Reform
+Bill which, as it was finally shaped in its passage through the House,
+really went further than Lord Russell's had done, enfranchising a much
+larger number of the working classes in boroughs. To have carried this
+Bill remains the greatest of Disraeli's triumphs. He had to push it
+gently through a hostile House of Commons by wheedling a section of
+the Liberal majority, against the appeals of their legitimate leader.
+He had also to persuade his own followers to support a measure which
+they had all their lives been condemning, and which was, or in their
+view ought to have been, more dangerous to the Constitution than the
+one which they and the recalcitrant Whigs had thrown out in the
+preceding year. He had, as he happily and audaciously expressed it, to
+educate his party into doing the very thing which they (though
+certainly not he himself) had cordially and consistently denounced.
+
+The process was scarcely complete when the retirement of Lord Derby,
+whose health had given way, opened Disraeli's path to the post of
+first Minister of the Crown. He dissolved Parliament, expecting to
+receive a majority from the gratitude of the working class whom his
+Act had admitted to the suffrage. To his own surprise, and to the
+boundless disgust of the Tories, a Liberal House of Commons was again
+returned, which drove him and his friends once more into the cold
+shade of Opposition. He was now sixty-four years of age, had suffered
+an unexpected and mortifying discomfiture, and had no longer the great
+name of Lord Derby to cover him. Disaffected voices were again heard
+among his own party, while the Liberals, reinstalled in power, were
+led by the rival whose unequalled popularity in the country made him
+for the time omnipotent. Still Mr. Disraeli was not disheartened. He
+fought the battle of apparently hopeless resistance with his old tact,
+wariness, and tenacity, losing no occasion for any criticism that
+could damage the measures--strong and large measures--which Mr.
+Gladstone's Government brought forward.
+
+Before long the tide turned. The Dissenters resented the Education Act
+of 1870. A reaction in favour of Conservatism set in, which grew so
+fast that, in 1874, the general election gave, for the first time
+since 1846, a decided Conservative majority. Mr. Disraeli became again
+Prime Minister, and now a Prime Minister no longer on sufferance, but
+with the absolute command of a dominant party, rising so much above
+the rest of the Cabinet as to appear the sole author of its policy. In
+1876, feeling the weight of age, he transferred himself to the House
+of Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield. The policy he followed (from 1876
+till 1880) in the troubles which arose in the Turkish East out of the
+insurrection in Herzegovina and the massacres in Bulgaria, as well as
+that subsequently pursued in Afghanistan and in South Africa, while it
+received the enthusiastic approval of the soldiers, the stockbrokers,
+and the richer classes generally, raised no less vehement opposition
+in other sections of the nation, and especially in those two which,
+when heartily united and excited, have usually been masters of
+England--the Protestant Nonconformists and the upper part of the
+working class. An election fought with unusual heat left him in so
+decided a minority that he resigned office in April 1880, without
+waiting for an adverse vote in Parliament. When the result had become
+clear he observed, "They," meaning his friends, "will come in again,
+but I shall not." A year later he died.
+
+Here is a wonderful career, not less wonderful to those who live in
+the midst of English politics and society than it appears to observers
+in other countries. A man with few external advantages, not even that
+of education at a university, where useful friendships are formed,
+with grave positive disadvantages in his Jewish extraction and the
+vagaries of his first years of public life, presses forward, step by
+step, through slights and disappointments which retard but never
+dishearten him, assumes as of right the leadership of a party--the
+aristocratic party, the party in those days peculiarly suspicious of
+new men and poor men,--wins a reputation for sagacity which makes his
+early errors forgotten, becomes in old age the favourite of a court,
+the master of a great country, one of the three or four arbiters of
+Europe. There is here more than one problem to solve, or, at least, a
+problem with more than one aspect. What was the true character of the
+man who had sustained such a part? Did he hold any principles, or was
+he merely playing with them as counters? By what gifts or arts did he
+win such a success? Was there really a mystery beneath the wizard's
+robe which he delighted to wrap around him? And how, being so unlike
+the Englishmen among whom his lot was cast, did he so fascinate and
+rule them?
+
+Imagine a man of strong will and brilliant intellectual powers,
+belonging to an ancient and persecuted race, who finds himself born
+in a foreign country, amid a people for whose ideas and habits he
+has no sympathy and scant respect. Suppose him proud, ambitious,
+self-confident--too ambitious to rest content in a private station,
+so self-confident as to believe that he can win whatever he aspires
+to. To achieve success, he must bend his pride, must use the language
+and humour the prejudices of those he has to deal with; while his
+pride avenges itself by silent scorn or thinly disguised irony.
+Accustomed to observe things from without, he discerns the weak
+points of all political parties, the hollowness of institutions and
+watchwords, the instability of popular passion. If his imagination be
+more susceptible than his emotions, his intellect more active than
+his conscience, the isolation in which he stands and the superior
+insight it affords him may render him cold, calculating, self-centred.
+The sentiment of personal honour may remain, because his pride will
+support it; and he will be tenacious of the ideas which he has
+struck out, because they are his own. But for ordinary principles of
+conduct he may have small regard, because he has not grown up
+under the conventional morality of the time and nation, but has
+looked on it merely as a phenomenon to be recognised and reckoned
+with, because he has noted how much there is in it of unreality or
+pharisaism--how far it sometimes is from representing or expressing
+either the higher judgments of philosophy or the higher precepts of
+religion. Realising and perhaps exaggerating the power of his own
+intelligence, he will secretly revolve schemes of ambition wherein
+genius, uncontrolled by fears or by conscience, makes all things bend
+to its purposes, till the scruples and hesitations of common humanity
+seem to him only parts of men's cowardice or stupidity. What
+success he will win when he comes to carry out such schemes in
+practice will largely depend on the circumstances in which he finds
+himself, as well as on his gift for judging of them. He may become a
+Napoleon. He may fall in a premature collision with forces which
+want of sympathy has prevented him from estimating.
+
+In some of his novels, and most fully in the first of them, Mr.
+Disraeli sketched a character and foreshadowed a career not altogether
+unlike that which has just been indicated. It would be unfair to treat
+as autobiographical, though some of his critics have done so, the
+picture of Vivian Grey. What that singular book shows is that, at an
+age when his contemporaries were lads at college, absorbed in cricket
+matches or Latin verse-making, Disraeli had already meditated
+profoundly on the conditions and methods of worldly success, had
+rejected the allurements of pleasure and the attractions of
+literature, as well as the ideal life of philosophy, had conceived of
+a character isolated, ambitious, intense, resolute, untrammelled by
+scruples, who moulds men to his purposes by the sheer force of his
+intellect, humouring their foibles, using their weaknesses, and luring
+them into his chosen path by the bait of self-interest.
+
+To lay stress on the fact that Mr. Disraeli was of Hebrew birth is
+not, though some of his political antagonists stooped so to use it, to
+cast any reproach upon him: it is only to note a fact of the utmost
+importance for a proper comprehension of his position. The Jews were
+at the beginning of the nineteenth century still foreigners in
+England, not only on account of their religion, with its mass of
+ancient rites and usages, but also because they were filled with the
+memory of centuries of persecution, and perceived that in some parts
+of Europe the old spirit of hatred had not died out. The antiquity of
+their race, their sense of its long-suffering and isolation, their
+pride in the intellectual achievements of those ancestors whose blood,
+not largely mixed with that of any other race, flows in their veins,
+lead the stronger or more reflective spirits to revenge themselves by
+a kind of scorn upon the upstart Western peoples among whom their lot
+is cast. The mockery one finds in Heinrich Heine could not have come
+from a Teuton. Even while imitating, as the wealthier of them have
+latterly begun to imitate, the manners and luxury of those nominal
+Christians among whom they live, they retain their feeling of
+detachment, and are apt to regard with a coldly observant curiosity
+the beliefs, prejudices, enthusiasms of the nations of Europe. The
+same passionate intensity which makes the grandeur of the ancient
+Hebrew literature still lives among them, though often narrowed by
+ages of oppression, and gives them the peculiar effectiveness that
+comes from turning all the powers of the mind, imaginative as well as
+reasoning, into a single channel, be that channel what it may. They
+produce, in proportion to their numbers, an unusually large number of
+able and successful men, as any one may prove by recounting the
+eminent Jews of the last seventy years. This success has most often
+been won in practical life, in commerce, or at the bar, or in the
+press (which over the European continent they so largely control); yet
+often also in the higher walks of literature or science, less
+frequently in art, most frequently in music.
+
+Mr. Disraeli had three of these characteristics of his race in
+full measure--detachment, intensity, the passion for material success.
+Nature gave him a resolute will, a keen and precociously active
+intellect, a vehement individuality; that is to say, a consciousness
+of his own powers, and a determination to make them recognised by
+his fellows. In some men, the passion to succeed is clogged by the
+fear of failure; in others, the sense of their greatness is
+self-sufficing and indisposes them to effort. But with him ambition
+spurred self-confidence, and self-confidence justified ambition. He
+grew up in a cultivated home, familiar not only with books but with
+the brightest and most polished men and women of the day, whose
+conversation sharpened his wits almost from childhood. No religious
+influences worked upon him, for his father had ceased to be a Jew in
+faith without becoming even nominally a Christian, and there is little
+in his writings to show that he had ever felt anything more than
+an imaginative, or what may be called an historical, interest in
+religion.[4] Thus his development was purely intellectual. The society
+he moved in was a society of men and women of the world--witty,
+superficial in its interests, without seriousness or reverence. He
+felt himself no Englishman, and watched English life and politics as a
+student of natural history might watch the habits of bees or ants.
+English society was then, and perhaps is still, more complex, more
+full of inconsistencies, of contrasts between theory and practice,
+between appearances and realities, than that of any other country.
+Nowhere so much limitation of view among the fashionable, so much
+pharisaism among the respectable, so much vulgarity among the rich,
+mixed with so much real earnestness, benevolence, and good sense;
+nowhere, therefore, so much to seem merely ridiculous to one who
+looked at it from without, wanting the sympathy which comes from the
+love of mankind, or even from the love of one's country. It was
+natural for a young man with Disraeli's gifts to mock at what he
+saw. But he would not sit still in mere contempt. The thirst for
+power and fame gave him no rest. He must gain what he saw every one
+around him struggling for. He must triumph over these people whose
+follies amused him; and the sense that he perceived and could use
+their follies would add zest to his triumph. He might have been a
+great satirist; he resolved to become a great statesman. For such a
+career, his Hebrew detachment gave him some eminent advantages. It
+enabled him to take a cooler and more scientific view of the social
+and political phenomena he had to deal with. He was not led astray
+by party cries. He did not share vulgar prejudices. He calculated
+the forces at work as an engineer calculates the strength of his
+materials, the strain they have to bear from the wind, and the weights
+they must support. And what he had to plan was not the success of a
+cause, which might depend on a thousand things out of his ken, but his
+own success, a simpler matter.
+
+A still greater source of strength lay in his Hebrew intensity. It
+would have pleased him, so full of pride in the pure blood of his
+race,[5] to attribute to that purity the singular power of concentration
+which the Jews undoubtedly possess. They have the faculty of throwing
+the whole stress of their natures into the pursuit of one object,
+fixing their eyes on it alone, sacrificing to it other desires,
+clinging to it even when it seems unattainable. Disraeli was only
+twenty-eight when he made his first attempt to enter the House of
+Commons. Four repulses did not discourage him, though his means were
+but scanty to support such contests; and the fifth time he
+succeeded. When his first speech in Parliament had been received with
+laughter, and politicians were congratulating themselves that this
+adventurer had found his level, he calmly told them that he had
+always ended by succeeding in whatever he attempted, and that he
+would succeed in this too. He received no help from his own side, who
+regarded him with suspicion, but forced himself into prominence, and at
+last to leadership, by his complete superiority to rebuffs. Through
+the long years in which he had to make head against a majority in the
+House of Commons, he never seemed disheartened by his repeated
+defeats, never relaxed the vigilance with which he watched his
+adversaries, never indulged himself (though he was physically
+indolent and often in poor health) by staying away from Parliament,
+even when business was slack; never missed an opportunity for exposing
+a blunder of his adversaries, or commending the good service of one of
+his own followers. The same curious tenacity was apparent in his
+ideas. Before he was twenty-two years of age he had, under the
+inspiration of Bolingbroke, excogitated a theory of the Constitution of
+England, of the way England should be governed at home and her
+policy directed abroad, from which he hardly swerved through all his
+later life. Often as he was accused of inconsistency, he probably
+believed himself to be, and in a sense he was, substantially faithful,
+I will not say to the same doctrines, but to the same notions or
+tendencies; and one could discover from the phrases he employed how
+he fancied himself to be really following out these old notions, even
+when his conduct seemed opposed to the traditions of his party.[6] The
+weakness of intense minds is their tendency to narrowness, and this
+weakness was in so far his that, while always ready for new
+expedients, he was not accessible to new ideas. Indeed, the old ideas
+were too much a part of himself, stamped with his own individuality, to
+be forsaken or even varied. He did not love knowledge, nor enjoy
+speculation for its own sake; he valued views as they pleased his
+imagination or as they carried practical results with them; and having
+framed his theory once for all and worked steadily upon its lines, he
+was not the man to admit that it had been defective, and to set
+himself in later life to repair it. His pride was involved in proving
+it correct by applying it.
+
+With this resolute concentration of purpose there went an undaunted
+courage--a quality less rare among English statesmen, but eminently
+laudable in him, because for great part of his career he had no family
+or party connections to back him up, but was obliged to face the world
+with nothing but his own self-confidence. So far from seeking to
+conceal his Jewish origin, he displayed his pride in it, and refused
+all support to the efforts which the Tory party made to maintain the
+exclusion of Jews from Parliament. Nobody showed more self-possession
+and (except on two or three occasions) more perfect self-command in
+the hot strife of Parliament than this suspected stranger. His
+opponents learnt to fear one who never feared for himself; his
+followers knew that their chief would not fail them in the hour of
+danger. His very face and bearing had in them an impassive calmness
+which magnetised those who watched him. He liked to surround himself
+with mystery, to pose as remote, majestic, self-centred, to appear
+above the need of a confidant. He would sit for hours on his bench in
+the House of Commons, listening with eyes half-shut to furious
+assaults on himself and his policy, not showing by the movement of a
+muscle that he had felt a wound; and when he rose to reply would
+discharge his sarcasms with an air of easy coolness. That this
+indifference was sometimes simulated appeared by the resentment he
+showed afterwards.
+
+Ambition such as his could not afford to be scrupulous, nor have his
+admirers ever claimed conscientiousness as one of his merits. One who
+sets power and fame before him as the main ends to be pursued may no
+doubt be restrained by pride from the use of such means as are
+obviously low and dishonourable. Other questionable means he may
+reject because he knows that the opinion of those whose good-will and
+good word he must secure would condemn them. But he will not be likely
+to allow kindliness or compassion to stand in his way; nor will he be
+very regardful of truth. To a statesman, who must necessarily have
+many facts in his knowledge, or many plans in his mind, which the
+interests of his colleagues, or of his party, or of the nation, forbid
+him to reveal, the temptation to put questioners on a false scent, and
+to seem to agree where he really dissents, is at all times a strong
+one. An honest man may sometimes be betrayed into yielding to it; and
+those who know how difficult are the cases of conscience that arise
+will not deal harshly with a possibly misleading silence, or even with
+the evasion of an embarrassing inquiry, where a real public interest
+can be pleaded, for the existence of such a public interest, if it
+does not justify, may palliate omissions to make a full disclosure of
+the facts. All things considered, the standard of truthfulness among
+English public men has (of course with some conspicuous exceptions)
+been a high one. Of that standard Disraeli fell short. People did not
+take his word for a thing as they would have taken the word of the
+Duke of Wellington, or Lord Althorp, or Lord Derby, or Lord Russell,
+or even of that not very rigid moralist, Lord Palmerston. Instances of
+his lapses were not wanting as late as 1877. His behaviour toward Sir
+Robert Peel, whom he plied with every dart of sarcasm, after having
+shortly before lavished praises on him, and sought office under him,
+has often been commented on.[7] Disraeli was himself (as those who
+knew him have often stated) accustomed to justify it by observing that
+he was then an insignificant personage, to whom it was supremely
+important to attract public notice and make a political position; that
+the opportunity of attacking the powerful Prime Minister, at a moment
+when their altered attitude towards the Corn Laws had exposed the
+Ministry to the suspicions of their own party, was too good to be
+lost; and that he was therefore obliged to assail Peel, though he had
+himself no particular attachment to the Corn Laws, and believed Peel
+to have been a _bona-fide_ convert. It was therefore no personal
+resentment against one who had slighted him, but merely the exigencies
+of his own career, that drove him to this course, whose fortunate
+result proved the soundness of his calculations.
+
+This defence will not surprise any one who is familiar with Disraeli's
+earlier novels. These stories are as far as possible from being
+immoral; that is to say, there is nothing in them unbecoming or
+corrupting. Friendship, patriotism, love, are all recognised as
+powerful and worthy motives of conduct. That which is wanting is the
+sense of right and wrong. His personages have for certain purposes the
+conventional sense of honour, though seldom a fine sense, but they do
+not ask whether such and such a course is conformable to principle.
+They move in a world which is polished, agreeable, dignified, averse
+to baseness and vulgarity, but in which conscience and religion
+scarcely seem to exist. The men live for pleasure or fame, the women
+for pleasure or love.
+
+Some allowance must, of course, be made for the circumstances of
+Disraeli's position and early training. He was brought up neither a
+Jew nor a Christian. The elder people who took him by the hand when he
+entered life, people like Samuel Rogers and Lady Blessington, were not
+the people to give lessons in morality. Lord Lyndhurst, the first of
+his powerful political friends, and the man whose example most
+affected him, was, with all his splendid gifts, conspicuously wanting
+in political principle. Add to this the isolation in which the young
+man found himself, standing outside the common stream of English life,
+not sharing its sentiments, perceiving the hollowness of much that
+passed for virtue and patriotism, and it is easy to understand how he
+should have been as perfect a cynic at twenty-five as their experience
+of the world makes many at sixty. If he had loved truth or mankind, he
+might have quickly worked through his youthful cynicism. But pride and
+ambition, the pride of race and the pride of genius, left no room for
+these sentiments. Nor was his cynicism the fruit merely of a keen and
+sceptical intelligence. It came from a cold heart.
+
+The pursuit of fame and power, to which he gave all his efforts, is
+presented in his writings as the only alternative ideal to a life of
+pleasure; and he probably regarded those who pursued some other as
+either fools or weaklings. Early in his political life he said one
+night to Mr. Bright (from whom I heard the anecdote), as they took
+their umbrellas in the cloak-room of the House of Commons: "After all,
+what is it that brings you and me here? Fame! This is the true arena.
+I might have occupied a literary throne; but I have renounced it for
+this career." The external pomps and trappings of life, titles,
+stately houses and far-spreading parks, all those gauds and vanities
+with which sumptuous wealth surrounds itself, had throughout his life
+a singular fascination for him. He liked to mock at them in his
+novels, but they fascinated him none the less. One can understand how
+they might fire the imagination of an ambitious youth who saw them
+from a distance--might even retain their charm for one who was just
+struggling into the society which possessed them, and who desired to
+feel himself the equal of the possessors. It is stranger that, when he
+had harnessed the English aristocracy to his chariot, and was driving
+them where he pleased, he should have continued to admire such things.
+So, however, it was. There was even in him a vein of inordinate
+deference to rank and wealth which would in a less eminent person have
+been called snobbishness. In his will he directs that his estate of
+Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire, shall pass under an entail as
+strict as he could devise, that the person who succeeds to it shall
+always bear the name of Disraeli. His ambition is the common, not to
+say vulgar, ambition of the English _parvenu_, to found a "county
+family." In his story of _Endymion_, published a few months before his
+death, the hero, starting from small beginnings, ends by becoming
+prime minister: this is the crown of his career, the noblest triumph
+an Englishman can achieve. It might have been thought that one who had
+been through it all, who had realised the dreams of his boyhood, who
+had every opportunity of learning what power and fame come to, would
+have liked to set forth some other conception of the end of human
+life, or would not have told the world so naively of his self-content
+at having attained the aim he had worked for. With most men the flower
+they have plucked withers. It might have been expected that one who
+was in other things an ironical cynic would at least have sought to
+seem disillusionised.
+
+To say that Disraeli's heart was somewhat cold is by no means to say
+that he was heartless. He was one of those strong natures who
+permit neither persons nor principles to stand in their way. His
+doctrine was that politics had nothing to do with sentiment; so those
+who appealed to him on grounds of humanity appealed in vain. No act
+of his life ever so much offended English opinion as the airy
+fashion in which he tossed aside the news of the Bulgarian massacre of
+1876. It incensed sections who were strong enough, when thoroughly
+roused, to bring about his fall. But he was far from being unkindly.
+He knew how to attach men to him by friendly deeds as well as
+friendly words. He seldom missed an opportunity of saying something
+pleasant and cheering to a _debutant_ in Parliament, whether of his
+own party or the opposite. He was not selfish in little things; was
+always ready to consider the comfort and convenience of those who
+surrounded him. Age and success, so far from making him morose or
+supercilious, softened the asperities of his character and developed
+the affectionate side of it. His last novel, published a few months
+before his death, contains more human kindliness, a fuller
+recognition of the worth of friendship and the beauty of sisterly
+and conjugal love, than do the writings of his earlier manhood.
+What it wants in intellectual power it makes up for in a mellower and
+more tender tone. Of loyalty to his political friends he was a
+model, and nothing did more to secure his command of the party than
+its sense that his professional honour, so to speak, could be
+implicitly relied upon. To his wife, a warm-hearted woman older than
+himself, and inferior to him in education, he was uniformly
+affectionate and indeed devoted. The first use he made of his
+power as Prime Minister was to procure for her the title of
+viscountess. Being once asked point blank by a lady what he thought
+of his life-long opponent, Mr. Gladstone answered that two things
+had always struck him as very admirable in Lord Beaconsfield's
+character--his perfect loyalty to his wife, and his perfect
+loyalty to his own race. A story used to be told how, in Disraeli's
+earlier days, when his political position was still far from
+assured, he and his wife happened to be the guests of the chief of
+the party, and that chief so far forgot good manners as to quiz Mrs.
+Disraeli at the dinner-table. Next morning Disraeli, whose visit
+was to have lasted for some days longer, announced that he must
+leave immediately. The host besought him to stay, and made all
+possible apologies. But Disraeli was inexorable, and carried off his
+wife forthwith. To literary men, whatever their opinions, he was
+ready to give a helping hand, representing himself as one of their
+profession. In paying compliments he was singularly expert, and few
+used the art so well to win friends and disarm enemies. He knew
+how to please Englishmen, and especially the young, by showing
+interest in their tastes and pleasures, and, without being what
+would be called genial, was never wanting in _bonhomie_. In
+society he was a perfect man of the world--told his anecdote apropos,
+wound up a discussion by some epigrammatic phrase, talked to the
+guest next him, if he thought that guest's position made him worth
+talking to, as he would to an old acquaintance. But he had few
+intimates; nor did his apparent frankness unveil his real thoughts.
+
+He was not of those who complicate political opposition with private
+hatreds. Looking on politics as a game, he liked, when he took off his
+armour, to feel himself on friendly terms with his antagonists, and
+often seemed surprised to find that they remembered as personal
+affronts the blows which he had dealt in the tournament. Two or three
+years before his death, a friend asked him whether there was in London
+any one with whom he would not shake hands. Reflecting for a moment,
+he answered, "Only one," and named Robert Lowe, who had said hard
+things of him, and to whom, when Lowe was on one occasion in his
+power, he had behaved with cruelty. Yet his resentments could smoulder
+long. In _Lothair_ he attacked, under a thin disguise, a distinguished
+man of letters who had criticised his conduct years before. In
+_Endymion_ he gratified what was evidently an ancient grudge by a
+spiteful presentation of Thackeray, as he had indulged his more bitter
+dislike of John Wilson Croker by portraying that politician in
+_Coningsby_ under the name of Nicholas Rigby. For the greatest of his
+adversaries he felt, there is reason to believe, genuine admiration,
+mingled with inability to comprehend a nature so unlike his own. No
+passage in the striking speech which that adversary pronounced, one
+might almost say, over Lord Beaconsfield's grave--a speech which may
+possibly go down to posterity with its subject--was more impressive
+than the sentence in which he declared that he had the best reason to
+believe that, in their constant warfare, Lord Beaconsfield had not
+been actuated by any personal hostility. Brave men, if they can
+respect, seldom dislike, a formidable antagonist.
+
+His mental powers were singularly well suited to the rest of his
+character--were, so to speak, all of a piece with it. One sometimes
+sees intellects which are out of keeping with the active or emotional
+parts of the man. One sees persons whose thought is vigorous, clear,
+comprehensive, while their conduct is timid; or a comparatively
+narrow intelligence joined to an enterprising spirit; or a sober,
+reflective, sceptical turn of mind yoked to an ardent and impulsive
+temperament. What we call the follies of the wise often spring from
+some such source. Not so with him. His intelligence had the same
+boldness, intensity, concentration, directness, which we discover in
+the rest of the man. It was just the right instrument, not perhaps for
+the normal career of a normal Englishman seeking political success,
+but for the particular kind of work Disraeli had planned to do; and
+this inner harmony was one of the chief causes of his success, as the
+want of it has caused the failure of so many gifted natures.
+
+The range of his mind was not wide. All its products were like one
+another. No one of them gives the impression that Disraeli could, had
+he so wished, have succeeded in a wholly diverse line. It was a
+peculiar mind: there is even more variety in minds than in faces. It
+was not logical or discursive, liking to mass and arrange stores of
+knowledge, and draw inferences from them, nor was it judicial, with a
+turn for weighing reasons and reaching a decision which recognises all
+the facts and is not confused by their seeming contradictions. Neither
+was it analytically subtle. It reached its conclusions by a process of
+intuition or divination in which there was an imaginative as well as a
+reflective element. It might almost have been called an artist's mind,
+capable of deep meditation, but meditating in an imaginative way, not
+so much on facts as on its own views of facts, on the pictures which
+its own creative faculty had called up. The meditation became dreamy,
+but the dreaminess was corrected by an exceedingly keen and quick
+power of observation, not the scientific observation of the
+philosopher, but rather the enjoying observation of the artist who
+sees how he can use the characteristic details which he notes, or the
+observation of the forensic advocate (an artist, too, in his way) who
+perceives how they can be fitted into the presentation of his case.
+There are, of course, other qualities in Disraeli's work. As a
+statesman he was obliged to learn how to state facts, to argue, to
+dissect an opponent's arguments. But the characteristic note, both of
+his speeches and of his writings, is the combination of a few large
+ideas, clear, perhaps, to himself, but generally expressed with
+grandiose vagueness, and often quite out of relation to the facts as
+other people saw them, with a turn for acutely fastening upon small
+incidents or personal traits. In his speeches he used his command of
+sonorous phrases and lively illustrations, sometimes to support the
+views he was advancing, but more frequently to conceal the weakness of
+those views; that is, to make up for the absence of such solid
+arguments as were likely to move his hearers. Everybody is now and
+then conscious of holding with assured conviction theories which he
+would find it hard to prove to a given audience, partly because it is
+too much trouble to trace out the process by which they were reached,
+partly because uninstructed listeners could not be made to feel the
+full cogency of the considerations on which his own mind relies.
+Disraeli was usually in this condition with regard to his political
+and social doctrines. He believed them, but as he had not reached them
+by logic, he was not prepared to use logic to establish them; so he
+picked up some plausible illustration, or attacked the opposite
+doctrine and its supporters with a fire of raillery or invective. This
+non-ratiocinative quality of his thinking was a source both of
+strength and of weakness--of weakness, because he could not prove his
+propositions; of strength, because, stated as he stated them, it was
+not less hard to disprove them. That mark of a superior mind, that it
+must have a theory, was never wanting. Some one said of him that he
+was "the ruins of a thinker." He could not rest content, like many
+among his followers, with a prejudice, a dogma delivered by tradition,
+a stolid suspicion unamenable to argument. He would not acquiesce in
+negation. He must have a theory, a positive theory, to show not only
+that his antagonist's view was erroneous, but that he had himself a
+more excellent way. These theories generally had in them a measure of
+truth and value for any one who could analyse them; but as this was
+exactly what the rank and file of the party could not do, they got
+into sad confusion when they tried to talk his language.
+
+He could hardly be called a well-read man, nor were his intellectual
+interests numerous. His education had consisted mainly in promiscuous
+reading during boyhood and early youth. There are worse kinds of
+education for an active intelligence than to let it have the run of a
+large library. The wild browsings of youth, when curiosity is strong
+as hunger, stir the mind and give the memory some of the best food it
+ever gets. The weak point of such a method is that it does not teach
+accuracy nor the art of systematic study. In middle life natural
+indolence and his political occupations had kept Disraeli from filling
+up the gaps in his knowledge, while, in conversation, what he liked
+best was persiflage. He was, however, tolerably familiar with the
+ancient classics, and with modern English and French literature;
+enjoyed Quintilian and Lucian, preferred Sophocles to Aeschylus and
+(apparently) Horace to Virgil, despised Browning, considered Tennyson
+the best of contemporary poets, but "not a poet of a high order."[8]
+Physical science seems never to have attracted him. Political economy
+he hated and mocked at almost as heartily as did Carlyle. People have
+measured his knowledge of history and geography by observing that he
+placed the Crucifixion in the lifetime of Augustus, and thought, down
+till 1878, when he had to make a speech about Afghanistan, that the
+Andes were the highest mountains in the world. But geography is a
+subject which a man of affairs does not think of reading up in later
+life: he is content if he can get information when he needs it. There
+are some bits of metaphysics and some historical allusions scattered
+over his novels, but these are mostly slight or superficial. He amused
+himself and the public by now and then propounding doctrines on
+agricultural matters, but would not appear to have mastered either
+husbandry or any other economical or commercial subject. Such things
+were not in his way. He had been so little in office as not to have
+been forced to apply himself to them, while the tide of pure
+intellectual curiosity had long since ebbed.
+
+For so-called "sports" he had little taste. He liked to go mooning in
+a meditative way round his fields and copses, and he certainly enjoyed
+Nature; but there seems to be no solid evidence that the primrose was
+his favourite flower. In his fondness for particular words and phrases
+there was a touch of his artistic quality, and a touch also of the
+cynical view that words are the counters with which the wise play
+their game. There is a passage in _Contarini Fleming_ (a story into
+which he has put a good deal of himself) where this is set out.
+Contarini tells his father that he left college "because they taught
+me only words, and I wished to learn ideas." His father answers, "Few
+ideas are correct ones, and what are correct, no one can ascertain;
+but with words we govern men."
+
+He went on acting on this belief in the power of words till he
+became the victim of his own phrases, just as people who talk
+cynically for effect grow sometimes into real cynics. When he had
+invented a phrase which happily expressed the aspect he wished his
+view, or some part of his policy, to bear, he came to believe in
+the phrase, and to think that the facts were altered by the colour
+the phrase put upon them. During the contest for the extension of
+the parliamentary franchise, he declared himself "in favour of
+popular privileges, but opposed to democratic rights." When he was
+accused of having assented, at the Congress of Berlin, to the
+dismemberment of the Turkish Empire, he said that what had been done
+was "not dismemberment, but consolidation." No statesman of recent
+times has given currency to so many quasi-epigrammatic expressions:
+"organised hypocrisy," "England dislikes coalitions," "plundering and
+blundering," "peace with honour," "_imperium et libertas_," "a
+scientific frontier," "I am on the side of the angels," are a few,
+not perhaps the best, though the best remembered, of the many which
+issued from his fertile mint. This turn for epigram, not common in
+England, sometimes led him into scrapes which would have damaged a man
+of less imperturbable coolness. No one else could have ventured to
+say, when he had induced the Tories to pass a Reform Bill stronger
+than the one they had rejected from the Liberals in the preceding
+year, that it had been his mission "to educate his party." Some of
+his opponents professed to be shocked by such audacity, and many
+old Tories privily gnashed their teeth. But the country received the
+dictum in the spirit in which it was spoken. "It was Disraeli all
+over."
+
+If his intellect was not of wide range, it was within its range a
+weapon of the finest flexibility and temper. It was ingenious, ready,
+incisive. It detected in a moment the weak point, if not of an
+argument, yet of an attitude or of a character. Its imaginative
+quality made it often picturesque, sometimes even impressive. Disraeli
+had the artist's delight in a situation for its own sake, and what
+people censured as insincerity or frivolity was frequently only the
+zest which he felt in posing, not so much because there was anything
+to be gained, as because he realised his aptitude for improvising a
+new part in the drama which he always felt himself to be playing. The
+humour of the situation was too good to be wasted. Perhaps this love
+of merry mischief may have had something to do with his tendency to
+confer honours on those whom the world thought least deserving.
+
+His books are not only a valuable revelation of his mind, but have
+more literary merit than critics have commonly allowed to them,
+perhaps because we are apt, when a man excels in one walk, to deem
+him to have failed in any other wherein he does not reach the same
+level. The novels foam over with cleverness; indeed, _Vivian Grey_,
+with all its youthful faults, gives as great an impression of
+intellectual brilliance as does anything Disraeli ever wrote or spoke.
+Their easy fertility makes them seem to be only, so to speak, a few
+sketches out of a large portfolio. There is some variety in the
+subjects--_Contarini Fleming_ and _Tancred_ are more romantic than the
+others, _Sybil_ and _Coningsby_ more political--as well as in the
+merits of the stories. The two latest, _Lothair_ and _Endymion_,
+works of his old age, are markedly inferior in spirit and invention;
+but the general features are the same in all--a lively fancy, a knack
+of hitting characters off in a few lines and of catching the
+superficial aspects of society, a brisk narrative, a sprightly
+dialogue, a keen insight into the selfishness of men and the vanities
+of women, with flashes of wit lighting up the whole stage. It is
+always a stage. The brilliance is never open-air sunshine. There is
+scarcely one of the characters whom we feel we might have met and
+known. Heroes and heroines are theatrical figures; their pathos
+rings false, their love, though described as passionate, does not
+spring from the inner recesses of the soul. The studies of men of
+the world, and particularly of heartless ones, are the most
+life-like; yet, even here, any one who wants to feel the difference
+between the great painter and the clever sketcher need only
+compare Thackeray's Marquis of Steyne with Disraeli's Marquis of
+Monmouth, both of them suggested by the same original. There is
+little intensity, little dramatic power in these stories, as also in
+his play of _Alarcos_; and if we read them with pleasure it is not
+for the sake either of plot or of character, but because they contain
+so many sparkling witticisms and reflections, setting in a strong
+light, yet not always an unkindly light, the seamy side of politics
+and human nature. The slovenliness of their style, which is often
+pompous, but seldom pure, makes them appear to have been written
+hastily. But Disraeli seems to have taken the composition of them
+(except, perhaps, the two latest) quite seriously. When he wrote the
+earlier tales, he meant to achieve literary greatness; while the
+middle ones, especially _Coningsby_ and _Sybil_, were designed as
+political manifestoes. The less they have a purpose or profess to
+be serious, the better they are; and the most vivacious of all are
+two classical burlesques, written at a time when that kind of
+composition had not yet become common--_Ixion in Heaven_ and _The
+Infernal Marriage_--little pieces of funning worthy of Thackeray, I
+had almost said of Voltaire. They recall, perhaps they were
+suggested by, similar pieces of Lucian's. Is Semitic genius specially
+rich in this mocking vein? Lucian was a Syrian from Samosata,
+probably a Semite; Heinrich Heine was a Semite; James Russell
+Lowell used to insist, though he produced little evidence for his
+belief, that Voltaire was a Semite.
+
+Whether Disraeli could ever have taken high rank as a novelist if he
+had thrown himself completely into the profession may be doubted,
+for his defects were such as pains and practice would hardly have
+lessened. That he had still less the imagination needed by a poet, his
+_Revolutionary Epick_, conceived on the plains of Troy, and meant
+to make a fourth to the _Iliad_, the _Aeneid_, and the _Divina
+Commedia_, is enough to show. The literary vocation he was best
+fitted for was that of a journalist or pamphleteer; and in this he
+might have won unrivalled success. His dash, his verve, his
+brilliancy of illustration, his scorching satire, would have made
+the fortune of any newspaper, and carried dismay into the enemy's
+ranks.
+
+In inquiring how far the gifts I have sought to describe qualified
+Disraeli for practical statesmanship, it is well to distinguish the
+different kinds of capacity which an English politician needs to
+attain the highest place. They may be said to be four. He must be a
+debater. He must be a parliamentary tactician. He must understand the
+country. He must understand Europe. This last is, indeed, not always
+necessary; there have been moments when England, leaving Europe to
+itself, may look to her own affairs only; but when the sky grows
+stormy over Europe, the want of knowledge which English statesmen
+sometimes evince may bode disaster.
+
+An orator, in the highest sense of the word, Disraeli never was. He
+lacked ease and fluency. He had not Pitt's turn for the lucid
+exposition of complicated facts, nor for the conduct of a close
+argument. The sustained and fiery declamation of Fox was equally
+beyond his range. And least of all had he that truest index of
+eloquence, the power of touching the emotions. He could not make his
+hearers weep. But he could make them laugh; he could put them in
+good-humour with themselves; he could dazzle them with rhetoric; he
+could pour upon an opponent streams of ridicule more effective than
+the hottest indignation. When he sought to be profound or solemn, he
+was usually heavy and laboured--the sublimity often false, the diction
+often stilted. For wealth of thought or splendour of language his
+speeches will not bear to be compared--I will not say with those of
+Burke (on whom he sometimes tried to model himself), but with those of
+three or four of his own contemporaries. Even within his own party,
+Lord Derby, Lord Ellenborough, and Lord Cairns in their several ways
+surpassed him. There is not one of his longer and more finished
+harangues which can be read with interest from beginning to end. But
+there is hardly any among them which does not contain some striking
+passage, some image or epigram, or burst of sarcasm, which must have
+been exceedingly effective when delivered. It is partly upon these
+isolated passages, especially the sarcastic ones (though the
+witticisms were sometimes borrowed), and still more upon the aptness
+of the speech to the circumstances under which it was made, that his
+parliamentary fame rests. If he was not a great orator he was a superb
+debater, who watched with the utmost care the temper of the audience,
+and said just what was needed at the moment to disconcert an opponent
+or to put heart into his friends. His repartees were often happy, and
+must sometimes have been unpremeditated. As he had not the ardent
+temperament of the born orator, so neither had he the external
+advantages which count for much before large assemblies. His voice was
+not remarkable either for range or for quality. His manner was
+somewhat stiff, his gestures few, his countenance inexpressive. Yet
+his delivery was not wanting in skill, and often added point, by its
+cool unconcern, to a stinging epigram.
+
+What he lacked in eloquence he made up for by tactical adroitness. No
+more consummate parliamentary strategist has been seen in England. He
+had studied the House of Commons till he knew it as a player knows his
+instrument--studied it collectively, for it has a collective
+character, and studied the men who compose it: their worse rather than
+their better side, their prejudices, their foibles, their vanities,
+their ambitions, their jealousies, above all, that curious corporate
+pride which they have, and which makes them resent any approach to
+dictation. He could play on every one of these strings, and yet so as
+to conceal his skill; and he so economised himself as to make them
+always wish to hear him. He knew how in a body of men obliged to
+listen to talk, and most of it tedious talk, about matters in
+themselves mostly uninteresting, the desire for a little amusement
+becomes almost a passion; and he humoured this desire so far as
+occasionally to err by excess of banter and flippancy. Almost always
+respectful to the House, he had a happy knack of appearing to follow
+rather than to lead, and when he made an official statement it was
+with the air of one who was taking them into his confidence. Much of
+this he may have learned from observing Lord Palmerston; but the art
+came more naturally to that statesman, who was an Englishman all
+through, than to a man of Mr. Disraeli's origin, who looked on
+Englishmen from outside, and never felt himself, so to speak,
+responsible for their habits or ideas.
+
+As leader of his party in Opposition, he was at once daring and
+cautious. He never feared to give battle, even when he expected
+defeat, if he deemed it necessary, with a view to the future, that the
+judgment of his party should have been pronounced in a formal way. On
+the other hand, he was wary of committing himself to a policy of blind
+or obstinate resistance. When he perceived that the time had come to
+yield, he knew how to yield with a good grace, so as both to support a
+character for reasonableness and to obtain valuable concessions as the
+price of peace. If difficulties arose with foreign countries he
+claimed full liberty of criticising the conduct of the Ministry, but
+ostentatiously abstained from obstructing or thwarting their acts,
+declaring that England must always present a united front to the
+foreigner, whatever penalties she might afterwards visit on those who
+had mismanaged her concerns. As regards the inner discipline of his
+party, he had enormous difficulties to surmount in the jealousy which
+many Tories felt for him as a new man, a man whom they could not
+understand and only partially trusted.[9] Conspiracies were repeatedly
+formed against him; malcontents attacked him in the press, and
+sometimes even in Parliament. These he seldom noticed, maintaining a
+cool and self-confident demeanour which disheartened the plotters, and
+discharging the duties of his post with steady assiduity. He was
+always on the look-out for young men of promise, drew them towards
+him, encouraged them to help him in parliamentary sharp-shooting, and
+fostered in every way the spirit of party. The bad side of that spirit
+was seen when he came into office, for then every post in the public
+service was bestowed either by mere favouritism or on party grounds;
+and men who had been loyal to him were rewarded by places or titles to
+which they had no other claim. But the unity and martial fervour of
+the Tory party was raised to the highest point. Nor was Disraeli
+himself personally unpopular with his parliamentary opponents, even
+when he was most hotly attacked on the platform and in the press.
+
+To know England and watch the shifting currents of its opinion is a
+very different matter from knowing the House of Commons. Indeed, the
+two kinds of knowledge are in a measure incompatible. Men who enter
+Parliament soon begin to forget that it is not, in the last resort,
+Parliament that governs, but the people. Absorbed in the daily
+contests of their Chamber, they over-estimate the importance of those
+contests. They come to think that Parliament is in fact what it is in
+theory, a microcosm of the nation, and that opinion inside is sure to
+reflect the opinion outside. When they are in a minority they are
+depressed; when they are in a majority they fancy that all is well,
+forgetting their masters out-of-doors. This tendency is aggravated by
+the fact that the English Parliament meets in the capital, where the
+rich and luxurious congregate and give their tone to society. The
+House of Commons, though many of its members belong to the middle
+class by origin, belongs practically to the upper class by sympathy,
+and is prone to believe that what it hears every evening at dinners or
+receptions is what the country is thinking. A member of the House of
+Commons is, therefore, ill-placed for feeling the pulse of the nation,
+and in order to do so must know what is being said over the country,
+and must frequently visit or communicate with his constituents. If
+this difficulty is experienced by an ordinary private member, it is
+greater for a minister whose time is filled by official duties, or for
+a leader of Opposition, who has to be constantly thinking of his
+tactics in the House. In Disraeli's case there was a keenness of
+observation and discernment far beyond the common. But he was under
+the disadvantages of not being really an Englishman, and of having
+never lived among the people.[10] The detachment I have already
+referred to tended to weaken his power of judging popular sentiment,
+and appraising at their true value the various tendencies that sway
+and divide a nation so complex as the English. Early in life he had
+formed theories about the relations of the different classes of
+English society--nobility, gentry, capitalists, workmen, peasantry,
+and the middle classes--theories which were far from containing the
+whole truth; and he adhered to them even when the changes of half a
+century had made them less true. He had a great aversion, not to say
+contempt, for Puritanism, and for the Dissenters among whom it chiefly
+holds its ground, and pleased himself with the notion that the
+extension of the suffrage which he carried in 1867 had destroyed their
+political power. The Conservative victory at the election of 1874
+confirmed him in this belief, and made him also think that the working
+classes were ready to follow the lead of the rich. He perceived that
+the Liberal ministry of 1868-74 had offended certain influential
+sections by appearing too demiss or too unenterprising in foreign
+affairs, and fancied that the bulk of the nation would be dazzled by a
+warlike mien, and an active, even aggressive, foreign policy. Such a
+policy was congenial to his own ideas, and to the society that
+surrounded him. It was applauded by some largely circulated newspapers
+which had previously been unfriendly to the Tory party. Thus he was
+more surprised than any other man of similar experience to find the
+nation sending up a larger majority against him in 1880 than it had
+sent up for him in 1874. This was the most striking instance of his
+miscalculation. But he had all through his career an imperfect
+comprehension of the English people. Individuals, or even an assembly,
+may be understood by dint of close and long-continued observation; but
+to understand a whole nation, one must also have sympathy, and this
+his circumstances, not less than his character, had denied him.
+
+It was partly the same defect that prevented him from mastering the
+general politics of Europe. There is a sense in which no single man
+can pretend to understand Europe. Bismarck himself did not. The
+problem is too vast, the facts to be known too numerous, the
+undercurrents too varying. One can speak only of more or less. If
+Europe had been in his time what it was a century before, Disraeli
+would have had a far better chance of being fit to become what it was
+probably his dearest wish to become--its guide and arbiter. He would
+have taken the measure of the princes and ministers with whom he had
+to deal, would have seen and adroitly played on their weaknesses. His
+novels show how often he had revolved diplomatic situations in his
+mind, and reflected on the way of handling them. Foreign diplomatists
+are agreed that at the Congress of Berlin he played his part to
+admiration, spoke seldom, but spoke always to the point and with
+dignity, had a perfect conception of what he meant to secure, and of
+the means he must employ to secure it, never haggled over details or
+betrayed any eagerness to win support, never wavered in his demands,
+even when they seemed to lead straight to war. Dealing with
+individuals, who represented material forces which he had gauged, he
+was perfectly at home, and deserved the praise he obtained from
+Bismarck, who, comparing him with other eminent figures at the
+Congress, is reported to have said, bluntly but heartily, "Der alte
+Jude, das ist der Mann."[11] But to know what the condition of
+South-Eastern Europe really was, and understand how best to settle its
+troubles, was a far more difficult task, and Disraeli possessed
+neither the knowledge nor the insight required. In the Europe of
+to-day, peoples count for more than the wills of individual rulers:
+one must comprehend the passions and sympathies of peoples if one is
+to forecast the future. This he seldom cared to do. He did not realise
+the part and the power of moral forces. Down to the outbreak of the
+American Civil War he maintained that the question between the North
+and the South was mainly a fiscal question between the Protectionist
+interests of the one and the Free Trade interests of the other. He
+always treated with contempt the national movement in Italy. He made
+no secret in the days before 1859 of his good-will to Austria and of
+his liking for Louis Napoleon--a man inferior to him in ability and in
+courage, but to whose character his own had some affinities. In that
+elaborate study of Sir Robert Peel's character,[12] which is one of
+Disraeli's best literary performances, he observes that Peel "was
+destitute of imagination, and wanting imagination he wanted
+prescience." True it is that imagination is necessary for prescience,
+but imagination is not enough to give prescience. It may even be a
+snare.
+
+Disraeli's imagination, his fondness for theories, and disposition
+rather to cling to them than to study and interpret facts, made him
+the victim of his own preconceived ideas, as his indolence deterred
+him from following the march of change and noting how different things
+were in the 'seventies from what they had been in the 'thirties. Mr.
+Gladstone said to me in 1876, "Disraeli's two leading ideas in foreign
+policy have always been the maintenance of the temporal power of the
+Pope, and the maintenance of the power of the Sultan." Unable to save
+the one, he clung to the hope of saving the other. He was possessed by
+the notion, seductive to a dreamy mind, that all the disturbances of
+Europe arose from the action of secret societies; and when the Eastern
+Question was in 1875 re-opened by the insurrection in Herzegovina,
+followed by the war of Servia against the Turks, he explained the
+event in a famous speech by saying, "The secret societies of Europe
+have declared war against Turkey"--the fact being that the societies
+which in Russia were promoting the Servian war were public societies,
+openly collecting subscriptions, while those secret "social
+democratic" societies of which we have since heard so much were
+strongly opposed to the interference of Russia, and those other secret
+societies in the rest of Europe, wherein Poles and Italians have
+played a leading part, were, if not hostile, at any rate quite
+indifferent to the movement among the Eastern Christians.
+
+Against these errors there must be set several cases in which he
+showed profound discernment. In 1843 and 1844 he delivered, in debates
+on the condition of Ireland, speeches which then constituted and long
+remained the most penetrating and concise diagnosis of the troubles of
+that country ever addressed to Parliament. Ireland has, he said, a
+starving peasantry, an alien church, and an absentee aristocracy, and
+he went on to add that the function of statesmanship was to cure by
+peaceful and constitutional methods ills which in other countries had
+usually induced, and been removed by, revolution. During the American
+Civil War of 1861-65, Disraeli was the only leading statesman on his
+own side of politics who did not embrace and applaud the cause of the
+South. Whether this arose from a caution that would not commit itself
+where it recognised ignorance, or from a perception of the superior
+strength of the Northern States (a perception which whoever visits the
+South even to-day is astonished that so few people in Europe should
+have had), it is not easy to decide; but whatever the cause, the fact
+is an evidence of his prudence or sagacity all the more weighty
+because Lord Palmerston, Lord Russell, and Mr. Gladstone, as well as
+Lord Derby and Sir Hugh Cairns, had each of them expressed more or
+less sympathy with, or belief in, the success of the Southern cause.
+
+The most striking instance, however, of Disraeli's insight was his
+perception that an extension of the suffrage would not necessarily
+injure, and might end by strengthening, the Tory party. The Act of
+1867 was described at the time as "a leap in the dark." But
+Disraeli's eyes had pierced the darkness. For half a century
+politicians had assumed that the masses of the people were and would
+remain under the Liberal banner. Even as late as 1872 it was thought
+on Liberal platforms a good joke to say of some opinion that it might
+do for Conservative working men, if there were any. Disraeli had, long
+before 1867, seen deeper, and though his youthful fancies that the
+monarchy might be revived as an effective force, and that "the
+peasantry" would follow with mediaeval reverence the lead of the landed
+gentry, proved illusory, he was right in discerning that wealth and
+social influence would in parliamentary elections count for more among
+the masses than the traditions of constitutional Whiggism or the
+dogmas of abstract Radicalism.
+
+In estimating his statesmanship as a whole, one must give due weight
+to the fact that it impressed many publicists abroad. No English
+minister had for a long time past so fascinated observers in Germany
+and Austria. Supposing that under the long reign of Liberalism
+Englishmen had ceased to care for foreign politics, they looked on him
+as the man who had given back to Britain her old European position,
+and attributed to him a breadth of design, a grasp and a foresight
+such as men had revered in Lord Chatham, greatest in the short list of
+ministers who have raised the fame of England abroad. I remember
+seeing in a Conservative club, about 1880, a large photograph of Lord
+Beaconsfield, wearing the well-known look of mysterious fixity, under
+which is inscribed the line of Homer: "He alone is wise: the rest are
+fleeting shadows."[13] It was a happy idea to go for a motto to the
+favourite poet of his rival, as it was an unhappy chance to associate
+the wisdom ascribed to Disraeli with his policy in the Turkish East
+and in Afghanistan, a policy now universally admitted to have been
+unwise and unfortunate.[14] But whatever may be thought of the
+appropriateness of the motto, the fact remains that this was the
+belief he succeeded in inspiring. He did it by virtue of those very
+gifts which sometimes brought him into trouble--his taste for large
+and imposing theories, his power of clothing them in vague and solemn
+language, his persistent faith in them. He came, by long posing, to
+impose upon himself and to believe in his own profundity. Few people
+could judge whether his ideas of imperial policy were sound and
+feasible; but every one saw that he had theories, and many fell under
+the spell which a grandiose imagination can exercise. It is chiefly
+this gift, coupled with his indomitable tenacity, which lifts him out
+of the line of mere party leaders. If he failed to see how much the
+English are sometimes moved by compassion, he did see that it may be
+worth while to play to their imagination.
+
+We may now ask again the question asked at first: How did a man,
+whatever his natural gifts, who was weighted in his course by such
+disadvantages as Disraeli's, by his Jewish origin, by the escapades of
+his early career, by the want of confidence which his habitual
+cynicism inspired, by the visionary nature of so many of his
+views,--how did he, in a conservative and aristocratic country like
+England, triumph over so many prejudices and enmities, and raise
+himself to be the head of the Conservative and aristocratic party, the
+trusted counsellor of the Crown, the ruler, almost the dictator, of a
+free people?
+
+However high be the estimate formed of Disraeli's gifts, secondary
+causes must have been at work to enable him to overcome the obstacles
+that blocked his path. The ancients were not wrong in ascribing to
+Fortune a great share in human affairs. Now, among the secondary
+causes of success, that "general minister and leader set over worldly
+splendours," as Dante calls her,[15] played no insignificant part. One
+of these causes lay in the nature of the party to which he belonged.
+The Tory party of the years between 1848 and 1865 contained a
+comparatively small number of able men. When J. S. Mill once called it
+the stupid party, it did not repudiate the name, but pointed to its
+cohesion and its resolution as showing how many things besides mere
+talent go to make political greatness. A man of shining gifts had
+within its ranks few competitors; and this was signally the case
+immediately after Peel's defection. That statesman had carried off
+with him the intellectual flower of the Conservatives. Those who were
+left behind to form the Protectionist Opposition in the House of
+Commons were broad-acred squires, of solid character but slender
+capacity. Through this heavy atmosphere Mr. Disraeli rose like a
+balloon. Being practically the only member of his party in the Commons
+with either strategical or debating power, he became indispensable,
+and soon established a supremacy which years of patient labour might
+not have given him in a rivalry with the distinguished band who
+surrounded Peel. During the twenty years that followed the great Tory
+schism of 1846 no man arose in the Tory ranks capable of disputing his
+throne. The conspiracies hatched against him might well have prospered
+could a candidate for the leadership have been found capable of
+crossing swords with the chieftain in possession. Fortune, true to her
+nursling, suffered none such to appear.
+
+Another favouring influence not understood outside England was to be
+found in the character of the party he led. In his day the Tories,
+being the party of the property-holders, and having not to advance but
+to stand still, not to propose changes but to resist them, having
+bonds of interest as well as of sentiment to draw them close together,
+possessed a cohesion, a loyalty to their chiefs, a tenacious corporate
+spirit, far exceeding what was to be found among their adversaries,
+who were usually divided into a moderate or Whig and an advanced or
+Radical section. He who established himself as the Tory leader was
+presently followed by the rank and file with a devotion, an
+unquestioning submission and confidence, which placed his character
+and doctrines under the aegis of the party, and enforced loyalty upon
+parliamentary malcontents. This corporate spirit was of infinite value
+to Disraeli. The historical past of the great Tory party, its
+associations, the social consideration which it enjoys, all went to
+ennoble his position and efface the remembrance of the less creditable
+parts of his career. And in the later days of his reign, when no one
+disputed his supremacy, every Tory was, as a matter of course, his
+advocate and admirer, and resented assaults on him as insults to the
+party. When a man excites hatred by his words or deeds, attacks on his
+character are an inevitable relief to overcharged feelings.
+Technically regarded, they are not good politics. Misrepresentation
+sometimes succeeds; vituperation seldom. Let a man be personally
+untrustworthy or dangerous, still, it is only his own words that
+damage him, at least in England and America. Even his own words,
+however discrediting, even his acts, however culpable, may, if they
+belong to a past unfamiliar to the voter of to-day, tell little,
+perhaps too little, on the voter's mind when they are brought up
+against him. The average citizen has a short memory, and thinks that
+the dead may be allowed to bury their dead.
+
+Let it be further noted that Disraeli's career coincided with a
+significant change in English politics, a change partly in the temper
+of the nation, partly in the balance of voting power. For thirty years
+after the Reform Act of 1832, not only had the middle classes
+constituted the majority of the electors, but the social influence of
+the great Whig families and the intellectual influence of the economic
+school of Cobden had been potent factors. These forces were, in the
+later part of Disraeli's life, tending to decline. The working-class
+vote was vastly increased in 1867. The old Whig light gradually paled,
+and many of the Whig magnates, obeying class sympathies rather than
+party traditions, drifted slowly into Toryism. A generation arose
+which had not seen the Free Trade struggle, or had forgotten the Free
+Trade arguments, and which was attracted by ideals other than those
+which Cobden had preached. The grievances which had made men
+reformers had been largely removed. The battle of liberty and
+nationality in Continental Europe had been in the main won, and
+Englishmen had lost the enthusiasm for freedom which had fired them in
+the days when the memory of their own struggle against the Crown and
+the oligarchy was still fresh. With none of these changes had
+Disraeli's personal action much to do, but they all enured to the
+benefit of his party, they all swelled the tide which bore him into
+office in 1874.
+
+Finally, he had the great advantage of living long. Many a statesman
+has died at fifty, and passed from the world's memory, who might have
+become a figure in history with twenty years more of life. Had
+Disraeli's career closed in 1854, he would have been remembered as a
+parliamentary gladiator, who had produced a few incisive speeches, a
+crude Budget, and some brilliant social and political sketches. The
+stronger parts of his character might have remained unknown. True it
+is that a man must have greatness in order to stand the test of long
+life. Some are found out, like Louis Napoleon. Some lose their balance
+and therewith their influence, like Lord Brougham. Some cease to grow
+or learn, and if a statesman is not better at sixty than he was at
+thirty, he is worse. Some jog heavily on, like Metternich, or stiffen
+into arbitrary doctrinaires, like Guizot. Disraeli did not merely
+stand the test, he gained immensely by it. He gained by rising into a
+position where his strength could show itself. He gained also by so
+impressing his individuality upon people as to make them accept it as
+an ultimate fact, till at length they came, not so much to blame him
+for what he did in accord with his established reputation, as rather
+to relish and enter into the humour of his character. As they
+unconsciously took to judging him by a standard different from that
+which they applied to ordinary Englishmen, they hardly complained of
+deflections from veracity which would have seemed grave in other
+persons. He had given notice that he was not like other men, that his
+words must not be taken in their natural sense, that he was to be
+regarded as the skilful player of a great game, the consummate actor
+in a great part. And, once more, he gained by the many years during
+which he had opportunities of displaying his fortitude, patience,
+constancy under defeat, unwavering self-confidence--gifts rarer than
+mere intellectual power, gifts that deserve the influence they bestow.
+Nothing so fascinates mankind as to see a man equal to every fortune,
+unshaken by reverses, indifferent to personal abuse, maintaining a
+long combat against apparently hopeless odds with the sharpest weapons
+and a smiling face. His followers fancy he must have hidden resources
+of wisdom as well as of courage. When some of his predictions come
+true, and the turning tide of popular feeling begins to bear them
+toward power, they believe that he has been all along right and the
+rest of the world wrong. When victory at last settles on his crest,
+even his enemies can hardly help applauding a reward which seems so
+amply earned. It was by this quality, more perhaps than by anything
+else, by this serene surface with fathomless depths below, that he
+laid his spell upon the imagination of observers in Continental
+Europe, and received at his death a sort of canonisation from a large
+section of the English people.
+
+What will posterity think of him, and by what will he be remembered?
+The glamour has already passed away, and to few of those who on the
+19th of April deck his statue with flowers is he more than a name.
+
+Parliamentary fame is fleeting: the memory of parliamentary conflicts
+soon grows dim and dull. Posterity fixes a man's place in history by
+asking not how many tongues buzzed about him in his lifetime, but how
+great a factor he was in the changes of the world, that is, how far
+different things would have been twenty or fifty years after his death
+if he had never lived. Tried by this standard, the results upon the
+course of events of Disraeli's personal action are not numerous,
+though some of them may be deemed momentous. He was an adroit
+parliamentary tactician who held his followers together through a
+difficult time. By helping to keep the Peelites from rejoining their
+old party, he gave that party a colour different from the sober hues
+which it had worn during the leadership of Peel. He became the founder
+of what has in later days been called Tory democracy, winning over a
+large section of the humbler classes to the banner under which the
+majority of the wealthy and the holders of vested interests already
+stood arrayed. He saved for the Turkish Empire a part of its
+territories, yet in doing so merely prolonged for a little the death
+agony of Turkish power. Though it cannot be said that he conferred any
+benefit on India or the Colonies, he certainly stimulated the imperial
+instincts of Englishmen. He had occasional flashes of insight, as when
+in 1843 he perceived exactly what Ireland needed, and at least one
+brilliant flash of foresight when he predicted that a wide extension
+of the suffrage would bring no evil to the Tory party. Yet in the case
+of Ireland he did nothing, when the chance came to him, to give effect
+to the judgment which he had formed, while in the case of the suffrage
+he did but follow up and carry into effect an impulse given by others.
+The Franchise Act of 1867 is perhaps the only part of his policy which
+has, by hastening a change that induced other changes, permanently
+affected the course of events; and it remains the chief monument of
+his parliamentary skill. There was nothing in his career to set the
+example of a lofty soul or a noble purpose. He did not raise, he may
+even have lowered, the tone of English public life.
+
+Yet history will not leave him without a meed of admiration. When all
+possible explanations of his success have been given, what a wonderful
+career! An adventurer foreign in race, in ideas, in temper, without
+money or family connections, climbs, by patient and unaided efforts,
+to lead a great party, master a powerful aristocracy, sway a vast
+empire, and make himself one of the four or five greatest personal
+forces in the world. His head is not turned by his elevation. He never
+becomes a demagogue; he never stoops to beguile the multitude by
+appealing to sordid instincts. He retains through life a certain
+amplitude of view, a due sense of the dignity of his position, a due
+regard for the traditions of the ancient assembly which he leads, and
+when at last the destinies of England fall into his hands, he feels
+the grandeur of the charge, and seeks to secure what he believes to be
+her imperial place in the world. Whatever judgment history may
+ultimately pass upon him, she will find in the long annals of the
+English Parliament no more striking figure.
+
+-----
+
+   [1] No "authorised" life of Lord Beaconsfield, nor indeed any life
+       commensurate with the part he played in English politics, has
+       yet appeared.
+
+   [2] Disraeli's family claimed to be of Spanish origin, but had come
+       from Italy to England shortly before 1748.
+
+   [3] There are few legal allusions in his novels, fewer in proportion
+       than in Shakespeare's plays, but an ingenious travesty of the
+       English use of legal fictions may be found in the _Voyage of
+       Captain Popanilla_, a satire on the English constitution and
+       government. Popanilla, who is to be tried for treason, is, to
+       his astonishment, indicted for killing a camelopard.
+
+   [4] That historical interest he did feel deeply. One might almost say
+       of him that he was a Christian because he was a Jew, for
+       Christianity was to him the proper development of the ancient
+       religion of Israel. "The Jews," he observes in the _Life of
+       Lord George Bentinck_, "represent the Semitic principle, all
+       that is most spiritual in our nature.... It is deplorable that
+       several millions of Jews still persist in believing only a part
+       of their religion."
+
+   [5] Though it has been maintained that in the Dark and Middle Ages a
+       considerable number of Gentiles found their way into Jewish
+       communities and became Judaised.
+
+       The high average of intellectual power among the Jews need
+       not be attributed to purity of race; it is sufficiently
+       explained by their history. Nor is it clear that where two
+       of the more advanced races are mixed by intermarriage, the
+       product is inferior to either of the parent stocks. On the
+       contrary, such a mixture, _e.g._ of Teutonic and Slavonic
+       blood, or of Celtic and Teutonic, gives a result at least
+       equal in capacity to either of the pure-blooded races which
+       have been so commingled.
+
+   [6] He had an intellectual arrogance, which made him dislike what may
+       be called the Radical conception of human equality. In the
+       _Life of Lord George Bentinck_ he remarks, "The Jews are a
+       living and the most striking evidence of the falsity of that
+       pernicious doctrine of modern times, the natural equality of
+       man.... All the tendencies of the Jewish race are conservative.
+       Their bias is to religion, property, and natural aristocracy."
+
+   [7] On one occasion he went so far as to deny that he had asked Peel
+       for office, relying on the fact that the letter which contained
+       the request was marked "private," so that Peel could not use it
+       to disprove his statement (_Letters of Sir Robert Peel_, by C.
+       S. Parker, vol. ii. p. 486; vol. iii. pp. 347, 348).
+
+   [8] See Sir S. Northcote's report of a conversation with Disraeli in
+       his last years (_Life of Sir Stafford Northcote_, vol. ii.).
+
+   [9] In the _Life of Lord George Bentinck_ (written shortly after
+       Peel's death), Disraeli, after dilating upon the loyalty which
+       the Tory aristocracy had displayed towards Peel, observes, "An
+       aristocracy hesitates before it yields its confidence, but it
+       never does so grudgingly.... In political connections the
+       social feeling mingles with the principle of honour which
+       governs gentlemen.... Such a following is usually cordial and
+       faithful. An aristocracy is rather apt to exaggerate the
+       qualities and magnify the importance of a plebeian leader."
+
+  [10] When he did set himself to examine the condition of the people,
+       the diagnosis, if not always correct, was always suggestive,
+       _e.g._ the account of the manufacturing districts given in
+       _Sybil, or the Two Nations_.
+
+  [11] "The old Jew, that is the man."
+
+  [12] In the _Life of Lord George Bentinck_.
+
+  [13] +Oio pepnusthai, toi de skiai aissousin+ (_Od._ x. 495). Used of
+       Tiresias, in the world of disembodied spirits.
+
+  [14] To defend Disraeli by arguing that his policy had not a fair
+       chance because his colleagues did not allow him to carry it
+       through is to admit another error not less grave, for the path
+       he took was one on which no minister ought to have entered
+       unless satisfied that the Cabinet and the country would let him
+       follow it to the end.
+
+  [15] _Inf._ vii. 77.
+
+
+
+
+DEAN STANLEY[16]
+
+
+In the England of his time there was no personality more attractive,
+nor any more characteristic of the country, than Arthur Penrhyn
+Stanley, Dean of Westminster. England is the only European country in
+which such a figure could have appeared, for it is the only country in
+which a man may hold a high ecclesiastical post and yet be regarded by
+the nation, not specially as an ecclesiastic, but rather as a
+distinguished writer, an active and influential man of affairs, an
+ornament of social life. But if in this respect he was typical of his
+country, he was in other respects unique. He was a clergyman untouched
+by clericalism, a courtier unspoiled by courts. No one could point to
+any one else in England who occupied a similar position, nor has any
+one since arisen who recalls him, or who fills the place which his
+departure left empty.
+
+Stanley was born in 1815. His father, then Rector of Alderley, in
+Cheshire, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, belonged to the family of the
+Stanleys of Alderley, a branch of that ancient and famous line the
+head of which is Earl of Derby. His mother, Catherine Leycester, was a
+woman of much force of character and intellectual power. He was
+educated at Rugby School under Dr. Arnold, the influence of whose
+ideas remained great over him all through his life, and at Oxford,
+where he became a fellow and tutor of University College. Passing
+thence to be Canon of Canterbury, he returned to the University as
+Professor of Ecclesiastical History, and remained there for seven
+years. In 1863 he was appointed Dean of Westminster, and at the same
+time married Lady Augusta Bruce (sister of the then Lord Elgin,
+Governor-General first of Canada and afterwards of India). He died in
+1881.
+
+He had an extraordinarily active and busy life, so intertwined with
+the history of the University of Oxford and the history of the Church
+of England from 1850 to 1880, that one can hardly think of any salient
+point in either without thinking also of him. Yet it was perhaps
+rather in the intensity of his nature and the nobility of his
+sentiments than in either the compass or the strength of his
+intellectual faculties that the charm and the force he exercised lay.
+In some directions he was curiously deficient. He had no turn for
+abstract reasoning, no liking for metaphysics or any other form of
+speculation. He was equally unfitted for scientific inquiry, and could
+scarcely work a sum in arithmetic. Indeed, in no field was he a
+logical or systematic thinker. Neither, although he had a retentive
+memory, and possessed a great deal of various knowledge on many
+subjects, could he be called learned, for he had not really mastered
+any branch of history, and was often inaccurate in details. He had
+never been trained to observe facts in natural history. He had
+absolutely no ear for music, and very little perception either of
+colour or of scent. He learned foreign languages with difficulty and
+never spoke them well. He was so short-sighted as to be unable to
+recognise a face passing close in the street. Yet with these
+shortcomings he was a born traveller, went everywhere, saw everything
+and everybody worth seeing, always seized on the most characteristic
+features of a landscape, or building, or a person, and described them
+with a freshness which made one feel as if they had never been
+described before. Of the hundreds who have published books on the
+Desert of Sinai and the Holy Land, many of them skilful writers or men
+of profound knowledge, he is the only one who is still read and likely
+to continue to be read, so vivid in colour, so exquisite in feeling,
+are the pictures he has given. Nature alone, however, nature taken by
+herself, did not satisfy him, did not, indeed, in his later days (for
+in his boyhood he had been a passionate lover of the mountains)
+greatly interest him. A building or a landscape had power to rouse his
+imagination and call forth his unrivalled powers of description only
+when it was associated with the thoughts and deeds of men.
+
+The largest part of his literary work was done in the field of
+ecclesiastical history, a subject naturally congenial to him, and
+to which he was further drawn by the professorship which he held at
+Oxford during a time when a great revival of historical studies was
+in progress. It was work which critics could easily disparage, for
+there were many small errors scattered through it; and the picturesque
+method of treatment he employed was apt to pass into scrappiness. He
+fixed on the points which had a special interest for his own mind as
+illustrating some trait of personal or national character, or some
+moral lesson, and passed hastily over other matters of equal or
+greater importance. Nevertheless his work had some distinctive merits
+which have not received from professional critics the whole credit
+they deserved. In all that Stanley wrote one finds a certain
+largeness and dignity of view. He had a sense of the unity of
+history, of the constant relation of past and present, of the
+similarity of human nature in one age and country to human nature in
+another; and he never failed to dwell upon the permanently valuable
+truths which history has to teach. Nothing was too small to
+attract him, because he discovered a meaning in everything, and he
+was therefore never dull, for even when he moralised he would light
+up his reflections by some happy anecdote. With this he possessed a
+keen eye, the eye of a poet, for human character, and a power of
+sympathy that enabled him to appreciate even those whose principles
+and policy he disliked. Herein he was not singular, for the
+sympathetic style of writing history has become fashionable among
+us. What was remarkable in him was that his sympathy did not
+betray him into the error, now also fashionable, of extenuating moral
+distinctions. His charity never blunted the edge of his justice, nor
+prevented him from reprobating the faults of the personages who had
+touched his heart. For one sin only he had little historical
+tolerance--the sin of intolerance. So there was one sin only which
+ever led him to speak severely of any of his contemporaries--the
+sin of untruthfulness. Being himself so simple and straightforward as
+to feel his inability to cope with deceitful men, deceit incensed
+him. But he did not resent the violence of his adversaries, for
+though he suffered much at their hands he knew many of them to be
+earnest, unselfish, and conscientious men.
+
+His pictures of historical scenes are admirable, for with his interest
+in the study of character there went a large measure of dramatic
+power. Nothing can be better in its way than the description of the
+murder of St. Thomas of Canterbury given in the _Memorials of
+Canterbury_, which, after _Sinai and Palestine_ and the _Life of
+Arnold_, may be deemed the best of Stanley's books. Whether he could,
+with more leisure for careful thought and study, have become a
+great historian, was a question which those of us who were dazzled
+by his Public Lectures at Oxford used often to discuss. The leisure
+never came, for he was throughout life warmly interested in every
+current ecclesiastical question, and ready to bear a part in
+discussing it, either in the press--for he wrote in the _Edinburgh
+Review_, and often sent letters to the _Times_ under the signature of
+"Anglicanus"--or in Convocation, where he had a seat during the
+latter part of his career. These interruptions not only checked the
+progress of his studies, but gave to his compositions an air of
+haste, which made them seem to want system and finish. The habit
+of rapid writing for magazines or other ephemeral purposes is alleged
+to tell injuriously upon literary men: it told the more upon
+Stanley because he was also compelled to produce sermons rapidly.
+Now sermon-writing, while it breeds a tendency to the making of
+rhetorical points, subordinates the habit of dispassionate inquiry to
+the enforcement of a moral lesson. Stanley, who had a touch of
+the rhetorical temperament, and was always eager to improve an
+occasion, certainly suffered in this way. When he brings out a
+general truth he is not content with it as a truth, but seeks to turn
+it also to edification, or to make it illustrate and support some
+view for which he is contending at the time. When he is simply
+describing, he describes rather as a dramatic artist working for
+effect than as a historian solely anxious to represent men and
+events as they were. Yet if we consider how much a historian gains,
+not only from an intimate knowledge of his own time, but also, and
+even more largely, from playing an active part in the events of his
+own time, from swaying opinion by his writings and his speeches,
+from sitting in assemblies and organising schemes of attack and
+defence, we may hesitate to wish that Stanley's time had been more
+exclusively given to quiet investigation. The freshness of his
+historical portraits is notably due to the sense he carried about
+with him of moving in history and being a part of it. He never
+mounted his pulpit in the Abbey or walked into the Jerusalem
+Chamber when Convocation was sitting without feeling that he was about
+to do something which might possibly be recorded in the annals of
+his country. I remember his mentioning, to illustrate undergraduate
+ignorance, that once when he was going to give a lecture to his
+class, he suddenly recollected that Mr. Goldwin Smith, then Regius
+Professor of Modern History, was announced to deliver a public
+lecture at the same hour. Telling the class that they would be
+better employed in hearing Mr. Goldwin Smith than himself, he led
+them all there. The next time the class met, one of them, after
+making some acute comments on the lecture, asked who the lecturer
+was. "I was amazed," said Stanley, "that an intelligent man should
+ask such a question, and then it occurred to me that probably he did
+not know who I was either." There was nothing of personal vanity or
+self-importance in this. All the men of mark among whom he moved
+were to him historical personages, and he would describe to his
+friends some doing or saying of a contemporary statesman or
+ecclesiastic with the same eagerness, the same sense of its being a
+fact to be noted and remembered, as the rest of us feel about a
+personal anecdote relating to Oliver Cromwell or Cardinal Richelieu.
+
+His sermons, like nearly all good sermons, will be inadequately
+appreciated by those who now peruse them, not only because they were
+composed for a given audience with special reference to the
+circumstances of the time, but also because the best of them gained so
+much by his impassioned delivery. They were all read from manuscript,
+and his handwriting was so illegible that it was a marvel how he
+contrived to read them. I once asked him, not long after he had been
+promoted to the Deanery of Westminster, whether he found it easy to
+make himself heard in the enormous nave of the Abbey church. His
+frame, it ought to be stated, was spare as well as small, and his
+voice not powerful. He answered: "That depends on whether I am
+interested in what I am saying. If the sermon is on something which
+interests me deeply I can fill the nave; otherwise I cannot." When he
+had got a worthy theme, or one which stimulated his own emotions, the
+power of his voice and manner was wonderful. His tiny body seemed to
+swell, his chest vibrated as he launched forth glowing words. The
+farewell sermon he delivered when quitting Oxford for Westminster
+lives in the memory of those who heard it as a performance of
+extraordinary power, the power springing from the intensity of his own
+feeling. No sermon has ever since so moved the University.
+
+He was by nature shy and almost timid, and he was not supposed to
+possess any gift for extempore speaking. But when in his later days he
+found himself an almost solitary champion in Convocation of the
+principles of universal toleration and comprehension which he held, he
+developed a debating power which surprised himself as well as his
+friends. It was to him a matter of honour and conscience to defend his
+principles, and to defend them all the more zealously because he
+stood alone on their behalf in a hostile assembly. His courage was
+equal to the occasion, and his faculties responded to the call his
+courage made.
+
+In civil politics he was all his life a Liberal, belonging by birth to
+the Whig aristocracy, and disposed on most matters to take rather the
+Whiggish than the Radical view, yet drawn by the warmth of his
+sympathy towards the working classes, and popular with them. One of
+his chief pleasures was to lead parties of humble visitors round the
+Abbey on public holidays. Like most members of the Whig families, he
+had no great liking for Mr. Gladstone, not so much, perhaps, on
+political grounds as because he distrusted the High Churchism and
+anti-Erastianism of the Liberal leader. However, he never took any
+active part in general politics, reserving his strength for those
+ecclesiastical questions which seemed to lie within his peculiar
+province.[17] Here he had two leading ideas: one, that the Church of
+England must at all hazards continue to be an Established Church, in
+alliance with, or subjection to, the State (for his Erastianism was
+unqualified), and recognising the Crown as her head; the other, that
+she must be a comprehensive Church, finding room in her bosom for
+every sort or description of Christian, however much or little he
+believed of the dogmas contained in the Thirty-nine Articles and the
+Prayer-Book, to which she is bound by statute. The former view cut him
+off from the Nonconformists and the Radicals; the latter exposed him
+to the fire not only of those who, like the High Churchmen and the
+Evangelicals, attach the utmost importance to these dogmas, but of
+those also among the laity who hold that a man ought under no
+circumstances to sign any test or use any form of prayer which does
+not express his own convictions. Stanley would, of course, have
+greatly preferred that the laws which regulate the Church of England
+should be so relaxed as to require little or no assent to any
+doctrinal propositions from her ministers. He strove for this; and he
+continued to hope that this might be ultimately won. But he conceived
+that in the meantime it was a less evil that men should be technically
+bound by subscriptions they objected to than that the National Church
+should be narrowed by the exclusion of those whose belief fell short
+of her dogmatic standards. It was remarkable that not only did he
+maintain this unpopular view of his with unshaken courage on every
+occasion, pleading the cause of every supposed heretic against hostile
+majorities with a complete forgetfulness of his own peace and ease,
+but that no one ever thought of attributing the course he took to any
+selfish or sinister motive. It was generally believed that his own
+opinions were what nine-tenths of the Church of England would call
+unorthodox. But the honesty and uprightness of his character were so
+patent that nobody supposed that this fact made any difference, or
+that it was for the sake of keeping his own place that he fought the
+cause of others.
+
+What his theological opinions were it might have puzzled Stanley
+himself to explain. His mind was not fitted to grasp abstract
+propositions. His historical imagination and his early associations
+attached him to the doctrines of the Nicene Creed; but when he came to
+talk of Christianity, he laid so much more stress on its ethics than
+on its dogmatic side that his clerical antagonists thought he held no
+creed at all. Dr. Pusey once said that he and Stanley did not worship
+the same God. The point of difference between him and them was not so
+much that he consciously disbelieved the dogmas they held--probably he
+did not--as that he did not, like them, think that true religion and
+final salvation depended on believing them. And the weak point in his
+imagination was that he seemed never to understand their position, nor
+to realise how sacred and how momentous to them were statements which
+he saw in a purely imaginative light. He never could be got to see
+that a Church without any dogmas would not be a Church at all in the
+sense either of mankind in the past or of mankind in the present. An
+anecdote was current that once when he had in Disraeli's presence been
+descanting on the harm done by the enforcement of dogmatic standards,
+Disraeli had observed, "But pray remember, Mr. Dean, no dogma, no
+Dean."
+
+Those who thought him a heathen would have assailed him less bitterly
+if he had been content to admit his own differences from them. What
+most incensed them was his habit of assuming that, except in mere
+forms of expression, there were really no differences at all, and that
+they also held Christianity to consist not in any body of doctrines,
+but in reverence for God and purity of life. They would have preferred
+heathenism itself to this kind of Universalism.
+
+As ecclesiastical preferment had not discoloured the native hue of his
+simplicity, so neither did the influences of royal favour. It says
+little for human nature that few people should be proof against what
+the philosopher deems the trivial and fleeting fascinations of a
+court. Stanley's elevation of mind was proof. Intensely interested in
+the knowledge of events passing behind the scenes which his relations
+with the reigning family opened to him, he scarcely ever referred to
+those relations, and seemed neither to be affected thereby, nor to
+care a whit more for the pomps and vanities of power or wealth, a whit
+less for the friends and the causes he had learned to value in his
+youth.
+
+In private, that which most struck one in his intellect was the quick
+eagerness with which his imagination fastened upon any new fact,
+caught its bearings, and clothed it with colour. His curiosity
+remained inexhaustible. His delight in visiting a new country was like
+that of an American scholar landing for the first time in Europe. A
+friend met him a year before his death at a hotel in the North of
+England, and found he was going to the Isle of Man. He had mastered
+its geography and history, and talked about it and what he was to
+explore there as one might talk of Rome or Athens when visiting them
+for the first time. When anybody told him an anecdote his susceptible
+imagination seized upon points which the narrator had scarcely
+noticed, and discovered a whole group of curious analogies from other
+times or countries. Whatever you planted in this fertile soil struck
+root and sprouted at once. Morally, he impressed those who knew him
+not only by his kindness of heart, but by a remarkable purity and
+nobleness of aim. Nothing mean or small or selfish seemed to harbour
+in his mind. You might think him right or wrong, but you never doubted
+that he was striving after the truth. He was not merely a just man; he
+loved justice with passion. It was partly, perhaps, because justice,
+goodness, honour, charity, seemed to him of such paramount importance
+in life that he made little of doctrinal differences, having perceived
+that these virtues may exist, and may also be found wanting, in every
+form of religious creed or philosophical profession. When the
+Convocation of the Anglican Church met at Westminster, it was during
+many years his habit to invite a great number of its leading members
+to the deanery, the very men who had been attacking him most hotly in
+debate, and who would go on denouncing his latitudinarianism till
+Convocation met again. They yielded--sometimes reluctantly, but still
+they yielded--to the kindliness of his nature and the charm of his
+manner. He used to dart about among them, introducing opponents to one
+another, as indeed on all occasions he delighted to bring the most
+diverse people together, so that some one said the company you met at
+the deanery were either statesmen and duchesses or starving curates
+and briefless barristers.
+
+He had on the whole a happy life. It is true that the intensity of his
+attachments exposed him to correspondingly intense grief when he lost
+those who were dearest to him; true also that, being by temperament a
+man of peace, he was during the latter half of his life almost
+constantly at war. But his home, first in the lifetime of his mother
+and then in that of his wife, had a serene and unclouded brightness;
+and the care of the Abbey, rich with the associations of nearly a
+thousand years of history, provided a function which exactly suited
+him and which constituted a never-failing source of enjoyment. To
+dwell in the centre of the life of the Church of England, and to dwell
+close to the Houses of Parliament, in the midst of the making of
+history, knowing and seeing those who were principally concerned in
+making it, was in itself a pleasure to his quenchless historical
+curiosity. His cheerfulness and animation, although to some extent
+revived by his visit to America and the reception he met with there,
+were never the same after his wife's death in 1876. But the sweetness
+of his disposition and his affection for his friends knew no
+diminution. He remembered everything that concerned them; was always
+ready with sympathy in sorrow or joy; and gave to all alike, high or
+low, famous or unknown, the same impression, that his friendship was
+for themselves, and not for any gifts or rank or other worldly
+advantage they might enjoy. The art of friendship is the greatest art
+in life. To enjoy his was to be educated in that art.
+
+-----
+
+  [16] A _Life of Dean Stanley_, in two volumes, begun by Theodore
+       Walrond, continued by Dean Bradley, and completed by Mr. R. E.
+       Prothero, appeared in 1893.
+
+  [17] When J. S. Mill was a candidate for Westminster in 1868, Stanley
+       published a letter announcing his support, partly out of
+       personal respect for Mill, partly because it gave him an
+       opportunity of expressing an opinion on the Irish Church
+       question, and of reprobating the charge of atheism which had
+       been brought against Mill.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS HILL GREEN
+
+
+The name of Thomas Green, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the
+University of Oxford, was not, during his lifetime, widely known
+outside the University itself. But he is still remembered by students
+of metaphysics and ethics as one of the most vigorous thinkers of his
+time; and his personality was a striking one, which made a deep and
+lasting impression on those with whom he came in contact.
+
+He was born in Yorkshire in 1836, the son of a country clergyman; was
+educated at Rugby School and at Balliol College, Oxford, of which he
+became a fellow in 1860, and a tutor in 1869. In 1867 he was an
+unsuccessful candidate for a chair of philosophy at St. Andrews, and
+in 1878 was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in his own
+University, which he never thereafter quitted. He was married in 1869
+and died in 1882. It was a life externally uneventful, but full of
+thought and work, and latterly crowned by great influence over the
+younger and great respect from the senior members of the University.
+
+I can best describe Green as he was in his undergraduate days, for
+it was then that I saw most of him. His appearance was striking, and
+made him a familiar figure even to those who did not know him
+personally. Thick black hair, a sallow complexion, dark eyebrows,
+deep-set eyes of rich brown with a peculiarly steadfast look, were
+the features which first struck one; and with these there was a
+remarkable seriousness of expression, an air of solidity and quiet
+strength. He knew comparatively few people, and of these only a
+very few intimately, having no taste or turn for those sports in
+which university acquaintances are most frequently made, and seldom
+appearing at breakfast or wine parties. This caused him to pass for
+harsh or unsocial; and I remember having felt a slight sense of
+alarm the first time I found myself seated beside him. Though we
+belonged to different colleges I had heard a great deal about him,
+for Oxford undergraduates are warmly interested in one another, and
+at the time I am recalling they had an inordinate fondness for
+measuring the intellectual gifts and conjecturing the future of those
+among their contemporaries who seemed likely to attain eminence.
+
+Those who came to know Green intimately, soon perceived that under
+his reserve there lay not only a capacity for affection--no man was
+more tenacious in his friendships--but qualities that made him an
+attractive companion. His tendency to solitude sprang less from
+pride or coldness, than from the occupation of his mind by subjects
+which seldom weigh on men of his age. He had, even when a boy at
+school (where he lived much by himself, but exercised considerable
+moral influence), been grappling with the problems of metaphysics
+and theology, and they had given a tinge of gravity to his manner.
+The relief to that gravity lay in his humour, which was not only
+abundant but genial and sympathetic. It used to remind us of
+Carlyle--he had both the sense of humour and an underlying Puritanism
+in common with Carlyle, one of the authors who (with Milton and
+Wordsworth) had most influenced him--but in Green the Puritan tinge
+was more kindly, and, above all, more lenient to ordinary people.
+While averse, perhaps too severely averse, to whatever was luxurious
+or frivolous in undergraduate life, he had the warmest interest in,
+and the strongest sympathy for, the humbler classes. Loving social
+equality, and filled with a sense of the dignity of simple human
+nature, he liked to meet farmers and tradespeople on their own level,
+and knew how to do so without seeming to condescend; indeed
+nothing pleased him better, than when they addressed him as one of
+themselves, the manner of his talk to them, as well as the extreme
+plainness of his dress, conducing to such mistakes. The belief in
+the duty of approaching the people directly and getting them to
+think and to form and express their own views in their own way was
+at the root of all his political doctrines.
+
+Though apt to be silent in general company, no one could be more
+agreeable when you were alone with him. We used to say of him--and his
+seniors said the same--that one never talked to him without carrying
+away something to ponder over. On everything he said or wrote there
+was stamped the impress of a strong individuality, a mind that thought
+for itself, a character ruggedly original, wherein grimness was
+mingled with humour, and practical shrewdness with a love for abstract
+speculation. His independence appeared even in the way he pursued his
+studies. With abilities of the highest order, he cared comparatively
+little for the distinctions which the University offers; choosing
+rather to follow out his own line of reading in the way he judged
+permanently useful than to devote himself to the pursuit of honours
+and prizes.
+
+He was constitutionally lethargic, found it hard to rouse himself to
+exertion, and was apt to let himself be driven to the last moment in
+finishing a piece of work. There was a rule in his College that an
+essay should be given in every Friday evening. His was, to the great
+annoyance of the dons, never ready till Saturday. But when it did go
+in, it was the weightiest and most thoughtful, as well as the most
+eloquent, that the College produced. This indolence had one good
+result. It disposed him to brood over subjects, while others were
+running quickly through many books and getting up subjects for
+examination. It contributed to that depth and systematic quality which
+struck us in his thinking, and made him seem mature beside even the
+ablest of his contemporaries. When others were being, so to speak,
+blown hither and thither, picking up and fascinated by new ideas,
+which they did not know how to fit in with their old ones, he seemed
+to have already formed for himself, at least in outline, a scheme of
+philosophy and life coherent and complete. There was nothing random or
+scattered in his ideas; his mind, like his style of writing, which ran
+into long and complicated sentences, had a singular connectedness. You
+felt that all its principles were in relation with one another. This
+maturity in his mental attitude gave him an air of superiority, just
+as the strength of his convictions gave a dogmatic quality to his
+deliverances. Yet in spite of positiveness and tenacity he had the
+saving grace of a humility which distrusted human nature in himself at
+least as much as he distrusted it in others. Leading an introspective
+life, he had many "wrestlings," and often seemed conscious of the
+struggle between the natural man and the spiritual man, as described
+in the Epistle to the Romans.
+
+In these early days, before, and to a less extent after, taking his
+degree, he used to speak a good deal, mostly on political topics, at
+the University Debating Society, where so many generations of young
+men have sharpened their wits upon one another. His speaking was
+vigorous, shrewd, and full of matter, yet it could not be called
+popular. It was, in a certain sense, too good for a debating society,
+too serious, and without the dash and sparkle which tell upon
+audiences of that kind. Sometimes, however, and notably in a debate
+on the American War of Secession in 1863, he produced, by the
+concentrated energy of his language and the fierce conviction with
+which he spoke, a powerful effect.[18] In a business assembly,
+discussing practical questions, he would soon have become prominent,
+and would have been capable on occasions of an oratorical success.
+
+Retired as was Green's life, he became by degrees more and more widely
+known beyond the circle of his own intimates; and became also, I
+think, more willing to make new friends. His truthfulness appeared in
+this that, though powerful in argument, he did not argue for victory.
+When he felt the force of what was urged against him, his admissions
+were candid. Thus people came to respect his character, with its high
+sense of duty, its simplicity, its uprightness, its earnest devotion
+to an ideal, even more than they admired his intellectual powers. I
+remember one friend of my own, himself eminent in undergraduate
+Oxford, and belonging to another college, between which and Green's
+there existed much rivalry, who, having been defeated by Green in
+competition for a University prize, said, "If it had been any one
+else, I should have been vexed, but I don't mind being beaten by a man
+I respect so much." My friend knew Green very slightly, and had been
+at one time strongly prejudiced against him by rumours of his
+heterodox opinions.
+
+So much for those undergraduate days on which recollection loves to
+dwell, but which were not days of unmixed happiness to Green, for his
+means were narrow and the future rose cloudy before him. When anxiety
+was removed by the income which a fellowship secured, he still
+hesitated as to his course in life. At one time he thought of
+journalism, or of seeking a post in the Education Office. More
+frequently his thoughts turned to the clerical profession. His
+theological opinions would not have permitted him to enter the
+service of the Church of England, but he did seriously consider
+whether he should become a Unitarian minister. It was not till he
+found that his college needed him as a teacher that these difficulties
+came to an end. Similarly he had doubted whether to devote himself to
+history, to theology, or to metaphysics. For history he had
+unquestionable gifts. With no exceptional capacity for mastering or
+retaining facts, he had a remarkable power of penetrating at once to
+the dominant facts, of grasping their connection, and working out
+their consequences. He had also a keen sense of the dramatic aspect of
+events, and a turn, not unlike Carlyle's, partly perhaps formed on
+Carlyle, of fastening on the details in which character shows itself,
+and illumining narrative by personal touches. On the problems of
+theology he had meditated even at school, and after taking his degree
+he set himself to a systematic study of the German critics, and I
+remember that when we were living together at Heidelberg he had begun
+to prepare a translation of C. F. Baur's principal treatise. As he
+worked slowly, the translation was never finished. Though not
+professing to be an adherent of the Tuebingen school, he had been
+fascinated by Baur's ingenuity and constructive power.
+
+Ultimately he settled down to metaphysical and ethical inquiries, and
+devoted to these the last thirteen years of his life. During his
+undergraduate years the two intellectual forces most powerful at
+Oxford had been the writings of J. H. Newman in the religious sphere,
+though their influence was already past its meridian, and the writings
+of John Stuart Mill in the sphere of logic and philosophy. By neither
+of these, save in the way of antagonism, had Green been influenced. He
+heartily hated all the Utilitarian school, and had an especial scorn
+for Buckle, who, now almost forgotten, enjoyed in those days, as being
+supposed to be a philosophic historian, a brief term of popularity.
+Green had been led by Carlyle to the Germans, and his philosophic
+thinking was determined chiefly by Kant and Hegel, more perhaps by the
+former than by the latter, for it was always upon ethical rather than
+upon purely metaphysical problems that his mind was bent. His
+religious vein and his hold upon practical life made him more
+interested in morals than in abstract speculation. Thus he became the
+leader in Oxford of a new philosophic school which looked to Kant as
+its master, and which for a time, partly perhaps because it
+effectively attacked the school of Mill, received the adhesion of some
+among the most thoughtful of the younger High Churchmen. Like Kant, he
+set himself to answer David Hume, and the essay prefixed to his
+edition of Hume's _Treatise on Human Nature_. along with his
+_Prolegomena to Ethics_, are the only books in which his doctrines
+have been given to the world, for he did not live to write the more
+systematic exposition he had planned. These two essays are hard
+reading, for his philosophical style was usually technical, and
+sometimes verged on obscurity. But when he wrote on less abstruse
+matters he was intelligible as well as weighty, full of thought, and
+with an occasional underglow of restrained eloquence. The force of
+character and convictions makes itself felt through the language.
+
+His mind, though constructive, was not, having regard to its general
+power, either fertile or versatile. Like most of those who prefer
+solitary musings to the commerce of men, he had little facility, and
+found it hard to express his thoughts in any other words than those
+into which his musings had first flowed. Thus even his oral teaching
+was not easy to follow. An anecdote was current how when one day he
+had been explaining to a small class his theory of the origin of our
+ideas, the class listened in rapt attention to his forcible rhetoric,
+admiring each sentence as it fell, and thinking that all their
+difficulties were being removed. When he ended they expressed their
+gratitude for the pleasure he had given them, and were quitting the
+room, when one, halting at the door, said timidly, "But, Mr. Green,
+what did you say was really the origin of our ideas?" However,
+whether they were or were not capable of assimilating his doctrines,
+his pupils all joined in their respect for him. They felt the
+loftiness of his character, they recognised the fervour of his belief.
+He was the most powerful ethical influence, and perhaps also the most
+stimulative intellectual influence, that in those years played upon
+the minds of the ablest youth of the University. But it was a singular
+fact, which those who have never lived in Oxford or Cambridge may find
+it hard to understand, that when he rose from the post of a college
+tutor to that of a University professor, his influence declined, not
+that his powers or his earnestness waned, but because as a professor
+he had fewer auditors and less personal relation with them than he had
+commanded as a college teacher. Such is the working of the collegiate
+system in Oxford, curiously unfortunate when it deprives the ablest
+men, as they rise naturally to the highest positions, of the
+opportunities for usefulness they had previously enjoyed.
+
+As his powers developed and came to be recognised, so did those slight
+asperities which had been observed in undergraduate days soften down
+and disappear. Though he lived a retired life, his work brought him
+into contact with a good many people, and he became more genial in
+general company. I remember his saying with a smile when I had lured
+him into Wales for a short excursion, "I don't know whether it is a
+sign of declining virtue, but I find as I grow older that I am less
+and less fond of my own company." From the first he had won the
+confidence and affection of his pupils. Many of them used long
+afterwards to say that his conduct and his teaching had been the one
+great example or one great influence they had found and felt in
+Oxford. The unclouded happiness of his married life made it easier for
+him to see the bright side of things, and he could not but enjoy the
+sense that the seed he sowed was falling on ground fit to receive it.
+Even when ill-health had fastened on him, and was checking both his
+studies and his public work, it did not affect the evenness of his
+temper nor sharpen the edge of his judgments of others. In earlier
+days these had been sometimes austere, though expressed in temperate
+and measured terms.
+
+I must not forget to add that although Green's opinions were by no
+means orthodox, the influence he exerted while he remained a college
+tutor was in large measure a religious influence. As the clergyman
+used to be in the English Universities less of a clergyman than he was
+anywhere else, so conversely it caused no surprise there that a lay
+teacher should concern himself with the religious life of his pupils.
+Green, however, did more, for he on two occasions at least delivered
+to his pupils, before the celebration of the communion in the college
+chapel, addresses which were afterwards privately printed, and which
+present his view of the relations of ethics and religion in a way
+impressive even to those who may find it hard to follow the
+philosophical argument.
+
+Metaphysicians are generally as little interested in practical
+politics as poets are, and not better suited for political life. Green
+was a remarkable exception. Politics were in a certain sense the
+strongest of his interests. To him metaphysics were not only the basis
+of theology, but also the basis of politics. Everything was to
+converge on the free life of the individual in a free State; rational
+faith and reason inspired by emotion were to have their perfect work
+in making the good citizen.
+
+His interest in politics was perhaps less active in later years than
+it had been in his youth, but his principles stood unchanged. He was a
+thoroughgoing Liberal, or what used to be called a Radical, full of
+faith in the people, an advocate of pretty nearly every measure that
+tended to democratise English institutions, a friend of peace and of
+non-intervention. In our days he would have been called a Little
+Englander, for though his ideal of national life was lofty, the
+wellbeing of the masses was to him a more essential part of that ideal
+than any extension of territory or power. He once said that he would
+rather see the flag of England trailed in the dirt than add sixpence
+to the taxes that weigh upon the poor. In foreign politics Louis
+Napoleon, as the corrupter of France and the disturber of Europe, was
+his favourite aversion; in home politics, Lord Palmerston, as the
+chief obstacle to parliamentary reform. The statesman whom he most
+admired and trusted was Mr. Bright. A strong sense of civic duty led
+him to enter the City Council of Oxford, although he could ill spare
+from his study and his lecture-room the time which the discharge of
+municipal duties required. He was the first tutor who had ever offered
+himself to a ward for election. The townsfolk, between whom and the
+University there had generally been little love, the former thinking
+themselves looked down upon by the latter, warmly appreciated his
+action in coming out of his seclusion to help them, and his influence
+in the Council contributed to secure some useful reforms, among
+others, the establishment of a "grammar" or secondary school for the
+city.
+
+One of the last things he wrote was a short pamphlet on freedom of
+contract, intended to justify the interference with bargains between
+landlord and tenant which was proposed by Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land
+Bill of 1881. It is a vigorous piece of reasoning, which may still be
+read with interest in respect of its application of philosophical
+principles to a political controversy. Had he desired it he might have
+gone to the House of Commons as member for the city of Oxford. But he
+had found in the Council a field for local public work, and apart from
+his constitutional indolence and his declining health, he had
+concluded that his first duty lay in expounding his philosophical
+system.
+
+Green will be long remembered in the English Universities as the
+strongest force in the sphere of ethical philosophy that they have
+seen in the second half of the nineteenth century, and remembered also
+as a singular instance of a metaphysician with a bent towards politics
+and practical life, no less than as a thinker far removed from
+orthodoxy who exerted over orthodox Christians a potent and inspiring
+religious influence.
+
+-----
+
+  [18] As I have referred to the American Civil War, it is worth adding
+       that there were no places in England where the varying fortunes
+       of that tremendous struggle were followed with a more intense
+       interest than in Oxford and Cambridge, and none in which so
+       large a proportion of the educated class sympathised with the
+       cause of the North. Mr. Goldwin Smith led the section which
+       took that view, and which included three-fourths of the best
+       talent in Oxford. Among the younger men Green was the most
+       conspicuous for his ardour on behalf of the principles of human
+       equality and freedom. He followed and watched every move in the
+       military game. No Massachusetts Abolitionist welcomed the fall
+       of Vicksburg with a keener joy. He used to say that the whole
+       future of humanity was involved in the triumph of the Federal
+       arms.
+
+
+
+
+ARCHBISHOP TAIT[19]
+
+
+England is now the only Protestant country in which bishops retain
+some relics of the dignity and influence which belonged to the
+episcopal office during the Middle Ages. Even in Roman Catholic
+countries they have been sadly shorn of their ancient importance,
+though the prelates of Hungary still hold vast possessions, while
+in France, or Spain, or the Catholic parts of Germany a man of eminent
+talents and energy may occasionally use his official position to
+become, through his influence over Catholic electors or Catholic
+deputies, a considerable political factor. This happens even in
+the United States and Canada, though in the United States the
+general feeling that religion must be kept out of politics obliges
+ecclesiastics to use their spiritual powers cautiously and sparingly.
+England stands alone in the fact that although the Protestant
+Episcopal Church is, in so far as she is established by law, the
+creature and subject of the State, she is nevertheless so far
+independent as a religious organisation that she retains a greater
+power than in other Protestant nations. State establishment, though it
+may have depressed, has not stifled her ecclesiastical life, and an
+interest in ecclesiastical questions is shown by a larger proportion
+of her laity than one finds in Germany or the Scandinavian kingdoms. A
+man of shining parts has, as an English bishop, a wide field of
+action and influence open to him outside the sphere of theology or
+of purely official duty. And the opportunities of the position
+attain their maximum when he reaches the primatial chair of
+Canterbury, which is now the oldest and the most dignified of all the
+metropolitan sees in countries that have accepted the Reformation of
+the sixteenth century.
+
+Ever since there was a bishop at Canterbury at all, that is to say,
+ever since the conversion of the English began in the seventh
+century of our era, the holder of that see has been the greatest
+ecclesiastical personage in these islands, with a recognised
+authority over all England, as well as an influence and dignity to
+which, in the Middle Ages, the Archbishops of Armagh and St. Andrews
+(primates of the Irish and Scottish Churches) practically bowed,
+even while refusing to admit his legal supremacy. To be the most
+highly placed and officially the most powerful man in the churches of
+Britain, in days when the Church was better organised, and in some
+ways stronger, than the State, meant a vast deal. The successor of
+Augustine was often called a Pope of his own world--that world of
+Britain which lay apart from the larger world of the European
+continent. Down to the Reformation, the English primates possessed a
+power which made some of them almost a match for the English kings.
+Dunstan, Lanfranc, Anselm, Thomas (Becket), Hubert, Stephen Langton,
+Arundel, Warham, were among the foremost statesmen of their time.
+After Henry VIII.'s breach with Rome, the Primate of England
+received some access of dignity in becoming independent of the
+Pope; but, in reality, the loss of church power and church wealth
+which the Reformation caused lowered his political importance. In
+the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, there were still
+some conspicuous and influential prelates at Canterbury--Cranmer,
+Pole, Whitgift, and Laud the best remembered among them. After the
+Revolution of 1688, a time of smaller men begins. The office
+retained its dignity as the highest place open to a subject, ranking
+above the Lord Chancellor or the Lord President of the Council, but
+the Church of England, having no fightings within, nor anything to
+fear from without, was lapped in placid ease, so it mattered
+comparatively little who her chief pastor was.
+
+Bishoprics were in those days regarded chiefly as pieces of rich
+preferment with which prime ministers bought the support of powerful
+adherents. But since the middle of the nineteenth century, as the
+Anglican Church has become at once more threatened and more energetic,
+as more of the life of the nation has flowed into her and round her,
+the office of a bishop has risen in importance. People show more
+interest in the appointments to be made, and ministers have become
+proportionately careful in making them. Bishops work harder and are
+more in the public eye now than they were eighty, or even fifty, years
+ago. They have lost something of the antique dignity and social
+consideration which they enjoyed. They no longer wear wigs or ride in
+State coaches. They may be seen in third-class railway carriages, or
+sitting on the tops of omnibuses. But they have gained by having
+countless opportunities opened up to them for exerting influence in
+philanthropic as well as in religious movements; and the more zealous
+among them turn these opportunities to excellent account.
+
+Whatever is true of an ordinary bishop is true _a fortiori_ of the
+Archbishop of Canterbury. He is still a great personage, but he is
+great in a new way, with less of wealth and power but larger
+opportunities of influence. He is also a kind of Pope in a new way,
+because he is the central figure of the Anglican communion over the
+whole world, with no legal jurisdiction outside England (except in
+India), but far over-topping all the prelates of that communion in the
+United States or the British Colonies. Less deference is paid to the
+office, considered simply as an office, than it received in the Middle
+Ages, because society and thought have been tinged by the spirit of
+democratic equality, and people realise that offices are only
+artificial creations, whose occupants are human beings like
+themselves. But if he is himself a man of ability and force, he may
+make his headship of an ancient and venerated church a vantage-ground
+whence to address the nation as well as the members of his own
+communion. He is sure of being listened to, which is of itself no
+small matter in a country where many voices are striving to make
+themselves heard at the same time. The world takes his words into
+consideration; the newspapers repeat them. His position gives him easy
+access to the ministers of the Crown, and implies a confidential
+intercourse with the Crown itself. He is, or can be, "in touch" with
+all the political figures who can in any way influence the march of
+events, and is able to enforce his views upon them. All his conduct is
+watched by the nation; so that if it is discreet, provident, animated
+by high and consistent principle, he gets full credit for whatever he
+does well, and acquires that influence to which masses of men are
+eager to bow whenever they can persuade themselves that it is
+deserved. During the first half of the nineteenth century the English
+people was becoming more interested in ecclesiastical and in
+theological matters than it had been during the century preceding. It
+grew by slow degrees more inclined to observe ecclesiastical persons,
+to read and think about theological subjects, to reflect upon the
+relations which the Church ought to bear to civil life and moral
+progress. Thus a leader of the Church of England became relatively a
+more important factor than he had been a century ago, and an
+archbishop, strong by his character, rectitude, and powers of
+utterance, rose to occupy a more influential, if not more conspicuous,
+position than his predecessors in the days of the Georges had done.
+
+These changes naturally made the selection of an archbishop a more
+delicate and troublesome business than it was in those good old days.
+Nobody then blamed a Prime Minister for preferring an aspirant who had
+the support of powerful political connections. Blameless in life he
+must be: even the eighteenth century demanded that from candidates for
+English, if not, according to Dean Swift, for Irish sees. If he was
+also a man of courtly grace and dignity, and a finished scholar, so
+much the better. If he was a man of piety, that also was well. By the
+time of Queen Victoria the possession of piety and of gifts of speech
+had become more important qualifications, but the main thing was
+tactful moderation. Even in apostolic days it was required that a
+bishop should rule his own house well, and the Popes esteemed most
+saintly have not always been the best, as the famous case of Celestine
+the Fifth attests. An archbishop must first and foremost be a discreet
+and guarded man, expressing few opinions, and those not extreme ones.
+His chief virtue came to be, if not the purely negative one of
+offending no section by expressing the distinctive views of any other,
+yet that of swerving so little from the _via media_ between Rome and
+Geneva that neither the Tractarian party, who began to be feared after
+1837, nor the pronounced Low Churchmen could claim the Primate as
+disposed to favour their opinions. In the case of ordinary bishops the
+plan could be adopted, and has since the days of Lord Palmerston been
+mostly followed, of giving every party its turn, while choosing from
+every party men of the safer sort. This method, however, was less
+applicable to the See of Canterbury, for a man on whose action much
+might turn could not well be taken from any particular section. The
+acts and words of a Primate, who is expected to "give a line" to the
+clergy generally and to speak on behalf of the bench of bishops as a
+whole, are so closely scrutinised that he must be prudent and wary,
+yet not so wary as to seem timid. He ought to be both firm and suave,
+conciliatory and decided. That he may do justice to all sections of
+the Church of England, he ought not to be an avowed partisan of any.
+Yet he must be able and eminent, and of course able and eminent men
+are apt to throw themselves into some one line of action or set of
+views, and so come to be considered partisans. The position which the
+Archbishop of Canterbury holds as the representative in Parliament of
+the whole Established Church, makes statesmanship the most important
+of all qualifications. Learning, energy, eloquence, piety would none
+of them, nor all of them together, make up for the want of calmness
+and wisdom. Yet all those qualities are obviously desirable, because
+they strengthen as well as adorn the primate's position.
+
+Archibald Campbell Tait (born in Scotland in 1811, died 1882) was
+educated at Glasgow University and at Balliol College, Oxford; worked
+at his college for some years as a tutor, succeeded Dr. Arnold as
+headmaster of Rugby School in 1843, became Dean of Carlisle and then
+Bishop of London, and was translated to Canterbury in 1868. It has
+been generally understood that Mr. Disraeli, then Prime Minister,
+suggested another prelate for the post, but the Queen, who did not
+share her minister's estimate of that prelate, expressed a preference
+for Tait. Her choice was amply justified, for Tait united, and indeed
+possessed in a high degree, the qualifications which have just been
+enumerated. He was, if it be not a paradox to say so, more remarkable
+as an archbishop than as a man. He had no original power as a thinker.
+He was not a striking preacher, and the more pains he took with his
+sermons the less interesting did they become. He was so far from being
+learned that you could say no more of him than that he was a sound
+scholar and a well-informed man. He was deeply and earnestly pious,
+but in a quiet, almost dry way, which lacked what is called unction,
+though it impressed those who were in close contact with him. He
+showed slight interest either in the historical or in the speculative
+side of theology. Though a good headmaster, he was not a stimulating
+teacher. Had he remained all his life in a subordinate position, as a
+college tutor at Oxford, or as canon of some cathedral, he would have
+discharged the duties of the position in a thoroughly satisfactory
+way, and would have acquired influence among his colleagues, but no
+one would have felt that Fate had dealt unfairly with him in depriving
+him of some larger career and loftier post. No one, indeed, who knew
+him when he was a college tutor seems to have predicted the dignities
+he was destined to attain, although he had shown in the theological
+strife that then raged at Oxford the courage and independence of his
+character.
+
+In what, then, did the secret of his success lie--the secret, that is,
+of his acquitting himself so excellently in those dignities as to have
+become almost a model to his own and the next generation of what an
+Archbishop of Canterbury ought to be? In the statesmanlike quality of
+his mind. He had not merely moderation, but what, though often
+confounded with moderation, is something rarer and better, a steady
+balance of mind. He was carried about by no winds of doctrine. He
+seldom yielded to impulses, and was never so seduced by any one theory
+as to lose sight of other views and conditions which had to be
+regarded. He was, I think, the first man of Scottish birth who ever
+rose to be Primate of England, and he had the cautious self-restraint
+which is deemed characteristic of his nation. He knew how to be
+dignified without assumption, firm without vehemence, prudent without
+timidity, judicious without coldness. He was, above all things, a
+singularly just man, who recognised every one's rights, and did not
+seek to overbear them by an exercise of authority. He was as ready to
+listen to his opponents as to his friends. Indeed, he so held himself
+as to appear to have no opponents, but to be rather a judge before
+whom different advocates were stating their respective cases, than a
+leader seeking to make his own views or his own party prevail. Genial
+he could hardly be called, for there was little warmth, little display
+of emotion, in his manner; and the clergy noted, at least in his
+earlier episcopal days, a touch of the headmaster in his way of
+receiving them. But he was simple and kindly, capable of seeing the
+humorous side of things, desiring to believe the good rather than the
+evil, and to lead people instead of driving them. With all his caution
+he was direct and straightforward, saying no more than was necessary,
+but saying nothing he had occasion to be ashamed of. He sometimes made
+mistakes, but they were not mistakes of the heart, and, being free
+from vanity or self-conceit, he was willing in his quiet way to admit
+them and to alter his course accordingly. So his character by degrees
+gained upon the nation, and so even ecclesiastical partisanship,
+proverbially more bitter than political, because it springs from
+deeper wells of feeling, grew to respect and spare him. The influence
+he obtained went far to strengthen the position of the Established
+Church, and to keep its several parties from breaking out into more
+open hostility with one another. He himself inclined to what might be
+called a moderate Broad Church attitude, leaning more to Evangelical
+than to Tractarian or Romanising views in matters of doctrine. At one
+time the extreme High Churchmen regarded him as an enemy. But this
+unfriendliness had almost died away when the death of his wife and his
+only son (a young man of singularly winning character), followed by
+his own long illness, stilled the voices of criticism.
+
+He exerted great influence in the House of Lords by his tact, by his
+firmness of character, and by the consistency of his public course, as
+well as by powers of speech, which, matured by long practice, had
+risen to a high level. Without eloquence, without either imagination
+or passion, which are the chief elements in eloquence, he had a grave,
+weighty, thoughtful style which impressed that fastidious audience.
+His voice was strong and sonorous, his diction plain yet pure and
+dignified, his matter well considered. His thought moved on a high
+plane; he spoke as one who fully believed every word he said. The late
+Bishop of Winchester, the famous Dr. Samuel Wilberforce, was
+incomparably his superior not only as a talker but as an orator, but
+no less inferior in his power over the House of Lords, for so little
+does rhetorical brilliance count in a critical and practical assembly.
+Next to courage, the quality which gains trust and regard in a
+deliberative body is that which is familiarly described when it is
+said of a man, "You always know where to find him." Tait belonged to
+no party. But his principles, though not rigid, were fixed and
+settled; his words and votes were the expression of his principles.
+
+The presence of bishops in the House of Lords is disapproved by some
+sections of English opinion, and there are those among the temporal
+peers who, quite apart from any political feeling, are said to regard
+them with little favour. But every one must admit that they have
+raised and adorned the debates in that chamber. Besides Tait and
+Wilberforce, two other prelates of the same generation stood in the
+front rank of speakers, Dr. Magee, whose wit and fire would have found
+a more fitting theatre in the House of Commons, and Dr. Thirlwall, a
+scholar and historian whose massive intellect and stately diction were
+too rarely used to raise great political issues above the dust-storms
+of party controversy.
+
+Perhaps no Archbishop since the Revolution of 1688 has exercised so
+much influence as Dr. Tait, and certainly none within living memory is
+so well entitled to be credited with a definite ecclesiastical policy.
+His aim was to widen the bounds of the Church of England, so far as
+the law could, without evasion, be stretched for that purpose. He bore
+a leading part in obtaining an Act of Parliament which introduced a
+new and less strict form of clerical subscription. He realised that
+the Church of England can maintain her position as a State Church
+only by adapting herself to the movements of opinion, and accordingly
+he voted for the Divorce Bill of 1859, and for the Burials Bill, which
+relieved Dissenters from a grievance that exposed the Established
+Church to odium. The Irish Church Disestablishment Bill of 1869 threw
+upon him, at the critical moment when it went from the House of
+Commons, where it had passed by a large majority, to the House of
+Lords, where a still larger majority was hostile, a duty delicate in
+itself, and such as seldom falls to the lot of a prelate. The Queen
+wrote to him suggesting that he should endeavour to effect a
+compromise between Mr. Gladstone, then head of the Liberal Ministry,
+and the leading Tory peers who were opposing the Bill. He conducted
+the negotiation with tact and judgment, and succeeded in securing good
+pecuniary terms for the Protestant Episcopal Establishment. Though he
+had joined in the Letter of the Bishops which conveyed their strong
+disapproval of the book called _Essays and Reviews_ (whose supposed
+heretical tendencies roused such a storm in 1861), and had thereby
+displeased his friends, Temple (afterwards archbishop), Jowett, and
+Stanley,[20] he joined in the judgment of the Privy Council which in
+1863 dismissed the charges against the impugned Essayists. Despite his
+advocacy of the Bill which in 1874 provided a new procedure to be used
+against clergymen transgressing the ritual prescribed by law, he
+discouraged prosecutions, and did his utmost to keep Ritualists as
+well as moderate Rationalists within the pale of the Church of
+England. He did not succeed--no one could have succeeded, even though
+he had spoken with the tongues of men and of angels--in stilling
+ecclesiastical strife. The controversies of his days still rage,
+though in a slightly different form. But in refusing to yield to the
+pressure of any section, in regarding the opinion of the laity rather
+than that of the clergy, in keeping close to the law yet giving it the
+widest possible interpretation, he laid down the lines on which the
+Anglican Established Church can best be defended and upheld. That she
+will last, as an Establishment, for any very long time, will hardly be
+expected by those who mark the direction in which thought tends to
+move all over the civilised world. But Tait's policy and personality
+have counted for something in prolonging the time-honoured connection
+of the Anglican Church with the English State.
+
+Perhaps a doubtful service either to the Church or to the State. Yet
+even those who regret the connection, and who, surveying the long
+course of Christian history from the days of the Emperor Constantine
+down to our own, believe that the Christian Church would have been
+spiritually purer and morally more effective had she never become
+either the mistress or the servant or the ally of the State, but
+relied on her divine commission only, may wish that, when the day
+arrives for the ancient bond to be unloosed, it should be unloosed not
+through an embittered political struggle, but because the general
+sentiment of the nation, and primarily of religious men throughout the
+nation, has come to approve the change.
+
+-----
+
+  [19] An admirable life of Archbishop Tait by his son-in-law, Dr. R. T.
+       Davidson (now Archbishop of Canterbury), and Canon Benham
+       appeared in 1891.
+
+  [20] They thought his public action scarcely consistent with the
+       language he had used to Temple in private.
+
+
+
+
+ANTHONY TROLLOPE[21]
+
+
+When Mr. Anthony Trollope died (December 11, 1882) at the age of
+sixty-seven, he was the best known of our English writers of fiction,
+and stood foremost among them if the double test of real merit and
+wide popularity be applied. Some writers, such as Wilkie Collins, may
+have commanded a larger sale. One writer at least, Mr. George
+Meredith, had produced work of far deeper insight and higher
+imaginative power. But the gifts of Mr. Meredith had then scarcely
+begun to win recognition, and not one reader knew his name for five
+who knew Trollope's. So Mr. Thomas Hardy had published what many
+continue to think his two best stories, but they had not yet caught
+the eye of the general public. Mrs. Oliphant, high as was the general
+level of her work, and inexhaustible as her fertility appeared, had
+not cut her name so deep upon the time as Trollope did. Everything she
+did was good, nothing superlatively good. No one placed Trollope in
+the first rank of creative novelists beside Dickens or Thackeray, or
+beside George Eliot, who had died two years before. But in the second
+rank he stood high; and though other novelists may have had as many
+readers as he, none was in so many ways representative of the general
+character and spirit of English fiction. He had established his
+reputation nearly thirty years before, when Thackeray and Dickens were
+still in the fulness of their fame; and had maintained it during the
+zenith of George Eliot's. For more than a generation his readers had
+come from the best-educated classes as well as from those who lack
+patience or taste for anything heavier than a story of adventure. In
+this respect he stood above Miss Braddon, Mrs. Henry Wood, Ouida, and
+other heroines of the circulating libraries, and also above such more
+artistic or less sensational writers as William Black, Walter Besant,
+James Payn, and Whyte Melville. (The school of so-called realistic
+fiction had scarcely begun to appear.) None of these had, like
+Trollope, succeeded in making their creations a part of the common
+thought of cultivated Englishmen; none had, like him, given us
+characters which we treat as typical men and women, and discuss at a
+dinner-table as though they were real people. Mrs. Proudie, for
+instance, the Bishop of Barchester's wife, to take the most obvious
+instance (though not that most favourable to Trollope, for he produced
+better portraits than hers), or Archdeacon Grantly, was when Trollope
+died as familiar a name to English men and women between sixty and
+thirty years of age as Wilkins Micawber, or Blanche Amory, or Rosamond
+Lydgate. There was no other living novelist of whose personages the
+same could be said, and perhaps none since has attained this
+particular kind of success.
+
+Personally, Anthony Trollope was a bluff, genial, hearty, vigorous
+man, typically English in his face, his talk, his ideas, his tastes.
+His large eyes, which looked larger behind his large spectacles, were
+full of good-humoured life and force; and though he was neither witty
+nor brilliant in conversation, he was what is called very good
+company, having travelled widely, known all sorts of people, and
+formed views, usually positive views, on all the subjects of the day,
+views which he was prompt to declare and maintain. There was not much
+novelty in them--you were disappointed not to find so clever a writer
+more original--but they were worth listening to for their solid
+common-sense, tending rather to commonplace sense, and you enjoyed the
+ardour with which he threw himself into a discussion. Though
+boisterous and insistent in his talk, he was free from assumption or
+conceit, and gave the impression of liking the world he lived in, and
+being satisfied with his own place in it. Neither did one observe in
+him that erratic turn which is commonly attributed to literary men. He
+was a steady and regular worker, who rose every morning between five
+and six to turn out a certain quantity of copy for the printer before
+breakfast, enjoying his work, and fond of his own characters--indeed
+he declared that he filled his mind with them and saw them moving
+before him--yet composing a novel just as other people might compose
+tables of statistics. These methodical habits were to some extent due
+to his training as a clerk in the Post Office, where he spent the
+earlier half of his working life, having retired in 1864. He did not
+neglect his duties there, even when occupied in writing, and claimed
+to have been the inventor of the pillar letter-box. It was probably in
+his tours as an inspector of postal deliveries that he obtained that
+knowledge of rural life which gives reality to his pictures of country
+society. He turned his Civil Service experiences to account in some of
+his stories, giving faithful and characteristic sketches, in _The
+Three Clerks_ and _The Small House at Allington_, of different types
+of Government officials, a class which is much more of a class in
+England than it is in America, though less of a class than it is in
+Germany or France. His favourite amusement was hunting, as readers of
+his novels know, and until his latest years he might have been seen,
+though a heavy weight, following the hounds in Essex once or twice a
+week.
+
+When E. A. Freeman wrote a magazine article denouncing the cruelty of
+field sports, Trollope replied, defending the amusement he loved. Some
+one said it was a collision of two rough diamonds. But the end was
+that Freeman invited Trollope to come and stay with him at Wells, and
+they became great friends.
+
+Like most of his literary contemporaries, he was a politician, and
+indeed a pretty keen one. He once contested in the Liberal interest--in
+those days literary men were mostly Liberals--the borough of Beverley in
+Yorkshire, a corrupt little place, where bribery proved too strong
+for him. It was thereafter disfranchised as a punishment for its
+misdeeds; and his costly experiences doubtless suggested the clever
+electioneering sketches in the story of _Ralph the Heir_. Thackeray
+also was once a Liberal candidate. He stood for the city of Oxford, and
+the story was current there for years afterwards how the freemen of
+the borough (not an exemplary class of voters) rose to an unwonted
+height of virtue by declaring that though they did not understand his
+speeches or know who he was, they would vote for him, expecting
+nothing, because he was a friend of Mr. Neate's. Trollope showed his
+continued interest in public affairs by appearing on the platform at
+the great meeting in St. James's Hall in December 1876, which was the
+beginning of a vehement party struggle over the Eastern Question that
+only ended at the general election of 1880. He was a direct and
+forcible speaker, who would have made his way had he entered
+Parliament. But as he had no practical experience of politics either in
+the House of Commons or as a working member of a party organisation in
+a city where contests are keen, the pictures of political life which are
+so frequent in his later tales have not much flavour of reality. They
+are sketches obviously taken from the outside. Very rarely do even the
+best writers of fiction succeed in reproducing any special and
+peculiar kind of life and atmosphere. Of the various stories that
+purport to describe what goes on in the English Parliament, none
+gives to those who know the social conditions and habits of the place
+an impression of truth to nature, and the same has often been
+remarked with regard to tales of English University life. Trollope,
+however, with his quick eye for the superficial aspects of any
+society, might have described the House of Commons admirably had he
+sat in it himself. He was fond of travel, and between 1862 and 1880
+visited the United States, the West Indies, Australia and New
+Zealand, and South Africa, about all of which he wrote books which, if
+hardly of permanent value, were fresh, vigorous, and eminently
+readable, conveying a definite and generally correct impression of the
+more obvious social and economic phenomena he found then existing.
+His account of the United States, for instance, is excellent, and did
+something to make the Americans forgive the asperity with which his
+mother had described her experiences there many years before.
+Trollope's travel sketches are as much superior in truthfulness to
+Froude's descriptions of the same regions as they are inferior in the
+allurements of style.
+
+The old classification of novels, based on the two most necessary
+elements of a drama, divided them into novels of plot and novels of
+character. To these we have of late years added novels of incident
+or adventure, novels of conversation, novels of manners, not to
+speak of "novels with a purpose," which are sermons or pamphlets
+in disguise. No one doubted to which of these categories Trollope's
+work should be referred. There was in his stories as little plot as a
+story can well have. The conversations never beamed with humour like
+that of Scott, nor glittered with aphorisms like those of George
+Meredith. The incidents carried the reader pleasantly along, but
+seldom surprised him by any ingenuity of contrivance. Character there
+was, and, indeed, great fertility in the creation of character, for
+there is hardly one of the tales in which three or four at least
+of the personages do not stand out as people whom you would know
+again if you met them years after. But the conspicuous merit of
+Trollope's novels, in the eyes of his own countrymen, is their
+value as pictures of contemporary manners. Here he may claim to
+have been surpassed by no writer of his own generation. Dickens, with
+all his great and splendid gifts, did not describe the society he
+lived in. His personages were too unusual and peculiar to speak and
+act and think like the ordinary men and women of the nineteenth
+century; nor would a foreigner, however much he might enjoy the
+exuberant humour and dramatic power with which they are presented,
+learn from them much about the ways and habits of the average
+Englishman. The everyday life to which the stories are most true
+is the life of the lower middle class in London; and some one has
+observed that although this class changes less quickly than the
+classes above it, it is already unlike that which Dickens saw when
+in the 'thirties he was a police-court reporter. Critics have,
+indeed, said that Dickens was too great a painter to be a good
+photographer, but the two arts are not incompatible, as appears
+from the skill with which Walter Scott, for instance, portrayed the
+peasantry of his own country in _The Antiquary_. Thackeray, again,
+though he has described certain sections of the upper or upper
+middle class with far more power and delicacy than Trollope ever
+reached, does not go beyond those sections, and has little to tell us
+about the middle class generally, still less about the classes
+beneath them. Trollope was thoroughly at home in the English middle
+class and also (though less perfectly) in the upper class; and his
+pictures are all the more true to life because there is not that vein
+of stern or cynical reflection which runs through Thackeray, and makes
+us think less of the story than of the moral. Trollope usually has a
+moral, but it is so obvious, so plainly and quietly put, that it does
+not distract attention from the minor incidents and little touches
+of every day which render the sketches lifelike. If even his
+best-drawn characters are not far removed from the commonplace
+this helps to make them fairly represent the current habits and
+notions of their time. They are the same people we meet in the street
+or at a dinner-party; and they are mostly seen under no more
+exciting conditions than those of a hunting meet, or a lawn-tennis
+match, or an afternoon tea. They are flirting or talking for effect,
+or scheming for some petty temporary end; they are not under the
+influence of strong passions, or forced into striking situations,
+like the leading characters in Charlotte Bronte's or George Eliot's
+novels; and for this reason again they represent faithfully the
+ordinary surface of English upper and upper middle class society:
+its prejudices, its little pharisaisms and hypocrisies, its
+snobbishness, its worship of conventionalities, its aloofness from or
+condescension to those whom it deems below its own level; and
+therewith also its public spirit, its self-helpfulness, its
+neighbourliness, its respect for honesty and straightforwardness,
+its easy friendliness of manner towards all who stand within the
+sacred pale of social recognition. Nor, again, has any one more
+skilfully noted and set down those transient tastes and fashions
+which are, so to speak, the trimmings of the dress, and which,
+transient though they are, and quickly forgotten by contemporaries,
+will have an interest for one who, a century or two hence, feels the
+same curiosity about our manners as we feel about those of the
+subjects of King George the Third. That Trollope will be read at
+all fifty years after his death one may hesitate to predict,
+considering how comparatively few in the present generation read
+Richardson, or Fielding, or Miss Edgeworth, or Charlotte Bronte, and
+how much reduced is the number of those who read even Walter Scott
+and Thackeray. But whoever does read Trollope in 1930 will gather
+from his pages better than from any others an impression of what
+everyday life was like in England in the "middle Victorian" period.
+The aspects of that life were already, when his latest books were
+written, beginning to change, and the features he drew are fast
+receding into history. Even the clergy of 1852-1862 are no longer,
+except in quiet country districts, the same as the clergy we now see.
+
+People have often compared the personal impressions which eminent
+writers make on those who talk to them with the impressions previously
+derived from their works. Thomas Carlyle and Robert Browning used to
+be taken as two instances representing opposite extremes. Carlyle
+always talked in character: had there been phonographs in his days,
+the phonographed "record" might have been printed as part of one of
+his books. Browning, on the other hand, seemed unlike what his poems
+had made a reader expect: it was only after a long _tete-a-tete_ with
+him that the poet whose mind had been learned through his works stood
+revealed. Trollope at first caused a similar though less marked
+surprise. This bluff burly man did not seem the kind of person who
+would trace with a delicate touch the sunlight sparkling on, or a gust
+of temper ruffling, the surface of a youthful soul in love. Upon
+further knowledge one perceived that the features of Trollope's
+talent, facile invention, quick observation, and a strong common-sense
+view of things, with little originality or intensity, were really the
+dominant features of his character as expressed in talk. Still, though
+the man was more of a piece with his books than he had seemed, one
+could never quite recognise in him the delineator of Lily Dale.
+
+As a painter of manners he recalls two of his predecessors--one
+greater, one less great than himself. In his limitations and in his
+fidelity to the aspects of daily life as he saw them, he resembles
+Miss Austen. He is inferior to her in delicacy of portraiture, in
+finish, in atmosphere. No two of his books can be placed on a level
+with _Emma_ and _Persuasion_. On the other hand, while he has done for
+the years 1850-1870 what Miss Burney did for 1770-1790, most critics
+will place him above her both in fertility and in naturalness. Her
+characters are apt either to want colour, like the heroines of
+_Evelina_ and _Cecilia_, or to be so exaggerated, like Mr. Briggs and
+Miss Larolles, as to approach the grotesque. Trollope is a realist in
+the sense of being, in all but a few of his books, on the lines of
+normal humanity, though he is seldom strong enough to succeed, when he
+pierces down to the bed-rock of human nature, in rendering the primal
+passions either solemn or terrible. Like Miss Austen, he attains
+actuality by observation rather than by imagination, hardly ever
+entering the sphere of poetry.
+
+His range was not wide, for he could not present either grand
+characters or tragical situations, any more than he could break out
+into the splendid humour of Dickens. His wings never raised him far
+above the level floor of earth. But within that limited range he had
+surprising fertility. His clerical portrait-gallery is the most
+complete that any English novelist has given us. No two faces are
+exactly alike, and yet all are such people as one might see any day in
+the pulpit. So, again, there is scarcely one of his stories in which a
+young lady is not engaged, formally or practically, to two men at the
+same time, or one man more or less committed to two women; yet no
+story repeats exactly the situation, or raises the problem of honour
+and duty in quite the same form as it appears in the stories that went
+before. Few people who have written so much have so little appeared to
+be exhausting their invention.
+
+It must, however, be admitted that Trollope's fame might have stood
+higher if he had written less. The public which had been delighted
+with his earlier groups of novels, and especially with that group in
+which _The Warden_ comes first and _Barchester Towers_ second, began
+latterly to tire of what they had come to deem the mannerisms of their
+favourite, and felt that they now knew the compass of his gifts.
+Partly, perhaps, because he feared to be always too like himself, he
+once or twice attempted to represent more improbable situations and
+exceptional personages. But the attempt was not successful. He lost
+his touch of ordinary life without getting into any higher region of
+poetical truth; and in his latest stories he had begun to return to
+his earlier and better manner.
+
+New tendencies, moreover, embodying themselves in new schools, were
+already beginning to appear. R. L. Stevenson as leader of the school
+of adventure, Mr. Henry James as the apostle of the school of
+psychological analysis, soon to be followed by Mr. Kipling with a type
+of imaginative directness distinctively his own, were beginning to
+lead minds and tastes into other directions. The influence of France
+was more felt than it had been when Trollope began to write. And what
+a contrast between Trollope's manner and that of his chief French
+contemporaries, such as Octave Feuillet or Alphonse Daudet or Guy de
+Maupassant! The French novelists, be their faculty of invention
+greater or less, at any rate studied their characters with more care
+than English writers had usually shown. The characters were fewer,
+almost as few as in a classical drama; and the whole action of the
+story is carefully subordinated to the development of these
+characters, and the placing of them in a critical position which sets
+their strength and weakness in the fullest light. There was more of a
+judicious adaptation of the parts to the whole in French fiction than
+in ours, and therefore more unity of impression was attained.
+Trollope, no doubt, set a bad example in this respect. He crowded his
+canvas with figures; he pursued the fortunes of three or four sets of
+people at the same time, caring little how the fate of the one set
+affected that of the others; he made his novel a sort of chronicle
+which you might open anywhere and close anywhere, instead of a drama
+animated by one idea and converging towards one centre. He neglected
+the art which uses incidents small in themselves to lead up to the
+_denoument_ and make it more striking. He took little pains with his
+diction, seeming not to care how he said what he had to say. These
+defects strike those who turn over his pages to-day. But to those who
+read him in the 'fifties or 'sixties, the carelessness was redeemed
+by, or forgotten in, the vivacity with which the story moved, the
+freshness and faithfulness of its pictures of character and manners.
+
+-----
+
+  [21] Trollope's autobiography, published in 1883, is a good specimen
+       of self-portraiture, candid, straightforward, and healthy, and
+       leaves an agreeable impression of the writer. Dr. Richard
+       Garnett has written well of him in the _Dictionary of National
+       Biography_.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN RICHARD GREEN[22]
+
+
+John Richard Green was born in Oxford on 12th December 1837, and
+educated first at Magdalen College School, and afterwards, for a short
+time, at a private tutor's. He was a singularly quick and bright boy,
+and at sixteen obtained by competition a scholarship at Jesus College,
+Oxford, where he began to reside in 1856. The members of that college
+were in those days almost entirely Welshmen, and thereby somewhat cut
+off from the rest of the University. They saw little of men in other
+colleges, so that a man might have a reputation for ability in his own
+society without gaining any in the larger world of Oxford. It so
+happened with Green. Though his few intimate friends perceived his
+powers, they had so little intercourse with the rest of the
+University, either by way of breakfasts and wine-parties, or at the
+University debating society, or in athletic sports, that he remained
+unknown even to those among his contemporaries who were interested in
+the same things, and would have most enjoyed his acquaintance. The
+only eminent person who seems to have appreciated and influenced him
+was Dean Stanley, then Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Canon
+of Christ Church. Green had attended Stanley's lectures, and Stanley,
+whose kindly interest in young men never failed, was struck by him,
+and had some share in turning his studies towards history. He
+graduated in 1860, having refused to compete for honours, because he
+had not received from those who were then tutors of the college the
+recognition to which he was entitled.
+
+In 1860 he was ordained, and became curate in London at St. Barnabas,
+King's Square, whence, after two years' experience, and one or two
+temporary engagements, including the sole charge of a parish in
+Hoxton, he was appointed in 1865 to the incumbency of St. Philip's,
+Stepney, a district church in one of the poorest parts of London,
+where the vicar's income was ill-proportioned to the claims which
+needy parishioners made upon him. Here he worked with zeal and
+assiduity for about three years, gaining an insight into the condition
+and needs of the poor which scholars and historians seldom obtain. He
+learnt, in fact, to know men, and the real forces that sway them; and
+he used to say in later life that he was conscious how much this had
+helped him in historical writing. Gibbon, as every one knows, makes a
+similar remark about his experience as a captain in the Hampshire
+militia.
+
+Green threw the whole force of his nature into the parish schools,
+spending some part of every day in them; he visited incessantly, and
+took an active part in the movement for regulating and controlling
+private charity which led to the formation of the Charity Organisation
+Society. An outbreak of cholera and period of distress among the poor
+which occurred during his incumbency drew warm-hearted men from other
+parts of London to give their help to the clergy of the East End.
+Edward Denison, who was long affectionately remembered by many who
+knew him in Oxford and London, chose Green's parish to work in, and
+the two friends confirmed one another in their crusade against
+indiscriminate and demoralising charity. It was at this time that
+Green, who spent upon the parish nearly all that he received as vicar,
+found himself obliged to earn some money by other means, and began to
+write for the _Saturday Review_. The addition of this labour to the
+daily fatigues of his parish duties told on his health, which had
+always been delicate, and made him willingly accept from Archbishop
+Tait, who had early marked and learned to value his abilities, the
+post of librarian at Lambeth. He quitted Stepney, and never took any
+other clerical work.
+
+Although physical weakness was one of the causes which compelled this
+step, there was also another. He had been brought up in Tractarian
+views, and is said to have been at one time on the point of entering
+the Church of Rome. This tendency passed off, and before he went to
+St. Philip's he had become a Broad Churchman, and was much influenced
+by the writings of Mr. F. D. Maurice, whom he knew and used frequently
+to meet, and whose pure and noble character, even more perhaps than
+his preaching, had profoundly impressed him. However, his restless
+mind did not stop long at that point. The same tendency which had
+carried him away from Tractarianism made him feel less and less at
+home in the ministry of the Church of England, and would doubtless
+have led him, even had his health been stronger, to withdraw from
+clerical duties. After a few years his friends ceased to address
+letters to him under the usual clerical epithet; but he continued to
+interest himself in ecclesiastical affairs, and always retained a
+marked dislike to Nonconformity. Aversions sometimes outlive
+attachments.
+
+On leaving Stepney he went to live in lodgings in Beaumont Street,
+Marylebone, and divided his time between Lambeth and literary work.
+He now during several years wrote a good deal for the _Saturday
+Review_, and his articles were among the best which then appeared in
+that organ. The most valuable of them were reviews of historical
+books, and descriptions from the historical point of view of cities or
+other remarkable places, especially English and French towns. Some of
+these are masterpieces. Other articles were on social, or what may be
+called occasional, topics, and attracted much notice at the time from
+their gaiety and lightness of touch, which sometimes seemed to pass
+into flippancy. He never wrote upon politics, nor was he in the
+ordinary sense of the word a journalist, for with the exception of
+these social articles, his work was all done in his own historical
+field, and done with as much care and pains as others would bestow on
+the composition of a book. Upon this subject I may quote the words of
+one of his oldest and most intimate friends (Mr. Stopford Brooke), who
+knew all he did in those days.
+
+  The real history of this writing for the _Saturday Review_ has
+  much personal, pathetic, and literary interest.
+
+  It was when he was vicar of St. Philip's, Stepney, that he wrote
+  the most. The income of the place was, I think, L300 a year, and
+  the poverty of the parish was very great. Mr. Green spent every
+  penny of this income on the parish. And he wrote--in order to
+  live, and often when he was wearied out with the work of the day
+  and late into the night--two, and often three, articles a week for
+  the _Saturday Review_. It was less of a strain to him than it
+  would have been to many others, because he wrote with such speed,
+  and because his capacity for rapidly throwing his subject into
+  form and his memory were so remarkable. But it was a severe
+  strain, nevertheless, for one who, at the time, had in him the
+  beginnings of the disease of which he died.
+
+  I was staying with him once for two days, and the first night he
+  said to me, "I have three articles to write for the _Saturday
+  Review_, and they must all be done in thirty-six hours." "What are
+  they?" I said; "and how have you found time to think of them?"
+  "Well," he answered, "one is on a volume of Freeman's _Norman
+  Conquest_, another is a 'light middle,' and the last on the
+  history of a small town in England; and I have worked them all
+  into form as I was walking to-day about the parish and in London."
+  One of these studies was finished before two o'clock in the
+  morning, and while I talked to him; the other two were done the
+  next day. It is not uncommon to reach such speed, but it is very
+  uncommon to combine this speed with literary excellence of
+  composition, and with permanent and careful knowledge. The
+  historical reviews were of use to, and gratefully acknowledged by,
+  his brother historians, and frequently extended, in two or three
+  numbers of the _Saturday Review_, to the length of an article in a
+  magazine. I used to think them masterpieces of reviewing, and
+  their one fault was the fault which was then frequent in that
+  _Review_--over-vehemence in slaughtering its foes. Such reviewing
+  cannot be fairly described as journalism. It was an historical
+  scholar speaking to scholars.
+
+  Another class of articles written by Mr. Green were articles on
+  towns in England, France, or Italy. I do not know whether it was
+  he or Mr. Freeman who introduced this custom of bringing into a
+  short space the historical aspect of a single town or of a famous
+  building, and showing how the town or the building recorded its
+  own history, and how it was linked to general history, but Mr.
+  Green, at least, began it very early in his articles on Oxford. At
+  any rate, it was his habit, at this time, whenever he travelled in
+  England, France, or Italy, to make a study of any town he
+  visited.
+
+  Articles of this kind--and he had them by fifties in his
+  head--formed the second line of what has been called his
+  journalism. I should prefer to call them contributions to history.
+  They are totally different in quality from ordinary journalism.
+  They are short historical essays.
+
+As his duties at Lambeth made no great demands on his time, he was now
+able to devote himself more steadily to historical work. His first
+impulse in that direction seems, as I have said, to have been received
+from Dean Stanley at Oxford. His next came from E. A. Freeman, who had
+been impressed by an ingenious paper of his at a meeting of the
+Somerset Archaeological Society, and who became from that time his
+steadfast friend. Green was a born historian, who would have been
+eminent without any help except that of books. But he was wise enough
+to know the value of personal counsel and direction, and generous
+enough to be heartily grateful for what he received. He did not belong
+in any special sense to what has been called Freeman's school,
+differing widely from that distinguished writer in many of his views,
+and still more in style and manner. But he learnt much from Freeman,
+and he delighted to acknowledge his debt. He learnt among other things
+the value of accuracy, the way to handle original authorities, the
+interpretation of architecture, and he received, during many years of
+intimate intercourse, the constant sympathy and encouragement of a
+friend whose affection was never blind to faults, while his
+admiration was never clouded by jealousy. It was his good fortune to
+win the regard and receive the advice of another illustrious
+historian, Dr. Stubbs, who has expressed in language perhaps more
+measured, but not less emphatic than Freeman's, his sense of Green's
+services to English history. These two he used to call his masters;
+but no one who has read him and them needs to be told that his was one
+of those strong and rich intelligences which, in becoming more perfect
+by the study of others, loses nothing of its originality.
+
+His first continuous studies had lain among the Angevin kings of
+England, and the note-books still exist in which he had accumulated
+materials for their history. However, the book he planned was never
+written, for when the state of his lungs (which forced him to spend
+the winter of 1870-71 at San Remo) had begun to alarm his friends,
+they urged him to throw himself at once into some treatise likely to
+touch the world more than a minute account of so remote a period could
+do. Accordingly he began, and in two or three years, his winters
+abroad sadly interrupting work, he completed the _Short History of the
+English People_. When a good deal of it had gone through the press, he
+felt, and his friends agreed with him, that the style of the earlier
+chapters was too much in the eager, quick, sketchy, "point-making"
+manner of his _Saturday Review_ articles, "and did not possess" (says
+the friend whom I have already quoted) "enough historical dignity for
+a work which was to take in the whole history of England. It was then,
+being convinced of this, that he cancelled a great deal of what had
+been stereotyped, and re-wrote it, re-creating, with his passionate
+facility, his whole style." In order to finish it he gave up the
+_Saturday Review_ altogether, though he could ill spare what his
+writing there brought him in. It is seldom that one finds such
+swiftness and ease in composition as his, united to so much
+fastidiousness. He went on remoulding and revising till his friends
+insisted that the book should be published anyhow, and published it
+accordingly was, in 1874. Feeling that his time on earth might be
+short, for he was often disabled even by a catarrh, he was the readier
+to yield.
+
+The success of the _Short History_ was rapid and overwhelming.
+Everybody bought it. It was philosophical enough for scholars, and
+popular enough for schoolboys. No historical book since Macaulay's
+_History_ has made its way so fast, or been read with so much avidity.
+And Green was under disadvantages from which his great predecessor did
+not suffer. Macaulay's name was famous before his _History of England_
+appeared, and Macaulay's scale was so large that he could enliven his
+pages with a multitude of anecdotes and personal details. Green was
+known only to a small circle of friends, having written nothing under
+his own signature except one or two papers in magazines or in the
+Transactions of archaeological societies; and the plan of his book,
+which dealt, in eight hundred and twenty pages, with the whole
+fourteen centuries of English national life, obliged him to handle
+facts in the mass, and touch lightly and briefly on personal traits. A
+summary is of all kinds of writing that which it is hardest to make
+interesting, because one must speak in general terms, one must pack
+facts tightly together, one must be content to give those facts
+without the delicacies of light and shade, or the subtler tints of
+colour. Yet such was his skill, both literary and historical, that his
+outlines gave more pleasure and instruction than other people's
+finished pictures.
+
+In 1876 he took, for the only time in his life, except when he had
+supported a working-man's candidate for the Tower Hamlets at the
+general election of 1868, an active part in practical politics.
+Towards the end of that year, when war seemed impending between Russia
+and the Turks, fears were entertained that England might undertake the
+defence of the Sultan, and a body called the Eastern Question
+Association was formed to organise opposition to the pro-Turkish
+policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Ministry. Green threw himself warmly
+into the movement, was chosen to serve on the Executive Committee of
+the Association, and was one of a sub-committee of five (which
+included also Mr. Stopford Brooke and Mr. William Morris the poet[23])
+appointed to draw up the manifesto convoking the meeting of delegates
+from all parts of the country, which was held in December 1876, under
+the title of the Eastern Question Conference. The sub-committee met at
+my house and spent the whole day on its work. It was a new and curious
+experience to see these three great men of letters drafting a
+political appeal. Morris and Green were both of them passionately
+anti-Turkish, and Morris indeed acted for the next two years as
+treasurer of the Association, doing his work with a business-like
+efficiency such as poets seldom possess. Green continued to attend the
+general committee until, after the Treaty of Berlin, it ceased to
+meet, and took the keenest interest in its proceedings. But his weak
+health and frequent winter absences made public appearances impossible
+to him. He was all his life an ardent Liberal. His sympathy with
+national movements did not confine itself to Continental Europe, but
+embraced Ireland and made him a Home Ruler long before Mr. Gladstone
+and the Liberal party adopted that policy. It ought to be added that
+though he had ceased to belong to the Church of England, he remained
+strongly opposed to disestablishment.
+
+When he had completed the re-casting of his _Short History_ in the
+form of a larger book, which appeared under the title of _A History of
+the English People_, he addressed himself with characteristic activity
+to a new project. He had for a long time meditated upon the _origines_
+of English history, the settlement of the Teutonic invaders in
+Britain, followed by the consolidation of their tribes into a nation
+with definite institutions and a settled order; and his desire to
+treat this topic was stimulated by the way in which some critics had
+sought to disparage his _Short History_ as a mere popularising of
+other people's ideas. The criticism was unjust, for, if there had been
+no rummaging in MS. sources for the _Short History_, there was
+abundant originality in the views the book contained. However, these
+carpings disposed his friends to recommend an enterprise which would
+lead him to deal chiefly with original authorities, and to put forth
+those powers of criticism and construction which they knew him to
+possess. Thus he set to work afresh at the very beginning, at Roman
+Britain and the Saxon Conquest. He had not advanced far when, having
+gone to spend the winter in Egypt, he caught an illness which so told
+on his weak frame that he was only just able to return to London in
+April, and would not have reached it at all but for the care with
+which he was tended by his wife. (He had married Miss Alice Stopford
+in 1877.) In a few weeks he so far recovered as to be able to resume
+his studies, though now forbidden to give to them more than two or
+three hours a day. However, what he could not do alone he did with and
+through his wife, who consulted the original sources for him,
+investigated obscure points, and wrote at his dictation. In this way,
+during the summer and autumn months of 1881, when often some slight
+change of weather would throw him back and make work impossible for
+days or weeks, the book was prepared, which he published in February
+1882, under the title of _The Making of England_. Even in those few
+months it was incessantly rewritten; no less than ten copies were made
+of the first chapter. It was warmly received by the few persons who
+were capable of judging its merits. But he was himself far from
+satisfied with it as a literary performance, thinking that a reader
+would find it at once too speculative and too dry, deficient in the
+details needed to make the life of primitive England real and
+instructive. If this had been so it would have been due to no failing
+in his skill, but to the scantiness of the materials available for the
+first few centuries of our national history. But he felt it so
+strongly that he was often disposed to recur to his idea of writing a
+history of the last seventy or eighty years, and was only induced by
+the encouragement of a few friends to pursue the narrative which, in
+_The Making of England_, he had carried down to the reign of Egbert.
+The winter of 1881 was spent at Mentone, and the following summer in
+London. He continued very weak, and was sometimes unable for weeks
+together to go out driving or to work at home. But the moment that an
+access of strength returned, the note-books were brought out, and he
+was again busy going through what his wife's industry had tabulated,
+and dictating for an hour or two till fatigue forced him to desist.
+Those who saw him during that summer were amazed, not only at the
+brave spirit which refused to yield to physical feebleness, but at the
+brightness and clearness of his intellect, which was not only as
+active as it had ever been before, but as much interested in whatever
+passed in the world. When one saw him sitting propped up with cushions
+on the sofa, his tiny frame worn to skin and bone, his voice
+interrupted by frequent fits of coughing, it seemed wrong to stay,
+but, after a little, all was forgotten in the fascination of his talk,
+and one found it hard to realise that where thought was strong speech
+might be weak.
+
+In October, when he returned to Mentone, the tale of early English
+history had been completed, and was in type down to the death of Earl
+Godwine in A.D. 1052. He had hesitated as to the point at which the
+book should end, but finally decided to carry it down to A.D. 1085,
+the date of the dispersion of the last great Scandinavian armament
+which threatened England. As the book dealt with both the Danish and
+Norman invasions, he called it _The Conquest of England_. It appeared
+after his death, wanting, indeed, those expansions in several places
+which he had meant to give it, but still a book such as few but he
+could have produced, full of new light, and equal in the parts which
+have been fully handled to the best work of his earlier years.
+
+Soon after he returned to Mentone he became rapidly worse, and unfit
+for any continuous exertion. He could barely sit in the garden during
+an hour or two of morning sunshine. There I saw him in the end of
+December, fresh and keen as ever, aware that the most he could hope
+for was to live long enough to complete his _Conquest_, but eagerly
+reading every new book that came to him from England, starting schemes
+for various historical treatises sufficient to fill three life-times,
+and ranging in talk over the whole field of politics, literature, and
+history. It seemed as if the intellect and will, which strove to
+remain till their work was done, were the only things which held the
+weak and wasted body together. The ardour of his spirit prolonged life
+amid the signs of death. In January there came a new attack, and in
+February another unexpected rally. On the 2nd of March he remarked
+that it was no use fighting longer, and expired five days afterwards
+at the age of forty-six.
+
+Short as his life was, maimed and saddened by an ill-health which gave
+his powers no fair chance, it was not an unhappy life, for he had that
+immense power of enjoyment which so often belongs to a vivacious
+intelligence. He delighted in books, in travel, in his friends'
+company, in the constant changes and movements of the world. No
+satiety dulled his taste for these things, nor was his spirit, except
+for passing moments, darkened by the shadows which to others seemed to
+lie so thick around his path. He enjoyed, though without boasting, the
+fame his books had won, and the sense of creative power. And the last
+six years of his life were brightened by the society and affection of
+one who entered into all his tastes and pursuits with the fullest
+sympathy, and enabled him, by her unwearied diligence, to prosecute
+labours which physical weakness must otherwise have arrested.
+
+He might have won fame as a preacher or as a political journalist. It
+was, however, towards historical study that the whole current of his
+intellect set, and as it is by what he did in that sphere that he will
+be remembered, his special gifts for it deserve to be examined.
+
+A historian needs four kinds of capacity. First of all, accuracy,
+and a desire for the exact truth, which will grudge no time and
+pains in tracing out even what might seem a trivial matter.
+Secondly, keen observation, which can fasten upon small points, and
+discover in isolated data the basis for some generalisation, or the
+illustration of some principle. Thirdly, a sound and calm judgment,
+which will subject all inferences and generalisations, both one's
+own and other people's, to a searching review, and weigh in delicate
+scales their validity. These two last-mentioned qualifications taken
+together make up what we call the critical faculty, _i.e._ the power
+of dealing with evidence as tending to establish or discredit
+statements of fact, and those general conclusions which are built on
+the grouping of facts. Neither acuteness alone nor the judicial
+balance alone is enough to make the critic. There are men quick in
+observation and fertile in suggestion whose conclusions are
+worthless, because they cannot weigh one argument against another,
+just as there are solid and well-balanced minds that never enlighten
+a subject because, while detecting the errors of others, they
+cannot combine the data and propound a luminous explanation. To the
+making of a true critic, in history, in philosophy, in literature,
+in psychology, even largely in the sciences of nature, there should
+go not only judgment, but also a certain measure of creative
+power. Fourthly, the historian must have imagination, not indeed
+with that intensity which makes the poet, but in sufficient volume
+to let him feel the men of other ages and countries to be living
+and real like those among whom he moves, to present to him a large and
+full picture of a world remote from himself in time--as a world
+moving, struggling, hoping, fearing, enjoying, believing, like the
+near world of to-day--a world in which there went on a private life
+of thousands or millions of men and women, vaster, more complex,
+more interesting than that public life which is sometimes all that
+the records of the past have transmitted to us. Our imaginative
+historian may or may not be able to reconstruct for us the private
+and personal as well as the public or political life of the past. If
+he can, he will. If the data are too scanty, he may cautiously
+forbear. Yet he will still feel that those whose movements on the
+public stage he chronicles were steeped in an environment of natural
+and human influences which must have affected them at every turn;
+and he will so describe them as to make us feel them human, and give
+life to the pallid figures of far-off warriors and lawgivers.
+
+To these four aptitudes one need hardly add the faculty of literary
+exposition, for whoever possesses in large measure the last three, or
+even the last alone, cannot fail to interest his readers; and what
+more does literary talent mean?
+
+Distinguishing these several aptitudes, historians will be found to
+fall into two classes, according as there predominates in them the
+critical or the imaginative faculty. Though no one can attain
+greatness without both gifts, still they may be present in very
+unequal degrees. Some will investigate tangible facts and their
+relations with special care, occupying themselves chiefly with that
+constitutional and diplomatic side of history in which positive
+conclusions are (from the comparative abundance of records) most
+easily reached. Others will be drawn towards the dramatic and personal
+elements in history, primarily as they appear in the lives of famous
+individual men, secondarily as they are seen, more dimly but not less
+impressively, in groups and masses of men, and in a nation at large,
+and will also observe and dwell upon incidents of private life or
+features of social and religious custom, which the student of stately
+politics passes by.
+
+As Coleridge, when he divided thinkers into two classes, took Plato
+as the type of one, Aristotle of the other, so we may take as
+representatives of these two tendencies among historians Thucydides
+for the critical and philosophical, Herodotus for the imaginative
+and picturesque. The former does not indeed want a sense of the
+dramatic grandeur of a situation; his narrative of the later part of
+the Athenian expedition against Syracuse is like a piece of Aeschylus
+in prose. So too Herodotus is by no means without a philosophical
+view of things, nor without a critical instinct, although his
+generalisations are sometimes vague or fanciful, and his critical
+apparatus rudimentary. Each is so splendid because each is wide,
+with the great gifts largely, although not equally, developed.
+
+Green was an historian of the Herodotean type. He possessed capacities
+which belong to the other type also; he was critical, sceptical,
+perhaps too sceptical, and philosophical. Yet the imaginative quality
+was the leading and distinctive quality in his mind and writing. An
+ordinary reader, if asked what was the main impression given by the
+_Short History of the English People_, would answer that it was the
+impression of picturesqueness and vividity--picturesqueness in
+attention to the externals of the life described, vividity in the
+presentation of that life itself.
+
+I remember to have once, in talking with Green about Greek history,
+told him how I had heard Mr. Jowett, in discussing the ancient
+historians, disparage Herodotus and declare him unworthy to be placed
+near Thucydides. Green answered, almost with indignation, that to say
+such a thing showed that eminent scholars might have little feeling
+for history. "Great as Thucydides is," he said, "Herodotus is far
+greater, or at any rate far more precious. His view was so much
+wider." I forget the rest of the conversation, but what he meant was
+that Herodotus, to whom everything in the world was interesting, and
+who has told us something about every country he visited or heard of,
+had a more fruitful conception of history than his Athenian successor,
+who practically confined himself to politics in the narrower sense of
+the term, and that even the wisdom of the latter is not so valuable to
+us as the flood of miscellaneous information which Herodotus pours out
+about everything in the early world--a world about which we should
+know comparatively little if his book had not been preserved.
+
+This deliverance was thoroughly characteristic of Green's own view of
+history. Everything was interesting to him because his imagination
+laid hold of everything. When he travelled, nothing escaped his quick
+eye, perpetually ranging over the aspects of places and society. When
+he went out to dinner, he noted every person present whom he had not
+known before, and could tell you afterwards something about them. He
+had a theory, so to speak, about each of them, and indeed about every
+one with whom he exchanged a dozen words. When he read the newspaper,
+he seemed to squeeze all the juice out of it in a few minutes. Nor was
+it merely the large events that fixed his mind; he drew from stray
+notices of minor current matters evidence of principles or tendencies
+which escaped other people's eyes. You never left him without having
+new light thrown upon the questions of the hour. His memory was
+retentive, but more remarkable was the sustained keenness of
+apprehension with which he read, and which made him fasten upon
+everything in a book or in talk which was significant, and could be
+made the basis for an illustration of some view. He had the Herodotean
+quality of reckoning nothing, however small or apparently remote from
+the main studies of his life, to be trivial or unfruitful. His
+imagination vitalised the small things, and found a place for them in
+the pictures he was always sketching out.
+
+As this faculty of discerning hidden meanings and relations was one
+index and consequence of his imaginative power, so another was found
+in that artistic gift to which I have referred. To give literary form
+to everything was a necessity of his intellect. He could not tell an
+anecdote or repeat a conversation without unconsciously dramatising
+it, putting into people's mouths better phrases than they would have
+themselves employed, and giving a finer point to the moral which the
+incident expressed. Verbal accuracy suffered, but what he thought the
+inner truth came out the more fully.
+
+Though he wrote very fast, and in the most familiar way, the style of
+his more serious letters was as good, I might say as finished, as that
+of his books. Every one of them had a beginning, middle, and end. The
+ideas were developed in an apt and graceful order, the sentences could
+all be construed, the diction was choice. It was the same with the
+short articles which he at one time used to write for the _Saturday
+Review_. They are little essays, some of them worthy to live not only
+for the excellent matter they contain, but for the delicate refinement
+of their form. Yet they were all written swiftly, and sometimes in the
+midst of physical exhaustion. The friend I have previously quoted
+describes the genesis of one. Green had reached the town of Troyes
+early one morning with two companions, and immediately started off to
+explore it, darting hither and thither through the streets like a dog
+trying to find a scent. In two or three hours the examination was
+complete. The friends lunched together, took the train on to Basel,
+got there late, and went off to bed. Green, however, wrote before he
+slept, and laid on the breakfast-table next morning, an article on
+Troyes, in which its characteristic features were brought out and
+connected with its fortunes and those of the Counts of Champagne
+during some centuries, an article which was really a history in
+miniature. Then they went out together to look at Basel, and being
+asked some question about that city he gave on the spur of the moment
+a sketch of its growth and character equally vivid and equally
+systematic, grouping all he had to say round two or three leading
+theories. Yet he had never been in either place before, and had not
+made a special study of either. He could apparently have done the same
+for many another town in France or the Rhineland.
+
+Nothing struck one so much in daily intercourse with him as his
+passionate interest in human life. The same quickness of sympathy
+which had served him well in his work among the East End poor, enabled
+him to pour feeling into the figures of a bygone age, and become the
+most human, and in so far the most real and touching, of all who have
+dealt with English history. Whether or not his portraits are true,
+they always seem to breathe.
+
+Men and women--that is to say, such of them as have characteristics
+pronounced enough to make them classifiable--may be divided into those
+whose primary interests are in nature and what relates to nature, and
+those whose primary interests are in and for man. Green was the most
+striking type I have known of the latter class, not merely because his
+human interests were strong, but also because they excluded, to a
+degree singular in a mind so versatile, interests in purely natural
+things. He did not seem to care for or seek to know any of the
+sciences of nature[24] except in so far as they bore directly upon
+man's life, and were capable of explaining it or of serving it. He had
+a keen eye for country, for the direction and character of hills, the
+position and influence of rivers, forests, and marshes, of changes in
+the line of land and sea. Readers of _The Making of England_ will
+recall the picture of the physical aspects of Britain when the
+Teutonic invaders entered it as an unsurpassed piece of reconstructive
+description. So on a battle-field or in an historical town, his vision
+of the features of the ground or the site was unerring. But he
+perceived and enjoyed natural beauty chiefly in reference to human
+life. The study of the battle-field and the town site were aids to the
+comprehension of historical events. The exquisite landscape was
+exquisite because it was associated with the people dwelling there,
+with the processes of their political growth, with their ideas or
+their social usages. I remember to have had from him the most vivid
+descriptions of the towns of the Riviera and of Capri, where he used
+to pass the winter, but he never touched on anything which did not
+illustrate or intertwine itself with the life of the people, leaving
+one uninformed on matters purely physical. Facts about the character
+of the mountains, the relation of their ranges to one another, or
+their rocks, or the trees and flowers of their upper regions, the
+prospects their summits command, the scenes of beauty in their glens,
+or beside their wood-embosomed lakes, all, in fact, which the mountain
+lover delights in, and which are to him a part of the mountain ardour,
+of the passion for pure nature unsullied by the presence of man--all
+this was cold to him. But as soon as a touch of human life fell like a
+sunbeam across the landscape, all became warm and lovable.
+
+It was the same with art. With an historian's delight in the creative
+ages and their work, he had a fondness for painting and sculpture, and
+could so describe what he saw in the galleries and churches of Italy
+as to bring out meanings one had not perceived before. But here, too,
+it was the human element that fascinated him. Technical merits, though
+he observed them, as he observed most things, were forgotten; he dwelt
+only on what the picture expressed or revealed. Pure landscape
+painting gave him little pleasure.
+
+It seems a truism to say that one who writes history ought to care
+for all that bears upon man in the present in order that he may
+comprehend what bore upon him in the past. This roaring loom of
+Time, these complex physical and moral forces playing round us, and
+driving us hither and thither by such a strange and intricate
+interlacement of movements that we seem to perceive no more than what
+is next us, and are unable to say whither we are tending, ought to
+be always before the historian's mind. But there are few who have
+tried, as Green tried, to follow every flash of the shuttle, and to
+discover a direction and a relation amidst apparent confusion, for
+there are few who have taken so wide a view of the historian's
+functions, and have so distinctly set before them as their object the
+comprehension and realisation and description of the whole field
+of bygone human life. The Past was all present to him in this sense,
+that he saw and felt in it not only those large events which
+annalists or state papers have recorded, but the everyday life of
+the people, their ideas, their habits, their external surroundings.
+And the Present was always as if past to him in this sense, that in
+spite of his strong political feelings, he looked at it with the eye
+of a philosophical observer, trying to disengage principles from
+details, permanent tendencies from passing outbursts. His imagination
+visualised, so to speak, the phenomena as in a picture; his
+speculative faculty tried to harmonise them, measure them, and
+forecast their effects. Hence it was a necessity to him to know
+what was passing in the world. The first thing he did every day,
+whatever other pressure there might be on him, was to read the daily
+newspaper. The last thing that he ceased to read, when what remained
+of life began to be counted by hours, was the daily newspaper. This
+warm interest in mankind is the keynote of his _History of the
+English People_. It is the whole people that is ever present to him,
+as it had been present before to few other historians.
+
+Such power of imagination and sympathy as I have endeavoured to
+describe is enough to make a brilliant writer, yet not necessarily a
+great historian. One must see how far the other qualifications,
+accuracy, acuteness of observation, and judgment, are also brought
+into action.
+
+His accuracy has been much impeached. When the first burst of applause
+that welcomed the _Short History_ had subsided, several critics began
+to attack it on the score of minor errors. They pointed out a number
+of statements of fact which were doubtful, and others which were
+incorrect, and spread in some quarters the impression that Green was a
+careless and untrustworthy writer. I do not deny that there are in the
+first editions of the _Short History_ some assertions made more
+positively than the evidence warrants, some pictures drawn from
+exceedingly slender materials. Mr. Skene remarks of the account given
+of the battle between the Jutes and the Britons which took place in
+the middle of the fifth century, somewhere near Aylesford in Kent, and
+about which we really know scarcely anything, "Mr. Green describes it
+as if he had been present." The temptation to such liberties is strong
+where the treatment of a period is summary. A writer who compresses
+the whole history of England into eight hundred pages of small
+octavo, making his narrative not a bare narrative but a picture full
+of colour and incident--incident which, for brevity's sake, must often
+be given by allusion--cannot be always interrupting the current of the
+story to indicate doubts or quote authorities for every statement in
+which there may be an element of conjecture; and it is probable that
+when the authorities are scrutinised their result will sometimes
+appear different from that which the author has presented. On this
+head the _Short History_ may be admitted to have occasionally
+purchased vividity at the price of exactitude. Of mistakes, strictly
+so called--_i.e._ statements demonstrably incorrect and therefore
+ascribable to haste or carelessness--there are enough to make a show
+under the hands of a hostile critic, yet not more than one is prepared
+to expect from any but the most careful scholars. The book falls far
+short of the accuracy of Thirlwall or Ranke or Stubbs, short even of
+the accuracy of Gibbon or Carlyle; but it is not greatly below the
+standard of Grote or Macaulay or Robertson, it is equal to the
+standard of Milman, above that of David Hume. I take famous names, and
+could put a better face on the matter by choosing for comparison
+divers contemporary writers whose literary eminence is higher than
+their historical. And Green's mistakes, although pretty numerous, were
+(for they have been corrected in later editions) nearly all in small
+matters. He puts an event, let us say, in 1340 which happened in the
+November of 1339; he calls a man John whose name was William. These
+are mistakes to the eye of a civil service examiner, but they seldom
+make any difference to the general reader, for they do not affect the
+doctrines and pictures which the book contains, and in which lies its
+permanent value as well as its literary charm. As Bishop Stubbs says,
+"Like other people, Green makes mistakes sometimes; but scarcely ever
+does the correction of his mistakes affect either the essence of the
+picture or the force of the argument.... All his work was real and
+original work; few people besides those who knew him well would see
+under the charming ease and vivacity of his style the deep research
+and sustained industry of the laborious student." It may be added that
+Green's later and more detailed works, _The Making of England_ and
+_The Conquest of England_, though they contain plenty of debatable
+matter, as in the paucity of authentic data any such book must do,
+have been charged with few errors in matters of fact.
+
+In considering his critical gift, it is well to distinguish those two
+elements of acute perception and sober judgment which I have already
+specified, for he possessed the former in larger measure than the
+latter. The same activity of mind which made him notice everything
+while travelling or entering a company of strangers, played
+incessantly upon the historical data of his work, and supplied him
+with endless theories as to the meaning of a statement, the source it
+came from, the way it had been transmitted, the conditions under which
+it was made. No one could be more acute and penetrating in what the
+Germans call _Quellenforschung_, the collection and investigation and
+testing of the sources of history, nor could any one be more
+painstaking. Errors of view, apart from those trivial inaccuracies
+already referred to, did not arise from an indolence that left any
+stone unturned, but rather from an occupation with the leading idea
+which had drawn his attention away from the details of time and place.
+The ingenuity with which he built up theories was as admirable as the
+art with which he stated them. People whom that art fascinated
+sometimes fancied that the charm lay entirely in the style. But the
+style was only a part of the craftsmanship. The facility in
+theorising, the power of grouping facts under new aspects, the skill
+in gathering and sifting evidence, were as remarkable as those
+artistic qualities which expressed themselves in the paragraphs and
+sentences and phrases. What danger there was arose from this
+fecundity. His mind was so fertile, could see so much in a theory and
+apply it so dexterously, that his judgment was sometimes dazzled by
+the brilliance of his ingenuity. I do not think he loved his theories
+specially because they were his own, for he often modified them, and
+was ready to consider any one else's suggestions; but he had a passion
+for light, and when a new view seemed to him to explain things
+previously dark, he wanted the patience to suspend his judgment and
+abide in uncertainty. Some of his hypotheses he himself dropped. Some
+others he probably would have dropped, as the authorities he respected
+have not embraced them. Others have made their way into general
+acceptance, and may become still more useful as future research works
+them out. But, whether right or wrong, they were instructive. Every
+one of them is based upon facts whose importance had not been so fully
+seen before, and suggests a point of view worth considering. Green's
+view may sometimes appear fanciful: it is never foolish, or
+superficial, or perverse. And so far from being credulous, his natural
+tendency was towards doubt.
+
+Inventive as his mind was, it was also solvent and sceptical. Seldom
+is a strong imagination coupled with so unsparing a criticism as
+that which he applied to the materials on which the constructive
+faculty had to work. His later tendencies were rather towards
+scepticism, and towards what one may call a severe and ascetic view
+of history. While writing _The Making of England_ and _The Conquest
+of England_, he used to lament the scantiness of the data and the
+barren dryness which he feared the books would consequently show.
+"How am I to make anything of these meagre entries of marches and
+battles which are the only materials for the history of whole
+centuries? Here are the Norsemen and Danes ravaging and occupying
+the country; we learn hardly anything about them from English
+sources, and nothing at all from Danish. How can one conceive and
+describe them? how have any comprehension of what England was like in
+the districts the Northmen took and ruled?" I tried to get him to
+work at the Norse Sagas, and remember in particular to have
+entreated him when he came to the battle of Brunanburh to eke out
+the pitifully scanty records of that fight from the account given of
+it in the story of the Icelandic hero, Egil, son of Skallagrim. But
+he answered that the Saga was unhistorical, a bit of legend
+written down more than a century after the events, and that he
+could not, by using it in the text, appear to trust it, or to mix up
+authentic history with what was possibly fable. It was urged that he
+could guard himself in a note from being supposed to take it for more
+than what it was, a most picturesque embellishment of his tale. But
+he stood firm. Throughout these two last books, he steadily
+refrained from introducing any matter, however lively or romantic,
+which could not stand the test of his stringent criticism, and used
+laughingly to tell how Dean Stanley had long ago said to him, after
+reading one of his earliest pieces, "I see you are in danger of
+growing picturesque. Beware of it. I have suffered for it."
+
+If in these later years he reined in his imagination more tightly, the
+change was due to no failing in his ingenuity. Nothing in his work
+shows higher constructive ability than _The Making of England_. He had
+to deal with a time which has left us scarcely any authentic records,
+and to piece together his narrative and his picture of the country out
+of these records, and the indications, faint and scattered, and often
+capable of several interpretations, which are supplied by the remains
+of Roman roads and villas, the names of places, the boundaries of
+local divisions, the casual statements of writers many centuries
+later. What he has given us remains an enduring witness to his
+historical power. For here it is not a question of mere brilliance of
+style. The result is due to patience, penetration, and the careful
+weighing of evidence, joined to that faculty of realising things in
+the concrete by which a picture is conjured up out of a mass of
+phenomena, everything falling into its place under laws which seem to
+prove themselves as soon as they are stated.
+
+Of his style nothing need be said, for his readers have felt its
+charm. But it deserves to be remarked that this accomplished master of
+words had little verbal memory. He used to say that he could never
+recollect a phrase in its exact form, and in his books he often
+unconsciously varied, writing from memory, some expression whose
+precise form is on record. Nor had he any turn for languages. German
+he knew scarcely at all, a fact which makes the range of his
+historical knowledge appear more striking; and though he had spent
+several winters in Italy, he could not speak Italian except so far as
+he needed it for the inn or the railway. The want of mere verbal
+memory partly accounts for this deficiency, but it was not unconnected
+with the vehemence of his interest in the substance of things. He was
+so anxious to get at the kernel that he could not stop to examine the
+nut. In this absence of linguistic gifts, as well as in the keenness
+of his observation (and in his shortsightedness), he resembled Dean
+Stanley, who, though he had travelled in and brought back all that was
+best worth knowing from every country in Europe, had no facility in
+any language but his own.
+
+Green was not one of those whose personality is unlike their books,
+for there was in both the same fertility, the same vivacity, the
+same quickness of sympathy. Nevertheless, his conversation seemed to
+give an even higher impression of intellectual power than did his
+writings, because it was so swift and so spontaneous. Such talk has
+rarely been heard in our time, so gay was it, so vivid, so various,
+so full of anecdote and illustration, so acute in criticism, so
+candid in consideration, so graphic in description, so abundant in
+sympathy, so flashing in insight, so full of colour and emotion as
+well as of knowledge and thought. One had to forbid one's self to
+visit him in the evening, because it was impossible to get away before
+two o'clock in the morning. And, unlike many famous talkers, he was
+just as willing to listen as to speak. One of the charms of his
+company was that it made a man feel better than his ordinary self.
+His appreciation of whatever had any worth in it, his comments and
+replies, so stimulated the interlocutor's mind that it moved faster
+and could hit upon apter expressions than at any other time. The
+same gifts which shone in his conversation, lucid arrangement of
+ideas, ready command of words, and a power in perceiving the
+tendencies of those whom he addressed, would have made him an
+admirable public speaker. I do not remember that he ever did
+speak, in his later years, to any audience larger than a committee
+of twenty. But he was an eloquent preacher. The first time I ever
+saw him was in St. Philip's Church at Stepney about 1866, and I
+shall never forget the impression made on me by the impassioned
+sentences that rang through the church from the fiery little figure
+in the pulpit with its thin face and bright black eyes.
+
+What Green accomplished seems to those who used to listen to him
+little in comparison with what he might have done had longer life
+and a more robust body been granted him. Some of his finest gifts
+would not have found their full scope till he came to treat of a
+period where the materials for history are ample, and where he
+could have allowed himself space to deal with them--such a period,
+for instance, as that of his early choice, the Angevin kings of
+England. Yet, even basing themselves on what he has done, they may
+claim for him a place among the foremost writers of his time. He
+left behind him no one who combined so many of the best gifts. There
+were among his contemporaries historians more learned and equally
+industrious. There were two or three whose accuracy was more
+scrupulous, their judgment more uniformly sober and cautious. But
+there was no one in whom so much knowledge and so wide a range of
+interests were united to such ingenuity, acuteness, and originality,
+as well as to such a power of presenting results in rich, clear,
+pictorial language. A master of style may be a worthless historian.
+We have instances. A skilful investigator and sound reasoner may be
+unreadable. The conjunction of fine gifts for investigation with
+fine gifts for exposition is a rare conjunction, which cannot be
+prized too highly, for while it advances historical science, it brings
+historical methods, as well as historical facts, within the horizon of
+the ordinary reader.
+
+Of the services Green rendered to English history, the first, and that
+which was most promptly appreciated, was the intensity with which he
+realised, and the skill with which he portrayed, the life of the
+people of England as a whole, and taught his readers that the exploits
+of kings and the intrigues of ministers, and the struggles of parties
+in Parliament, are, after all, secondary matters, and important
+chiefly as they affect the welfare or stimulate the thoughts and
+feelings of the great mass of undistinguished humanity in whose hands
+the future of a nation lies. He changed the old-fashioned distribution
+of our annals according to reigns and dynasties into certain periods,
+showing that such divisions often obscure the true connection of
+events, and suggesting new and better conceptions of the periods into
+which the record of English progress naturally falls. And, lastly, he
+laid, in his latest books, a firm and enduring foundation for our
+mediaeval history by that account of the Teutonic occupation of
+England, of the state of the country as they found it, and the way
+they conquered and began to organise it, which I have already dwelt on
+as a signal proof of his constructive faculty.
+
+Many readers will be disposed to place him near Macaulay, for though
+he was less weighty he was more subtle, and not less fascinating. To
+fewer perhaps will it occur to compare him with Gibbon, yet I am
+emboldened by the opinion of one of our greatest contemporary
+historians to venture on the comparison. There are indeed wide
+differences between the two. Green is as completely a man of the
+nineteenth century as Gibbon was a man of the eighteenth. Green's
+style has not the majestic march of Gibbon: it is quick and eager
+almost to restlessness. Nor is his judgment so uniformly grave and
+sound. But one may find in his genius what was characteristic of
+Gibbon's also, the combination of a mastery of multitudinous details,
+with a large and luminous view of those far-reaching forces and
+relations which govern the fortunes of peoples and guide the course of
+empire. This width and comprehensiveness, this power of massing for
+the purposes of argument the facts which his literary art has just
+been clothing in its most brilliant hues, is the highest of a
+historian's gifts, and is the one which seems most surely to establish
+Green's position among the leading historical minds of his time.
+
+-----
+
+  [22] This sketch was written in 1883. A volume of Green's Letters,
+       with a short connecting biography by Sir Leslie Stephen, was
+       published in 1901. The letters are extremely good reading, the
+       biography faithful and graceful.
+
+  [23] Sir George Young and I were the other members.
+
+  [24] At one time, however, he learnt a little geology from his friend
+       Professor Dawkins, perceiving its bearings on history.
+
+
+
+
+SIR GEORGE JESSEL, MASTER OF THE ROLLS
+
+
+There is hardly any walk of English life in which brilliant abilities
+win so little fame for their possessor among the public at large as
+that of practice at the Chancery bar. A leading ecclesiastic, or
+physician, or surgeon, or financier, or manufacturer, or even a great
+man of science, unless his work is done in some sphere which, like
+pure mathematics, is far removed from the comprehension of ordinary
+educated men, is sure, in a time like ours, to become well known to
+the world and acquire influence in it. A great advocate practising in
+the Common-law Courts is, of course, still more certain to become a
+familiar figure. But the cases which are dealt with by the Courts of
+Equity, though they often involve vast sums of money and raise
+intricate and important points of law, mostly turn on questions of a
+technical kind, and are seldom what the newspapers call sensational.
+Thus it may happen that a practitioner or a judge in these Courts
+enjoys an extraordinary reputation within his profession, and is by
+them regarded as one of the ornaments of his time, while the rest of
+his fellow-countrymen know nothing at all about his merits.
+
+This was the case with Sir George Jessel, though towards the end of
+his career the admiration which the Bar felt for his powers began so
+far to filter through to the general public that his premature death
+was felt to be a national misfortune.
+
+Jessel (born in 1824, died in 1883) was only one among many instances
+England has lately seen of men of Jewish origin climbing to the
+highest distinction. But he was the first instance of a Jew who,
+continuing to adhere to the creed of his forefathers, received a very
+high office; for Mr. Disraeli, as every one knows, had been baptized
+as a boy, and always professed to be a Christian. Jessel's career was
+not marked by any remarkable incidents. He rose quickly to eminence at
+the bar, being in this aided by his birth; for the Jews in London, as
+elsewhere, hold together. There are among them many solicitors in
+large practice, and these take a natural pleasure in pushing forward
+any specially able member of their community. His powers were more
+fully seen and appreciated when he became (in 1865) a Queen's Counsel,
+and brought him with unusual speed to the front rank. He came into
+Parliament at the general election of 1868 on the Liberal side, and
+three years later was made Solicitor-General in Mr. Gladstone's first
+Government, retaining, as was then usual, his private practice, which
+had become so large that there was scarcely any case of first-rate
+importance brought into the Chancery Courts in which he did not
+appear. Although a decided Liberal, as the Jews mostly were until Lord
+Beaconsfield's foreign policy had begun to lead them into other paths,
+he had borne little part in politics till he took his seat in the
+House of Commons; and when he spoke there, he obtained no great
+success. Lawyers in the English Parliament are under the double
+disadvantage of having had less leisure than most other members to
+study and follow political questions, and of having contracted a
+manner and style of speaking not suited to an assembly which, though
+deliberative, is not deliberate, and which listens with impatience to
+a technical or forensic method of treating the topics which come
+before it.
+
+Jessel's ability would have soon overcome the former difficulty, but
+less easily the latter. Though he was lucid and powerful in his
+treatment of legal topics, and made a quite admirable law officer in
+the way of advising ministers and the public departments, he was never
+popular with the House of Commons, for he presented his views in a
+hard, dry, dogmatic form, with no graces of style or delivery.
+However, he did not long remain in that arena, but on the retirement
+of Lord Romilly from the office of Master of the Rolls, was in 1873
+appointed to succeed him. In this post his extraordinary gifts found
+their amplest sphere. The equity judges in England used always to sit,
+and in nearly all cases do still sit, without a jury to hear causes,
+with or without witnesses, and they despatch a great deal of the
+heaviest business that is brought into the courts. Commercial causes
+of the first importance come before them, no less than those which
+relate to trusts or to real property; and the granting of injunctions,
+a specially serious matter, rests chiefly in their hands. Each equity
+judge sits alone, and the suitor may choose before which of them he
+will bring his case. Among the four--a number subsequently increased
+to five--equity judges of first instance, Jessel immediately rose to
+the highest reputation, so that most of the heavy and difficult cases
+were brought into his court. He possessed a wonderfully quick, as well
+as powerful, mind, which got to the kernel of a matter while other
+people were still hammering at the shell, and which applied legal
+principles just as swiftly and surely as it mastered a group of
+complicated facts.
+
+The Rolls Court used to present, while he presided over it, a curious
+and interesting sight, which led young counsel, who had no business to
+do there, to frequent it for the mere sake of watching the Judge. When
+the leading counsel for the plaintiff was opening his case, Jessel
+listened quietly for the first few minutes only, and then began to
+address questions to the counsel, at first so as to guide his remarks
+in a particular direction, then so as to stop his course altogether
+and turn his speech into a series of answers to the Judge's
+interrogatories. When, by a short dialogue of this kind, Jessel had
+possessed himself of the vital facts, he would turn to the leading
+counsel for the defendant and ask him whether he admitted such and
+such facts alleged by the plaintiff to be true. If these facts were
+admitted, the Judge proceeded to indicate the view he was disposed to
+take of the law applicable to the facts, and, by a few more questions
+to the counsel on the one side or the other, as the case might be,
+elicited their respective legal grounds of contention. If the facts
+were not admitted, it of course became necessary to call the witnesses
+or read the affidavits, processes which the vigorous impatience of the
+Judge considerably shortened, for it was a dangerous thing to read to
+him any irrelevant or loosely-drawn paragraph. But more generally his
+searching questions and the sort of pressure he applied so cut down
+the issues of fact that there was little or nothing left in
+controversy regarding which it was necessary to examine the evidence
+in detail, since the counsel felt that there was no use in putting
+before him a contention which they could not sustain under the fire
+of his criticism. Then Jessel proceeded to deliver his opinion and
+dispose of the case. The affair was from beginning to end far less an
+argument and counter-argument by counsel than an investigation
+directly conducted by the Judge himself, in which the principal
+function of the counsel was to answer the Judge's questions concisely
+and exactly, so that the latter might as soon as possible get to the
+bottom of the matter. The Bar in a little while came to learn and
+adapt themselves to his ways, and few complained of being stopped or
+interrupted by him, because his interruptions, unlike those of some
+judges, were neither inopportune nor superfluous. The counsel (with
+scarcely an exception) felt themselves his inferiors, and recognised
+not only that he was better able to handle the case than they were,
+but that the manner and style in which they presented their facts or
+arguments would make little difference to the result, because his
+penetration was sure to discover the merits of each contention, and
+neither eloquence nor pertinacity would have the slightest effect on
+his resolute and self-confident mind. Thus business was despatched
+before him with unexampled speed, and it became a maxim among
+barristers that, however low down in the cause-list at the Rolls your
+cause might stand, it was never safe to be away from the court, so
+rapidly were cases "crumpled up" or "broken down" under the blows of
+this vigorous intellect. It was more surprising that the suitors, as
+well as the Bar and the public generally, acquiesced, after the first
+few months, in this way of doing business. Nothing breeds more
+discontent than haste and heedlessness in a judge. But Jessel's speed
+was not haste. He did as much justice in a day as others could do in a
+week; and those few who, dissatisfied with these rapid methods, tried
+to reverse his decisions before the Court of Appeal, were very seldom
+successful, although that court then contained in Lord Justice James
+and Lord Justice Mellish two unusually strong men, who would not have
+hesitated to differ even from the redoubtable Master of the Rolls.
+
+As I have mentioned Lord Justice Mellish, I may turn aside for a
+moment to say a word regarding that extraordinary man, who stood along
+with Cairns and Roundell Palmer in the foremost rank of Jessel's
+professional contemporaries. Mellish held for some years before his
+elevation to the Bench in 1869 a position unique at the English
+Common-law Bar as a giver of opinions on points of law. As the
+Israelites in King David's day said of Ahithophel that his counsel was
+as if a man had inquired at the oracle of God,[25] so the legal
+profession deemed Mellish practically infallible, and held an opinion
+signed by him to be equal in weight to a judgment of the Court of
+Exchequer Chamber (the then court of appeal in common-law cases). He
+was not effective as an advocate addressing a jury, being indeed far
+too good for any jury; but in arguing a point of law his unerring
+logic, the lucidity with which he stated his position, the cogency and
+precision with which he drew his inferences, made it a delight to
+listen to him. The chain of ratiocination seemed irrefragable:
+
+        +en d' ethet' akmotheto megan akmona, kopte de desmous
+        arrhektous alutous, ophr' empedon authi menoien.+[26]
+
+He had, indeed, but one fault as an arguer. He could not argue a point
+whose soundness he doubted as effectively as one in which he had
+faith; and when it befell that several points arose in a case, and the
+Court seemed disposed to lay more stress on the one for which he cared
+little than on the one he deemed conclusive, he refused to fall in
+with their view and continued to insist upon that which his own mind
+approved.
+
+I remember to have once heard him and Cairns argue before the House of
+Lords (sitting as the final Court of Appeal) a case relating to a
+vessel called the _Alexandra_--it was a case arising out of an
+attempt of the Confederates, during the American War of Secession, to
+get out of a British port a cruiser they had ordered. Cairns spoke
+first with all his usual power, and seemed to have left nothing to be
+added. But when Mellish followed on the same side, he set his points
+in so strong a light, and placed his contention on so solid a basis,
+that even Cairns's speech was forgotten, and it seemed impossible that
+any answer could be found to Mellish's arguments. One felt as if the
+voice of pure reason were speaking through his lips.
+
+Such an intellect might seem admirably qualified for judicial work.
+But as a judge, Mellish, admirable though he was in temper, in
+fairness, in learning, and in logic, did not win so exceptional a
+reputation as he had won at the Bar. People used to ascribe this
+partly to his weak health, partly to the fact that he, who had been a
+common-law practitioner, was sitting in a court which heard equity
+appeals, and alongside of a quick and strong colleague reared in the
+equity courts.[27] But something may have been due to the fact that he
+needed the stimulus of conflict to bring out the full force of his
+splendid intelligence. A circumstance attending the appointment of
+Mellish illustrates the remark already made that a great counsel whose
+work lies apart from so-called "sensation cases" may remain unknown to
+his contemporaries. When Mr. Gladstone, being then Prime Minister, and
+having to select a Lord Justice of Appeal, was told that Mellish was
+the fittest man for the post, he asked, "Can that be the boy who was
+my fag at Eton?" He had not heard of Mellish during the intervening
+forty years!
+
+However, I return to the Master of the Rolls. In dealing with facts,
+Jessel has never had a superior, and in our days, perhaps, no rival.
+He knew all the ways of the financial and commercial world. In his
+treatment of points of law, every one admitted and admired both an
+extraordinary knowledge and mastery of reported cases, and an
+extremely acute and exact appreciation of principles, a complete power
+of extracting them from past cases and fitting them to the case in
+hand. He had a memory which forgot nothing, and which, indeed, wearied
+him by refusing to forget trivial things. When he delivered an
+elaborate judgment it was his delight to run through a long series of
+cases, classifying and distinguishing them. His strength made him
+bold; he went further than most judges in readiness to carry a
+principle somewhat beyond any decided case, and to overrule an
+authority which he did not respect. The fault charged on him was his
+tendency, perhaps characteristic of the Hebrew mind, to take a
+somewhat hard and dry view of a legal principle, overlooking its more
+delicate shades, and, in the interpretation of statutes or documents,
+to adhere too strictly to the letter, overlooking the spirit. An
+eminent lawyer said, "If all judges had been like Jessel, there might
+have been no equity." In that respect many deemed him inferior to Lord
+Cairns, the greatest judge among his contemporaries, who united to an
+almost equally wide and accurate knowledge of the law a grasp of
+principles even more broad and philosophical than Jessel's was. Be
+this as it may, the judgments of the Master of the Rolls, which fill
+so many pages of the recent English Law Reports, are among the best
+that have ever gone to build up the fabric of the English law. Except
+on two occasions, when he reserved judgment at the request of his
+colleagues in the Court of Appeal, they were delivered on the spur of
+the moment, after the conclusion of the arguments, or of so much of
+the arguments as he allowed counsel to deliver; but they have all the
+merits of carefully-considered utterances, so clear and direct is
+their style, so concisely as well as cogently are the authorities
+discussed and the grounds of decision stated. The bold and sweeping
+character which often belongs to them makes them more instructive as
+well as more agreeable reading than the judgments of most modern
+judges, whose commonest fault is a timidity which tries to escape, by
+dwelling on the details of the particular case, from the enunciation
+of a definite general principle. Positive and definite Jessel always
+was. As he put it himself: "I may be wrong, but I never have any
+doubts."
+
+At the Bar, Jessel had been far from popular; for his manners were
+unpolished, and his conduct towards other counsel overbearing. On
+the Bench he improved, and became liked as well as respected. There
+was a sort of rough _bonhomie_ about him, and though he could be
+disagreeable on occasions to a leading counsel, especially if brought
+from the common-law bar into his court, he showed a good-humoured
+wish to deal gently with young or inexperienced barristers. There
+was also an obvious anxiety to do justice, an impatience of mere
+technicalities, and a readiness, remarkable in so strong-willed a
+man, to hear what could be said against his own opinion, and to
+reconsider it. Besides, a profession is naturally proud of any one
+whose talents adorn it, and whose eminence seems to be communicated
+to the whole body.
+
+Ever since, under the Plantagenet kings, the Chancery became a law
+court, the office of Master of the Rolls had been that of a judge of
+first instance. In 1881 its character was changed, and its occupant
+placed at the head of the Court of Appeal. Thus it was as an appellate
+judge that Jessel latterly sat, giving no less satisfaction in that
+capacity than in his former one, and being indeed confessedly the
+strongest judicial intellect (except Lord Cairns) on the Bench.
+Outside his professional duties, his chief interest was in the
+University of London, at which he had himself graduated. He was a
+member of its senate, and busied himself with its examinations, being
+up till the last excessively fond of work, and finding that of a judge
+who sits for five or six hours daily insufficient to satisfy his
+appetite. He was not what would be called a highly cultivated man,
+although he knew a great deal beyond the field of law, mathematics,
+for instance, and Hebrew literature and botany, for he had been
+brought up in a not very refined circle, and had been absorbed in
+legal work during the best years of his life. But his was an
+intelligence of extraordinary power and flexibility, eminently
+practical, as the Semitic intellect generally is, and yet thoroughly
+scientific. And he was also one of those strong natures who make
+themselves disliked while they are fighting their way to the top, but
+grow more genial and more tolerant when they have won what they
+sought, and perceive that others admit their pre-eminence. The
+services which he rendered as a judge illustrate not only the
+advantage of throwing open all places to all comers--the bigotry of an
+elder day excluded the Jews from judicial office altogether--but also
+the benefit of having a judge at least equal in ability to the best of
+those who practise before him. It was because Jessel was so easily
+master in his court that so large and important a part of the judicial
+business of the country was, during many years, despatched with a
+swiftness and a success seldom equalled in the annals of the English
+Courts.
+
+-----
+
+  [25] 2 Sam. xvi. 23.
+
+  [26] _Odyss._ viii. 274: "And upon the anvil-stand he set the mighty
+       anvil; and he forged the links that could be neither broken nor
+       loosed, so that they should stay firm in their place."
+
+  [27] Lord Justice James said of his colleague that he had only one
+       defect as a judge: "He was too anxious to convince counsel that
+       they were wrong, when he thought their contention unsound,
+       seeming to forget that counsel are paid not to be convinced."
+
+
+
+
+LORD CHANCELLOR CAIRNS
+
+
+Hugh M'Calmont Cairns, afterwards Earl Cairns (born 1819, died
+1885), was one of three remarkable Scoto-Irishmen whom the north-east
+corner of Ulster gave to the United Kingdom in one generation, and
+each of whom was foremost in the career he entered. Lord Lawrence
+was the strongest of Indian or Colonial administrators, and did more
+than any other man to save India for England in the crisis of the
+great Mutiny of 1857. Lord Kelvin has been, since the death of
+Charles Darwin, the first among British men of science. Lord Cairns
+was unquestionably the greatest judge of the Victorian epoch, perhaps
+of the nineteenth century.[28] His name and family were of Scottish
+origin, but he combined with the shrewd sense and grim persistency
+of Scotland some measure of the keen partisanship which marks the
+Irish Orangeman. Born an Episcopalian, he grew up a Tory in
+politics, an earnest Low-Church Evangelical in religion; nor did his
+opinions in either respect ever seem to alter during his long
+life. His great abilities were perceived both at school (he was
+educated at the Academy in Belfast) and at college (Trinity College,
+Dublin), and so much impressed the counsel in whose chambers he
+studied for a year in London, that he strongly dissuaded the young
+man from returning to Dublin to practise at the Irish bar, promising
+him a brilliant career on the wider theatre of England. The prediction
+was verified by the rapidity with which Cairns, who had, no doubt,
+the advantage of influential connections in the City of London, rose
+into note. He obtained (as a Conservative) a seat in Parliament
+for his native town of Belfast when only thirty-three years of age,
+and was appointed Solicitor-General to Lord Derby's second Ministry
+six years later--a post which few eminent lawyers have reached before
+fifty. In the House of Commons, though at first somewhat diffident and
+nervous, he soon proved himself a powerful as well as ready speaker,
+and would doubtless have remained in an assembly where he was
+rendering such valuable services to his party but for the weakness
+of his lungs and throat, which had threatened his life since boyhood.
+He therefore accepted, in 1867, the office of Lord Justice of
+Appeal, with a seat in the House of Lords, and next year was made
+Lord Chancellor by Mr. Disraeli, then Prime Minister, who dismissed
+Lord Chelmsford, then Chancellor, in order to have the benefit of
+Cairns's help as a colleague. Disraeli subsequently caused him to
+be raised to an earldom.
+
+After Lord Derby's death, Cairns led the Tory party in the House of
+Lords for a time (replacing the Duke of Richmond when the latter
+quitted the leadership), but his very pronounced Low-Church
+proclivities, coupled perhaps with a certain jealousy felt toward him
+as a newcomer, prevented him from becoming popular there, so that
+ultimately the leadership of that House settled itself in the hands of
+Lord Salisbury, a statesman not superior to Cairns in political
+judgment or argumentative power, but without the disadvantage of being
+a lawyer, possessing a wider range of political experience, and in
+closer sympathy with the feelings and habits of the titled order.
+There were, however, some peers who, when Lord Beaconsfield died in
+1881, desired to see Cairns chosen to succeed him in the leadership of
+the Tory party, then in opposition, in the Upper Chamber. Whether in
+opposition or in power, Cairns took a prominent part in all
+"full-dress" political debates in the House of Lords and in the
+discussion of legal measures, and was indeed so absolutely master of
+the Chamber when such measures came under discussion, that the
+Liberal Government, during the years from 1868 to 1874, and again from
+1880 till 1885, could carry no legal reforms through the House of
+Lords except by his permission, which, of course, was never given when
+such reforms could seem to affect any political issue. Yet the
+vehemence of his party feeling did not overcast his judgment. It was
+mainly through his interposition (aided by that of Archbishop Tait)
+that the House of Lords consented to pass the Irish Church Bill of
+1869, a measure which Cairns, of course heartily disliking it,
+accepted for the sake of saving to the disestablished Church a part of
+her funds, since these might have been lost had the Bill been rejected
+then and passed next year by an angrier House of Commons. Of all the
+members of Disraeli's two Cabinets, he was the one whom Disraeli
+himself had been wont most to trust and most to rely on. In January
+1874, when Mr. Gladstone's suddenly announced dissolution of
+Parliament startled all England one Saturday morning, Disraeli, who
+heard of it while still in bed, was at first frightened, thinking that
+the Liberal leader had played his cards boldly and well, and would
+carry the elections. When his chief party manager came to see him he
+was found restless and dejected, and cried out, "Send for Cairns at
+once." Lord Cairns was sent for, came full of vigour, hope, and
+counsel, and after an hour's talk so restored the confidence of his
+ally that Disraeli sat down in the best spirits to compose his
+electoral manifesto. As everybody knows, Cairns's forecast was right,
+and the Tories won the general election by a large majority.
+
+For political success Cairns had several qualities of the utmost
+value--a stately presence, a clear head, a resolute will, and splendid
+oratorical gifts. He was not an imaginative speaker, nor fitted to
+touch the emotions; but he had a matchless power of statement, and a
+no less matchless closeness and cogency in argument. In the famous
+controversies of 1866, he showed himself the clearest and most
+vigorous thinker among the opponents of reform, more solid, if less
+brilliant, than was Robert Lowe. His diction, without being
+exceptionally choice, was pure and precise, and his manner had a
+dignity and weight which seemed to compel your attention even when
+the matter was uninteresting. A voice naturally neither strong nor
+musical, and sometimes apt to sound hollow (for the chest was weak),
+was managed with great skill; action and gesture were used sparingly
+but effectively, and the tall well-built figure and strongly-marked,
+somewhat Roman features, with their haughty and distant air,
+deepened the impression of power, courage, and resolution which was
+characteristic of the whole man.
+
+The qualities of oratory I have described may seem better fitted to a
+comparatively sober and sedate assembly like the House of Lords than
+to a changeful and excitable assembly like the House of Commons. Yet,
+in point of fact, Cairns spoke better in the Commons than he did
+afterwards in the Lords, and would have left an even higher oratorical
+reputation had his career in the popular House been longer and his
+displays more numerous. The reason seems to be that the heat of that
+House warmed his somewhat chilly temperament, and roused him to a more
+energetic and ardent style of speaking than was needed in the Upper
+Chamber, where he and his friends, commanding a large majority, had
+things all their own way. In the House of Commons he confronted a
+crowd of zealous adversaries, and put forth all the forces of his
+logic and rhetoric to overcome them. In the more languid House of
+Lords he was apt to be didactic, sometimes even prolix. He overproved
+his own case without feeling the need, which he would have felt in the
+Commons, of overthrowing the case of the other side; his manner wanted
+animation and his matter variety. Still, he was a great speaker,
+greater as a speaker upon legal topics, where a power of exact
+statement and lucid exposition is required, than any one he left
+behind him.
+
+Why, it may be asked, with these gifts, and with so much firmness and
+energy of character, did he not play an even more conspicuous part in
+politics, and succeed, after Lord Beaconsfield's death, to the
+chieftaincy of the Tory party? The answer is to be found partly in the
+prejudice which still survives in England against legal politicians,
+partly in certain defects of his own personality. Although sincerely
+pious, and exemplary in all the relations of domestic life, he was
+ungenial and unbending in social intercourse. Few equally eminent men
+of our time have had so narrow a circle of personal friends. There was
+a dryness, a coldness, and an appearance of reserve and hauteur about
+his manner which repelled strangers, and kept acquaintanceship from
+ripening into friendship. To succeed as a political leader, a man must
+usually (I do not say invariably, because there are a few remarkable
+instances--Mr. Parnell's would appear to be one of them--to the
+contrary) at least seem sympathetic; must be able to enter into the
+feelings of his followers, and show himself interested in them not
+merely as party followers, but as human beings. There must be a
+certain glow, a certain effluence of feeling about him, which makes
+them care for him and rally to him as a personality. Whether Lord
+Cairns wanted warmth of heart, or whether it was that an inner warmth
+failed to pierce the cloak of reserve and pride which he habitually
+wore, I do not attempt to determine. But the defect told heavily
+against him. He never became a familiar figure to the mass of his
+party, a person whose features they knew, at whose name they would
+cheer; and nowadays all leaders, to whatever party they belong, find a
+source of strength in winning this kind of popularity. The quality
+which Americans call magnetism is perhaps less essential in England
+than in the country which distinguished and named it; but it is
+helpful even in England. Cairns, though an Irishman, was wholly
+without it.
+
+In the field of law, where passion has no place, and even imagination
+must be content to move with clipped wings along the ground, the
+merits of Lord Cairns's intellect showed to the best advantage. At the
+Chancery bar he was one of a trio who had not been surpassed, if ever
+equalled, during the nineteenth century, and whom none of our now
+practising advocates rivals. The other two were Mr., afterwards Lord
+Justice, Rolt, and Mr. Roundell Palmer, afterwards Lord Chancellor
+Selborne. All were admirable lawyers, but, of the three, Rolt excelled
+in his spirited presentation of a case and in the lively vigour of his
+arguments. Palmer was conspicuous for exhaustless ingenuity, and for a
+subtlety which sometimes led him away into reasonings too fine for the
+court to follow. Cairns was broad, massive, convincing, with a robust
+urgency of logic which seemed to grasp and fix you, so that while he
+spoke you could fancy no conclusion possible save that toward which he
+moved. His habit was to seize upon what he deemed the central and
+vital point of the case, throwing the whole force of his argument upon
+that one point, and holding the judge's mind fast to it.
+
+All these famous men were raised to the judicial bench. Rolt remained
+there for a few months only, so his time was too short to permit him
+to enrich our jurisprudence and leave a memory of himself in the
+Reports. Palmer sat in the House of Lords from his accession to the
+Chancellorship in 1872 till his death in 1896, and, while fully
+sustaining his reputation as a man of eminent legal capacity, was, on
+the whole, less brilliant as a judge than he had been as an advocate,
+because a tendency to over-refinement is more dangerous in the
+judicial than in the forensic mind. He made an admirable Chancellor,
+and showed himself more industrious and more zealous for law reform
+than did Cairns. But Cairns was the greater judge, and became to the
+generation which argued before him a model of judicial excellence. In
+hearing a cause he was singularly patient, rarely interrupting
+counsel, and then only to put some pertinent question. His figure was
+so still, his countenance so impassive, that people sometimes doubted
+whether he was really attending to all that was urged at the bar. But
+when the time came for him to deliver judgment, which in the House of
+Lords is done in the form of a speech addressed to the House in
+moving or supporting a motion that is to become the judgment of the
+tribunal, it was seen how fully he had apprehended the case in all its
+bearings. His deliverances were never lengthy, but they were
+exhaustive. They went straight to the vital principles on which the
+question turned, stated these in the most luminous way, and applied
+them with unerring exactitude to the particular facts. It is as a
+storehouse of fundamental doctrines that his judgments are so
+valuable. They disclose less knowledge of case-law than do those of
+some other judges; but Cairns was not one of the men who love cases
+for their own sake, and he never cared to draw upon, still less to
+display, more learning than was needed for the matter in hand. It was
+in the grasp of the principles involved, in the breadth of view which
+enabled him to see these principles in their relation to one another,
+in the precision of the logic which drew conclusions from the
+principles, in the perfectly lucid language in which the principles
+were expounded and applied, that his strength lay. Herein he surpassed
+the most eminent of contemporary judges, the then Master of the Rolls,
+for while Jessel had perhaps a quicker mind than Cairns, he had not so
+wide a mind, nor one so thoroughly philosophical in the methods by
+which it moved.
+
+Outside the spheres of law and politics, Cairns's only interest was in
+religion. He did not seem, although a good classical scholar and a
+competent mathematician, to care either for letters or for science. But
+he was a Sunday-school teacher nearly all his life. Prayer-meetings
+were held at his house, at which barristers, not otherwise known for
+their piety, but believed to desire county court judgeships, were
+sometimes seen. He used to take the chair at missionary and other
+philanthropic meetings. He was surrounded by evangelisers and
+clergymen. But nothing softened the austerity or melted the ice of
+his manners. Neither did the great position he had won seem to give a
+higher and broader quality to his statesmanship. It is true that in
+law he was wholly free from the partisanship which tinged his politics.
+No one was more perfectly fair upon the bench; no one more honestly
+anxious to arrive at a right decision. And as a law reformer, although
+he effected less than might have been hoped from his abilities or
+expected from the absolute sway which he exercised while Chancellor in
+Lord Beaconsfield's Government from 1874 to 1880, he was free from
+prejudice, and willing to sweep away antiquated rules or usages if they
+seemed to block the channel of speedy justice. But in politics this
+impartiality and elevation vanished even after he had risen so high
+that he did not need to humour the passions or confirm the loyalty of
+his own associates. He seemed to be not merely a party man, which an
+English politician is forced to be, because if he stands outside
+party he cannot effect anything, but a partisan--that is, a man
+wholly devoted to his party, who sees everything through its eyes, and
+argues every question in its interests. He gave the impression of
+being either unwilling or unable to rise to a higher and more truly
+national view, and sometimes condescended to arguments whose unsoundness
+his penetrating intellect could hardly have failed to detect. His
+professional tone had been blameless, but at the bar the path of
+rectitude is plain and smooth, and a scrupulous mind finds fewer cases
+of conscience present themselves in a year than in Parliament within a
+month. Yet if in this respect Cairns failed to reach a level worthy of
+his splendid intellect, the defect was due not to any selfish view of
+his own interest, but rather to the narrowness of the groove into
+which his mind had fallen, and to the atmosphere of Orange sentiment
+in which he had grown up. As a politician he is already beginning to
+be forgotten; but as a judge he will be held in honourable remembrance
+as one of the five or six most brilliant luminaries that have
+adorned the English bench since those remote days[29] in which the
+beginning of legal memory is placed.
+
+-----
+
+  [28] No biography of Lord Cairns has (so far as I know) appeared--a
+       singular fact, considering the brilliancy of his career, and
+       considering the tendency which now prevails to bestow this kind
+       of honour on many persons of the second or even the third rank.
+       One reason may be that Cairns, great though he was, never won
+       personal popularity even with his own political party or among
+       his contemporaries at the bar, and was to the general public no
+       more than a famous name.
+
+  [29] The reign of King Richard the First.
+
+
+
+
+BISHOP FRASER
+
+
+James Fraser, Bishop of Manchester from 1870 till 1885, was born in
+Gloucestershire, of a Scottish family, in 1818, and died at Manchester
+in 1885.[30] He took no prominent part in ecclesiastical politics, and
+no part at all in general politics. Though a sound classical scholar
+in the old-fashioned sense of the term--he won the Ireland University
+Scholarship at Oxford, then and still the most conspicuous prize in
+the field of classics--he was not an exceptionally cultivated man, and
+he never wrote anything except official reports and episcopal charges.
+Neither was he, although a ready and effective speaker, gifted with
+the highest kind of eloquence. Neither was he a profound theologian.
+Yet his character and career are of permanent interest, for he created
+not merely a new episcopal type, but (one may almost say) a new
+ecclesiastical type within the Church of England.
+
+Till some sixty or seventy years ago the normal English bishop was a
+rich, dignified, and rather easy-going magnate, aristocratic in his
+tastes and habits, moderate in his theology, sometimes to the verge of
+indifferentism, quite as much a man of the world as a pastor of souls.
+He had usually obtained his preferment by his family connections, or
+by some service rendered to the court or a political chief--perhaps
+even by solicitation or intrigue. Now and then eminence in learning or
+literature raised a man to the bench: there were, for instance, the
+"Greek play" bishops, such as Dr. Monk of Gloucester, whose fame
+rested on their editions of the Attic dramatists; and the _Quarterly
+Review_ bishops, such as Dr. Copleston, of Llandaff, whose powerful
+pen, as well as his wise administration of the great Oxford College
+over which he long presided, amply justified his promotion. So even in
+the eighteenth century the illustrious Butler had been Bishop of
+Durham, as in Ireland the illustrious Berkeley had been Bishop of
+Cloyne. But, on the whole, the bishops of our grandfathers' days were
+more remarkable for their prudence and tact, their adroitness or
+suppleness, than for intellectual or moral superiority to the rest of
+the clergy. Their own upper-class world, and the middle class which,
+in the main, took its view of English institutions from the upper
+class, respected them as a part of the solid fabric of English
+society, but they were a mark for Radical invective and for literary
+sneers. Their luxurious pomp and ease were incessantly contrasted
+with the simplicity of the apostles and the poverty of curates, and
+the abundance among them of the gifts that befit the senate or the
+drawing-room was compared with the rarity of the graces that adorn a
+saint. The comparison was hardly fair, for saints are scarce, and a
+good bishop needs some qualities which a saint may lack.
+
+That revival within the Church of England which went on in various
+forms from 1800 till 1870, at first Low Church or Evangelical in its
+tendencies, latterly more conspicuously High Church and Ritualist,
+began from below and worked upwards till at length it reached the
+bishops. Lord Palmerston, influenced by Lord Shaftesbury, filled the
+vacant sees that fell to him with earnest men, sometimes narrow,
+sometimes deficient in learning, but often good preachers, and zealous
+for the doctrines they held. When the High Churchmen found their way
+to the Bench, as they did very largely under Lord Derby's and Mr.
+Gladstone's rule, they showed as much theological zeal as the
+Evangelicals, and perhaps more talent for administration. The popular
+idea of what may be expected from a bishop rose, and the bishops rose
+with the idea. As Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Samuel Wilberforce was among
+the first to make himself powerfully felt through his diocese. His
+example told upon other prelates, and prime ministers grew more
+anxious to select energetic and popular men. So it came to pass that
+the bishops began to be among the foremost men in the Church of
+England. Some, like Dr. Magee of Peterborough, and afterwards of York,
+were brilliant orators; some, like Dr. Lightfoot of Durham, profound
+scholars; some, like Dr. Temple of Exeter, able and earnest
+administrators. There remained but few who had not some good claim to
+the dignity they enjoyed. So it may be said, when one compares the
+later Victorian bishops with their Georgian predecessors, that no
+class in the country has improved more. Few now sneer at them, for no
+set of men take a more active and more creditable part in the public
+business of the country. Their incomes, curtailed of late years in the
+case of the richer sees, are no more than sufficient for the expenses
+which fall upon them, and they work as hard as any other men for their
+salaries. Though the larger sees have been divided, the reduction of
+the toil of bishops thus effected has been less than the addition to
+it due to the growth of population and the increased activity of the
+clergy. The only defect which the censorious still impute to them is a
+certain episcopal conventionality, a disposition to try to please
+everybody by the use of vague professional language, a tendency to
+think too much about the Church as a church establishment, and to
+defer to clerical opinion when they ought to speak and act with an
+independence born of their individual opinions. Some of them, as, for
+instance, the three I have just mentioned, were not open to this
+reproach. It was one of the merits and charms of Fraser that he was
+absolutely free from any such tendency. Other men, such as Bishop
+Lightfoot, have been not less eminent models of the virtues which
+ought to characterise a great Christian pastor; but Fraser (appointed
+some time before Lightfoot) was the first to be an absolutely
+unconventional and, so to speak, unepiscopal bishop. His career marked
+a new departure and set a new example.
+
+Fraser spent the earlier years of his manhood in Oxford, as a tutor in
+Oriel College, teaching Thucydides and Aristotle. Like many of his
+Oxford contemporaries, he continued through life to think on
+Aristotelian lines, and one could trace them in his sermons. He then
+took in succession two college livings, both in quiet nooks in the
+South of England, and discharged for nearly twenty years the simple
+duties of a parish priest, unknown to the great world, but making
+himself beloved by the people, and doing his best to improve their
+condition. The zeal he had shown in promoting elementary education
+caused him to be appointed (in 1865) by the Schools Inquiry
+Commissioners to be their Assistant Commissioner to examine the
+common-school system of the United States, and the excellence of his
+report thereon attracted the notice of the late Lord Lyttelton, one
+of those Commissioners who were then sitting to investigate the state
+of secondary education in England. His report long remained by far the
+best general picture of American schools, conspicuous for its breadth
+of view, its clearness of statement, its sympathetic insight into
+conditions unlike those he had known in England. On the recommendation
+(as has been generally believed) of Lord Lyttelton and of the then
+Bishop of Salisbury, who was a friend of Dr. Fraser's, Mr. Gladstone,
+at that time Prime Minister, appointed him Bishop of Manchester in
+1870. The diocese of Manchester, which included all Lancashire except
+Liverpool and a small district in the extreme north of the county, had
+been under a bishop who, although an able and learned man, capable of
+making himself agreeable when he pleased, was personally unpopular,
+and had done little beyond his formal duties. He lived in a large and
+handsome country-house some miles from the city, and was known by
+sight to very few of its inhabitants. (I was familiar with Lancashire
+in those days, for I had visited all its grammar-schools as Assistant
+Commissioner to the Commission just referred to, and there was hardly
+a trace to be found in it of the bishop's action.) Fraser had not been
+six months in the county before everything was changed. The country
+mansion was sold, and he procured a modest house in one of the less
+fashionable suburbs of the city. He preached twice every Sunday,
+usually in some parish church, and spent the week in travelling up and
+down his diocese, so that the days were few in which he was not on the
+railway. He stretched out the hand of friendship to the Dissenters
+(numerous and powerful in the manufacturing districts), who had
+hitherto regarded a bishop as a sort of natural enemy, gained their
+confidence, and soon became as popular with them as with the laity of
+his own Church. He associated himself with all the works of
+benevolence or public utility which were in progress, subscribed to
+all so far as his means allowed, and was always ready to speak at a
+meeting on behalf of any good enterprise. He dealt in his sermons with
+the topics of the day, avoiding party politics, but speaking his mind
+on all social and moral questions with a freedom which sometimes
+involved him in passing difficulties, but stimulated the minds of his
+hearers, and gave the impression of his own perfect candour and
+perfect courage. He used to say that as he felt it his duty to speak
+wherever he was asked to do so, he must needs speak without
+preparation, and must therefore expect sometimes to get into hot
+water; that this was a pity, but it was not his fault that he was
+reported, and that it was better to run the risk of making mistakes
+and suffering for them than to refuse out of self-regarding caution to
+give the best of himself to the diocese. He had that true modesty
+which makes a man willing to do a thing imperfectly, at the risk of
+lowering his intellectual reputation. He knew that he was neither a
+deep thinker nor a finished preacher, and was content to be what he
+was, so long as he could perform the work which it was in him to do.
+He lost no opportunity of meeting the working men, would go and talk
+to them in the yards of the mills or at the evening gatherings of
+mechanics' institutes; and when any misfortune befell, such as a
+colliery accident, he was often among the first who reached the spot
+to help the survivors and comfort the widows. He made no difference
+between rich and poor, showed no wish to be a guest in the houses of
+the great, and treated the poorest curate with as much courtesy as the
+most pompous county magnate. His work in Lancashire seldom allowed him
+to appear in the House of Lords; and this he regretted, not that he
+desired to speak there, but because, as he said, "Whether or not
+bishops do Parliament good, Parliament does bishops good."
+
+Such a simple, earnest, active course of conduct told upon the
+feelings of the people who read of his words and doings. But even
+greater was the impression made by his personality upon those who saw
+him. He was a tall, well-built man,[31] erect in figure, with a quick
+eye, a firm step, a ruddy face, an expression of singular heartiness
+and geniality. He seemed always cheerful, and, in spite of his endless
+labours, always fresh and strong. His smile and the grasp of his hand
+put you into good-humour with yourself and the world; if you were
+dispirited, they led you out of shadow into sunlight. He was not a
+great reader, and had no time for sustained and searching thought; yet
+he seemed always abreast of what was passing in the world, and to know
+what the books and articles and speeches of the day contained,
+although he could not have found time to peruse them. With strong
+opinions of his own, he was anxious to hear yours; a ready and eager
+talker, yet a willing listener. His oratory was plain, with few
+flights of rhetoric, but it was direct and vigorous, free from
+conventional phrases, charged with clear good sense and genuine
+feeling, and capable, when his feeling was exceptionally strong, of
+rising to eloquence. He had a ready sense of humour, the best proof of
+which was that he relished a joke against himself.[32] However, the
+greatest charm, both of his public and private talk, was the
+transparent sincerity and honesty that shone through it. His mind was
+like a crystal pool of water in a mountain stream. You saw everything
+that was in it, and saw nothing that was mean or unworthy. This
+sincerity and freshness made his character not only manly, but lovable
+and beautiful, beautiful in its tenderness, its loyalty to his
+friends, its devotion to truth.
+
+His conscientious anxiety to say nothing more than he thought was apt
+to make him an embarrassing ally. It happened more than once that when
+he came to speak at a public meeting on behalf of some enterprise, he
+was not content, like most men, to set forth its merits and claims,
+but went on to dwell upon possible drawbacks or dangers, so that the
+more ardent friends of the scheme thought he was pouring cold water on
+them, and called him a Balaam reversed. In a political assembly he
+would have been an _enfant terrible_ whom his party would have feared
+to put up to speak; but as people in the diocese got to know that this
+was his way, they only smiled at his too ingenuous honesty. As he
+spoke with no preparation, and was naturally impulsive, he now and
+then spoke unadvisedly, and received a good deal of newspaper censure.
+But he was never involved in real trouble by these speeches. As Dean
+Stanley wrote to him, "You have a singular gift of going to the very
+verge of imprudence and yet never crossing it."
+
+No one will wonder that such a character, set in a conspicuous place,
+and joined to extraordinary activity and zeal, should have produced an
+immense effect on the people of his city and diocese. Since
+Nonconformity arose in England in the seventeenth century, no bishop,
+perhaps, indeed no man, whether cleric or layman, had done so much to
+draw together people of different religious persuasions and help them
+to realise their common Christianity. Densely populated South
+Lancashire is practically one huge town, and he was its foremost
+citizen; the most instant in all good works; the one whose words were
+most sure to find attentive listeners. This was because he spoke, I
+will not say as a layman, but simply as a Christian, never claiming
+for himself any special authority in respect either of his sacerdotal
+character or his official position. No English prelate before him had
+been so welcome to all classes and sections; none was so much lamented
+by the masses of the people. But it is a significant fact that he was
+from first to last more popular with the laity than with the clergy.
+Not that there was ever any slur on his orthodoxy. He began life as a
+moderate High Churchman, and gradually verged, half unconsciously,
+toward what would be called a Broad-Church position; maintaining the
+claim of the Anglican Church to undertake, and her duty to hold
+herself responsible for, the education of the people, and upholding
+her status as an establishment, but dwelling little on minor points of
+doctrinal difference, and seeming to care still less for external
+observances or points of ritual. This displeased the Anglo-Catholic
+party, and even among other sections of the clergy there was a kind of
+feeling that the Bishop was not sufficiently clerical, did not set
+full store by the sacerdotal side of his office, and did not think
+enough about ecclesiastical questions.
+
+He was, I think, the first bishop who greeted men of science as
+fellow-workers for truth, and declared that Christianity had not, and
+could not have, anything to fear from scientific inquiry. This has
+often been said since, but in 1870 it was so novel that it drew from
+Huxley a singularly warm and impressive recognition. He was one of the
+first bishops to condemn the system of theological tests in the
+English universities. He even declared that "it was an evil hour when
+the Church thought herself obliged to add to or develop the simple
+articles of the Apostles' Creed." These deliverances, which any one
+can praise now, alarmed a large section of the Church of England then;
+nor was the bishop's friendliness to Dissenters favourably regarded by
+those who deny to Dissenting pastors the title of Christian
+ministers.[33]
+
+The gravest trouble of his life arose in connection with legal
+proceedings which he felt bound to take in the case of a Ritualist
+clergyman who had persisted in practices apparently illegal. Fraser,
+though personally the most tolerant of men to those who differed from
+his own theological views, felt bound to enforce the law, because it
+was the law, and was at once assailed unjustly, as well as bitterly,
+by those who sympathised with the offending clergyman, and who could
+not, or would not, understand that a bishop, like other persons in an
+official position, may hold it his absolute duty to carry out the
+directions of the law whether or no he approves the law, and at
+whatever cost to himself. These attacks were borne with patience and
+dignity. He was never betrayed into recriminations, and could the more
+easily preserve his calmness, because he felt no animosity.
+
+A bishop may be a power outside his own religious community even in a
+country where the clergy are separated as a caste from the lay
+people. Such men as Dupanloup in France show that. So too he may be a
+mighty moral and religious force outside his own religious community
+in a country where there is no church established or endowed by the
+State. The example of Dr. Phillips Brooks in the United States shows
+that. But Dupanloup would have been eminent and influential had he not
+been a clergyman at all; and Dr. Brooks was the most inspiring
+preacher and the most potent leader of religious thought in America
+long before, in the last years of his life, he reluctantly consented
+to accept the episcopal office. Fraser, not so gifted by nature as
+either of those men, would have had little chance of doing the work he
+did save in a country where the existence of an ancient establishment
+secures for one of its dignitaries a position of far-reaching
+influence. When the gains and losses to a nation of the retention of a
+church establishment are reckoned up, this may be set down among the
+gains.
+
+If the Church of England possessed more leaders like Tait, Fraser, and
+Lightfoot--the statesman, the citizen, and the scholar--in the
+characters and careers of all of whom one finds the common mark of a
+catholic and pacific spirit, she would have no need to fear any
+assaults of political foes, no temptation to ally herself with any
+party, but might stand as an establishment until, after long years,
+by the general wish of her own people, as well as of those who are
+without, she passed peaceably into the position of being the first in
+honour, numbers, and influence among a group of Christian communities,
+all equally free from State control.
+
+Fraser's example showed how much an attitude of unpretending
+simplicity and friendliness to all sects and classes may do to
+mitigate the jealousy and suspicion which still embitter the relations
+of the different religious bodies in England, and which work for evil
+even in its politics. He created, as Dean Stanley said, a new type of
+episcopal excellence: and why should not originality be shown in the
+conception and discharge of an office as well as in the sphere of pure
+thought or of literary creation?
+
+-----
+
+  [30] Two Lives of Dr. Fraser have been published, one (in 1887) by the
+       late Judge Hughes, the other, which gives a fuller impression
+       of his personal character, by the Rev. J. W. Diggle (1891).
+
+  [31] He was a good judge of horses, and had in his youth been fond of
+       hunting.
+
+  [32] A clergyman of his diocese had once, under the greatest
+       provocation, knocked down a person who had insulted him, and
+       the bishop wrote him a letter of reproof pointing out (among
+       other things) that, exposed as the Church of England was to
+       much criticism on all hands, her ministers ought to be very
+       careful in their demeanour. The offender replied by saying, "I
+       must regretfully admit that being grossly insulted, and
+       forgetting in the heat of the moment the critical position of
+       the Church of England, I did knock the man down, etc." Fraser,
+       delighted with this turning of the tables on himself, told me
+       the anecdote with great glee, and invited the clergyman to stay
+       with him not long afterwards.
+
+  [33] He was himself aware that this caused displeasure. In his latest
+       Charge, delivered some months before his death, he said: "I am
+       charged, amongst other grievous sins, with that of thinking not
+       unkindly, and speaking not unfavourably, of Dissenters. I don't
+       profess to love dissent, but I have received innumerable
+       kindnesses from Dissenters. Why should I abuse them? Why should
+       I call them hard names? Remembering how Nonconformity was
+       made--no doubt sometimes by self-will and pride and prejudice
+       and ignorance, but far more often by the Church's supineness,
+       neglect, and intolerance in days long since gone by, of which
+       we have not yet paid the full penalty--though, as I have said,
+       I love not the thing, I cannot speak harshly of it."
+
+       That a defence was needed may seem strange to those who do not
+       know England.
+
+
+
+
+SIR STAFFORD HENRY NORTHCOTE, EARL OF IDDESLEIGH[34]
+
+
+Sir Stafford Northcote (born 1818, died 1887) belonged to a type of
+politician less common among us than it used to be, and likely to
+become still more rare as England grows more democratic--the county
+gentleman of old family and good estate, who receives and profits by a
+classical education at one of the ancient universities, who is at an
+early age returned to Parliament in respect of his social position in
+his county, who has leisure to cultivate himself for statesmanship,
+who has tastes and resources outside the sphere of politics.
+Devonshire, whence he came, has preserved more of the old features of
+English country life than the central and northern parts of England,
+where manufactures and the growth of population have swept away the
+venerable remains of feudalism. In Devonshire the old families are
+still deeply respected by the people. They are so intermarried that
+most of them have ties of kinship with all their neighbours. Few rich
+parvenus have intruded among them; society is therefore exceptionally
+easy, simple, and unostentatious. There is still a strong local
+patriotism, which makes every Devonshire man, whatever his political
+prepossessions, proud of other Devonshire men who rise to eminence,
+and which exerts a wholesome influence on the tone of manners and
+social intercourse. Northcote was a thorough Devonshire man, who loved
+his county and knew its dialect: his Devonshire stories, told with the
+strong accent he could assume, were the delight of any company that
+could tempt him to repeat them. He was immensely popular in the
+county, and had well earned his popularity by his pleasant neighbourly
+ways, as well as by his attention to county business and to the duties
+of a landowner.
+
+He had the time-honoured training of the good old English type, was a
+schoolboy at Eton, went thence to Oxford, won the highest distinctions
+as a scholar, and laid the foundations of a remarkably wide knowledge
+of modern as well as ancient literature. He served his apprenticeship
+to statesmanship as private secretary to Mr. Gladstone, who was then
+(1843) a member of Sir Robert Peel's Government. When the great schism
+in the Tory party took place over the question of free trade in corn,
+he was not yet in Parliament, and therefore was not driven to choose
+between Peel and the Protectionists. In 1855, when he first entered
+the House of Commons, that question was settled and gone, so there was
+no inconsistency in his entering the Tory ranks although himself a
+decided Free Trader. He was not a man who would have elbowed his way
+upward. But elbows were not needed. His abilities, as well as his
+industry and the confidence he inspired, speedily brought him to the
+top. He was appointed Secretary to the Treasury in 1859, entered the
+Cabinet in 1866, when a new Tory Ministry was formed under Lord Derby;
+and when in 1876 Mr. Disraeli retired to the House of Lords, he
+became, being then Chancellor of the Exchequer, leader of the majority
+in the House of Commons, while Mr. Gathorne Hardy, the only other
+person who had been thought of as suitable for that post, received a
+peerage. Mr. Hardy was a more forcible and rousing speaker, but
+Northcote had more varied accomplishments and a fuller mastery of
+official work. Disraeli said that he had "the largest parliamentary
+knowledge of any man he had met."
+
+As an administrator, Sir Stafford Northcote was diligent, judicious,
+and free from any taint of jobbery. He sought nothing for himself; did
+not abuse his patronage; kept the public interests steadily before his
+mind. He was considerate to his subordinates, and gracious to all
+men. He never grudged labour, although there might be no prospect of
+winning credit by it. Scrupulous in discharging his duties to his
+party, he overtaxed his strength by speaking constantly at public
+meetings in the country, a kind of work he must have disliked, and for
+which he was ill fitted by the moderation of his views and of his
+language. Parliament is not a good place for the pursuit of pure
+truth, but the platform is still less favourable to that quest. It was
+remarked of him that even in party gatherings, where invective against
+political opponents is apt to be expected and relished, he argued
+fairly, and never condescended to abuse.
+
+As a Parliamentarian he had two eminent merits--immense knowledge
+and admirable readiness. He had been all his life a keen observer
+and a diligent student; and as his memory was retentive, all that he
+had observed or read stood at his command. In questions of trade and
+finance, questions which, owing, perhaps, to their increasing
+intricacy, seem to be less and less frequently mastered by practical
+politicians in England, he was especially strong. No other man on his
+own side in politics spoke on such matters with equal authority, and
+the brunt of the battle fell on him whenever they came up for
+discussion. As he had now his old master for his chief antagonist, the
+conflict was no easy one; but he never shrank from it. Not less
+remarkable was his alertness in debate. His manner was indeed
+somewhat ineffective, for it wanted both force and variety. Sentence
+followed sentence in a smooth and easy stream, always clear, always
+grammatically correct, but with a flow too equably unbroken. There
+were few impressive phrases, few brilliant figures, few of those
+appeals to passion with which it is necessary to warm and rouse a
+large assembly. When the House grew excited at the close of a long
+full-dress debate, and Sir Stafford rose in the small hours of the
+morning to wind it up on behalf of his party, men felt that the
+ripple of his sweet voice, the softness of his gentle manner, were not
+what the occasion called for. But what he said was always to the
+point and well worth hearing. No facts or arguments suddenly
+thrown at him by opponents disconcerted him; for there was sure to
+be an answer ready. However weak his own case might seem, his
+ingenuity could be relied upon to strengthen it; however powerfully
+the hostile case had been presented, he found weak places in it and
+shook it down by a succession of well-planted criticisms, each
+apparently small, but damaging when taken all together, because no
+one of them could be dismissed as irrelevant.
+
+It was interesting to watch him as he sat on the front bench, with his
+hat set so low on his brow that it hid all the upper part of his face,
+while the lower part was covered by a thick yellowish-brown beard,
+perfectly motionless, rarely taking a note of what was said, and, to
+all appearance, the most indifferent figure in the House. The only
+sign of feeling which he gave was to be found in his habit of
+thrusting each of his hands up the opposite sleeve of his coat when
+Mr. Gladstone, the only assailant whom he needed to fear, burst upon
+him in a hailstorm of declamation. But when he rose, one perceived
+that nothing had escaped him. Every point which an antagonist had made
+was taken up and dealt with; no point that could aid his own
+contention was neglected; and the fluent grace with which his
+discourse swept along, seldom aided by a reference to notes, was not
+more surprising than the unfailing skill with which he shunned
+dangerous ground, and put his propositions in a form which made it
+difficult to contradict them. I remember to have heard a member of the
+opposite party remark, that nothing was more difficult than to defend
+your argument from Northcote, because he had the art of nibbling it
+away, admitting a little in order to evade or overthrow the rest.
+
+So much for his parliamentary aptitudes, which were fully recognised
+before he rose to leadership. But as it was his leadership that has
+given him a place in history, I may dwell for a little upon the way in
+which he filled that most trying as well as most honourable post. He
+led the House--that is to say, the Ministerial majority--for four
+sessions (1877-1880), and the Tory Opposition for five and a half
+sessions (1880 to middle of 1885). To lead the House of Commons a man
+must have, over and above the qualities which make a good debater, an
+unusual combination of talents. He must be both bold and cautious,
+combative and cool. He must take, on his own responsibility, and on
+the spur of the moment, decisions which commit the whole Ministry, and
+yet, especially if he be not Prime Minister, he must consider how far
+his colleagues will approve and implement his action. He must put
+enough force and fire into his speeches to rouse his own ranks and
+intimidate (if he can) his opponents, yet must have regard to the more
+timorous spirits among his own supporters, going no further than he
+feels they will follow, and must sometimes throw a crafty fly over
+those in the Opposition whom he thinks wavering or disaffected. Under
+the fire of debate, perhaps while composing the speech he has to make
+in reply, he must consider not merely the audience before him but also
+the effect his words will have when they are read next morning in cold
+blood, and, it may be, the effect not only in England but abroad.
+Being responsible for the whole conduct of parliamentary business, he
+must keep a close watch upon every pending bill, and determine how
+much of Government time shall be allotted to each, and in what order
+they shall be taken, and how far the general feeling of the House will
+let him go in seizing the hours usually reserved for private members,
+and in granting or refusing opportunities for discussing topics he
+would prefer to have not discussed at all.
+
+So far as prudence, tact, and knowledge of business could enable him
+to discharge these duties, Northcote discharged them admirably. It was
+his good fortune to have behind him in Lord Beaconsfield, who had
+recently gone to the House of Lords, a chief of the whole party who
+trusted him, and with whom he was on the best terms. The immense
+authority of that chief secured his own authority. His party was--as
+the Tory party usually is--compact and loyal; and his majority ample,
+so he had no reason to fear defeat. In the conflicts that arose over
+Eastern affairs in 1877-79, affairs at some moments highly critical,
+he was cautious and adroit, more cautious than Lord Beaconsfield,
+sometimes repairing by moderate language the harm which the latter's
+theatrical utterances had done. When a group of Irish Nationalist
+members, among whom Mr. Parnell soon came to the front, began to evade
+the rules and paralyse the action of the House by obstructive tactics,
+he was less successful. Their ingenuity baffled the Ministry, and
+brought the House into sore straits. But it may be doubted whether
+any leader could have overcome the difficulties of the position. It
+was a new position. The old rules framed under quite different
+conditions were not fit to check members who, far from regarding the
+sentiments of the House, avowed their purpose to reduce it to
+impotence, and thereby obtain that Parliament of their own, which
+could alone, as they held, cure the ills of Ireland.
+
+After ten years of struggle and experiment, drastic remedies for
+obstruction were at last devised; but in the then state of opinion
+within the House, those remedies could not have been carried. Members
+accustomed to the old state of things could not for a good while make
+up their minds to sacrifice part of their own privileges in order to
+deal with a difficulty the source of which they would not attempt to
+cure. On the whole, therefore, though he was blamed at the time,
+Northcote may be deemed to have passed creditably through his first
+period of leadership.
+
+It was when he had to lead his party in Opposition, after April 1880,
+that his severest trial came. To lead the minority is usually easier
+than to lead the majority. A leader of the Opposition also must, no
+doubt, take swift decisions in the midst of a debate, must consider
+how far he is pledging his party to a policy which they may be
+required to maintain when next they come into power, must endeavour
+to judge, often on scanty data, how many of his usual or nominal
+supporters will follow him into the lobby when a division is called,
+and how best he can draw off some votes from among his opponents.
+Still, delicate as this work is, it is not so hard as that of the
+leader of the Government, for it is rather critical than constructive,
+and a mistake can seldom do irreparable mischief. Northcote, however,
+had special difficulties to face. Mr. Gladstone, still full of energy
+and fire, was leading the majority. After a few months Lord
+Beaconsfield's mantle no longer covered Northcote (that redoubtable
+strategist died in April 1881), and a small but active group of Tory
+members set up an irregular skirmishing Opposition on their own
+account, paying little heed to his moderate counsels. The Tory party
+was then furious at its unexpected defeat at the election of 1880. It
+was full of fight, burning for revenge, eager to denounce every
+trifling error of the Ministry, and to give battle on small as well as
+great occasions. Hence it resented the calm and cautiously critical
+attitude which Northcote took up. He had plenty of courage; but he
+thought, as indeed most impartial observers thought, that little was
+to be gained by incessantly worrying an enemy so superior in force and
+flushed with victory; that premature assaults might consolidate a
+majority within which there existed elements of discord; and that it
+was wiser to wait till the Ministry should begin to make mistakes and
+incur misfortunes in the natural course of events, before resuming the
+offensive against them. There is a natural tendency to reaction in
+English popular opinion, and a tendency to murmur against whichever
+party may be in power. This tendency must soon have told in favour of
+the Tories, with little effort on their own part; and when it was
+already manifest, a Parliamentary attack could have been delivered
+with effect. Northcote's view and plan were probably right, but, being
+too prone to yield to pressure, and finding his hand forced, he
+allowed himself to be drawn by the clamour of his followers into
+aggressive operations, which, nevertheless, himself not quite
+approving them, he conducted in a half-hearted way. He had not Mr.
+Gladstone's power of doing excellently what he hated to have to do.
+And it must be admitted that from 1882 onwards, when troubles in
+Ireland and oscillations in Egyptian policy had begun to shake the
+credit of the Liberal Ministry, he showed less fire and pugnacity than
+the needs of the time required from a party leader. In one thing the
+young men, who, like Zulu warriors, wished to wash their spears, were
+right and he was wrong. He conceived that frequent attacks and a
+resort to obstructive tactics would damage the Opposition in the eyes
+of the country. Experience has shown that parties do not greatly
+suffer from the way they fight their Parliamentary battles. Few people
+follow the proceedings closely enough to know when an Opposition
+deserves blame for prolonging debate, or a Ministry for abuse of the
+closure. So, too, in the United States it would seem that neither the
+tyrannical action of a majority nor filibustering by a minority shocks
+the nation.
+
+Not only was Northcote's own temper pacific, but he was too sweetly
+reasonable and too dispassionate to be a successful leader in
+Opposition. He felt that he was never quite a party man. His mind was
+almost too judicial, his courtesy too unfailing, his temper too
+unruffled, his manner too unassuming. He did not inspire awe or fear.
+Not only did he never seek to give pain, even where pain might have
+been a wholesome discipline for pushing selfishness--he seemed
+incapable of irritation, and bore with vexatious obstruction from some
+members of the House, and mutinous attacks from others who belonged to
+his own party, when a spirit less kindly and forgiving might have
+better secured his own authority and the dignity of the assembly. He
+proceeded on the assumption, an unsafe one, as he had too much reason
+to know, that every one else was a gentleman like himself, penetrated
+by the old traditions of the House of Commons.
+
+While superior to the prejudices of the old-fashioned wing of his
+party, he was too cautious and conscientious to join those who sought
+to lead it into demagogic courses. So far as political opinions went,
+he might, had fortune sent him into the world as the son of a Whig
+family, have made an excellent Whig, removed as far from high Toryism
+on the one hand as from Radicalism on the other. There was, therefore,
+a certain incompatibility between the man and the position. Average
+partisans felt that a leader so very reasonable was not in full
+sympathy with them. Even his invincible optimism displeased them.
+"Hang that fellow Northcote!" said one of them; "he's always seeing
+blue sky." The militant partisans, whatever their opinions, desired a
+pugnacious chief. That a leader should draw the enemy's fire does him
+good with his followers, and makes them rally to him. But the fire of
+his opponents was hardly ever directed against Northcote, even when
+controversy was hottest. Had he possessed a more imperious will, he
+might have overcome these difficulties, because his abilities and
+experience were of the highest value to his party, and his character
+stood so high that the mass of sensible Tories all over the country
+might perhaps have rallied to him, if he had appealed to them against
+the intrigues by which it was sought to supplant him. He did not lack
+courage. But he lacked what men call "backbone." For practical
+success, it is less fatal to fail in wisdom than to fail in
+resolution. He had not that unquenchable self-confidence which I have
+sought to describe in Disraeli, and shall have to describe in Parnell
+and in Gladstone. He yielded to pressure, and people came to know that
+he would yield to pressure.
+
+The end of it was that the weakened prestige and final fall of the
+Liberal Ministry were not credited to his generalship, but rather to
+those who had skirmished in advance of the main army. That fall was in
+reality due neither to him nor to them, but partly to the errors or
+internal divisions of the Ministry itself, partly to causes such as
+the condition of Ireland and the revolt of Arabi in Egypt, for which
+Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet was no more, perhaps less, to blame than many
+of its predecessors. No Ministry of recent years seemed, when it was
+formed, to have such a source of strength in the abilities of the men
+who composed it as did the Ministry of 1880. None proved so
+persistently unlucky.
+
+The circumstances under which Northcote's leadership came to an end by
+his elevation to the Upper House (June 1885) as Earl of Iddesleigh, as
+well as those under which he was subsequently (1887) removed from the
+post of Foreign Secretary in the then Tory Ministry, evoked much
+comment at the time, but some of the incidents attending them have not
+yet been disclosed, and they could not be discussed without bringing
+in other persons with whom I am not here concerned. Conscious of his
+own loyalty to his party, and remembering his long and laborious
+services, he felt those circumstances deeply; and they may have
+hastened his death, which came very suddenly in February 1887, and
+called forth a burst of sympathy such as had not been seen since Peel
+perished by an accident nearly forty years before.
+
+In private life Northcote had the charm of unpretending manners,
+coupled with abundant humour, a store of anecdote, and a geniality
+which came straight from the heart. No man was a more agreeable
+companion. In 1884, when the University of Edinburgh celebrated its
+tercentenary, he happened to be Lord Rector, and in that capacity had
+to preside over the festivities. Although a stranger to Scotland, and
+as far removed (for he was a decided High Churchman) from sympathy
+with Scottish Presbyterianism as he was removed in politics from the
+Liberalism then dominant in Edinburgh, he won golden opinions from the
+Scotch, as well as from the crowd of foreign visitors, by the tact and
+grace he showed in the discharge of his duties, and the skill with
+which, putting off the politician, he entered into the spirit of the
+occasion as a lover of letters and learning. Though political eminence
+had secured his election to the office, every one felt that it would
+have been hard to find in the ranks of literature and science any one
+fitter to preside over such a gathering.
+
+He left behind few in whom the capacities of the administrator were so
+happily blended with a philosophic judgment and a wide culture. It is
+a combination which was inadequately appreciated in his own person.
+Vehemence in controversy, domineering audacity of purpose, the power
+of moving crowds by incisive harangues, were the qualities which the
+younger generation seemed disposed to cultivate. They are qualities
+apt to be valued in times of strife and change, times when men are
+less concerned to study and apply principles than to rouse the
+passions and consolidate the organisation of their party, while
+dazzling the nation by large promises or bold strokes of policy. For
+such courses Northcote was not the man. Were it to be observed of him
+that he was too good for the work he had to do, it might be answered
+that political leadership is work for which no man can be too good,
+and that it was rather because his force of will and his combativeness
+were not commensurate with his other gifts, that those other gifts did
+not have their full effect and win their due success. Yet this at
+least may be said, that if he had been less amiable, less fair-minded,
+and less open-minded, he would have retained his leadership to the
+end.
+
+-----
+
+  [34] A _Life of Lord Iddesleigh_, written by Mr. Andrew Lang,
+       presents Northcote's character and career with fairness and
+       discrimination.
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES STEWART PARNELL
+
+
+Though I do not propose to write even the briefest narrative of
+Parnell's life, but only to note certain salient features of his
+intellect and character, it may be well to state a few facts and
+dates; for in these days of rapid change and hasty reading, facts soon
+pass out of most men's memories, leaving only vague impressions
+behind.[35]
+
+He belonged to a family which, established at Congleton in Cheshire,
+had at the time of the Restoration migrated to Ireland, had settled on
+an estate in Wicklow, and had produced in every subsequent generation
+a person of distinction. Thomas Parnell, the friend of Pope and Swift,
+is still remembered by his poem of _The Hermit_. Another Parnell (Sir
+John) was Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer in the days of Henry
+Grattan, whose opinions he shared. Another (Sir Henry) was a leading
+Irish Liberal member of the House of Commons, and died by his own hand
+in 1842. Charles's father and grandfather figured less in the public
+eye. But his mother was a remarkable woman, and the daughter of a
+remarkable man, Commodore Charles Stewart, one of the most brilliant
+naval commanders on the American side in the war of 1812. Stewart was
+the son of a Scoto-Irishman from Ulster, who had emigrated to America
+in the middle of the eighteenth century; so there was a strain of
+Scottish as well as a fuller strain of English blood in the most
+powerful Irish leader of recent times.
+
+Parnell was born at Avondale, the family estate in Wicklow, in 1846,
+and was educated mostly at private schools in England. He spent some
+months at Magdalene College, Cambridge, but, having been rusticated
+for an affray in the street, refused to return to the College, and
+finished his education for himself at home. It was a very imperfect
+education. He cared nothing for study, and indeed showed interest only
+in mathematics and cricket. In 1874 he stood as a candidate for
+Parliament, but without success. When he had to make a speech he broke
+down utterly. In 1875 he was returned as member for the county of
+Meath, and within two years had made his mark in the House of Commons.
+In 1880 he was elected leader of the Irish Parliamentary party, and
+ruled it and his followers in Ireland with a rod of iron until he was
+deposed, in 1890, at the instance of the leaders of the English
+Liberal party, who thought that the verdict against him in a divorce
+suit in which he was co-respondent had fatally discredited him in the
+eyes of the bulk of the English Liberal party, and made co-operation
+with him impossible. Refusing to resign his leadership, he conducted a
+campaign in Ireland against the majority of his former followers with
+extraordinary energy till November 1891, when he died of rheumatic
+fever after a short illness. A constitution which had never been
+strong was worn out by the ceaseless exertions and mental tension of
+the last twelve months.
+
+The whole of his political activity was comprised within a period of
+sixteen years, during ten of which he led the Irish Nationalist party,
+exercising an authority more absolute than any Irish leader had
+exercised before.
+
+It has often been observed that he was not Irish, and that he led the
+Irish people with success just because he did not share their
+characteristic weaknesses. But it is equally true that he was not
+English. One always felt the difference between his temperament and
+that of the normal Englishman. The same remark applies to some other
+famous Irish leaders. Wolfe Tone, for instance, and Fitzgibbon
+(afterwards Lord Clare) were unlike the usual type of Irishman--that
+is, the Irishman in whom the Celtic element predominates; but they
+were also unlike Englishmen. The Anglo-Irish Protestants, a strong
+race who have produced a number of remarkable men in excess of the
+proportion they bear to the whole population of the United Kingdom,
+fall into two classes--the men of North-Eastern Ulster, in whom there
+is so large an infusion of Scottish blood that they may almost be
+called "Scotchmen with a difference," and the men of Leinster and
+Munster, who are true Anglo-Celts. It was to this latter class that
+Parnell belonged. They are a group by themselves, in whom some of the
+fire and impulsiveness of the Celt has been blended with some of the
+firmness, the tenacity, and the close hold upon facts which belong to
+the Englishman. Mr. Parnell, however, though he might be reckoned to
+the Anglo-Irish type, was not a normal specimen of it. He was a man
+whom you could not refer to any category, peculiar both in his
+intellect and in his character generally.
+
+His intellect was eminently practical. He did not love speculation or
+the pursuit of abstract truth, nor had he a taste for literature,
+still less a delight in learning for its own sake. Even of the annals
+of Ireland his knowledge was most slender. He had no grasp of
+constitutional questions, and was not able to give any help in the
+construction of a Home Rule scheme in 1886. His general reading had
+been scanty, and his speeches show no acquaintance either with
+history, beyond the commonest facts, or with any other subject
+connected with politics. Very rarely did they contain a maxim or
+reflection of general applicability, apart from the particular topic
+he was discussing. Nor did he ever attempt to give to them the charm
+of literary ornament. All was dry, direct, and practical, without so
+much as a graceful phrase or a choice epithet. Sometimes, when
+addressing a great public meeting, he would seek to rouse the audience
+by vehement language; but though there might be a glow of suppressed
+passion, there were no flashes of imaginative light. Yet he never gave
+the impression of an uneducated man. His language, though it lacked
+distinction, was clear and grammatical. His taste was correct. It was
+merely that he did not care for any of those things which men of
+ability comparable to his usually do care for. His only interests,
+outside politics, lay in mechanics and engineering and in the
+development of the material resources of his country. He took pains to
+manage his estate well, and was specially anxious to make something
+out of his stone quarries, and to learn what could be done in the way
+of finding and working minerals.
+
+Those who observed that he was almost always occupied in examining and
+attacking the measures or the conduct of those who governed Ireland
+were apt to think his talent a purely critical one. They were
+mistaken. Critical, indeed, it was, in a remarkable degree; keen,
+penetrating, stringently dissective of the arguments of an opponent,
+ingenious in taking advantage of a false step in administration or of
+an admission imprudently made in debate. But it had also a positive
+and constructive quality. From time to time he would drop his negative
+attitude and sketch out plans of legislation which were always
+consistent and weighty, though not made attractive by any touch of
+imagination. They were the schemes not so much of a statesman as of an
+able man of business, who saw the facts, especially the financial
+facts, in a sharp, cold light, and they seldom went beyond what the
+facts could be made to prove. And his ideas struck one as being not
+only forcible but independent, the fruit of his own musings. Although
+he freely used the help of others in collecting facts or opinions, he
+did not seem to be borrowing the ideas, but rather to have looked at
+things for himself, and seen them as they actually were, in their true
+perspective, not (like many Irishmen) through the mists of sentiment
+or party feeling. The impression made by one of his more elaborate
+speeches might be compared to that which one receives from a grey
+sunless day with an east wind, a day in which everything shows clear,
+but also hard and cold.
+
+To call his mind a narrow one, as people sometimes did, was to wrong
+it. If the range of his interests was limited, his intelligence was
+not. Equal to any task it undertook, it judged soundly, appreciating
+the whole phenomena of the case, men and things that had no sort of
+attraction for it. There was less pleasure in watching its activities
+than the observation of a superior mind generally affords, for it was
+always directed to immediate aims, and it wanted the originality which
+is fertile in ideas and analogies. It was not discursive, not
+versatile, not apt to generalise. It did not rejoice in the exercise
+of thought for thought's sake, but felt itself to be merely a useful
+instrument for performing the definite practical work which the will
+required of it.
+
+If, however, the intellect of the man could not be called interesting,
+his character had at least this interest, that it gave one many
+problems to solve, and could not easily be covered by any formulae. An
+observer who followed the old method of explaining every man by
+ascribing to him a single ruling passion, would have said that his
+ruling passion was pride. The pride was so strong that it almost
+extinguished vanity. Parnell did not appear to seek occasions for
+display, frequently neglecting those which other men would have
+chosen, seldom seeming to be elated by the applause of crowds, and
+treating the House of Commons with equal coolness whether it cheered
+him or howled at him. He cared nothing for any social compliments or
+attentions, rarely accepted an invitation to dinner, dressed with
+little care and often in clothes whose style and colour seemed
+unworthy of his position. He was believed to be haughty and distant to
+his followers; and although he could occasionally be kindly and even
+genial, scarcely any were admitted to intimacy, and few of the
+ordinary signs of familiarity could be observed between him and them.
+Towards other persons he was sufficiently polite but warily reserved,
+showing no desire for the cultivation of friendship, or, indeed, for
+any relations but those of business. Of some ordinary social duties,
+such as opening and answering letters, he was, especially in later
+years, more neglectful than good breeding permits; and men doubted
+whether to ascribe this fault to indolence or to a superb disregard of
+everybody but himself. Such disregard he often showed in greater
+matters, taking no notice of attacks made upon him which he might have
+refuted, and intimating to the English his indifference to their
+praise or blame. On one remarkable occasion, at the beginning of the
+session of 1883, he was denounced by Mr. W. E. Forster in a long and
+bitter speech, which told powerfully upon the House. Many instances
+were given in which Irish members had palliated or failed to condemn
+criminal acts, and Parnell was arraigned as the head and front of this
+line of conduct, and thus virtually responsible for the outrages that
+had occurred. The Irish leader, who had listened in impassive silence,
+broken only by one interjected contradiction, to this fierce
+invective, did not rise to reply, and was with difficulty induced by
+his followers to deliver his defence on the following day. To the
+astonishment of every one, that defence consisted in a declaration,
+delivered in a cold, careless, almost scornful way, that for all he
+said or did in Ireland he held himself responsible to his countrymen
+only, and did not in the least regard what Englishmen thought of him.
+It was an answer not of defence but of defiance.
+
+Even to his countrymen he could on occasion be disdainful, expecting
+them to defer to his own judgment of his own course. He would
+sometimes remain away from Parliament for weeks together, although
+important business might be under consideration, perhaps would vanish
+altogether from public ken. Yet this lordly attitude and the air of
+mystery which surrounded him did not seem to be studied with a view to
+effect. They were due to his habit of thinking first and chiefly of
+himself. If he desired to indulge his inclinations, he indulged them.
+Some extremely strong motive of passion or interest might interpose
+to restrain this desire and stimulate him to an unwelcome exertion;
+but no respect for the opinion of others, nor fear of censure from his
+allies or friends, would be allowed to do so.
+
+This boundless self-confidence and independence greatly contributed to
+his success as a leader. His faith in his star inspired a conviction
+that obstacles whose reality his judgment recognised would ultimately
+yield to his will, and gave him in moments of crisis an undismayed
+fortitude which only once forsook him--in the panic which was suddenly
+created by the Phoenix Park murders of May 1882. The confidence which
+he felt, or appeared to feel, reacted upon his party, and became a
+chief ground of their obedience to him and their belief in his
+superior wisdom. His calmness, his tenacity, his patience, his habit
+of listening quietly to every one, but deciding for himself, were all
+evidences of that resolute will which imposed itself upon the Irish
+masses no less than upon his Parliamentary following, and secured for
+him a loyalty in which there was little or nothing of personal
+affection.
+
+In these several respects his overweening pride was a source of
+strength. In another direction, however, it proved a source of
+weakness. There are men in whom the want of moral principle, of noble
+emotions, or of a scrupulous conscience and nice sense of honour, is
+partly replaced by deference to the opinion of their class or of the
+world. Such men may hold through life a tolerably upright course,
+neither from the love of virtue nor because they are ambitious and
+anxious to stand well with those whom they aspire to influence or
+rule, but because, having a sense of personal dignity, combined with a
+perception of what pleases or offends mankind, they are resolved to do
+nothing whereby their good name can be tarnished or an opening given
+to malicious tongues. But when pride towers to such a height as to
+become a law to itself, disregarding the judgment of others, it may
+not only lead its possessor into an attitude of defiance which the
+world resents, but may make him stoop to acts of turpitude which
+discredit his character. Mr. Parnell was certainly not a scrupulous
+man. Without dwelling upon the circumstances attending the divorce
+case already referred to, or upon his betrayal of Mr. Gladstone's
+confidences, and his reckless appeals during the last year of his life
+to the most inflammable elements in Ireland, there are facts enough in
+his earlier career to show that he had little regard for truth and
+little horror for crime. A revolution may extenuate some sins, but
+even in a revolution there are men (and sometimes the strongest men)
+whose moral excellence shines through the smoke of conflict and the
+mists of detraction. In Mr. Parnell's nature the moral element was
+imperfectly developed. He seemed cynical and callous; and it was
+probably his haughty self-reliance which prevented him from
+sufficiently deferring to the ordinary moralities of mankind. His
+pride, which ought to have kept him free from the suspicion of
+dishonour, made him feel himself dispensed from the usual restraints.
+Whatever he did was right in his own eyes, and no other eyes need be
+regarded. Phenomena somewhat similar were observable in Napoleon. But
+Napoleon, though he came of a good family, was obviously not a
+gentleman in the common sense of the term. Mr. Parnell was a gentleman
+in that sense. He had the bearing, the manners, the natural easy
+dignity of a man of birth who has always moved in good society. He
+rarely permitted any one to take liberties with him, even the innocent
+liberties of familiar intercourse. This made his departures from what
+may be called the inner and higher standard of gentlemanly conduct all
+the more remarkable.
+
+He has been accused of a want of physical courage. He did no doubt
+after the Phoenix Park murders ask the authorities in England for
+police protection, being, not unnaturally, in fear for his life; and
+he habitually carried firearms. He was at times in danger, and there
+was every reason why he should be prepared to defend himself. An
+anecdote was told of another member of the House of Commons whose
+initials were the same as his own, and who, taking what he supposed to
+be his own overcoat from the peg on which it hung in the cloakroom of
+the House, was startled when he put his hand into the pocket to feel
+in it the cold iron of a pistol. Moral courage he showed in a high
+degree during his whole public career, facing his antagonists with an
+unshaken front, even when they were most numerous and bitter. Though
+he intensely disliked imprisonment, the terms on which he came out of
+Kilmainham Gaol left no discredit upon him. He behaved with perfect
+dignity under the attacks of the press in 1887, and in the face of the
+use made of letters attributed to him which turned out to have been
+forged by Richard Pigott--letters which the bulk of the English upper
+classes had greedily swallowed. With this courage and dignity there
+was, however, little trace of magnanimity. He seldom said a generous
+word, or showed himself responsive to such a word spoken by another.
+Accustomed to conceal his feelings, except in his most excited
+moments, he rarely revealed, but he certainly cherished, vindictive
+sentiments. He never forgave either Mr. W. E. Forster or Mr. Gladstone
+for having imprisoned him in 1881;[36] and though he stood in some
+awe of the latter, whom he considered the only really formidable
+antagonist he had ever had to confront, he bore a grudge which
+smouldered under the reconciliation of 1886 and leapt into flame in
+the manifesto of November 1890.
+
+The union in Mr. Parnell of intense passion with strenuous self-control
+struck all who watched him closely, though it was seldom that passion
+so far escaped as to make the contrast visibly dramatic. Usually he was
+cold, grave, deliberate, repelling advances with a sort of icy
+courtesy. He hardly ever lost his temper in the House of Commons,
+even in his last session under the sarcasms of his former friends,
+though the low, almost hissing tones of his voice sometimes betrayed an
+internal struggle. But during the electoral campaign in Kilkenny, in
+December 1890, when he was fighting for his life, he was more than
+once so swept away by anger that those beside him had to hold him
+back from jumping off the platform into the crowd to strike down some
+one who had interrupted him. Suspended for a moment, his mastery of
+himself quickly returned. Men were astonished to observe how, after
+some of the stormy passages at the meetings of Irish members held in
+one of the House of Commons committee-rooms in December 1890, he
+would address quietly, perhaps lay his hand upon the shoulder of, some
+one of the colleagues who had just been denouncing him, and on whom
+he had poured all the vitriol of his fierce tongue. As this could
+not have been good-nature, it must have been either calculated
+policy or a pride that would not accept an injury from those whom he
+had been wont to deem his subjects. Spontaneous kindliness was never
+ascribed to him; nor had he, so far as could be known, a single intimate
+friend.
+
+Oratory is the usual avenue to leadership in a democratic movement,
+and Mr. Parnell is one of the very few who have arrived at power
+neither by that road nor by military success. So far from having by
+nature any of the gifts or graces of a popular speaker, he was at
+first conspicuously deficient in them, and became at last effective
+only by constant practice, and by an intellectual force which asserted
+itself through commonplaceness of language and a monotonous delivery.
+Fluency was wanting, and even moderate ease was acquired only after
+four or five years' practice. His voice was neither powerful nor
+delicate in its modulations, but it was clear, and the enunciation
+deliberate and distinct, quiet when the matter was ordinary, slow and
+emphatic when an important point arrived. With very little action of
+the body, there was often an interesting and obviously unstudied
+display of facial expression. So far from glittering with the florid
+rhetoric supposed to characterise Irish eloquence, his speeches were
+singularly plain, bare, and dry. Neither had they any humour. If they
+ever raised a smile, which seldom happened, it was by some touch of
+sarcasm or adroit thrust at a point left unguarded by an adversary.
+Their merit lay in their lucidity, in their aptness to the matter in
+hand, in the strong practical sense which ran through them, coupled
+with the feeling that they came from one who led a nation, and whose
+forecasts had often fulfilled themselves. They were carefully
+prepared, and usually made from pretty full notes; but the preparation
+had been given rather to the matter and the arrangement than to the
+diction, which had rarely any ornament or literary finish. Of late
+years he spoke infrequently, whether from indolence or from weak
+health, or because he thought little was to be done in the face of a
+hostile majority, now that the tactics of obstruction had been
+abandoned. When he interposed without preparation in a debate which
+had arisen unexpectedly, he was short, pithy, and direct; indeed,
+nothing was more characteristic of Parnell than his talent for hitting
+the nail on the head, a talent which always commands attention in
+deliberative assemblies. No one saw more clearly or conveyed in terser
+language the course which the circumstances of the moment required;
+and as his mastery of parliamentary procedure and practice came next
+to that of Mr. Gladstone, any advice that he gave to the House on a
+point of order carried weight. It would indeed be no exaggeration to
+say that during the sessions of 1889 and 1890 he was distinctly the
+second man in the House of Commons, surpassed in debating power by
+five or six others, but inferior to Mr. Gladstone alone in the
+interest which his speeches excited and in the impression they
+produced. Along with this access of influence his attitude and the
+spirit of his policy appeared to rise and widen. There was less of
+that hard attorneyism which had marked his criticisms of the Tory
+Government and their measures up to March 1880, and of the Liberal
+Government and their measures during the five following years. He
+seemed to grow more and more to the full stature of a statesman, with
+constructive views and a willingness to make the best of the facts as
+he found them. Yet even in this later and better time one note of
+greatness was absent from his speeches. There was nothing genial or
+generous or elevated about them. They never soared into an atmosphere
+of lofty feeling, worthy of the man who was by this time deemed to be
+leading his nation to victory, and who had begun to be admired and
+honoured by one of the two great historic English parties.
+
+Parnell was not only versed in the rules of parliamentary procedure,
+but also a consummate master of parliamentary tactics. Soon after he
+entered the House of Commons he detected its weak point, and perfected
+a system of obstruction which so destroyed the efficiency of its
+time-honoured modes of doing business that new sets of rules, each
+more stringent than the preceding, had to be devised between 1878 and
+1888. The skill with which he handled his small but well-disciplined
+battalion was admirable. He was strict with individuals, requiring
+absolute obedience to the party rules, but ready to gratify any
+prevailing current of feeling when he saw that this could be done
+without harm to the cause. More than once, when English members who
+happened to be acting with him on some particular question pressed him
+to keep his men quiet and let a division be taken at once, he answered
+that they were doubtless right in thinking that the moment for
+securing a good division had arrived, but that he must not muzzle his
+followers when they wanted to have their fling. The best proof of the
+tact with which he ruled a section comprising many men of brilliant
+talents lies in the fact that there was no serious revolt, or movement
+towards revolt, against him until the breach of 1890 between himself
+and the Liberal party had led to the belief that his continued
+leadership would mean defeat at the polls in Great Britain, and the
+postponement, perhaps for many years, of Home Rule for Ireland.
+
+Parnell's political views and tendencies were eagerly canvassed by
+those who had studied him closely. Many, among both Englishmen and
+Irishmen, held that he was at heart a Conservative, valuing strong
+government and attached to the rights of property. They predicted that
+if an Irish Parliament had been established, as proposed by Mr.
+Gladstone in 1886, and an Irish cabinet formed to administer the
+affairs of the island, Parnell would have been the inevitable and
+somewhat despotic leader of the party of authority and order. His
+co-operation with the agrarian agitators from 1879 onwards was in this
+view merely a politic expedient to gain support for the Home Rule
+campaign. For this theory there is much to be said. Though he came to
+lead a revolution, and was willing, as appeared in the last few months
+of his life, to appeal to the genuine revolutionary party, Parnell was
+not by temper or conviction a revolutionist. Those who were left in
+Ireland of the old Fenian group, and especially that section of the
+extreme Fenians out of which the secret insurrectionary and dynamitard
+societies were formed, never liked or trusted him. The passion which
+originally carried him into public life was hatred of England, and a
+wish to restore to Ireland, if possible her national independence
+(though he rarely if ever avowed this), or at least her own
+Parliament. But he was no democratic leveller, and still less
+inclined to those socialistic doctrines which the section influenced
+by Mr. Davitt had espoused. He did not desire the "extinction of
+landlordism," and would probably have been a restraining and
+moderating force in an Irish legislature. That he was genuinely
+attached to his native country need not be doubted. But his patriotism
+had little of a sentimental quality, and seemed to spring as much from
+dislike of England as from love of Ireland.
+
+It may excite surprise that a man such as has been sketched, with so
+cool a judgment and so complete a self-control, a man (as his previous
+career had shown) able to endure temporary reverses in the confidence
+of ultimate success, should have committed the fatal error, which
+blasted his fame and shortened his life, of clinging to the headship
+of his party when prudence prescribed retirement. When he sought the
+advice of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, retirement for a time was the counsel he
+received. His absence need not have been of long duration. Had he,
+after the sentence of the Divorce Court in November 1890, gone abroad
+for eight or ten months, allowing some one to be chosen in his place
+chairman of the Irish party for the session, he might thereafter have
+returned to the House of Commons, and would doubtless, after a short
+lapse of time, have naturally recovered the leadership. No one else
+could have resisted his claims. Unfortunately, the self-reliant pride
+which had many a time stood him in good stead, made him refuse to bow
+to the storm. Probably he could not understand the indignation which
+the proceedings in the divorce case had awakened in England, being
+morally somewhat callous, and knowing that his offence had been no
+secret to many persons in the House of Commons. He had been accustomed
+to despise English opinion, and had on former occasions suffered
+little for doing so. He bitterly resented both Mr. Gladstone's letter
+and the movement to depose him which it roused in his own party.
+Having often before found defiant resolution lead to success, he
+determined again to rely on the maxim which has beguiled so many to
+ruin, just because it has so much truth in it--"_De l'audace, encore
+de l'audace, toujours de l'audace._" The affront to his pride
+disturbed the balance of his mind, and made him feel as if even a
+temporary humiliation would destroy the prestige that had been won by
+his haughty self-confidence. It was soon evident that he had
+overestimated his power in Ireland, but when the schism began there
+were many besides Lord Salisbury--many in Ireland as well as in
+England--who predicted triumph for him. Nor must it be thought that it
+was pure selfishness which made him resolve rather to break with the
+English Liberals than allow the Nationalist bark to be steered by any
+hands but his own. He was a fatalist, and had that confidence in his
+star and his mission which is often characteristic of minds in which
+superstition--for he was superstitious--and a certain morbid taint may
+be discerned. There were others who believed that no one but himself
+could hold the Irish party together and carry the Irish cause to
+triumph. No wonder that this belief should have filled and perhaps
+disordered his own brain.
+
+The swiftness of his rise is a striking instance of the power which
+intellectual concentration and a strenuous will can exert, for he had
+no adventitious help from wealth or family connection or from the
+reputation of having suffered for his country. _Ergo vivida vis animi
+pervicit._ When he entered Parliament he was only thirty, with no
+experience of affairs and no gift of speech; but the quality that was
+in him of leading and ruling men, of taking the initiative, of seeing
+and striking at the weak point of the enemy, and fearlessly facing the
+brunt of an enemy's attack, made itself felt in a few months, and he
+rose without effort to the first place. With some intellectual
+limitations and some great faults, he will stand high in the long and
+melancholy series of Irish leaders: less lofty than Grattan, less
+romantic than Wolfe Tone, less attractive than O'Connell, less
+brilliant than any of these three, yet entitled to be remembered as
+one of the most remarkable characters that his country has produced in
+her struggle of many centuries against the larger isle.
+
+-----
+
+  [35] The _Life of Parnell_, by Mr. R. Barry O'Brien, has taken rank
+       among the best biographies of the last half-century.
+
+  [36] An anecdote was told at the time that when he found himself in
+       the prison yard at Kilmainham, he said, in a sort of soliloquy,
+       "I shall live yet to dance upon those two old men's graves."
+
+
+
+
+CARDINAL MANNING
+
+
+Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop of Westminster and Cardinal of the
+Holy Roman Church, was born in 1808, eight years after Cardinal
+Newman, and died in 1892. He was one of the most notable figures of
+his generation; and, indeed, in a sense, an unique figure, for he
+contributed a new type to the already rich and various ecclesiastical
+life of England. If he could scarcely be described as intellectually a
+man of the first order, he held a considerable place in the history of
+his time, having effected what greater men might perhaps have failed
+to effect, for the race is not always to the swift, and time and
+chance favoured Manning.
+
+He was the son of wealthy parents, his father a City of London
+merchant; was educated at Harrow and at Oxford, where he obtained high
+classical honours and a Fellowship at Merton College; was ordained a
+clergyman, and soon rose to be Archdeacon of Chichester; and, having
+by degrees been led further and further from his original Low Church
+position into the Tractarian movement, ultimately, at the age of
+forty-three, went over to the Church of Rome. Having some time before
+lost his wife, he was at once re-ordained a priest, was appointed
+Archbishop of Westminster on Cardinal Wiseman's death in 1865, and
+raised to the Cardinalate by Pope Pius IX. in 1875.
+
+He was not a great thinker nor a man of wide learning. His writings
+show no trace of originality, nor indeed any conspicuous philosophical
+acuteness or logical power. So far as purely intellectual gifts are
+concerned, he was not to be named with Cardinal Newman or with several
+other of the ablest members of the English Tractarian party, such as
+were the two metaphysicians W. G. Ward and Dalgairns, both of whom
+passed over to Rome, or such as was Dean Church, an accomplished
+historian, and a man of singularly beautiful character, who remained
+an Anglican till his death in 1890. Nor, though he had won a high
+reputation at his University, was Manning a leading spirit in the
+famous "Oxford Movement." It was by his winning manners, his graceful
+rhetoric, and his zealous discharge of clerical duties, rather than by
+any commanding talents that he rose to eminence in the Church of
+England. Neither had his character the same power either to attract or
+to awe as that of Newman. Nobody in those days called him great, as
+men called Newman. Nobody felt compelled to follow where he led. There
+was not, either in his sermons or in his writings, or in his bodily
+presence and conversation, anything which could be pronounced
+majestic, or lofty, or profound. In short, he was not in the grand
+style, either as a man or as a preacher, and wanted that note of
+ethereal purity or passionate fervour which marks the two highest
+forms of religious character.
+
+Intelligent, however, skilful, versatile he was in the highest degree;
+cultivated, too, with a knowledge of all that a highly educated man
+ought to know; dexterous rather than forcible in theological
+controversy; an admirable rhetorician, handling language with
+something of that kind of art which Roman ecclesiastics most
+cultivate, and in their possession of which the leading Tractarians
+showed their affinity to Rome, an exact precision of phrase and a
+subtle delicacy of suggestion. Newman had it in the fullest measure.
+Dean Church had it, with less brilliance than Newman, but with no less
+grace and dignity. Manning equalled neither of these, but we catch in
+him the echo. He wrote abundantly and on many subjects, always with
+cleverness and with the air of one who claimed to belong to the _ames
+d'elite_, yet his style never attained the higher kind of literary
+merit. There was no imaginative richness about it, neither were there
+the weight and penetration that come from sustained and vigorous
+thinking. Similarly, with a certain parade of references to history
+and to out-of-the-way writers, he gave scant evidence of solid
+learning. He was an accomplished disputant in the sense of knowing
+thoroughly the more obvious weaknesses of the Protestant (and
+especially of the Anglican) position, and of being able to contrast
+them effectively with the external completeness and formal symmetry of
+the Roman system. But he never struck out a new or illuminative
+thought; and he seldom ventured to face--one could indeed sometimes
+mark him seeking to elude--a real difficulty.
+
+What, then, was the secret of his great and long-sustained reputation
+and influence? It lay in his power of dealing with men. For the work
+of an ecclesiastical ruler he had three inestimable gifts--a resolute
+will, captivating manners, and a tact equally acute and vigilant, by
+which he seemed not only to read men's characters, but to discern the
+most effective means of playing on their motives. To call him an
+intriguer would be unjust, because the word, if it does not imply the
+pursuit of some mean or selfish object, does generally connote a
+resort to unworthy arts; and the Cardinal was neither dishonourable
+nor selfish. But he had the talents which an intriguer needs, though
+he used them in a spirit of absolute devotion to the interests of his
+Church, and though he was too much of a gentleman to think that the
+interests of the Church, which might justify a good deal, could be
+made to justify any and every means. In conversation he had the art of
+seeming to lay his mind alongside of yours, wishful to know what you
+had to say, and prepared to listen respectfully to it, even though you
+might be much younger and of no personal consequence. Yet you
+sometimes felt, if your own power of observation had not been lulled
+to sleep by the winning manner, that he was watching you, and
+watching, in conformity to a settled habit, the effect upon you of
+whatever he said. It was hard not to be flattered by this air of
+kindly deference, and natural to admire the great man who condescended
+without condescension, even though one might be secretly disappointed
+at the want of freshness and insight in his conversation. Like his
+famous contemporary, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, Manning was all things
+to all men. He was possessed, no doubt, of far less wit and far less
+natural eloquence than that brilliant but variable creature. But he
+gave a more distinct impression of earnest and unquestioning loyalty
+to the cause he had made his own.
+
+In the government of his diocese, Manning showed himself a finished
+ruler and manager of men, flexible in his power of adapting himself to
+any character or society, yet inflexible when firmness was needed,
+usually tactful if not always gentle in his methods, but tenacious in
+his purposes, demanding rightfully from others the simplicity of life
+and the untiring industry of which he set an example himself. Over
+women his influence was still greater than over men, because women are
+more susceptible to the charm of presence and address; nor could any
+other ecclesiastic count so many conversions among ladies of high
+station, his dignified carriage and ascetic face according admirably
+with his sacerdotal rank and his life of strict observance. For some
+years it was his habit to go to Rome early in Lent and remain till
+after Easter. Promising subjects, who had doubts as to their
+probabilities of salvation in the Anglican communion, used to be
+invited to dinner to meet him, and they fell in swift succession
+before his skilful presentation of the peace and bliss to be found
+within the Roman fold.
+
+In his public appearances, it was neither the solid substance of his
+discourses nor the literary quality of their style that struck one,
+but their judicious adaptation to the audience, and the grace with
+which they were delivered. For this reason--originality being rarer
+and therefore more precious in the pulpit, where well-worn themes have
+to be handled, than on a platform, where the topic is one of the
+moment--his addresses at public meetings were better than his sermons,
+and won for him the reputation of a speaker whom it was well worth
+while to secure at any social or philanthropic gathering. At the
+Vatican OEcumenical Council of 1870 it was less by his speeches than
+by his work in private among the assembled prelates that he served the
+Infallibilist cause. Himself devoted, and, no doubt, honestly devoted,
+to Ultramontane principles, he did not hesitate to do violence to
+history and join in destroying what freedom the Church at large had
+retained, in order to exalt the Chair of Peter to a position unheard
+of even at Trent, not to say in the Middle Ages. His activity, his
+assiduity, and his tireless powers of persuasion contributed largely
+to the satisfaction at that Council of the wishes of Pius IX., who
+presently rewarded him with the Cardinalate. But the opponents of the
+new dogma, who were as superior in learning to the Infallibilists as
+they proved inferior in numbers, carried back with them to Germany and
+North America an undying distrust of the astute Englishman who had
+shown more than a convert's proverbial eagerness for rushing to
+extremes and forcing others to follow. I remember to have met some of
+the anti-Infallibilist prelates returning to America in the autumn of
+1870; and in our many talks on shipboard they spoke of the Archbishop
+in terms no more measured than Nestorius may have used of St. Cyril
+after the Council of Ephesus.
+
+But Manning's powers shone forth most fully in the course he gave to
+his policy as Archbishop of Westminster and head of the Roman
+hierarchy in Britain. He had two difficulties to confront. One was the
+suspicion of the old English Roman Catholic families, who distrusted
+him as a recent recruit from Protestantism, a man brought up in ideas
+unfamiliar to their conservative minds. The other was the aversion of
+the ruling classes in England, and indeed of Englishmen generally, to
+the pretensions of Rome an aversion which, among the Tories, sprang
+from deep-seated historical associations, and among the Whigs drew
+further strength from dislike to the reactionary tendencies of the
+Popedom on the European continent, and especially its resistance to
+the freedom and unity of Italy. In 1850 the creation by the Pope of a
+Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, followed by Cardinal Wiseman's
+letter dated from the Flaminian Gate, had evoked a burst of anti-papal
+feeling which never quite subsided during Wiseman's lifetime. Both
+these enmities Manning overcame. The old Catholic families rallied to
+a prelate who supported with dignity and vigour the pretensions of
+their church; while the suspicions of Protestants were largely, if not
+universally, allayed when they noted the attitude of a patriotic
+Englishman, zealous for the greatness of his country, which the
+Archbishop assumed, as well as the heartiness with which he threw
+himself into moral and philanthropic causes. Loyalty to Rome never
+betrayed him into any apparent disloyalty to England. Too prudent to
+avow sympathy with either political party, he seemed less opposed to
+Liberalism than his predecessor had been or than most of the English
+Catholics were. While, of course, at issue with the Liberal party upon
+educational questions, he was believed to lean to Home Rule, and
+maintained good relations with the Irish leaders. He joined those who
+worked for the better protection of children and the repression of
+vice, advocated total abstinence by precept and example, and did much
+to promote it among the poorer Roman Catholic population. Discerning
+the growing magnitude of what are called labour questions, he did not
+recoil from proposals to limit by legislation the hours of toil, and
+gladly exerted himself to settle differences between employers and
+workmen, showing his own sympathy with the needs and hardships of the
+latter. Thus he won a popularity with the London masses greater than
+any prelate of the Established Church had enjoyed, while the middle
+and upper classes noted with pleasure that, however Ultramontane in
+his theology, he always spoke and wrote as an Englishman upon
+non-theological subjects.
+
+In this there was no playing of a part, for he sincerely cared about
+temperance, the welfare of children, the advancement of the labouring
+class, and the greatness of England. But there was also a sage
+perception of the incidental service which his attitude in these
+matters could render to his church; and he relished opportunities of
+proving that a Catholic prelate could be not only a philanthropist but
+also a patriot. He saw the value of the attitude, though he used it
+honestly, and if he was not artful, he was full of art. Truth, for its
+own sake, he neither loved nor sought, but, having once adopted
+certain conclusions, doctrinal and practical, subordinated everything
+else to them. Power he loved, yet not wholly for the pleasure which he
+found in exerting it, but also because he knew that he was fit to use
+it, and could use it, to promote the aims he cherished. To his church
+he was devoted heart and soul; nor could any one have better served it
+so far as England was concerned. No one in our time, hardly even
+Cardinal Newman, has done so much to sap and remove the old Protestant
+fears and jealousies of Rome, fears and jealousies which had descended
+from days when they were less unreasonable than the liberality or
+indifference of our times will allow. Truly the Roman Church is a
+wonderful institution, fertile beyond any other, since in each
+succeeding age she has given birth to new types of force suited to the
+conditions she has to deal with. In Manning she developed a figure
+full of a kind of charm and strength which could hardly have found due
+scope within a Protestant body: a man who never obtruded a claim, yet
+never yielded one; who was the loyal servant of a spiritual despotism,
+yet apparently in sympathy with democratic ideas and movements;
+equally welcome among the poorest Irish of his diocese and at the
+gatherings of the great; ready to join in every good work with those
+most opposed to his own doctrines, yet standing detached as the
+austere and unbending representative of a world-embracing power.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+Since these pages were written there has appeared a Life of Cardinal
+Manning which, for the variety and interest of its contents, and for
+the flood of light which it throws upon its subject, deserves to rank
+among the best biographies in the English language. It reveals the
+inner life of Manning, his high motives and his tortuous methods, his
+piety and his aspirations, his occasional lapses from sincerity and
+rectitude, with a fulness to which one can scarcely find a parallel.
+As was remarked by Mr. Gladstone, who was so keenly interested in the
+book that for months he could talk of little else, it leaves nothing
+for the Day of Judgment.
+
+It would be idle to deny that Manning's reputation did in some measure
+suffer. Yet it must in fairness be remembered that an ordeal such as
+that to which he has been thus subjected is seldom applied, and might,
+if similarly applied, have lowered many another reputation. Cicero
+has suffered in like manner. We should have thought more highly of
+him, though I do not know that we should have liked him better, if his
+letters had not survived to reveal weaknesses which other men, or
+their biographers, were discreet enough to conceal.
+
+I have not attempted to rewrite the preceding pages in the light of
+Mr. Purcell's biography, for to do so would have extended them beyond
+the limits of a sketch. I have, moreover, found that the disclosures
+contained in the biography do not oblige me to darken the colours of
+the sketch itself. Taken all in all, these intimate records of
+Manning's life tend to confirm the view that, along with his love of
+power and pre-eminence, along with his carelessness about historic
+truth, along with the questionable methods he sometimes allowed
+himself to use, there lay deep in his heart a genuine and unfailing
+sympathy with many good causes, such as the cause of temperance, and a
+real tenderness for the poor and for children. If he was far removed
+from a saint, still less was he the mere worldly ecclesiastic, crafty
+and ambitious, who has in all ages been a familiar and unlovely type
+of character.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN[37]
+
+
+Edward Freeman was born at Harborne in South Staffordshire on 2nd
+August 1823, and died at Alicante on 16th March 1892, in the course of
+an archaeological and historical journey to the east and south of
+Spain, whither he had gone to see the sites of the early Carthaginian
+settlements. His life was comparatively uneventful, as that of learned
+men in our time usually is. He was educated at home and at a private
+school till he went to Oxford at the age of eighteen. There he was
+elected a scholar of Trinity College in 1841, took his degree (second
+class in _literae humaniores_) in 1845, and was elected a fellow of
+Trinity shortly afterwards. Marrying in 1847, he lost his fellowship,
+and settled in 1848 in Gloucestershire, and at a later time went to
+live in Monmouthshire, whence he migrated in 1860 to Somerleaze, a
+pretty spot about a mile and a half to the north-west of Wells in
+Somerset. Here he lived till 1884, when he was appointed (on the
+recommendation of Mr. Gladstone) to the Regius Professorship of Modern
+History at Oxford. Thenceforth he spent the winter and spring in the
+University, returning for the long vacation to Somerleaze, a place he
+dearly loved, not only in respect of the charm of the surrounding
+scenery, but from its proximity to the beautiful churches of Wells and
+to many places of historical interest. For the greater part of his
+manhood his surroundings were those of a country gentleman, nor did he
+ever reconcile himself to town life, for he loved the open sky, the
+fields and hills, and all wild creatures, though he detested what are
+called field sports, knew nothing of natural history, and had neither
+taste nor talent for farming. As he began life with an income
+sufficient to make a gainful profession unnecessary, he did not
+prepare himself for any, but gave free scope from the first to his
+taste for study and research. Thus the record of his life is, with the
+exception of one or two incursions into the field of practical
+politics, a record of his historical work and of the journeys he
+undertook in connection with it.
+
+History was the joy as well as the labour of his life. But the
+conception he took of it was peculiar enough to deserve some remark.
+The keynote of his character was the extraordinary warmth of his
+interest in the persons, things, and places which he cared for, and the
+scarcely less conspicuous indifference to matters which lay outside the
+well-defined boundary line of his sympathies. If any branch of inquiry
+seemed to him directly connected with history, he threw himself
+heartily into it, and drew from it all it could be made to yield for his
+purpose. About other subjects he would neither read nor talk, no
+matter how completely they might for the time be filling the minds of
+others. While an undergraduate, and influenced, like most of the abler
+men among his Oxford contemporaries, by the Tractarian opinions and
+sentiments then in their full force and freshness,[38] he became
+interested in church architecture, discerned the value which
+architecture has as a handmaid to historical research, set to work
+to study mediaeval buildings, and soon acquired a wonderfully full and
+exact knowledge of the most remarkable churches and castles all over
+England. He taught himself to sketch, not artistically, but
+sufficiently well to record characteristic points, and by the end of
+his life he had accumulated a collection of hundreds of drawings made
+by himself of notable buildings in France, Germany, Italy, and
+Dalmatia, as well as in the British Isles. Architecture was always
+thenceforward to him the prime external record and interpreter of
+history. But it was the only art in which he took the slightest
+interest. He cared nothing for pictures or statuary; was believed to
+have once only, when his friend J. R. Green dragged him thither,
+visited a picture-gallery in the course of his numerous journeys; and
+did not seem to perceive the significance which paintings have as
+revealing the thoughts and social condition of the time which produced
+them. Another branch of inquiry cognate to history which he prized
+was comparative philology. With no great turn for the refinements of
+classical scholarship, and indeed with some contempt for the practice
+of Latin and Greek verse-making which used to absorb much of the time
+and labour of undergraduates and their tutors at Oxford and Cambridge,
+he was extremely fond of tracing words through different languages
+so as to establish the relations of the peoples who spoke them, and,
+indeed, used to argue that all teaching of languages ought to begin
+with Grimm's law, and to base his advocacy of the retention of Greek
+as a _sine qua non_ for an Arts degree in the University on the
+importance of that law. But with this love for philology as an
+instrument in the historian's hands, he took little pleasure in
+languages simply as languages--that is to say, he did not care to
+master, and was not apt at mastering, the grammar and idioms of a
+tongue. French was the only foreign language he spoke with any
+approach to ease, though he could read freely German, Italian, and
+modern Greek, and on his tour in Greece made some vigorous speeches
+to the people in their own tongue. He had learnt to pronounce Greek in
+the modern fashion, which few Englishmen can do; but how much of his
+classically phrased discourses did the crowds that acclaimed the
+distinguished Philhellene understand? So too he was a keen and
+well-trained archaeologist, but only because archaeology was to him a
+priceless adjunct--one might almost say the most trustworthy source--of
+the study of early history. As evidence of his accomplishments as an
+antiquary I cannot do better than quote the words of a master of that
+subject, who was also one of his oldest friends. Mr. George T. Clark
+says:--
+
+  He was an accurate observer, not only of the broad features of a
+  country but of its ancient roads and earthworks, its prehistoric
+  monuments, and its earlier and especially its ecclesiastical
+  buildings. No man was better versed in the distinctive styles of
+  Christian architecture, or had a better general knowledge of the
+  earthworks from the study of which he might hope to correct or
+  corroborate any written records, and by the aid of which he often
+  infused life and reality into otherwise obscure narrations.... He
+  visited every spot upon which the Conqueror is recorded to have
+  set his foot, compared many of the strongholds of his followers
+  with those they left behind them in Normandy, and studied the
+  evidence of Domesday for their character and possessions. When
+  writing upon Rufus he spent some time in examining the afforested
+  district of the New Forest, and sought for traces of the villages
+  and churches said to have been depopulated or destroyed. And for
+  us archaeologists he did more than this. When he attended a
+  provincial congress and had listened to the description of some
+  local antiquity, some mound, or divisional earthbank, or
+  semi-Saxon church, he at once strove to show the general evidence
+  to be deduced from them, and how it bore upon the boundaries or
+  formation of some Celtic or Saxon province or diocese, if not upon
+  the general history of the kingdom itself.... He thus did much to
+  elevate the pursuits of the archaeologist, and to show the relation
+  they bore to the far superior labours of the historian.
+
+  Freeman was always at his best when in the field. It was then that
+  the full force of his personality came into play: his sturdy
+  upright figure, sharp-cut features, flowing beard, well-modulated
+  voice, clear enunciation, and fluent and incisive speech. None who
+  have heard him hold forth from the steps of some churchyard cross,
+  or from the top stone of some half-demolished cromlech, can ever
+  cease to have a vivid recollection of both the orator and his
+  theme.
+
+Freeman took endless pains to master the topography of any place he
+had to deal with. When at work in his later years on Sicilian history
+he visited, and he has minutely described, the site of nearly every
+spot in that island where a battle or a siege took place in ancient
+times, so that his volumes have become an elaborate historical
+guide-book for the student or tourist.
+
+But while he thus delighted in whatever bore upon history as he
+conceived it, his conception was one which belonged to the eighteenth
+century rather than to our own time. It was to him not only primarily
+but almost exclusively a record of political events--that is to say,
+of events in the sphere of war, diplomacy, and government. He
+expressed this view with concise vigour in the well-known dictum,
+"History is past politics, and politics is present history"; and
+though his friends remonstrated with him against this view as far too
+narrow, excluding from the sphere of history many of its deepest
+sources of interest, he would never give way. That historians should
+care as much (or more) for the religious or philosophical opinions of
+an age, or for its ethical and social phenomena, or for the study of
+its economic conditions, as for forms of government or battles and
+sieges, seemed to him strange. He did not argue against the friends
+who differed from him, for he was ready to believe that there must be
+something true and valuable in the views of a man whom he respected;
+but he could not be induced to devote his own labours to the
+elucidation of these matters. He would say to Green, "You may bring in
+all that social and religious kind of thing, Johnny, but I can't." So
+when he went to deliver lectures in the United States, he delighted in
+making new acquaintances there, and was interested in the Federal
+system and in all institutions which he could trace to their English
+originals, but did not care to see anything or hear anything about the
+economic development or social life of the country.
+
+The same predominant liking for the political element in history made
+him indifferent to many kinds of literature. It may indeed be said
+that literature, simply as literature, did not attract him. In his
+later years, at any rate, he seldom read a book except for the sake of
+the political or historical information it contained. Among the
+writers whom he most disliked were Plato, Carlyle, and Ruskin, in no
+one of whom could he see any merit. Plato, he said, was the only
+author he had ever thrown to the other end of the room. Neither,
+although very fond of the Greek and Roman classics generally, did he
+seem to enjoy any of the Greek poets except Homer and Pindar and, to
+some extent, Aristophanes. His liking for Pindar used to surprise us,
+because Pindar is peculiarly the favourite poet of poetical minds; and
+I suspect it was not so much the splendour of Pindar's style and the
+wealth of his imagination that Freeman enjoyed, as rather the
+profusion of historical and mythological references. He was impatient
+with the Greek tragedians, and still more impatient with Virgil,
+because (as he said) "Virgil cannot or will not say a thing simply."
+Among English poets his preference was for the old heroic ballads,
+such as the songs of Brunanburh and Maldon, and, among recent
+writers, for Macaulay's _Lays_. The first thing he ever published
+(1850) was a volume of verse, consisting mainly of ballads, some of
+them very spirited, on events in Greek and Moorish history. It may be
+doubted if he remembered a line of Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, or
+Tennyson. He blamed Walter Scott for misrepresenting history in
+_Ivanhoe_, but constantly read the rest of his stories, taking special
+pleasure in _Peveril of the Peak_. He bestowed warm praise upon
+_Romola_, on one occasion reading it through twice in a single
+journey. Mrs. Gaskell's _Mary Barton_, Marryatt's _Peter Simple_,
+Trollope's _The Warden_ and _Barchester Towers_, were amongst his
+favourites. Among the moderns, Macaulay was his favourite prose
+author, and he was wont to say that from Macaulay he had learned never
+to be afraid of using the same word to describe the same thing, and
+that no one was a better model to follow in the choice of pure
+English. Limitations of taste are not uncommon among eminent men. What
+was uncommon in Freeman was the perfect frankness with which he avowed
+his aversions, and the absence of any pretence of caring for things
+which he did not really care for. He was in this, as in all other
+matters, a singularly simple and truthful man, never seeking to appear
+different from what he was, and finding it hard to understand why
+other people should not be equally simple and direct. This directness
+made him express himself with an absence of reserve which often gave
+offence. Positive and definite, with a strong broad logic which every
+one could follow, he was a formidable controversialist even on
+subjects outside history. A good specimen of his powers was given in
+the argument against the cruelty of field sports which he carried on
+with Anthony Trollope. His cause was not a popular one in England, but
+he stated it so well as to carry off the honours of the fray.[39]
+
+The restriction of his interest to a few topics--wide ones, to be
+sure--seemed to increase the intensity of his devotion to those few;
+and thus even the two chief practical interests he had in life
+connected themselves with his conception of history. One was the
+discharge of his duties as a magistrate in the local government of his
+county. While he lived at Somerleaze he rarely missed Quarter
+Sessions, speaking seldom, but valuing the opportunity of taking part
+in the rule of the shire. The other was the politics of the time,
+foreign politics even more than domestic. He was from an early age a
+strong Liberal, throwing himself into every question which bore on the
+Constitution, either in state or in church, for (as has been said)
+topics of the social or economic kind lay rather out of his sphere.
+When Mr. Gladstone launched his Irish Home Rule scheme in 1886,
+Freeman espoused it warmly, and praised it for the very point which
+drew most censure even from Liberals, the removal of the Irish members
+from Parliament. He was intensely English and Teutonic, and wished the
+Gael to be left to settle, or fight over, their own affairs in their
+own island, as they had done eight centuries ago. Even the idea of
+separating Ireland altogether from the English Crown would not have
+alarmed him, for he did not thank Strongbow and Henry II. for having
+invaded it; while, on the other hand, the plan of turning the United
+Kingdom into a federation, giving to England, Scotland, Ireland, and
+Wales each a local parliament of its own, with an imperial parliament
+for common concerns, shocked all his historical instincts.
+
+In 1859 he was on the point of coming forward as a parliamentary
+candidate for the borough of Newport in Monmouthshire, and again at
+the election of 1868 he actually did stand for one of the divisions of
+Somerset, and showed in his platform speeches a remarkable gift of
+eloquence, and occasionally, also, of humour, coupled with a want of
+those minor arts which usually contribute more than eloquence does to
+success in electioneering. I went round with him, along with his and
+my friend Mr. Albert Dicey, and few are the candidates who get so much
+pleasure out of a contest as Freeman did. He was a strenuous advocate
+of disestablishment in Ireland, the question chiefly at issue in the
+election of 1868, because he thought the Roman Catholic Church was of
+right, and ought by law to be, the national Church there; but no less
+decidedly opposed to disestablishment in England, where it would have
+pained him to see the uprooting of a system entwined with the ideas
+and events of the Middle Ages. In his later years he told me that if
+the Liberal party took up the policy of disestablishment in Wales, he
+did not know whether he could adhere to them, much as he desired to do
+so.
+
+Similarly he disliked all schemes for drawing the colonies into closer
+relations with the United Kingdom, and even seemed to wish that they
+should sever themselves from it, as the United States had done. This
+view sprang partly from his feeling that they were very recent
+acquisitions, with which the old historic England had nothing to do,
+partly also from the impression made on him by the analogy of the
+Greek colonies. He held that the precedent of the Greek settlements
+showed the true and proper relation between a "metropolis," or
+mother-city, and her colonies to be one not of political dependence or
+interdependence, but of cordial friendliness and a disposition to
+render help, nothing more. These instances are worth citing because
+they illustrate a remarkable difference between his way of looking
+historically at institutions and Macaulay's way. A friend of his (the
+late Mr. S. R. Gardiner), like Freeman a distinguished historian, and
+like him a strong Home Ruler, wrote to me upon this point as
+follows:--
+
+  Freeman and Macaulay are alike in the high value they set upon
+  parliamentary institutions. On the other hand, when Macaulay wants
+  to make you understand a thing, he compares it with that which
+  existed in his own day. The standard of the present is always with
+  him. Freeman traces it to its origin, and testifies to its growth.
+  The strength of this mode of proceeding in an historian is
+  obvious. Its weakness is that it does not help him to appreciate
+  statesmanship looking forward and trying to find a solution of
+  difficult problems. Freeman's attitude is that of the people who
+  cried out for the good laws of King Edward, trying to revive the
+  past.
+
+Freeman was apt to go beyond his own dictum about history and
+politics, for he sometimes made history present politics as well as
+past.
+
+By far the strongest political interest--indeed it rose to a
+passion--of his later years was his hatred of the Turk. In it his
+historical and religious sentiment, for there was a good deal of the
+Crusader about him, was blended with his abhorrence of despotism and
+cruelty. Ever since the beginning of the Crimean war he had been
+opposed to the traditional English policy of supporting the Sultan.
+Ever since he had thought about foreign politics at all he had
+sympathised with the Christians of the East. So when Lord Beaconsfield
+seemed on the point of carrying the country into a war with Russia in
+defence of the Turks, no voice rose louder or bolder than his in
+denouncing the policy then popular with the upper classes in England.
+On this occasion he gave substantial proof of his earnestness by
+breaking off his connection with the _Saturday Review_ because it had
+espoused the Turkish cause. This cost him L600 a year, a sum he could
+ill spare, and took from him what had been the joy of his heart,
+opportunities of delivering himself upon all sorts of current
+questions. But his sense of duty forbade him to write for a journal
+which was supporting a misguided policy and a minister whom he thought
+unscrupulous.
+
+His habit of speaking out his whole mind with little regard to the
+effect his words might produce, or to the way in which they might be
+twisted, sometimes landed him in difficulties. One utterance raised an
+outcry at the time, because it was made at a conference held in London
+in December 1876 to oppose Lord Beaconsfield's Eastern policy. The
+Duke of Westminster and Lord Shaftesbury presided at the forenoon and
+afternoon sessions, and the meeting, which told powerfully on the
+country, was wound up by Mr. Gladstone. Freeman's speech, only ten
+minutes long, but an oratorical success at the moment, contained the
+words, "Perish the interests of England, perish our dominion in India,
+rather than that we should strike one blow or speak one word on behalf
+of the wrong against the right." This flight of rhetoric was perverted
+by his opponents into "Perish India"; and though he indignantly
+repudiated the misrepresentation, it continued to be repeated against
+him for years thereafter, and to be cited as an instance of the
+irresponsible violence of the friends of the Eastern Christians.
+
+The most conspicuous and characteristic merits of Freeman as an
+historian may be summed up in six points: love of truth, love of
+justice, industry, common sense, breadth of view, and power of vividly
+realising the political life of the past.
+
+Every one knows the maxim, _pectus facit theologum_,[40] a maxim
+accountable, by the way, for a good deal of weak theology. More truly
+may it be said that the merits of a great historian are far from lying
+wholly in his intellectual powers. Among the highest of such merits,
+merits which the professional student has even more reason to
+appreciate than the general reader, because he more frequently
+discerns the disturbing causes, are two moral qualities. One is the
+zeal for truth, with the willingness to undertake, in a search for it,
+a toil by which no credit will ever be gained. The other is a clear
+view of, and loyal adherence to, the permanent moral standards. In
+both these points Freeman stood in the front rank. He was kindly and
+fair in his judgments, and ready to make all the allowances for any
+man's conduct which the conditions of his time suggested, but he hated
+cruelty, falsehood, oppression, whether in Syracuse twenty-four
+centuries ago or in the Ottoman empire to-day. That conscientious
+industry which spares no pains to get as near as possible to the facts
+never failed him. Though he talked less about facts and verities than
+Carlyle did, Carlyle was not so assiduous and so minutely careful in
+sifting every statement before he admitted it into his pages. That he
+was never betrayed by sentiment into partisanship it would be too much
+to say. Scottish critics have accused him, perhaps not without
+justice, of being led by his English patriotism to over-state the
+claims of the English Crown to suzerainty over Scotland. J. R. Green,
+as well as the late Mr. C. H. Pearson, thought that the same cause
+disposed him to overlook the weak points in the character of Harold
+son of Godwin, one of his favourite heroes. But there have been few
+writers who have so seldom erred in this way; few who have striven so
+earnestly to do full justice to every cause and every person. Even the
+race prejudices which he allowed himself to indulge, in letters and
+talk, against Irishmen, Frenchmen, and Jews, scarcely ever appear in
+his books. The characters he has drawn of Lucius Cornelius Sulla,
+William the Conqueror and William the Red, St. Thomas of Canterbury
+(none of whom he liked), and, in his _History of Sicily_, of Nicias,
+are models of the fairness which historical portraiture requires. It
+is especially interesting to compare his picture of the unfortunate
+Athenian with the equally vigorous but harsher view of Grote. Freeman,
+whom many people thought fierce, was one of the most soft-hearted of
+men, and tolerant of everything but perfidy and cruelty. Though
+disposed to be positive in his opinions, he was always willing to
+reconsider a point when any new evidence was discovered or any new
+argument brought to his notice, and not unfrequently modified his view
+in the light of such evidence or arguments. It was this passion for
+accuracy and for that lucidity of statement which is the necessary
+adjunct of real accuracy, that made him deal so sternly with confused
+thinkers and careless writers. Carelessness seemed to him a moral
+fault, because a fault which true conscientiousness excludes. So also
+clearness of conception and exact precision in the use of words were
+so natural to him, and appeared so essential to good work, that he
+would set down the want of them rather to indolence than to
+incapacity, and apply to them a proportionately severe censure. Mere
+ignorance he could pardon, but when it was, as often happens, even in
+persons of considerable pretensions, joined to presumption, his wrath
+was the hotter because he deemed it a wholly righteous wrath. Never
+touching any subject which he had not mastered, he thought it his duty
+as a critic to expose impostors, and rendered in this way, during the
+years when he wrote for the _Saturday Review_, services to English
+scholarship second only to those which were embodied in his own
+treatises. It must be confessed that he enjoyed the work, and, like
+Samuel Johnson, was not displeased to be told that he had "tossed and
+gored several persons."
+
+His determination to get to the bottom of a question was the cause of
+the censure he so freely bestowed both on lawyers, who were wont to
+rest content with their technicalities, and not go back to the
+historical basis on which those technicalities rested, and on
+politicians who fell into the habit of using stock phrases which
+muddled or misrepresented the principles involved. The expression
+"national property," as applied to tithes, incensed him, and gave
+occasion for some of his most vigorous writing. So the commonplace
+grumblings against the presence of bishops in the House of Lords,
+which may be heard from people who acquiesce in the presence of
+hereditary peers, led him to give the most clear and forcible
+statement of the origin and character of that House which our time has
+produced. Here he was on ground he knew thoroughly. But his habits of
+accuracy were not less fully illustrated by his attitude towards
+branches of history he had not explored. With a profound and minute
+knowledge of English history down to the fourteenth century, so far as
+his aversion to the employment of manuscript authorities would allow,
+and a scarcely inferior knowledge of foreign European history during
+the same period, with a less full but very sound knowledge down to the
+middle of the sixteenth century, and with a thorough mastery of pretty
+nearly all ancient history, his familiarity with later European
+history, and with the history of such outlying regions as India or
+America, was not much beyond that of the average educated man. He used
+to say when questioned on these matters that "he had not come down to
+that yet." But when he had occasion to refer to those periods or
+countries, he hardly ever made a mistake. If he did not know, he did
+not refer; if he referred, he had seized, as if by instinct, something
+which was really important and serviceable for his purpose. The same
+remark applies (speaking generally) to Gibbon and to Macaulay, and I
+have heard Freeman make it of the writings of Mr. Goldwin Smith, for
+whom he had a warm admiration.
+
+Freeman's abstention from the use of manuscript sources was virtually
+prescribed by his persistence in refusing to work out of his own
+library, or, as he used to say, out of a room which he could
+consider to be his library for the time being. As, however, the
+original authorities for the times with which he chiefly dealt are,
+with few or unimportant exceptions, all in print, this habit can
+hardly be considered a defect in his historical qualifications. In
+handling the sources he was a judicious critic and a sound scholar,
+thoroughly at home in Greek and Latin, and sufficiently equipped in
+Anglo-Saxon, or, as he called it, Old English. Of his breadth of
+view, of the command he had of the whole sweep of his knowledge, of
+his delight in bringing together things the most remote in place or
+time, it is superfluous to speak. These merits are perhaps most
+conspicuously seen in the plan of his treatise on Federal Government,
+as well as in the execution of that one volume which unfortunately
+was all he produced of what might have been, if completed, a book of
+the utmost value. But one or two trifling illustrations of this habit
+of living in an atmosphere in which the past was no less real to him
+than the present may be forgiven. When careless friends directed
+letters to him at "Somerleaze, Wookey, Somerset," Wookey being a
+village a quarter of a mile from his house, but on the other side of
+the river Axe, he would write back complaining that they were
+"confusing the England and Wales of the seventh century." When his
+attention had been called to a discussion in the weekly journals
+about Shelley's first wife he wrote to me, "Why will they worry us
+with this _Harrietfrage_? You and I have quite enough to do with
+Helen, and Theodora, and Mary Stuart." So in addressing Somersetshire
+rustics during his election campaign in 1868, he could not help on one
+occasion referring to Ptolemy Euergetes, and on another launching
+out into an eloquent description of the Landesgemeinde of Uri.
+
+Industry came naturally to Freeman, because he was fond of his own
+studies and did not think of his work as task work. The joy in reading
+and writing about bygone times sprang from the intensity with which he
+realised them. He had no geographical imagination, finding no more
+pleasure in books of travel than in dramatic poetry. But he loved to
+dwell in the past, and seemed to see and feel and make himself a part
+of the events he described. Next to their worth as statements of
+carefully investigated facts, the chief merit of his books lies in the
+sense of reality which fills them. The politics of Corinth or Sicyon,
+the contest of William the Red with St. Anselm, interested him as
+keenly as a general election in which he was himself a candidate.
+Looking upon current events with an historian's eye, he was fond, on
+the other hand, of illustrating features of Roman history from
+incidents he had witnessed when taking part in local government as a
+magistrate; and in describing the relations of Hermocrates and
+Athenagoras at Syracuse he drew upon observations which he had made in
+watching the discussions of the Hebdomadal Council at Oxford. This
+power of realising the politics of ancient or mediaeval times was
+especially useful to him as a writer, because without it his
+minuteness might have verged on prolixity, seeing that he cared
+exclusively for the political part of history. It was one of the
+points in which he rose superior to most of those German students with
+whom it is natural to compare him. Many of them have equalled him in
+industry and diligence; some have surpassed him in the ingenuity which
+they bring to bear upon obscure problems; but few of them have shown
+the same gift for understanding what the political life of remote
+times really was. Like Gibbon, Freeman was not a mere student, but
+also a man with opportunities of mixing in affairs, accustomed to bear
+his share in the world's work, and so better able than the mere
+student can be to comprehend how that work goes forward. Though he was
+too peculiar in his views and his way of stating them to have been
+adapted either to the House of Commons or to a local assembly, and
+would indeed have been wasted upon nineteen-twentieths of the business
+there transacted, he loved politics and watched them with a shrewdly
+observant eye. Though he indulged his foibles in some directions, he
+could turn upon history a stream of clear common sense which sometimes
+made short work of German conjectures. And he was free from the
+craving to have at all hazards something new to advance, be it a
+trivial fact or an unsupported guess. He was accustomed of late years
+to complain that German scholarship seemed to be suffering from the
+passion for _etwas Neues_, and the consequent disposition to disparage
+work which did not abound with novelties, however empty or transient
+such novelties might be.
+
+To think of the Germans is to think of industry. Freeman was a true
+Teuton in the mass of his production. Besides the seven thick
+volumes devoted to the Norman Conquest and William Rufus, the four
+thick volumes to Sicily, four large volumes of collected essays,
+and nine or ten smaller volumes on architectural subjects, on the
+English constitution, on the United States, on the Slavs and the
+Turks, he wrote an even greater quantity of matter which appeared in
+the _Saturday Review_ during the twenty years from 1856 to 1876, and
+it was by these articles, not less than by his books, that he
+succeeded in dispelling many current errors and confusions, and in
+establishing some of his own doctrines so firmly that we now
+scarcely remember what iteration and reiteration, in season and out
+of season, and much to the impatience of those who remembered that
+they had heard these doctrines often before, were needed to make
+them accepted by the public. Freeman's swift facility was due to
+his power of concentration. He always knew what he meant an article
+to contain before he sat down to his desk; and in his historical
+researches he made each step so certain that he seldom required to
+reinvestigate a point or to change, in revising for the press, the
+substance of what he had written.
+
+In his literary habits he was so methodical and precise that he could
+carry on three undertakings at the same time, keeping on different
+tables in his working rooms the books he needed for each, and passing
+at stated hours from one to the other. It is often remarked that the
+growth of journalism, forcing men to write hastily and profusely,
+tends to injure literature both in matter and in manner. In point of
+matter, Freeman, though for the best part of his life a very prolific
+journalist, did not seem to suffer. He was as exact, clear, and
+thorough at the end as he had been at the beginning. On his style,
+however, the results were unfortunate. It retained its force and its
+point, but it became diffuse, not that each particular sentence was
+weak, or vague, or wordy, but that what was substantially the same
+idea was apt to be reiterated, with slight differences of phrase, in
+several successive sentences or paragraphs. He was fond of the
+Psalter, great part of which he knew by heart, and we told him that he
+had caught too much of the manner of Psalm cxix. This tendency to
+repetition caused some of his books, and particularly the _Norman
+Conquest_ and _William Rufus_, to swell to a portentous bulk. Those
+treatises, which constitute a history of England from A.D. 1042 to
+1100, would be more widely read if they had been, as they ought to
+have been, reduced to three or four volumes; and as he came to
+perceive this, he resolved in the last year of his life to republish
+the _Norman Conquest_ in a condensed form. To be obliged to compress
+was a wholesome, though unwelcome, discipline, and the result is seen
+in some of his smaller books, such as the historical essays, and the
+sketches of English towns, often wonderfully fresh and vigorous bits
+of work. Anxiety to be scrupulously accurate runs into prolixity, and
+Freeman so loved his subjects that it pained him to omit any
+characteristic detail a chronicler had preserved; as he once observed
+to a distinguished writer who was dealing with a much later period,
+"You know so much about your people that you have to leave out a great
+deal, I know so little that I must tell all I know." The tendency to
+repeat the same word too frequently sprang from his preference for
+words of Teutonic origin and his pride in what he deemed the purity of
+his English. His pages would have been livelier had he felt free to
+indulge in the humour with which his private letters sparkled; for he
+was full of fun, though it often turned on points too recondite for
+the public. But it was only in the notes to his histories, and seldom
+even there, that he gave play to one of the merits that most commended
+him to his friends.
+
+So far of his books. He was, however, also Regius Professor of History
+at Oxford during the last eight years of his life, and thus the head
+of the historical faculty in his own university which he dearly loved.
+That he was less effective as a teacher than as a writer may be partly
+ascribed to his having come too late to a new kind of work, and one
+which demands the freshness of youth; partly also to the cramping
+conditions under which professors have to teach at Oxford, where
+everything is governed by a system of examinations which Freeman was
+never tired of denouncing as ruinous to study. His friends, however,
+doubted whether the natural bent of his mind was towards oral
+teaching. It was a peculiar mind, which ran in a deep channel of its
+own, and could not easily, if the metaphor be permissible, be drawn
+off to irrigate the adjoining fields. He was always better at putting
+his own views in a clear and telling way than at laying his intellect
+alongside of yours, apprehending your point of view, and setting
+himself to meet it. Or, to put the same thing differently, you learned
+more by listening to him than by conversing with him. He had not the
+quick intellectual sympathy and effusion which feels its way to the
+heart of an audience, and indeed derives inspiration from the sight of
+an audience. In his election meetings I noticed that the temper and
+sentiment of the listeners did not in the least affect him; what he
+said was what he himself cared to say, not what he felt they would
+wish to hear. So also in his lecturing he pleased himself, and chose
+the topics he liked best rather than those which the examination
+scheme prescribed to the students. Perhaps he was right, for he was of
+those whose excellence in performance depends upon the enjoyment they
+find in the exercise of their powers. But even on the topics he
+selected, he did not take hold of and guide the mind of the students,
+realising their particular difficulties and needs, but simply
+delivered his own message in his own way. Admitting this deficiency,
+the fact remains that he was not only an ornament to the University by
+the example he set of unflagging zeal, conscientious industry, loyalty
+to truth, and love of freedom, but also a stimulating influence upon
+those who were occupied with history. He delighted to surround himself
+with the most studious of the younger workers, gave them abundant
+encouragement and recognition, and never grudged the time to help them
+by his knowledge or his counsel.
+
+Much the same might be said of his lifelong friend and illustrious
+predecessor in the chair of history (Dr. Stubbs), whom Freeman had
+been generously extolling for many years before the merits of that
+admirable scholar became known to the public. Stubbs disliked
+lecturing; and though once a year he delivered a "public lecture" full
+of wisdom, and sometimes full of wit also, he was not effective as a
+teacher, not so effective, for instance, as Bishop Creighton, who won
+his reputation at Merton College long before he became Professor of
+Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge. But Stubbs, by his mere presence
+in the University, and by the inexhaustible kindness with which he
+answered questions and gave advice, rendered great services to the
+studies of the place. It may be doubted whether, when he was raised to
+the episcopal bench, history did not lose more than the Church of
+England gained. Other men of far less ability could have discharged
+five-sixths of a bishop's duties equally well, but there was no one
+else in England, if indeed in Europe, capable of carrying on his
+historical researches. So Dr. Lightfoot was, as Professor at
+Cambridge, doing work for Christian learning even more precious than
+the work which is still affectionately remembered in his diocese of
+Durham.
+
+Few men have had a genius for friendship equal to Freeman's. The
+names of those he cared for were continually on his lips, and their
+lives in his thoughts; their misfortunes touched him like his own;
+he was always ready to defend them, always ready to give any aid they
+needed. No differences of opinion affected his regard. Sensitive
+as he was to criticism, he received their censure on any part of his
+work without offence. The need he felt for knowing how they fared and
+for sharing his thoughts with them expressed itself in the enormous
+correspondence, not of business, but of pure affection, which he kept
+up with his many friends, and which forms, for his letters were so
+racy that many of them were preserved, the fullest record of his
+life.
+
+This warmth of feeling deserves to be dwelt on, because it explains
+the tendency to vehemence in controversy which brought some enmities
+upon him. There was an odd contrast between his fondness for
+describing wars and battles and that extreme aversion to militarism
+which made him appear to dislike the very existence of a British army
+and navy. So his combativeness, and the zest with which he bestowed
+shrewd blows on those who encountered him, though due to his wholesome
+scorn for pretenders, and his hatred of falsehood and injustice,
+seemed inconsistent with the real kindliness of his nature. The
+kindliness, however, no one who knew him could doubt; it showed itself
+not only in his care for dumb creatures and for children, but in the
+depth and tenderness of his affections. Of religion he spoke little,
+and only to his most intimate friends. In opinion he had drifted a
+long way from the Anglo-Catholic position of his early manhood; but he
+remained a sincerely pious Christian.
+
+Though his health had been infirm for some years before his death, his
+literary activity did not slacken, nor did his powers show signs of
+decline. There is nothing in his writings, nor in any writings of our
+time, more broad, clear, and forcible than many chapters of the
+_History of Sicily_. Much of his work has effected its purpose, and
+will, by degrees, lose its place in the public eye. But much will
+live on into a yet distant future, because it has been done so
+thoroughly, and contains so much sound and vigorous thinking, that
+coming generations of historical students will need it and value it
+almost as our own has done.
+
+-----
+
+  [37] An excellent Life of Freeman has been written by his friend Mr.
+       W. R. W. Stephens, afterwards Dean of Winchester, whose death
+       while these pages were passing through the press has caused the
+       deepest regret to all who had the opportunity of knowing his
+       literary gifts and his lovable character.
+
+  [38] The scholars of Trinity were then (1843) all High Churchmen, and
+       never dined in hall on Fridays. Fourteen years later there was
+       not a single High Churchman among them. Ten or fifteen years
+       afterwards Anglo-Catholic sentiment was again strong. Freeman
+       said that his revulsion against Tractarianism began from a
+       conversation with one of his fellow-scholars, who had remarked
+       that it was a pity there had been a flaw in the consecration of
+       some Swedish bishops in the sixteenth century, for this had
+       imperilled the salvation of all Swedes since that time. He was
+       startled, and began to reconsider his position.
+
+  [39] Having had about the same time a brush with George Anthony
+       Denison (Archdeacon of Taunton), and a less friendly passage of
+       arms with James Anthony Froude, he wrote to me in 1870: "I am
+       greater than Cicero, who was smiter of one Antonius. I venture
+       to think that I have whopped the whole _Gens Antonia_--first
+       Anthony pure and simple, which is Trollope; secondly, James
+       Anthony, whom I believe myself to have smitten, as Cnut did
+       Eadric swiethe rihtlice, in the matter of St. Hugh; thirdly,
+       George Anthony, with whom I fought again last Tuesday, carrying
+       at our Education Board a resolution in favour of Forster's
+       bill." Trollope and he became warm friends. Froude he heartily
+       disliked, not, I think, on any personal grounds, but because he
+       thought Froude indifferent to truth, and was incensed by the
+       defence of Henry VIII.'s crimes.
+
+       It may be added that Freeman, much as he detested Henry VIII.,
+       used to observe that Henry had a sort of legal conscience,
+       because he always wished his murders to be done by Act of
+       Parliament, and that the earlier and better part of Henry's
+       reign ought not to be forgotten. He was fond of quoting the
+       euphemism with which an old Oxford professor of ecclesiastical
+       history concluded his account of the sovereign whom, in respect
+       of his relation to the Church of England, it seemed proper to
+       handle gently: "The later years of this great monarch were
+       clouded by domestic troubles."
+
+  [40] "The heart makes the theologian."
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT LOWE VISCOUNT SHERBROOKE[41]
+
+
+Had Robert Lowe died in 1868, when he became a Cabinet Minister, his
+death would have been a political event of the first magnitude; but
+when he died in 1892 (in his eighty-second year) hardly anybody under
+forty years of age knew who Lord Sherbrooke was, and the new
+generation wondered why their seniors should feel any interest in the
+disappearance of a superannuated peer whose name had long since ceased
+to be heard in either the literary or the political world. It requires
+an effort to believe that he was at one time held the equal in oratory
+and the superior in intellect of Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone. There
+are few instances in our annals of men who have been equally famous
+and whose fame has been bounded by so short a span out of a long
+life.
+
+No one who knew Lowe ever doubted his abilities. He made a brilliant
+reputation, first at Winchester (where, as his autobiography tells
+us, he was miserable) and then at Oxford, where he was the
+contemporary and fully the peer of Roundell Palmer (afterwards Lord
+Chancellor Selborne) and of Archibald Tait (afterwards Archbishop of
+Canterbury). He was much sought after and wonderfully effective as a
+private tutor or "coach" in classical subjects, being not only an
+excellent scholar but extremely clear and stimulating as a teacher. He
+retained his love of literature all through life, and made himself,
+_inter alia permulta_, a good Icelandic scholar and a fair Sanskrit
+scholar. For mathematics he had no turn at all. Active sports, he
+tells us, he enjoyed, characteristically adding, "they open to dulness
+also its road to fame." When he left the University, where anecdotes
+of his caustic wit were long current, he tried his fortune at the Bar,
+but with such scant success that he presently emigrated to New South
+Wales, soon rose to prominence and unpopularity there, returned in ten
+years with a tolerable fortune and a detestation of democracy, became
+a leading-article writer on the _Times_, entered Parliament, but was
+little heard of till Lord Palmerston gave him (in 1859) the place of
+Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education. His function
+in that office was to administer the grants made from the national
+treasury to elementary schools, and as he found the methods of
+inspection rather lax, and noted a tendency to superficiality and a
+neglect of backward children, he introduced new rules for the
+distribution of the grant (the so-called "Revised Code") which
+provoked violent opposition. The motive was good, but the rules were
+too mechanical and rigid and often worked harshly; so he was presently
+driven from office by an attack led by Lord Robert Cecil (now Lord
+Salisbury).
+
+Though Lowe became known by this struggle, his conspicuous fame dates
+from 1865, when he appeared as the trenchant critic of a measure
+for extending the parliamentary franchise in boroughs, introduced
+by a private member. Next year his powers shone forth in their full
+lustre. The Liberal Ministry of Lord Russell, led in the House of
+Commons by Mr. Gladstone, had brought in a Franchise Extension Bill
+(applying to boroughs only) which excited the dislike of the more
+conservative or more timid among their supporters. This dislike might
+not have gone beyond many mutterings and a few desertions but for the
+vehemence with which Lowe opposed the measure. He fought against it
+in a series of speeches which produced a greater impression in the
+House of Commons, and roused stronger feelings of admiration and
+hostility in the country, than any political addresses had done since
+1832. The new luminary rose so suddenly to the zenith, and cast so
+unexpected a light that everybody was dazzled; and though many
+dissented, and some attacked him bitterly, few ventured to meet him
+in argument on the ground he had selected. The effect of these
+speeches of 1866 can hardly be understood by any one who reads them
+to-day unless he knows how commonplace and "practical," that is to
+say, averse to general reasonings and historical illustrations,
+the character of parliamentary debating was becoming even in Lowe's
+time. It is still more practical and still less ornate in our own
+day.
+
+The House of Commons then contained, and has indeed usually contained
+(though some Houses are much better than others), many capable
+lawyers, capable men of business, capable country gentlemen; many men
+able to express themselves with clearness, fluency, and that sort of
+temperate good sense which Englishmen especially value. Few,
+however, were able to produce finished rhetoric; still fewer had a
+range of thought and knowledge extending much beyond the ordinary
+education of a gentleman and the ordinary ideas of a politician;
+and the assembly was one so intolerant of rhetoric, and so much
+inclined to treat, as unpractical, facts and arguments drawn from
+recondite sources, that even those who possessed out-of-the-way
+learning were disposed, and rightly so, to use it sparingly. In
+Robert Lowe, however, a remarkable rhetorical and dialectical power
+was combined with a command of branches of historical, literary, and
+economic knowledge so unfamiliar to the average member as to have
+for him all the charm of novelty. The rhetoric was sometimes too
+elaborate. The political philosophy was not always sound. But the
+rhetoric was so polished that none could fail to enjoy it; and the
+political philosophy was put in so terse, bright, and pointed a form
+that it made the ordinary country gentleman fancy himself a
+philosopher while he listened to it in the House or repeated it to
+his friends at the club. The speeches, which, though directed
+against a particular measure, constituted an indictment of democratic
+government in general, had the advantages of expressing what many
+felt but few had ventured to say, and of being delivered from one side
+of the House and cheered by the other side. No position gives a
+debater in the House of Commons such a vantage ground for securing
+attention. Its rarity makes it remarkable. If the speaker who
+attacks his own party is supposed to do so from personal motives,
+the personal element gives piquancy. If he may be credited with
+conscientious conviction, his shafts strike with added weight, for
+how strong must conviction be when it turns a man against his former
+friends. Accordingly, nothing so much annoys a party and gratifies
+its antagonists as when one of its own recalcitrant members attacks
+it in flank. When one looks back now at the contents of these
+speeches--there were only five or six of them--and finds one's self
+surprised at their success, this favouring circumstance and the whole
+temper of the so-called "upper classes" need to be remembered. The
+bulk of the wealthier commercial class and a large section of the
+landed class had theretofore belonged to the Liberal party. Most
+of them, however, were then already beginning to pass through what
+was called Whiggism into habits of thought that were practically
+Tory. They did not know how far they had gone till Lowe's speeches
+told them, and they welcomed his ideas as justifying their own
+tendencies.
+
+In themselves, as pieces either of rhetoric or of "civil wisdom," the
+speeches are not first-rate. No one would dream of comparing them to
+Burke's, in originality, or in richness of diction, or in weight of
+thought. But for the moment they were far more appreciated than
+Burke's were by the House of his time, which thought of dining while
+he thought of convincing. Robert Lowe was for some months the idol of
+a large part of the educated class, and indeed of that part chiefly
+which plumed itself upon its culture. I recollect to have been in
+those days at a breakfast party given by an eminent politician and
+nominal supporter of the Liberal Ministry, and to have heard Mr. G. S.
+Venables, the leader of the _Saturday Review_ set, an able and copious
+writer who was a sort of literary and political oracle among his
+friends, deliver, amid general applause, including that of the host,
+the opinion that Lowe was an intellectual giant compared to Mr.
+Gladstone, and that the reputation of the latter had been extinguished
+for ever.
+
+This period of glory, which was enhanced by the fall of Lord Russell
+and Mr. Gladstone from power in June 1866--the defeat came on a minor
+point, but was largely due to Lowe's speeches--lasted till Lowe, who
+had now become a force to be counted with, obtained office as
+Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Liberal Ministry which Mr.
+Gladstone formed in the end of 1868. From that moment his position
+declined. He lost popularity and influence both with the country and
+in the House of Commons. His speeches were always able, but they did
+not seem to tell when delivered from the ministerial bench. His
+financial proposals, though ingenious, were thought too ingenious, and
+showed a deficient perception of the tendencies of the English mind.
+No section likes being taxed, but Lowe's budgets met with a more than
+usually angry opposition. His economies and retrenchments, so far from
+bringing him the credit he deserved, exposed him to the charge of
+cheese-paring parsimony, and did much to render the Ministry
+unpopular. Before that ministry fell in 1874, Lowe, who had in 1873
+exchanged the Exchequer for the Home Office, had almost ceased to be a
+personage in politics. He did nothing to retrieve his fame during the
+six years of Opposition that followed, seldom spoke, took little part
+in the denunciation of Lord Beaconsfield's Eastern and Afghan policy,
+which went on from 1876 till 1880, and once at least gave slight signs
+of declining mental power. So in 1880 he was relegated to the House of
+Lords, because the new Liberal Government of that year could not make
+room for him. Very soon thereafter his memory began to fail, and for
+the last ten years of his life he had been practically forgotten,
+though sometimes seen, a pathetic figure, at evening parties. There is
+hardly a parallel in our parliamentary annals to so complete an
+eclipse of so brilliant a luminary.
+
+This rapid obscuration of a reputation which was genuine, for Lowe's
+powers had been amply proved, was due to no accident, and was apparent
+long before mental decay set in. The causes lay in himself. One cause
+was purely physical. He was excessively short-sighted, so much so
+that when he was writing a letter, his nose was apt to rub out the
+words his pen had traced; and this defect shut him out from all that
+knowledge of individual men and of audiences which is to be
+obtained by watching their faces. Mr. Gladstone, who never seemed to
+resent Lowe's attacks, and greatly admired his gifts--it was not so
+clear that Lowe reciprocated the admiration--used to relate that on
+one occasion when a foreign potentate met the Minister in St.
+James's Park and put out his hand in friendly greeting, Lowe
+repelled his advances, and when the King said, "But, Mr. Lowe, you
+know me quite well," he answered, "Yes, indeed, I know you far too
+well, and I don't want to have anything more to do with you." He
+had mistaken the monarch for a prominent politician with whom he
+had had a sharp encounter on a deputation a few days before! For
+social purposes Lowe might almost as well have been blind; yet he did
+not receive that kind of indulgence which is extended to the
+blind. In the interesting fragment of autobiography which he left,
+he attributes his unpopularity entirely to this cause, declaring that
+he was really of a kindly nature, liking his fellow-men just as well
+as most of them like one another.[42] But in truth his own character
+had something to answer for. Without being ill-natured, he was deemed
+a hard-natured man, who did not appear to consider the feelings of
+others. He had indeed a love of mischief, and gleefully tells in
+his autobiography how, when travelling in his youth through the
+Scottish Highlands, he drove the too self-conscious Wordsworth wild
+by his incessant praise of Walter Scott.[43] He had not in political
+life more than his fair share of personal enmities. One of them was
+Disraeli's. They were not unequally matched. Lowe was intellectually
+in some respects stronger, but he wanted Disraeli's skill in
+managing men and assemblies. Disraeli resented Lowe's sarcasms, and
+on one occasion, when the latter had made an indiscreet speech, went
+out of his way to inflict on him a personal humiliation.
+
+Nor was this Lowe's only defect. Powerful in attack, he was feeble in
+defence. Terrible as a critic, he had, as his official career showed,
+little constructive talent, little tact in shaping or recommending his
+measures. Unsteady or inconstant in purpose, he was at one moment
+headstrong, at another timid or vacillating. These faults, scarcely
+noticed when he was in Opposition, sensibly reduced his value as a
+minister and as a Cabinet colleague.
+
+In private Lowe was good company, bright, alert, and not unkindly. He
+certainly did not, as was alleged of another famous contemporary,
+Lord Westbury, positively enjoy the giving of pain. But he had a most
+unchristian scorn for the slow and the dull and the unenlightened, and
+never restrained his scorching wit merely for the sake of sparing
+those who came in his way. If the distinction be permissible, he was
+not cruel but he was merciless, that is to say, unrestrained by
+compassion. Instances are not wanting of men who have maintained great
+influence in spite of their rough tongues and the enmities which rough
+tongues provoke. But such men have usually also possessed some of the
+arts of popularity, and have been able to retain the adherence of
+their party at large, even when they had alienated many who came into
+personal contact with them. This was not Lowe's case. He did not
+conceal his contempt for the multitude, and had not the tact needed
+for humouring it, any more than for managing the House of Commons. The
+very force and keenness of his intellect kept him aloof from other
+people and prevented him from understanding their sentiments. He saw
+things so clearly that he could not tolerate mental confusion, and was
+apt to reach conclusions so fast that he missed perceiving some of the
+things which are gradually borne in upon slower minds. There are also
+instances of strong men who, though they do not revile their
+opponents, incur hatred because their strength and activity make them
+feared. Hostility concentrates itself on the opponents deemed most
+formidable, and a political leader who is spared while his fellows are
+attacked cannot safely assume that this immunity is a tribute to his
+virtues. Incessant abuse fell to the lot of Mr. Bright, who was not
+often, and of Mr. Gladstone, who was hardly ever, personally bitter in
+invective. But in compensation Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone received
+enthusiastic loyalty from their followers. For Lowe there was no such
+compensation. Even his own side did not love him. There was also a
+certain harshness, perhaps a certain narrowness, about his views. Even
+in those days of rigid economics, he took an exceptionally rigid view
+of all economic problems, refusing to make allowance for any motives
+except those of bare self-interest. Though he did not belong by
+education or by social ties to the Utilitarian group, and gave an
+ungracious reception to J. S. Mill's first speeches in the House of
+Commons, he was a far more stringent and consistent exponent of the
+harder kind of Benthamism than was Mill himself. He professed, and
+doubtless to some extent felt, a contempt for appeals to historical or
+literary sentiment, and relished nothing more than deriding his own
+classical training as belonging to an effete and absurd scheme of
+education. He left his mark on our elementary school system by
+establishing the system of payment by results, but nearly every change
+made in that system since his day has tended to destroy the
+alterations he made and to bring back the older condition of things,
+though no doubt in an amended form. His ideas of University reform
+were crude and barren, limited, indeed, to the substitution of what
+the Germans call "bread studies" for mental cultivation, and to the
+extension of the plan of competitive examinations for honours and
+money prizes, a plan which more and more displeases the most
+enlightened University teachers, and is felt to have done more harm
+than good to Oxford and Cambridge, where it has had the fullest play.
+He had also, and could give good reasons for his opinion, a hearty
+dislike to endowments of all kinds; and once, when asked by a Royal
+Commission to suggest a mode of improving their application, answered
+in his trenchant way, "Get rid of them. Throw them into the sea."
+
+It would not be fair to blame Lowe for the results which followed his
+vigorous action against the extension of the suffrage in 1866, for no
+one could then have predicted that in the following year the Tories,
+beguiled by Mr. Disraeli, would reverse their former attitude and
+carry a suffrage bill far wider than that which they had rejected a
+year before. But the sequel of the successful resistance of 1866 may
+stand as a warning to those who think that the course of thoroughgoing
+opposition to a measure they dislike is, because it seems courageous,
+likely to be the right and wise course for patriotic men. Had the
+moderate bill of 1866 been suffered to pass, the question of further
+extending the suffrage might possibly have slept for another thirty
+years, for there was no very general or urgent cry for it among the
+working people, and England would have continued to be ruled in the
+main by voters belonging to the middle class and the upper section of
+the working class. The consequence of the heated contest of 1866 was
+not only to bring about a larger immediate change in 1867, but to
+create an interest in the question which soon prompted the demand for
+the extension of household suffrage to the counties, and completed in
+1884-85 the process by which England has become virtually a democracy,
+though a plutocratic democracy, still affected by the habits and
+notions of oligarchic days. Thus Robert Lowe, as much as Disraeli and
+Gladstone, may in a sense be called an author of the tremendous change
+which has passed upon the British Constitution since 1866, and the
+extent of which was not for a long while realised. Lowe himself never
+recanted his views, but never repeated his declaration of them,
+feeling that he had incurred unpopularity enough, and probably feeling
+also that the case was hopeless.
+
+People who disliked his lugubrious forecasts used to call him a
+Cassandra, perhaps forgetting that, besides the distinctive feature
+of Cassandra's prophecies that nobody believed them, there was another
+distinctive feature, viz. that they came true. Did Lowe's? It is often
+profitable and sometimes amusing to turn back to the predictions
+through which eminent men relieved their perturbed souls, and see how
+far these superior minds were able to discern the tendencies, already
+at work in their time, which were beginning to gain strength, and were
+destined to determine the future. Whoever reads Lowe's speeches of
+1865-67 may do worse than glance at the same time at a book,[44] long
+since forgotten, which contains the efforts of a group of young
+University Liberals to refute the arguments used by him and by Lord
+Cairns, the strongest of his allies, in their opposition to schemes of
+parliamentary reform.
+
+To compare the optimism of these young writers and Lowe's pessimism
+with what has actually come to pass is a not uninstructive task. True
+it is that England has had only thirty-five years' experience of the
+Reform Act of 1867, and only seventeen years' experience of that even
+greater step towards pure democracy which was effected by the
+Franchise and Redistribution Acts of 1884-85. We are still far from
+knowing what sorts of Parliaments and policies the enlarged suffrage
+will end by giving. But some at least of the mischiefs Lowe foretold
+have not arrived. He expected first of all a rapid increase in
+corruption and intimidation at parliamentary elections. The quality of
+the House of Commons would decline, because money would rule, and
+small boroughs would no longer open the path by which talent could
+enter. Members would be either millionaires or demagogues, and they
+would also become far more subservient to their constituents.
+Universal suffrage would soon arrive, because no halting-place between
+the L10 franchise[45] and universal suffrage could be found. Placed on
+a democratic basis, the House of Commons would not be able to retain
+its authority over the Executive. The House of Lords, the Established
+Church, the judicial bench (in that dignity and that independence
+which are essential to its usefulness), would be overthrown as England
+passed into "the bare and level plain of democracy where every
+ant-hill is a mountain and every thistle a forest tree." These and the
+other features characteristic of popular government on which Lowe
+savagely descanted were pieced together out of Plato and Tocqueville,
+coupled with his own disagreeable experiences of Australian politics.
+None of the predicted evils can be said to have as yet become features
+of the polity and government of England,[46] though the power of the
+House relatively to the Cabinet does seem to be declining. Yet some of
+Lowe's incidental remarks are true, and not least true is his
+prediction that democracies will be found just as prone to war, just
+as apt to be swept away by passion, as other kinds of government have
+been. Few signs herald the approach of that millennium of peace and
+enlightenment which Cobden foretold and for which Gladstone did not
+cease to hope.
+
+No one since Lowe has taken up the part of _advocatus diaboli_ against
+democracy which he played in 1866.[47] Since Disraeli passed the
+Household Suffrage in Boroughs Bill in 1867, a nullification of Lowe's
+triumph which incensed him more than ever against Disraeli, no one has
+ever come forward in England as the avowed enemy of changes designed
+to popularise our government. Parties have quarrelled over the time
+and the manner of extensions of the franchise, but the issue of
+principle raised in 1866 has not been raised again. Even in 1884, when
+Mr. Gladstone carried his bill for assimilating the county franchise
+to that existing in boroughs, the Tory party did not oppose the
+measure in principle, but confined themselves to insisting that it
+should be accompanied by a scheme for the redistribution of seats. The
+secret, first unveiled by Disraeli, that the masses will as readily
+vote for the Tory party as for the Liberal, is now common property,
+and universal suffrage, when it comes to be offered, is as likely to
+be offered by the former party as by the latter. This gives a touch of
+historical interest to Lowe's speeches of 1866. They are the swan-song
+of the old constitutionalism. The changes which came in 1867 and 1884
+must have come sooner or later, for they were in the natural line of
+development as we see it all over the world; but they might have come
+much later had not Lowe's opposition wrecked the moderate scheme of
+1866. Apart from that episode Lowe's career would now be scarcely
+remembered, or would be remembered by those who knew his splendid
+gifts as an illustration of the maxim that mere intellectual power
+does not stand first among the elements of character that go to the
+winning of a foremost place.
+
+-----
+
+  [41] A carefully written life of Lord Sherbrooke (in two volumes) by
+       Mr. Patchett Martin was published in 1896. The most interesting
+       part of it is the short fragment of autobiography with which it
+       begins, and which carries the story down to Lowe's arrival in
+       Australia.
+
+  [42] In his autobiography he writes, "With a quiet temper and a real
+       wish to please, I have been obliged all my life to submit to an
+       amount of unpopularity which I really did not deserve, and to
+       feel myself condemned for what were really physical rather than
+       moral deficiencies."
+
+  [43] There was an anecdote current in the University of Oxford down to
+       my time that when Lowe was examining in the examination which
+       the statutes call "Responsions," the dons "Little-go," and the
+       undergraduates "Smalls," a friend coming in while the _viva
+       voce_ was in progress, asked him how he was getting on.
+       "Excellently," said Lowe; "five men plucked already, and the
+       sixth very shaky." Another tale, not likely to have been
+       invented, relates that when he and several members of the then
+       Liberal Ministry were staying in Dublin with the Lord
+       Lieutenant, and had taken an excursion into the Wicklow hills,
+       they found themselves one afternoon obliged to wait for half an
+       hour at a railway station. To pass the time, Lowe forthwith
+       engaged in a dispute about the charge with the car-drivers who
+       had brought them, a dispute which soon became hot and noisy, to
+       the delight of Lowe, but to the horror of the old Lord
+       Chancellor, who was one of the party.
+
+  [44] _Essays on Reform_, published in 1867.
+
+  [45] The then borough qualification, which Mr. Gladstone's Bill
+       proposed to reduce to L7.
+
+  [46] Mr. Gladstone said to me in 1897 that the extension of the
+       suffrage had, in his judgment, improved the quality of
+       legislation, making it more regardful of the interests of the
+       body of the people, but had not improved the quality of the
+       House of Commons.
+
+  [47] Sir H. S. Maine's _Quarterly Review_ articles, published in a
+       volume under the title of _Popular Government_, come nearest to
+       being a literary presentation of the case against democracy,
+       but they are, with all their ingenuity and grace of style, so
+       provokingly vague and loosely expressed that there can seldom
+       be found in them a proposition with which one can agree, or
+       from which one can differ. E. de Laveleye's well-known book is
+       not much more substantial, but instruction may (as respects
+       France) be found in the late Edmond Scherer's _De la
+       Democratie_, and (as respects England and the United States) in
+       M. Ostrogorski's recent book, _Democracy and the Organisation
+       of Political Parties_.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM ROBERTSON SMITH
+
+
+Robertson Smith,[48] the most widely learned and one of the most
+powerful teachers that either Cambridge or Oxford could show during
+the years of his residence in England, died at the age of forty-seven
+on the 31st of March 1894. To the English public generally his name
+was little known, or was remembered only in connection with the
+theological controversy and ecclesiastical trial of which he had been
+the central figure in Scotland fifteen years before. But on the
+Continent of Europe and by Orientalists generally he was regarded as
+the foremost Semitic scholar of Britain, and by those who knew him as
+one of the most remarkable men of his time.
+
+He was born in 1846 in the quiet pastoral valley of the Don, in
+Aberdeenshire. His father, who was a minister of the Scottish Free
+Church in the parish of Keig, possessed high mathematical talent,
+and his mother, who survived him six years, was a woman of great
+force of character, who retained till her death, at seventy-six years
+of age, the full exercise of her keen intelligence. Smith went
+straight from his father's teaching to the University of Aberdeen, and
+after graduating there, continued his studies first at Bonn in
+1865, and afterwards at Gottingen (1869). When only twenty-four he
+became Professor of Oriental Languages in the College or Divinity
+School of the Free Church at Aberdeen, and two years later was
+chosen one of the revisers of the Old Testament, a striking honour
+for so young a man. In 1881 he became first assistant-editor and
+then editor-in-chief of the ninth edition of the _Encyclopaedia
+Britannica_. He was exceptionally qualified for the post by the
+variety of his attainments and by the extreme quickness of his
+mind, which rapidly acquired knowledge on almost any kind of subject.
+Those who knew him are agreed that among all the eminent men who have
+been connected with this great _Encyclopaedia_ from its first
+beginning nearly a century and a half ago until now, he was
+surpassed by none, if equalled by any, in the range of his learning
+and in the capacity to bring learning to bear upon editorial work.
+He took infinite pains to find the most competent writers, and was
+able to exercise effective personal supervision over a very large
+proportion of the articles. The ninth edition was much fuller and
+more thorough than any of its predecessors; and good as the first
+twelve volumes were, a still higher level of excellence was attained
+in the latter half, a result due to his industry and discernment.
+Not a few of the articles on subjects connected with the Old
+Testament were from his own pen; and they were among the best in the
+work.
+
+The appearance of one of them, that entitled "Bible," which contained
+a general view of the history of the canonical books of Scripture,
+their dates, authorship, and reception by the Christian Church, became
+a turning-point in his life. The propositions he stated regarding the
+origin of parts of the Old Testament, particularly the Pentateuch,
+excited alarm and displeasure in Scotland, where few persons had
+become aware of the conclusions reached by recent Biblical scholars in
+Continental Europe. The article was able, clear, and fearless, plainly
+the work of a master hand. The views it advanced were not for the most
+part due to Smith's own investigations, but were to be found in the
+writings of other learned men. Neither would they now be thought
+extreme; they are in fact accepted to-day by many writers of
+unquestioned orthodoxy in Britain and a (perhaps smaller) number in
+the United States. In 1876, however, these views were new and
+startling to those who had not studied in Germany or followed the
+researches of such men as Ewald, Kuenen, and Wellhausen. The Scottish
+Free Church had theretofore prided itself upon the rigidity of its
+orthodoxy; and while among the younger ministers there were a good
+many able and learned scholars holding what used to be called
+"advanced views," the mass of the elder and middle-aged clergy had
+gone on in the old-fashioned traditions of verbal inspiration, and
+took every word in the Five Books (except the last chapter of
+Deuteronomy) to have been written down by Moses. It was only natural
+that their anger should be kindled against the young professor, whose
+theories seemed to cut away the ground from under their feet.
+Proceedings were (1876) taken against him before the Presbytery of
+Aberdeen, and the case found its way thence to the Synod of Aberdeen,
+and ultimately to the General Assembly of the Free Church. In one form
+or another (for the flame was lit anew by other articles published by
+him in the _Encyclopaedia_) it lingered on for five years. So far from
+yielding to the storm, Robertson Smith defied it, maintaining not only
+the truth of his views, but their compatibility with the Presbyterian
+standards as contained in the Confession of Faith and the Longer and
+Shorter Catechisms. In this latter contention he was successful,
+proving that the divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
+had not committed themselves to any specific doctrine of inspiration,
+still less to any dogmatic deliverance as to the authorship of
+particular books of Scripture. The standards simply declared that the
+Word of God was contained in the canonical books, and as there had
+been little or no controversy between Protestants and Roman Catholics
+regarding the date or the authorship or the divine authority of those
+books (apart of course from disputes regarding the Apocrypha), had not
+dealt specifically with those last mentioned matters. As it was by
+reference to the Confession of Faith that the offence alleged had to
+be established, Smith made good his defence; so in the end, finding it
+impossible to convict him of deviation from the standards, and thereby
+to deal with him as an ordained minister of the Church, his
+adversaries fell back on the plan of depriving him, by an executive
+rather than judicial vote, not indeed of his clerical status, but of
+his professorship, on the ground of the alleged "unsettling character"
+of his teaching.
+
+Meanwhile, however, there had been an immense rally to him of the
+younger clergy and of the less conservative among the laity. The main
+current of Scottish popular thought and life had ever since the
+Reformation flowed in an ecclesiastical channel; and even nowadays,
+when Scotland is rapidly becoming Anglicised, a theological or
+ecclesiastical question excites a wider and keener interest there than
+a similar question would do in England. So in Scotland for four years
+"the Robertson Smith case" was the chief topic of discussion outside
+as well as inside the Free Church. The sympathy felt for the accused
+was heightened by the ingenuity, energy, and courage with which he
+defended his position, showing a power of argument and repartee which
+made it plain that he would have held a distinguished place in any
+assembly whatever. If his debating had a fault, it was that of being
+almost too dialectically cogent, so that his antagonists felt that
+they were being foiled on the form of the argument before they could
+get to the issues they sought to raise. But while he was an
+accomplished lawyer in matters of form, he was no less an accomplished
+theologian in matters of substance. Although the party of repression
+triumphed so far as to deprive him of his chair, the victory virtually
+remained with him, not only because he had shown that the Scottish
+Presbyterian standards did not condemn the views he held, but also
+because his defence and the discussions which it occasioned had, in
+bringing those views to the knowledge of a great number of thoughtful
+laymen, led such persons to reconsider their own position. Some of
+them found themselves forced to agree with Smith. Others, who
+distrusted their capacity for arriving at a conclusion, came at least
+to think that the questions involved did not affect the essentials of
+faith, and must be settled by the ordinary canons of historical and
+philological criticism. Thus the trial proved to be a turning-point
+for the Scottish Churches, much as the _Essays and Reviews_ case had
+been for the Church of England eighteen years earlier. Opinions
+formerly proscribed were thereafter freely expressed. Nearly all the
+doctrinal prosecutions subsequently attempted in the Scottish
+Presbyterian Churches have failed. Much feeling has been excited, but
+the result has been to secure a greater latitude than was dreamt of
+forty years ago. At first the rigidly orthodox section of the Free
+Church, now almost confined to the Highlands, thought of seceding from
+the main body on the ground that tolerance was passing into
+indifference or unbelief. But the new ideas continued to grow, and the
+sentiment in favour of letting clergymen as well as lay church members
+put a lax construction on the doctrinal standards drawn up in the
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has spread as widely in Scotland
+as in England. The Presbyterian Churches in America and the Roman
+Catholic Church now stand almost alone among the larger Christian
+bodies in retaining something of the ancient rigidity. Even the Roman
+Church begins to feel the solvent power of these researches. It may be
+conjectured that as the process of adjusting the letter of Scripture
+to the conclusions of science which Galileo was not permitted to
+apply in the field of astronomy has now been generally applied in the
+fields of geology and biology, so all the churches will presently
+reconcile themselves to the conclusions of historical and linguistic
+criticism, now that such criticism has become truly scientific in its
+methods.
+
+Having no longer any tie to Scotland, as he had never desired a
+pastoral charge there, since he felt his vocation to lie in study and
+teaching, Smith was hesitating which way to turn, when the offer of
+the Lord Almoner's Readership in Arabic, which had become vacant in
+1883, determined him to settle in Cambridge. He had travelled in
+Arabia a few years earlier, thereby adding a colloquial familiarity to
+his grammatical mastery of the language. He was an ardent student of
+Arabic literature, and indeed devoted more time to it than to Hebrew.
+Though he had felt deeply the attacks made upon him, and was indignant
+at the mode of his dismissal, he was not in the least dispirited; and
+his self-control was shown by the way in which he resisted the
+temptation, to which controversialists are prone, of going further
+than they originally meant and thereby damaging the position of their
+supporters. Still, he was weary of controversy, and pleased to see
+before him a prospect of learned quiet and labour, although the salary
+of the Readership was less than L100 a year. Fortunately he had come
+to a place where gifts like his were appreciated. The Master and
+Fellows of Christ's College elected him to a fellowship with no duties
+of tuition attached to it--a wise and graceful recognition of his
+merits which did them the more credit because they had very little
+personal knowledge of him, while he had possessed no prior tie with
+the University. Christ's is one of the smaller colleges, but has
+almost always had men of distinction among its fellows, and has
+maintained a high standard of teaching. In the list of its alumni
+stand the names of John Milton, Isaac Barrow, Ralph Cudworth, and
+Charles Darwin. Robertson Smith dwelt in it for the rest of his days,
+entering into the life of hall and common-room with great zest, for he
+was of an extremely sociable turn, and the College became proud of
+him. When a vacancy occurred in the office of University Librarian, he
+was chosen to fill it. His knowledge of and fondness for books fitted
+him excellently for the place, but the details of administration
+worried him, and it was a change for the better when (in 1889), on the
+death of his friend, William Wright, he became Professor of
+Arabic.[49] His efforts to build up a school of Oriental studies on
+the foundations laid by Wright, and with the help of an eminent Syriac
+scholar, Bensley, were proving successful, and a considerable number
+of able young men were gathering round him, when (in 1890) the hand of
+disease fell upon him, obliging him first to curtail and afterwards to
+intermit his lectures. The last year of his life was a year of
+suffering, borne with uncomplaining fortitude.
+
+What with work on the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, with the distractions
+of his prolonged trial, with the time spent in oral teaching, and with
+the physical weakness of his latest years, Smith's leisure available
+for literary production was not large, and the books he has left do
+not adequately represent either his accumulated knowledge or his
+faculty of investigation. The earlier books--_The Old Testament in the
+Jewish Church_ and _The Prophets of Israel_ (the latter a series of
+lectures delivered at Glasgow)--are comparatively popular in handling.
+The two later--_Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_ and _The
+Religion of the Semites_--are more abstruse and technical, and also
+more original, dealing with topics in which their author was a
+pioneer, though he had been influenced by, and acknowledged in the
+amplest way his obligations to, his friend John F. Maclennan, the
+author of _Primitive Marriage_. _The Religion of the Semites_, though
+masterly in plan and execution, and though it has excited the
+admiration of the few Oriental scholars competent to appraise its
+substantial merit, suffers from its incompleteness. Only the first
+volume was published, for death overtook the author before he could
+put into final shape the materials he had collected for the full
+development of his theories. As the second volume would have traced
+the connection between the primitive religion of the Arab branches of
+the Semitic stock (including Israel) and the Hebrew religion as we
+have it in the earlier books of the Old Testament, the absence of this
+finished statement is a loss to science. Changes had passed upon his
+views since he wrote the incriminated articles, and he said to me (I
+think about 1888) that he would no longer undertake any clerical
+duties. He had a sensitive conscience, and held that no clergyman
+ought to use language in the pulpit which did not express his personal
+convictions.
+
+What struck one most in Robertson Smith's writings was the easy
+command wherewith he handled his materials. His generalisations were
+based on an endlessly patient and careful study of details, a study in
+which he never lost sight of guiding principles. With perfect lucidity
+and an unstrained natural vigour, there was a sense of abounding and
+overflowing knowledge which inspired confidence in the reader, making
+him feel he was in the hands of a master. On all that pertained to the
+languages and literature of the Arabic branch of the Semitic races,
+ancient and modern (for he did not claim to be an Assyriologist), his
+knowledge was accurate no less than comprehensive. Full of deference
+to the great scholars--no one spoke with a warmer admiration of
+Noeldeke, Wellhausen, and Lagarde than he did--he was a stringent
+critic of unscientific work in the sphere of history and physics as
+well as in that of philology, quick to expose the uncritical
+assumptions or loose hypotheses of less careful though more
+pretentious students. He used to say that when he had disposed of the
+_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, he might undertake a "Dictionary of
+European Impostors." Oriental lore was only one of many subjects in
+which he might have achieved distinction. His mathematical talents
+were remarkable, and during two sessions he taught with conspicuous
+success the class of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh
+as assistant professor. He had a competent acquaintance with not a few
+other practical arts, including navigation, and once, when the
+compasses of the vessel on which he was sailing in the Red Sea got out
+of order, he proved to be the person on board most competent to set
+them right. In metaphysics and theology, in ancient history and many
+departments of modern history, he was thoroughly at home. Few, indeed,
+were the subjects that came up in the course of conversation on which
+he was not able to throw light, for the range of his acquirements was
+not more striking than the swiftness and precision with which he
+brought knowledge to bear wherever it was wanted.
+
+There was hardly a line of practical life in which he might not have
+attained a brilliant success. But the passion for knowledge made him
+prefer the life of a scholar, and seemed to have quenched any desire
+even for literary fame.
+
+Learning is commonly thought of as a weight to be carried, which makes
+men dull, heavy, or pedantic. With Robertson Smith the effect seemed
+to be exactly the opposite. Because he knew so much, he was interested
+in everything, and threw himself with a joyous freshness and keenness
+into talk alike upon the most serious and the lightest topics. He was
+combative, apt to traverse a proposition when first advanced, even
+though he might come round to it afterwards; and a discussion with him
+taxed the defensive acumen of his companions. Having once spent five
+weeks alone with him in a villa at Alassio on the Riviera, I observed
+to him when we parted that we had had (as the Americans say) "a lovely
+time" together, and that there was not an observation I had made
+during those weeks which he had not contested. He laughed and did not
+contest that observation. Yet this tendency, while it made his society
+more stimulating, did not make it less agreeable, because he never
+seemed to seek to overthrow an adversary, but only to get at the truth
+of the case, and his manner, though positive, had about it nothing
+either acrid or conceited. One could imagine no keener intellectual
+pleasure than his company afforded, for there was, along with an
+exuberant wealth of thought and knowledge, an intensity and ardour
+which lit up every subject which it touched. I once invited him and
+John Richard Green (the historian) to meet at dinner. They took to one
+another at once, nor was it easy to say which lamp burned the
+brighter. Smith had wider and more accurate learning, and stronger
+logical power, but Green was just as swift, just as fertile, just as
+ingenious. In stature Smith, like Green, was small, almost diminutive;
+his dark brown eyes bright and keen; his speech rapid; his laugh ready
+and merry, for he had a quick sense of humour and a power of enjoying
+things as they came. The type of intellect suggested a Teutonic Scot
+of the Lowlands, but in appearance and temperament he was rather a
+Scottish Celt of the Highlands, with a fire and a gaiety, an abounding
+vivacity and vitality, which made him a conspicuous figure wherever he
+lived, in Aberdeen, in Edinburgh, in Cambridge. Even by his walk, with
+its quick, irregular roll, one could single him out at a distance in
+the street.
+
+When a man is attractive personally, he is all the more attractive for
+being unlike other men, and he often becomes the centre of a group.
+This was the case with Smith. His numerous friends were so much
+interested by him that when they met their talk was largely of him,
+and many friendships were based on a common knowledge of this one
+person. Indeed, the geniality, elevation, and simplicity of his
+character gave him a quite unusual hold on those who had come to know
+him well. Few men, leading an equally quiet and studious life, have
+inspired so much regard and affection in so large a number of persons;
+few teachers have had an equal power of stimulating and attracting
+their pupils. He loved teaching hardly less than he loved the
+investigation of truth, and he was the most faithful and sympathetic
+of friends, one who was felt to be unique while he lived and
+irreplaceable when he had departed.
+
+I have spoken of the courage he had shown in confronting his
+antagonists in the ecclesiastical courts. That courage did not fail
+him in the severer trials of his last illness. The nature of the
+disease of which he died was disclosed to him by his physician in
+September 1892, while an international Congress of Orientalists, in
+which he presided over the Semitic section, was holding its meetings.
+A festival dinner was being given in honour of the Congress the same
+afternoon. When the physician had spoken, Smith simply remarked, "This
+means the death my brother died" (one of his brothers had been struck
+by the same malady a few years before). He went straight to the
+dinner, and was throughout the evening the gayest and brightest of the
+guests.
+
+Fancy sometimes indulges herself in imagining what part the eminent
+men one has known would have played had their lot been cast in some
+other age. So I have fancied that Archbishop Tait (described in an
+earlier chapter) ought to have been Primate of England under Edward
+the Sixth or Elizabeth. He would have guided the course of reform more
+prudently and more firmly than Cranmer did; he would have shown a
+broader spirit than did Parker or Whitgift. So Cardinal Manning, had
+he lived in the seventeenth century, might haply have become General
+of the Jesuit Order, and enjoyed the secret control of the politics of
+the Catholic world. So Robertson Smith, had he been born in the great
+age of the mediaeval universities, might, like the bold dialectician of
+whom Dante speaks, have "syllogised invidious truths"[50] in the
+University of Paris; or had Fortune placed him two centuries later
+among the scholars of the Italian Renaissance in its glorious prime,
+the fame of his learning might have filled half Europe.
+
+-----
+
+  [48] No life of Robertson Smith has yet been written, but it is hoped
+       that one may be prepared by his intimate friend, Mr. J.
+       Sutherland Black. A portrait of him (by his friend Sir George
+       Reid, late President of the Royal Scottish Academy) hangs in
+       the library of Christ's College, Cambridge, to which Smith's
+       collection of Oriental books was presented by his friends, and
+       another has been placed in the Divinity College of the United
+       Free Presbyterian Church at Aberdeen. A memorial window has
+       been set up in the chapel of the University of Aberdeen, where
+       he won his first distinctions. I have to thank my friend Mr.
+       Black for some suggestions he has kindly made after perusing
+       this sketch.
+
+  [49] There was an aged Jewish scholar who came now and then to
+       Cambridge in those days, and who, as sometimes happens,
+       disliked other scholars labouring in the same field. He was (so
+       it used to be said) one of the few who knew exactly how the
+       word which we write Jehovah or Iahve ought to be pronounced,
+       and it was believed that he had solemnly cursed Wright, Smith,
+       and a third Semitic scholar in the Sacred Name. All three died
+       soon afterwards.
+
+       What would have been thought of this in the Middle Ages!
+
+  [50] _Parad._ x. 136, of Sigier, "Sillogizzo invidiosi veri."
+
+
+
+
+HENRY SIDGWICK
+
+
+Henry Sidgwick was born at Skipton, in Yorkshire, where his father was
+headmaster of the ancient grammar school of the town, on 31st May
+1838.[51] The family belonged to Yorkshire. He was a precocious boy,
+and used to delight his brothers and sister by the fertility of his
+imagination in inventing games and stories. Educated at Rugby School
+under Goulburn (afterwards Dean of Norwich), he was sent at an
+unusually early age to Trinity College, Cambridge. His brilliant
+University career was crowned by the first place in the classical
+tripos and by a first class in the mathematical tripos, and he was
+speedily elected a Fellow of Trinity. Intellectual curiosity and an
+interest in the problems of theology presently drew him to Germany,
+where he worked at Hebrew and Arabic under Ewald at Gottingen, as well
+as with other eminent teachers. After hesitating for a time whether to
+devote himself to Oriental studies or to classical scholarship, he was
+drawn back to philosophy by his desire to investigate questions
+bearing on natural theology, and finally settled down to the pursuit
+of what are called in Cambridge the moral sciences--metaphysics,
+ethics, and psychology; becoming first a College Lecturer and then (in
+1875) a University Praelector in these subjects. In 1869 he resigned
+his fellowship, feeling that he could no longer consider himself a
+"_bona fide_ member of the Church of England," that being the
+condition then attached by law to the holding of fellowships in the
+Colleges at Cambridge. This step caused surprise, for the test was
+deemed a very vague and light one, having been recently substituted
+for a more stringent requirement, and there had been many holders of
+fellowships who were at least as little entitled to call themselves
+_bona fide_ members of the Established Church as he was. But, as was
+afterwards said of him by Mrs. Cross (George Eliot), Sidgwick was
+expected by his intimate friends to conform to standards higher than
+average men prescribe for their own conduct. Taken in conjunction with
+the fact that several English Dissenters and Scottish Presbyterians
+had won the distinction of a Senior Wranglership and been debarred
+from fellowships, though they were in theological opinion more
+orthodox than some nominal members of the Established Church who were
+holding fellowships, Sidgwick's conscientious act made a great
+impression in Cambridge and did much to hasten that total abolition
+of tests in the Universities which was effected by statute in 1871;
+for in England concrete instances of hardship and injustice are more
+powerful incitements to reform than the strongest abstract arguments,
+and Sidgwick was already so eminent and so respected a figure that all
+Cambridge felt the absurdity of excluding such a man from its honours
+and emoluments. In 1883 he was appointed Professor of Moral
+Philosophy, and continued to hold that post till three months before
+his death in 1900, when failing health determined him to resign it.
+
+His life was the still and tranquil life of the thinker, teacher, and
+writer, varied by no events more exciting than those controversies
+over reforms in the studies and organisation of the University in
+which his sense of public duty frequently led him to bear a part.
+
+These I pass over, but there is one branch of his active work to which
+special reference ought to be made, viz. the part he took in promoting
+the University education of women. In or about the year 1868 he joined
+with the late Miss Anne Jane Clough (sister of the poet Arthur Clough)
+and a few other friends in establishing a course of lectures and a
+hall of residence for women at Cambridge, which grew into the
+institution called Newnham College. It and Girton College, founded by
+other friends of the same cause about the same time, were the first
+two institutions in England which provided for women, together with
+residential accommodation, a complete University training equivalent
+and similar to that provided by the two ancient English universities
+for men. The teaching was mainly given by the University professors
+and lecturers, the curriculum was the same as the University
+prescribed, and the women students, though not legally admitted to the
+University, were examined by the University examiners at the same time
+as the other students. Henry Sidgwick was, from the foundation of
+Newnham onwards, the moving spirit and the guiding hand among its
+University friends, the spirit which inspired the policy and the hand
+which piloted the fortunes of the College. Its growth to its present
+dimensions, and its usefulness, not only directly, but through the
+example it has set, have been largely due to his assiduous care and
+temperate wisdom. He had married (in 1876) Miss Eleanor Mildred
+Balfour, and when she accepted the principalship of Newnham after Miss
+Clough's death, in 1889, he and she transferred their residence to the
+College, and lived thenceforward at it. The England of our time has
+seen no movement of opinion more remarkable or more beneficial than
+that which has recognised the claims of women to the highest kind of
+education, and secured a substantial, if still incomplete, provision
+therefor. The change has come so quietly and unobtrusively that few
+people realise how great it is. Few, indeed, remember what things were
+forty years ago, as few realise when waste lands have been stubbed and
+drained and tilled what they were like in their former state. No one
+did more than Sidgwick to bring about this change. Besides his work
+for Newnham, he took a lead in all the movements that have been made
+to obtain for women a fuller admission to University privileges, and
+well deserved the gratitude of Englishwomen for his unceasing efforts
+on their behalf.
+
+The obscure problems of psychology had a great attraction for him, and
+he spent much time in investigating them, being one of the founders,
+and remaining all through his later life a leading and guiding member,
+of the Society for Psychical Research, which has for the last twenty
+years cultivated this field with an industry and ability which have
+deserved larger harvests than have yet been reaped. Two remarkable
+men, both devoted friends of his, worked with him, Edmund Gurney and
+Frederic Myers the poet, the latter of whom survived him a few months
+only. It was characteristic of Sidgwick that he never committed
+himself to any of the bold and possibly over-sanguine anticipations
+formed by some of the other members of the Society, while yet he never
+was deterred by failure, or by the discovery of deceptions, sometimes
+elaborate and long sustained, from pursuing inquiries which seemed to
+him to have an ultimate promise of valuable results. The phenomena, he
+would say, may be true or false; anyhow they deserve investigation.
+The mere fact that so many persons believe them to be genuine is a
+problem fit to be investigated. If they are false, it will be a
+service to have proved them so. If they contain some truth, it is
+truth of a kind so absolutely new as to be worth much effort and long
+effort to reach it. In any case, science ought to take the subject out
+of the hands of charlatans.
+
+The main business of his life, however, was teaching and writing. Three
+books stand out as those by which he will be best remembered--his
+_Methods of Ethics_, his _Principles of Political Economy_, and his
+_Elements of Politics_. All three have won the admiration of those
+who are experts in the subjects to which they respectively relate, and
+they continue to be widely read in universities both in Britain and in
+America. All three bear alike the peculiar impress of his mind.
+
+It was a mind of singular subtlety, fertility, and ingenuity, which
+applied to every topic an extremely minute and patient analysis. Never
+satisfied with the obvious view of a question, it seemed unable to
+acquiesce in any broad and sweeping statement. It discovered
+objections to every accepted doctrine, exceptions to every rule. It
+perceived minute distinctions and qualifications which had escaped the
+notice of previous writers. These qualities made Sidgwick's books
+somewhat difficult reading for a beginner, who was apt to ask what,
+after all, was the conclusion to which he had been led by an author
+who showed him the subject in various lights, and added not a few
+minor propositions to that which had seemed to be the governing one.
+But the student who had already some knowledge of the topic, who,
+though he apprehended its main principles, had not followed them out
+in detail or perceived the difficulties in applying them, gained
+immensely by having so many fresh points presented to him, so many
+fallacies lurking in currently accepted notions detected, so many
+conditions indicated which might qualify the amplitude of a general
+proposition. The method of discussion was stimulating. Sometimes it
+reminded one of the Socratic method as it appears in Plato, but more
+frequently it was the method of Aristotle, who discusses a subject
+first from one side, then from another, throws out a number of
+remarks, not always reconcilable, but always suggestive, regarding it,
+and finally arrives at a view which he delivers as being probably the
+best, but one which must be taken subject to the remarks previously
+made. The reader often feels in Sidgwick's treatment of a subject as
+he often feels in Aristotle's, that he would like to be left with
+something more definite and positive, something that can be easily
+delivered to learners as an established truth. He desires a bolder and
+broader sweep of the brush. But he also feels how much he is benefited
+by the process of sifting and analysing to which every conception or
+dogma is subjected, and he perceives that he is more able to handle it
+afterwards in his own way when his attention has been called to all
+these distinctions and qualifications or antinomies which would have
+escaped any vision less keen than his author's. For those who, in an
+age prone to hasty reading and careless thinking, are disposed to
+underrate the difficulties of economic and political questions, and to
+walk in a vain conceit of knowledge because they have picked up some
+large generalisations, no better discipline can be prescribed than to
+follow patiently such a treatment as Sidgwick gives; nor can any
+reader fail to profit from the candour and the love of truth which
+illumine his discussion of a subject.
+
+The love of truth and the sense of duty guided his life as well as his
+pen. Though always warmly interested in politics, he was of all the
+persons I have known the least disposed to be warped by partisanship,
+for he examined each political issue as it arose on its own merits,
+apart from predilections for either party or for the views of his
+nearest friends. We used to wonder how such splendid impartiality
+would have stood a practical test such as that of the House of
+Commons. His loyalty to civic duty was so strong as on one occasion to
+bring him, in the middle of his vacation, all the way from Davos, in
+the easternmost corner of Switzerland, to Cambridge, solely that he
+might record his vote at a parliamentary election, although the result
+of the election was already virtually certain.
+
+Sidgwick's attitude toward the Benthamite system of Utilitarianism
+illustrates the cautiously discriminative habit of mind I have sought
+to describe. If he had been required to call himself by any name, he
+would not have refused that of Utilitarian, just as in mental
+philosophy he leaned to the type of thought represented by the two
+Mills rather than to the Kantian idealism of his friend and school
+contemporary, the Oxford professor T. H. Green. But the system of
+Utility takes in his hands a form so much more refined and delicate
+than was given to it by Bentham and James Mill, and is expounded with
+so many qualifications unknown to them, that it has become a very
+different thing, and is scarcely, if at all, assailable by the
+arguments which moralists of the idealistic type have brought against
+the older doctrine. Something similar may be said of his treatment of
+bimetallism in his book on political economy. While assenting to some
+of the general propositions on which the bimetallic theory rests, he
+points out so many difficulties in the application of that theory to
+the actual conditions of currency that his assent cannot be cited as a
+deliverance in favour of trying to turn theory into practice. He told
+me in 1896 that he held the political and other practical objections
+to an attempt to establish a bimetallic system to be virtually
+insuperable. When he treats of free trade, he is no less guarded and
+discriminating. He points out various circumstances or conditions
+under which a protective tariff may become, at least for a time,
+justifiable, but never abandons the free trade principle as being
+generally true and sound, a principle not to be departed from save for
+strong reasons of a local or temporary kind. His general economic
+position is equally removed from the "high and dry" school of Ricardo
+on the one hand, and from the "Katheder-Sozialisten" and the modern
+"sentimental" school on the other. In all his books one notes a
+tendency to discover what can be said for the view which is in popular
+disfavour, even often for that which he does not himself adopt, and to
+set forth all the objections to the view which is to receive his
+ultimate adhesion. There is a danger with such a method of losing
+breadth and force of effect. One is ready to cry, "Do lapse for a
+moment into dogmatism." Yet it ought to be added that Sidgwick's
+subtlety is always restrained by practical good sense, as well as by
+the desire to reconcile opposite views. His arguments, though they
+often turn on minute distinctions, are not bits of fine-drawn
+ingenuity, but have weight and substance in them.[52]
+
+One book of his which has not yet (December 1902) been published, but
+which I have had the privilege of reading in proof, displays his
+constructive power in another light. It is a course of lectures on the
+development of political institutions in Europe from early times down
+to our own. Here, as he is dealing with concrete matter, the treatment
+is more broad, and the line of exposition and argument more easy to
+follow, than in the treatises already referred to. It is a masterly
+piece of work, and reveals a wider range of historical knowledge and a
+more complete mastery of historical method than had been shown in his
+earlier books, or indeed than some of his friends had known him to
+possess.
+
+The tendency to analysis rather than to construction, the abstention
+from the deliverance of doctrines easy to comprehend and repeat, which
+belong to his writings on ethics and economics, do not impair the
+worth of his literary criticisms. In this field his fine perception
+and discriminative taste had full scope. He was an incessant reader,
+especially of poetry and novels, with a retentive memory for poetry,
+as well as a finely modulated and expressive voice in reciting it. His
+literary judgments had less of a creative quality, if the expression
+be permissible, than Matthew Arnold's, but are not otherwise inferior
+to those of that brilliant though sometimes slightly prejudiced
+critic. No one of his contemporaries has surpassed Sidgwick in
+catholicity and reasonableness, in the power of delicate appreciation,
+or in an exquisite precision of expression. His essay on Arthur Hugh
+Clough, prefixed to the latest edition of Clough's collected poems, is
+a good specimen of this side of his talent. Clough was one of his
+favourites, and has indeed been called the pet poet of University men.
+Sidgwick's literary essays, which appeared occasionally in magazines,
+were few, but they well deserve to be collected and republished, for
+this age of ours, though largely occupied in talking about literature,
+has produced comparatively little criticism of the first order.
+
+Sidgwick did not write swiftly or easily, because he weighed carefully
+everything he wrote. But his mind was alert and nimble in the highest
+degree. Thus he was an admirable talker, seeing in a moment the point
+of an argument, seizing on distinctions which others had failed to
+perceive, suggesting new aspects from which a question might be
+regarded, and enlivening every topic by a keen yet sweet and kindly
+wit. Wit, seldom allowed to have play in his books, was one of the
+characteristics which made his company charming. Its effect was
+heightened by a hesitation in his speech which often forced him to
+pause before the critical word or phrase of the sentence had been
+reached. When that word or phrase came, it was sure to be the right
+one. Though fond of arguing, he was so candid and fair, admitting all
+that there was in his opponent's case, and obviously trying to see the
+point from his opponent's side, that nobody felt annoyed at having
+come off second best, while everybody who cared for good talk went
+away feeling not only that he knew more about the matter than he did
+before, but that he had enjoyed an intellectual pleasure of a rare and
+high kind. The keenness of his penetration was not formidable, because
+it was joined to an indulgent judgment: the ceaseless activity of his
+intellect was softened rather than reduced by the gaiety of his
+manner. His talk was conversation, not discourse, for though he
+naturally became the centre of nearly every company in which he found
+himself, he took no more than his share. It was like the sparkling of
+a brook whose ripples seem to give out sunshine.
+
+Though Sidgwick's writings are a mine of careful and suggestive
+thinking, he was even more remarkable than his books. Though his
+conversation was delightful, the impression of its fertility and its
+wit was the least part of the impression which his personality
+produced. An eminent man is known to the world at large by what he
+gives them in the way of instruction or of pleasure. A man is prized
+and remembered by his friends for what he was in the intercourse of
+life. Few men of our time have influenced so wide or so devoted a
+circle of friends as did Henry Sidgwick; few could respond to the
+calls of friendship with a like sympathy or wisdom. His advice was
+frequently asked in delicate questions of conduct, and he was
+humorously reminded that, by his own capacity as well as by the title
+of his chair, he was a professor of casuistry. His stores of knowledge
+and helpful criticism were always at the service of his pupils or his
+fellow-workers.
+
+From his earliest college days he had been just, well-balanced,
+conscientious alike in the pursuit of truth and in the regulation of
+his own life, appearing to have neither prejudices nor enmities, and
+when he had to convey censure, choosing the least cutting words in
+which to convey it. Yet in earlier years there had been in him a touch
+of austerity, a certain remoteness or air of detachment, which
+confined to a very few persons the knowledge of his highest qualities.
+As he grew older his purity lost its coldness, his keenness of
+discernment mellowed into a sweet and persuasive wisdom. A life
+excellently conducted, a life which is the expression of fine
+qualities, and in which the acts done are in harmony with the thoughts
+and words of the man, is itself a beautiful product, whether of
+untutored nature or of thought and experience turning every faculty to
+the best account. In the modern world the two types of excellence
+which we are chiefly bidden to admire are that of the active
+philanthropist and that of the saint. The ancient world produced and
+admired another type, to which some of its noblest characters
+conformed, and which, in its softer and more benignant aspect,
+Sidgwick presented. In his indifference to wealth and fame and the
+other familiar objects of human desire, in the almost ascetic
+simplicity of his daily life, in his pursuit of none but the purest
+pleasures, in his habit of subjecting all impulses to the law of
+reason, the will braced to patience, the soul brought into harmony
+with the divinely appointed order, he seemed to reproduce one of those
+philosophers of antiquity who formed a lofty conception of Nature and
+sought to live in conformity with her precepts. But the gravity of a
+Stoic was relieved by the humour and vivacity which belonged to his
+nature, and the severity of a Stoic was softened by the tenderness and
+sympathy which seemed to grow and expand with every year. In
+Cambridge, where, though the society is a large one, all the teachers
+become personally known to one another, and the students have
+opportunities of familiar intercourse with the teachers, affection as
+well as admiration gathered round him. His thoughts quickened and his
+example inspired generation after generation of young men passing
+through the University out into the life of England, as a light set
+high upon the bank beams on the waves of a river gliding swiftly to
+the sea.
+
+It was a life of single-minded devotion to truth and friendship, a
+life serene and gentle, free alike from vanity and from ambition,
+bearing without complaint the ill-health which sometimes checked his
+labours, viewing with calm fortitude those problems of man's life on
+which his mind was always fixed, untroubled in the presence of death.
+
+           Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas
+           Quique metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
+           Subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari.
+
+When his friends heard of his departure there rose to mind the words
+in which the closing scene of the life of Socrates is described by the
+greatest of his disciples, and we thought that among all those we had
+known there was none of whom we could more truly say that in him the
+spirit of philosophy had its perfect work in justice, in goodness, and
+in wisdom.
+
+-----
+
+  [51] It is hoped that a life of Sidgwick, together with a selection
+       from his letters, may before long be published.
+
+  [52] It was his aim to avoid as much as possible technical terms or
+       phrases whose meaning was not plain to the average reader. An
+       anecdote was current that once when, in conducting a
+       university examination, he was perusing the papers of a
+       candidate who had darkened the subject by the use of extreme
+       Hegelian phraseology, he turned to his co-examiner and said, "I
+       can see that this is nonsense, but is it the right kind of
+       nonsense?"
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD ERNEST BOWEN[53]
+
+
+Ever since the publication of Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold that
+eminent headmaster has been taken as the model of a great teacher and
+ruler of boys, the man who, while stimulating the intelligence of his
+pupils, was even more concerned to discipline and mould their moral
+natures. Arnold has become the type of what Carlyle might have called
+"The Hero as Schoolmaster." Though there have been many able men at
+the head of large schools since his time, including three who
+afterwards rose to be Archbishops of Canterbury, as well as a good
+many who have become bishops, his fame remains unrivalled, and the
+type created by his career, or rather perhaps by his biographer's
+account of it, still holds the field. Moreover, during the sixty years
+that have passed since Arnold's death scarcely a word has been said
+regarding any other masters than the head. During those years the
+English universities have sent into the great schools a large
+proportion of their most capable graduates as assistant teachers; and
+some of the strongest men among these graduates have never, from
+various causes, and often because they preferred to remain laymen,
+been raised to the headships of the schools. Every one knows that a
+school depends for its wellbeing and success more largely on the
+assistants taken together than it does on the headmaster. Most people
+also know that individual assistant masters are not unfrequently
+better scholars, better teachers, and more influential with the boys
+than is their official superior. Yet the assistant masters have
+remained unhonoured and unsung in the general chorus of praise of the
+great schools which has been resounding over England for nearly two
+generations.
+
+Edward Bowen was all his life an assistant master, and never cared to
+be anything else. As he had determined not to take orders in the
+Church of England, he was virtually debarred from many of the chief
+headmasterships, which are, some few of them by law, many more by
+custom, confined to Anglican clergymen. But even when other headships
+to which this condition was not attached were known to be practically
+open to his acceptance, were, indeed, in one or two instances almost
+tendered to him, he refused to become a candidate, preferring his own
+simple and easy way of life to the pomp and circumstance which
+convention requires a headmaster to maintain. This abstention,
+however, did not prevent his eminence from becoming known to those who
+had opportunities of judging. In his later years he would, I think,
+have been generally recognised by the teaching profession as the most
+brilliant, and in his own peculiar line the most successful, man among
+the schoolmasters of Britain.
+
+He was born on 30th March 1836, of an Irish family (originally from
+Wales) holding property in the county of Mayo. His father was a
+clergyman of the Church of England; his mother, who survived him a
+few months (dying at the age of ninety-four) and whom he tended with
+watchful care during her years of widowhood, was partly of Irish,
+partly of French extraction. Like his more famous but perhaps not
+more remarkable elder brother, Charles Bowen, who became Lord Bowen,
+and is remembered as one of the most acute and subtle judges as well
+as one of the most winning personalities of our time, he had a gaiety,
+wit, and versatility which suggested the presence of Celtic blood. He
+was educated at Blackheath School, and afterwards at King's College
+in London, whence he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge. In
+1860, after a career at the University, distinguished both in the
+way of honours and in respect of the reputation he won among his
+contemporaries, he became a master at Harrow, and thenceforth
+remained there, leading an uneventful and externally a monotonous
+life, but one full of unceasing and untiring activity in play and
+work. He died on Easter Monday 1901.
+
+Nothing could be less like the traditional Arnoldine methods of
+teaching and ruling boys than Bowen's method was. The note of those
+methods was what used to be called moral earnestness. Arnold was grave
+and serious, distant and awe-inspiring, except perhaps to a few
+specially favoured pupils. Bowen was light, cheerful, vivacious,
+humorous, familiar, and, above all things, ingenious and full of
+variety. His leading principles were two--that the boy must at all
+hazards be interested in the lessons and that he should be at ease
+with the teacher.
+
+A Harrow boy once said to his master, "I don't know how it is, sir,
+but if Mr. Bowen takes a lesson he makes you work twice as hard as
+other masters, but you like it twice as much and you learn far more."
+He was the most unexpected man in conversation that could be imagined,
+always giving a new turn to talk by saying something that seemed
+remote from the matter in hand until he presently showed the
+connection. So his teaching kept the boys alert, because its variety
+was inexhaustible. He seemed to think that it did not greatly matter
+what the lesson was so long as the pupil could be got to enjoy it. The
+rules of the school and the requirements of the examinations for
+which boys had to be prepared would not have permitted him to try to
+any great extent the experiment of varying subjects to suit individual
+tastes; but he was fond of giving lessons in topics outside the
+regular course, on astronomy for instance, of which he had acquired a
+fair knowledge, and on recent military history, which he knew
+wonderfully well, better probably than any man in England outside the
+military profession. When the so-called "modern side" was established
+at Harrow, in 1869, he became head of it, having taken this post, not
+from any want of classical taste and learning, for he was an admirable
+scholar, and to the end of his life wrote charming Latin verses, but
+because he felt that this line of teaching needed to be developed in a
+school which had been formerly almost wholly classical. For
+grammatical minutiae, for learning rules by heart, and indeed for the
+old style of grammar-teaching generally, he had an unconcealed
+contempt. He thought it unkind and wasteful to let a boy go on
+puzzling over difficulties of language in an author, and permitted,
+under restrictions, the use of English translations, or (as boys call
+them) "cribs." Teaching was in his view a special gift of the
+individual, which depended on the aptitude for getting hold of the
+pupil's mind, and enlisting his interest in the subject. He had
+accordingly no faith in the doctrine that teaching is a science which
+can be systematically studied, or an art in which the apprentice ought
+to be systematically trained. When he was summoned as a witness before
+the Secondary Education Commission in 1894 he adhered, under
+cross-examination, to this view (so far as it affected schools like
+Harrow or Eton), refusing to be moved by the arguments of those among
+the Commissioners who cited the practice of Germany, where Paedagogik,
+as they call it, is elaborately taught in the universities. "I am
+unable," he said, "to conceive any machinery by which the art of
+teaching can be given practically to masters. That art is so much a
+matter of personal power and experience, and of various social and
+moral gifts, that I cannot conceive a good person made a good master
+by merely seeing a class of boys taught, unless he was allowed to take
+a real and serious part in it himself, unless he became a teacher
+himself. I can understand that at a primary school you can learn by
+going in and hearing a good teacher at work; but the teaching of a
+class of older boys is so different, and has so much of the social
+element in it, and it may vary so much, that I should despair of
+teaching a young man how to take a class unless he was a long time
+with me.... A master at a large public school is chiefly a moral and
+social force; a master is this to a much less extent at a primary
+school or in the ordinary day-schools, the grammar-schools of the
+country. To deal with boys when you have them completely under your
+control for the whole of every day is an altogether different thing,
+and requires different virtues in the teacher from those that are
+required in the case of day-schools."
+
+Bowen may possibly have been mistaken, even as regards the teachers in
+the great public boarding schools. His view seems to overlook or
+disregard that large class of persons who have no marked natural
+aptitude for teaching, but are capable of being, by special
+instruction and supervised practice, kneaded and moulded into better
+teachers than they would otherwise have grown to be. He felt so
+strongly that no one ought to teach without having a real gift and
+fondness for teaching that he thought such difference as training
+could make insignificant in comparison with the inborn talent. Perhaps
+he generalised too boldly from himself, for he had an enjoyment of his
+work, and a conscientiousness in always putting the very best of
+himself into it--how much was conscientiousness and how much was
+enjoyment, no one could tell--as well as a quickness and vivacity
+which no study of methods could have improved. As one of his most
+eminent colleagues,[54] who was also his life-long friend, observes:
+"The humdrum and routine which must form so large a part of a
+teacher's life were never humdrum or routine to him, for he put the
+whole of his abounding energies into his work, and round its driest
+details there played and flickered, as with a lambent flame, his
+joyous spirit, finding expression now perhaps in a striking parallel,
+now in a startling paradox, now in a touch of humour, and once again
+in a note of pathos."
+
+The personal influence he exerted on the boys who lived in his House
+was quite as remarkable as his "form-teaching." Stoicism and honour
+were the qualities it was mainly directed to form. Every boy was
+expected to show manliness and endurance, and to utter no complaint.
+Where physical health was concerned he was indulgent; his House was
+the first which gave the boys meat at breakfast in addition to tea
+with bread and butter. But otherwise the discipline was Spartan,
+though not more Spartan than that he prescribed to himself, and the
+House was trained to scorn the slightest approach to luxury.
+Arm-chairs were forbidden except to sixth-form boys. A pupil relates
+that when Bowen found he was in the habit of taking two hot baths a
+week the transgression was reproved with the words: "Oh boy, that's
+like the later Romans, boy." His maxims were: "Take sweet and bitter
+as sweet and bitter come" and "Always play the game." He never
+preached to the boys or lectured them; and if he had to convey a
+reproof, conveyed it in a single sentence. But he dwelt upon honour as
+the foundation of character, and made every boy feel that he was
+expected to reach the highest standard of truthfulness, courage, and
+duty to the little community of the House, or the cricket eleven, or
+the football team.
+
+Some have begun to think that in English schools and universities too
+much time is given to athletic sports, and that they absorb too
+largely the thoughts and interests of the English youth. Bowen,
+however, attached the utmost value to games as a training in
+character. He used to descant upon the qualities of discipline,
+good-fellowship, good-humour, mutual help, and postponement of self
+which they are calculated to foster. Though some of his friends
+thought that his own intense and unabated fondness for these
+games--for he played cricket and football up to the end of his
+life--might have biassed his judgment, they could not deny that the
+games ought to develop the qualities aforesaid.
+
+"Consider the habit of being in public, the forbearance, the
+subordination of the one to the many, the exercise of judgment, the
+sense of personal dignity. Think again of the organising faculty that
+our games develop. Where can you get command and obedience, choice
+with responsibility, criticism with discipline, in any degree remotely
+approaching that in which our social games supply them? Think of the
+partly moral, partly physical side of it, temper, of course, dignity,
+courtesy.... When the match has really begun, there is education,
+there is enlargement of horizon, self sinks, the common good is the
+only good, the bodily faculties exhilarate in functional development,
+and the make-believe ambition is glorified into a sort of ideality.
+Here is boyhood at its best, or very nearly at its best. _Sursum
+crura!..._ When you have a lot of human beings, in highest social
+union and perfect organic action, developing the law of their race and
+falling in unconsciously with its best inherited traditions of
+brotherhood and common action, you are not far from getting a glimpse
+of one side of the highest good. There lives more soul in honest play,
+believe me, than in half the hymn-books."
+
+These words, taken from a half-serious essay on Games written for a
+private society, give some part of Bowen's views. The whole essay is
+well worth reading.[55] Its arguments do not, however, quite settle
+the matter. The playing of games may have, and indeed ought to have,
+the excellent results Bowen claimed for it, and yet it may be doubted
+whether the experience of life shows that boys so brought up do in
+fact turn out substantially more good-humoured, unselfish, and fit for
+the commerce of the world than others who have lacked this training.
+And the further question remains whether the games are worth their
+costly candle. That they occupy a good deal of time at school and at
+college is not necessarily an evil, seeing that the time left for
+lessons or study is sufficient if well spent. The real drawback
+incident to the excessive devotion games inspire in our days is that
+they leave little room in the boy's or collegian's mind either for
+interest in his studies or for the love of nature. They fill his
+thoughts, they divert his ambition into channels of no permanent value
+to his mind or life; they continue to absorb his interest and form a
+large part of his reading long after he has left school or college.
+Nevertheless, be these things as they may, the opinion of a man so
+able and so experienced as Bowen was, deserves to be recorded; and his
+success in endearing himself to and guiding his boys was doubtless
+partly due to the use he made of their liking for games.
+
+He was never married, so the school became the sole devotion of his
+life, and he bequeathed to it the bulk of his property, directing an
+area of land which he had purchased on the top of the Hill to be
+always kept as an open space for the benefit of boys and masters.
+
+It need hardly be said that he loved boys as he loved teaching. He
+took them with him in the holidays on walking tours. He kept up
+correspondence with many of his pupils after they left Harrow, and
+advised them as occasion rose. To many of them he remained through
+life the model whom they desired to imitate. But he was very chary of
+the exercise of influence. "A boy's character," he once wrote, "grows
+like the Temple of old, without sound of mallet and trowel. What we
+can do is to arrange matters so as to give Virtue her best chance. We
+can make the right choice sometimes a little easier, we can prevent
+tendencies from blossoming into acts, and render pitfalls visible. How
+much indirectly and unconsciously we can do, none but the recording
+angel knows. 'You can and you should,' said Chiffers,[56] 'go straight
+to the heart of every individual boy.' Well, a fellow-creature's mind
+is a sacred thing. You may enter into that arcanum once a year,
+shoeless. And in the effort to control the spirit of a pupil, to make
+one's own approval his test and mould him by the stress of our own
+presence, in the ambition to do this, the craving for moral power and
+visible guiding, the subtle pride of effective agency, lie some of the
+chief temptations of a schoolmaster's work."
+
+Such ways and methods as I have endeavoured to describe are less easy
+to imitate than those which belong to the Arnoldine type of
+schoolmaster. In Bowen's gaiety, in his vivacity, in the humour which
+interpenetrated everything he said or did, there was something
+individual. Teachers who do not possess a like vivacity, versatility,
+and humour cannot hope to apply with like success the method of
+familiarity and sympathy. Not indeed that Bowen stood altogether alone
+in his use of that method. There were others among his contemporaries
+who shared his view, and whose practice was not dissimilar. He was,
+however, the earliest and most brilliant exponent of the view, so his
+career may be said to open a new line, and to mark a new departure in
+the teacher's art.
+
+I have mentioned his walking tours. He was a pedestrian of extraordinary
+force, rather tall, but spare and light, swift of foot, and tireless
+in his activity. As an undergraduate he had walked from Cambridge to
+Oxford, nearly ninety miles, in twenty-four hours, scarcely halting. At
+one time or another he had traversed on foot all the coast-line and
+great part of the inland regions of England. He was an accomplished
+Alpine climber. His passion for exercise of body as well as of mind
+was so salient a feature in his character that his friends wondered
+how he would be able to support old age. He was spared the trial,
+for he was gay and joyous as ever on the last morning of his life, and
+he died in a moment, while mounting his bicycle after a long ascent,
+among the lonely forests of Burgundy, then bursting into leaf under
+an April sun.
+
+His interest in politics provided him with a short and strenuous
+interlude of public action, which varied the even tenor of his life at
+Harrow. At the general election of 1880 he stood as a candidate for
+the little borough of Hertford (which has since been merged in the
+county) against Mr. Arthur Balfour, now (1902) First Lord of the
+Treasury in England. The pro-Turkish policy of Lord Beaconsfield,
+followed by the Afghan War of 1878, had roused many Liberals who
+usually took little part in political action. Bowen felt the impulse
+to denounce the conduct of the Ministry, and went into the contest
+with his usual airy suddenness. He had little prospect of success at
+such a place, for, like many of the so-called Academic Liberals of
+those days, he made the mistake of standing for a small semi-rural
+constituency, overshadowed by a neighbouring magnate, instead of for a
+large town, where both his opinions and his oratory would have been
+better appreciated. However, he enjoyed the contest thoroughly,
+amusing himself as well as the electors by his lively and sometimes
+impassioned speeches, and he looked back to it as a pleasant episode
+in his usually smooth and placid life. He was all his life a strong
+Liberal _vieille roche_, a lover of freedom and equality as well as of
+economy in public finance, a Free Trader, an individualist, an enemy
+of all wars and all aggressions, and in later years growingly
+indignant at the rapid increase of military and naval expenditure. He
+was also, like the Liberals of 1850-60 in general, a sympathiser with
+oppressed nationalities, though this feeling did not carry him the
+length of accepting the policy of Home Rule for Ireland, as to which
+he had grave doubts, yet doubts not quite so serious as to involve
+his separation from the Liberal party. Twice after 1880 he was on the
+point of becoming a candidate for a seat in the House of Commons, but
+whether his love for Harrow would have suffered him to remain in
+Parliament had he entered it may be doubted. One could not even tell
+whether he was really disappointed that his political aspirations
+remained unfulfilled. Had he given himself to parliamentary life, his
+readiness, ingenuity, and wit would have soon made him valued by his
+own side, while his sincerity and engaging manners would have
+commended him to both sides alike. His delivery was always too rapid,
+and his voice not powerful, yet these defects would have been
+forgotten in the interest which so peculiar a figure must have
+aroused.
+
+His peace principles contrasted oddly with his passion for military
+history, a passion which prompted many vacation journeys to
+battlefields all over Europe, from Salamanca to Austerlitz. He had
+followed the campaigns of Napoleon through Piedmont and Lombardy,
+through Germany and Austria, as well as those of Wellington in Spain
+and Southern France.[57] This taste is not uncommon in men of peace.
+Freeman had it; J. R. Green and S. R. Gardiner had it; and the
+historical works of Sir George Trevelyan and Dr. Thomas Hodgkin prove
+that it lives in those genial breasts also. It was a pleasure to be
+led over a battlefield by Bowen, for he had a good eye for ground, he
+knew the movements of the armies down to the smallest detail, and he
+could explain with perfect lucidity the positions of the combatants
+and the tactical moves in the game.
+
+Twice only did he come across actual fighting, once at Dueppel in 1864,
+during the Schleswig-Holstein war, and again in Paris during the siege
+of the Communards by the forces that obeyed Thiers and the Assembly
+sitting at Versailles. He maintained that the Commune had been
+unfairly judged by Englishmen, and wrote a singularly interesting
+description of what he saw while risking his life in the beleaguered
+city. There was in him a great spirit of adventure, though the
+circumstances of his life gave it little scope.
+
+Travel was one of his chief pleasures, but it was, if possible, a
+still greater pleasure to his fellow-travellers, for he was the most
+agreeable of companions, fertile in suggestion, candid in discussion,
+swift in decision. He cared nothing for luxury and very little for
+comfort; he was absolutely unselfish and imperturbably good-humoured;
+he could get enjoyment out of the smallest incidents of travel, and
+his curiosity to see the surface of the earth as well as the cities of
+men was inexhaustible. He loved the unexpected, and if one had written
+proposing an expedition to explore Tibet, he would have telegraphed
+back, "Start to-night: do we meet Charing Cross or Victoria?"
+
+I have dwelt on Bowen's gifts and methods as a teacher, because
+teaching was the joy and the business of his life, and because he
+showed a new way in which boys might be stimulated and guided. But he
+was a great deal besides a teacher, just as his brother Charles was a
+great deal besides a lawyer. Both had talents for literature of a very
+high order. Charles published a verse translation of Virgil's
+_Eclogues_ and the first six books of the _Aeneid_, full of ingenuity
+and refinement, as well as of fine poetic taste. Edward's vein
+expressed itself in the writing of songs. His school songs, composed
+for the Harrow boys, became immensely popular with them, and their use
+at school celebrations of various kinds has passed from Harrow to the
+other great schools of England, even to some of the larger girls'
+schools. The songs are unique in their fanciful ingenuity and humorous
+extravagance, full of a boyish joy in life, in the exertion of
+physical strength, in the mimic strife of games, yet with an
+occasional touch of sadness, like the shadow of a passing cloud as it
+falls on the cricket field over which the shouts of the players are
+ringing. The metres are various: all show rhythmical skill, and in all
+the verse has a swing which makes it singularly effective when sung
+by a mass of voices. Most of the songs are dedicated to cricket or
+football, but a few are serious, and two or three of these have a
+beauty of thought and perfection of form which make the reader ask why
+a poetic gift so true and so delicate should have been rarely used.
+These songs were the work of his middle or later years, and he never
+wrote except when the impulse came upon him. The stream ran pure but
+it ran seldom. In early days he had been for a while, like many other
+brilliant young University men of his time, a contributor to the
+_Saturday Review_. (There surely never was a journal which enlisted so
+much and such varied literary talent as the _Saturday_ did between
+1855 and 1863.) Bowen's articles were, like his elder brother's,
+extremely witty. In later life he could seldom be induced to write,
+having fallen out of the habit, and being, indeed, too busy to carry
+on any large piece of work; but the occasional papers on educational
+subjects he produced showed no decline in his vivacity or in the
+abundance of his humour. Those who knew the range and the resources of
+his mind sometimes regretted that he would do nothing to let the world
+know them. But he was, to a degree most unusual among men of real
+power, absolutely indifferent, not only to fame, but to opportunities
+for exercising power or influence.
+
+The stoicism which he sought to form in his pupils was inculcated by
+his own example. It was a genial and cheerful stoicism, which checked
+neither his affection for them nor his brightness in society, and
+which permitted him to draw as much enjoyment from small things as
+most people can from great ones. But if he had the gaiety of an
+Irishman, he had a double portion of English reserve. He never gave
+expression in words to his emotions. He never seemed either elated or
+depressed. He never lost his temper and never seemed to be curbing it.
+His tastes and way of life were simple to the verge of austerity; nor
+did he appear to desire anything more than what he had obtained.
+
+It is natural--possibly foolish, yet almost inevitable--that those
+who perceive in a friend the presence of rare and brilliant gifts
+should desire that his gifts should not only be turned to full
+account for the world's benefit, but should become so known and
+appreciated as to make others admire and value what they admire and
+value. When such a man prefers to live his life in his own way, and do
+the plain duties that lie near him, with no thought of anything
+further, they feel, though they may try to repress, a kind of
+disappointment, as though greatness or virtue had missed its mark
+because known to few besides themselves. Yet there is a sense in
+which that friend is most our own who has least belonged to the
+world, who has least cared for what the world has to offer, who has
+chosen the simplest and purest pleasures, who has rendered the
+service that his way of life required with no longing for any wider
+theatre or any applause to be there won. Is there indeed anything
+more beautiful than a life of quiet self-sufficing yet beneficent
+serenity, such as the ancient philosophers inculcated, a life which
+is now more rarely than ever led by men of shining gifts, because the
+inducements to bring such gifts into the dusty thoroughfares of the
+world have grown more numerous? Bowen had the best equipment for a
+philosopher. He knew the things that gave him pleasure, and sought no
+others. He knew what he could do well. He followed his own bent.
+His desires were few, and he could gratify them all. He had made life
+exactly what he wished it to be. Intensely as he enjoyed travel, he
+never uttered a note of regret when the beginning of a Harrow school
+term stopped a journey at its most interesting point, so dearly did
+he love his boys. What more can we desire for our friends than
+this--that in remembering them there should be nothing to regret,
+that all who came under their influence should feel themselves for
+ever thereafter the better for that influence, that a happy and
+peaceful life should be crowned by a sudden and painless death?
+
+-----
+
+  [53] Since this sketch was written a very interesting _Life of Edward
+       Bowen_ by his nephew (the Hon. and Rev. W. E. Bowen) has
+       appeared. Some of his (too few) essays and a collection of his
+       school-songs are appended to it.
+
+  [54] Mr. R. Bosworth Smith.
+
+  [55] It is printed in the _Life_.
+
+  [56] "Chiffers" is the typical would-be imitator of Arnold.
+
+  [57] He remarked once that he had so nearly exhausted the battlefields
+       of the past that he must begin to devote himself to the
+       battlefields of the future.
+
+
+
+
+EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN
+
+
+As with the progress of science new arts emerge and new occupations
+and trades are created, so with the progress of society professions
+previously unknown arise, evolve new types of intellectual excellence,
+and supply a new theatre for the display of peculiar and exceptional
+gifts. Such a profession, such a type, and the type which is perhaps
+most specially characteristic of our times, is that of the Editor. It
+scarcely existed before the French Revolution, and is, as now fully
+developed, a product of the last eighty years. Various are its forms.
+There is the Business Editor, who runs his newspaper as a great
+commercial undertaking, and may neither care for politics nor attach
+himself to any political party. America still recollects the familiar
+example set by James Gordon Bennett, the founder of the _New York
+Herald_. There is the Selective Editor, who may never pen a line, but
+shows his skill in gathering an able staff round him, and in allotting
+to each of them the work he can do best. Such an one was John Douglas
+Cook, a man of slender cultivation and few intellectual interests,
+but still remembered in England by those who forty years ago knew the
+staff of the _Saturday Review_, then in its brilliant prime, as
+possessed of an extraordinary instinct for the topics which caught the
+public taste, and for the persons capable of handling those topics.
+John T. Delane, of the _Times_, had the same gift, with talents and
+knowledge far surpassing Cook's. A third and usually more interesting
+form is found in the Editor who is himself an able writer, and who
+imparts his own individuality to the journal he directs. Such an one
+was Horace Greeley, who, in the days before the War of Secession, made
+the _New York Tribune_ a power in America. Such another, of finer
+natural quality, was Michael Katkoff, who in his short career did much
+to create and to develop the spirit of nationality and imperialism in
+Russia thirty years ago.
+
+It was to this third form of the editorial profession that Mr. Godkin
+belonged. He is the most remarkable example of it that has appeared in
+our time--perhaps, indeed, in any time since the profession rose to
+importance; and all the more remarkable because he was never, like
+Greeley or Katkoff, the exponent of any widespread sentiment or potent
+movement, but was frequently in opposition to the feeling for the
+moment dominant.
+
+Edwin Lawrence Godkin, the son of a Protestant clergyman and author,
+was born in the county of Wicklow, in Ireland, in 1831. He was
+educated at Queen's College, Belfast, read for a short time for the
+English bar, but drifted into journalism by accepting the post of
+correspondent to the London _Daily News_ during the Crimean War in
+1853-54. The horror of war which he retained through his life was due
+to the glimpse of it he had in the Crimea. Soon afterwards he went to
+America, was admitted to the bar in New York, but never practised,
+spent some months in travelling through the Southern States on
+horseback, learning thereby what slavery was, and what its economic
+and social consequences, was for two or three years a writer on the
+_New York Times_, and ultimately, in 1865, established in New York a
+weekly journal called the _Nation_. This he continued to edit, writing
+most of it himself, till 1881, when he accepted the editorship of the
+_New York Evening Post_, an old and respectable paper, but with no
+very large circulation. The _Nation_ continued to appear, but became
+practically a weekly edition of the _Evening Post_, or rather, as some
+one said, the _Evening Post_ became a daily edition of the _Nation_,
+for the tone and spirit that had characterised the _Nation_ now
+pervaded the _Post_. In 1900 failing health compelled him to retire
+from active work, and in May 1902 he died in England. Journalism left
+him little leisure for any other kind of literary production; but he
+wrote in early life a short history of Hungary; and a number of
+articles which he had in later years contributed to the _Nation_ or to
+magazines were collected and published in three volumes between 1895
+and 1900. They are clear and wise articles, specially instructive
+where they deal with the most recent aspects of democracy. But as they
+convey a less than adequate impression of the peculiar qualities which
+established his fame, I pass on to the work by which he will be
+remembered, his work as a weekly and daily public writer.
+
+He was well equipped for this career by considerable experience of the
+world, by large reading, for though not a learned man, he had
+assimilated a great deal of knowledge on economical and historical
+subjects, and by a stock of positive principles which he saw clearly
+and held coherently. In philosophy and economics he was a Utilitarian
+of the school of J. S. Mill, and in politics what used to be called a
+philosophical Radical, a Radical of the less extreme type, free from
+sentiment and from prejudices, but equally free from any desire to
+destroy for the sake of destroying. Like the other Utilitarians of
+those days, he was a moderate optimist, expecting the world to grow
+better steadily, though not swiftly; and he went to America in the
+belief that he should there find more progress secured, and more of
+further progress in prospect, than any European country could show. It
+was the land of promise, in which all the forces making for good on
+which the school of Mill relied were to be found at work, hampered
+only by the presence of slavery. I note this fact, because it shows
+that the pessimism of Mr. Godkin's later years was not due to a
+naturally querulous or despondent temperament.
+
+So too was his mind admirably fitted for the career he had chosen.
+It was logical, penetrating, systematic, yet it was also quick and
+nimble. His views were definite, not to say dogmatic, and as they were
+confidently held, so too they were confidently expressed. He never
+struck a doubtful note. He never slurred over a difficulty, nor
+sought, when he knew himself ignorant, to cover up his ignorance.
+Imagination was kept well in hand, for his constant aim was to get
+at and deal with the vital facts of every case. If he was not
+original in the way of thinking out doctrines distinctively his own,
+nor in respect of any exuberance of ideas bubbling up in the
+course of discussion, there was fertility as well as freshness in
+his application of principles to current questions, and in the
+illustrations by which he enforced his arguments.
+
+As his thinking was exact, so his style was clear-cut and trenchant.
+Even when he was writing most swiftly, it never sank below a high
+level of form and finish. Every word had its use and every sentence
+told. There was no doubt about his meaning, and just as little about
+the strength of his convictions. He had a gift for terse vivacious
+paragraphs commenting on some event of the day or summing up the
+effect of a speech or a debate. The touch was equally light and firm.
+But if the manner was brisk, the matter was solid: you admired the
+keenness of the insight and the weight of the judgment just as much as
+the brightness of the style. Much of the brightness lay in the humour.
+That is a plant which blossoms so much more profusely on Transatlantic
+soil that English readers of the _Nation_ had usually a start of
+surprise when told that this most humorous of American journalists was
+not an American at all but a European, and indeed a European who never
+became thoroughly Americanised. It was humour of a pungent and
+sarcastic quality, usually directed to the detection of tricks or the
+exposure of shams, but it was eminently mirth-provoking and never
+malicious. Frequently it was ironical, and the irony sometimes so fine
+as to be mistaken for seriousness.
+
+The _Nation_ was from its very first numbers so full of force,
+keenness, and knowledge, and so unusually well written, that it made
+its way rapidly among the educated classes of the Eastern States. It
+soon became a power, but a power of a new kind. Mr. Godkin wanted
+most of the talents or interests of the ordinary journalist. He
+gave no thought to the organisation of the paper as a business
+undertaking. He scarcely heeded circulation, either when his
+livelihood depended upon the _Nation_ of which he was the chief
+owner, or when he was associated with others in the ownership of
+the _Evening Post_. He refused to allow any news he disapproved,
+including all scandal and all society gossip, to appear. He was
+prepared at any moment to incur unpopularity from his subscribers, or
+even to offend one half of his advertisers. He took no pains to get
+news before other journals, and cared nothing for those "beats" and
+"scoops" in which the soul of the normal newspaper man finds a
+legitimate source of pride. He was not there, he would have said,
+to please either advertisers or subscribers, but to tell the American
+people the truths they needed to hear, and if those truths were
+distasteful, so much the more needful was it to proclaim them. He
+was absolutely independent not only of all personal but of all party
+ties. A public man was never either praised or suffered to escape
+censure because he was a private acquaintance. He once told me that
+the being obliged to censure those with whom he stood in personal
+relations was the least agreeable feature of his profession.
+Whether an act was done by the Republicans or by the Democrats
+made no difference to his judgment, or to the severity with which his
+judgment was expressed. His distrust of Mr. James G. Blaine had led
+him to support Mr. Cleveland at the election of 1884, and he
+continued to give a general approval to the latter statesman during
+both his presidential terms. But when Mr. Cleveland's Venezuelan
+message with its menaces to England appeared in December 1895, Mr.
+Godkin vehemently denounced it, as indeed he had frequently before
+blamed particular acts of the Cleveland administrations. He
+sometimes voted for the Republicans, sometimes for the Democrats,
+according to the merits of the transitory issue or the particular
+candidate, but after 1884 no one could have called him either a
+Republican or a Democrat.
+
+Independence of party is less rare among American than among European
+newspapers; but courage such as Godkin's is rare everywhere. The
+editor of a century ago had in most countries to fear press
+censorship, or the law of political libel, or the frowns of the great.
+The modern editor, delivered from these risks, is exposed to the more
+insidious temptations of financial influence, of social pressure, of
+the fear of injuring the business interests of the paper, which are
+now sometimes enormous. Godkin's conscientiousness and pride made him
+equally indifferent to influence and to threats. As some one said,
+you might as well have tried to frighten the east wind. Clear, prompt,
+and self-confident, judging everything by a high standard of honour
+and public spirit, he distributed censure with no regard either to the
+official position or to the party affiliations of politicians. The
+"Weekly Day of Judgment" was the title bestowed upon the _Nation_ by
+Charles Dudley Warner, who himself admired it. As Godkin expected--or
+at least demanded--righteousness from every one, he was more a terror
+to evildoers than a praise to them that do well, and the fact that,
+having no private ends to serve, he thought only of truth and the
+public interest, made him all the more stringent. Because he was, and
+found it easy to be, fearless and independent, he scarcely allowed
+enough for the timidity of others, and sometimes chastised the weak as
+sternly as the wicked. An editor who smites all the self-seekers and
+all the time-servers whom he thinks worth smiting, is sure to become a
+target for many arrows. But as Godkin was an equally caustic critic of
+the sentimental vagaries or economic heresies of well-meaning men or
+sections of opinion, he incurred hostility from quarters where the
+desire for honest administration and the purity of public life was
+hardly less strong than in the pages of the _Nation_ itself. Though he
+took no personal part in politics, never appeared on platforms nor in
+any way put himself forward, his paper was so markedly himself that
+people talked of it as him. It was not "the _Nation_ says" or "the
+_Post_ says," but "Godkin says." Even his foreign birth was charged
+against him--a rare charge in a country so tolerant and catholic as
+the United States, where every office except that of President is open
+to newcomers as freely as to the native born.
+
+He was called "un-American," and I have heard men who admired and read
+the _Nation_ nevertheless complain that they did not want "to be
+taught by a European how to run this Republic." True it is that he did
+not see things or write about them quite as an American would have
+done. But was this altogether a misfortune? The Italian cities of the
+Middle Ages used to call in a man of character and mark from some
+other place and make him Podesta just because he stood outside the
+family ties and the factions of the city. Godkin's foreign education
+gave him detachment and perspective. It never reduced his ardour to
+see administration and public life in America made worthy of the
+greatness of the American people.
+
+No journal could have maintained its circulation and extended its
+influence in the face of so much hostility except by commanding
+merits. The merits of the _Nation_ were incontestable. It was the best
+weekly not only in America but in the world. The editorials were
+models of style. The book reviews, many of them in earlier days also
+written by Godkin himself, were finished in point of form, and, when
+not his own, came from the ablest specialist hands in the country. The
+"current notes" of progress in such subjects as geography, natural
+history, and archaeology were instructive and accurate. So it was that
+people had to read the _Nation_ whether they liked it or not. It could
+not be ignored. It was a necessity even where it was a terror.
+
+Yet neither the force of his reasoning nor the brilliance of his
+style would have secured Godkin's influence but for two other
+elements of strength he possessed. One was the universal belief in his
+disinterestedness and sincerity. He was often charged with prejudice
+or bitterness, but never with any sinister motive; enemies no less
+than friends respected him. The other was his humour. An austere
+moralist who is brimful of fun is rare in any country. Relishing
+humour more than does any other people, the Americans could not be
+seriously angry with a man who gave them so abundant a feast.
+
+To trace the course he took in the politics of the United States since
+1860 would almost be to outline the history of forty years, for
+there was no great issue in the discussion of which he did not bear a
+part. He was a strong supporter of the Northern cause during the
+War of Secession, and by his letters to the London _Daily News_ did
+something to enlighten English readers. When the problems of
+reconstruction emerged after the war, he suggested lines of action
+more moderate than those followed by the Republican leaders, and
+during many subsequent years denounced the "carpet-baggers," and
+advocated the policy of restoring self-government to the Southern
+States and withdrawing Federal troops. Incensed at the corruption of
+some of the men who surrounded President Grant during his first
+term, he opposed Grant's re-election, as did nearly all the
+reformers of those days. By this time he had begun to attack the
+"spoils system," and to demand a reform of the civil service, and he
+had also become engaged in that campaign against the Tammany
+organisation in New York City which he maintained with unabated energy
+till the end of his editorial career.[58] In 1884 he led the
+opposition to the candidacy of Mr. Blaine for President, and it
+was mainly the persistency with which the _Evening Post_ set forth
+the accusations brought against that statesman that secured his defeat
+in New York State, and therewith his defeat in the election. It
+was on this occasion that the nickname of Mugwump[59] was first
+applied to Mr. Godkin by the ablest of his antagonists in the press,
+Mr. Dana of the _New York Sun_, a title before long extended to the
+Independents whom the _Post_ led, and who constituted, during the
+next ten or twelve years, a section of opinion important, if not
+by its numbers, yet by the intellectual and moral weight of the men
+who composed it. When currency questions became prominent, Mr.
+Godkin was a strong opponent of bimetallism and of "silverism" in
+all its forms, and a not less strenuous opponent of all socialistic
+theories and movements. It need hardly be added that he had always
+been an upholder of the principles of Free Trade. Like a sound
+Cobdenite, he was an advocate of peace, and disliked territorial
+extension. He opposed President Grant's scheme for the acquisition
+of San Domingo, as he afterwards opposed the annexation of Hawaii.
+His close study of Irish history, and his old faith in the principle
+of nationality, had made him a strenuous advocate of Home Rule for
+Ireland. But no one was farther than he from sharing the feelings of
+the American Irish towards England. He condemned the threats
+addressed in 1895 to Great Britain over the Venezuela question; and
+glad as he was to see that question settled by England's acceptance
+of an arbitration which she had previously denied the right of the
+United States to demand, he held that England must beware of yielding
+too readily to pressure from the United States, because such
+compliance would encourage that aggressive spirit in the latter whose
+consequences for both countries he feared. Never, perhaps, did he
+incur so much obloquy as in defending, almost single-handed, the
+British position in the Venezuelan affair. The attacks made all over
+the country on the _Evening Post_ were, he used to say, like storms of
+hail lashing against his windows. At the very end of his career,
+he resisted the war with Spain and the annexation of the Philippine
+Islands, deeming the acquisition of trans-Oceanic territories,
+inhabited by inferior races, a dangerous new departure, opposed to
+the traditions of the Fathers of the Republic, and inconsistent with
+the principles on which the Republic was founded. No public writer
+has left a more consistent record.
+
+In private life Mr. Godkin was a faithful friend and a charming
+companion, genial as well as witty, considerate of others, and liked
+no less than admired by his staff on the _Evening Post_, free from
+cynicism, and more indulgent in his views of human nature than might
+have been gathered from his public utterances. He never despaired of
+democratic government, yet his spirits had been damped by the faint
+fulfilment of those hopes for the progress of free nations, and
+especially of the United States, which had illumined his youth. The
+slow advance of economic truths, the evils produced by the increase of
+wealth, the growth of what he called "chromo-civilisation," the
+indifference of the rich and educated to politics, the want of nerve
+among politicians, the excitability of the masses, the tenacity with
+which corruption and misgovernment held their ground, in spite of
+repeated exposures, in cities like New York, Philadelphia, and
+Chicago--all these things had so sunk into his soul that it became
+hard to induce him to look at the other side, and to appreciate the
+splendid recuperative forces which are at work in America. Thus his
+friends were driven to that melancholy form of comfort which consists
+in pointing out that other countries are no better. They argued that
+England in particular, to which he had continued to look as the home
+of political morality and enlightened State wisdom, was suffering from
+evils, not indeed the same as those which in his judgment afflicted
+America, but equally serious. They bade him remember that moral
+progress is not continuous, but subject to ebbs of reaction, and that
+America is a country of which one should never despair, because in it
+evils have often before worked out their cure. He did regretfully own,
+after his latest visits to Europe, that England had sadly declined
+from the England of his earlier days, and he admitted that the clouds
+under which his own path had latterly lain might after a time be
+scattered by a burst of sunshine; but his hopes for the near future of
+America were not brightened by these reflections. Sometimes he seemed
+to feel--though of his own work he never spoke--as though he had
+laboured in vain for forty years.
+
+If he so thought, he did his work far less than justice. It had told
+powerfully upon the United States, and that in more than one way.
+Though the circulation of the _Nation_ was never large, it was read by
+the two classes which in America have most to do with forming
+political and economic opinion--I mean editors and University
+teachers. (The Universities and Colleges, be it remembered, are far
+more numerous, relatively to the population, in America than in
+England, and a more important factor in the thought of the country.)
+From the editors and the professors Mr. Godkin's views filtered down
+into the educated class generally, and affected its opinion. He
+instructed and stimulated the men who instructed and stimulated the
+rest of the people. To those young men in particular who thought about
+public affairs and were preparing themselves to serve their country,
+his articles were an inspiration. The great hope for American
+democracy to-day lies in the growing zeal and the ripened intelligence
+with which the generation now come to manhood has begun to throw
+itself into public work. Many influences have contributed to this
+result, and Mr. Godkin's has been among the most potent.
+
+Nor was his example less beneficial to the profession of journalism.
+There has always been a profusion of talent in the American press,
+talent more alert and versatile than is to be found in the press of
+any European country. But in 1865 there were three things which the
+United States lacked. Literary criticism did not maintain a high
+standard, nor duly distinguish thorough from flashy or superficial
+performances. Party spirit was so strong and so pervasive that
+journalists were content to denounce or to extol, and seldom subjected
+the character of men or measures to a searching and impartial
+examination. There was too much sentimentalism in politics, with too
+little reference of current questions to underlying principles, too
+little effort to get down to what Americans call the "hard pan" of
+facts. In all these respects the last forty years have witnessed
+prodigious advances; and, so far as the press is concerned--for much
+has been due to the Universities and to the growth of a literary
+class--Mr. Godkin's writings largely contributed to the progress made.
+His finished criticism, his exact method, his incisive handling of
+economic problems, his complete detachment from party, helped to form
+a new school of journalists, as the example he set of a serious and
+lofty conception of an editor's duties helped to add dignity to the
+position. He had not that disposition to enthrone the press which made
+a great English newspaper once claim for itself that it discharged in
+the modern world the functions of the mediaeval Church. But he brought
+to his work as an anonymous writer a sense of responsibility and a
+zeal for the welfare of his country which no minister of State could
+have surpassed.
+
+His friends may sometimes have wished that he had more fully
+recognised the worth of sentiment as a motive power in politics, that
+he had more frequently tried to persuade as well as to convince, that
+he had given more credit for partial instalments of honest service and
+for a virtue less than perfect, that he had dealt more leniently with
+the faults of the good and the follies of the wise. Defects in these
+respects were the almost inevitable defects of his admirable
+qualities, of his passion for truth, his hatred of wrong and
+injustice, his clear vision, his indomitable spirit.
+
+The lesson of his editorial career is a lesson not for America only.
+Among the dangers that beset democratic communities, none are greater
+than the efforts of wealth to control, not only electors and
+legislators, but also the organs of public opinion, and the
+disposition of statesmen and journalists to defer to and flatter the
+majority, adopting the sentiment dominant at the moment, and telling
+the people that its voice is the voice of God. Mr. Godkin was not
+only inaccessible to the lures of wealth--the same may happily be
+still said of many of his craft-brethren--he was just as little
+accessible to the fear of popular displeasure. Nothing more incensed
+him than to see a statesman or an editor with his "ear to the ground"
+(to use an American phrase), seeking to catch the sound of the coming
+crowd. To him, the less popular a view was, so much the more did it
+need to be well weighed and, if approved, to be strenuously and
+incessantly preached. Democracies will always have demagogues ready to
+feed their vanity and stir their passions and exaggerate the feeling
+of the moment. What they need is men who will swim against the stream,
+will tell them their faults, will urge an argument all the more
+forcibly because it is unwelcome. Such an one was Edwin Godkin. Since
+the death of Abraham Lincoln, America has been generally more
+influenced by her writers, preachers, and thinkers than by her
+statesmen. In the list of those who have during the last forty years
+influenced her for good and helped by their pens to make her history,
+a list illustrated by such names as those of R. W. Emerson and
+Phillips Brooks and James Russell Lowell, his name will find its place
+and receive its well-earned meed of honour.
+
+-----
+
+  [58] The Tammany leaders had him repeatedly arrested, usually on
+       Sunday mornings (that being the day on which it was least easy
+       to find bail) for alleged criminal libels upon them. These
+       prosecutions, threatened in the hope of intimidating him, never
+       went further.
+
+  [59] A Mugwump is in the Algonquin tongue an aged chief or wise man,
+       and the name was meant to ridicule the _ex cathedra_ manner
+       ascribed to the _Evening Post_.
+
+
+
+
+LORD ACTON
+
+
+When Lord Acton died on 19th June 1902, at Tegern See in Bavaria,
+England lost the most truly cosmopolitan of her children, and Europe
+lost one who was, by universal consent, in the foremost rank of her
+men of learning. He belonged to an old Roman Catholic family of
+Shropshire, a branch of which had gone to Southern Italy, where his
+grandfather, General Acton, had been chief minister of the King of
+Naples in the great war, at the time when the Bourbon dynasty
+maintained itself in Sicily by the help of the British fleet, while
+all Italy lay under the heel of Napoleon. His father, Sir Ferdinand
+Acton, married a German lady, heiress of the ancient and famous house
+of Dalberg, one of the great families of the middle Rhineland; so John
+Edward Emerich Dalberg-Acton was born half a German, and connected by
+blood with the highest aristocracy of Germany. He was educated at
+Oscott, one of the two chief Roman Catholic colleges of England, under
+Dr. Wiseman, afterwards Archbishop of Westminster and Cardinal; but
+the most powerful influence on the development of his mind and
+principles came from that glory of Catholic learning, a beautiful soul
+as well as a capacious intellect, Dr. von Doellinger, with whom Acton
+studied during some years at Munich. He sat for a short time in the
+House of Commons as member for Carlow (1859); and was afterwards
+elected for Bridgnorth (1865), but lost his seat (which he had gained
+by one vote only) on a scrutiny. In those days it was not easy for a
+Roman Catholic to find an English constituency, so in 1869 Mr.
+Gladstone procured his elevation to the peerage. He made a successful
+speech in the House of Lords in 1893, but took no prominent part in
+parliamentary life in either House, feeling himself too much of a
+student, and looking at current questions from a point of view unlike
+that of English politicians. Neither as a philosopher, nor as a
+historian, nor as a product of German training, could he find either
+Lords or Commons a congenial audience. When he was asked soon after he
+entered Parliament why he did not speak, he answered that he agreed
+with nobody and nobody agreed with him. But since he regarded politics
+as history in the course of making under his eyes, he continued to be
+all his life keenly interested in public affairs, watching and judging
+every move in the game. Mr. Gladstone, whose trusted friend he had
+been for many years, was believed to have on one occasion wished to
+place him in an important office; but political exigencies made this
+impossible, and the only public post he ever held was that of
+Lord-in-Waiting in the Ministry of 1892. In this capacity he was
+brought into frequent contact with Queen Victoria, who felt the
+warmest respect and admiration for him. He was one of the very few
+persons surrounding her who was familiar with most of the courts of
+Continental Europe, and could discuss with her from direct knowledge
+the men who figured in those courts. At Windsor he spent in the
+library of the Castle all the time during which he was not required to
+be in actual attendance on the Queen, a singular phenomenon among
+Lords-in-Waiting.
+
+Unlike most English Roman Catholics, he was a strong Liberal, a
+Liberal of that orthodox type, individualist, free-trade, and
+peace-loving, which prevailed from 1846 till 1885. He was also a
+convinced Home Ruler, and had, indeed, adopted the principle of Home
+Rule for Ireland long before Mr. Gladstone himself was converted to
+it. His faith in that principle rested on the value he attached to
+self-government as a means of training and developing the political
+aptitudes of a people, and to the recognition of national sentiment,
+which he held to be, like other natural forces, useful when guided but
+formidable when repressed. So too his Liberalism was based on the love
+of freedom for its own sake, joined to the conviction that freedom is
+the best foundation for the stability of a constitution and the
+happiness of a people. Reliance on the power of freedom was, he used
+to say, one of the broadest of all the lessons he had learned from
+history. He applied it in ecclesiastical as well as in political
+affairs. At the time of the Vatican Council of 1870 he was, though a
+layman, prominent among those who constituted the opposition
+maintained by the Liberal section of the Roman Catholic Church to the
+affirmation of the dogma of papal infallibility. His full and accurate
+knowledge of ecclesiastical history was placed at the disposal of the
+prelates, such as Archbishop Dupanloup, Bishop Strossmayer, and
+Archbishop Conolly (of Halifax, Nova Scotia), who combated the
+Ultramontane party in the animated and protracted debates which
+illumined that OEcumenical Council. One, at least, of the treatises,
+and many of the letters in the press which the Council called forth
+were written either by him or from materials which he supplied, and he
+was recognised by the Ultramontanes, and in particular by Archbishop
+Manning, as being, along with Doellinger, the most formidable of their
+opponents behind the scenes. As every one knows, the Infallibilists
+triumphed, and the schism which led to the formation of the Old
+Catholic Church in Germany and Switzerland was the result. Doellinger
+was excommunicated; but against Lord Acton no action was taken, and he
+remained all his life a faithful member of the Roman communion, while
+adhering to the views he had advocated in 1870.
+
+With this close hold upon practical life and this constant interest in
+the politics of the world, especially of England and the United
+States, no one could be less like that cloistered student who is
+commonly taken as the typical man of learning. But Lord Acton was a
+miracle of learning. Of the sciences of nature and their practical
+applications in the arts he had indeed no more knowledge than any
+cultivated man of the world is expected to possess. But of all the
+so-called "human subjects" his mastery was unequalled. Learning was
+the business of his life. He was gifted with a singularly tenacious
+memory. His industry was untiring. Wherever he was--in London, at
+Cannes in winter, at Tegern See in summer, at Windsor or Osborne with
+the Queen, latterly (till his health failed) at Cambridge during the
+University terms--he never worked less than eight hours a day. Yet,
+even after making every allowance for his memory and his industry, his
+friends stood amazed at the range and exactness of his knowledge. It
+was as various as it was profound, and much of it bore on recondite
+matters which few men study to-day. Though less minute where it
+touched the ancient and the early mediaeval world than as respected
+more recent times, it might be said to cover the whole field of
+history, both civil and ecclesiastical, and became wonderfully full
+and exact when it reached the Renaissance and Reformation periods. It
+included not only the older theology, but modern Biblical criticism.
+It included metaphysics; and not only metaphysics in the more special
+sense, but the abstract side of economics and that philosophy of law
+on which the Germans set so much store. Most of the prominent figures
+who have during the last half-century led the march of inquiry in
+these subjects, men like Ranke and Fustel de Coulanges in history,
+Wilhelm Roscher in economic science, Adolf Harnack in theology, were
+his personal friends, and he could meet them as an equal on their own
+ground. On one occasion I had invited to meet him at dinner the late
+Dr. (afterwards Bishop) Creighton, who was then writing his _History
+of the Popes_, and the late Professor Robertson Smith, the most
+eminent Hebrew and Arabic scholar in Britain. The conversation turned
+first upon the times of Pope Leo the Tenth, and then upon recent
+controversies regarding the dates of the books of the Old Testament,
+and it soon appeared that Lord Acton knew as much about the former as
+Dr. Creighton, and as much about the latter as Robertson Smith. The
+constitutional history of the United States is a topic far removed
+from those philosophical and ecclesiastical or theological lines of
+inquiry to which most of his time had been given; yet he knew it more
+thoroughly than any other living European, at least in England and
+France, for of the Germans I will not venture to speak, and he
+continued to read most of the books of importance dealing with it
+which from time to time were published. So, indeed, he kept abreast of
+nearly all the literature of possible utility bearing on history
+(especially ecclesiastical history) and political theory that appeared
+in Europe or America, reading much which his less diligent or less
+eager friends thought scarcely worthy of his perusal. And it need
+hardly be said that his friends found him an invaluable guide to the
+literature of any subject. In the sphere of history more especially,
+one might safely assume that a book which he did not know was not
+worth knowing, while he was often able to indicate, as being the right
+book to consult, some work of which the person who consulted him,
+albeit not unversed in the subject, had never heard. He had at one
+time four libraries, the largest at his family seat, Aldenham in
+Shropshire, others at Tegern See, at Cannes, and in London; and he
+could usually tell in which of these the particular book he named was
+to be found. Unlike most men who value their libraries, he was fond of
+lending books, and would sometimes put a friend to shame by asking
+some weeks afterwards what the latter thought of the volumes he had
+almost forced on the borrower, and which the borrower had not found
+time to read. After saying this, I need scarcely add that he was not a
+book collector in the usual sense of the word. He did not care for
+rare editions, and still less did he care about bindings.
+
+His Aldenham library was itself a monument of learning and industry.[60]
+In forming it he sought to bring together the books needed for
+tracing and elucidating the growth of formative ideas and of
+institutions in the sphere of ecclesiastical and civil polity, and to
+attain this he made it include not only all the best treatises
+handling these large and complex subjects, but a mass of original
+records bearing as well on the local histories of the cities and
+provinces of such countries as Italy and France as on the general
+history of the great European States and of the Church. This
+magnificent design he accomplished by his own efforts before he was
+forty. What was still more surprising, he had found time to use the
+books. Nearly all of them show by notes pencilled or marks placed in
+them that he had read some part of them, and knew (so far as was needed
+for his purpose) their contents.
+
+Vast as his stores of knowledge were, they were opened only to his few
+intimate friends. It was not merely that he, as Tennyson said of
+Edmund Lushington, "bore all that weight of learning lightly, like a
+flower." No one could have known in general society that he had any
+weight of learning to bear. He seemed to be merely a cultivated and
+agreeable man of the world, interested in letters and politics, but
+disposed rather to listen than to talk. He was sometimes enigmatic
+and "not incapable of casting a pearl of irony in the way of those
+who would mistake it for pebbly fact."[61] A great capacity for
+cynicism remained a capacity only, because joined to a greater
+reverence for virtue. In a large company he seldom put forth the
+fulness of his powers; it was in familiar converse with persons whose
+tastes resembled his own that the extraordinary finesse and polish
+of his mind revealed themselves. His critical taste was not only
+delicate, but exacting; his judgments leaned to the side of severity.
+No one applied a more stringent moral standard to the conduct of men
+in public affairs, whether to-day or in past ages. He insisted upon
+this, in his inaugural lecture at Cambridge, as the historian's first
+duty. "It is," said he, "the office of historical science to maintain
+morality as the sole impartial criterion of men and things." When he
+came to estimate the value of literary work he seemed no less hard
+to satisfy. His ideal, both as respected thoroughness in substance and
+finish in form, was impossibly high, and he noted every failure to
+reach it. No one appreciated merit more cordially. No one spoke
+with warmer admiration of such distinguished historians and
+theologians as the men whom I have just named. But the precision of
+his thinking and the fastidiousness of his taste gave more than a
+tinge of austerity to his judgment. His opinions were peculiarly
+instructive and illuminative to Englishmen, because he was only
+half an Englishman in blood, less than half an Englishman in his
+training and mental habits. He was as much at home in Paris or Berlin
+or Rome as he was in London, speaking the four great languages with
+almost equal facility, and knowing the men who in each of these
+capitals were best worth knowing. He viewed our insular literature
+and politics with the detachment not only of a Roman Catholic
+among Protestants, of a pupil of Doellinger and Roscher among Oxford
+and Cambridge men, but also of a citizen of the world, whose mastery
+of history and philosophy had given him an unusually wide outlook
+over mankind at large.
+
+His interest in the great things, so far from turning him away from
+the small things, seemed to quicken his sense of their significance.
+It was a noteworthy feature of his view of history that he should have
+held that the explanation of most of what has passed in the light is
+to be found in what has passed in the dark. He was always hunting for
+the key to secret chambers, preferring to believe that the grand
+staircase is only for show, and meant to impose upon the multitude,
+while the real action goes on in hidden passages behind. No one knew
+so much of the gossip of the past; no one was more intensely curious
+about the gossip of the present, though in his hands it ceased to be
+gossip and became unwritten history. One was sometimes disposed to
+wonder whether he did not think too much about the backstairs. But he
+had seen a great deal of history in the making.
+
+The passion for acquiring knowledge which his German education had
+fostered ended by becoming a snare to him, because it checked his
+productive powers. Not that learning burdened him, or clogged the
+soaring pinions of his mind. He was master of all he knew. But
+acquisition absorbed so much of his time that little was left for
+literary composition. (Doellinger saw the danger, for he observed that
+if Acton did not write a great book before he reached the age of
+forty, he would never do so.) It made him think that he could not
+write on a subject till he had read everything, or nearly everything,
+that others had written about it. It developed the habit of making
+extracts from the books he read, a habit which took the form of
+accumulating small slips of paper on which these extracts were written
+in his exquisitely neat and regular hand, the slips being arranged in
+cardboard boxes according to their subjects. He had hundreds of these
+boxes; and though much of their contents must no doubt be valuable,
+the time spent in distilling and bottling the essence of the books
+whence they came, might have been better spent in giving to the world
+the ideas which they had helped to evoke in his own mind. If one may
+take the quotations appended to his inaugural lecture as a sample of
+those he had collected, many of them were not exceptionally valuable,
+and did little more than show how the same idea, perhaps no recondite
+one, might be expressed in different words by different persons. When
+one read some article he had written, garnished and even overloaded
+with citations, one often felt that his own part was better, both in
+substance and in form, than the passages which he had culled from his
+predecessors. It becomes daily more than ever true that the secret of
+historical composition is to know what to neglect, since in our time
+it has become impossible to exhaust the literature of most subjects,
+and, as respects the last two centuries, to exhaust even the original
+authorities. Yet how shall one know what to neglect without at least a
+glance of inspection? Acton was unwilling to neglect anything; and his
+ardour for completeness drew him into a policy fit only for one who
+could expect to live three lives of mortal men.
+
+The love of knowledge grew upon him till it became a passion of the
+intellect, a thirst like the thirst for water in a parching desert.
+What he sought to know was not facts only, but facts in their
+relations to principles, facts so disposed and fitly joined together
+as to become the causeway over which the road to truth shall pass. For
+this purpose events were in his view not more important than the
+thoughts of men, because discursive and creative thought was to him
+the ruling factor in history. Hence books must be known--books of
+philosophic creation, books of philosophic reflection, no less than
+those which record what has happened. The danger of this conception is
+that everything men have said or written, as well as everything they
+have done, becomes a possibly significant fact; and thus the search
+for truth becomes endless because the materials are inexhaustible.
+
+He expressed in striking words, prefixed to a list of books suggested
+for a young man's perusal, his view of the aim of a course of
+historical reading. It is "to give force and fulness and clearness and
+sincerity and independence and elevation and generosity and serenity
+to his mind, that he may know the method and law of the process by
+which error is conquered and truth is won, discerning knowledge from
+probability and prejudice from belief, that he may learn to master
+what he rejects as fully as what he adopts, that he may understand the
+origin as well as the strength and vitality of systems and the better
+motive of men who are wrong ... and to steel him against the charm of
+literary beauty and talent."[62]
+
+Neither his passion for facts nor his appreciation of style and form
+made him decline to the right hand or to the left from the true
+position of a historian. He set little store upon what is called
+literary excellence, and would often reply, when questioned as to the
+merits of some book bearing an eminent name, "You need not read it: it
+adds nothing to what we knew." He valued facts only so far as they
+went to establish a principle or explained the course of events. It
+was really not so much in the range of his knowledge as in the
+profundity and precision of his thought that his greatness lay.
+
+His somewhat overstrained conscientiousness, coupled with the
+practically unattainable ideal of finish and form which he set before
+himself, made him less and less disposed to literary production. No
+man of first-rate powers has in our time left so little by which
+posterity may judge those powers. In his early life, when for a time
+he edited the _Home and Foreign Review_, and when he was connected
+with the _Rambler_ and the _North British Review_, he wrote
+frequently; and even between 1868 and 1890 he contributed to the press
+some few historical essays and a number of anonymous letters. But the
+aversion to creative work seemed to grow on him. About 1890 he so far
+yielded to the urgency of a few friends as to promise to reissue a
+number of his essays in a volume, but, after rewriting and polishing
+these essays during several years, he abandoned the scheme altogether.
+In 1882 he had already drawn out a plan for a comprehensive history of
+Liberty. But this plan also he dropped, because the more he read with
+a view to undertaking it the more he wished to read, and the vaster
+did the enterprise seem to loom up before him. With him, as with many
+men who cherish high literary ideals, the Better proved to be the
+enemy of the Good.
+
+Twenty years ago, late at night, in his library at Cannes, he
+expounded to me his view of how such a history of Liberty might be
+written, and in what wise it might be made the central thread of all
+history. He spoke for six or seven minutes only; but he spoke like a
+man inspired, seeming as if, from some mountain summit high in air, he
+saw beneath him the far-winding path of human progress from dim
+Cimmerian shores of prehistoric shadow into the fuller yet broken and
+fitful light of the modern time. The eloquence was splendid, but
+greater than the eloquence was the penetrating vision which discerned
+through all events and in all ages the play of those moral forces, now
+creating, now destroying, always transmuting, which had moulded and
+remoulded institutions, and had given to the human spirit its
+ceaselessly-changing forms of energy. It was as if the whole landscape
+of history had been suddenly lit up by a burst of sunlight. I have
+never heard from any other lips any discourse like this, nor from his
+did I ever hear the like again.
+
+His style suffered in his later days from the abundance of the
+interspersed citations, and from the overfulness and subtlety of the
+thought, which occasionally led to obscurity. But when he handled a
+topic in which learning was not required, his style was clear, pointed
+and incisive, sometimes epigrammatic. Several years ago he wrote in a
+monthly magazine a short article upon a biography of one of his
+contemporaries which showed how admirable a master he was of polished
+diction and penetrating analysis, and made one wish that he had more
+frequently consented to dash off light work in a quick unstudied way.
+
+To the work of a University professor he came too late to acquire the
+art of fluent and forcible oral discourse, nor was the character of
+his mind, with its striving after a flawless exactitude of statement,
+altogether fitted for the function of presenting broad summaries of
+facts to a youthful audience. His predecessor in the Cambridge chair
+of history, Sir John Seeley, with less knowledge, less subtlety, and
+less originality, had in larger measure the gift of oral exposition
+and the power of putting points, whether by speech or by writing, in
+a clear and telling way. No one, indeed, since Macaulay has been a
+better point-putter than Seeley was. But Acton's lectures (read from
+MS.) were models of lucid and stately narrative informed by fulness of
+thought; and they were so delivered as to express the feeling which
+each event had evoked in his own mind. That sternness of character
+which revealed itself in his judgments of men and books never affected
+his relations to his pupils. Precious as his time was, he gave it
+generously, encouraging them to come to him for help and counsel. They
+were awed by the majesty of his learning. Said one of them to me,
+"When Lord Acton answers a question put to him, I feel as if I were
+looking at a pyramid. I see the point of it clear and sharp, but I see
+also the vast subjacent mass of solid knowledge." They perceived,
+moreover, that to him History and Philosophy were not two things but
+one, and perceived that of History as well as of divine Philosophy it
+may be said that she too is "charming, and musical as is Apollo's
+lute." Thus the impression produced in the University by the amplitude
+of Lord Acton's views, by the range of his learning, by the liberality
+of his spirit and his unfailing devotion to truth and to truth alone,
+was deep and fruitful.
+
+When they wished that he had given to the world more of his wisdom,
+his friends did not undervalue a life which was in itself a rare and
+exquisite product of favouring nature and unwearied diligence. They
+only regretted that the influence of his ideas, of his methods, and of
+his spirit, had not been more widely diffused in an enduring form. It
+was as when a plant unknown elsewhere grows on some remote isle where
+ships seldom touch. Few see the beauty of the flower, and here death
+came before the seed could be gathered to be scattered in receptive
+soil.
+
+To most men Lord Acton seemed reserved as well as remote, presenting a
+smooth and shining surface beneath which it was hard to penetrate. He
+avoided publicity and popularity with the tranquil dignity of one for
+whom the world of knowledge and speculation was more than sufficient.
+But he was a loyal friend, affectionate to his intimates, gracious in
+his manners, blameless in all the relations of life. Comparatively few
+of his countrymen knew his name, and those who did thought of him
+chiefly as the confidant of Mr. Gladstone, and as the most remarkable
+instance of a sincere and steadfast Roman Catholic who was a Liberal
+alike in politics and in theology. But those who had been admitted to
+his friendship recognised him as one of the finest intelligences of
+his generation, an unsurpassed, and indeed a scarcely rivalled, master
+of every subject which he touched.
+
+-----
+
+  [60] This library, bought by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, was presented by him
+       to Mr. John Morley, and by the latter to the University of
+       Cambridge.
+
+  [61] The phrase is Professor Maitland's.
+
+  [62] I owe this quotation to a letter of Sir M. E. Grant Duff's
+       published soon after Lord Acton's death.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
+
+
+Of no man who has lived in our times is it so hard to speak in a
+concise and summary fashion as of Mr. Gladstone. For fifty years he
+was so closely associated with the public affairs of his country that
+the record of his parliamentary life is virtually an outline of
+English political history during those years. His activity spread
+itself out over many fields. He was the author of several learned and
+thoughtful books, and of a multitude of articles upon all sorts of
+subjects. He showed himself as eagerly interested in matters of
+classical scholarship and Christian doctrine and ecclesiastical
+history as in questions of national finance and foreign policy. No
+account of him could be complete without reviewing his actions and
+estimating the results of his work in all these directions.
+
+But the difficulty of describing and judging him goes deeper. His was
+a singularly complex nature, whose threads it was hard to unravel.
+His individuality was extremely strong. All that he said or did
+bore its impress. Yet it was an individuality so far from being
+self-consistent as sometimes to seem a bundle of opposite qualities
+capriciously united in a single person. He might with equal truth
+have been called, and he was in fact called, a conservative and a
+revolutionary. He was dangerously impulsive, and had frequently to
+suffer for his impulsiveness; yet he was also not merely prudent and
+cautious, but so astute as to have been accused of craft and
+dissimulation. So great was his respect for tradition that he clung
+to views regarding the authorship of the Homeric poems and the date
+of the books of the Old Testament which nearly all competent
+specialists have now rejected. So bold was he in practical matters
+that he carried through sweeping changes in the British constitution,
+changed the course of English policy in the nearer East, overthrew an
+established church in one part of the United Kingdom, and committed
+himself in principle to the overthrow of two other established
+churches in other parts. He came near to being a Roman Catholic in
+his religious opinions, yet was for the last twenty years of his life
+the trusted leader of the English Protestant Nonconformists and the
+Scottish Presbyterians. No one who knew him intimately doubted his
+conscientious sincerity and earnestness, yet four-fifths of the
+English upper classes were in his later years wont to regard him as
+a self-interested schemer who would sacrifice his country to his
+ambition. Though he loved general principles, and often soared out
+of the sight of his audience when discussing them, he generally
+ended by deciding upon points of detail the question at issue. He
+was at different times of his life the defender and the assailant of
+the same institutions, yet scarcely seemed inconsistent in doing
+opposite things, because his methods and his arguments preserved the
+same type and colour throughout. Those who had at the beginning of
+his career discerned in him the capacity for such diversities and
+contradictions would probably have predicted that they must wreck
+it by making his purposes fluctuating and his course erratic. Such
+a prediction might have proved true of any one with less firmness of
+will and less intensity of temper. It was the persistent heat and
+vehemence of his character, the sustained passion which he threw
+into the pursuit of the object on which he was for the moment bent,
+that fused these dissimilar qualities and made them appear to
+contribute to and increase the total force which he exerted.
+
+The circumstances of Mr. Gladstone's political career help to explain,
+or, at any rate, will furnish occasion for the attempt to explain,
+this complexity and variety of character. But before I come to his
+manhood it is convenient to advert to three conditions whose influence
+on him was profound--the first his Scottish blood, the second his
+Oxford education, the third his apprenticeship to public life under
+Sir Robert Peel.
+
+Theories of character based on race differences are dangerous, because
+they are as hard to test as they are easy to form. Still, we all know
+that there are specific qualities and tendencies usually found in the
+minds of men of certain stocks, just as there are peculiarities in
+their faces or in their speech. Mr. Gladstone was born and brought up
+in Liverpool, and always retained a touch of Lancashire accent. But,
+as he was fond of saying, every drop of blood in his veins was Scotch.
+His father's family belonged to the Scottish Lowlands, and came from
+the neighbourhood of Biggar, in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire, where
+the ruined walls of Gledstanes[63]--"the kite's rock"--may still be
+seen. His mother was of Highland extraction, by name Robertson, from
+Dingwall, in Ross-shire. Thus he was not only a Scot, but a Scot with
+a strong infusion of the Celtic element, the element whence the Scotch
+derive most of what distinguishes them from the northern English. The
+Scot is more excitable, more easily brought to a glow of passion, more
+apt to be eagerly absorbed in one thing at a time. He is also more
+fond of exerting his intellect on abstractions. It is not merely that
+the taste for metaphysical theology is commoner in Scotland than in
+England, but that the Scotch have a stronger relish for general
+principles. They like to set out by ascertaining and defining such
+principles, and then to pursue a series of logical deductions from
+them. They are, therefore, bolder reasoners than the English, less
+content to remain in the region of concrete facts, more prone to throw
+themselves into the construction of a body of speculative doctrine.
+The Englishman is apt to plume himself on being right in spite of
+logic; the Scotchman likes to think that it is through logic he has
+reached his results, and that he can by logic defend them. These are
+qualities which Mr. Gladstone drew from his Scottish blood. He had a
+keen enjoyment of the processes of dialectic. He loved to get hold of
+an abstract principle and to derive all sorts of conclusions from it.
+He was wont to begin the discussion of a question by laying down two
+or three sweeping propositions covering the subject as a whole, and
+would then proceed to draw from these others which he could apply to
+the particular matter in hand. His well-stored memory and boundless
+ingenuity made the discovery of such general propositions so easy a
+task that a method in itself agreeable sometimes appeared to be
+carried to excess. He frequently arrived at conclusions which the
+judgment of the common-sense auditor did not approve, because,
+although they seemed to have been legitimately deduced from the
+general principles just enunciated, they were somehow at variance with
+the plain teaching of the facts. At such moments one felt that the man
+who was fascinating but perplexing Englishmen by his subtlety was not
+himself an Englishman in mental quality, but had the love for
+abstractions and refinements and dialectical analysis which
+characterises the Scotch intellect. He had also a large measure of
+that warmth and vehemence, called in the sixteenth century the
+_perfervidum ingenium Scotorum_, which belong to the Scottish
+temperament, and particularly to the Celtic Scot. He kindled quickly,
+and when kindled, he shot forth a strong and brilliant flame. To any
+one with less power of self-control such intensity of emotion as he
+frequently showed would have been dangerous; nor did this excitability
+fail, even with him, to prompt words and acts which a cooler judgment
+would have disapproved. But it gave that spontaneity which was one of
+the charms of his nature; it produced that impression of profound
+earnestness and of resistless force which raised him out of the rank
+of ordinary statesmen. The rush of emotion swelling fast and full
+seemed to turn the whole stream of intellectual effort into whatever
+channel lay at the moment nearest.
+
+With these Scottish qualities, Mr. Gladstone was brought up at school
+and college (Eton and Christ Church) among Englishmen, and received at
+Oxford, then lately awakened from a long torpor, a bias and tendency
+which never thereafter ceased to affect him. The so-called "Oxford
+Movement," which afterwards obtained the name of Tractarianism and
+carried Newman and Manning, together with other less famous leaders,
+on to Rome, had not yet, in 1831, when Mr. Gladstone obtained his
+degree with double first-class honours, taken visible shape, or
+become, so to speak, conscious of its own purposes. But its doctrinal
+views, its peculiar vein of religious sentiment, its respect for
+antiquity and tradition, its proneness to casuistry, its taste for
+symbolism, were already in the air as influences working on the more
+susceptible of the younger minds. On Mr. Gladstone they told with full
+force. He became, and never ceased to be, not merely a High-churchman,
+but what may be called an Anglo-Catholic, in his theology, deferential
+not only to ecclesiastical tradition, but to the living voice of the
+Visible Church, revering the priesthood as the recipients (if duly
+ordained) of a special grace and peculiar powers, attaching great
+importance to the sacraments, feeling himself nearer to the Church of
+Rome, despite what he deemed her corruptions, than to any of the
+non-Episcopal Protestant churches. Henceforth his interests in life
+were as much ecclesiastical as political. For a time he desired to be
+ordained a clergyman. Had this wish, abandoned in deference to his
+father's advice, been carried out, he must eventually have become a
+leading figure in the Church of England and have sensibly affected her
+recent history. The later stages in his career drew him away from the
+main current of political opinion within that church. He who had been
+the strongest advocate of the principle of the State establishment of
+religion came to be the chief actor in the disestablishment of the
+Protestant Episcopal Church in Ireland, and a supporter of the policy
+of disestablishment in Scotland and in Wales. But the colour which
+these Oxford years gave to his mind and thoughts was never effaced.
+While they widened the range of his interests and deepened his moral
+earnestness, they at the same time confirmed his natural bent toward
+over-subtle distinctions and fine-drawn reasonings, and put him out of
+sympathy not only with the attitude of the average Englishman, who is
+essentially a Protestant--that is to say, averse to sacerdotalism, and
+suspicious of any other religious authority than that of the Bible and
+the individual conscience--but also with two of the strongest
+influences of our time, the influence of the sciences of nature, and
+the influence of historical criticism. Mr. Gladstone, though too wise
+to rail at science, as many religious men did till within the last
+few years, could never quite reconcile himself either to the
+conclusions of geology and zoology regarding the history of the
+physical world and the creatures which inhabit it, or to modern
+methods of critical inquiry as applied to Scripture and to ancient
+literature generally. The training which Oxford then gave, stimulating
+as it was, and free from the modern error of over-specialisation, was
+defective in omitting the experimental sciences, and in laying undue
+stress upon the study of language. A proneness to dwell on verbal
+distinctions and to trust overmuch to the analysis of terms as a means
+of reaching the truth of things is noticeable in many eminent Oxford
+writers of that and the next succeeding generation--some of them, like
+the illustrious F. D. Maurice, far removed from Cardinal Newman and
+Mr. Gladstone in theological opinion.
+
+When, bringing with him a brilliant University reputation, he
+entered the House of Commons at the age of twenty-three, Sir Robert
+Peel was leading the Tory party with an authority and ability rarely
+surpassed in the annals of parliament. Within two years the young man
+was admitted into the short-lived Tory ministry of 1834, and soon
+proved himself a promising lieutenant of the experienced chief.
+Peel was an eminently wary man, alive to the necessity of watching
+the signs of the times, of studying and interpreting the changeful
+phases of public opinion. Yet he always kept his own counsel. Even
+when he perceived that the policy he had hitherto followed would
+need to be modified, Peel continued to use guarded language and did
+not publicly commit himself to change till it was plain that the
+fitting moment had arrived. He was, moreover, a master of detail,
+slow to propound a plan until he had seen how its outlines were to
+be filled up by appropriate devices for carrying it out in practice.
+These qualities and habits of the minister profoundly affected his
+disciple. They became part of the texture of Mr. Gladstone's
+political character, and in his case, as in that of Peel, they
+sometimes brought censure upon him, as having locked up too long
+within his breast views or purposes which he thought it unwise to
+disclose till effect could be forthwith given to them. Such
+reserve, such a guarded attitude and tenderness for existing
+institutions, may have been not altogether natural to Mr. Gladstone's
+mind, but due partly to the influence of Peel, partly to the
+tendency to hold by tradition and the established order which
+reverence for Christian antiquity and faith in the dogmatic teachings
+of the Church had planted deep in his soul. The contrast between Mr.
+Gladstone's caution and respect for facts on the one hand, and his
+reforming fervour on the other, like the contrast which ultimately
+appeared between his sacerdotal tendencies and his political
+liberalism, contributed to make his character perplexing and to
+expose his conduct to the charge of inconsistency. Inconsistent,
+in the proper sense of the word, he was not, much less changeable.
+He was really, in his fundamental convictions and the main habits of
+his mind, one of the most tenacious and persistent of men. But there
+were always at work in him two tendencies. One was the speculative
+desire to probe everything to the bottom, to try it by the light of
+general principles and logic, and when it failed to stand this
+test, to reject it. The other was the sense of the complexity of
+existing social and political arrangements, and of the risk of
+disturbing any one part of them until the time had arrived for
+resettling other parts also. Every statesman feels both these sides
+to every concrete question of reform. No one has set them forth more
+cogently, and in particular no one has more earnestly dwelt on the
+necessity for the latter side, than the most profound thinker among
+British statesmen, Edmund Burke. When Mr. Gladstone stated either side
+with his incomparable force, people forgot that there was another
+side which would be no less vividly present to him at some other
+moment. He was not only, like all successful parliamentarians,
+necessarily something of an opportunist, though perhaps less so than
+his master, but was moved by emotion more than most statesmen, and
+certainly more than Peel. The relative strength with which the need
+for drastic reform or the need for watchful conservatism, as the
+case might be, presented itself to his mind depended largely upon the
+weight which his emotions cast into one or other scale, and this
+emotional element made it difficult to forecast his course. Thus
+his action in public life was the result of influences differing
+widely in their origin, influences, moreover, which could be duly
+appreciated only by those who knew him intimately.
+
+Whoever has followed his political career has been struck by the sharp
+divergence of the views entertained by his fellow-countrymen about one
+who had been for so long a period under their observation. That he was
+possessed of boundless energy and brilliant eloquence all agreed. But
+agreement went no further. One section of the nation accused him of
+sophistry, of unwisdom, of a want of patriotism, of a lust for power.
+The other section not only repelled these charges, but admired in him
+a conscientiousness and a moral enthusiasm such as no political leader
+had shown for centuries. When the qualities of his mind and the
+aptitudes for politics which he showed have been briefly examined, it
+will be fitting to return to these divergent views of his character,
+and endeavour to discover which of them contains the larger measure of
+truth. Meantime let it suffice to say that among the reasons that led
+men to misjudge him, this union in one person of opposite qualities
+was the chief. He was rather two men than one. Passionate and
+impulsive on the emotional side of his nature, he was cautious and
+conservative on the intellectual. Few understood the conjunction;
+still fewer saw how much of what was perplexing in his conduct it
+explained.
+
+Mr. Gladstone sat for sixty-three years (1833-1895) in Parliament, was
+for twenty-eight years (1866-1894) the leader of his party, and was
+four times Prime Minister. He began as a high Tory, remained about
+fifteen years in that camp, was then led by the split between Peel and
+the Protectionists to take up an intermediate position, and finally
+was forced to cast in his lot with the Liberals, for in England, as in
+America, third parties seldom endure. No parliamentary career in
+English annals is comparable to his for its length and variety; and of
+those who saw its close in the House of Commons, there was only one
+man, Mr. Villiers (who died in January 1898), who could remember its
+beginning. Mr. Gladstone had been opposed in 1833 to men who might
+have been his grandfathers; he was opposed in 1894 to men who might
+have been his grandchildren. It is no part of my design to describe or
+comment on the events of such a life. All that can be done here is to
+indicate the more salient characteristics which a study of his career
+as a statesman and a parliamentarian sets before us.
+
+The most remarkable of these characteristics was the openness,
+freshness, and eagerness of mind which he preserved down to the end of
+his life. Most men form few new opinions after thirty-five, just as
+they form few new intimacies. Intellectual curiosity may remain even
+after fifty, but its range narrows as a man abandons the hope of
+attaining any thorough knowledge of subjects other than those which
+make the main business of his life. It is impossible to follow the
+progress of all the new ideas that are set afloat in the world,
+impossible to be always examining the foundations of one's political
+or religious beliefs. Repeated disappointments and disillusionments
+make a man expect less from changes the older he grows; while
+indolence deters him from entering upon new enterprises. None of these
+causes seemed to affect Mr. Gladstone. He was as much excited over a
+new book (such as Cardinal Manning's Life) at eighty-four as when at
+fourteen he insisted on compelling little Arthur Stanley (afterwards
+Dean of Westminster, and then aged nine) forthwith to procure and
+study Gray's poems, which he had just perused himself. His reading
+covered almost the whole field of literature, except physical and
+mathematical science. While frequently declaring that he must confine
+his political thinking and leadership to a few subjects, he was so
+observant of current events that the course of talk brought up
+scarcely any topic in which he did not seem to know what was the
+latest thing that had been said or done. Neither the lassitude nor the
+prejudices that usually accompany old age prevented him from giving a
+fair consideration to any new doctrines. But though his intellect was
+restlessly at work, and though his curiosity disposed him to relish
+novelties, except in theology, that bottom rock in his mind of caution
+and reserve, which has already been referred to, made him refuse to
+part with old views even when he was beginning to accept new ones. He
+allowed both to "lie on the table" together, and while declaring
+himself open to conviction, felt it safer to speak and act on the old
+lines till the process of conviction had been completed. It took
+fourteen years, from 1846 to 1860, to carry him from the Conservative
+into the Liberal camp. It took five stormy years to bring him round to
+Irish Home Rule, though his mind was constantly occupied with the
+subject from 1880 to 1885, and those who watched him closely saw that
+the process had advanced a long way even in 1882. And as regards
+ecclesiastical establishments, having written a book in 1838 as a warm
+advocate of State churches, it was not till 1867 that he adopted the
+policy of disestablishment for Ireland, not till 1890 that he
+declared himself ready to apply that policy in Wales and Scotland
+also.
+
+Both these qualities--his disposition to revise his opinions in the
+light of new arguments and changing conditions, and the silence he
+maintained till the process of revision had been completed--exposed
+him to misconstruction. Commonplace men, unwont to give serious
+scrutiny to their opinions, ascribed his changes to self-interest, or
+at best regarded them as the index of an unstable purpose. Dull men
+could not understand why he should have forborne to set forth all that
+was passing in his mind, and saw little difference between reticence
+and dishonesty. In so far as they shook public confidence, these
+characteristics injured him in his statesman's work. Yet the loss was
+outweighed by the gain. In a country where opinion is active and
+changeful, where the economic conditions that legislation has to deal
+with are in a state of perpetual flux, where the balance of power
+between the upper, the middle, and the poorer classes has been swiftly
+altering during the last seventy years, no statesman can continue to
+serve the public if he adheres obstinately to the doctrines with which
+he started in life. He must--unless, of course, he stands aloof in
+permanent isolation--either subordinate his own views to the general
+sentiment of his party, and be driven to advocate courses he secretly
+mislikes, or else, holding himself ready to quit his party, if need
+be, must be willing to learn from events, and to reconsider his
+opinions in the light of emergent tendencies and insistent facts. Mr.
+Gladstone's pride as well as his conscience forbade the former
+alternative; it was fortunate that the tireless activity of his
+intellect made the latter natural to him. He was accustomed to say
+that the capital fault of his earlier days had been his failure
+adequately to recognise the worth and power of liberty, and the
+tendency which things have to work out for good when left to
+themselves. The application of this principle gave room for many
+developments, and many developments there were. He may have shown less
+than was needed of that prescience which is, after integrity and
+courage, the highest gift of a statesman, but which can seldom be
+expected from an English minister, too engrossed to find time for the
+patient reflection from which alone sound forecasts can issue. But he
+had the next best quality, that of remaining accessible to new ideas
+and learning from the events which passed under his eyes.
+
+With this openness and flexibility of mind there went a not less
+remarkable ingenuity and resourcefulness. Fertile in expedients, he
+was still more fertile in reasonings by which to recommend the
+expedients. The gift had its dangers, for he was apt to be carried
+away by the dexterity of his own dialectic, and to think that a
+scheme must be sound in whose support he could muster a formidable
+array of arguments. He never seemed at a loss, in public or in
+private, for a criticism, or for an answer to the criticisms of
+others. If his power of adapting his own mind to the minds of those
+whom he had to convince had been equal to the skill and swiftness with
+which he accumulated a mass of matter persuasive to those who looked
+at things in his own way, no one would have exercised so complete a
+control over the political opinion of his time. But his intellect
+lacked this power of adaptation. It moved on lines of its own, which
+were often misconceived, even by those who sought to follow him
+loyally. Thus, as already observed, he was blamed for two opposite
+faults. Some, pointing to the fact that he had frequently altered his
+views, denounced him as a demagogue profuse of promises, ready to
+propose whatever he thought likely to catch the people's ear. Others
+complained that there was no knowing where to have him; that he had an
+erratic mind, whose currents ran underground and came to the surface
+in unexpected places; that he did not consult his party, but followed
+his own impulses; that his guidance was unsafe because his decisions
+were unpredictable. Much of the suspicion with which he was regarded,
+especially after 1885, arose from this view of his character.
+
+It was an unfair view, yet nearer to the truth than that which charged
+him with seeking to flatter and follow the people. No great popular
+leader had in him less of the demagogue. He saw, of course, that a
+statesman cannot oppose the general will beyond a certain point, and
+may have to humour it in small things that he may direct it in great
+ones. He was obliged, as others have been, to take up and settle
+questions he deemed unimportant because they were troubling the body
+politic. Now and then, in his later days, he so far yielded to his
+party advisers as to express his approval of proposals in which his
+own interest was slight. But he was ever a leader, not a follower, and
+erred rather in not keeping his finger closely and constantly upon the
+pulse of public opinion. In this point, at least, one may discover in
+him a likeness to Disraeli. Slow as he was in maturing his opinions,
+Mr. Gladstone was liable to forget that the minds of his followers
+might not be moving along with his own, and hence his decisions
+sometimes took his party as well as the nation by surprise. But he was
+too self-absorbed, too eagerly interested in the ideas that suited his
+own cast of thought, to be able to watch and gauge the tendencies of
+the multitude. The three most remarkable instances in which his new
+departures startled the world were his declarations against the Irish
+Church establishment in 1867, against the Turks and the traditional
+English policy of supporting them in 1876, and in favour of Irish Home
+Rule in 1886, and in none of these did any popular demand suggest his
+pronouncement. It was the masses who took their view from him, not he
+who took a mandate from the masses. In each of these cases he may,
+perhaps, be blamed for not having sooner perceived, or at any rate for
+not having sooner announced, the need for a change of policy. But it
+was very characteristic of him not to give the full strength of his
+mind to a question till he felt that it pressed for a solution. Those
+who listened to his private talk were scarcely more struck by the
+range of his vision than by his unwillingness to commit himself on
+matters whose decision he could postpone. Reticence and caution were
+sometimes carried too far, not merely because they exposed him to
+misconstruction, but because they withheld from his party the guidance
+it needed. This was true in the three instances just mentioned; and in
+the last of them it is possible that earlier and fuller communications
+might have averted the separation of some of his former colleagues.
+Nor did he always rightly divine the popular mind. His proposal (in
+1874) to extinguish the income-tax fell completely flat, because the
+nation was becoming indifferent to that economy in public expenditure
+which both parties had in the days of Peel and Lord John Russell vied
+in demanding. Cherishing his old financial ideals, Mr. Gladstone had
+not marked the change. So he failed to perceive how much the credit of
+his party was suffering (after 1871) from the belief of large sections
+of the people, that he was indifferent to the interests of England
+outside England. Perhaps, knowing the charge of indifference to be
+groundless, he underrated the effect which the iteration of it
+produced: perhaps his pride would not let him stoop to dissipate it.
+
+Though the power of reading the signs of the times and swaying the
+mind of the nation may be now more essential to an English statesman
+than the skill which manages a legislature or holds together a
+cabinet, that skill counts for much, and must continue to do so while
+the House of Commons remains the governing authority of the country. A
+man can hardly reach high place, and certainly cannot retain high
+place, without possessing this kind of art. Mr. Gladstone was at one
+time thought to want it. In 1864, when Lord Palmerston's end was
+approaching, and Mr. Gladstone had shown himself the strongest man
+among the Liberal ministers in the House of Commons, people speculated
+about the succession to the headship of the party; and the wiseacres
+of the day were never tired of repeating that Mr. Gladstone could not
+possibly lead the House of Commons. He wanted tact, they said, he was
+too excitable, too impulsive, too much absorbed in his own ideas, too
+unversed in the arts by which individuals are conciliated. But when,
+after twenty-five years of his unquestioned reign, the time for his
+own departure drew nigh, men asked how the Liberal party in the House
+of Commons would ever hold together after it had lost a leader of such
+consummate capacity. The Whig critics of 1864 had grown so accustomed
+to Palmerston's way of handling the House as to forget that a man
+might succeed by quite different methods, and that defects, serious in
+themselves, may be outweighed by transcendent merits.
+
+Mr. Gladstone had the defects ascribed to him. His impulsiveness
+sometimes betrayed him into declarations which a cooler reflection
+would have dissuaded. The second reading of the Irish Home Rule Bill
+of 1886 might possibly have been carried had he not been goaded by his
+opponents into words which were construed as recalling or modifying
+the concessions he had announced at a meeting of the Liberal party
+held just before. More than once precious time was wasted because
+antagonists, knowing his excitable temper, brought on discussions with
+the sole object of annoying him and drawing from him some hasty
+deliverance. Nor was he an adept, like Disraeli and Disraeli's famous
+Canadian imitator, Sir John A. Macdonald, in the management of
+individuals. His aversion for the meaner side of human nature made him
+refuse to play upon it. Many of the pursuits, and most of the
+pleasures, which attract ordinary men had no interest for him, so that
+much of the common ground on which men meet was closed to him. He was,
+moreover, too constantly engrossed by the subjects he loved, and by
+enterprises which specially appealed to him, to have leisure for the
+lighter but often vitally important devices of political strategy. I
+remember hearing, soon after 1870, how Mr. Delane, then editor of the
+_Times_, had been invited to meet the Prime Minister at a moment when
+the support of that newspaper would have been specially valuable to
+the Liberal Government. Instead of using the opportunity in the way
+that had been intended, Mr. Gladstone dilated during the whole time of
+dinner upon the approaching exhaustion of the English coal-beds, to
+the surprise of the company and the unconcealed annoyance of the
+powerful guest. It was the subject then uppermost in his mind, and he
+either forgot, or disdained, to conciliate Mr. Delane. Good nature as
+well as good sense made him avoid giving offence by personal
+reflections in debate, and he usually suffered fools if not, like St.
+Paul's converts, gladly, yet patiently.[64] In the House of Commons he
+was entirely free from airs, and, indeed, from any assumption of
+superiority. The youngest member might accost him in the lobby and be
+listened to with perfect courtesy. But he had a bad memory for faces,
+seldom addressed any one outside the circle of his personal friends,
+and more than once made enemies by omitting to notice and show
+attention to recruits who, having been eminent in their own towns,
+expected to be made much of when they entered Parliament. Having
+himself plenty of pride and comparatively little vanity, he never
+realised the extent to which, and the cheapness with which, men can be
+captured and used through their vanity. Adherents were sometimes
+turned into dangerous foes because his preoccupation with graver
+matters dimmed his sense of what may be done to win support by the
+minor arts, such as an invitation to dinner or even a seasonable
+compliment. And his mind, flexible as it was in seizing new points of
+view and devising expedients to meet new circumstances, did not easily
+enter into the characters of other men. Ideas and causes interested
+him more than did personal traits; his sympathy was keener and
+stronger for the sufferings of nations or masses of men than with the
+fortunes of an individual man. With all his accessibility and
+kindliness, he was at bottom chary of real friendship, while the
+circle of his intimates became constantly smaller with advancing
+years. So it befell that though his popularity among the general body
+of his adherents went on increasing, and the admiration of his
+parliamentary followers remained undiminished, he had in the House of
+Commons few personal friends who linked him to the party at large, and
+rendered to him those confidential services which count for much in
+keeping all sections in hearty accord and enabling the commander to
+gauge the sentiment of his troops.
+
+Of parliamentary strategy in that larger sense, which covers
+familiarity with parliamentary forms and usages, care and judgment in
+arranging the business of the House, the power of seizing a
+parliamentary situation and knowing how to deal with it, the art of
+guiding a debate and choosing the right moment for reserve and for
+openness, for a dignified retreat, for a watchful defence, for a
+sudden rattling charge upon the enemy--of all this no one had a fuller
+mastery. His recollection of precedents was unrivalled, for it began
+in 1833 with the first reformed Parliament, and it seemed as fresh for
+those remote days as for last month. He enjoyed combat for its own
+sake, not so much from inborn pugnacity, for he was not disputatious
+in ordinary conversation, as because it called out his fighting force
+and stimulated his whole nature. "I am never nervous in reply," he
+once said, "though I am sometimes nervous in opening a debate." No one
+could be more tactful or adroit when a crisis arrived whose gravity he
+had foreseen. In the summer of 1881 the House of Lords made some
+amendments to the Irish Land Bill which were deemed ruinous to the
+working of the measure, and therewith to the prospects of the
+pacification of Ireland. A conflict was expected which might have
+strained the fabric of the constitution. The excitement which quickly
+arose in Parliament spread to the nation. Mr. Gladstone alone remained
+calm and confident. He devised a series of compromises, which he
+advocated in conciliatory speeches. He so played his game that by a
+few minor concessions he secured nearly all the points he cared for,
+and, while sparing the dignity of the Lords, steered his bill
+triumphantly out of the breakers which had threatened to engulf it.
+Very different was his ordinary demeanour in debate when he was off
+his guard. His face and gestures while he sat in the House of Commons
+listening to an opponent would express all the emotions that crossed
+his mind. He would follow every sentence as a hawk follows the
+movements of a small bird, would sometimes contradict half aloud,
+sometimes turn to his next neighbour to vent his displeasure at the
+groundless allegations or fallacious arguments he was listening to,
+till at last, like a hunting leopard loosed from the leash, he would
+spring to his feet and deliver a passionate reply. His warmth would
+often be in excess of what the occasion required, and quite
+disproportioned to the importance of his antagonist. It was in fact
+the unimportance of the occasion that made him thus yield to his
+feeling. As soon as he saw that bad weather was coming, and careful
+seamanship wanted, his coolness returned, his language became
+measured, while passion, though it might increase the force of his
+oratory, never made him deviate a hand's breadth from the course he
+had chosen. The Celtic heat subsided, and the shrewd self-control of
+the Lowland Scot regained command.
+
+It was by oratory that Mr. Gladstone rose to fame and power, as,
+indeed, by it most English statesmen have risen, save those to whom
+wealth and rank and family connections used to give a sort of
+presumptive claim to high office, like the Cavendishes and the
+Russells, the Bentincks and the Cecils. And for many years, during
+which Mr. Gladstone was suspected as a statesman because, while he had
+ceased to be a Tory, he had not fully become a Liberal, his eloquence
+was the main, one might almost say the sole, source of his influence.
+Oratory was a power in English politics even a century and a half ago,
+as the career of the elder Pitt shows. During the last seventy years,
+years which have seen the power of rank and family connections
+decline, it has, although less cultivated as a fine art, continued to
+be almost essential to the highest success, and it still brings a man
+quickly to the front, though it will not keep him there should he
+prove to want the other branches of statesmanlike capacity.
+
+The permanent reputation of an orator depends upon two things, the
+witness of contemporaries to the impression produced upon them, and
+the written or printed record of his speeches. Few are the famous
+speakers who would be famous if they were tried by this latter test
+alone, and Mr. Gladstone was not one of them. It is only by a rare
+combination of gifts that one who speaks with so much force and
+brilliance as to charm his listeners is also able to deliver thoughts
+so valuable in words so choice that posterity will read them as
+literature. Some of the ancient orators did this; but we seldom know
+how far those of their speeches which have been preserved are the
+speeches which they actually delivered. Among moderns, a few French
+preachers, Edmund Burke, Macaulay, and Daniel Webster are perhaps the
+only speakers whose discourses have passed into classics and find new
+generations of readers.[65] Twenty years hence Mr. Gladstone's will
+not be read, except, of course, by historians. Indeed, they ceased to
+be read even in his lifetime. They are too long, too diffuse, too
+minute in their handling of details, too elaborately qualified in
+their enunciation of general principles. They contain few epigrams and
+few of those weighty thoughts put into telling phrases which the
+Greeks called +gnomai+. The style, in short, is not sufficiently rich
+or polished to give an enduring interest to matter whose practical
+importance has vanished. The same oblivion has overtaken all but a few
+of the best speeches (or parts of speeches) of Grattan, Sheridan,
+Pitt, Fox, Erskine, Canning, Plunket, Brougham, Peel, Bright. It may,
+indeed, be said--and the examples of Burke and Macaulay show that this
+is no paradox--that the speakers whom posterity most enjoys are rarely
+those who most affected the audiences that listened to them.[66]
+
+If, on the other hand, Mr. Gladstone be judged by the impression he
+made on his own time, his place will be high in the front rank. His
+speeches were neither so concisely telling as Mr. Bright's nor so
+finished in diction; but no other man among his contemporaries--neither
+Lord Derby nor Mr. Lowe, nor Lord Beaconsfield nor Lord Cairns, nor
+Bishop Wilberforce nor Bishop Magee--taken all round, could be ranked
+beside him. And he rose superior to Mr. Bright himself in readiness,
+in variety of knowledge, in persuasive ingenuity. Mr. Bright spoke
+seldom and required time for preparation. Admirable in the breadth and
+force with which he set forth his own position, or denounced that of
+his adversaries, he was not equally qualified for instructing nor
+equally apt at persuading. Mr. Gladstone could both instruct and
+persuade, could stimulate his friends and demolish his opponents, and
+could do all these things at an hour's notice, so vast and well
+ordered was the arsenal of his mind. Pitt was superb in an expository
+or argumentative speech, but his stately periods lacked variety. Fox,
+incomparable in reply, was hesitating and confused when he had to state
+his case in cold blood. Mr. Gladstone showed as much fire in winding
+up a debate as skill in opening it.
+
+His oratory had, indeed, two faults. It wanted concentration, and it
+wanted definition. There were too many words, and the conclusion was
+sometimes left vague because the arguments had been too nicely
+balanced. I once heard Mr. Cobden say: "I always listen to Mr.
+Gladstone with pleasure and admiration, but I sometimes have to ask
+myself, when he has sat down, 'What after all was it that he meant,
+and what practical course does he recommend?'" These faults were
+balanced by conspicuous merits. There was a lively imagination, which
+enabled him to relieve even dull matter by pleasing figures, together
+with a large command of quotations and illustrations. There were
+powers of sarcasm, powers, however, which he rarely used, preferring
+the summer lightning of banter to the thunderbolts of invective. There
+was admirable lucidity and accuracy in exposition. There was art in
+the disposition and marshalling of his arguments, and finally--a gift
+now almost lost in England--there was a delightful variety and grace
+of appropriate gesture. But above and beyond everything else which
+enthralled the listener, there stood out four qualities. Two of them
+were merits of substance--inventiveness and elevation; two were merits
+of delivery--force in the manner, expressive modulation in the voice.
+
+No one showed such swift resourcefulness in debate. His readiness, not
+only at catching a point, but at making the most of it on a moment's
+notice, was amazing. Some one would lean over the back of the bench he
+sat on and show a paper or whisper a sentence to him. Apprehending the
+bearings at a glance, he would take the bare fact and so shape and
+develop it, like a potter moulding a bowl on the wheel out of a lump
+of clay, that it grew into a cogent argument or a happy illustration
+under the eye of the audience, and seemed all the more telling because
+it had not been originally a part of his case. Even in the last three
+years of his parliamentary life, when his sight had so failed that he
+read nothing, printed or written, except what it was absolutely
+necessary to read, and when his deafness had so increased that he did
+not hear half of what was said in debate, it was sufficient for a
+colleague to say into the better ear a few words explaining how the
+matter at issue stood, and he would rise to his feet and extemporise a
+long and ingenious argument, or retreat with dexterous grace from a
+position which the course of the discussion or the private warning of
+the Whips had shown to be untenable. Never was he seen at a loss
+either to meet a new point raised by an adversary or to make the best
+of an unexpected incident. Sometimes he would amuse himself by drawing
+a cheer or a contradiction from his opponents, and would then suddenly
+turn round and use this hasty expression of their opinion as the basis
+for a fresh argument of his own. Loving conflict, he loved debate,
+and, so far from being confused or worried by the strain conflict put
+upon him, his physical health was strengthened and his faculties were
+roused to higher efficiency by having to prepare and deliver a great
+speech. He had the rare faculty of thinking ahead while he was
+speaking, and could, while pouring forth a stream of glittering
+sentences, be at the same time (as one saw by watching his eye)
+composing an argument to be delivered five or ten minutes later. Once,
+at a very critical moment, when he was defending a great measure
+against the amendment--moved by a nominal supporter of his own--which
+proved fatal to it, a friend suddenly reminded him of an incident in
+the career of the mover which might be effectively used against him.
+When Mr. Gladstone sat down after delivering an impassioned speech, in
+the course of which he had several times approached and then sheered
+off from the incident, he turned round to the friend and said, "I was
+thinking all the time I was speaking whether I could properly use
+against ---- what you told me, but concluded, on the whole, that it
+would be too hard on him."
+
+The weakness of his eloquence sprang from its supersubtlety and
+superabundance. He was prone to fine distinctions. He multiplied
+arguments when it would have been better to rely upon two or three of
+the strongest. And he was sometimes so intent on refuting the
+particular adversaries opposed to him, and persuading the particular
+audience before him, that he forgot to address his reasonings to the
+public beyond the House, and make them equally applicable and equally
+convincing to the readers of next morning.
+
+As dignity is one of the rarest qualities in literature, so elevation
+is one of the rarest in oratory. It is a quality easier to feel than
+to analyse. One may call it a power of ennobling ordinary things by
+showing their relation to great things, by pouring high emotions round
+them, by bringing the worthier motives of human conduct to bear upon
+them, by touching them with the light of poetry. Ambitious writers and
+speakers strain after effects of this kind; but they are effects which
+study and straining cannot ensure. Vainly do most men flap their wings
+in the effort to soar; if they succeed in rising from the ground it is
+because some unusually strong burst of feeling makes them for the
+moment better than themselves. In Mr. Gladstone the capacity for
+feeling was at all times so strong, and the susceptibility of the
+imagination so keen, that he soared without effort. His vision seemed
+to take in the whole landscape. The points actually in question might
+be small, but the principles involved were to him far-reaching. The
+contests of to-day were ennobled by the effect they might have in a
+still distant future. There are rhetoricians skilful in playing by
+words and manner on every chord of human nature, rhetoricians who move
+you, and may even carry you away for the moment, but whose sincerity
+is doubted, because the sense of spontaneity is lacking. Mr. Gladstone
+was not of these. He never seemed to be forcing an effect or assuming
+a sentiment. To listen to him was to feel convinced of his own
+conviction and to be warmed by the warmth with which he expressed it.
+Nor was this due to the perfection of his rhetorical art. He really
+did feel what he expressed. Sometimes, of course, like all statesmen,
+he had to maintain a cause whose weakness he perceived, as, for
+instance, when it became necessary to defend the blunder of a
+colleague, or a decision reached by some Cabinet compromise which his
+own judgment disapproved. But even in such cases he did not simulate
+feeling, but reserved his earnestness for those parts of the case on
+which it could be honestly expended. As this was generally true of the
+imaginative and emotional side of his eloquence, so was it especially
+true of his unequalled power of lifting a subject from the level on
+which other speakers had treated it into the purer air of permanent
+principle, perhaps even of moral sublimity.
+
+The dignity and spontaneity which marked the substance of his speeches
+was no less conspicuous in their delivery. Nothing could be more easy
+and graceful than his manner on ordinary occasions, nothing more grave
+and stately than it became when he was making a ceremonial reference
+to some public event or bestowing a meed of praise on the departed.
+His expository discourses, such as those with which he introduced a
+complicated bill or unfolded a financial statement, were models of
+their kind, not only for lucidity, but for the pleasant smoothness,
+never lapsing into monotony, with which the stream of speech flowed
+from his lips. The task was performed so well that people thought it
+an easy task till they saw how inferior were the performances of two
+subsequent chancellors of the exchequer so able in their respective
+ways as Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Lowe. But when an occasion
+arrived which quickened men's pulses in the House of Commons, a place
+where feeling rises as suddenly as do the waves of a Highland loch
+when a squall comes rushing down the glen, the vehemence of his
+feeling found expression in the fire of his eye and the resistless
+strength of his words. His utterance did not grow swifter, nor did the
+key of his voice rise, as passion raises and sharpens the voice in
+most men. But the measured force with which every sentence was
+launched, like a shell hurtling through the air, the concentrated
+intensity of his look, as he defied antagonists in front and swept his
+glance over the ranks of his supporters around and behind him, had a
+startling and thrilling power which no other Englishman could exert,
+and which no Englishman had exerted since the days of Pitt and Fox.
+The whole proud, bold, ardent nature of the man seemed to flash out,
+and one almost forgot what the lips said in admiration of the
+towering personality.
+
+People who read next day the report in the newspapers of a speech
+delivered on such an occasion could not comprehend the impression
+it had made on the listeners. "What was there in it so to stir you?"
+they asked. They had not seen the glance and the gestures; they
+had not heard the vibrating voice rise to an organ peal of triumph or
+sink to a whisper of entreaty. Mr. Gladstone's voice was naturally
+rich and resonant. It was a fine singing voice, and a pleasant voice
+to listen to in conversation, not the less pleasant for having a
+slight trace of Liverpool accent clinging to it. But what struck one
+in listening to his speeches was not so much the quality of the
+vocal chords as the skill with which they were managed. He had a
+gift of sympathetic expression, of throwing his feeling into his
+voice, and using its modulations to accompany and convey every shade
+of meaning, like that which a great composer exerts when he puts music
+to a poem, or a great executant when he renders at once the
+composer's and the poet's thought. And just as accomplished singers
+or violinists enjoy the practice of their art, so he rejoiced,
+perhaps unconsciously, yet intensely, in putting forth this faculty
+of expression; as appeared, indeed, from the fact that whenever his
+voice failed him (which sometimes befell in later years) his
+words came less easily, and even the chariot of his argument seemed
+to drive heavily. That the voice should so seldom have failed was
+wonderful. When he had passed his seventy-fifth year, it became
+sensibly inferior in volume and depth of tone. But its variety and
+delicacy remained. In April 1886, he being then seventy-seven, it
+held out during a speech of nearly four hours in length. In
+February 1890 it enabled him to deliver with extraordinary effect an
+eminently solemn and pathetic appeal. In March 1894 those who
+listened to it the last time it was heard in Parliament--they were
+comparatively few, for the secret of his impending resignation had
+been well kept--recognised in it all the old charm. The most
+striking instance I recall of the power it could exert is to be
+found in a speech made in 1883, during one of the tiresome debates
+occasioned by the refusal of the Opposition and of some timorous
+Liberals to allow Mr. Bradlaugh to be sworn as a member of the House
+of Commons. This speech produced on those who heard it an impression
+which its perusal to-day fails to explain. That impression was chiefly
+due to the grave and reverent tone in which he delivered some
+sentences stating the view that it is not our belief in the bare
+existence of a Deity, but the realising of him as being a Providence
+ruling the world, that has moral value and significance for us. And
+it was due in particular to the solemn dignity with which he
+declaimed six lines of Lucretius, setting forth the Epicurean view
+that the gods do not concern themselves with human affairs. There
+were perhaps not twenty men in the House of Commons who could follow
+the sense of the lines so as to appreciate their bearing on his
+argument. But these sonorous hexameters--hexameters that seemed to
+have lived on through nineteen centuries to find their application
+from the lips of an orator to-day--the sense of remoteness in the
+strange language and the far-off heathen origin, the deep and moving
+note in the speaker's voice, thrilled the imagination of the
+audience and held it spellbound, lifting for a moment the whole
+subject of debate into a region far above party conflicts. Spoken by
+any one else, the passage culminating in these Lucretian lines might
+have produced little effect. It was the voice and manner, above
+all the voice, with its marvellous modulations, that made the
+speech majestic.
+
+Yet one must not forget to add that with him, as with some other
+famous statesmen, the impression made by a speech was in a measure due
+to the admiring curiosity and wonder which his personality inspired.
+He was so much the most interesting human being in the House of
+Commons that, when he withdrew, many members said that the place had
+lost half its attraction for them, and that the chamber looked empty
+because he was not in it. Plenty of able men remained. But even the
+ablest seemed ordinary when compared with the figure that had
+vanished, a figure in whom were combined, as in no other man of his
+time, an unrivalled experience, an extraordinary activity and
+versatility of intellect, a fervid imagination, and an indomitable
+will.
+
+Though Mr. Gladstone's oratory was a main source of his power, both in
+Parliament and over the people, the effort of detractors to represent
+him as a mere rhetorician will seem absurd to the historian who
+reviews his whole career. The rhetorician adorns and popularises the
+ideas which have originated with others; he advocates policies which
+others have devised; he follows and expresses the sentiments which
+already prevail in his party. Mr. Gladstone was himself a source of
+new ideas and new policies; he evoked new sentiments or turned old
+sentiments into new channels. Neither was he, as some alleged,
+primarily a destroyer. His conservative instincts were strong; he
+cherished ancient custom. When it became necessary to clear away an
+institution he sought to put something else in its place. He was a
+constructive statesman not less conspicuously than were Pitt, Canning,
+and Peel. Whether he was a philosophic statesman, basing his action on
+large views obtained by thought and study, philosophic in the sense
+in which we apply the epithet to Pericles, Machiavelli, Turgot,
+Burke, Jefferson, Hamilton, Stein--if one class can be made to include
+persons otherwise so dissimilar--may perhaps be doubted. There are few
+instances in history of men who have been great thinkers and also
+great legislators or administrators, because the two kinds of capacity
+almost exclude one another. As experts declare that a man who should
+try to operate on the Stock Exchange in reliance upon a profound
+knowledge of the inner springs of European politics and the financial
+resources of the great States, would ruin himself before his perfectly
+correct calculations had time to come true, so a practical statesman,
+though he cannot know too much, or look too far ahead, must beware of
+trusting his own forecasts, must remember that he has to deal with the
+next few months or years, and to persuade persons who cannot be
+expected to share or even to understand his views of the future. The
+habit of meditating on underlying truths, the tendency to play the
+long game, are almost certain to spoil a man for dealing effectively
+with the present. He will not be a sufficiently vigilant observer; he
+will be out of sympathy with the notions of the average man; his
+arguments will go over the head of his audience. No English prime
+minister has looked at politics with the eye of a philosopher. But Mr.
+Gladstone, if hardly to be called a thinker, showed higher
+constructive power than any one else has done since Peel. Were the
+memory of his oratorical triumphs to pass completely away, he would
+deserve to be remembered in respect of the mark he left upon the
+British statute-book and of the changes he wrought both in the
+constitution of his country and in her European policy.
+
+Three groups of measures stand out as monuments of his skill and
+energy. The first of these three includes the financial reforms
+embodied in a series of fourteen budgets between the years 1853 and
+1882, the most famous of which were the budgets of 1853 and 1860. In
+the former he continued the work begun by Peel by reducing and
+simplifying the customs duties. Deficiencies in revenue were supplied
+by the enactment of less oppressive imposts, and particularly by
+resettling the income-tax, and by the introduction of a succession
+duty on real estate. The preparation and passing of this very
+technical and intricate Succession Duty Act was a most laborious
+enterprise, of which Mr. Gladstone used to speak as the severest
+mental strain he had ever undergone:
+
+        +Kartisten de ten ge machen phato dymenai andron.+[67]
+
+The budget of 1860, among other changes, abolished the paper duty, a
+boon to the press which was resisted by the House of Lords. They
+threw out the measure, but in the following year Mr. Gladstone forced
+them to submit. His achievements in the field of finance equal, if
+they do not surpass, those of Peel, and are not tarnished, as in the
+case of Pitt, by the recollection of a burden of debts incurred. To no
+minister can be ascribed so large a share in promoting the commercial
+and industrial prosperity of modern England, and in the reduction of
+her national debt to the figure at which it stood when it began to
+rise again in 1900.
+
+The second group includes the parliamentary reform bills of 1866 and
+1884 and the Redistribution Bill of 1885. The first of these was
+defeated in the House of Commons, but it led to the passing next year,
+by Mr. Disraeli, of a more sweeping measure. Taken together, these
+statutes have turned Britain into a democratic country, changing the
+character of her government almost as profoundly as did the Reform Act
+of 1832.
+
+The third group consists of a series of Irish measures, beginning with
+the Church Disestablishment Act of 1869, and including the Land Act of
+1870, the University Education Bill of 1873 (defeated in the House of
+Commons), the Land Act of 1881, and the Home Rule bills of 1886 and
+1893. All these were in a special manner Mr. Gladstone's handiwork,
+prepared as well as brought in and advocated by him. All were highly
+complicated, and of one, the Land Act of 1881, which it took three
+months to carry through the House of Commons, it was said that so
+great was its intricacy that only three men understood it--Mr.
+Gladstone himself, his Attorney-General for Ireland, and Mr. T. M.
+Healy. In preparing a bill no man could be more painstaking. He
+settled and laid down the principles himself; and when he came to work
+them out with the draughtsman and the officials who had special
+knowledge of the subject, he insisted on knowing what their effect
+would be in every particular. Indeed, he loved work for its own sake,
+in this respect unlike Mr. Bright, who once said to me with a smile,
+when asked as to his methods of working, that he had never done any
+work all his life. The value of this mastery of details was seen when
+a bill came to be debated in Committee. It was impossible to catch Mr.
+Gladstone tripping on a point of fact, or unprepared with a reply to
+the arguments of an opponent. He seemed to revel in the toil of
+mastering a tangle of technical details.
+
+It is long since England, in this respect not favoured by her
+parliamentary system, has produced a great foreign minister, nor has
+that title been claimed for Mr. Gladstone. But he showed on several
+occasions both his independence of tradition and his faith in broad
+principles as fit to be applied in international relations; and his
+action in that field, though felt only at intervals, has left abiding
+results in European history. In 1851, he being then still a Tory, his
+pamphlet denouncing the cruelties of the Bourbon government of Naples,
+and the sympathy he subsequently avowed with the national movement in
+Italy, gave that movement a new standing in Europe by powerfully
+recommending it to English opinion. In 1870 the prompt action of his
+ministry in arranging a treaty for the neutrality of Belgium on the
+outbreak of the war between France and Germany, averted the risk that
+Belgium might be drawn into the strife. In 1871, by concluding the
+treaty of Washington, which provided for the settlement by arbitration
+of the _Alabama_ claims, he not only set a precedent full of promise
+for the future, but delivered England from what would have been, in
+case of her being at war with any European power, a danger fatal to
+her ocean commerce. And, in 1876, his onslaught upon the Turks, after
+the Bulgarian massacres, roused an intense feeling in England, turning
+the current of opinion so decisively that Disraeli's ministry were
+forced to leave the Sultan to his fate, and thus became a cause of the
+ultimate deliverance of Bulgaria, Eastern Rumelia, Bosnia, and
+Thessaly from Mussulman tyranny. Few English statesmen have equally
+earned the gratitude of the oppressed.
+
+Nothing lay nearer to his heart than the protection of the Christians
+of the East. His sense of personal duty to them was partly due to the
+feeling that the Crimean War had prolonged the rule of the Turk, and
+had thus imposed a special responsibility on Britain, and on the
+members of Lord Aberdeen's cabinet which drifted into that war. Twenty
+years after the agitation of 1876, and when he had finally retired
+from Parliament and political life, the massacres perpetrated by the
+Sultan on his Armenian subjects brought him once more into the field,
+and his last speech in public (delivered at Liverpool in the autumn of
+1896) was a powerful argument in favour of British intervention to
+rescue the Eastern Christians. In the following spring he followed
+this up by a pamphlet on behalf of the freedom of Crete. In neither of
+these two cases did success crown his efforts, for the Government,
+commanding a large majority in Parliament, pursued the course upon
+which it had already entered. Poignant regrets were expressed that Mr.
+Gladstone was no longer able to take effective action in the cause of
+humanity; yet it was a consolation to be assured that age and
+infirmity had not dulled his sympathies with that cause.
+
+That he was right in 1876-78 in the view he took of the line of
+conduct England should adopt towards the Turks has been now virtually
+admitted even by his opponents. That he was also right in 1896, when
+urging action to protect the Eastern Christians, will probably be
+admitted ten years hence, when the facts of the case and the nature of
+the opportunity that existed for taking prompt action without the risk
+of a European war have become better known. In both cases it was not
+merely religious sympathy, but also a far-sighted view of policy that
+governed his judgment. He held that the faults of Turkish rule are
+incurable, and that the Powers of Western and Central Europe ought to
+aim at protecting the subject nationalities and by degrees extending
+self-government to them, so that they may grow into states, and in
+time be able to restore prosperity to regions ruined by long
+misgovernment, while constituting an effective barrier to the advance
+of Russia. The jealousies of the Powers throw obstacles in the way of
+this policy, but it is a safe policy for England, and offers the best
+hope for the peoples of the East.
+
+The facts just noted prove that he possessed and exerted a capacity
+for initiative in foreign as well as in domestic affairs. In the
+Neapolitan case, in the _Alabama_ case, in the Bulgarian case, he
+acted from his own convictions, with no previous suggestion of
+encouragement from his party; and in the last-mentioned instance he
+took a course which did not at the moment promise any political gain,
+and which seemed to the English political world so novel and even
+startling that no ordinary statesman would have ventured on it.
+
+His courage was indeed one of the most striking parts of the man.[68]
+It was not the rashness of an impetuous nature, for, impetuous as he
+was when stirred by some sudden excitement, he showed an Ulyssean
+caution whenever he took a deliberate survey of the conditions that
+surrounded him. It was the proud self-confidence of a strong
+character, which was willing to risk fame and fortune in pursuing a
+course it had once resolved upon; a character which had faith in its
+own conclusions, and in the success of a cause consecrated by
+principle; a character which obstacles did not affright, but rather
+roused to a higher combative energy. Few English statesmen have done
+anything so bold as was Mr. Gladstone's declaration for Irish Home
+Rule in 1886. He took not only his political power but the fame and
+credit of his whole past life in his hand when he set out on this new
+journey at seventy-seven years of age; for it was quite possible that
+the great bulk of his party might refuse to follow him, and he be left
+exposed to derision as the chief of an insignificant group. As it
+happened, the bulk of the party did follow him, though many of the
+most influential refused to do so. But neither he nor any one else
+could have foretold this when his intentions were first announced.
+
+We may now, before passing away from the public side of Mr.
+Gladstone's career, return for a moment to the opposite views of his
+character which were indicated some pages back. He was accused of
+sophistry, of unwisdom, of want of patriotism, of lust for power.
+Though it is difficult to sift these charges without discussing the
+conduct which gave rise to them, a task impossible here, each of them
+must be briefly examined.
+
+The first charge is the most plausible. His ingenuity in discovering
+arguments and stating fine verbal distinctions, his subtlety in
+discriminating between views or courses apparently similar, were
+excessive, and invited misconstruction. He had a tendency to persuade
+himself, quite unconsciously, that the course he desired to take was a
+course which the public interest required. His acuteness soon found
+reasons for that course; the warmth of his emotions enforced the
+reasons. It was a dangerous tendency, but it does not impeach his
+honesty of purpose, for the influence which his predilections
+unconsciously exerted upon his judgment appeared also in his
+theological and literary inquiries. I can recall no instance in which
+he wilfully misstated a fact, or simulated a feeling, or used an
+argument which he knew to be unsound. He did not, as does the sophist,
+attempt "to make the worse appear the better reason."
+
+His wisdom will be differently judged by those who condemn or approve
+the chief acts of his policy. But it deserves to be noted that all the
+legislation he passed, even the measures which, like the Irish Church
+Disestablishment Bill, exposed him to angry attacks at the time, have
+now been approved by the all but unanimous judgment of Englishmen.[69]
+The same may be said of two acts which brought much invective upon
+him--his settlement of the _Alabama_ claims, one of the wisest strokes
+of foreign policy ever accomplished by a British minister, and his
+protest against a support of the Turks in and after 1876. I pass by
+Irish Home Rule, because the wisdom of the course he took must be
+tested by results that are yet unborn, as I pass by his Egyptian
+policy in 1882-85, because it cannot be fairly judged till the facts
+have been fully made public. He may be open to blame for his
+participation in the Crimean War, for his mistaken view of the
+American Civil War, for his neglect of the Transvaal question when he
+took office in 1880, and for his omission during his earlier career to
+recognise the gravity of Irish disaffection and to study its causes. I
+have heard him lament that he had not twenty years earlier given the
+same attention to that abiding source of the difficulties of England
+which he gave from 1866 onwards. If in these instances he erred, it
+must be remembered that he erred in company with nine-tenths of
+British statesmen in both political parties.
+
+Their admiration did not prevent his friends from noting tendencies
+which sometimes led him to miscalculate the forces he had to deal
+with. Being, like the younger Pitt, extremely sanguine, he was prone
+to underrate difficulties. Hopefulness is a splendid quality. It is
+both the child and the parent of faith. Without it neither Mr. Pitt
+nor Mr. Gladstone could have done what they did. But it disposes its
+possessor not sufficiently to allow for the dulness or the prejudice
+of others. So too the intensity of Mr. Gladstone's own feeling made
+him fail to realise how many of his fellow-countrymen did not know of,
+or were not shocked by, acts of cruelty and injustice which had roused
+his indignation. If his hatred of ostentation suffered him to perceive
+that a nation, however well assured of the reality of its power and
+influence in the world, may also desire that this power and influence
+should be asserted and proclaimed to other nations, he refused to
+humour that desire. He had a contempt for what is called "playing to
+the gallery," with a deep sense of the danger of stimulating the
+passions which lead to aggression and war. To national honour, as he
+conceived it, national righteousness was vital. His spirit was that of
+Lowell's lines--
+
+           I love my country so as only they
+           Who love a mother fit to die for may.
+           I love her old renown, her ancient fame:
+           What better proof than that I loathe her shame?
+
+It was this attitude that brought on him the charge of wanting
+patriotism, a charge first, I think, insinuated at the time of the
+_Alabama_ arbitration, renewed when in 1876 he was accused of
+befriending Russia and neglecting "British interests," and sedulously
+repeated thereafter, although in those two instances the result had
+proved him right. There was this much to give a kind of colour to the
+charge, that he had scrupulously, perhaps too scrupulously, refrained
+from extolling the material power of England, preferring to insist
+upon her responsibilities; that he was known to regret the constant
+increase of naval and military expenditure, and that he had several
+times taken a course which honour and prudence seemed to him to
+recommend, but which had offended the patriots of the music-halls. But
+it was an unjust charge, for no man had a warmer pride in England, a
+higher sense of her greatness and her mission.
+
+Was he too fond of power? Like other strong men, he enjoyed it.[70]
+That to secure it he ever either adopted or renounced an opinion,
+those who understood and watched the workings of his mind could not
+believe. He was not only too conscientious, but too proud to forego
+any of his convictions, and there were not a few occasions when he
+took a course which considerations of personal interest would have
+forbidden. He did not love office, feeling himself happier without its
+cares, and when he accepted it did so, I think, in the belief that
+there was work to be done which it was laid upon him individually to
+do. His changes sprang naturally from the development of his own ideas
+or (as in the case of his Irish policy) from the teaching of facts. He
+sometimes so far yielded to his colleagues as to sanction steps which
+he thought not the best, and may in this have sometimes erred; yet
+compromises are unavoidable, for no Cabinet could be kept together if
+its members did not now and then, in matters not essential, yield to
+one another. When all the facts of his life come to be known,
+instances may be disclosed in which he was the victim of his own
+casuistry or of his deference to Peel's maxim that a minister should
+not avow a change of view until the time has come to give effect to
+it. But it will also be made clear that he strove to obey his
+conscience, that he acted with an ever-present sense of his
+responsibility to the Almighty, and that he was animated by an
+unselfish enthusiasm for humanity, enlightenment, and freedom.
+
+Whether he was a good judge of men was a question much discussed
+among his friends. With all his astuteness, he was in some ways
+curiously simple; with all his caution, he was by nature unsuspicious,
+disposed to treat all men as honest till they gave him strong reasons
+for thinking otherwise. Those who professed sympathy with his views
+and aims sometimes succeeded in inspiring more confidence than they
+deserved. But where this perturbing influence was absent he showed
+plenty of insight, and would pass shrewd judgments on the politicians
+around him, permitting neither their behaviour towards himself nor his
+opinion of their moral character to affect his estimate of their
+talents. In making appointments in the Civil Service, or in the
+Established Church, he rose to a far higher standard of public duty
+than Palmerston or Disraeli had reached or cared to reach, taking
+great pains to find the fittest men, and giving little weight to
+political considerations.[71]
+
+His public demeanour, and especially his excitability and vehemence of
+speech, made people attribute to him an overbearing disposition and an
+irritable temper. In private one did not find these faults. Masterful
+he certainly was, both in speech and in action. His ardent manner, the
+intensity of his look, the dialectical vigour with which he pressed an
+argument, were apt to awe people who knew him but slightly, and make
+them abandon resistance. A gifted though somewhat erratic politician
+of long bygone days told me how he once fared when he had risen in the
+House of Commons to censure some act of his leader. "I had not gone on
+three minutes when Gladstone turned round and gazed at me so that I
+had to sit down in the middle of a sentence. I could not help it.
+There was no standing his eye." But he neither meant nor wished to
+beat down his opponents by mere authority. One who knew him as few
+people did observed to me, "When you are arguing with Mr. Gladstone,
+you must never let him think he has convinced you unless you are
+really convinced. Persist in repeating your view, and if you are
+unable to cope with him in skill of fence, say bluntly that for all
+his ingenuity and authority you think he is wrong, and you retain your
+own opinion. If he respects you as a man who knows something of the
+subject, he will be impressed by your opinion, and it will afterwards
+have due weight with him." In his own Cabinet he was willing to listen
+patiently to everybody's views, and, indeed, in the judgment of some
+of his colleagues, was not, at least in his later years, sufficiently
+strenuous in asserting and holding to his own. It is no secret that
+some of the most important decisions of the ministry of 1880-85 were
+taken against his judgment, though, when they had been adopted, he
+was, of course, bound to defend them in Parliament as if they had
+received his individual approval. Nor, though tenacious, did he bear
+malice against those who had baffled him. He would exert his full
+force to get his own way, but if he could not get it, accepted the
+position with good temper.[72] He was too proud to be vindictive, too
+completely master of himself to be betrayed into angry words.
+Impatient he might sometimes be under a nervous strain, but never rude
+or rough. It was less easy to determine whether he was overmindful of
+injuries, but those who had watched him most closely held that mere
+opposition or even insult did not leave a permanent sting, and that
+the only thing he could not forget or forgive was faithlessness.
+Himself a model of loyalty to his colleagues, he followed his
+favourite poet in consigning the _traditori_ to the lowest pit,
+although, like all statesmen, he often found himself obliged to work
+with those whom he distrusted.
+
+He was less sensitive than Peel, as appeared from his attitude toward
+his two chief opponents. Disraeli's attacks did not seem to gall him,
+perhaps because, although he recognised the ability and admired the
+courage of his adversary, he did not respect Disraeli's character,
+remembering his behaviour to Peel, and thinking him habitually
+untruthful. Yet he never attacked Disraeli personally. There was
+another of his opponents of whom he entertained a specially
+unfavourable opinion, but no one could have told from his speeches
+what that opinion was. Against Lord Salisbury, his chief antagonist
+from 1881 onwards, he showed no resentment, though Lord Salisbury had
+more than once spoken discourteously of him. In 1890 he remarked to me
+_apropos_ of some attack, "I have never felt angry at what Salisbury
+has said about me. His mother was very kind to me when I was quite a
+young man, and I remember Salisbury as a little fellow in a red frock
+rolling about on the ottoman."
+
+That his temper was naturally hot, no one who looked at him could
+doubt. But he had it in such tight control, and it was so free from
+anything acrid or malignant, that it had become a good temper, worthy
+of a fine nature. However vehement his expressions, they did not wound
+or humiliate, and those younger men who had to deal with him were not
+afraid of a sharp answer or an impatient repulse. He was cast in too
+large a mould to have the pettiness of ruffled vanity or to abuse his
+predominance by treating any one as an inferior. His manners were the
+manners of the old time, easy but stately. Like his oratory, they
+were in what Matthew Arnold used to call the grand style; and the
+contrast in this respect between him and some of those who crossed
+swords with him in literary or theological controversy was apparent.
+His intellectual generosity was a part of the same largeness of
+nature. He cordially acknowledged his indebtedness to those who helped
+him in any piece of work, received their suggestions candidly, even
+when opposed to his own preconceived notions, did not hesitate to
+confess a mistake. Those who know the abundance of their resources,
+and have conquered fame, can doubtless afford to be generous. Julius
+Caesar was, and George Washington, and so, in a different sphere, were
+Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. But the instances to the contrary are
+so numerous that one may say of magnanimity that it is among the
+rarest as well as the finest ornaments of character.
+
+The essential dignity of Mr. Gladstone's nature was never better seen
+than during the last few years of his life, after he had finally
+retired (in 1894) from public life. He indulged in no vain regrets,
+nor was there any foundation for the rumours, so often circulated,
+that he thought of re-entering the arena of strife. He spoke with no
+bitterness of those who had opposed, and sometimes foiled, him in the
+past. He gave vent to no criticisms of those who from time to time
+filled the place that had been his in the government of the country or
+the leadership of his party. Although his opinion on current questions
+was frequently solicited, he scarcely ever allowed it to be known,
+lest it should embarrass his successors in the leadership of the
+party, and never himself addressed the nation, except (as already
+mentioned) on behalf of what he deemed a sacred cause, altogether
+above party--the discharge by Britain of her duty to the victims of
+the Turk. As soon as an operation for cataract had enabled him to
+resume his habit of working for seven hours a day, he devoted himself
+with his old ardour to the preparation of an edition of Bishop
+Butler's works, resumed his multifarious reading, planned (as he told
+me in 1896) a treatise on the Olympian religion, and filled up the
+interstices of his working-time with studies on Homer which he had
+been previously unable to complete. No trace of the moroseness of old
+age appeared in his manners or his conversation, nor did he, though
+profoundly grieved at some of the events which he witnessed, and
+owning himself disappointed at the slow advance made by a cause dear
+to him, appear less hopeful than in earlier days of the general
+progress of the world, or less confident in the beneficent power of
+freedom to promote the happiness of his country. The stately
+simplicity which had always charmed those who saw him in private,
+seemed more beautiful than ever in this quiet evening of a long and
+sultry day. His intellectual powers were unimpaired, his thirst for
+knowledge undiminished. But a placid stillness had fallen upon him and
+his household; and in seeing the tide of his life begin slowly to ebb,
+one thought of the lines of his illustrious contemporary and
+friend:--
+
+                 Such a tide as moving seems asleep,
+                     Too full for sound and foam,
+           When that which drew from out the boundless deep
+                     Turns again home.
+
+Adding to his grace of manner a memory of extraordinary strength and
+quickness and an amazing vivacity and variety of mental force, any one
+can understand how fascinating Mr. Gladstone was in society. He
+enjoyed it to the last, talking as earnestly and joyously at
+eighty-seven as he had done at twenty on every topic that came up, and
+exerting himself with equal zest whether his interlocutor was an
+archbishop or a youthful curate. Though his party used to think that
+he overvalued the political influence of the great families, allotting
+them rather more than their share of honours and appointments, no one
+was personally more free from that taint of snobbishness which is
+frequently charged upon Englishmen. He gave the best he had to
+everybody alike, paying to men of learning and letters a respect
+which in England they seldom receive from the magnates who lead
+society. And although he was scrupulously observant of the rules of
+precedence and conventions of social life, it was easy to see that
+neither rank nor wealth had that importance in his eyes which the
+latter nowadays commands. Dispensing titles and decorations with a
+liberal hand, his pride always refused such so-called honours for
+himself.
+
+It was often said of him that he lacked humour; but this was only so
+far true that he was apt to throw into small matters more force and
+moral earnestness than were needed, and to honour with a refutation
+opponents whom a little light sarcasm would have better reduced to
+their insignificance.[73] In private he was wont both to tell and to
+enjoy good stories; while in Parliament, though his tone was generally
+earnest, he could display such effective powers of banter and ridicule
+as to make people wonder why they were so rarely put forth. Much of
+what passes in London for humour is mere cynicism, and he hated
+cynicism so heartily as to dislike even humour when it had a cynical
+flavour. Wit he enjoyed, but did not produce. The turn of his mind was
+not to brevity, point, and condensation. He sometimes struck off a
+telling phrase, but seldom polished an epigram. His conversation was
+luminous rather than sparkling; you were interested and instructed
+while you listened, but it was not so much the phrases as the general
+effect that dwelt in your memory. An acute observer once said to me
+that Mr. Gladstone showed in argument a knack of hitting the nail not
+quite on the head. The criticism was so far just that he was less
+certain to go straight to the vital issue in a controversy than one
+expected from his force and keenness.
+
+After the death of Thomas Carlyle he was probably the best talker in
+London, and a talker in one respect more agreeable than either Carlyle
+or Macaulay, inasmuch as he was no less ready to listen than to speak,
+and never wearied the dinner-table by a monologue. His simplicity, his
+spontaneity, his geniality and courtesy, as well as the fund of
+knowledge and of personal recollections at his command, made him so
+popular in society that his opponents used to say it was dangerous to
+meet him, because one might be forced to leave off hating him. He was,
+perhaps, too prone to go on talking upon the subject which filled his
+mind at the moment; nor was it easy to divert his attention to
+something else which others might deem more important.[74] Those who
+stayed with him in the same country house sometimes complained that
+the perpetual display of force and eagerness tired them, as one tires
+of watching the rush of Niagara. His guests, however, did not feel
+this, for his own home life was quiet and smooth. He read and wrote a
+good many hours daily, but never sat up late, almost always slept
+soundly, never seemed oppressed or driven to strain his strength. With
+all his impetuosity, he was regular, systematic, and deliberate in his
+habits and ways of doing business. A swift reader and a surprisingly
+swift writer, he was always occupied, and was skilful in using even
+the scraps and fragments of his time. No pressure of work made him
+fussy, nor could any one remember to have seen him in a hurry.
+
+The best proof of his swiftness, industry, and skill in economising
+time is supplied by the quantity of his literary work, which,
+considering the abstruse nature of the subjects to which much of it is
+related, would have been creditable to the diligence of a German
+professor sitting alone in his study. The merits of the work have been
+disputed. Mankind are slow to credit the same person with eminence in
+various fields. When they read the prose of a great poet, they try it
+by severer tests than would be applied to other writers. When a
+painter has won credit by his landscapes or his cattle pieces, he is
+seldom encouraged to venture into other lines. So Mr. Gladstone's
+reputation as an orator stood in his own light when he appeared as an
+author. He was read by thousands who would not have looked at the
+article or book had it borne some other name; but he was judged by the
+standard, not of his finest printed speeches, for his speeches were
+seldom models of composition, but rather by the impression which his
+finest speeches made on those who heard them. Since his warmest
+admirers could not claim for him as a writer of prose any such
+pre-eminence as belonged to him as a speaker, it followed that his
+written work was not duly appreciated. Had he been a writer and
+nothing else, he would have been eminent and powerful by his pen.
+
+He might, however, have failed to secure a place in the front rank.
+His style was forcible, copious, rich with various knowledge, warm
+with the ardour of his temperament. But it suffered from an inborn
+tendency to exuberance which the long practice of oratory had
+confirmed. It was diffuse, apt to pursue a topic into details, when
+these might have been left to the reader's own reflection. It was
+redundant, employing more words than were needed to convey the
+substance. It was unchastened, indulging too freely in tropes and
+metaphors, in quotations and adapted phrases even when the quotation
+added nothing to the sense, but was suggested merely by some
+association in his own mind. Thus it seldom reached a high level of
+purity and grace, and though one might excuse the faults as natural to
+the work of a swift and busy man, they were sufficient to reduce the
+pleasure to be derived from the form and dress of his thoughts.
+Nevertheless there are not a few passages of rare merit, both in the
+books and in the articles, among which may be cited (not as
+exceptionally good, but as typical of his strong points) the striking
+picture of his own youthful feeling toward the Church of England
+contained in the _Chapter of Autobiography_, and the refined criticism
+of _Robert Elsmere_, published in 1888. Almost the last thing he
+wrote, a pamphlet on the Greek and Cretan question, published in the
+spring of 1897, has the force and cogency of his best days. Two things
+were never wanting to him: vigour of expression and an admirable
+command of appropriate words.
+
+His writings fall into three classes: political, theological, and
+literary--the last chiefly consisting of his books and articles upon
+Homer and the Homeric question. All the political writings, except
+the books on _The State in its Relations to the Church_ and _Church
+Principles considered in their Results_, belong to the class of
+occasional literature, being pamphlets or articles produced with a
+view to some current crisis or controversy. They are valuable chiefly
+as proceeding from one who bore a leading part in the affairs they
+relate to, and as embodying vividly the opinions and aspirations of
+the moment, less frequently in respect of permanent lessons of
+political wisdom, such as one finds in Machiavelli or Tocqueville or
+Edmund Burke. Like Pitt and Peel, Mr. Gladstone had a mind which,
+whatever its original tendencies, had come to be rather practical
+than meditative. He was fond of generalisations and principles,
+but they were always directly related to the questions that came
+before him in actual politics; and the number of weighty maxims or
+illuminative suggestions to be found in his writings and speeches
+is small in proportion to the sustained vigour they display. Even
+Disraeli, though his views were often fanciful and his epigrams often
+forced, gives us more frequently a brilliant (if only half true)
+historical _apercu_, or throws a flash of light into some corner of
+human character. Of the theological essays, which are mainly
+apologetic and concerned with the authenticity and authority of
+Scripture, it is enough to say that they were the work of an
+accomplished amateur, who had been too busy to follow the progress of
+critical inquiry. His Homeric treatises, the most elaborate piece
+of work that proceeded from Mr. Gladstone's pen, are in one sense
+worthless, in another sense admirable. Those parts of them which
+deal with early Greek mythology, genealogy, and religion, and, in a
+less degree, the theories about Homeric geography and the use of
+Homeric epithets, have been condemned by the unanimous voice of
+scholars as fantastic. The premises are assumed without sufficient
+investigation, while the reasonings are fine-drawn and flimsy.
+Extraordinary ingenuity is shown in piling up a lofty fabric, but
+the foundation is of sand, and the edifice has hardly a solid wall
+or beam in it. A conjecture is treated as a fact; then an inference,
+possible but not certain, is drawn from this conjecture; a second
+possible inference is based upon the first; and we are made to
+forget that the probability of this second is at most only half the
+probability of the first. So the process goes on; and when the
+superstructure is complete, the reader is provoked to perceive how
+much dialectical skill has been wasted upon a series of hypotheses
+which a breath of common-sense criticism dissipates. If one is
+asked to explain the weakness in this particular department of a mind
+otherwise so strong, the answer would seem to be that the element
+of fancifulness in Mr. Gladstone's intellect, and his tendency to
+mistake mere argumentation for verification, were checked in
+practical politics by constant intercourse with friends and
+colleagues as well as by the need of convincing visible audiences,
+while in theological or historical inquiries his ingenuity roamed
+with fatal freedom over wide plains where no obstacles checked its
+course. Something may also be due to the fact that his philosophical
+and historical education was received at a time when the modern
+critical spirit and the canons it recognises had scarcely begun to
+assert themselves at Oxford. Similar defects may be discerned in other
+eminent writers of his own and the preceding generation of Oxford
+men, defects from which persons of inferior power in later days might
+be free. In some of these writers, and particularly in Cardinal
+Newman, the contrast between dialectical acumen, coupled with
+surpassing rhetorical skill, and the vitiation of the argument by a
+want of the critical faculty, is scarcely less striking; and the
+example of that illustrious man suggests that the dominance of the
+theological view of literary and historical problems, a dominance
+evident in Mr. Gladstone, counts for something in producing the
+phenomenon.
+
+With these defects, Mr. Gladstone's Homeric work had the merit of
+being based on a full and thorough knowledge of the Homeric text. He
+had seen, at a time when few people in England had seen it, that the
+Homeric poems are an historical source of the highest value, a
+treasure-house of data for the study of early Greek life and thought,
+an authority all the more trustworthy because an unconscious
+authority, addressing not posterity but contemporaries. This mastery
+of the matter contained in the poems enabled him to present valuable
+pictures of the political and social life of Homeric Greece, while the
+interspersed literary criticisms are often subtle and suggestive,
+erring, when they do err, chiefly through the over-earnestness of his
+mind. He often takes the poet too seriously; reading an ethical
+purpose into descriptive or dramatic touches which are merely
+descriptive or dramatic. Passages whose moral tendency offends him are
+reprobated as later insertions with a naivete which forgets the
+character of a primitive age. But he has for his author not only that
+sympathy which is the best basis for criticism, but a justness of
+poetic taste which the learned and painstaking German commentator
+frequently wants. That Mr. Gladstone was a sound scholar in that
+narrower sense of the word which denotes a grammatical and literary
+command of Greek and Latin, goes without saying. Men of his generation
+kept a closer hold upon the ancient classics than we do to-day; and
+his habit of reading Greek for the sake of his Homeric studies, and
+Latin for the sake of his theological, made this familiarity more than
+usually thorough. Like most Etonians, he loved and knew the poets by
+preference. Dante was his favourite poet, perhaps because Dante is the
+most theological and ethical of the great poets, and because the
+tongue and the memories of Italy had a peculiar attraction for him. He
+used to say that he found Dante's thought incomparably inspiring, but
+hard to follow, it was so high and so abstract. Theology claimed a
+place beside poetry; history came next, though he did not study it
+systematically. It seemed odd that he was sometimes at fault in the
+constitutional antiquities of England; but this subject was, until the
+day of Dr. Stubbs, pre-eminently a Whig subject, and Mr. Gladstone
+never was a Whig, never learned to think upon the lines of the great
+Whigs of former days. His historical knowledge was not exceptionally
+wide, but it was generally accurate in matters of fact, however
+fanciful he might be in reasoning from the facts, however wild his
+conjectures in the prehistoric region. In metaphysics strictly so
+called his reading did not go far beyond those companions of his
+youth, Aristotle and Bishop Butler; and philosophical speculation
+interested him only so far as it bore on Christian doctrine. Keen as
+was his interest in theology and in history, it is not certain that
+he would have produced work of permanent value in either sphere even
+had his life been wholly devoted to study. His mind seemed to need to
+be steadied, his ingenuity restrained, by having to deal with concrete
+matter for a practical end. Neither, in spite of his eminence as a
+financier and an advocate of free trade, did he show much taste for
+economic studies. On practical topics, such as the working of
+protective tariffs, the abuse of charitable endowments, the
+development of fruit-culture in England, the duty of liberal giving by
+the rich, the utility of thrift among the poor, his remarks were full
+of point, clearness, and good sense, but he seldom launched out into
+the wider sea of economic theory. He took a first-class in mathematics
+at Oxford, at the same time as his first in classics, but did not
+pursue the subject in later life. Regarding the sciences of experiment
+and observation, he seemed to feel as little curiosity as any educated
+man who notes the enormous part they play in the modern world can
+feel. Sayings of his have been quoted which show that he imperfectly
+comprehended the character of the evidence they rely upon and of the
+methods they employ. On one occasion he horrified a dinner-table of
+younger friends by refusing to accept some of the most certain
+conclusions of modern geology. No doubt he belonged, as Lord Derby
+(the Prime Minister) once said of himself, to a pre-scientific age.
+Perhaps he was unconsciously biassed by the notion that such sciences
+as geology and biology, for instance, were being used by some students
+to sap the foundations of revealed religion. But I can recall no sign
+of disposition to dissuade free inquiry either into those among the
+sciences of nature which have been supposed to touch theology, or into
+the date, authorship, and authority of the books of the Bible. He had
+faith not only in his creed, but in God as a God of truth, and in the
+power of research to elicit truth.
+
+General propositions are dangerous, yet it seems safe to observe that
+great men have seldom been obscurantists or persecutors. Either the
+sympathy with intellectual effort which is natural to a powerful
+intellect, or the sense that free inquiry, though it may be checked by
+repression for a certain time or within a certain area, will
+ultimately have its course, dissuades them from that attempt to dam up
+the stream of thought which smaller minds regard as the obvious
+expedient for saving souls or institutions.
+
+It ought to be added, for this was a remarkable feature of his
+character, that he had the deepest reverence for the great poets and
+philosophers, placing the career of the statesman on a far lower plane
+than that of those who rule the world by their thoughts enshrined in
+literature. He expressed in a striking letter to Tennyson's eldest
+son his sense of the immense superiority of the poet's life and work.
+Once, in the lobby of the House of Commons, seeing his countenance
+saddened by the troubles of Ireland, I told him, in order to divert
+his thoughts, how some one had recently discovered that Dante had in
+his last years been appointed at Ravenna to a lectureship which raised
+him above the pinch of want. Mr. Gladstone's face lit up at once, and
+he said, "How strange it is to think that these great souls whose
+words are a beacon-light to all the generations that have come after
+them, should have had cares and anxieties to vex them in their daily
+life, just like the rest of us common mortals." The phrase reminded me
+that a few days before I had heard Mr. Darwin, in dwelling upon the
+pleasure a visit paid by Mr. Gladstone had given him, say, "And he
+talked just as if he had been an ordinary person like one of
+ourselves." The two great men were alike unconscious of their
+greatness.
+
+It was an unspeakable benefit to Mr. Gladstone that his love of
+letters and learning enabled him to find in the pursuit of knowledge a
+relief from anxieties and a solace under disappointments. Without some
+such relief his fiery and restless spirit would have worn itself out.
+He lived two lives--the life of the statesman and the life of the
+student, and passed swiftly from the one to the other, dismissing when
+he sat down to his books all the cares of politics. But he led a
+third life also, the secret life of the soul. Religion was of all
+things that which had the strongest hold upon his thoughts and
+feelings. Nothing but his father's opposition prevented him from
+becoming a clergyman when he quitted the University. Never thereafter
+did he cease to take the warmest interest in everything that affected
+the Christian Church. He lost his seat for Oxford University by the
+votes of the country clergy, who formed the bulk of the constituency.
+He incurred the displeasure of four-fifths of the Anglican communion
+by disestablishing the Protestant Episcopal Church in Ireland, and
+from 1868 to the end of his life found nearly all the clerical force
+of the English establishment arrayed against him, while his warmest
+support came from the Nonconformists of England and the Presbyterians
+of Scotland. Yet nothing affected his devotion to the Church in which
+he had been brought up, nor to the body of Anglo-Catholic doctrine he
+had imbibed as an undergraduate. After an attack of influenza which
+had left him very weak in the spring of 1891, he endangered his life
+by attending a meeting on behalf of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund, for
+which he had spoken fifty years before. His theological opinions
+tinged his views upon political subjects. They filled him with dislike
+of the legalisation of marriage with a deceased wife's sister; they
+made him a vehement opponent of the bill which established the
+English Divorce Court in 1857, and a watchfully hostile critic of all
+divorce legislation in America afterwards. Some of his friends traced
+to the same cause his less than adequate appreciation of German
+literature (though he admired Goethe and Schiller) and even his
+political coldness towards Prussia and afterwards towards the German
+Empire. He could not forget that Germany had been the fountain of
+rationalism, while German Evangelical Protestantism was more
+schismatic and farther removed from the mediaeval Catholic Church than
+it pleased him to deem the Church of England to be. He had an
+exceedingly high sense of the duty of purity of life and of the
+sanctity of domestic relations, and his rigid ideas of decorum
+inspired so much awe that it used to be said to a person who had told
+an anecdote with ever so slight a tinge of impropriety, "How many
+thousands of pounds would you take to tell that to Gladstone?" When
+living in the country, it was his practice to attend daily morning
+service in the parish church, and on Sunday to read in church the
+lessons for the day; and he rarely, if ever, transgressed his rule
+against Sunday labour. Religious feeling, coupled with a system of
+firm dogmatic beliefs, was the mainspring of his life, a guiding light
+in perplexities, a source of strength in adverse fortune, a
+consolation in sorrow, a beacon of hope beyond the failures and
+disappointments of this present world. He did not make what is
+commonly called a profession of religion, and talked little about it
+in general society, although always ready to plunge into a magazine
+controversy when Christianity was assailed. But those who knew him
+best knew that he was always referring current questions to, and
+trying his own conduct by, a religious standard. He believed in the
+efficacy of prayer, and sought through prayer for strength and for
+direction in the affairs of state. He was a remarkable example of the
+coexistence together with a Christian virtue of a quality which
+Catholic theologians treat as a mortal sin. He was an exceedingly
+proud man, yet an exceedingly humble Christian. With a high regard for
+his own dignity and a sensitiveness to any imputation on his honour,
+he was deeply conscious of his imperfections in the eye of God,
+realising the weakness and sinfulness of human nature with a mediaeval
+intensity. The language of self-depreciation he was wont to use,
+sometimes deemed unreal, expressed his genuine sense of the contrast
+between the religious ideal he set up and his own attainment. And the
+tolerance which he extended to those who attacked him or who had (as
+he thought) behaved ill in public life was largely due to this
+pervading sense of the frailty of human character, and of the
+inextricable mixture in conduct of good and bad motives. "It is
+always best to take the charitable view," he once observed when I had
+quoted to him the saying of Dean Church that Mark Pattison had painted
+himself too black in his autobiography--"always best," adding, with
+grim emphasis, "especially in politics."
+
+In this indulgent view, more evident in his later years, and the more
+remarkable because his expressions were often too vehement, there was
+nothing of the cynical "man of the world" acceptance of a low standard
+as the only possible standard, for his moral earnestness was as
+fervent at eighty-eight as it had been at thirty, and he retained a
+simplicity and an unwillingness to suspect sinister motives, singular
+in one who had seen so much. Although accessible and frank in the
+ordinary converse of society, he was in reality a reserved man; not
+shy, stiff, and externally cold, like Peel, nor always standing on a
+pedestal of dignity, like the younger Pitt, but revealing his deepest
+thoughts only to a few intimate friends, and treating others with a
+courteous kindliness which, though it put them at their ease, did not
+encourage them to approach nearer. Thus, while he was admired by the
+mass of his followers, and beloved by the small inner group of family
+friends, the majority of his colleagues, official subordinates, and
+political or ecclesiastical associates, would have hesitated to give
+him any of friendship's confidences. Though quick to mark and
+acknowledge good service, or to offer to a junior an opportunity of
+distinction, many deemed him too much occupied with his own thoughts
+to show interest in his disciples, or to bestow those counsels which a
+young man prizes from his chief. But for the warmth of his devotion to
+a few early friends and the reverence he paid to their memory, a
+reverence touchingly shown in the article on Arthur Hallam which he
+published near the end of his own life, sixty-five years after
+Hallam's death, there might have seemed to be a measure of truth in
+the judgment that he cared less for men than for ideas and causes.
+Those, however, who marked the pang which the departure to the Roman
+Church of his friend Hope Scott caused him, those who in later days
+noted the enthusiasm with which he would speak of Lord Althorp, his
+opponent, and of Lord Aberdeen, his chief, dwelling upon the
+truthfulness and uprightness of the former and the amiability of the
+latter, knew that the impression of detachment he gave wronged the
+sensibility of his own heart. Of how few who have lived for more than
+sixty years in the full sight of their countrymen, and have been as
+party leaders exposed to angry and sometimes spiteful criticism, can
+it be said that there stands on record against them no malignant word
+and no vindictive act! This was due not perhaps entirely to natural
+sweetness of disposition, but rather to self-control and to a certain
+largeness of soul which would not condescend to anything mean or
+petty. Pride, though it may be a sin, is to most of us a useful, to
+some an indispensable, buttress of virtue. Nor should it be forgotten
+that the perfectly happy life which he led at home, cared for in
+everything by a devoted wife, kept far from him those domestic
+troubles which have soured the temper and embittered the judgments of
+not a few famous men. Reviewing his whole career, and summing up the
+concurrent impressions and recollections of those who knew him best,
+this dignity is the feature which dwells most in the mind, as the
+outline of some majestic Alp thrills one from afar when all the lesser
+beauties of glen and wood, of crag and glacier, have faded in the
+distance. As elevation was the note of his oratory, so was magnanimity
+the note of his character.
+
+The Greek maxim that no one can be called happy till his life is
+closed must, in the case of statesmen, be extended to warn us from the
+attempt to fix a man's place in history till a generation has arisen
+to whom he is a mere name, not a familiar figure to be loved or hated.
+Few reputations made in politics so far retain their lustre that
+curiosity continues to play round the person when those who can
+remember him living have departed. Dante has in immortal stanzas
+contrasted the fame of Provenzano Salvani that sounded through all
+Tuscany while he lived with the faint whispers of his name heard in
+his own Siena forty years after his death.[75] So out of all the men
+who have held a foremost place in English public life in the
+nineteenth century there are but six or seven--Pitt, Fox, Wellington,
+Peel, Disraeli, possibly Canning, or O'Connell, or Melbourne--whose
+names are to-day upon our lips. The great poet or the great artist
+lives as long as his books or his pictures; the statesman, like the
+singer or the actor, begins to be forgotten so soon as his voice is
+still, unless he has so dominated the men of his own time, and made
+himself a part of his country's history, that his personal character
+is indissolubly linked to the events the course of which he helped to
+determine. Tried by this test, Mr. Gladstone's fame seems destined to
+endure. His eloquence will soon become merely a tradition, for his
+printed speeches do not preserve its charm. If some of his books
+continue to be read, it will be rather because they are his than in
+respect of any permanent contribution they have made to knowledge. The
+wisdom of his policy, foreign and domestic, will have to be judged,
+not only by the consequences we see, but also by other consequences
+still hidden in the future. Yet among his acts there are some with
+which history cannot fail to concern herself, and which will keep
+fresh the memory of their author's energy and courage. Whoever
+follows the annals of England during the memorable years from 1843 to
+1894 will meet his name on almost every page, will feel how great must
+have been the force of an intellect that could so interpenetrate the
+story of its time, and will seek to know something of the dauntless
+figure that rose always conspicuous above the struggling throng.
+
+There is a passage in the _Odyssey_ where the seer Theoclymenus says,
+in describing a vision of death: "The sun has perished out of heaven."
+To Englishmen, Mr. Gladstone had been like a sun which, sinking
+slowly, had grown larger as he sank, and filled the sky with radiance
+even while he trembled on the verge of the horizon. There were men of
+ability and men of renown, but there was no one comparable to him in
+fame and power and honour. When he departed the light seemed to have
+died out of the sky.
+
+-----
+
+  [63] "Gled" is a kite or hawk. The name was Gladstones till Mr.
+       Gladstone's father dropped the final s.
+
+  [64] One of his most intimate friends has, I think, said that "he
+       never knew what it was to be bored." Fortunate, indeed, would
+       he have been had this been so; but that one who had watched him
+       long and closely should make the statement shows how gently
+       bores fared at his hands.
+
+       I recollect his once remarking on the capacity for boring
+       possessed by a gentleman who had been introduced and had talked
+       for some fifteen minutes to him; but his own manner through the
+       conversation had betrayed no impatience.
+
+  [65] Sermons belong to a somewhat different category, else I should
+       have to add the discourses of a few great preachers, such as
+       Robert Hall, J. H. Newman, Phillips Brooks.
+
+  [66] Though one of Macaulay's speeches (that against the exclusion of
+       the Master of the Rolls from the House of Commons) had the rare
+       honour of turning votes.
+
+  [67] "He said that this was the hardest battle of men he had entered,"
+       _Iliad_ vi. 185.
+
+  [68] His physical courage was no less evident than his moral. For two
+       or three years his life was threatened, and policemen were told
+       off to guard him wherever he went. He disliked this protection
+       so much (though the Home Office thought it necessary) that he
+       used to escape from the House of Commons by a little-frequented
+       exit, give the policemen the slip, and stroll home to his
+       residence along the Thames Embankment in the small hours of the
+       morning. Fear was not in his nature.
+
+  [69] The late Protestant Episcopal Primate of Ireland said that
+       Disestablishment had proved a blessing to his Church; and this
+       would seem to be now the general view of Irish Protestants.
+
+  [70] His abdication of leadership in 1875 was meant to be final,
+       though when the urgency of Eastern affairs had drawn him back
+       into strife, the old ardour revived, and he resumed the place
+       of Prime Minister in 1880. It has been often said that he would
+       have done better to retire from public life in 1880, or in
+       1885, yet the most striking proofs both of his courage and of
+       his physical energy were given in the latest part of his
+       career.
+
+  [71] For instance, he recommended Dr. Stubbs for a bishopric and Sir
+       John Holker for a lord justiceship, knowing both of them to be
+       Tories.
+
+  [72] His respect and regard for Mr. Bright were entirely unaffected by
+       the fact that Mr. Bright's opposition to the Home Rule Bill of
+       1886 had been the chief cause of its defeat.
+
+  [73] Usually over-anxious to vindicate his own consistency, he showed
+       on one occasion a capacity for recognising the humorous side of
+       a position into which he had been brought. In a debate which
+       arose in 1891 frequent references had been made to a former
+       speech in which he had pronounced a highly-coloured panegyric
+       upon the Church of England in Wales, the disestablishment of
+       which he had subsequently become willing to support. He
+       replied, "Many references have been made to a former speech of
+       mine on this subject, and I am not prepared to deny that in
+       that speech, when closely scrutinised, there may appear to be
+       present some element of exaggeration." The House dissolved in
+       laughter, and no further reference was made to the old speech.
+
+  [74] His Oxford contemporary and friend, the late Mr. Milnes Gaskell,
+       told me that when Mr. Gladstone was undergoing his _viva voce_
+       examination for his degree, the examiner, satisfied with the
+       candidate's answers on a particular matter, said, "And now, Mr.
+       Gladstone, we will leave that part of the subject." "No,"
+       replied the examinee, "we will, if you please, not leave it
+       yet." Whereupon he proceeded to pour forth a further flood of
+       knowledge and disquisition.
+
+  [75] _Purgat._ xi. 100-126.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+ Acton, John Edward Emerich Dalberg, Lord--
+   career of, 382-84
+   characteristics of, 399
+   critical taste of, 390
+   family of, 382
+   history, view of, 391-92;
+     view of study of, 394-95
+   learning of, 386-89, 392
+   liberty, history of, projected by, 395-96
+   libraries of, 388-89 and note
+   political opinions of, 384
+   style of, 396-97
+   thoroughness of, 390, 393-95
+   University work of, 397-98
+   writings of, 395
+
+ American Civil War, 55, 57, 90 and note. _See also_ United States
+
+ Arnold, Dr., 343, 346
+
+ Austen, Jane, 127
+
+
+ Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, Lord--
+   Cairns valued by, 186-87
+   career of, 3-16
+   characteristics of--
+     ambition, 21-22, 26, 30-31
+     _bonhomie_, 32, 34
+     courage, 11, 25-26, 65
+     cynicism, 30, 40-41
+     debating power, 47
+     intellectual congruity, 35-38, 42
+     loyalty, 33
+     self-confidence, 21, 26, 50, 65, 224
+     tactical adroitness, 48-50
+     tenacity, 11, 15, 23-24, 60, 65
+   Eastern policy of, 140, 275-76, 300, 356
+   education of, 39
+   epigrammatic phrases of, 41-42
+   estimates regarding, 1-2;
+     foreign, 54, 58
+   family of, 3
+   Gladstone compared with, 418, 429, 465;
+     contrasted with, 422;
+     Gladstone's attitude towards, 455-56
+   influence of, 66-68
+   literary works of, 4-5, 18-19, 29, 31-33, 35, 41, 43-45, 52 note;
+     quoted, 21 note, 25 note, 41, 50 note, 55
+   Lowe and, 34, 302
+   Northcote appreciated by, 21, 218
+   political views of, 6-8;
+     foreign policy of (_see also above_, Eastern policy), 15, 56, 59, 67
+   Stanley and, 81
+   suffrage extension, policy of, 305-306, 309-10, 442
+   otherwise mentioned, 107, 171, 220
+
+ Bentinck, Lord George, 9
+
+ Bishops--
+   change in type of, 196-98
+   House of Lords, presence in, 112
+   industry of, 199
+   influence of, 100-101, 103
+
+ Bismarck, Prince, 54
+
+ Black, J. Sutherland, 311 note
+
+ Bowen, Edward Ernest--
+   biography of, 343 note
+   career of, 345-46
+   characteristics of, 360-62
+   death of, 355
+   games, attitude towards, 351-52
+   influence of, 350;
+     views regarding, 353-54
+   military history, fondness for, 357-58
+   political interests of, 355-57
+   school songs of, 343 note, 359-360
+   teaching methods of, 346-47, 349-350, 354-55
+   training of teachers, views on, 348
+   travel, fondness for, 358
+   walking tours of, 355
+
+ Bowen, Lord, 345, 359
+
+ Bright, John, 30, 98, 304, 428-29, 443, 455 note
+
+ Bradlaugh, Mr., 437
+
+ Brooke, Rev. Stopford, quoted, 135-137
+
+ Brooks, Dr. Phillips, 209, 381
+
+ Brougham, Lord, 64, 428
+
+ Browning, Robert, 39, 126
+
+ Burke, Edmund, 410, 427-28, 440
+
+ Burney, Miss, 127
+
+
+ Cairns, Hugh M'Calmont, Earl--
+   American Civil War, attitude towards, 57
+   career of, 184-86
+   characteristics of, 184, 188-91
+   Disraeli compared with, 47
+   Gladstone compared with, 429
+   Jessel compared with, 180, 193
+   judicial gifts of, 192-93
+   legal manner of, 191-92
+   Mellish and, 176-78
+   parliamentary reform opposed by, 307
+   political partisanship of, 187, 194-195
+   religious views and interests of, 185-86, 193-94
+
+ Cambridge--
+   Jewish scholar at, 319 note
+   Sidgwick at, 327 _seq._
+   Smith, W. R., at, 319
+
+ Canterbury,
+   importance of See of, 101-105;
+   qualifications of archbishops of, 105-107
+
+ Carlyle, Thomas, 40, 87, 92, 126, 277, 461
+
+ Celtic temperament, 403, 405
+
+ Chancery Bar, 170;
+   famous trio at, 191
+
+ Chancery Courts, 181-82
+
+ Charity Organisation Society, 133
+
+ Church, Dean, 251-52
+
+ Church--
+   Anglican--
+     disestablishment of, 114-15, 141
+     possibilities before, 209-10
+     Stanley's view of, 78-79
+     Tractarian movement in, 252, 264 note, 406
+   Roman Catholic--
+     adaptability of, 259
+     Infallibilist claims of, 256, 385
+     modern research, attitude towards, 317
+
+ Clark, George T., quoted, 266-67
+
+ Clough, Miss A. J., 329
+
+ Clough, Arthur Hugh, 338
+
+ Cobden, Mr., quoted, 429-30
+
+ Collins, Wilkie, 116
+
+ Copleston, Dr. (Bishop of Llandaff), 197
+
+ Creighton, Bishop, 289, 387
+
+
+ Dalgairns, 251
+
+ Dante, 468-69, 471
+
+ Darwin, Charles, 457, 471-72
+
+ _De la Democratie_, Scherer's, cited, 309 note
+
+ Delane, Mr., 422
+
+ _Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties_,
+     Ostrogorski's, cited, 309 note
+
+ Denison, Archdeacon, 133, 271 note
+
+ Derby, Lord, 10, 12, 28, 47, 57, 198, 429, 470
+
+ Dickens, Charles, 123, 127
+
+ Disraeli. _See_ Beaconsfield
+
+ Dissenters. _See_ Nonconformists
+
+ Doellinger, Dr. von, 383, 385, 392
+
+ Dupanloup, Archbishop, 209, 385
+
+
+ Eastern Question (1876), 140, 275-276, 300, 356, 419
+
+ Editors,
+   types of, 363-64;
+   temptations of, 370, 380-81
+
+ Eliot, George, 124, 328
+
+ Equity Courts, 170, 173
+
+ _Essays and Reviews_, 113, 317
+
+ _Essays on Reform_, cited, 307 and note
+
+ _Evening Post, The_, 365, 374-76
+
+
+ Forster, W. E., 234, 239 and note
+
+ Fox, Charles James, 428-29, 435
+
+ France, novelists of, 129
+
+ Franchise extension. _See_ Suffrage
+
+ Fraser, James, Bishop of Manchester--
+   biographies of, 196 note
+   career of, 196, 200-201
+   characteristics of, 204-205
+   energy of, 202
+ Fraser, James, Bishop of Manchester--
+   influence of, 206
+   new Episcopal type created by, 196, 210
+   personality of, 203-204
+   popularity of, 202, 206
+   ritualist illegalities, attitude towards, 208
+   science, attitude towards, 207
+   views of, 206-207
+
+ Freeman, Edward Augustus--
+   biography of, 262 note
+   career of, 262-63
+   friendships of, 290
+   Green influenced by, 137
+   historical work,
+     merits of, 276-84;
+     style of, 286-87
+   humour of, 287
+   interests of, 264-67, 271-72
+   kindliness of, 278, 291
+   literary preferences of, 269-70
+   methodical ways of, 285
+   military history, fondness for, 357
+   Oxford work of, 287-89
+   political views of, 272-75
+   simplicity and directness of, 270-71, 275
+   Trollope and, 120, 271 and note
+   works of, 267, 284-86, 291-92
+
+ Froude, J. A., 271 note
+
+
+ Gardiner, S. R., 357;
+   quoted, 274
+
+ Gibbon, 133, 169, 281, 284
+
+ Gladstone, William Ewart--
+   Acton, Lord, relations with, 383, 399
+   _Alabama_ claims, action regarding, 444, 446, 449, 451
+   American Civil War, attitude towards, 57
+   career of, 412
+   characteristics of--
+     breadth and keenness of interests, 400, 413, 459
+     caution, 409, 414, 419, 447, 453
+     complexity of nature, 400, 409-410, 412
+     conservatism, 401, 439
+     constructive power, 439-41
+     conversational powers, 461
+     courage, 447 and note, 451 note
+     courtesy, 423 and note, 455-456, 461
+     dignity, 457
+     emotional excitability, 405, 410-411, 433-34
+     humour, 460
+     impulsiveness, 401, 405, 421, 447
+     independence, 418-19, 450
+     ingenuity, 404, 416-17, 430-31, 466
+     insight into character, 453
+     intensity, 402, 405, 426, 435, 450, 453, 460, 462
+     loyalty, 455
+     magnanimity, 457, 477
+     memory, 404, 424, 459
+       for faces, 423
+     open-mindedness, 416, 452, 454
+     oratory, 411, 426-39, 463
+     over-subtlety, 407, 432, 448, 452
+     patriotism, 450-51
+     pride, 416, 420, 423, 452, 455, 474, 477
+     religious disposition, 472-75
+       views, 401, 406-407
+     reserve:
+       political, 409, 414-15, 419, 452
+       personal, 424, 475-476
+     Scottish temperament, 403-405
+     self-confidence, 224
+     simplicity, 453, 458, 461, 475
+     sincerity, 401
+     temper, 455-56
+     tranquillity, 462
+     voice, 430, 436-38
+   Disraeli and, 11, 33, 35
+   estimates of, 411, 417, 448
+     continental, 444
+   family of, 403
+   foreign affairs, attitude towards, 443-46, 458
+   Freeman's appointment by, 263
+   High Church appointments of, 198
+   home life of, 462, 474, 477
+   Home Rule Bill of (1886), 272
+   Homeric studies and views of, 401, 465-68
+   hostility to, 304
+   literary activities of, 401, 458, 462-68
+   Lowe compared with, 293, 299, 429, 435
+     Lowe's antagonism to, 295
+     Lowe in Cabinet of, 299
+   mistakes of, 449
+   Northcote and, 212, 216
+   Oxford training of, 406-408
+   parliamentary abilities of, 420-21, 424-26
+   Parnell's resentment against, 239-240, 247
+   Peel's influence on, 10, 409, 452
+   poetry, attitude towards, 471
+   quoted, 56
+   Reform Bill of, 13, 442
+   scholarship of, 468
+   science, attitude towards, 407-408, 470
+   suffrage qualifications, proposed reduction of, 308 note
+   theological views of, tinging political, 473
+   otherwise mentioned, 67, 113, 179, 187, 221, 260
+
+ Godkin, Edwin Lawrence--
+   career of, 365-66
+   courage of, 370-71
+   geniality of, 376
+   humour of, 368-73
+   independence of, 364, 369, 381
+   influence of, 378-80
+   sincerity of, 367, 373, 380
+   style of, 367-68, 373
+   Tammany, attitude towards, 374 and note
+   views of, 366-67, 370, 374-76
+
+ Green, John Richard--
+   biography of, 131 note
+   career of, 131-34
+   conversation of, 165-66
+   eloquence of, 166
+   gifts and qualities of, 146, 151-52, 154, 160-62, 164-67
+   ill-health of, 138, 141-46
+   interests of, 151, 154-57
+   letters of, 131 note, 152-53
+   literary work of--
+     _Saturday Review_ articles, 133, 135-37, 153;
+     historical, 138-39, 142-45, 155, 158-60, 163-64;
+     characteristics of, 139-40, 150, 152-53, 157-65, 167-69
+   military history, fondness for, 357
+   political activity of, 140-41
+   views of, 134
+
+ Green, Prof. Thomas Hill--
+   career of, 85
+   characteristics of, 86-91
+   civic activities of, 98
+   influence of, 95-97, 99
+   literary works of, 92-94, 98
+   political keenness of, 95, 97
+   views of, 93, 97, 335
+   otherwise mentioned, 265, 268, 278
+
+
+ Hardy, Gathorne, 213
+
+ Hardy, Thomas, 116
+
+ Healy, T. M., 443
+
+ Henry VIII., 271 note
+
+ Herodotus, 149-51
+
+ Historians--
+   qualifications of, 146-48, 156, 277
+   two classes of, 149
+
+ History, Freeman's view of, 268, 274
+
+ Hodgkin, Dr. Thomas, 357
+
+ Holker, Sir John, 453 note
+
+ House of Commons--
+   character of, 48
+   erroneous sketches of, 121
+   lawyers in, 172
+   leadership of, 217, 424
+   occasional detachment of, from popular sentiment, 51
+   power of, declining, 308-309
+   rhetoric unpopular with, 296
+
+ Huxley, 207
+
+
+ Iddesleigh. _See_ Northcote
+
+ Ireland--
+   Anglo-Irish Protestants, 229-30
+   Church disestablishment in, 113, 187, 273, 407, 419, 442, 449 and note
+   Disraeli's attitude towards, 56-57, 67
+   Green, J. R., views of, regarding, 141
+   Home Rule, views regarding, of
+     Acton, 384;
+     Bowen, 356;
+     Bright, 455 note;
+     Freeman, 272;
+     Gladstone, 272, 414, 447;
+     Godkin, 375
+   Land Bill of 1881, 425, 442-43
+
+
+ James, Henry, 129
+
+ Jessel, Sir George--
+   Cairns compared with, 180, 193
+   career of, 171
+   judicial methods of, 174-75, 179-181, 194
+   mental powers of, 173, 181-82
+   parliamentary manner of, 172
+   quickness of, 173, 176, 183, 193
+
+ Jews--
+   bigotry towards, 183
+   Cambridge scholar, anecdote of, 319 note
+   concentration, power of, possessed by, 23 and note
+   conservatism of, 25 note
+   detachment of, 19-20
+   distinctions gained by, 171
+   practicality of, 182
+   satirical powers of, 45
+
+ Jowett, 113, 150
+
+
+ Kelvin, Lord, 184
+
+ Kipling, Rudyard, 129
+
+
+ Lawrence, Lord, 184
+
+ Lightfoot, Bishop, 199-200, 209, 290
+
+ Louis Napoleon, 55, 64, 98
+
+ Lowe, Robert--
+   biography of, 293 note
+   Cairns compared with, 188
+   career of, 293-95, 299-300
+   characteristics of, 301-304
+   Disraeli and, 34, 302
+   eclipse of fame of, 293, 300
+   educational work of, 294-95, 304-305
+   Gladstone compared with, 293, 299, 429, 435;
+     antagonism to Gladstone, 295;
+     in Gladstone's Cabinet, 299
+   Oxford, at, 301 note 2
+   rhetorical power of, 296-97
+   shortsightedness of, 300-301
+   Utilitarianism of, 304
+
+ Lyndhurst, Lord, 29
+
+
+ Macaulay, 139, 169, 270, 274, 281, 427, 428 and note 2
+
+ Macdonald, Sir John A., 422
+
+ Maclennan, John F., 320
+
+ Magee, Archbishop, 112, 199, 429
+
+ Manning, Cardinal Henry Edward--
+   biography of, 260-61
+   career of, 250-51
+   characteristics of, 251-54, 261
+   conversions effected by, 255
+   Infallibilist cause, work for, 256
+   interests and sympathies of, 257-61
+   speeches of, 255
+
+ Maurice, F. D., 134, 408
+
+ Mellish, Lord Justice, 176-79
+
+ Meredith, George, 116, 122
+
+ Mill, John Stuart, 61, 78 note, 93, 304
+
+ Monk, Bishop, 197
+
+ Mugwumps, 375 and note
+
+
+ Napoleon Bonaparte, 238
+
+ Napoleon, Louis, 55, 64, 98
+
+ _Nation, The_, 365, 368, 371-73, 378
+
+ Newman, Cardinal, 251-52, 428 note 1, 467
+
+ Newnham College, Cambridge, 329-330
+
+ Nonconformists--
+   Disraeli's dislike of, 8, 52
+   Education Act (1870) resented by, 15
+   Fraser's attitude towards, 202, 206-208 and note
+   Gladstone trusted by, 401
+   Green's dislike of, 134
+
+ Northcote, Sir Stafford (Lord Iddesleigh)--
+   biography of, 211 note
+   career of, 212-13
+   characteristics of, 213, 222-23, 225-26
+   Gladstone compared with, 435
+   parliamentary abilities of, 214-16, 218
+
+ Novels, types of, 122
+
+
+ O'Connell, Daniel, 6, 8, 248
+
+ Oliphant, Mrs., 116
+
+ Oratory--
+   elevation in, 433
+   reputation for, nature of, 427
+
+ Oxford--
+   Green, T. H., on municipal council of, 98-99
+   Thackeray's candidature for, 120
+
+ Oxford University--
+   Tractarian movement in, 252, 264 note, 406
+   training at, characteristics of, 408, 467
+
+
+ Palmer, Roundell (Lord Selborne), 176, 191-92, 294
+
+ Palmerston, Lord, 13, 28, 49, 57, 98, 294
+
+ Parliament. _See_ House of Commons
+
+ Parnell, Charles Stewart--
+   biography of, 227 note
+   career of, 228-29
+   family of, 227
+   leadership, aptness for, 248
+   moral courage of, 239
+   parliamentary tactics of, 218-19, 244;
+     knowledge of procedure, 242-43
+   passion and self-control of, 240
+   Phoenix Park murders, demeanour after, 236, 238
+   Pigott affair, attitude towards, 239
+   practicality of, 230-33
+   pride of, 233, 235-38
+   self-confidence of, 224, 236, 238
+   speeches of, 241-42
+   unscrupulousness of, 237-38
+   unsympathetic manner of, 190
+   views of, 245-46
+
+ Peel, Sir Robert--
+   caution of, 408-409, 452
+   death of, 10
+   Disraeli's conduct towards, 28 and note
+     his view of, 55
+   financial policy of, 441-42
+   Gladstone compared with, 411, 439, 455, 475
+   separation of, from Conservatives, 9, 61
+   speeches of, 428
+
+ Pitt, William, 429, 435, 439, 442, 476
+
+ _Popular Government_, Sir H. Maine's, cited, 309 note
+
+ Psychical Research Society, 331-32
+
+ Pusey, Dr., cited, 80
+
+
+ Rhodes, Cecil, 246
+
+ Rolt, Lord Justice, 191-92
+
+ Roman Catholic Church. _See under_ Church
+
+ Russell, Lord, 13, 28, 57, 295
+
+
+ Salisbury, Lord, 186, 247, 295, 456
+
+ _Saturday Review_--
+   Bowen's contributions to, 360
+   Freeman's contributions to, 285
+     dissociation from, 275
+   Green's contributions to, 133, 135-137, 153
+
+ Schoolmasters, types of, 343, 346
+
+ Schools Inquiry Commission, 200-201
+
+ Scott, Sir Walter, 123, 125
+
+ Scottish temperament and characteristics, 315, 403-405
+
+ Selborne, Lord. _See_ Palmer, Roundell
+
+ Sherbrooke, Viscount. _See_ Lowe, Robert
+
+ Sidgwick, Henry--
+   career of, 327-29
+   characteristics of, 338-42
+   impartiality of, 334
+   literary preferences of, 338
+   psychical research, interest in, 331-332
+   views of, philosophical and political, 335-37
+   women's education promoted by, 329
+
+ Sidgwick, Henry--
+   works of, 332-34, 338
+
+ Skene, Mr., cited, 158
+
+ Smith, Professor Goldwin, 76, 281
+
+ Smith, R. Bosworth, quoted, 349-50
+
+ Smith, Prof. Robertson--
+   Acton, Lord, and, 387
+   career of, 311-12, 315, 318-320
+   characteristics of, 323-25
+   ecclesiastical trial of, 313-16
+   _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, work on, 312-14
+   versatility of, 322
+   works of, 320-21;
+     characteristics of, 321
+
+ Stanley, Very Rev. Arthur Penrhyn--
+   career of, 70
+   characteristics of, 71, 73, 77, 82-84
+   debating power of, 77
+   Disraeli and, 81
+   family of, 69-70
+   Green influenced by, 132, 137
+   literary work of, 71-74
+   politics of, 78
+   sermons of, 76-77
+   theological position of, 80-81
+   Tait, attitude towards, 113
+   otherwise mentioned, 164-65, 205-206
+
+ Statesmanship, necessary qualifications for, 46
+
+ Stevenson, R. L., 129
+
+ Stubbs, Bishop, 138, 160, 289-90, 453 note
+
+ Suffrage extension--
+   Disraeli's view of, 52, 57-58, 67-68, 310
+   Lowe's opposition to, 295-98, 305-306
+   results of, 306-309
+
+
+ Tait, Archibald Campbell, Archbishop of Canterbury--
+   biography of, cited, 100 note
+   career of, 107
+   characteristics of, 108-12, 209
+   Green appointed librarian by, 133-134
+   influence of, 110-12
+   Irish Church Disestablishment Bill, attitude towards, 187
+   policy of, 112, 114
+   views of, 110
+
+ Temple, Archbishop, 113 and note, 199
+
+ Tennyson, 39, 459
+
+ Thackeray, W. M., 35, 120, 123-25
+
+ Thirlwall, Bishop, 112
+
+ Thucydides, 149-50
+
+ Tone, Wolfe, 229, 248
+
+ Tory party--
+   nature of, 218;
+     (1848-1865), 60-62
+   suffrage extension profitable to, 52, 57-58, 67, 310
+
+ Tractarian movement, 252, 264 note, 406
+
+ Trollope, Anthony--
+   biographies of, cited, 116 note
+   Freeman and, 120, 271 and note
+   literary position of, 116-18
+   personality of, 118, 126
+   political activity of, 120
+   travels of, 121-22
+   works of, 117-20, 128;
+     characteristics of, 122-30
+
+
+ United States--
+   Acton's knowledge of history of, 387
+   Freeman's visit to, 268
+   journalism in, 379
+   Presbyterianism in, 317
+   religion and politics dissociated in, 100
+   Trollope's account of, 122
+   University influence in, 378
+
+
+ Westbury, Lord, 303
+
+ Whiggism, 6, 8, 63, 298, 469
+
+ Wilberforce, Bishop Samuel, 111-12, 198, 254, 429
+
+ Women, education of, 329-31
+
+ Wordsworth, 301
+
+ Wright, William, 319 and note, 320
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+_Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+  The authors' archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation
+  are preserved.
+
+  The authors' punctuation styles are preserved.
+
+  Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter.
+
+  Typographical errors were corrected and are listed below.
+
+Transcriber's Changes: (Indicated below with =equal signs=.)
+
+ Page 218: Was 'opportunies' (in granting or refusing =opportunities=
+          for discussing topics he would prefer to have not discussed
+          at all.)
+
+
+
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