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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-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***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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