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EMINENT PEESONS

EMINENT PEESONS
BIOGKAPHIES
EEPEINTED FEOM TEE TIMES

VOLUME IV
1887 — 1890

Hanson
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
and Zije TOmea office, printing house square
1893

CONTENTS

Loed Iddesleigh

PAGE 1

Sik Joseph Whitwoeth

10

Loed Lyons .....

17

Sie Heney Maine ....

24

The Empeeoe William

35

Matthew Arnold ....

87

The Empeeoe Fkedeeiok III.

97

General Sheridan

117

Marshal Bazaine

124

Viscount Eveesley

129

Mr. Bright .

138

Lord Malmesbuey

171

Jeffeeson Davis

181

Robert Beowning

196

The Bishop of Dueham

203

Dr. Dollingee

211

Loed Napiee of Magdala

222

Sie AVilliam Gull

233

Loed Caenarvon

236

Sie Edwin Chadwick , . . .

244

vi CONTENTS PAGE
Cardinal Newman . 251
Canon Liddon . 277
Peofessoe J. E. Thoeold Rogers 283
Sie Richard Burton . 288
Sie Barnes Peacock . . 293
Lord Cottesloe . . 297
Me. Baron Huddlbston . 303
Dean Chuech . . 311
The Archbishop of York . 319

LOED IDDESLEIGH
Obituary Notice, Thursday, January 13, 1887
The Earl of Iddesleigh, better known to hia countrymen as Sir
Stafford Henry Northcote, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and
leader of the House of Commons in the second Administration
of Mr. Disraeli, was born in London in 1818. He came of an
ancient Devonshire family, his father being the eldest son of the
seventh baronet, and his name having been well known and
respected in the west of England for several generations. As
an illustration of this we may recall a pleasant little episode of
the debates in the House of Commons on the Redistribution of
Seats Bill during the session of 1885. A question arose as to
the name to be given to one of the Devonshire county divisions.
Sir Stafford Northcote, at that time leader of the Opposition,
pleaded successfully, and amid the general sympathy of the
House, for the retention under the new system of the ancient
name of a constituency which in former times was represented
by an ancestor of his own.
Sir Stafford Northcote was educated at Eton, where he was
among the pupils of a very well - known master — the Rev.
Edward Coleridge. From Eton he went to Oxford and entered
at Balliol. In Michaelmas Term 1839, when he was barely
twenty-one years of age, he was placed by the examiners in the
first class in Classics and the third class in Mathematics.
Among his companions in the first class were Dr. Fraser, the
late Bishop of Manchester, and Mr. Jowett, the present Master
of Balliol, and late Vice-Chancellor of the University. Mr.
vol. rv & b

2 EMINENT PERSONS
Northcote, as he then was, came to London at once for the
purpose of studying law, but it was some years before he was
called to the Bar.
In 1841 a change of Ministry occurred, and Sir Robert Peel
became Prime Minister, supported by the first Conservative
majority which the constituencies had returned to the House of
Commons since the Reform Act was passed in 1832. Mr.
Gladstone accepted subordinate office as Vice-President of the
Board of Trade, and two years afterwards he was promoted to
the Presidency of the same department. He cast about for a
competent private secretary, and consulted his friend Mr. Cole
ridge, of Eton, before making his choice. Mr. Coleridge men
tioned three names, and from these Mr. Gladstone selected Mr.
Stafford Northcote. Mr. Gladstone, as is well known, retired
in 1845 from the Government of Sir Robert Peel, but we
believe that before his retirement he procured the appointment
of his private secretary to a permanent post in the Board of
Trade. However this may be, Mr. Northcote was called to the Bar
in 1847, and in the same year he became Legal Secretary to the
Board of Trade. Mr. Northcote's connection with the Board of
Trade lasted for some years. When the Navigation Laws were
under discussion he published an able pamphlet on the subject,
which attracted much attention at the time, and had the credit
of convincing no less a personage than the Duke of Wellington
of the necessity and expediency of removing this the last vestige
of the old Protective system.
In 1851 Mr. Northcote succeeded his grandfather in the
baronetcy, which had belonged to his family for several genera
tions, and in the same year he officiated as one of the secretaries
of the great Exhibition. In this capacity he rendered signal
assistance to the late Prince Consort, and his labours were so
assiduous and exhausting that at the close of the Exhibition his
health was seriously impaired. We believe that the cardiac
weakness which has now proved suddenly fatal to the deceased
statesman then first declared itself, and Sir Stafford Northcote,
as he then was, withdrew for a time from his active official
duties, and went with his family to reside in France in the
hope of recovering his health. That hope was happily fulfilled.
After a year's residence in Paris, Sir Stafford Northcote returned
to England with his strength completely restored,.and destined

LORD IDDESLEIGH 3
for more than thirty years to take an active and prominent part
in the political life of his time. In the years 1853 and 1854
Sir Stafford Northcote was associated with the late Sir Charles
Trevelyan in an important and, as the event showed, an epoch-
making inquiry into the condition of the civil establishments of
the Crown, and the Report presented by these Commissioners in
1854 eventually led to the establishment of the Civil Service
Commission and to the throwing open of the Civil Service
generally to public competition.
So far, Sir Stafford Northcote's life, though of political
activity and influence, was dissociated from Parliamentary and
party controversy, and devoted only to public objects irrespective
of party. In financial and commercial matters he was always on
the side of Free Trade, and his intervention in the controversy
concerning the Navigation Laws was regarded with some surprise
even by the Whigs. But in general politics Sir Stafford North
cote was a Conservative, though a Conservative without party
acrimony and with strong Liberal instincts on many important
points. He was not in Parliament when the Peelites joined the
Government of Lord Aberdeen ; possibly if he had been he
would have been tempted to follow the fortunes of his first
official chief.
He first entered the House of Commons in 1855 as the
Conservative member for Dudley — a political connection which
he was not the man to forget when, as Chancellor of the
Exchequer in Mr. Disraeli's Government, he visited the Mid
lands and defended the policy of his colleagues in an elaborate
series of speeches. He represented Dudley for two years, and
from 1858 to 1866 he sat in the House of Commons as member
for Stamford, his colleague during the whole of that time being
the present Prime Minister, who sat for Stamford, first as Lord
Robert Cecil, and afterwards as Lord Cranborne, from 1853 till
1868. In 1866 Sir Stafford Northcote first became a member
for what may be called his native constituency of North Devon ;
he had unsuccessfully contested the seat in 1857, but when once
the connection was established between the Devon constituency
and the member who never forgot that he belonged in a special
sense to the west of England, it remained unbroken until Sir
Stafford Northcote was raised to the peerage as Earl of Iddesleigh
in 1885. When Sir Stafford Northcote entered Parliament in 1855

4 EMINENT PERSONS
the Government of Lord Palmerston was in office. It was dis
placed in 1858 by the second Government of Lord Derby, but
Sir Stafford Northcote did not obtain office when his party
first came into power. Sir Charles Trevelyan was permanent
Secretary of the Treasury and Mr. G. A Hamilton was Financial
Secretary, Mr. Disraeli being Chancellor of the Exchequer. A
change was soon made whereby Sir Stafford Northcote became,
in a sense, Mr. Disraeli's lieutenant. Sir Charles Trevelyan
was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Madras, Mr. Hamilton,
the former Financial Secretary, became permanent Secretary to
the Treasury, and Sir Stafford Northcote was appointed to the
important Parliamentary post of Financial Secretary to the
Treasury. He went out of office with his party in the summer
of 1859, and when Lord Derby's third Administration was
formed in 1866 he became President of the Board of Trade, an
office which he exchanged in the following year for that of
Secretary of State for India, vacated by the resignation of the
present Prime Minister. Sir Stafford Northcote retained this
office until the resignation of Mr. Disraeli — who succeeded
Lord Derby as Prime Minister on the retirement of the latter —
in 1868. He was by this time recognised as one of the leaders
of the Conservative party, and though Mr. Disraeli's supremacy
was undisputed and unrivalled, Sir Stafford Northcote was
beginning to be regarded as one of his most efficient lieu
tenants. The Conservative party was led by Mr. Disraeli during the
first Administration of Mr. Gladstone from 1868 to 1874. In
1871 Sir Stafford Northcote was, by an adroit and far-sighted
stroke of policy, nominated by Mr. Gladstone as one of the
Special Commissioners for the negotiation of the Treaty of
Washington, which had for its main object the final settlement
of the Alabama Claims. This Treaty gave rise to a very active
controversy in Parliament arising out of the advancement by
the Government of the United States of what were termed
indirect or consequential claims, and even when these claims
were finally set aside, the award of the Geneva Commission
appointed in pursuance of the Treaty was very warmly and
not very favourably canvassed in this country.
It would seem that the Treaty of Washington — concluded by
the Commission of which the Marquis of Ripon was chairman
and Sir Stafford Northcote a member — was somewhat loosely

LORD IDDESLEIGH 5
drawn, but it has always been suspected that the Government
at home was quite as much responsible for its laxity and
ambiguity of language as the Commissioners at Washington.
At any rate the whole controversy is now closed with the best
results to the friendly relations of this country with the United
States, and it may be conjectured that the official association of
Sir Stafford Northcote with the Treaty had a very considerable
and in the result a very salutary effect in restraining the attacks
of the Opposition on the Government which concluded it. Mr.
Gladstone's Government suffered at the time, not perhaps un
deservedly, but the end has been held in this case to justify the
means, and the Washington Treaty finally closed a very trouble
some and, indeed, a very dangerous dispute with the United
States. In estimating its merits it has to be remembered that
more than one Foreign Minister had previously tried, and tried
in vain, to settle a controversy which threatened permanently
to embitter the relations of two kindred countries.
When Mr. Gladstone resigned in 1874 and Mr. Disraeli
returned once more to power, for the first time in his life at
the head of a powerful and devoted majority, Sir Stafford
Northcote was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. For
this office he was peculiarly well qualified. He had entered
public life as an official at the Board of Trade, Mr. Gladstone
being his sponsor and Sir Robert Peel his official chief. His
financial orthodoxy was -(thus doubly certified, and his acumen
and attainments were attested by an important work which he
published in 1862, entitled Twenty Years of Financial Policy;
a Summary of the Chief Financial Measures passed between 181^2
and 1861, with a Table of Budgets. In this work Sir Stafford
Northcote had declared himself a disciple of that financial school
which Sir Robert Peel had founded and Mr. Gladstone had
fostered with such remarkable results.
At a much later date in his career Sir Stafford Northcote
went so far, under the pressure of transient political exigencies,
as to pronounce what is called " fair trade " to be a " pious
opinion " not wholly inconsistent with financial orthodoxy ; but
as Chancellor of the Exchequer he gave no countenance to
heresy. His financial policy at the Exchequer is remarkable
for the final extinction of the sugar duties, counterbalanced by
a slight increase in the tax on tobacco ; for the temporary
reduction of the income-tax to 2d. in the pound, the lowest

6 EMINENT PERSONS
point at which it has' stood since the tax was first imposed ; and
for the establishment and maintenance of a really effective
sinking fund, which has been maintained intact by his suc
cessors except when it was suspended for a short period in
1885, in order to meet a heavy, exceptional, and unexpected
expenditure due to the exigencies of the Egyptian campaign
and the imminence of a war with Russia in connection with the
dispute over the Afghan frontier. Sir Stafford Northcote's
finance was often attacked by Mr. Gladstone and other financial
authorities, but on the whole he was held by competent and
impartial authorities to have fairly held his own even against
so redoubtable an antagonist. It should further be mentioned
as an illustration of his financial ability and orthodoxy, that in
the interval between Lord Derby's second and third Administra
tions, Sir Stafford Northcote had acted as Chairman of an
important Parliamentary Committee on the Income - Tax, and
that his report contributed largely to sustain that unpopular
and unequal, but indispensable impost against the attacks of
Mr. Hubbard and other financiers of the same school.
Mr. Disraeli became Lord Beaconsfield towards the close of
the session of 1876. Thenceforth, and until the fall of the
Conservative Government in 1880, Sir Stafford Northcote was
leader of the House of Commons. There were some who
thought that Lord Cranbrook, at that time Mr. Gathorne-
Hardy, would have made a more vigorous and combative
leader, but the wisdom of Lord Beaconsfield's choice was
never seriously disputed during the lifetime of the Parliament
of 1874. Sir Stafford Northcote was not perhaps a very combative
leader. He was mild in temperament, judicial in disposition,
gentle in demeanour, courteous to opponents, slow to take
offence, and slower still to give it. His leadership fell in very
difficult and very critical times. It was his duty to defend
the Eastern policy of the Government against a resolute and
exasperated Opposition. He had to deal also with the first
beginnings, or almost the first beginnings, of obstruction — a task
for which, perhaps, his mild, gentle, and courteous disposition
hardly fitted him. To write a history of his leadership we
should need to write a history of the four eventful years from
1877 to 1880, including the Russo-Turkish War, the Berlin
Treaty, the Zulu War, the Afghan War, and a long series of

LORD IDDESLEIGH 7
critical events both at home and abroad, which few politicians
or students of political history are likely to have forgotten.
Only on one occasion did Sir Stafford Northcote's invincible
straightforwardness seem to have forsaken him. He was asked
on the eve of the Easter recess in 1878, at a moment when
rumours of war were rife, to give some explanation of the
action and policy of the Government before Parliament separ
ated. His answer was certainly evasive and gave no informa
tion of importance. The next day the country was startled by
the announcement that orders had been given and arrangements
made for the conveyance of a contingent of Indian troops to
Malta. The incident was very unfavourably commented on at
the time, especially by the opponents of the Government ; but
possibly, if all were known, it would be found that Sir Stafford
Northcote's language was defensible on the ground that reti
cence was demanded by the exigencies of the public service.
Those who best know the difficulty of conducting public affairs
of moment in the presence of an inquisitive legislature and a
hostile Opposition will not be hasty to condemn the conduct of
Lord Beaconsfield's Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In 1880 Lord Beaconsfield dissolved Parliament and Mr.
Gladstone returned to power. Sir Stafford Northcote's position
was henceforth a very difficult one. The Liberal majority was
triumphant and overwhelming. Its leader was the statesman
under whose auspices Sir Stafford Northcote himself had first
entered public life. In oratory he was no match for Mr.
Gladstone, and his physical vigour was already seriously im
paired by his incessant Parliamentary labours from 1877 to
1880. His difficulties, moreover, did not arise merely from
the strength of his opponents. Among his own followers there
were those who distrusted and derided his leadership. Only
those, perhaps, who have led a discredited and dispirited Op
position can fully estimate his difficulties and are entitled to
criticise his strategy.
It may, however, be admitted that Sir Stafford Northcote
seemed never to forget that he had been Mr. Gladstone's
private secretary, and the recollection weakened, if it did not
paralyse, his powers of attack. At the best it was a case of
impar congressus Achilli, and the contest was the more unequal
because the leader of the Opposition had once played the part
of Patroclus to the great Parliamentary warrior. There were

8 EMINENT PERSONS
occasions, notably in the Bradlaugh dispute, when Sir Stafford
Northcote did not make the best of his opportunities ; there
were others, as frequently in the Egyptian debates, when he was
distinctly unequal to the occasion. But the best general is,
after all, he who wins the final victory, and it is not to be for
gotten that Sir Stafford Northcote led and marshalled the
majority which finally overthrew Mr. Gladstone's Government
in 1885. By this time, and, indeed, ever since the death of
Lord Beaconsfield, he had been universally recognised as joint
leader, together with Lord Salisbury, of the Conservative party.
It might, indeed, have been a question whether, on the fall of
Mr. Gladstone, Sir Stafford Northcote or Lord Salisbury should
be invited by the Queen to form a Conservative Government.
On the morrow of the sudden and melancholy death of an
honourable and respected statesman, we have no mind to follow
in detail the manoeuvres — or, as some might call them, the
intrigues — which resulted in the deposition of Sir Stafford
Northcote from the leadership of the House of Commons and
his elevation as Earl of Iddesleigh to the House of Lords. The
whole episode will be in the recollection of all our readers, and
it forms no very creditable chapter in the recent history of the
Conservative party. Lord Iddesleigh became First Lord of the
Treasury in Lord Salisbury's first Government, and when, on
the defeat of Mr. Gladstone at the last general election, Lord
Salisbury again became Prime Minister, he was nominated to
the important and highly responsible post of Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs. This appointment naturally caused some
surprise, since it was manifest to all who saw him that Lord
Iddesleigh's powers were failing. For a time, however, he dis
charged the duties of his laborious office with credit, industry,
and discretion, being assisted in all the more important negotia
tions by the skill and experience of the Prime Minister in
person. How the solidarity of the Government was impaired,
and even its existence for a moment imperilled by the sudden
resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill, and how, as the result
of the changes which ensued, the Foreign Secretary was some
what clumsily removed from his post, is matter of current
history, on which at the present moment it is not altogether
pleasant to dwell. Lord Iddesleigh's death may, perhaps, be
held to show that there were reasons which justified his removal
in the interests of the public service ; but it is difficult not to

LORD IDDESLEIGH 9
think that a necessary duty might have been discharged with a
more tender regard for a singularly sensitive, modest, and
chivalrous nature.
After all, however, the late Foreign Secretary may be said to
have been felix opportunitate mortis. He has been spared the
mortification of realising the failure of his powers, and the loss
of consideration among his colleagues and associates which that
failure might have entailed. He has passed away suddenly and
painlessly in the midst of universal respect. He has not, like
Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne, been left to discover that his
colleagues and successors thought him no longer fit for the
active service of his country. His memory will survive as a
man of great capacity well employed, of great opportunities
patriotically used, of unfailing courtesy, of the most perfect
temper, of rare self-sacrifice — in a word, of all those qualities
which are combined in an English statesman who is also an
English gentleman. In private life Lord Iddesleigh was one of
the most genial and entertaining of companions. He was not
perhaps a brilliant political speaker, though he occasionally told
a racy story with rare felicity of application. But his nxitis
sapientia, his ample stores of felicitous anecdote, and his abund
ant humour, far more copious than his public utterances would
indicate, made him one of the most charming of social com
panions. He belonged to a type of which modern political life
does not furnish many examples. He once said of himself that
he was deficient in " go." Perhaps he was ; but those who
have abundance of " go " might often with the greatest advan
tage cultivate some of those rarer and gentler qualities of mind,
heart, and temper, the stock of which in English public life
has been sensibly diminished by the sudden removal of Lord
Iddesleigh.

SIR JOSEPH WHITWORTH
Obituary Notice, Monday, January 24, 1887
We regret to announce the death of Sir Joseph Whitworth.
With him disappears the greatest name of our time in mechanical
engineering — a person of remarkable individuality, and one
whose efforts have left a permanent impress upon the work
shops, not only of this country, but of the whole civilised
world. His biography is highly instructive. He was born
at Stockport on the 21st of December 1803, and received the
first part of his scanty education at a school kept there by his
father. At twelve he was removed to Mr. Vint's academy at
Idle, near Leeds, where he remained for another year and a
half ; but at fourteen we find him placed with his uncle, a
cotton spinner in Derbyshire — his school days over and the
business of life begun. During the six years spent here he
taught himself to work all the machines used in the factory,
of which, though so young, he became practically the manager.
His uncle so highly appreciated his usefulness that he wished
him to stay, but young Whitworth felt that there was nothing
to learn there, and, knowing that he could not escape in any
other fashion, he ran away to Manchester. Here for four more
years, at the works of Messrs. Crighton and elsewhere, he
acquired a practical knowledge of the manufacture of cotton
machinery, and he also developed those habits of persevering
industry and frugal self-denial which in after years made his
character so peculiar and interesting a study.
At that time the application of steam-power to the processes
of the Lancashire mills was in its infancy, and a special need
existed for good tools to assist in the change. But Whitworth

SIR JOSEPH WHITWORTH 11
though he saw the want and the great opportunity it presented,
was determined not to enter on the field without the fullest
preparation. Therefore he resolved to go to London and gain
what experience he could in the best workshops of the metropolis.
He went, of course, to Maudslay's, and his superior skill being
at once manifest, he was taken into Mr. Maudslay's own private
workroom and placed next to Jris best workman, one Hampson.
After the day's labour was over he had always employment at
home, and it was in this way that he completed the true plane,
exhibiting it one night with pride to Hampson, whose sole
comment was " You've done it." From Maudslay's, Whitworth
went to Holtzapffel's and then to Clements', where Mr.
Babbage's celebrated calculating machine was on hand at the
time. Upon this machine Whitworth worked, being paid for
what he did by the hour. He always maintained that the
calculating machine would have worked perfectly had it been
proceeded with, and recent remarkable progress in the direction
of mechanical calculators tends to confirm his opinion.
In. 1833, when he was thirty, having acquired all the
experience attainable in the best machine shops of London,
having completed the true plane himself, and having been
taught by Clements how to make a true screw, Mr. Whitworth
commenced business on his own account in Manchester as a
manufacturer of engineers' tools — "Manchester tools," as they
then began to be called. Bear in mind what was then the
state of things in all the machine shops of the country, but
especially of Lancashire — nothing done to systematise, no
standards of reference, no exactitude. It was requisite to
establish the primary conditions of orderly production, if fearful
sources of waste and terrible expenditure in repairs were to be
avoided. At the root of order and method lay the true plane
and the power of refined measurement, which truth of surface
and the true screw now placed within reach of the mechanician.
Whitworth's standard gauges, his taps and dies, his uniform
system of screw-threads, his great refinements in the manu
facture of lathes, planing -machines, drills, etc., all became
available at the moment when they had become indispensable,
if chaos was to be avoided in our machine shops, and if the
imperative demands for mechanical appliances in every direction
were to be worthily met. The forward industrial movement
of the century was upon us in full swing, and it had to be met

12 EMINENT PERSONS
somehow, if railways, and steamships, and steam -navvies, and
the other vast developments of modern invention were to have
any reasonable chance of establishing themselves. From 1833
to 1851 Mr. Whitworth worked steadily in this direction,
turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, but content
to appear in the great Exhibition at Hyde Park as a maker of
engineers' tools, and showing as his best credentials in that
respect the true plane and the measuring-machine indicating
to the millionth of an inch. The world was astonished by such
a revelation of accuracy and refined workmanship, and soon
after events occurred which strikingly enforced the lessons
thus taught.
The Crimean War began, and Sir Charles Napier demanded
of the Admiralty 120 gunboats, each with engines of 60
horse-power, for the campaign of 1855 in the Baltic. There
were just ninety days in which to meet this requisition, and,
short as the time was, the building of the gunboats presented
no difficulty. It was otherwise, however, with the engines,
and the Admiralty were in despair. Suddenly, by a flash of
the mechanical genius which was inherent in him, the late Mr.
John Penn solved the difficulty, and solved it quite easily. He
had a pair of engines on hand of the exact size. He took them
to pieces and he distributed the parts among the best machine
shops in the countrj', telling each to make ninety sets exactly
in all respects to sample. The orders were executed with
unfailing regularity, and he actually completed ninety sets of
engines of 60 horse-power in ninety days — a feat which made
the great Continental Powers stare with wonder, and which
was possible only because the Whitworth standards of measure
ment and of accuracy and finish were by that time thoroughly
recognised and established throughout the country. Nor was
this the only illustration which the Crimean War supplied in
this matter. A steam fleet was then for the first time attended
by a steamship fitted up for making such repairs as could be
effected promptly at sea after an action. Such an arrangement
would have been useless to attempt before Whitworth had
established order and system in mechanical engineering.
In 1853 Mr. Whitworth went to America as one of the
Royal Commissioners to the New York Exhibition, and in that
capacity he drew up a special report on American manufacturing
industry, which attracted much attention at the time, and

SIR JOSEPH WHITWORTH 13
which the lapse of more than thirty years, with their great
relative changes, leaves still invested with considerable interest.
For example, it was then firmly believed that the relations
between capital and labour had received a final and complete
solution in the United States ; but, whatever Americans them
selves may think, that is not the opinion of other civilised
countries now. On his return home Mr. Whitworth, under the
influence of the first Lord Hardinge, began to study the prin
ciples of construction underlying the manufacture of rifles and
rifled artillery. So eager was the War Office of that day to
avail itself of this experience that a shooting gallery 500 yards
long was actually erected at its expense in Mr. Whitworth's
private grounds at Rusholme, near Manchester, in order that he
might make the requisite experiments under favourable con
ditions, and without interruption.
The " Woolwich Ring " had not then come into existence,
or, at least, if it did exist, had not established its ascendency
at headquarters in Pall Mall. The investigations conducted by
Mr. Whitworth in his new shooting gallery were of the utmost
importance and interest. In fact, the conclusions arrived at
have worked a complete revolution in the manufacture of arms
of precision, and all modern rifles, whatever name they may
bear, are substantially founded on Mr. Whitworth's demonstra
tion that an elongated projectile (from three to five diameters),
with a rapid rotation and a quick uniform rifling pitch of poly
gonal form, lay at the root of the whole matter. This was true,
not only for small arms, but, with modifications, for all sizes of
ordnance. Let any one interested in this subject, and with a
candid mind, go to 24 Great George Street and study the
diagrams, suspended there as in a museum, of results obtained
by Mr. Whitworth in his shooting gallery experiments. The
collection of objects is not more interesting for its practical
value than as a striking indication of the manner in which a
mind of the highest inventive order works towards its objects.
The patience, the step by step progress of investigation, the
certainty with which conclusions once fairly reached are grasped
— finally, the systematic and orderly form in which all truth,
but mechanical truth especially, tends to arrange itself — all
these things are particularly manifest.
Mr. Whitworth had not been long committed to the inquiry
as to the principles upon which the manufacture of rifled small

14 EMINENT PERSONS
arms and ordnance should be conducted before he found himself
more or less arrested by the subject of material. He knew that
the best material (mild steel), even if it could be had in the
most perfect condition, was hardly good enough for the work to
be performed. Mild steel, however, from its very nature, was
specially unreliable. The quality which gave it toughness and
ductility tended, in cooling from the molten state, to imprison
the escaping gases and cause unsoundness. This unsoundness
might remain latent until a strain came on the defective spot,
and then there might be a catastrophe as in the case of the
" Thunderer " big gun and others. Mr. Whitworth set himself
resolutely to grapple with this difficulty. It had existed for
years, and its evils were widely recognised. More especially
had it become urgent to find a solution since the introduction
first of the grand Bessemer, and subsequently of the not less
valuable Siemens-Martin processes. He used for his purpose
great hydraulic presses with which to squeeze the molten metal
in the act of cooling, thus driving the particles into closer con
tact and liberating the gases. It is a wonderful sight to see
these presses in operation and to watch the results. A commis
sion of inquiry into the methods of heavy ordnance manufacture
abroad appointed quite recently by the United States, after
witnessing this process at the very close of its investigation,
declared it to be " a complete revelation." Yet Woolwich saw
it in vain for years, and it was only when the Admiralty on
one side and Elswick on the other practically recognised that
Whitworth metal had the exceptional qualities of strength,
ductility, and soundness claimed for it that they have at last
begun to use it.
Of the tests to which Whitworth rifles were subjected at
Hythe and Wimbledon, and which Whitworth guns had to
sustain at Shoeburyness and in other places before the Arm
strong and Whitworth Committee and other judges, we cannot
treat worthily within the limits of an obituary notice. Suffice
it to say, that the Queen opened the first Wimbledon meeting
on 2nd July 1860 by firing from a mechanical rest a Whit
worth rifle, at a range of 400 yards, and hitting the target
within an inch and a quarter of the centre of the bull's-eye.
In 1858 from the " Stork " gunboat Mr. Whitworth at 450 yards
first completely penetrated a 4-inch armour plate fixed to the
side of Her Majesty's ship "Alfred." In 1862 he sent a flat-

SIR JOSEPH WHITWORTH 15
fronted steel shell through a target of 4j-inch plating, backed
with 18 inches of teak, representing the side of the "Warrior."
he was also the first to demonstrate the possibility of exploding
armour shells without using any kind of fuse, and his experi
ments with flat-headed shot to avoid ricochet and penetrate
armour obliquely and ships under the water-line still remain,
after the lapse of nearly a quarter of a century, to have their
undoubted practical value fully recognised by Woolwich.
In 1857 Mr. Whitworth was made a Fellow of the Royal
Society, LL.D. of Trinity College, Dublin, and D.C.L. of Oxford
University. At the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867 he
took for his fine collection of engineers' tools and rifled ordnance
and projectiles one of the five "Grands Prix" allotted to
England, and during the visit of the late Emperor of the
French to the camp at Chalons in September 1868 he was so
pleased with one of the Whitworth field-guns tried there that
he conferred upon the inventor the distinction of the Legion of
Honour. The Albert Gold Medal was also awarded to Mr.
Whitworth by the Council of the Society of Arts "for the
invention and manufacture of instruments of measurement and
uniform standards, by which the production of machinery has
been brought to a degree of perfection hitherto unapproached."
When it is borne in mind that among the recipients of this
honour since deceased are the names of Professor Faraday, Sir
Charles Wheatstone, and Sir Rowland Hill, its value will be
the more fully appreciated.
In 1869 Mr. Whitworth was created a baronet, in conjunc
tion with his distinguished contemporary Sir William Fairbairn.
Early in that year he had founded and endowed the Whitworth
scholarships, assigning for the purpose £3000 a year in per
petuity, or the interest on a capital sum of £100,000. The
fund was vested in the Lord President of the Privy Council or
other Minister of public instruction for the time being, and its
administration, now reaching over a period of nearly twenty
years, has been highly satisfactory and successful. Sir Joseph
Whitworth's object, as he expressed it to Mr. Disraeli in the
letter announcing his intention, was to promote the mechanical
and engineering industry of the country by a system of scholar
ships — the prizes of competition accessible on fairly equal terms
to the. student who combined some practice with his theory,
and to the intelligent artisan who united some theoretical

16 EMINENT PERSONS
knowledge with perfection of workmanship. It will be readily
understood how eagerly this distinction is now sought for by
the young ilite of the busy machine shops throughout the
country, so that to them a Whitworth scholarship has become
very much what the V.C. is to the soldier.
Munificent endowment to take effect after death is common
enough, and, perhaps justly, does not excite any superfluous
emotion of gratitude ; but for a man who has worked strenu
ously to make his fortune, and, knowing its full value, is fond
of money, to part with it in his lifetime for the promotion of
great public objects — that is a sacrifice which speaks for itself,
and cannot in this intensely self-seeking age be too highly
commended for imitation. Besides what this noble endowment
reveals him to have been in character, Sir Joseph Whitworth
was fond of landscape gardening, and finding a great stone
quarry on his property in Darley Dale, Derbyshire, he con
verted it into a very remarkable and highly picturesque rock
garden, making the quarry furnish the cost of the transforma
tion. Sir Joseph Whitworth was also fond of trotting horses,
and his mare Kate had a wide reputation in and round Man
chester. Altogether his was a character as strongly marked as
can well be imagined, and proving what possibilities of achieve
ment lie within the reach of any lad in this country who will
cultivate assiduously his opportunities in life, and has the
genius and the self-restraint indispensable for success.

LORD LYONS
Obituary Notice, Tuesday, December 6, 1887
We regret to announce the fatal termination of Lord Lyons'
brief illness. Only a week ago, while staying at Norfolk House,
he was stricken with paralysis, and it was at once perceived that
he had little chance of recovery. It was reported a few days
ago that Lord Lyons had been received into the Roman Catholic
Church. We have received the following statement as to the
circumstances attending this event : " He spoke about the
change of his religion six weeks ago. Since then, and even
before he went regularly to attend daily mass, he was engaged
in serious religious studies. He intended, as soon as he felt he
was prepared, to be received into the Church of Rome, but up
to the time of his illness, which occurred on Monday, 28th
November, he had not taken the final step. After his seizure
it is extremely doubtful to what extent he retained consciousness ;
but the Bishop of Southwark (Dr. Butt), with whom for some
time he had had consultations, felt so convinced of his disposition
and intention, that he received him into the Church and
administered to him extreme unction."
This distinguished diplomatist, Richard Bickerton Pemell,
second Baron and first Viscount and Earl Lyons, came of an old
family originally settled in Antigua, and united by marriage
with one of the best families in the United States. Henry
Lyons, of Antigua, and some time of Philadelphia, married a
daughter of Samuel Winthrop, grandson of John Winthrop, first
Governor of Massachusetts. His descendant Edmund, the first
Baron Lyons, was born at Burton, in Hampshire (England),
21st November 1790. He early entered upon a naval career,
vol. iv c

18 EMINENT PERSONS
and after seeing a quarter of a century of active service, in 1827
he was appointed to the " Blonde," with which he took part in
blockading Navarino. The " Blonde " was the first English man-
of-war that ever entered the Black Sea. On the formation of the
independent kingdom of Greece, Admiral Lyons was commis
sioned to convey King Otho and his suite to Athens. He was
knighted and appointed British Minister to the new Court,
where he resided for fourteen years. In February 1849 he
became British Minister at Berne, and in 1851 was transferred
to Stockholm. When the Crimean War broke out, Admiral
Lyons was appointed second in command of the Black Sea fleet,
and on the retirement of Admiral Dundas in December 1854
he succeeded to the chief command. He performed many
brilliant naval services, and during the siege of Sebastopol,
whenever opportunity was afforded, he constantly traversed the
lines in front of the fortress, participating also in the military-
operations. When he returned to England he was the recipient
of numerous honours and ovations, and on 23rd June 1856 he
was called to the House of Lords as Baron Lyons of Christchurch.
Admiral Lord Lyons married Augusta Louisa, daughter of
Captain Josias Rodgers, R.N., and by her he had issue two sons
and two daughters. The elder son was the peer now deceased.
The second son, Captain Edmund Mowbray Lyons, R.N., who
was unmarried, highly distinguished himself in the Crimea, and
was killed in action in 1855. The Admiral's elder daughter,
Anne Theresa Bickerton Lyons, married the Baron Von
Wiirtzburg, of Bavaria, and the younger espoused the fourteenth
Duke of Norfolk. The former lady still survives, but the
(Dowager) Duchess of Norfolk died in 1886.
Earl Lyons, whose death we now record, was born at
Lymington on 26th April 1817. He was educated at Winchester
and at Christchurch, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1838
and M.A. in 1843. At twenty-two years of age he entered the
diplomatic service, being appointed unpaid Attache at Athens ;
in October 1844 he became paid Attache at that place, where
he remained until 1852. He was then transferred to Dresden,
and in 1853 went thence to Florence. In 1856 he was
appointed Secretary of Legation at Florence, and advanced to
the rank of Envoy in 1858. In the latter year he succeeded
his father in the barony and the baronetcy.
Lord Lyons was soon to find his skill as a diplomatist put

LORD LYONS 19
to a severe test, for in December 1858 he was sent out to
Washington as British Representative to the United States. In
little more than two years after his arrival there, the great
American Civil War broke out. Lord Lyons had a very difficult
part to play. He was instructed in the outset to give no advice,
unless requested to do so by the contending parties, but at the
same time he was to express on every fitting occasion the earnest
desire entertained by Her Majesty's Government that the differ
ences between the North and South might be peacefully
adjusted. The affair of the British mail steamer " Trent," with the
seizure of the Confederate Commissioners, Messrs. Slidell and
Mason, in November 1861, nearly led to a rupture between
England and the United States. It became Lord Lyons' duty
to consider whether he should at once demand the release of the
prisoners, or await instructions from his chief. He chose the
latter course, not one word on the subject passing between him
and Mr. Seward till the arrival of despatches from Lord
Russell. Lord Russell instructed Lord Lyons to demand the
release of the Commissioners with a suitable apology. Mr.
Seward, on behalf of the American Government, claimed that
Messrs. Slidell and Mason were contraband of war ; but this
was strenuously denied by Lords Russell and Lyons, and the
note of the British Government was supported by communica
tions from France, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Italy. Lord
Lyons waited upon Mr. Seward, and informed him that he had
received instructions to leave Washington in seven days unless
the British demands were complied with. Eventually, and after
a lengthy diplomatic correspondence, the basis of a settlement
was arrived at, and the American Government stated that the
friendly spirit and the discretion which Lord Lyons had mani
fested in the whole matter, from the day on which the intelli
gence of the seizure reached Washington, had more than
anything else contributed to the satisfactory settlement of the
question. The affair of the " Trent " was the last public matter
which engaged the attention of the Prince Consort ; and the
great anxiety he felt in regard to it rendered him the less able
to battle with the disease which had already seized upon him,
and which resulted in his premature and universally lamented
death. Lord Lyons conducted an intricate correspondence with the

20 EMINENT PERSONS
American Minister and with Earl RusseH on the subject of the
Declaration of Paris, and on the question of the blockade of the
Southern ports. Also, on the 7th of April 1862, he concluded
at Washington, on behalf of Her Majesty, a treaty with the
United States for the suppression of the slave trade. The
treaty, which gave extensive rights of search to the cruisers of
both nations, was hailed with satisfaction in this country.
During the progress of the war Lord Lyons was further engaged
in important correspondence with the Home Government upon
such questions as the proposed recognition of the Southern Con
federacy, President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the
case of the Alabama, and other matters.
The anxieties of the period during which his lordship repre
sented Great Britain at Washington told severely upon his
health. On personal grounds he would have desired an earlier
relief from the excessive strain, but he could not be spared.
However, in February 1865, Lord Lyons resigned his position
as Envoy Extraordinary to the United. States, and was succeeded
by Sir F. A. Bruce. Taking only a few months' rest from the
public service, in the following August his lordship was
appointed Ambassador at Constantinople. He remained in the
Turkish capital for barely two years, and was then transferred
to Paris, taking up his abode as British Minister at the French
Court in July 1867.
Lord Lyons succeeded a very capable diplomatist, Earl
Cowley, but he was not long before he justified his appointment
to this onerous post. His tact and urbanity made him a
successful Minister, and one whose advice was frequently
solicited and acted upon by the Emperor Napoleon. He was
unable, however, to stem the tide of martial aggressiveness
which burst all bounds in 1870, and plunged France into her
most disastrous conflict with Germany. Lord Lyons had
repeated interviews with the Due de Grammont on the candi
dature of the Prince of Hohenzollern for the Spanish throne,
the immediate and ostensible cause of the war. He declined,
however, to pledge the good offices of England to bring pressure
to bear upon the King of Prussia on the question of expressly
forbidding the Hohenzollern candidature, though he stated that
Her Majesty's Government were most anxious to effect a recon
ciliation between France and Prussia.
A final effort was made by England to avert war, but in

LORD LYONS 21
vain. Then the conflict burst forth in all its fury. France
was humbled at the feet of Prussia, and after a series of over
whelming disasters the Emperor Napoleon surrendered at Sedan.
The French Republic was proclaimed, and the war still pro
ceeded. The Germans marched upon Paris, but before the
investment of the city began Lord Lyons sent a letter by Mr.
(now Sir Edward) Malet, Secretary to the British Embassy in
Paris, asking whether Count Bismarck would confer with M.
Jules Favre on the conditions of an armistice. Lord Lyons
could not have employed a better intermediary, and Count
Bismarck consented to an interview. In the end, nevertheless,
M. Favre returned to Paris dispirited, and the German condi
tions were rejected by the Government of National Defence.
Paris was soon surrounded by German soldiers, and the
siege began. All the foreign Ambassadors left the capital, with
the exception of Mr. Washburne, Minister of the United States.
In the English Parliament certain animadversions were made
upon Lord Lyons regarding the manner of his withdrawal from
Paris. His lordship departed for Tours with a section of the
Provisional Government, which England, together with several
other Powers, had already recognised as the de facto Govern
ment of France. Subsequently defending himself for this step
in a letter to Lord Granville, Lord Lyons said he conceived it
to be his duty at the time neither to reject the advice of the
French Minister for Foreign Affairs nor to separate himseK from
his principal colleagues. He considered that it would be on all
accounts inexpedient to allow himself to be shut up in Paris
and to be deprived of all speedy and satisfactory means of com
municating with the English Foreign Office. His lordship, as
a matter of fact, had no sooner left Paris than all communica
tion by road with the city was intercepted, and the last tele
graphic wire was cut. The minor diplomatists who were left
with Mr. Washburne in the besieged city were refused by the
German authorities all facilities for corresponding with their
Governments otherwise than by open letters. Lord Lyons
accompanied the delegation of the Government first to Tours
and subsequently to Bordeaux, and his action was accepted by the
French as conclusive proof of the desire of Her Majesty's
Government to maintain intimate and friendly relations with
them, while his doing so ensured the most effectual means of
maintaining communications with London. It will readily be

22 EMINENT PERSONS
admitted that all through the critical period of the Franco-
German war he acted with great discretion and resolution.
In 1873 Lord Lyons concluded negotiations with the French
Government for the renewal of the Commercial Treaty which
the Emperor Napoleon had made with England in 1860, but
which M. Thiers had superseded by a Convention more in con
formity with his own Protectionist predilections. It was agreed
to maintain the system in force before the fall of the Empire
until the end of the year 1876. When Queen Victoria visited
the Continent in 1876 Lord Lyons had the honour of receiving
Her Majesty at La Villette, and introduced to her the French
President, Marshal MacMahon. His lordship continued to hold
the appointment of Ambassador at Paris until November of the
present year, when he resigned and was succeeded by the Earl
of Lytton. It is understood that Lord Lyons was offered the
Secretaryship of Foreign Affairs by Lord Salisbury in 1886.
When his retirement was announced five weeks ago, our
Paris correspondent sent us the following estimate of his
character and abilities :
" England has probably few diplomatists capable of treating
an affair with more correctness and precision. He was incap
able of going beyond the intentions of his Government, or of
committing a blunder which his chiefs would have to repair.
His capacity for work even to the last was striking, and no
matter entrusted to him, whatever the effort it required, ever
suffered an hour's delay. He was discretion itself. But if he
said nothing of what he knew, he was honest enough not merely
to say nothing contrary to what he knew, but to tell you if you
were on a false tack.
" He was always unostentatious and affable, and there was
not, I think, any great variety in his methods of approaching
men and negotiating with them. He never took anybody by
surprise, but it was useless to try and surprise him. Affairs
capable of solution he always arranged ; affairs difficult to solve
he left, without further involving them. But he rarely settled
them ; for he never had one of those sudden inspirations which
frequently change the fate of battles. He was a methodical
diplomatist in his negotiations, in his mode of life, in his lists
of visitors and invitations ; and he might on New Year's Day
have almost decided as to the employment of his time for all
the ensuing year. Into this symmetrical life the unforeseen

LORD LYONS 23
entered with difficulty, and he returned to his beaten track as
soon as the incident which had drawn him from it was set aside
or arranged. It was never he who embroiled France with
England ; but he lacked the qualities necessary for bringing
them together again.
" He was entirely unknown outside diplomatic circles, and
the crowd, on seeing a man with a slight stoop looking vaguely
before him, buried in the corner of a modest but well-appointed
carriage, awkwardly lifting his hat when his saluter was already
at a distance, with every feature indicating desire for rest and
quiet, could little suspect that he was the Ambassador of the
most aristocratic of Republics.
" He had the prestige which still environs stately envoys who,
under impassive countenances, conceal the confidences of foreign
rulers ; especially when, as in his case, their lives furnish a
pattern of honour and self-respect. But he was not popular,
and had neither the wish nor the ability to become popular.
In a country where the street resembles a forum, in a nation
where everybody is ready to talk at any hour of the day or
night, and where an interested air will attract confidences, in a
society quite ready to be convinced, if the trouble of convincing
be taken, a country where a diplomatist should quit his desk
and mix in the world in order to combat a fallacy or a pre
judice, to smooth ruffled susceptibilities or irritated interests,
Lord Lyons watched the stir around him with an indifference,
not of disdain, but of temperament ; and could never see that
account had to be taken of human stupidity, which ends by
enacting laws and dictating orders. He represented, indeed, in
the fullest sense of the word the island which knows itself to
be respected and safe from dreams of conquest, with resources
enough at home to enable it to care little what is granted or
refused it abroad."
Lord Lyons was made a K.C.B. in 1860, was advanced to
the rank of G.C.B. in 1862, and was sworn a member of the
Privy Council on 9th March 1865. At the Oxford Commemora
tion in June 1865 he received the honorary degree of D.O.L.
In November 1881 he was created Viscount Lyons, of Christ
church, in the county of Southampton, and on his resignation
this autumn he was advanced to an earldom.

SIR HENRY MAINE
Obituary Notice, Monday, February 6, 1888
Henry James Sumner Maine was born in 1822, and was the
son of Dr. James Maine, a medical man who resided, we believe,
in Oxfordshire. He was educated at Christ's Hospital, and
went in due course to Pembroke College, Cambridge. His
University career was exceptionally brilliant. In 1842 he
carried off the Browne's medal for a Greek ode, the Camden
medal, and the Chancellor's medal for English verse. Next
year he was elected Craven Scholar, and obtained the Browne's
medal for a Latin ode and epigrams. He took his degree in
1844, being Senior Classic, Senior Chancellor's Classical
Medallist, and Senior Optime in Mathematics. He obtained no
Fellowship at his own College, there being no vacancy at the
time, but he was speedily invited to become Tutor of Trinity
Hall, the college of which he was afterwards elected Master.
He held his Tutorship for two years, and in 1847, at the un
usually early age of twenty -five, he was appointed Regius Pro
fessor of Civil Law. He held this office until 1854, when he
relinquished it, in order to undertake the post of Reader in
Jurisprudence at the Middle Temple. He had been called to
the Bar in 1850, being a member both of Lincoln's Inn and of
the Middle Temple. He was elected a Bencher of the latter
Inn in 1873.
The years between 1847 and 1861 were devoted by Sir
Henry Maine to study and teaching in connection with those
departments of law and the history of institutions which are
now inseparably associated with his name and fame. With one
exception, it was not until the latter year that the results of his

SIR HENRY MAINE 25
studies were given to the world in any more permanent form
than the lectures' which he delivered as Professor at Cambridge
or Reader at the Middle Temple. The exception is significant
of the drift his studies were taking. In 1856 he contributed
to the Cambridge Essays an essay on " Roman Law and Legal
Education." But his rare literary gifts were not entirely
unemployed. Like so many of his contemporaries since dis
tinguished in various departments of literature, such as Mr.
Justice Stephen, his lifelong friend, Mr. Goldwin Smith, Pro
fessor Freeman, the late Rector of Lincoln, and others, he
became a frequent contributor to periodical literature and
journalism, his relations with which, indeed, were never entirely
severed. His last work, Popular Government, originally ap
peared in the form of articles contributed to the Quarterly
Review, and the readers of the Times have not unfrequently
been delighted by essays from his pen on topics of current
interest and reviews of books dealing with subjects in which he
was specially interested.
It was not, however, until after 1861, when Sir Henry
Maine's first important work on Ancient Law was published,
that his rare gifts and attainments began to be discerned and
appreciated by the general world of letters. His reputation
was established at a single stroke. Ancient Law was, in the
strictest sense of the word, an epoch-making book, and it
appeared at a fortunate moment. The Origin of Species had
been published some fifteen months earlier, and, widely differ
ent as are the scope and subject matter of the two works, there
is more than a chronological connection between them. The
pregnant conception of evolution is the link that binds them
together. The Origin of Species applies this conception to the
phenomena of biology. Ancient Law applies it to the phenomena
of law and society. Both works are signal illustrations of that
great movement of modern thought which has made evolution
the key of science and the comparative method the key of
history. Maine was not, of course, as great an originator as Darwin.
His name is not indissolubly linked, like Darwin's, with a
great luminous conception which has revolutionised a whole
department of thought and inquiry. He was preceded in the
application of the comparative method to jurisprudence by the
great school of German jurists who acknowledge Savigny as

26 EMINENT PERSONS
their chief. But in England he was a pioneer. His first
work, Ancient Law: its Connection with the Early History of
Society and its Relation to Modern Ideas, broke what was entirely
new ground to Englishmen in the study of jurisprudence. It
exhibited a method which has since become the common instru
ment of students in the same regions of inquiry, and its effect
was all the greater because this method was employed with a
dexterity of manipulation and a felicity of literary presentation
which have rarely been surpassed. The style was so lucid, the
reasoning was so clear and cogent, the illustrative matter was
so aptly chosen, the analogies were so dexterously handled, the
survey was so broad, the grasp of principles was so firm, the
whole fabric of the argument was articulated in so masterly a
fashion, that the reader was easily tempted to suppose that
Ancient Law must have been as easy to write as it was fascinat
ing to read.
Such a conclusion, however, was purely the creation of
Maine's unique literary method. He was not a rapid worker,
and he was utterly disdainful of display. There are some
writers whose books resemble a building from which the
scaffolding has never been removed. The solid fabric is there ;
but it is encumbered with all the mechanism of construction.
Maine's method was not less conscientious, nor were his struc
tures less solid, but as soon as his work was complete the
scaffolding was all swept away, and the finished structure alone
was left. Maine, in fact, combined the characteristics of a
profound student and a consummate literary artist. He bore
his learning lightly, but it was a burden such as few men
could have borne.
The effect of the publication of Ancient Law was profound.
It was at once recognised that a new and brilliant luminary
had arisen on the horizon of English letters, and that the light
shed by it was as penetrating as it was novel. Maine had
created in England a new method for the study of legal ideas
and the political institutions founded on them, and, though
many have since applied this method with great skill and
success, he has remained to the last its unrivalled master and
exponent. We cannot better describe this method than by
borrowing Sir Henry Maine's own account of it from his first
lecture on " Village Communities in the East and West "
"I think I may venture to affirm that the comparative

SIR HENRY MAINE 27
method, which has already been fruitful of such wonderful
results, is not distinguishable in some of its applications from
the historical method. We take a number of contemporary
facts, ideas, and customs, and we infer the past form of those
facts, ideas, and customs not only from historical records of
that past form, but from examples of it which have not yet
died out of the world, and are still to be found in it. When
in truth we have to some extent succeeded in freeing ourselves
from that limited conception of the world and mankind,
beyond which the most civilised societies and (I will add) some
of the greatest thinkers do not always rise ; when we gain
something like an adequate idea of the vastness and variety of
the phenomena of human society ; when in particular we have
learned not to exclude from our view of earth and man those
great and unexplored regions which we vaguely term the East,
we find it to be not wholly a conceit or a paradox to say that
the distinction between the present and the past disappears.
Sometimes the past is the present; much more often it is
removed from it by varying distances, which, however, cannot
be estimated or expressed chronologically. Direct observation
comes then to the aid of historical inquiry, and historical
inquiry to the help of direct observation. The characteristic
difficulty of the historian is that recorded evidence, however
sagaciously it may be examined and re-examined, can very
rarely be added to ; the characteristic error of the direct
observer of unfamiliar social or juridical phenomena is to com
pare them too hastily with familiar phenomena apparently of
the same kind. But the best contemporary historians, both of
England and of Germany, are evidently striving to increase their
resources through the agency of the comparative method, and
nobody can have been long in the East without perceiving and
regretting that a great many conclusions founded on patient
personal study of Oriental usage and ideas are vitiated through
the observer's want of acquaintance with some elementary facts
of Western legal history."
In 1862, a year after the publication of Ancient Law, Mr.
Maine was appointed Legal Member of the Governor-General's
Council, an office rendered illustrious not merely by its intrinsic
importance, but by its connection with the name of Macaulay
and his many distinguished successors. To no man of his time
could the appointment have been more congenial than to Maine.

28 EMINENT PERSONS
With his profound knowledge of law there was associated an
intellect of exceptional force and rare cultivation, specially
versed in the comparative study of institutions, and, as his
colleagues in the Government of India were soon to discover,
an aptitude and capacity for affairs which might have placed
him in the foremost rank of statesmen if he had not preferred
to remain a student. His service in India coincided mainly
with the viceroyalty of Lord Lawrence, who succeeded Lord
Elgin, and was succeeded by Lord Mayo, and it was again a
happy concurrence of circumstances which placed his legal
acquirements and the aptitudes generated by his special studies
at the service of the State in the carrying out of those reforms
in the land-tenures of India which are associated with the name
of Lord Lawrence.
Of his services in India it is not necessary here to speak at
length ; the recital would hardly be appreciated by any but
experts in Indian politics and history. His services to India
were happily not concluded when his appointment came to an
end. They are, indeed, though necessarily little known to the
public, the great achievement and the permanent record of his life,
even more, perhaps, than the admirable series of works which
has won for him a high place among the leaders of contemporary
English literature. He was appointed a member of the Council
of the Secretary of State for India in 1871, and from that time
till he left England a few weeks ago he has served his country
as one of its most trusted councillors in difficult and critical
affairs. He was not fond of official drudgery, and perhaps he
did less of routine work than some of his colleagues. By
superficial observers he was often thought to be somewhat
indolent ; but real indolence was impossible to a man of his
active mind, his sustained interest in affairs of moment, and his
truly statesmanlike grasp of their bearings and issues. Such
a man is better employed in reserving his judgment for matters
worthy of its exercise than in carrying on the mere routine of
public business.
Whenever Maine took up a subject seriously, he treated it
with a thoroughness and mastery peculiarly his own, and the
result was that when his opinion was given it rarely failed to
prevail. He was not prodigal of talk in matters of State, but
when he spoke he almost always settled the matter under debate.
His authority in matters of law was undisputed, but it was not

SIR HENRY MAINE 29
merely as a lawyer that he gave the best of his mind and life
to the service of India. His colleagues soon saw in him and
learnt to respect that rare gift of statesmanship, the power to
look before and after, which is so useful in the art of govern
ment and so little exercised in the art of Parliamentary manage
ment. He was cautious to the verge of timidity, sensitive to
criticism, and perhaps somewhat too prone to avoid it. This
was, perhaps, because he had no very high estimate of the worth
of public opinion, and had learnt by experience the danger and
mischief of subjecting critical affairs of State to the too direct
control of popular impulse, popular prejudice, or popular ignor
ance. No man had more keenly scrutinised than he had the
gradual evolution of popular government with all its short
comings and advantages. Probably no man felt more strongly
than he did the difficulty of reconciling the stability of institu
tions and the continuity of national policy with that form of
popular government which consists in the unmitigated supremacy
of a democratic legislature. Take him for all in all, however,
he had very few equals among those who have formed the
Council of the Secretary of State for India. In Sir Henry
Maine the State has lost one of its most valuable servants, and
the world of letters one of its most brilliant luminaries.
Soon after his return from India, Maine was elected to the
newly-created Corpus Professorship of Jurisprudence in the
University of Oxford. The Professorship was practically created
in order that he might hold it, and since he relinquished it, it
has in some respects been remodelled, though in Mr. Frederick
Pollock, who succeeded him, the University was fortunate enough
to find a professor admirably qualified, alike by the variety of
his accomplishments and the direction of his chosen studies, to
occupy the chair vacated by his distinguished predecessor.
During his tenure of the chair from 1871 to 1878, Sir
Henry Maine — who was created K.C.S.I. in 1871 on his
appointment to the Indian Council — delivered several series of
lectures, the substance of which was embodied in the successive
works published by him on the history of institutions and
cognate subjects. In the first series published on Village
Communities he brought his Indian experience to bear with
admirable effect on subjects which had long exercised his atten
tion, and combined it with a lucid exposition of the results
achieved in Germany by the researches in the same field of

30 EMINENT PERSONS
Von Maurer, Nasse, and others. This was followed in 1875
by Lectures on the Early History of Institutions, and in 1883 by
Dissertations on Early Law and Custom. These works are too
well known to all serious readers of modern literature to need,
any detailed notice on the present occasion. In 1875 Sir
Henry Maine delivered the Rede Lecture at Cambridge, charac
teristically choosing for his subject " The Effects of Observation
of India on Modern European Thought" ; and in 1878, shortly
before resigning his Professorship, he delivered a public lecture
at Oxford on " Modern Theories of Succession to Property after
Death, and the Corrections of them suggested by Recent Re
searches." As a lecturer, Sir Henry Maine was singularly effective.
His reputation attracted a large audience, chiefly of graduates,
to the little Hall of Corpus Christi College, where his lectures
were delivered, and those who came were never disappointed.
He had a powerful voice, a clear utterance, a dignified presence,
and a singular felicity in the distribution of emphasis so as to
make his points tell with full but by no means forced effect.
Such was the influence of Sir Henry Maine's mind and
personality on his contemporaries that distinctions and offices
were constantly thrust upon him without his seeking. In 1877
the Mastership of Trinity Hall became vacant by the death of
Dr. Geldart. Two candidates presented themselves — the Rev.
H. Latham, Senior Fellow, who had long served the College as
tutor with great devotion and success, and the late Professor
Fawcett, who was also a Fellow of the College. The electors
were unable to decide between the rival claims. After long
and fruitless negotiations between the supporters of the two
candidates, a compromise was agreed upon, and the Fellows
unanimously agreed to offer the vacant Mastership to Sir Henry
Maine. He accepted the office and retained it till his death,
though his duties as a member of the Indian Council compelled
him to retain his house in London and to reside only inter
mittently at the Master's lodgings at Cambridge. His heart
was in the India Office, and though he worthily represented
and embodied the legal traditions associated with Trinity Hall,
and discharged with fidelity, dignity, and geniality the official
and social duties of the Mastership, he took little active share
in the current business of the University.
In 1885 he was offered by the present Secretary of State for

SIR HENRY MAINE 31
India, at that time Home Secretary, the post of permanent
Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. He was
greatly gratified by the offer and was much tempted by it for
a time, but after fully considering the matter he concluded,
perhaps wisely, that at his age and with health which had
already given him ground for anxiety it was not advisable to
undertake entirely new duties of a very arduous character.
He resolved, in fact, that India had the first claim on his
services, and in this decision his friends could not but concur.
Maine would have been a tower of strength in any public
department ; but the department in which his strength could
be employed to the best advantage to the State and at the least
sacrifice to himself was that of India, to which his services had
been so long, so faithfully, and so ungrudgingly given.
Again, when the office of Chief Clerk of the House of
Commons became vacant by the resignation of Sir Erskine
May — afterwards created Lord Farnborough — in 1886, it was
offered by Mr. Gladstone, at that time Prime Minister, to Sir
Henry Maine. Maine declined the offer, though he fully
appreciated the compliment implied in it. The offer, indeed,
can only be explained by the high estimation in which Maine
was held in the public service, which probably engendered the
conviction that, while he was fully qualified to discharge the
duties of any office which he might think proper to undertake,
he might be trusted with equal confidence to decline any office
for which he felt himself unqualified.
Lastly, when Sir William Harcourt resigned the Professor
ship of International Law, founded by Whewell at Cambridge,
Sir Henry Maine was chosen, almost by public acclamation, as
his successor. This was a position specially suited to his genius,
and for which his studies and researches had qualified him
beyond all possible rivalry. He accepted it with pride and
gratification, but not without misgiving on account of his
health. He thought, however, that it ought to entail his resig
nation of his seat at the Indian Council, and he was only with
difficulty persuaded to postpone his resignation — which he had
announced to his friends on his election to the Chair — until
certain important matters, in which he was specially interested,
should be settled.
The contemplated preparation of his lectures on International
Law cost Sir Henry Maine much labour and anxiety. Many

32 EMINENT PERSONS
years ago, before he went to India, he had projected, and to a
great extent prepared, a work on International Law, intended
as a companion to, and conceived in the same spirit as, the well-
known work on Ancient Law. When he returned from India
the manuscript of this work could not be found, and we believe
it was never recovered. Accordingly, he had to begin the work
entirely afresh when his appointment to the Chair of Interna
tional Law at Cambridge required him to prepare a course of
lectures on the subject. He was not disconcerted or dismayed
by the loss of his early lucubrations. On the contrary, though
it entailed upon him heavy labour, he thought it in some
respects an advantage. His mind never ceased growing, his
subsequent studies and experience had expanded his conception
of his subject, and he thought that, even if he could recover his
lost manuscript, it would need to be largely recast in order to
make it represent adequately the point of view from which he
had come to regard the subject. Unhappily, death has now
frustrated his design.
So far as we have yet traced the literary history of Sir
Henry Maine's life in the record of his studies, researches, and
writings, it will be seen that it stands entirely aloof from the
region of practical politics. His interest in politics — apart
from Indian politics — was that of a philosophical and some
what indifferent observer. No one was more surprised and
entertained than he was when in the debates on the Irish Land
Bill of 1881 his dictum in Ancient Law on the historical rela
tions of Status and Contract was pressed into the service of
current political controversy. But in his last work on Popular
Government, published in 1885, just after the demise of the
Parliament which had enfranchised the rural householder, and
on the very eve of the general election of that year, he seemed
to the superficial observer to be inclined to descend from the
heights of political speculation and historical inquiry into the
noisy warfare of contemporary politics. This was not really
the case. Popular Government was in its essence the fruit of
the same sober and scientific spirit which had produced Ancient
Law. Sir Henry Maine's last work was the counterpart and com
plement of his first. It was an examination of those d, priori
theories of society and government which, originally emanating
from Rousseau, have almost unconsciously and imperceptibly

SIR HENRY MAINE 33
established themselves as the commonplaces of democratic
politics. Sir Henry Maine brought these theories to the bar of
experience and common-sense and compelled them to produce
their credentials. In so doing he necessarily adopted a more
polemical tone than when he was discussing the early history
of the family, and the origin of the Patria Potestas, or compar
ing the Praetorian jurisdiction at Rome with that of the Court
of Chancery. But the method was identical, and the results,
though less' conclusive, perhaps, in some cases, were none the
less instructive to all serious students of politics.
The influence and lessons of Popular Government are by no
means exhausted as yet. In fact, the real influence which the
book was entitled to exert was perhaps obscured, and in some
part intercepted for a time by the special circumstances of its
first appearance. It was regarded by many who might have
been expected to appreciate it more justly as what Mr. John
Morley described it in an electioneering speech, namely, "a
rattling Tory pamphlet under philosophical disguise." The
description was only so far true as it indicated the effect pro
duced by a work so brilliant, so epigrammatic, and withal so
difficult to gainsay or refute, on a mind qualified to appreciate
its rare literary excellence. " It seems to me," wrote Sir Henry
Maine to a friend who had called his attention to Mr. Morley's
criticisms, " that the test which he applies and which entitles
him to describe the book in the language he has used would
prevent any book of any sort touching on politics from being
thought impartial. Apparently he means that some of my
conclusions are unfavourable to advanced Radicalism and un
palatable to advanced Liberals. But there is much in the book
which is disagreeable to Tories also, as I have good reason to
believe. ... If there were an ideal Toryism, I should probably
be a Tory ; but I should not find it easy to say which party I
should wish to win now (in 1885). The truth is, India and
the India Office make one judge public men by standards which
have little to do with political opinion." Here we seem to have
Sir Henry Maine's political views in a nutshell. In politics
the welfare of India was all in all to him, and he knew that in
many respects it could only be secured by methods with which
popular government, as it is generally understood in Europe,
has very little in common. He cared more for good govern
ment than for party government, and he thought that the two

34 EMINENT PERSONS
were by no means necessarily nor universally identical. It is
characteristic of the man and his prepossessions that the last
serious literary work he undertook was a masterly essay on
India, worthy in all respects of his style and method at their
best, contributed to Mr. Humphry Ward's valuable compilation,
entitled " The Reign of Queen Victoria."
Those who knew Sir Henry Maine personally, and enjoyed
his society in moments of leisure and expansion, will be afflicted
no less than his official colleagues at his death. There were
more brilliant talkers among his contemporaries, but there were
few more charming and attractive companions. His conversa
tion was less epigrammatic than his writings. He used to
quote, with an approbation which implied far too modest an
estimate of his own powers of brilliant talk, the saying of a
French author, that " he kept all his good things for his books."
Sir Henry Maine did nothing of the kind ; but he did not
strive at epigram, and his presence and influence irradiated the
society in which he moved rather with a diffused and steady
effulgence than with brilliant but evanescent flashes. He was
singularly free from personal antipathies, and he never indulged
in personal animadversions. There was absolutely no rancour
in his disposition, and, so far as his utterances, public and
private, were concerned, he lived in charity with all men. His
affections were strong and his friendships lasting.
Sir Henry Maine was an F.R.S., and was elected in the
place of Emerson as a Foreign Associate of the French Academy
of Moral and Political Sciences. He had long been a member
of "The Club" founded by Dr. Johnson and his associates,
perhaps the most distinguished and select of literary societies in
London.

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM
Obituary Notice, Saturday, March 10, 1888
Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig, German Emperor and King of
Prussia, whose death Germany and all Europe are mourning
to-day, was born on the 22nd of March 1797, the second son of
the Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm and his wife, Princess
Louisa of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Six months after his birth
his father ascended the throne, to vacate it only after a reign of
forty-three years, in 1840. The rural retreat near Potsdam,
where his parents resided in an unpretending villa, did not
shelter the young Prince from the two opposite influences, then
rife in every part of the Continent. Friedrich Wilhelm IL,
his grandfather, affected to be a king after the haughty and
luxurious pattern of Louis XIV. ; Friedrich Wilhelm III., his
father, an adherent of the new school of philosophy, prided
himself upon being a man, a husband, and a philanthropist
rather than a king. While the Court retained the laxity
imparted by his predecessor, the new King, impotent to change
the manners of an entire generation of Ministers and Generals,
absented himself from the capital and led an idyllic life with
his beautiful spouse in the country.
Amid these striking antagonisms Prince William spent his
childhood. In the seclusion of Paretz, he was guided by the
hand of an upright, single-minded father ; in the splendour of
Berlin, his intercourse was with an aristocracy unduly elated
with the deeds of Frederick the Great, and lost in the effemin
acies of his successor's period. Thanks to the virtuous example
of his parents, thanks to the wise teachings of the Rev. Dr.
Delbriick, to whom his education was confided, the Prince

36 EMINENT PERSONS
learned to distinguish between the two sides of the picture
displayed before him. A composition on the duties of a man
and a Prince, handed by him to his father on confirmation,
affords remarkable proof of the solidity of his character at that
early age. He says in this memorable essay :
" I rejoice to be a Prince, because my rank in life will give
me many opportunities to help others. I am far from thinking
myself better than those occupying other positions. I am, on
the contrary, fully aware that I am a man exposed to all the
frailties of human nature ; that the laws governing the action
of all classes alike apply to me too ; and that with the rest of
the world I shall one day be held responsible for my deeds. To
be an indefatigable learner and striver for the good of my
country shall be the one aim of my public life."
His career has shown this a true expression of his senti
ments. The modesty, industry, and wish to serve others which
distinguished him as a youth adorned him throughout his long
life. Early Life
If his parents taught the Prince to esteem duty and work
above all else, the collapse of the opposite tendencies prevailing
in aristocratic circles confirmed the doctrine inculcated in his
father's house. An excellent man in intent, Friedrich Wilhelm
III. lacked the energy and confidence to impress his principles
upon the decaying civil and military service. The disaster
which ensued was in proportion to the stupid hauteur of digni
taries who were pleased to consider themselves invincible since
the Seven Years' War, though Frederick was gone, and his
associates had degenerated into routs. " We have fallen asleep
upon the laurels of Frederick the Great " was the melancholy
complaint of Queen Louisa after the defeat of Jena in 1806 had
almost annihilated the kingdom.
The flight of the Queen to Stettin, Konigsberg, and Memel
was shared by her children. In an open carriage, with only a
few attendants, the Queen and her sons drove in mid-winter
along the sea-shore to escape the enemy's pursuit. The Queen and
Prince William were laid up with typhus before arriving at
Memel. Six months more and they had to migrate to Tilsit,
where Napoleon forced the unfortunate Queen to receive him
and listen to his taunts. " Sire," replied the spirited lady, "it was

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 37
a pardonable error in the descendants of Frederick the Great to
overrate their strength." A flood of tears followed upon the
departure of the ungenerous victor, and when a few days after
the event Prince William was made Lieutenant, the Queen told
him it was his duty to assist in avenging his country. A year
later she died of a broken heart, with the foe still unexpelled.
Shortly before her death, in a letter to her father, the Grand
Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, she spoke warmly of the hero of
this notice :
" Prince William, unless I am greatly mistaken, will be like
his father in character — honest, guileless, and sensible. In
features, too, he resembles him more than any of my other
children, though scarcely as handsome. You see, dear papa, I
am still in love with my husband. ... It is, perhaps, as well
that our children should be made acquainted with the dark side
of life through our misfortunes. The grave countenance of their
father and their mother's frequent tears will teach them that
clouds and sunshine alternate."
About the same time Captain Reiepe, the military instructor
of Prince William, inscribed in his diary the following remarks
upon his pupil :
" Prince William learns easily, and has excellent practical
common-sense. He is strangely serious and sedate for his age,
and will make a reliable soldier and commander."
The next few years witnessed the civil and military reforms
which prepared the kingdom for the final struggle with the
usurper. The country people were emancipated from the last
lingering remnant of landlord control. The towns had fresh
charters conferred upon them. The guilds were abolished,
universal conscription introduced, and the highest culture and
rank made accessible to persons of all classes. Their institutions
being thus harmonised with the liberal spirit of the age, the
people thronged by tens of thousands into the ranks when the
day of reckoning with the foreigner came. The purposeless
apathy marking the reign of Frederick William II. was at an
end, and a new era of intellectual and political vigour set in.
The German style of enthusiasm, a peculiarly tough variety of
the fiery passion, equally grounded upon sentiment and thought,
came out strong. The Prussians fought fifty battles, entered
Paris twice, and took an active part- in remodelling the
Continent.

38 EMINENT PERSONS
Like his brothers, Prince William was with the army through
the whole campaign of 1813 and 1814. In the battle of
Barsur-Aube, he found occasion to distinguish himself by doing
Adjutant's service, and carrying orders into the thick of the
fight. He entered Paris, where he was appointed Major, and
returned to Berlin after an agreeable visit to London. The
Prince is said to have kept a journal during the campaign,
which, though as yet undivulged, may possibly one day be given
to the world. Though but seventeen, his conduct in the war
was that of a calm, cool, and self-possessed soldier. In 1828
the Prince was married at Weimar to Princess Augusta, eldest
daughter of the Grand Duke of Saxony and his wife Maria
Paulovna, Grand Duchess of Russia.
The twenty-five years which elapsed between the close of the
war and the death of Frederick William III. saw the maturing
of the political opinions of the Prince. It was a peculiarly
interesting period. The reconstruction of the German Empire
after the war had been prevented partly by the jealousy of
Russia and France, partly by the reluctance of Prussia and the
Liberals to readmit the half-foreign and wholly Ultramontane
Austria to the first place. But if the eminent share Prussia had
in the nation's defence protected her from being reduced to the
rank of a secondary power, under the control of an Austro-
German Kaiser, neither had she the strength to secure a recog
nised place at the head of the nation. As opposed to Austria
she was, no doubt, the representative of the national and liberal
movement in Germany. She had prepared for the war by
political reform, and carried it on by an enthusiastic uprising
of her population, from boy to veteran, the like of which has
never been witnessed in modern times. She had appointed
champions of culture and popular rights, Ministers, and, through
the mouth of her King, promised the revival on a modern basis
of the ancient representative institutions of the race. All this
made the Germans look to her as destined to assume the imperial
hegemony, gradually dropping away from Catholic, Slavified,
and reactionary Austria.
But the task was too much for Prussia. She would have
had to fight Austria and Russia had she listened to the popular
voice. She was clearly too weak for the gigantic enterprise
after three sanguinary campaigns against the western enemy.
Nor was the temper of her King of a colour to encourage him

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 39
to engage in the venture. Cautious, diffident, and reserved,
Frederick William III. had been too deeply shaken by the
vicissitudes of preceding campaigns to be raised up by their
victorious issue. Being also very methodic and conscientiously
devoted to the despatch of business details, his strong points,
as well as his weak, combined to make him prefer the labours
of peace to the glories of war. To international and personal
motives dissuading from another venture in the field came a
strong and easily intelligible reluctance to lean upon Liberalism
as the mainstay of his domestic and foreign policy.
Frederick William III. was anything but .a reactionary.
He had established municipal self-government ; he had emanci
pated the peasantry, curtailed the prerogatives of the nobility,
and thrown open the public service to all classes alike ; he had
introduced a Liberal commercial policy, abolished the duties
shutting off province from province, and done away with guilds.
Above all, he had made the schools the envy of the world ; he
had enacted an admirable and most effective code ; and he had
reorganised the civil service and judicature in so enlightened a
style, that for administrative skill and incorruptible integrity
the Prussian bureaucracy has since been justly lauded through
out Europe. To effect all this he had called in the help of the
best men of the time. Surrounded by the Humboldts and the
Steins, the Hardenbergs and the Schleiermachers, the Schons,
the Fichtes, and the Bockhs, he might well consider himself
to be marching at the head of his age and his country.
But if the aims of Liberalism were thus practically realised
by a judicious King, content to act as the chief of an intelligent
staff, accessible to all classes, this temperate potentate was the
less inclined to modify the form of government traditionally
handed down to him. There never had been much margin for
despotism in Brandenburg-Prussia. The rulers of the country
had to rely too unconditionally upon the good offices of the
inhabitants, and the race in the perils jeopardising its existence
had too early developed a rough and rugged temperament to
afford much latitude to the arbitrary whims of royalty. In a
history which was a continued struggle for dear life, there was
little room for anything except what was necessary, practical,
and improving. Had the people been less endowed with the
German capacity for hard thinking they would have degenerated
into a mere military tribe, as, in fact, there was danger at one

40 EMINENT PERSONS
time they would. However, they happily emerged from the
soldiering era of the last century to take rank as the leaders of
their nation in the arena of intellectual as well as military
progress. The same necessity which forced them to invent new
systems of infantry tactics, to devise the iron ramrod in 1740,
and the needle-gun in 1840, compelled the cultivation of the
nobler resources of the mind, and created a structure of society
and a form of government peculiarly calculated to develop the
individual. Nominally absolutist, the Prussian government
practically had long been a creditable arrangement for the
promotion of the public weal, by means of persons specially
educated for the performance of their task, and controlled by
the pervading common -sense and honour of a respectable
national type.
Derived from the history of the kingdom and royal family,
and grounded upon what appeared irrefragable reasoning, the
political creed of Frederick William III. was fully and entirely
endorsed by his sons. Prince William more especially approved
the Conservative leanings of his father. A clear reasoner from
his youth, his intellectual idiosyncracies developed the ability
to draw correct conclusions rather than to take in new and
enlarged views. Whenever he adverted to politics, he advocated
the maintenance of existing monarchical institutions as a primary
necessity of the State. His unflinching adherence to this
opinion, his refusal to discuss the possibility of a change, caused
him to be regarded as the hope of the Conservatives, the more
so as his elder brother had a vague poetic way of looking upon
politics which, less consistent and comprehensible, strongly
contrasted with the definite and seemingly immutable opinions
of the firm and outspoken William. Still it would be con
veying a wrong impression to say that the Prince took any
particular interest in politics during his father's life. As the
second son, only a few years the junior of his elder brother, he
did not look forward to ascending the throne, even though his
brother should remain childless, as he did ; and, his taste
agreeing with his prospects, he turned his attention to military
matters, not to affairs of State. The perfect acquaintance with
the condition and wants of the army which he acquired in that
period of his life eventually contributed as much to impart a
distinct character and surpassing success to his reign as any
political studies could have done.

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 41

Reign of Frederick William IV.
The reign of Frederick William IV., the elder brother and
predecessor of the deceased Emperor, lasted from 1840 to 1861.
During that time the flood-gates of Liberalism were thrown
open. By one of the most remarkable processes in the history
of the German mind, representative institutions were exacted
from a Conservative King by a people equally Conservative,
and who had every reason to be satisfied with the general
management of the State and the part played by their most
enlightened citizens in influencing public affairs. The only
tangible aim pursued by Liberals in insisting upon the con
vention of a Representative Assembly was the reunion of the
German States into a common whole. While a German Parlia
ment existed, the nation had been united ; since the downfall
of the Representative Assembly in 1806, the land had been
portioned out among its Princes, and the power and security of
the people gone. But this Eldorado of a reunited Germany
appeared altogether too distant and too visionary a scheme to
become the aim of a political movement. What the people
really yearned after was to vindicate their honour by an access
of prerogative. Their scholars had held forth upon the equity
of the claim. Their poets had advocated the Teuton's right to
representative government in flowing verse.
If a policy could have been devised expressly to develop this
semi-sentimental view and convert it into practical resolve, it
was the course held by Frederick William IV. Conservative
to his heart's core, his very Conservatism led him to reinstitute
Provincial Estates because they had existed 200 years before ;
while the identical principle prevented his bestowing upon them
more than deliberate rights, because the kings of Prussia had
been absolute for a century and a half. The controversy born
of this contrariety filled a period of nearly ten years, and, being
enlivened by royal reprimands, dealt right and left, wounded
and, by wounding, strengthened that very feeling of dignity
which was at the bottom of the whole movement.
At last public opinion was so deeply excited by the painful
and interminable conflict that, when Government required a
heavy loan to lay down railways, they could not conceal from
themselves the impossibility of getting it without a Parliamen-

42 EMINENT PERSONS
tary vote, and to obtain this vote King Frederick William IV.
was reluctantly prevailed upon to convoke the first United Diet
of the Monarchy — a Diet, that is to say, composed of all the
Provincial Assemblies — which met at Berlin on the 11th of
April 1847. The Prince of Prussia, as well as one Herr von
Bismarck, of Schonhausen, in the Old Mark — as yet unknown to
him and the world — who sat in the Diet, beheld this beginning
of Parliamentary life with misgivings and aversion. It is true
that he ultimately yielded to the majority of his brother's
counsellors ; but, more practical than his royal "frire poHe," who,
when opening the Diet, swore that he would never allow a sheet
of paper to come between the Lord God in heaven and his
subjects, Prince William sadly foresaw the consequences of this
first Constitutional step taken by the King. And these con
sequences were not long in coming — they came, indeed, in less
than a single year.
In Prussia the revolution of 1848 began with the enactment
of a bond fide charter. With his principles the Prince could
not but object to the sudden surrender of the royal prerogative
to an Assembly elected by manhood suffrage. Yet when the
change had been consummated by his brother, the Prince,
seeing everything metamorphosed, and, possibly, discerning
little difference between the United Diet and the new House
which floated freely on the billows, acquiesced in what he was
unable to prevent. As, however, rumour attributed to him the
order to attack the barricades, he withdrew for a while.
Leaving Berlin in a manner strangely contrasting with his
future position, he came to London and resided at the Prussian
Embassy in Carlton House Terrace. Baron Bunsen, in his
private letters, bears witness to the calm composure maintained
by his guest during those trying days, of which the suspense
was relieved by frequent intercourse with Sir Robert Peel, Lord
John Russell, Lord Palmerston, and particularly with Prince
Albert. His communion with these eminent political thinkers
bore good fruit, and when the subsidence of the waters of
revolution enabled him to return to Berlin he sought to dispel
the unpopularity which had gathered round his name by frankly
declaring that, having regard to the spirit and necessities of the
time, he was prepared to support his royal brother in the
Constitutional course on which he had been forced to embark.
But this course consisted in an attempt to pour new wine

THE EMPEROR "WILLIAM 43
into old bottles. The Crown had one idea of Constitutionalism
and the country another. What the Representative Assembly,
convened to concert the details of a charter, aimed at was an
amount of Parliamentary power which would have Americanised
the country ; what the King, the royal family, the Cabinet,
and the more judicious section of the people insisted upon was
to maintain a state of things in consonance with the traditions
of the past, the social structure of the present, and the defensive
necessities of a nation surrounded by military and ambitious
Powers. Innumerable collisions between Crown and National
Assembly terminated in the dissolution of the latter and the
promulgation of a complete charter, founded on the Belgian
model, by the King. He kept his promise by the enactment of
a Constitution, conferring upon Parliament a share in legislation
and taxation ; but, all other laws remaining as they were, he
turned his administrative omnipotence to account to restrict
individual rights and to strengthen the hands of the police.
True to his principles, the Prince of Prussia applauded the
endeavours of the King to reconcile new institutions with the
old standard. He had openly sided with the King against the
National Assembly ; had seconded his brother's refusal to
accept the German Crown on conditions which, as the King
termed it, would make him the slave of revolution ; and had
finally placed himself at the head of the Prussian army des
patched against the Baden rebels. But if he objected to the
surrender of power by king and bureaucracy to assemblies
elected by manhood suffrage, the means by which the reac
tionaries sought to prolong their sway were equally distasteful
to him. The police regime, identified with the names of Man-
teuffel, Wesphalen, and Hinckeldey, did not come up to his
ideas of legality and loyalty. It is a fact redounding to his
honour that the Prince, who opposed Constitutionalism before
its establishment, was so undisguisedly disgusted with the
means taken to repress its excrescences that the Manteuffel
police thought it needful to watch his steps. A box on the ear
he conferred upon a spy attained historical celebrity.
While domestic affairs were in this sorry plight the Crimean
War broke out. Differing from his brother, the Prince of Prussia
at once declared against the Tsar. No doubt he sympathised
with Nicholas, his father's ally, his own brother-in-law, and the
guardian of monarchical power on the Continent ; but the Prince

44 EMINENT PERSONS
could not leave out of account that he was a German and a
member of the leading dynasty of his race. He would not
brook the humiliation of Olmutz inflicted upon his country and
family by the proud autocrat of St. Petersburg — Olmutz which
had meant the resuscitation of the old and retrograde Bund under
the supremacy of a jealous Austria, as well as the shameful
renunciation by Prussia of her rdle as appointed unifier of the
nation — Olmutz to which even perhaps Frederick William
would never have gone but for the dictatorial attitude of the
Tsar. The retreat forced upon him, the treatment he had to
. endure at the hands of his imperious relative ; the death of
Count Brandenburg, the Prussian negotiator, a day after the
abasement sustained, were deeply resented by every Prussian —
nay, by every German. There is reason to believe that the
Prince of Prussia advised war at all risks rather than pocket
these insults ; but Frederick William IV. had cast in his lot
with the reactionary party, who, teaching him to reverence the
Tsar as the protector of kingship all over the world, prevented
reprisals. When the cannon thundered in front of Sebastopol,
the Prince of Prussia reminded him what had happened. If,
he urged, Russia jealously impeded Prussia's attaining a legiti
mate goal, Prussia could have no interest in shielding Russia
from western attack. The King half listened to these repre
sentations, and pressed Nicholas to desist. Failing in this he
adopted a benevolent neutrality. The part played by Prussia
at the Paris Congress had nothing in it to reconcile the Prince
to the policy pursued.
After the Peace of Paris King Frederick William IV. charged
the Prince of Prussia with the control of public business. The
delicate physical organisation of the King had succumbed under
the political agitation of the time. A crowned bel esprit, noble-
minded and susceptible in his every impulse, he had the
mortification to see his policy rejected by his people and his
people coerced by his police. The one being as unendurable as
the other, the royal sufferer, whose life is a most melancholy
episode in modern history, felt his reasoning faculties gradually
slip from him. When the decree authorising the Prince to act
in the King's behalf had been twice renewed without any visible.
improvement in the King's condition, the Prince on 9th October
1858 was appointed Regent. He was now entitled to act inde
pendently. From that day dates his reign, and simultaneous

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 45
almost with the commencement of his reign was the marriage
of his only son and heir, Prince Frederick William, to the
Princess Royal of England — a union which has not belied the
auspicious hopes with which, in both countries, it was hailed.
Like an incubus, the Manteuffel fraternity vanished before
the rays of the rising sun. A Liberal administration was forth
with created. Prince Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a south German
sovereign, who, to promote unity, abdicated in 1848 in favour
of the King of Prussia, consented to become the head of the
Ministry. Rudolph von Auerswald, an avowed Liberal, who
had been brought up with the Prince Regent, was the heart and
soul of the new Cabinet. Others of equal promise rallied round
these chiefs. Prussia breathed freely when, in a famous address
to his new advisers, the Prince Regent owned to a moderate but
fearless and straightforward Liberalism. To keep Constitutional
promises, promote administrative reforms, and infuse a free
spirit into the Church, which had lately been disgraced by
stagnation and hypocrisy — such were the leading items of the
programme laid down by the new ruler. As there were no
Republicans in the country, his emphasizing divine right had
nothing in it to alarm any one. To follow up words by deeds,
the administration was restored to its old standard of impar
tiality and integrity. The petty tyranny exercised by the
police towards Liberals had an end, and the law ceased to be
interpreted by servile sycophants in a way unintelligible to the
public. The announced will of the Prince that truth and
honesty should reign paramount was realised.
Soon after the Prince Regent had an opportunity of un
folding his German aspirations. On Napoleon going to war
with Austria in Italy, Prussia moved in the German Diet, re
constructed after the abandonment of her plans for unity, that
the German armies be mobilised, placed under her command,
and sent to the Rhine. No sooner did the news reach the
Austrian camp than the Emperor Francis Joseph concluded
peace. Rather than witness Prussia's military supremacy in
Germany, he gave up a province. Rather than be saved by
Prussia's help he would incur loss. After this crucial test all
hope of a friendly understanding with Austria on the German
question was relinquished at Berlin. Yet, although he knew
that Austria's policy was supported by many of the minor
sovereigns, the Prince, at the meeting of the German Princes

46 EMINENT PERSONS
with Napoleon in 1860, distinctly assured his royal brethren
that no difference of opinion should ever induce him to con
nive at the diminution of German territory. Notwithstanding
that this resolution was purposely expressed to dispel any notion
that Prussia, having failed to agree with Austria, might settle
with France, Louis Napoleon mistook the utterance for a mere
fagon de parler. He subsequently encouraged Prussia to begin
war with Austria because convinced that his connivance would
have to be purchased with the coveted Rhine frontier.
William I., King op Prussia
King Frederick William IV. being gathered to his fathers on
2nd January 1861, the Prince Regent became William I. In
his first speech from the throne he proclaimed a truth, borne
out by impending events. " It was not Prussia's lot," he said,
"to rejoice in the tranquil enjoyment of acquired possessions.
Only by extreme exertion of her moral and intellectual powers,
by the sincerity of her religious faith, by the union of obedience
and liberty and the development of her military strength, could
she hope to retain her position in the world." As fate would
have it, the people were not equally persuaded with their
sovereign of this necessity. This difference of opinion led to a
split, and the most serious consequences at home and abroad.
As early as 1849 the then Prince of Prussia made public
avowal of his opinions on military affairs. The German and
Prussian Parliaments having proposed to convert the German
armies into a militia, with self-elected officers, who were to
follow civil occupations when not in the field, the Prince in
that year printed an anonymous pamphlet to oppose this eccen
tric scheme, and the equally shrewd and convincing argu
ments against it which he then used were supplemented
in the inaugural address of the Prince Regent to the new
Cabinet on the 8th of November 1858. The organisation of
the Prussian army having survived the short-lived pretensions
of the Frankfort and Berlin Parliaments, the Prince suggested
the advisability of increasing and strengthening the professional
character of the troops. Prussia, as he worded it, ought to be
strong if she wished to have a voice in the council of nations,
and a cheap army would prove the most expensive in the long
run by diminishing the chances of victory. In keeping with

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 47
these convictions the Prince in his speech from the throne on
the 12th of January 1860, declared it to be "his duty and his
right" to insist upon the amendment of the defects lately
apparent in the condition of the army. The Bill submitted in
the ensuing session, besides prolonging the service in the reserve
from two to four years, raised the peace footing from 150,000
to 213,000 men ; increased the number of recruits from 40,000
to 63,000 a year; and, to make room for a further increase,
nearly doubled existing regiments.
Had the Chamber, had the country, formed a correct esti
mate of the Prince's character and policy at the time this Bill
was submitted, the grave conflict to which it gave rise would
never have arisen. In other words, had the people foreseen
that the Prince — acting on the advice of the heaven-sent
Minister who was now the soul of his policy — intended to fight
it out with Austria, and attempt a loosening of the oppressive
tie which kept Prussia weak and Germany disunited, there
would have been no material opposition to the military measures
proposed. But no one gave the Prince credit for cherishing
such a comprehensive scheme. His courage, his resolution, and
his fine sense of honour were sufficiently known to protect him
from the suspicion of incurring another Warsaw or Olmutz ; but
his reminiscence of Holy Alliance traditions was thought to be
too vivid and his conservatism too ingrained to allow him to
settle accounts with Austria, infringe the sovereign rights of the
minor dynasties, and seek the alliance of the Liberal party
throughout the Fatherland. The conclusion drawn from these
premisses was that the Prince Regent, a thorough-going soldier,
was anxious to augment the army, not because there was any
immediate anticipation of turning it to account, but to gratify
his personal taste for tall grenadiers and model battalions in
herited from the father of Frederick the Great. Parliament
after Parliament therefore declined to minister to what to them
appeared a royal hobby, not a political necessity, and successive
dissolutions only resulted in adding to the numbers of the
Opposition. But this Opposition was broken, or at least baffled, by the
opportune appearance on the scene of Herr von Bismarck, who,
having sat as an angry and uncompromising foe of popular
claims in the successive Parliaments of the Revolutionary era,
having acquired a consummate acquaintance with German

48 EMINENT PERSONS
politics as a member of the regalvanised Diet at Frankfort, and
having gained valuable diplomatic experience at St. Petersburg
and Paris, was now discerned by King William to be the only
man who could pilot him through the storms that were
beginning to rage round the ship of State. No sooner was
Bismarck at the helm of affairs than he began to arrange his
cards by conciliating Russia with the offer of substantial help in
suppressing the Polish insurrection. Great was the unpopularity
incurred by both him and his master from this misunderstood
and misrepresented act, but it was nothing to the obloquy which
their efforts to dragoon Parliament to their wills drew down
upon their names. The reasoning employed to make good their
case was as simple as it was unexpected. The Budget, they
alleged, had constitutionally to be passed by both Houses.
Now, the House of Lords having rejected the Budget voted by
the Lower House, on the ground of the curtailment of the
military estimates by the Commons, no Budget was legally
there. What was Government to do in this predicament ? The
two Houses having failed to supply the financial law provided
in the charter, the only remedy left for Government was to be
guided by their own lights pending the establishment of a
better understanding between Lords and Commons. Excepting
a few Conservatives, the novel reading of the charter was
rejected by the whole country. The Crown Prince himself, at
a later stage of the struggle, declared against the advice given
the Crown by the interpreting Ministers as being detrimental to
the chances of his succession, and for a time had to dwell under
a cloud of royal displeasure.
The dismay of the people was great indeed when the' pro
ceedings of Herr von Bismarck, discountenanced by the Lower
Courts, were approved by the supreme tribunal, packed for the
purpose. After this the Government found it comparatively
easy to enforce their will. For a period of four years the
administration of the country was carried on without a pro
perly-voted Budget. The slight pressure felt by the individual,
the dread of retributive measures, and the fear of shaking a
political fabric erected amid the storms of preceding centuries,
combined to restrict the opposition of the people to passive
resistance ; but many would not pay the taxes until an execu
tion was in their house, and the feeling that something por
tentous had happened was overwhelming. Not even when

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 49
Austria made a faint attempt to profit by the unpopularity of
the Hohenzollern and unite Germany under the Hapsburg
would the Prussian Parliament give in to the Crown. Nor had
the Danish War and the acquisition of Schleswig-Holstein,
soothing as it was to the feelings of the people, power to induce
the submission of the refractory deputies. The war with
Austria in 1866 about the division of the spoil, popular as it
might have been under a Liberal Cabinet, was likewise opposed
because Bismarck guided the helm. It was held to be dangerous
to fight Austria when the minor Sovereigns, owing to the tem
porary unpopularity of Hohenzollern, were unable to make
common cause with the Kaiser. It was feared that Bismarck
might be driven to ask for the help of France, and pay for it
too, were he beaten by Austria. It was, at any rate, clear that
Napoleonlll. counted upon some such contingency when stimulat
ing Bismarck to war ; and though nobody accused King William
of aspiring to aggrandise Prussia at the risk of seeing Germany
divided between himself, Austria, and France, still such a result
seemed possible.
The overthrow of the Austrian army and State in a single
week having removed this peril, and paved the way for German
unity, all previous misunderstandings were effaced in joy at
this stupendous event. The Prussian Parliament passed a vote
of indemnity for military expenses. The new North German
Parliament congratulated King William as the benefactor of his
race ; and the Sovereign, who had been mistaken for a disciplin
arian by some and an autocrat by others, stood revealed as a
deep politician and a skilful general. His noble pride in pre
ferring the chance of another war to paying blackmail to
Napoleon III. served to enhance his renown among his people
and the nations of the world.
The War with France
The Peace of Prague had scarcely been signed when it
became clear to all men, and to none clearer than to King
William and his counsellors, that a war with France was only a
question of time. As early as the winter of 1868-69 Count
Moltke elaborated a complete scheme of action for the contin
gency of a defensive invasion of France, and it was by following
this scheme in all its details that the German army were enabled
vol. iv E

50 EMINENT PERSONS
to achieve those marvellous victories which justly won for the
strategist who planned them a lofty and lasting niche in the
temple of military fame. The King of Prussia was told by his
most far-seeing advisers that Germany would never become
perfectly regenerated until it endured the final birth-throe of a
struggle with France, and yet the pacific King, as far as he him
self was concerned, did his best to avoid a rupture with
Napoleon. A rupture had seemed inevitable when, in pur
suance of his " policy of compensation," Napoleon, immediately
after the war of 1866, demanded Mayence and the Rhine
frontier of 1814, a demand of which the refusal was followed
by his concoction of secret treaty designs on Belgium, and again
when, balked in all his other schemes of bloodless conquest at
the expense of Prussia, he vainly cast about to get hold of
Luxemburg. Shortly after the settlement of the Luxemburg
dispute King William, in company with the Tsar, repaired
to Paris during the great Exhibition ; but the visit served
to enlighten His Majesty, or at least Bismarck and Moltke,
who went with him, as to the true feelings of France towards
Prussia. Louis Napoleon, and with him the greater part of the French
nation, beheld with a very jealous eye the strong and solid
North German Confederation succeed to the loose and in
harmonious system of the old Bund ; but the masterly diplomacy
of Bismarck had kept him inactive during the Seven Weeks'
War ; he lost his opportunity, and it never returned. Yet the
share he took in the peace negotiations showed that he still
clung to the traditionary belief of his countrymen that it was
their privilege to interfere in German affairs and profit by all
querelles d'Allemand. Thus it was that to French initiative was
due, among others, that article in the Treaty of Prague which
stipulated that the South German States should continue to
maintain " an international and independent position " — a
stipulation which was nothing but a Gallic command of " Thus
far may you go in your efforts after unity, but no further."
What, then, was the surprise of the French nation to learn
during the discussion of the Luxemburg question, which
threatened to precipitate the inevitable war, that even before the
Treaty of Prague, containing the above stipulation, was signed,
the King of Prussia had concluded a defensive and offensive
alliance with each of the South German States ! The publica-

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 51
tion of this significant fact did not fail to lay King William's
Ministers open to the charge of duplicity ; but it at least had
the effect of disposing Napoleon to settle the Luxemburg
dispute without an appeal to arms. So for the next three years
the Prussian Government could devote itself to the task of
assimilating the conquered sovereignties of Hanover and Hesse-
Nassau, and encouraging the organising labours of the North
German Parliament. Already one from a military and com
mercial (Customs Parliament) point of view, how was Germany
to become politically united 1 How were the States south of
the Main to be united to those north of it, thus producing the
" ganzes Deutschland " of the lyric poet ? The Emperor Napoleon
again kindly came to the aid of the statesmen at Berlin, whose
thoughts for four years had been vainly occupied with the
solution of this political problem.
On the 30th of June 1870 M. Ollivier declared in the
Corps Legislatif that the peace of Europe was never more
assured, and before the end of the next month the colossal armies
of France and Germany stood confronting each other in battle
array on the banks of the Rhine. What had wrought such a
sudden and marvellous change ? What was the nature of this
terrific bolt out of the blue ? Its ostensible character, at least,
was plain enough, and to the philosophic historian the causes
of a war are far more interesting than its course. The throne
of Spain was vacant, and the sceptre of Charles V. had been
offered to a remote and Catholic kinsman of the King of
Prussia. At this the French nation professed to take alarm,
and its alarm was marked by that overstrung intensity which
not unfrequently characterises the feelings of that sensitive and
excitable people. That, if a Hohenzollern Prince — much more
nearly related to the ruling families of France and Portugal —
ruled at Madrid, France would run the risk of being over
shadowed by the wings of the Prussian eagle, was, perhaps,
natural for hasty Frenchmen to believe ; and, if they believed
it, there was no reason why they should be refused the
advantage of a doctrine which Europe had repeatedly approved.
But they also jumped to the conclusion that Prince Leopold
had been put forward by Prussia of set and deliberate purpose
to insult France, and precipitate that war which each nation
believed the other to be meditating.
The truth is that the French people, more, no doubt, than

52 EMINENT PERSONS
their Emperor, had long been looking for some cause of quarrel
with Prussia, however flimsy, and in that perennial source of
strife, the Spanish Succession, they found it. Before the
battle of Koniggratz France had been unchallenged Queen of
the Continent ; but now a united Germany threatened to usurp
her long unquestioned sway, and she was determined to try
conclusions with the parvenu rival of her fame and power.
The fierce struggle that ensued had a most complicated origin,
but it may be described as the resultant of two nearly equal
forces emanating from the Tuileries and the Vatican. In the
Vatican the rapid growth of an enlightened Germany under a
Protestant ruler had been watched with equal aversion and
dread, and the occupant of St. Peter's Chair, whose tottering
throne was propped by French bayonets, naturally beheld in
Catholic France his surest ally against a power whose victories
in science and learning, in peace and in war, had given a rude
disintegrating shock to the fabric of his own temporal, if not
spiritual, sway. Quick to discern the signs of the times, the
Jesuits devised an Oecumenical Council as a last desperate
means of staving off their evil day, and it was by no mere
chance that war against Prussia by France and the doctrine
of Papal infallibility — that is, war against the human mind
by Rome — were simultaneously declared.
We have thus hinted at the real, if occult, causes of the
huge cataclysm which threw down one Empire and built up
another. The tragedy was preluded by one of the most
dramatic incidents in the annals of diplomacy — the meeting
of King William and Count Benedetti at Ems in the warm
July days of 1870. The candidature of Prince Leopold for
the throne of Spain is still wrapped in a certain amount of
mystery ; and it may plausibly be argued that Bismarck, who
saw further than his royal master, recognised in the Prince's
voluntary acceptance of the proffered crown an unexpected
means of promoting his policy which it was not in his interest
to discard. But it is quite certain, at least, that King William
himself was guiltless of a design to provoke France, or to
compass her detriment by placing " a Prince of his house on
the throne of Charles V." His Majesty innocently believed
that the close relationship of Prince Leopold with the Bonaparte
family — closer than with his own — would reconcile Napoleon
to the Hohenzollern candidature, and for the rest he allowed

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 53
his young kinsman to act as he had a mind. He was not
entitled, he said, to forbid the Prince from accepting the
Spanish crown; and for the same reason he could not and
would not order him, in compliance with the French demand,
to renounce it. In view of the excitement raging in France
he would approve the step if the Prince receded, but the
initiative must come from the royal candidate himself. Acting,
it is known, on the secret suggestion of the pacific King,
Prince Leopold did withdraw ; and had the French been wise
they would have contented themselves with this diplomatic
victory. But their fighting blood was up with the suspicion
that they had been made the objects of an unscrupulous intrigue
on the part of Prussia, and they demanded a guarantee against
its future repetition. To this King William could only reply
by a dignified refusal to discuss such a humiliating request,
and the immediate result was the greatest and most momentous
war of modern times.
These were stupendous and exciting days. The insult
offered to King William filled every German with patriotic
rage, and the whole nation was thrilled with a deep and fierce
content to think that the hour of final reckoning with its
hereditary foe had at la,st come. Not a mere dynastic dispute,
but a great and long-standing quarrel between two peoples,
was about to be settled by mortal combat. In France itself,
to use the words of M. Benedetti, the declaration of war was
received with " transports of enthusiasm," and Paris burst into
frenzied shouts of "To the Rhine, to Berlin!" But, cruel
irony of fate, the Rhine remained uncrossed by a single French
soldier. Down swooped the hosts of the united Fatherland
upon the ill-prepared legions of the Empire, and almost sooner
than the bewildered world could take in the separate scenes of
the unparalleled drama, the finest armies of warlike France
had been crumpled up and scattered to the winds, her most
formidable fortresses had been disposed of, her Emperor, at the
head of more than 100,000 men, had been captured and sent
to Germany, and her capital lay stretched a suppliant at the
feet of her conquerors in irresistible gyves of engirdling fire
and steeL Never had the world seen anything like it. Placing
himself, with his seventy -three summers on his brow, at the
head of the united German armies — for the Southern States,
though not yet politically one with the North, had hastened

54 EMINENT PERSONS
to place their troops under His Majesty's command — King
William again sallied forth against the foe in front of whom,
as a lad of seventeen, he had first won his spurs. He shirked
not the fatigues and dangers of the campaign ; just as in
Bohemia he had coolly exposed himself in the very forefront
of the fray, he was frequently under fire in the most sanguin
ary battles, and his presence never failed to inspire his troops
with an enthusiasm which nothing could resist. Thus they
bore him on from victory unto victory, from Mars-la-Tour to
Gravelotte, Sedan, and Paris.
German Emperor
Finally, on the 18th of January 1871, the anniversary of
the day on which King William's ancestor Frederick, the first
King of Prussia, had crowned himself at Konigsberg, 170
years before, the conqueror of France was acclaimed German
Emperor by the Sovereigns of Germany and the chiefs of the
army assembled in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. His
brother and predecessor on the throne had refused the Imperial
dignity because offered him by the Revolution and the
representatives of the people whose sovereignty he was thus
asked to acknowledge ; but no such scruple could weigh with
William I., who now returned to Germany an Emperor-King,
wearing the crown of Barbarossa and of Charlemagne, sparkling
with the reconquered gems of Alsace-Lorraine. The national
aspirations of so many years had at last been realised ; the
policy of blood and iron, to which his Chancellor had managed
to convert him, had done what fine speeches and paper
constitutions had failed to do ; and, from being a mere
geographical expression, slighted and ignored by the rest of
Europe, Germany now became one of the stablest and most
formidable States, one of the most pregnant facts of modern
times. The instrument wherewith this political edifice was
erected was the German army, which may well be called the
most perfect organisation of the kind that ever existed, and its
creation was mainly the work of the Emperor William. To
have fashioned the tool which achieved such a task was in
itself no slight merit, and the Emperor, with native modesty,
never claimed to have done very much more. "You," said
His Majesty in toasting the army "after Sedan, "You, War

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 55
Minister von Roon, have sharpened our sword ; you, General
von Moltke, have wielded it ; and you, Count von Bismarck,
by your management of our policy, have brought Prussia to her
present height of glory." The Struggle with Rome
Not long permitted to rest upon his laurels, the conqueror
in three campaigns only returned from France to find that he
had a more desperate foe to fight than either the Danes, the
Austrians, or the French. The weapons of these enemies had
been balls and bayonets, but William the Victorious, as his
fond subjects began to call him, was now confronted with a
host of adversaries armed with " quibbles quick and paper
bullets of the brain." The Pope and the Jesuits had virtually
declared war against the new German Empire. Before leaving
Versailles the Emperor had been waited upon by a Catholic
deputation from Prussia, who vainly prayed him to use his
new-won might in restoring the temporal power of the Pope,
and the answer to His Majesty's refusal was the appearance in
the first Imperial Parliament of an entirely new faction, that
of the Centre or Clericals, whose watchword was negation,
whose banner was blazoned with the ancient war - cry of the
Guelphs, and to whom the Declaration of Infallibility was a
much more binding document than the new German Consti
tution. The struggle that now broke out between Church and State
was not new. It was as old, as Bismarck said, as Agamemnon
and the siege of Troy. It was nothing but the old contest for
power between the Pope and the Emperor which had raged all
through the Middle Ages, dividing and deluging Germany with
blood. It was the question whether in the civil imperio there
should continue to exist an ecclesiastical imperium ; in fact, it
was the question between Society and the Syllabus. At first
the attitude of King William was a purely defensive one.
True to the principles of religious tolerance which have ever
been the boast of his family, he did not object to the newly-
propounded tenets of the Vatican being taught to the Catholic
youth of Prussia, although these tenets were held to clash with
the duties of civil allegiance. All he did was to protect from
material harm (arising from ecclesiastical penalties) such of his

56 EMINENT PERSONS
subjects and servants as, from scruples of conscience, refused to
teach and preach them.
Above all things the late Emperor was an unaggressive man.
He, more than most military monarchs, ever acted on the sage
advice of Polonius to his son about " entrance to a quarrel,"
and especially so in his quarrel with the Pope. For he knew
that to enter into a conflict with Pius the Ninth was to incur
the risk of alienating the loyalty of about a third of his own
subjects ; and this might have very serious consequences at a
time when the young empire was exposed to peril no less from
jealous foes without than explosive forces within.
But, in addition to being a pacific monarch, the Emperor
was an exceedingly pious one. Before engaging on a struggle
d outrance with a spiritual potentate, King William must have
had political provocation of no ordinary kind, and that a suffi
cient casus belli did exist was convincingly shown him by the
man who had made him ruler of a united and an enlightened
Germany, and was firmly resolved that no alien and obscur
antist usurper should ever share his Imperial master's sway. As
usual, therefore, the Emperor - King sent his foremost fighting
man into the lists, and looked approvingly on while the latter
rained showers of resounding blows on his Papal antagonist, who,
however, showed marvellous powers of resistance and tenacity.
It was no doubt quite natural for the Emperor to believe
that the policy of blood and iron which had unified Germany
would also prevail against its Jestiit foes and ill-wishers ; but,
had he been less of a soldier, and therefore less familiar with
the idea of force as the ultimate arbiter of disputes, he would
probably have viewed with more misgiving the masterful means
proposed by his Chancellor to combat the encroachments of a
Church whose spiritual sway has been rather increased than
otherwise by the destruction of its temporal power. But with
Dr. Falk to draft his repressive measures, and Prince Bismarck
to champion them, and willing majorities both in the Prussian
and Imperial Parliament to pass them, and the public applause
of enlightened Protestant countries like England and America
to encourage him, he never doubted that the path of combat he
had chosen was the right one.
The publication of a correspondence between the Pope and
the Emperor added immensely to the popularity of the latter,
if that, indeed, could be said of a Sovereign who was already

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 57
the idol of his people. There was only one voice which
maligned him, and that was the voice of the infuriated Pope.
But even the Catholic world was pained to see their spiritual
chief, who claimed the virtues of infallible wisdom, so utterly
incapable of controlling his own bad temper. His allocutions
and his encyclicals were disfigured by the most abusive language
towards the head of the German Empire, whose ambassador
designate he refused to receive ; and at last the measure of his
personal insults grew so full that the Emperor was compelled to
withdraw his representative at the Curia and break off further
intercourse with a potentate who had gone the length of declar
ing certain Prussian statutes to be null and void, and de
nounced their sovereign executor as the "rabid patron of force
and fraud."
Whenever Rome thundered forth its anathemas and its
insults, the Emperor -King quietly replied by acts and laws.
At first these were of a purely defensive character ; but it was
soon found that the safety and supremacy of the civil power
could only be ensured by carrying the war into the camp of the
enemy. Within six years, or from 1872-78, a formidable
list of measures, generally known as the Falk or May Laws,
were enacted against the Catholic Church. Limits were im
posed on the freedom of pulpit speech ; the Jesuits were
banished from the Empire, and all other religious and non-
Samaritan orders broken up ; the education of the national
youth and of the Catholic clergy was placed entirely under the
supervision of the State ; civil marriage was made compulsory ;
stringent forms were devised for testing the civil allegiance of
the clergy before their appointment ; and, to crown all, heavy
penalties in the shape of fines, imprisonment, and banishment
were enacted against the transgressors of any of these laws.
To a man the Prussian bishops, who at Rome had opposed the
doctrine of Infallibility, but had soon afterwards gone over bag
and baggage to the Papal camp, now encouraged their ciergy
and flocks to resist these laws, taking refuge themselves in an
attitude of non possumus and passive resistance. The conse
quence was that most of them were soon either living in exile
or in Prussian gaols, while hundreds of parishes were left
without priests. The May Laws were administered with relent
less severity ; Catholic society became disorganised, and sent up
a wail of oppression ; but still the stubborn folly of the Pope

58 EMINENT PERSONS
was met by the dignified firmness of the Emperor, whose Chan
cellor had vowed that his master, unlike his medieeval prede
cessor Henry IV., " would never go to Canossa."
And yet as time went on the Emperor himself was the first
to admit that the heat of the Kulturkampf had engendered
laws which were not permanently necessary to secure proper
relations between Church and State ; that blows had been given
to wound as well as to disarm. One main obstacle, as it was
thought, to the conclusion of peace was removed in the spring
of 1878 by the death of Pius IX.; but Leo XIII. cheated the
promise of his accession to the throne of St. Peter, and proved
to be no less obstinate a stickler for the divine right of Popes
than his infallible predecessor.
Hopeful negotiations between Bismarck and various agents
of the Vatican ended in smoke ; but yet the Emperor was
determined to show his Catholic subjects that, if their griev
ances continued unabated, their spiritual and not their secular
sovereign would be to blame for it. And his method was as
effective as it was safe and ingenious. His Government would
not consent to repeal any essential principle of the May Laws,
but managed to procure from Parliament power to administer
some of them at discretion. He even went a step further on
the path of compromise, and reaccredited a Prussian repre
sentative at the Vatican ; but though the exigencies of party
warfare, as well as an honest desire to restore contentment to
his Catholic subjects had induced the Emperor- King to make
ample use of the discretionary and full dispensing powers
conferred upon him by the Prussian Diet, the importunate cry
of the Clericals was still for more. Not merely relaxation, but
revision and repeal of the May Laws would only content them ;
and within the last few years they have gained many of the
concessions for which they so stubbornly strove. Their bishops
have been reinstated, some of their religious Orders have been
allowed to return, the Church has reacquired some of its pre
vious power over the training of its ministers, and, in fact, the
May Laws are now little more than the ghosts of their original
selves. Session after session saw some of their most stringent
enactments go by the Board, the Emperor's Government com
placently contenting itself with the avowal that, after all, it still
retained sufficient power to secure the State from unlawful
encroachments by the Church.

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 59
The truth is, the Emperor and his advisers had entered into
a struggle with a power of which they underrated the resources
— a power which proved to be all the more formidable as its
forces were impalpable, and, in plain language, they got the
worst of it. In the Imperial Parliament the patience of the
Government had been utterly worn out by the dogged opposition
of the Clericals, and Prince Bismarck began to see that the
friendship of the Pope was at least equal to the alliance of
a great Power — a friendship with which Germany could not
afford to dispense. The political necessities of the Chancellor
thus agreeing with the personal inclinations of the Emperor —
who vowed that he could not die happy unless he made his
peace with Rome — the process of reconciliation was carried on
with all the persistence and thoroughness which ever char
acterised the co-operative doings of master and man, and the
world was startled with the transformation effects that were
thus produced. It wondered to hear of the Crown Prince
being closeted with the captive of the Vatican, to see the Pope
posing as the deeply revered and trusted arbiter between
Germany and Spain in the matter of their dispute about the
Caroline Islands, and to see a special envoy from Leo XIII.
journey to Berlin on the occasion of the Emperor's ninetieth
birthday, with the warm personal congratulations of His Holi
ness ; to behold His Holiness enjoining upon the faithful in
Germany to vote for the , Army Law, which was to secure the
Empire from the revengeful French ; to witness the iron
Chancellor and the Head of the Church exchanging their
portraits with effusive assurances of mutual admiration ; and
to read of the Protestant Kaiser sending to the Pope of Rome
a costly and magnificent mitre in recognition of the latter's
jubilee. These were results for which those who had applauded the
Chancellor's vow that he "would never go to Canossa, either
in body or in spirit," were not prepared ; and there were many
who lamented that William I. should thus, after all, have been
made to demean himself by what looked like a cautious imitation
of the penitential pilgrimage of Henry IV. But the Emperor's
conscience itself was clear on this score, and he died in the
firm conviction that, in repealing and mollifying the May
Laws as he did, he but performed an act of clemency and
justice to his Catholic subjects without impairing those principles

60 EMINENT PERSONS
which underlie the emancipation of the nation from Papal
condominium and priestly rule.
The Empire and the Socialists
A favourite Clerical argument in terrorem has always been
that the Kulturkampf, by temporarily depriving large numbers
of the population of the blessings of religious ministration, has
contributed to the spread of infidelity and social democracy,
with all their accompanying ills. Be that as it may, the
legislative era of the Kulturkampf was scarcely over when the
attention of the nation was directed in the most alarming
manner to the rapid strides which Social Democracy had been
taking since the foundation of the Empire.
On Saturday, 11th May 1878, as the Emperor, accompanied
by his daughter the Grand Duchess of Baden, was driving along
the Linden Avenue, he was twice fired at by a young man,
almost at the very spot where, twelve years before, Blind had
levelled his revolver at the breast of Bismarck. The assassin,
who happily missed his aim, was found to be a journeyman
tinsmith from Leipsic, Hoedel by name, whose thoroughly
wicked and depraved character was in itself sufficient to account
for his crime. But what gave it a grave political significance
was the fact that this worthless character of his had served as
a fertile soil to the seeds of those misunderstood principles of
Lassalle and Marx which were beginning to be so popular
among the working classes of Germany. Hoedel was a low,
brainless miscreant, as incapable of comprehending the current
jargon about labour and capital as Kullman was of under
standing the real issues between the Pope and the Emperor ;
but it is, nevertheless, as certain that Hoedel was as much the
product of Social -Democratic agitation as that Kullman was
the outcome of Jesuit spite and Ultramontane fury. And this
was what gave his crime its serious aspect This was the
third attempt that had been made on the life of the Emperor-
King — once near Mayence, when, as Prince of Prussia, he had
been sent to suppress the Revolution in Baden ; the second
time at Baden-Baden by the fanatical student Becker ; and now
there was great joy in the Fatherland when it became known
that the beloved monarch had remained unscathed by Hoedel's
bullets. But joy soon gave way to seriousness, and how to

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 61
deal with the movement which had produced one assassin and
might be training a hundred more was now the question which
occupied the public mind.
The danger was undoubted. Between 1871 and 1877 the
number of Social-Democratic voters had risen from three to
nine per cent, and the tone of their Press after the attempt on
the Emperor became savagely defiant. His Majesty himself,
who had a lively recollection of the troubles of 1848, believed
that the revolutionary element in his dominions was beginning
to regain the upper hand. What was to be done 1 Within a
week after Hoedel had fired his pistol a Bill for coping with
the dangers of Social Democracy had been laid before Parlia
ment. The measure was a most serious encroachment on the
liberty of the person and of the Press ; but it soon appeared,
in spite of the general roar of execration which greeted Hoedel's
crime, that it had no chance of becoming law. It was not to
be expected that the Clericals, who were groaning under re
pressive decrees themselves, would stultify their impassioned
speeches about human freedom by helping to shackle a portion
of their fellow-subjects, however bad or dangerous. To the
Progressists, on the other hand, as the stiff-necked champions
of political doctrinairism, it was vain to look for aid ; while
the National Liberals found it equally irreconcilable with their
convictions to comply with the demands of the Government.
The Bill was ably supported by the Conservatives, and by none
more so than by Count Moltke, who, with the emphasis of a
soldier, argued that the enemy must be engaged and beaten
before he had time to do further harm. But in vain. On
24th May the measure was rejected by a majority of nearly
200 votes, and on the same day Parliament was prorogued.
The result was a bitter disappointment to the Emperor,
and presently there occurred something to depress his spirits
still further. A week after the rejection of the Socialist Bill,
the " Konig Wilhelm " and the " Grosser Kurfiirst," two of
the finest ironclads in the infant navy of the Empire, were
steaming down the Channel, when by some awkward manoeuvre
they came into collision off Folkestone, and the latter vessel
was sunk, with its crew of nearly 300 officers and men. The
Emperor took the disaster very much to heart. To his pious
mind the hand of God seemed to be heavy on Germany, and
he passed a couple of sleepless nights. One day, while suffering

62 EMINENT PERSONS
from the combined impression produced by this great naval
calamity and by the rejection of a measure which he deemed
essential to the safety of his person and the stability of Govern
ment, he drove out alone. It was Sunday, the 2nd of June,
and the Emperor's carriage had proceeded about half-way down
the Linden Avenue towards the Brandenburg Gate, when he
was twice fired at in rapid succession by some marksman, who
aimed at his victim from a window overhead. This time the
double shower of buckshot took effect, and, streaming with
blood from neck and shoulder, the Emperor was driven home.
On the assassin being at last seized — which he only was after,
with a revolver in reserve, he had inflicted a cruel wound on
one of his assailants and lodged a bullet, that afterwards proved
fatal, in his own head — he turned out to be a Dr. Nobiling,
aged about thirty, from the province of Posen.
If there was any doubt as to Hoedel's past, there could be
none about the antecedents of Dr. Nobiling. Of middle-class
parentage, he had enjoyed an academic education, and when
at the University had already been known as the " Petroleur "
and the " Communist." He had attended the meetings of Social
Democrats, he had studied their writings, and in the year
preceding the commission of his crime he had visited Paris,
London, Switzerland, and Vienna, in order to establish a
connection with the head centres of revolution. Like many
of his countrymen, he was a despairing materialist of the ex
tremist type ; yet he was afflicted with what the Germans
called Grossenwahn, or a consuming mania for being thought
great. The news of this second outrage flew like lightning all over
Berlin, all over Germany, all over the world, and stunned like
an electric shock. What was humanity coming to ? The
Press of Europe burst into one unanimous cry of horror and
execration, and again from every quarter a flood of genuine
sympathy came pouring into Berlin. The Crown Prince, who,
with his consort, was on a visit to London — where, by the
way, he had been the object of an insulting demonstration on
the part of some German Socialists — hurried home, and was
at once entrusted with the reins of power pending the recovery
of his stricken father. About thirty pellets of buck and swan
shot, not all of which could be extracted, had penetrated the
Emperor's face, head, neck, back, and shoulders. Prince

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 63
Bismarck himseK was confined to his bed at one of his country
seats, but on hearing how His Majesty had been struck down
he started up, forgetful of his own ailments, and hastened to
the side of his Sovereign. His heart was strongly moved
within him, he afterwards confessed, to see his beloved master
lying in his blood, and he "vowed a silent vow to devote
himself to his service, and think no more of resignation, what
ever befell, till death should them part."
Bismarck entered on this new lease of service with character
istic energy. The Reichstag was p+ once dissolved. It was
doubtful whether a Parliament which had already refused to
ensure the internal safety of the nation at the premium of a
little of its personal liberty would now, even under the influ
ence of the horror produced by Dr. Nobiling's crime, depart
from the professional principles it had previously maintained,
and it was, therefore, at once sent about its business. Favoured
by the prevailing excitement, the new elections resulted in the
return of a much more Conservative Parliament. The electoral
watchword of the Government had been, " Safety of the State,
safety of society," and a Parliament, much more plastic appar
ently than its predecessor to the will of the Chancellor, met in
September, about three months after the perpetration of
Nobiling's crime, but before the horror and indignation pro
duced thereby had lost the force of freshness. Its only task
was to pass a law against the pernicious aims of Social
Democracy, and after a month's very excited discussion it did
so, though not exactly in the extreme form demanded by the
Government. The Government immediately began to make an unsparing
use of the repressive power with which it had been entrusted,
and which enabled it to suppress obnoxious publications of all
kinds, dissolve suspected clubs and societies, and place the chief
seats of anarchical agitation under a state of siege. The law of
October 1878 was only to last until the end of March 1881 ;
but it has been repeatedly renewed. As giving the police so
much arbitrary power over liberty of action and freedom of
speech, the Socialist Law was a most critical experiment, and
even now, after a long trial, its efficacy has only been partial.
The evils which it was meant to eradicate are less patent,
perhaps, to the public eye, but they still exist in secret and
exuberant strength. Social Democracy in Germany has been

64 EMINENT PERSONS
disorganised, but by no means destroyed ; and this fact is part
of the heavy burden of government which devolves on the
successor of William I.
The Foreign Policy of Germany
Within two months after receiving Nobiling's buckshot the
Emperor, thanks to his splendid vital powers, was able to leave
for Teplitz ; in September he had so far recovered as to be
able to mount his horse, with his arm in a sling, and manoeuvre
the Hessian troops ; while in the beginning of December, amid
the acclamations of the nation, he made a sort of triumphal
entry into Berlin, and resumed the reins of government.
While the wounded monarch lay stretched on his camp-
couch, a notable thing was occurring in his capital. Under the
presidency of Prince Bismarck, representatives of the great
Powers sat in Congress to adjust the results of the war between
Russia and Turkey, and the German people were flattered by
the thought that the name of their capital had been given to
the treaty which secured the peace of Europe. The Emperor
himself was intensely proud of the fact, and said that he now
felt the wounds, which still kept him prostrate, less acutely.
It was a fine thing to say, and it was truly meant. Nothing
ever gave the Emperor greater pleasure than when he had been
successful in compounding quarrels, whether of a public or
private nature ; and thus he felt in his element when appealed
to in 1871 by the Governments of Great Britain and the
United States to arbitrate between them on the San Juan
dispute. Ever since the transference of the centre of inter
national gravity from Paris to Berlin the main desire of the
ruler of a strong and united Germany had been to avert war,
not only against the Empire, but among its neighbours. And
yet, unlike Napoleon, he claimed to be neither the " arbiter
nor the schoolmaster of Europe," which the immense military
force at his disposal might very well have made him. True to
the programme set forth in his first speech from the Imperial
throne, which so cruelly dashed the hopes of the Clericals, he
always avoided the very appearance even of meddling with the
affairs of his neighbours, a habit which none better than he
knew had been the curse and ruin of France. The motto of
the Emperor was "toujours en vedette," but his foreign policy

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 65
was always one of strict non-intervention, especially towards
" our nearest and most interesting neighbours, the French," as
Moltke once called them.
There is strong reason to believe that, after the Peace of
Frankfort was signed, the Emperor would have preferred to see
a monarchical regime of some kind or other supplant the
Republic in France ; but it is no less certain that, intriguing as
he did for the fall of M. Thiers and the return of the Bona-
partists, Count Arnim acted without even the implied assent of
His Majesty, and in flagrant violation of Prince Bismarck's
express orders. But
It is the curse of Kings to be attended
By slaves who take their humours for a warrant,
and the tragic story of Count Arnim may best be told by saying
that he was the victim of such misapprehending zeal.
We have said that, as one of the results of the Franco-
German War, the centre of political gravity on the Continent
was at once transferred from Paris to Berlin. No statesman
could henceforth afford to trim his sails without consulting the
diplomatic weather report on the Spree. As after the Peace of
Paris the nations vied with each other in courting the friend
ship of France, so, when the Treaty of Frankfort had been
signed, an alliance with the Emperor William was thought to
be something very well worth seeking by most European
Sovereigns. The powerful Emperors of Russia and Austria
were the first political suitors. Francis Joseph came to Berlin
to say that he frankly recognised the results of the Seven
Weeks' War ; while the Tsar Emancipator was also minded to
show that he still cherished the traditions of the Holy Alliance,
and that the ties which united the Courts of St. Petersburg and
Berlin were not merely those of kin. But, indeed, there had
already been sufficient evidence of this. Prussia had remained
neutral during the Crimean War, had helped her northern
neighbour to suppress the Polish insurrection, and had made no
serious remonstrance when Prince Gortchakoff tore up the
Black Sea Treaty, in return for which favours, partly done and
partly promised, Russia not only remained neutral herself
during the conflict of 1870, but also prevented Austria from
slipping her dogs of war on the back of struggling Germany.
vol, iv f

66 EMINENT PERSONS
But Prussia had now become Germany, and the Sovereigns
of Russia and Austria found it expedient to readjust their
relations to the remodelled Power. The meeting of the three
Emperors at Berlin in September 1872, with its conferences,
its feastings, its exchanging of orders, its balls, its embracings,
and its military parades, was the Continental event of the year ;
and what stamped it with undoubted political meaning was the
fact that the chief Ministers of their Majesties — Prince Bis
marck, Prince Gortchakoff, and Coivnt Andrassy — were also
present, and had frequent interviews. Europe, of course, began
to puzzle itself about the real significance of the event, but
Prince Bismarck took an early opportunity of satisfying public
curiosity, without going into details. " The friendly meeting of
the Emperors," he said, " will strengthen the confidence of our
friends in the preservation of peace, and show our foes how
hard it will be to break it." This explanation was afterwards
completed by the Russian Chancellor, who remarked that " the
best thing about the meeting was that nothing had been
reduced to writing."
Nevertheless,, the tacit alliance of the three Emperors, or
Dreikaiserbiindniss, as it was called, continued to be the fact
dominating the political dynamics of Europe until the Russo-
Turkish War occurred to throw it somewhat out of joint. The
Pope, of course, sneered at the meeting as a " merely human
Areopagus whereof one member (the Emperor William) was a
declared enemy of the Church " ; but Europe, at least, was
content to regard it as a pledge of peace and as a very pregnant
hint to the prophets of revenge in France. In the spring of
the following year the Emperor (taking with him Bismarck and
Moltke) returned the Tsar's visit ; and the autumn found him,
also with his Chancellor, at Vienna (during the Universal
Exhibition), where he was most enthusiastically received — so
soon do feelings of political expediency outweigh the bitterness
of defeat and the rancour of revenge. Even the Shah in the
early summer of 1873 (and again in 1878) journeyed to Berlin
to visit the aged Monarch, the fame of whose army and Empire
had already taken root far beyond Teheran ; but a much more
honoured, because a much more important, guest at Berlin in
the autumn of 1873 was King Victor Emmanuel. It was
thought that the conscience of his Italian Majesty was not
altogether clear as regarded his attitude to the war of 1870 ;

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 67
but now that there was talk of the Comte de Chambord unfold
ing the lily banner as Henry V., which might possibly be borne
against Italy as the expropriator of the Pope, the Re Galantuomo
deemed it prudent to repair to Berlin to embrace and drink the
health of his " old ally," who had conquered for him Venetia and
Rome on the sanguinary fields of Koniggratz and Sedan.
King Victor Emmanuel was accompanied by his Ministers,
Minghetti and Visconti-Venosta, who conferred much with
Prince Bismarck, and the signal distinction with which His
Majesty was received by the Emperor was no less eloquent to
the French than exasperating to the Pope, whose next
Kulturkampf anathema bore unmistakable signs of his impotent
spite. Germany had already shown how highly she valued the
friendship of the Italian people, her Parliament on the very eve
of the French war having voted a sum of 10,000,000 marks to
subsidise the building of the St Gothard Tunnel — a railroad
route which would unite the two countries without passing either
through France or Austria. The presence of Victor Emmanuel
in Berlin acted as another link of connection between the two
nations, and the chain was thought to be completed by the
Emperor's return visit to Milan in the autumn of 1875 (Francis
Joseph had been to Venice in the spring), when he was received
with such extraordinary honour and enthusiasm that, as he
wrote to the Empress, " he had never in all his life seen any
thing like it." The imagination of the Italians was fired by
this meeting between the first Emperor of reunified Germany
and the first King of regenerated Italy, and they drew vivid
parallels between the triumphal entry into Milan of the peace
ful Barba Bianca, as they called the gray old monarch, and the
time when the Teutonic chivalry of Kaiser Red-beard carried
terror and devastation into the plains of Lombardy.
The example of Italy in seeking the friendship of the
Empire was imitated in the course of the next ten years by
Sweden, Servia, Holland, Belgium, sad, defeated Denmark,
whose Sovereign visited the Court of Berlin, and ambitious Spain
— anxious to rank as a great Power — whose young King
Alfonso was treated with much distinction at Homburg in
September 1883. Rarely, indeed, did the Emperor manoeuvre
his splendid troops in the autumn of every year without a few
European sovereigns to add brilliancy to his suite ; and even
the European orbit of the King of the Sandwich Islands was

68 EMINENT PERSONS
deflected towards the German capital by sheer attractive force
of political gravity.
But nothing was more remarkable than the " dead set," so
to speak, which the Sultan made at the favour of the Emperor
William, the only one of the European Sovereigns who, while
professing to be his " friends, " never sought to enrich himself
with a slice of Ottoman territory. Yielding to his political
wooer on the Bosphorus, the Emperor exchanged high orders
with the Sultan, and sent military and civil officials to reform
his army and his administration ; but the troubles in Egypt
proved to Abdul Hamid that friendship is never more sincere
than when it is honest and impartial. If, indeed, the Emperor
William showed any partiality during the Egyptian Campaign
it was towards England, on whose friendship he always set an
exceptionally high value. Nothing ever gave His Majesty greater
pain than the transient estrangement between the two countries
which resulted from the misunderstandings consequent on the
sudden revelation of Germany's intentions to become a rival
colonising Power ; and nothing ever gave him greater pleasure
than when the glorious traditions which centre round the name
" La Belle Alliance " were restored to their former brightness
about the time when Queen Victoria celebrated her Jubilee. On
this occasion the Emperor was represented in London by his
son, his grandson, and his great-grandson — his three heirs in
direct succession to the throne, and the German Press only
reflected the feelings of His Majesty when it descanted on the
ties of dynasty of common origin, of common struggle, and of
common aspirations which fitted the two nations to be close
natural friends and " weapon-brothers."
Since the first meeting of the Three Emperors the Tsar came
repeatedly to Berlin, and scarcely an autumn passed without
bringing together Kaiser William and Francis Joseph at Teplitz
or Gastein ; but no serious politician ever thought of connect
ing these interviews with unpeaceful purposes. In France, it
is true, schemes of aggression were frequently imputed to Prince
Bismarck and his master ; and once even — in 1875 — a regular
war scare was excited by the cry of " Wolf ! " But perfect
success always crowned the foreign policy of the Emperor, which
was shaped with a main eye to France, and which aimed at
depriving her no less of every cause of quarrel than of allies
who might help her in maintaining it when found.

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 69
The Russo-Turkish War was a trying event for Germany, but
to the firm and impartial attitude of the Imperial Government
was due in no small measure the restriction of the conflict to the
dimensions it actually took. The Emperor William did all he
could to avert the war, but he was careful not to carry his
mediatorial offices either in St. Petersburg or in Constantinople
so far as to incur the charge of dictatorial interference; and
during the conflict itself his attitude was one of strict neutrality.
Austria, of course, was much more closely affected by the war ;
but even had Austria been forced to take the field in defence of
her interests, it is more than probable that Germany's sword
would still have remained sheathed, for her difficulty would
have been France's opportunity. The Tsar undoubtedly ex
pected, as an exact equivalent for his restraining services in
1870, that Germany not only would remain neutral herself, but
also prevent Austria from operating on his right flank ; yet it
is very doubtful whether, had the case arisen, his expectations
in this respect would have been fulfilled. " Do not," said
Bismarck to Gortchakoff during the Berlin Congress, " do not
compel me to choose between you and Austria."
The Treaty of Berlin was signed in July 1878, and before a
year had elapsed it became quite plain that the edifice of peace
had been erected, among other things, on the ruins of the Triple
Alliance. The German Chancellor had offered his services
to the Powers as an " honest broker," and was held by most of
them to have acted as such ; but in the Treaty of Berlin the
disappointed Russians saw nothing but the work of German
perfidy and ingratitude. The Panslavist and Anti-German
party in Russia gained the upper hand at Court ; the Press
indulged in vehement outbursts against Germany, and proclaimed
that "Constantinople must be conquered in Berlin." Prince
Gortchakoff began to angle for a French alliance, while Grand
Dukes made ostentatious visits to Paris ; and, to crown all,
threatening numbers of Russian troops were massed, or were
at least believed by the Germans to be massed, on their eastern
frontier. These several phenomena had the effect of producing
great irritation at Berlin, and a war between the two Empires
began to be looked upon as inevitable.
But that Germany, at least, still remained true to her peace
ful and unaggressive policy the Emperor resolved to show, and
begged an interview with the Tsar, which took place on the

70 EMINENT PERSONS
3rd of September 1879, at Alexandrovo, a small town on the
eastern side of the Russo- German frontier. "Thank God,
peace is again secured," exclaimed the Emperor on leaving
Alexandrovo. He had succeeded in convincing the Tsar of
the continuance of his own personal friendship, and in
removing false impressions from the mind of his Imperial
nephew. The Emperor had gone to Alexandrovo of his own
accord, and even, it is said, against the will of his
Chancellor, who had meanwhile been equally active in his
efforts to secure for his country the blessings of peace. He went
to Gastein and conferred with Count Andrassy ; he went to
Vienna, and was treated with high distinction by Francis
Joseph, and he returned to Berlin with the treaty of an Austro-
German defensive alliance, by which the contracting parties
mutually guaranteed the integrity of their territory with their
continued existence as great Powers. The meeting at
Alexandrovo had been mostly of a personal nature ; the confer
ences at Gastein and Vienna were purely political. At the
touch of the master's wand the tableau vivant of the European
States had suddenly undergone a startling change. The two
great military Powers of Central Europe were now seen standing
back to back, with ready hands on sword hilts, but defence, not
defiance, plainly printed on their visages, while insulated Russia
looked surprised, and checkmated France pensive.
Though the experience of the last few years had shown the
Emperor that two are company and three none, it was only
with the greatest reluctance that he consented to ratify this
fresh bargain of Bismarck and to relinquish a political partner
ship of a century's standing ; but the forcible representations of
his Chancellor left him no choice. Russia felt helpless with a
sense of her complete insulation ; but the Emperor William
took repeated opportunities of soothing her sensibilities by the
assurance that the object of his alliance with Francis Joseph was
purely defensive, and that it need not disturb the personal
relations between the Courts of Berlin and St. Petersburg — which
have always had a political effect — he strove to show to
Alexander III. at Dantsic in the autumn of 1881. The removal
of the Panslavists from power under the new Tsar helped to
bring about a better mutual feeling in both countries, and by
the beginning of 1884 the diplomatic relations between Germany
and Russia had resumed such an affectionate form as to prepare

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 71
Europe for the meeting of the three Emperors with their
Chancellors at Skierniewice in the autumn of that year.
It is as little known what was the exact result of this inter
view as of the return' meeting between the Tsar and Francis
Joseph at Kremsier in the following autumn (1885), which only
the growing infirmities of the Emperor William " prevented him
from attending in body but not in spirit." Yet if in going to
Skierniewice His Majesty's main object had been to promote a
more cordial understanding between his fellow sovereigns, the
outbreak of the revolution in Bulgaria, which followed so hard
on the Kremsier interview, proved that he had undertaken a
task as praiseworthy as it was hopeless.
The Bulgarian revolution, with its consequent troubles, the
kidnapping of Prince Alexander, and the subsequent course of
events in the young Principality, all brought to light the
existence of a serious antagonism between the interests of
Austria and Russia on the Danube which the most "honest
broker " and peacemaker might well despair of reconciling, and
which no Imperial interviews could wholly reason away. Last
year the tension became most serious after the adoption of
Prince Ferdinand as their ruler by the Bulgarians, and a sharp
polemical strife between the German and the Russian news
papers was accentuated by the Tsar's marked avoidance of an
interview with his Imperial uncle at Stettin. Afterwards,
however, the estrangement so far as it was personal was
removed ; the Tsar visited . Berlin, where he was splendidly
welcomed by the Emperor, and where he had an explanation
with the Chancellor, which, it was hoped, replaced the relations
of the two Empires on a friendly footing.
But it soon became clear from the publication of the text of
the Austro-German Treaty that the policy of Germany was in
no way altered, that she remained in the strictest alliance, as
Prince Bismarck subsequently stated in the Reichstag, with
Austria-Hungary, and that Italy had joined this earlier pact,
with the object of preserving the status quo in Europe against
any ambitious or restless Power. This " League of Peace,"
which was publicly proclaimed after Signor Crispi's visit to
Friedrichsruh in the autumn, is the last great political achieve
ment of the Emperor William's reign, and it remains the
dominant fact in the European situation in spite of the desire
both of the Emperor and of Prince Bismarck to avoid a breach

72 EMINENT PERSONS
with Russia. The Emperor William and his great Minister
devoted themselves to the task of preserving the peace and
conciliating conflicting interests and clashing susceptibilities
with an anxiety equal to the gravity of the issues at stake,
well knowing that, though Bulgaria was mere "Hecuba" — as
Bismarck phrased it — to Germany herself, yet that France's
opportunity would come were Germany forced (as forced she well
might be) to take the field in order to save her ally from disaster.
In general, the foreign policy of the Emperor William aimed at
isolating France, at humouring Russia while remaining true to
Austria, and at the same time at reconciling the conflicting in
terests of these two Empires — with what success is so far known.
The Emperor and the Army
Such, then, is a brief outline of the policy by which the
Emperor William successfully sought to secure his new-born
Empire against danger from without ; and we have also seen how
he endeavoured to cope with the main causes of internal peril
— Papalism and Social Democracy. For the rest, the energies
of his Government were wholly devoted to the organisation of
Imperial institutions and to the work of domestic legislation.
Of Imperial institutions, by far the most sacred and important
in the eyes of the Emperor was the army — at once the symbol
and safeguard of the national unity. Frederick the Great won
his victories with a military force which he had inherited from
his father. William I. had himself to make the tools with
which he built his house. The creation of the Prussian army
had been the employment of his youth and early manhood ; its
perfection would be the work of his old age ; and he declared
that he would not die contented if this, "his main life-task,"
were unachieved. " What we have won in half a year with the
sword we must defend for half a century with the sword," said
Germany's great strategist, and his words were warmly approved
by the Emperor, who himself believed, and experience has
proved him right, that a " strong Germany is the best pledge of
the peace of Europe."
Surrounded, like no other State, with jealous, revengeful,
and untrustworthy neighbours, Germany could not possibly
avoid remaining armed to the very teeth. She had the choice
of two evils. It was highly probable that her own armour

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 73
might crush her, but it was at least quite certain that if she
did not arm to an almost ruinous extent she would very soon
be crushed by others. In any case, seeing that Germany is and
always, or until at least the millennium dawns, must remain in
the position of a besieged fortress, it seemed to the Emperor
above all things necessary that the strength of her garrison
should not depend upon the varying whims of the hour, or, in
other words, that the army should be withdrawn as much as
possible from the influence of Parliament, and become a strong
and steadfast bulwark against foreign attack amidst all the
fluctuations of domestic politics. The Reichstag was, therefore,
asked to fix the peace establishment at the permanent rate of
one per cent of the population, thus entailing on the country in
perpetuity a standing army of considerably over 400,000 men.
In Germany the dread of home despotism has always been
less than fear of the foreigner ; nevertheless, Parliament — split
up into fractious parties ill representing the general sense of the
nation — would not at first listen to such a proposal in spite of a
powerfully persuasive speech from Count Moltke which created
a great sensation all over Europe. The Emperor himself
openly avowed to his generals that the splendid military and
political success which had ultimately crowned his resistance to
the Prussian Lantag between 1862 and 1866, and proved him
to have been in the right, now encouraged him not to yield to
the Reichstag ; and there ensued a crisis which threatened to
end in a return of the Conflict time. From this, however, the
country was saved by the enlightened patriotism of the National
Liberals, in whose hands lay the balance of party power, and
who offered to support the Army Law on condition of its being
at first limited to a period of seven years. By the advice of his
Chancellor and his generals the Emperor accepted this com
promise, but he only did so reluctantly.
First voted in 1874, the Military Septennate, as it is called,
was renewed in 1881, and again in 1887 (with a considerable
increase — 40,000 — in the army), after the opposition of the
Reichstag had been triumphantly broken by an appeal to the
electors based on an avowed and reasoned fear of France.
Indeed, the political condition of Europe and the state of public
feeling in Germany will have to undergo a very marked change
before there is any likelihood of the Septennate being refused.
This unique institution, which increases the national security at

74 EMINENT PERSONS
the expense of a little of the popular power of budget control,
virtually gave the Emperor and his successors command of a
permanent standing army of about half a million men, who
could be joined in a week's time by twice as many trained
soldiers ; but even then the German army is only the third
strongest in Europe. What, however, it lacks in numbers it pos
sesses in efficiency, and to a widespread belief in this efficiency
must be ascribed the fact that peace upon the continent of
Europe was so long, if, perchance, so reluctantly, preserved.
After the army, the main object of the Emperor's solicitude
was the navy. To see Germany provided with a fleet capable
of defending her coasts at home and vindicating her interests
abroad was what he earnestly wished before he died. The
Frankfort Diet had squabbled so much about the maintenance
of a North Sea Fleet that at last, in 1852, the rotten old vessels
composing it had to be brought under the hammer. Prussia then
began to form the nucleus of a German navy, which in 1871
only numbered forty-eight various vessels, mostly of small size,
with 380 guns. What she would have done had the French
attacked her by sea as well as land, heaven only knows. The
Emperor-King was resolved that such an opportunity should
never again be presented to his foes. His Government set to
work with a will, and by 1883 the Imperial Fleet consisted of
108 various war ships, carrying 518 guns, all of the newest
construction, and a crew of over 12,000 men. The Emperor
watched the development of his naval power with intense pride,
and it more than once happened that from manoeuvring an
army corps, which foreign critics pronounced to be unsurpass
able in drill and discipline, His Majesty stepped on board an
aviso at Dantsic, Kiel, or Wilhelmshaven, and steamed out to
sea to witness the evolutions of an ironclad squadron which had
already made so much progress in naval tactics as to avoid the
blunders which sent the Grosser Kurfurst to the bottom of the
English Channel.
It was no small satisfaction to the Emperor that his grandson,
Prince Heinrich, the rising hope of the Navy, had repeatedly
sailed round the world, and returned with assurances of increas
ing respect everywhere for the national flag and name produced
by Germany's naval power. The piratical Chinese, the South
Sea Islanders, the savages of the West Coast of Africa, the
civilised inhabitants of Nicaragua have all been taught what it

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 75
is to plunder or insult the subjects of the Empire ; and when,
shortly before the outbreak of the Russo- Turkish War, the
German Consul at Salonica was murdered, a formidable
squadron was at once despatched to that port, while Bismarck
telegraphed to the Imperial Ambassador at Constantinople :
" Germany's Emperor demands instantaneous satisfaction. . . .
In the event of refusal we shall know how to take measures
for upholding the dignity of the Empire." " Our enormously
expensive fleet," thought the German people, " is not too dear
after all." The Emperor and His Chancellor
The organisation of the army and the creation of the
navy were matters in which the Emperor took a personal and
directing interest. In other internal questions he was content
to leave the initiative to his Chancellor and Ministers. Unlike a
great many of his subjects, perhaps, indeed, the majority of them,
the Emperor never doubted that Bismarck had as much a genius
for domestic affairs as for diplomacy ; and he, therefore, continued
to put as much trust in the means by which his Chancellor
proposed to consolidate the Empire as he had in those by which
he created it. But, even in this latter respect his confidence
had often been blind. "Mein alter Herr," said Bismarck once,
" ist stets uberredet, wenn nicht iiberzeugt gewesen " ; i.e. " I have
always been able to talk over, if not to convince, my old master."
Thus it was, for example, both at the beginning and the end of
the campaign of 1866. It was with the utmost difficulty that
Bismarck persuaded the King to draw the sword on Austria ;
and afterwards it was only by a threat to resign that he induced
His Majesty to desist from his determination to annex Bohemia
as part of the war indemnity. " I will rather abdicate," said
the King in a spirit characteristic of Frederick the Great, " than
return without a considerable acquisition of territory to Prussia."
Again, after the war with France, Bismarck advised the King
not to insist too much on the annexation of Lorraine as well as
Alsace, so as to deprive the dangerous fire of revenge of a double
and long-enduring store of fuel ; but here His Majesty, backed
by Moltke and the military party, was inexorable.
It has always been popularly supposed that one of the most
difficult tasks of the Emperor was to curb and reduce the Hot-

76 EMINENT PERSONS
spur and impetuous spirit of his Chancellor ; but, indeed, there
is much to show that the virtues of wisdom and moderation
were sometimes more on the side of the man than of the master,
and if the former ever went unwittingly astray the latter was
much more likely to follow than to put him right. Indeed, in
later years the Chancellor had acquired such an amazing ascend
ency over the mind and will of the Emperor that, in all but
military matters, the former was looked upon, and rightly so,
as the real ruler of Germany. No Sovereign was ever more
popular, more revered, and more beloved of his subjects than
William I. ; but the name of no Sovereign was ever less on the
lips of his subjects when anything affecting the welfare of the
nation was under discussion. Not what the Emperor thought,
but what the Chancellor meant to do, was the only question
asked ; for every one knew that the will of the Chancellor would
at last prevail. And woe to any one, no matter who or what
his station, who crossed it.
During the first twenty years of Bismarck's tenure of power
no fewer than twenty-four Ministers of various kinds quitted
office, most of them on the usual plea of "ill-health," which
everybody knew to be a mere euphemism for bad behaviour.
Even the Emperor could not prevent their fall, and all he could
do to mollify it was to send the victim of his Chancellor's dis
pleasure a kindly letter of thanks for past services, with a high
decoration, and wish him health and prosperity for the rest of
his honourable days. What Bismarck had compelled so many
of his colleagues to do, he frequently threatened to do himself,
and his "requests for leave to resign" gradually came to form
part of the regular machinery of government. The Emperor
was at first startled, and wrote an emphatic " Never ! " on the
margin of one of the earliest of these petitions ; but he soon
became accustomed to them, and cheerily disposed of them by
simply asking his Chancellor what he wanted now. Then the
Prince would at once achieve his will — the dismissal of a
Minister, the recall of an Ambassador, or the dissolution of a
Parliament, and the nation, relieved from the horrible anxiety
of another " Chancellor crisis," breathed freely and was happy
again. Never did the Emperor more cordially approve, or seem to
approve, the action of his Chancellor than when the latter led
the nation into what is called the era of economic reform, with

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 77
its return to a stringent Protectionism, its nationalisation of
railways, its tax-reforms, its accident assurance schemes, its
tobacco monopolies, its biennial budgets, and other approved and
rejected prescriptions for the health of a State which suffers
acutely from the poverty of its blood and the weight of its
armour. Regarding himself, like Frederick the Great, as only
the first servant of the State, the Emperor became sincerely
anxious to improve the lot of the poorer classes, especially when
he saw that Social Democracy with all its public dangers, was
in part, if not wholly, the direct outcome of their depressed
condition. The remedies which Prince Bismarck proposed to
apply went far to warrant the statement that the greatest foe of
the Social Democrats had become the greatest State-Socialist of
the age ; but the nation rejected most of the economic medicines
offered it, nor would it believe that its rulers knew better than
itself what was good for it. And when its chief political doctor
became the object of much popular abuse, and was accused of a
desire to drug the country the better to work his despotic will upon
it, it was touching to see how the Emperor-King interposed a
manifesto, in January 1882, between the Chancellor and his
furious critics, claiming the direct initiative of all the acts of
his Ministers, and reminding his forgetful subjects that the
Crown itself was still by far the most important part of the
machinery of Constitutional government. It is difficult for old
men to assimilate young ideas, and perhaps the political character
of William I., as German Emperor, were best described by
saying that to the last he continued to act and think like a King
of Prussia. Personal Characteristics
Perhaps the most striking trait in the character of the
Emperor was the simplicity of his manners and habits. Military
in most things, he was in this respect a thorough soldier. He
slept on a couch which had more in common with the bed of a
penitentiary than of a palace. When not entertaining guests
his table was most frugally supplied. He was very moderate
in the use of wine, and indulged not at all in tobacco, setting
an example in the latter respect which very few of his subjects
could bring themselves to imitate.
And simple as his habits were his beliefs. He made no

78 EMINENT PERSONS
pretensions to that humanitarian enlightenment which would
supply the place of revealed religion. In an age when rational
ism was rampant, and when many of his educated countrymen
wandered very widely from the fold, he himself still clung with
touching devotion to the simple faith of his forefathers. The
more orthodox any preacher, even though plebeian in his
manners and addicted to Jew-baiting, the more likely he to
become a Court chaplain. Like the founder of his royal line,
William I. placed the Crown upon his own head in token of the
divine right of kings. Even among kings themselves the belief
in this doctrine is becoming rarer, but the steadfast religious
convictions of the Emperor William saved him from the
danger of being classed with these apostates, and prove that
piety and politics are much more intimately connected than is
generally supposed. The piety, indeed, of the deceased
Emperor was one of his chief characteristics, and betrayed itself
in most he said and did, in his prayers, his church attendance,
his war despatches, and his speeches from the throne. Some
of his telegrams from Bohemia and France read like King
David's psalms of thanksgiving for triumphs over the Philistines.
In all the victories which made Germany one, he beheld the
finger of the God of Hosts ; and on each of the occasions when
his life was attempted he ascribed his escape to heavenly inter
vention. It was thus, too, that he invariably drove about in
an open carriage without an escort, believing Divine favour to
be much more effectual protection against the bomb or the
bullet of the assassin than any encompassing cloud of cavalry.
" And yet it was of no use," said His Majesty sadly on hearing
that the Tsar Alexander had been struck down, despite the
vigilant cordon of Cossacks within which he furtively hurried
through his own Nihilist-infested capital.
No less regular than simple were the Emperor's habits. As
became the Commander-in-Chief of the most efficient army in
the world, he was the pattern of punctuality. Every hour,
every day, every season of the year brought its appointed round
of duty and recreation. From His Majesty's occupations in
Berlin men could set their watches, and from his movements
throughout the Empire easily tell the position of the sun in the
zodiac. Save when a war took him into the field and broke the
even tenor of his life, his existence was one monotonous and
rigorously-executed programme. Gifted in a high degree with

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 79
the chief characteristic of his subjects — a capacity for plodding
¦ — he accomplished by method tasks which would have fretted
the patience of genius. Method, indeed, was his stimulant, was
the secret of his longevity ; and whenever he fell ill his phy
sicians used to tremble with apprehension lest the sudden
interruption of his habits of sustaining routine should produce
a fatal effect.
There are many public buildings and monuments that will
lastingly commemorate the long and glorious reign of William
I. In 1873 the Emperor himself unveiled the Victory
Column at Berlin dedicated by a " grateful Fatherland to the
Army" whose three victorious campaigns had made Germany
one ; while in 1877 he laid the foundation of the huge National
Monument overlooking the Rhine on the edge of the Niederwald,
and in 1883 he unveiled it amid circumstances of pomp and
ceremony which invested his act with the character of an
historical event. Again, in 1875, in presence of 40,000
spectators, at a time when his struggle with Rome was at its
height — significant moment — he unveiled a colossal statue of
Arminius, near Detmold, in the Teutoburger Wald, in view of
the spot where " Hermann the German," with his Teutonic
warriors, exterminated the invading legions of Varus ; and in
1880 he witnessed the completion of Cologne Cathedral — an
architectural symbol of German unity, a splendid triumph of
German art. At Berlin in the summer of 1884 — in the presence
of all the magnates of the Empire — he laid the foundation-stone
of a splendid building to serve as the meeting-place of the Im
perial Parliament ; while three years afterwards he inaugurated
the stupendous undertaking which is to connect the Baltic and
the North Seas by a canal available for the heaviest German war
vessels afloat, and thus virtually double the naval strength of
the Empire in either of its great arsenals — Wilhemshaven and
KieL These imposing monuments of stone and brass will long
endure, but they are not likely to outlive the traditional fame
of the monarch whose reign they mark.
For of no Sovereign did the throne ever so much consist of
the hearts of his people. To say that the Emperor - King
William was respected, honoured, and beloved by his subjects
is only half the truth. He was simply adored by them. It is
not too much to say that the number of busts, photographs,
portraits, medallions, and other mementoes of the Emperor

80 EMINENT PERSONS
throughout Germany is greater than the number of Bibles.
His great age, with the character of his acts and the deeds of
his mighty paladins, which the vulgar imagination made no
great effort to distinguish from those of their lord, had combined
to invest him in later years with something like the halo of a
mythical hero.
It was hard to say whether he was more beloved as a
monarch or as a man. In Prussia, with all its constitutional
forms, the royal office is anything but a figurehead function ;
it is still a living dignity of power ; and the Prussian people
still put more trust in their Kings than in their Parliaments.
It was at once a proof of the love he enjoyed as a man and of
the confidence reposed in him as a ruler that he could visit no
part of his dominions without the certainty of being rained
upon by bouquets and begging letters. The suitor whose heart
was nearly broken by the law's injustice or delay ; the crippled
old soldier whose poverty was ignored by parochial despots ;
the mother who wanted a pardon for her erring son — all got
their petitions ready and waited for the ' coming of the King.
Nor did he, by any of his actions, ever shake the deep con
viction of his subjects that he was the pure fountain of honour
and of justice. That the King could do no wrong was in
Prussia less a constitutional fiction than a popular belief. Even
during times of hot political conflict he never became the object
of personal abuse.
It was a rule of Parliament that His Majesty's name should
never be dragged into debates. The nation felt bound by the
ties of deep personal gratitude to the Sovereign who had done
so much for it. It grudged not the festive pomp and military
display which made his Court one of the gayest and most
brilliant in Europe. It was greatly pleased to see him hold so
long with rigid evenness the scales of war and peace in Europe ;
its vanity was flattered to think that his capital was visited by
soldiers from all parts of the world — from Turkey and Greece,
and China and Japan, and the uttermost islands of the sea —
eager to become students in the high military school of his
creating. It was proud to have as a ruler the grand old man
who was a physical wonder to all ; who was so homely yet so
dignified ; so kindly, so just, so cheerful, so chivalrous, and such
a perfect gentleman ; who had lived to celebrate his golden
wedding, his eightieth anniversary of service in the army, his

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 81
ninetieth birthday, to be surrounded by a troop of great-grand
children, and to take into his arms the third heir in direct
succession to his throne.
It is melancholy to be compelled to add that the Emperor's
last days were darkened by the shadow of a cruel domestic
calamity. The Crown Prince was stricken down in the flower
of his age by a terrible and mysterious malady, and for some
months has been under treatment at San Remo for a form of
throat disease suspected to be cancerous. This sorrow, aggra
vated by the possibility that it may encourage the ambitious
disturbers of European peace, weighed on the spirits of the aged
Sovereign, and perhaps impaired his power of fighting with
all the vigour of a robust and well-tempered constitution
against the effects of accumulated years and the approach of
death. William I. was not intellectual in the strict sense of the
word ; his mental outfit was not nearly so ample as that of his
predecessor ; but he was endowed with sound good sense, which
is perhaps rarer than pure brain power, and which at least
achieved far greater results than the intellectualism of his royal
brother. His mind was much more adapted for details than
generalities, but one of his greatest merits was that he had an
instinct for discovering, and a self-effacing faculty for retaining,
men whose high and brilliant qualities were the complement of
his own. His reign has been one of wonders, but its greatness
somewhat resembles that of our own Elizabeth, whose glory was
largely derived from the shining galaxy of genius that surrounded
her throne. Although the Emperor William I. had personal
virtues which history will not readily forget, his best and, let
us hope, most lasting monument will be the German Empire.

Leading Article, Saturday, March 10, 1888
" The great Emperor who founded Germany's unity is dead."
In these words the President of the German Reichstag gave
simple but faultless expression to the universal sentiment of the
German people towards the veteran hero who yesterday passed
to his rest. We can find no better words to express the feeling
of the whole civilised world concerning an event of world-wide
significance and interest. The future political effects of the
vol. iv G

82 EMINENT PERSONS
death of the first Emperor of united Germany need not be
dwelt on to-day. It is the event itself, and the great career of
which it is the impressive close, that occupy all men's thoughts ,
to the exclusion, at any rate for the moment, of cold calculation
concerning the political future. The greatest career of our
modern days has come to an end, in the fulness of time, it is
true, but in the midst of circumstances so suggestive of sorrow
and compassion as to give a fresh significance to the familiar but
immortal words of the Roman poet, "Sunt lacrymce rerum et
mentem mortalia tangunt."
Such a death at such a time impresses the whole world with
the tragedy of human things. But it has other lessons to teach,
and the contemplation of the Emperor William's life and
character brings with it much instruction and consolation. He
was, and this is how men will always remember him, "the
great Emperor who founded Germany's unity." There have
been other German Emperors in past times whose fame in
history may possibly be adjudged to be greater than his. But
he is the only Emperor who has ever succeeded in making
Germany a united nation. The very length of his days,
extending from the tragic flight of his mother after Jena to
more than eighteen years after the proclamation of the Empire
at Versailles, and comprehending within its experience all the
political vicissitudes of a century now fast drawing to its close,
gives to his achievements an epic unity for which no parallel
can be found in modern history.
The Emperor William has witnessed and taken part in the
overthrow of two Napoleons, and has twice been present at the
conclusion of a victorious peace in the capital of Germany's
hereditary foe. He has seen Prussia rise, first from the over
throw of Jena, and afterwards from the humiliation of Olmutz,
and he has placed her, with the willing consent of the German
people, at the head of a united nation. When he ascended the
Prussian throne Prussia was hardly counted by her neighbours
as more than a second-rate Power. The Prussian capital is now
the acknowledged centre of European politics, and the political
influence of Germany knows no superior in Europe. This is
the great achievement of the Emperor William's life, and this is
his title to the everlasting fame which history accords to those
who make nations.
The whole public career of the late Emperor was inspired

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 83
and dominated by single-minded devotion to the welfare of
Prussia and the unity of Germany. For this he devoted him
self from his earliest years to the punctual discharge of every
public duty, for this he made himself a soldier and shared the
dangers and privations of his beloved Prussian army, and for
this, when he ascended the throne, he resolved to sacrifice
everything, even for a time the goodwill and confidence of his
own subjects. He was a soldier before everything, and his
political ideas and methods were inspired by a soldier's sense
of discipline and obedience ; but his mind was not, perhaps,
naturally of a warlike cast. He loved peace better than war,
and he was never so happy as when he could act as a peace
maker either in public or private affairs. But he knew that
his lot was cast in a time which required the actual ruler of
Prussia and the future ruler of Germany to be a soldier before
everything. He recognised from the first that a lasting peace
for Germany was only to be secured at the point of the sword,
and for this reason he instinctively chose as his agents and
ministers men who shared his ideas and had the genius to
realise them.
It is often thought by hasty political observers that the
unity of Germany was exclusively the work of Prince Bismarck,
and that the Prince's Imperial master was only the instrument
of a policy which he had not himself conceived. A perusal of
the full Memoir of the late Emperor's life which we give else
where will show, we think, that this is really a superficial view.
German unity was not the work of one man, but of many, and
of these the late Emperor, though not perhaps the greatest, was
always the centre and the chief. He alone knew and appre
ciated the profound and far-sighted policy which induced Prince
Bismarck in the days before 1866 to set under foot all the consti
tutional formulas and precepts which impeded the development
of Prussia's military strength. He stood by Prince Bismarck
against all his adversaries and braved unpopularity for his sake,
not because Prince Bismarck had acquired at that time the
ascendency over his mind and policy which he exercised in
later years, but because long before Prince Bismarck had
become his Minister he had conceived the idea of making
Prussia great, and of establishing her hegemony in Germany by
making her force respected.
It would be idle to say he was ever the great Chancellor's

84 EMINENT PERSONS
equal in statecraft. He would have claimed no such supre
macy for himself. But he knew from the outset what it was
he wanted. It was not his own aggrandisement, but the
aggrandisement of Prussia and the unification of Germany that
he desired to achieve ; and though he may not have foreseen as
clearly as Prince Bismarck did how the end was to be attained,
or how much it would cost him and his people to attain it, yet
he never doubted that the work must be done by the sword, and
that the sword must be forged with the utmost labour and tem
pered with the utmost skill if it was to be equal to the work.
Hence it was that the Emperor chose a soldier's career for him
self. Hence it was that he scorned delights and lived laborious
days in making the Prussian army the finest military weapon
that the world has ever seen. Hence it was that he twice
placed himself at the head of his army, took the field at the call
of patriotic duty, and manfully risked everything at the hazard
of war, in conflict with two of the greatest military Powers of
Europe. The result of those two campaigns has changed the face of
the Continent, and altered the course of its history for many
generations to come. It has made Germany a united nation
and placed Prussia at its head. It has completed the regenera
tion of Italy, emancipated Hungary, and recalled Austria to the
path of liberal progress. It has deposed France from her pride
of place in Europe, and exploded the Napoleonic tradition.
Above all, it has given the Powers of Europe peace among them
selves for eighteen years, and so strengthened the public confi
dence in Germany's desire for peace, and Germany's power to
maintain peace, that even the death of the Emperor who
achieved all this cannot seriously shake it.
If this were not so, the anxious and sorrowful circumstances
which attend the devolution of the German Imperial Crown
would inspire universal misgiving. In any circumstances the
death of such a man as the Emperor William would impress the
world as a great historical event. The passing away of a man
who has made so much history, who has filled so long and so
well a great place in the eyes of the world, is one of those rare
occasions which unquestionably mark an epoch. But in the
actual circumstance it fills the world with a feeling of com
passion so universal and so poignant as almost to sink its
historical aspects in its personal interest.

THE EMPEROR WILLIAM 85
Prince Bismarck formally announced yesterday in the Reich
stag that the Imperial dignity had passed, in accordance with
the Constitution of the German Empire, to His Majesty
Frederick ILL, King of Prussia. By this title, therefore, will
the late Emperor's eldest son, the Crown Prince, henceforth be
known. It is unhappily impossible to greet the new Emperor
with feelings of unmixed congratulation, for apart from the
sorrow which must overwhelm such a son at the loss of such a
father, the Emperor Frederick, as all the world knows, is him
self sorely stricken with a painful malady, which has prostrated
his strength and gravely imperilled his life. It behoves us,
therefore, to offer our heartfelt sympathy to the German nation,
both in its mourning for the death of its late Emperor, and in
its anxiety for the health and life of his successor. These feel
ings are universal to-day throughout the civilised world ; but
no nation outside the German Empire can desire more earnestly
that the new Emperor may enjoy such happiness as is possible
to him and such length of days as Providence may vouchsafe to
him than that which is ruled by the mother of his noble and
devoted wife.
But the first thoughts of all men will be given to-day rather
to the dead than to the living. The death of such a man as the
Emperor William compels us to think of the past rather than of
the future. As we meditate on a career so full of personal,
historical, and dramatic interest, we are almost compelled to ask
ourselves the question, What is its central and most instructive
lesson ? It is the same as that of the life of our own great
soldier, and the late Emperor himself gave prophetic expression
to it many years before most of those who survive him were
born. " To be an indefatigable learner and striver for the good
of my country shall be the one aim of my public life." So he
wrote as a youth in an essay presented to his father on the
occasion of his confirmation.
The late Emperor was not a man of genius, nor was he in
any way specially remarkable for intellectual gifts. Prussia has
had more than one Sovereign of greater intellectual capacity.
But his character was grave, earnest, and invincibly upright,
his piety was deep, simple, and unaffected, and love of his
country was his one absorbing passion. He had a keen sense of
duty and an invincible devotion to it, a clear perception of his
country's interest, and he possessed the hereditary gift of the

86 EMINENT PERSONS
Hohenzollerns — that of recognising capacity when he saw it,
and of choosing and supporting the men who could do the work
which Germany wanted done. These were the qualities which
made him " the great Emperor who founded Germany's unity,"
and no man can consider the magnitude of the work he achieved
without recognising the real greatness of the qualities which
enabled him to achieve it.

MATTHEW ARNOLD
Obituary Notice, Tuesday, April 17, 1888
We deeply regret to record the death of Mr. Matthew Arnold.
He was the eldest son and second child — the eldest being
Mrs. W. E. Forster — of the Rev. Thomas Arnold, D.D., and was
born on 24th December 1822, at Laleham, near Staines, where
his father was at the time taking private pupils. In 1827 Dr.
Arnold was appointed to the Headmastership of Rugby, and
thither the family migrated in the following year. From this
time down to the year 1845, when Matthew Arnold was
elected Fellow of Oriel, the story of his life is best told in the
words of one who was his constant companion throughout those
years :
"For some years previously to 1836, Matthew Arnold was
under the care of the Rev. J. Buckland, the brother of the
celebrated geological professor and Dean of Westminster, who
kept a flourishing private school at Laleham. The astonishingly
copious repertory of school-boy slang which the future poet
brought home with him at the commencement of his first
holidays, and poured into the ears of his brothers and sisters in
the schoolroom at Rugby, is still within the recollection of
some of them. On entering Winchester, in August 1836, he
was put at once in ' Senior Part,' and was consequently under
Dr. Moberly. An unfortunate remark made to the doctor at a
breakfast where he and several of his form-fellows were present,
relative to the light character of the work which they had to do,
being ill-naturedly repeated, caused him to incur much unpopu
larity in the school, and he was subjected to that singular form
of ostracism known as 'cloister-peelings,' when the victim was

88 EMINENT PERSONS
led out before the whole school, and exposed for some minutes
to a rain of ' pontos,' round missiles made of the crumb of new
bread. " But this unpopularity soon passed away, and when he was
adjudged to have obtained the palm of rhetoric over the whole
school by his declamation of the last speech of Marino Faliero in
Byron's drama, every one was well pleased. It had never been
his father's intention to leave him at Winchester longer than
was necessary to make him familiar with a system which had
woven itself into the very nature of the elder man ; and in the
summer of 1837 Matthew Arnold was removed from Winchester
and entered at Rugby. Several uneventful years followed,
during which he worked his way nearly to the head of the
school, obtaining an exhibition in 1841.
"Before this, in November 1840, he had won the open
scholarship at Balliol College with great Mat, but was per
mitted to postpone the period of his coming into residence to the
autumn term of the following year. His first rooms were on
the second floor of the corner staircase in the inner quadrangle.
His perfect self-possession, the sallies of his ready wit, the
humorous turn which he could give to any subject that he
handled, his gaiety, exuberance, versatility, audacity, and
unfailing command of words made him one of the most
popular and successful undergraduates that Oxford has ever
known. " In his first academical year he won the Hertford scholar
ship, given by the University for proficiency in Latin. He won
the Newdigate, the subject being ' Cromwell ; ' in the final
schools he was disappointed, and only obtained a second class.
In 1845 he was elected Fellow of Oriel, just thirty years after.
the election of his father. Dean Church, Dean Burgon ; Fraser,
the late Bishop of Manchester ; Buckle, now Canon of Wells •
Earle, the present Professor of Anglo-Saxon, and Arthur Hugh
Clough were among his colleagues at the then famous college. It
was the year in which Newman, himself a Fellow of Oriel, after
long deliberation took the final step and seceded to Rome. The
intimacy of Matthew Arnold with Clough was of the closest
character. During all the early part of 1846 Clough used every
Sunday to entertain at breakfast a small party of friends, con
sisting of Matthew, his brother of University, and Theodore
Walrond."

MATTHEW ARNOLD 89
Clough himself Arnold always loved, though he cared little
for his poetry ; and their friendship, as all readers of English
poetry know, received its final seal in the exquisite elegiac poem
of Thyrsis — that poem which Mr. Swinburne has placed by
the side of Lycidas and Adonais, and which contains the
very spirit of the Oxford of those days.
Matthew Arnold never felt any desire for the life of a college
tutor, and, indeed, such a career was at that time almost im
possible except under the condition of Holy Orders, and these he
was not disposed to take. An opening in London presented
itself two years after his election, in 1847, when the late Lord
Lansdowne, the veteran Whig leader, offered him the post of
private secretary. He was thus transplanted to the very centre
of political and social life in London, but it is evident that
neither politics nor society absorbed him, for it was in the next
year (1848) that there appeared the now famous little volume,
The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems, by A. Here the note was
struck which vibrated to the last through Mr. Arnold's poetry
and through much of his prose ; here was a sensibility and an
inward experience intensely modern, expressed with a luminous-
ness and a perfection of form that was purely Greek.
Three years after the appearance of the Poems by A. Mr.
Arnold married the daughter of Mr. Justice Wightman, and, as
he lately told the Westminster school teachers, when they made
a presentation to him on his retirement, it was in consequence
of his marriage that he left his private secretaryship and
accepted the post of Lay Inspector of Schools. In the interval
he worked for a short time as assistant master at Rugby. At
that date, as is well known, the State organisation of elementary
instruction was but just beginning ; the antagonism between the
Church schools and the Dissenting school's was still acute, and it
was even necessary to have separate staffs of inspectors for the
one and for the other. Mr. Arnold had assigned to him what
were called the British Schools, under which short title the
schools of the British and Foreign School Society were known ;
and it was in travelling about -the country examining these
schools that he learnt his business and formed besides those
views as to the nature of British Nonconformity and of the
mental and moral horizon of the middle class to which in later
years he often gave so trenchant an expression. His work as a
school inspector — which, it may here be said, only ceased two

90 EMINENT PERSONS
or three years ago — was laborious, and few of those who have
been charmed and consoled by his poetry, or stimulated and
amused by his prose, have reflected that what they were
reading was produced in the intervals of drudgery such as, it
might be thought, would have sufficed to dull the edge of
genius. And here we may pause to say something of Matthew
Arnold's strictly professional work as a school inspector and as
a reformer of education. The most direct outcome of it is to be
found where few people outside the official circle have ever
looked for it — viz. in the Annual Reports published by the Com
mittee of Council on Education. In those Blue-books it has
been the habit to print a certain number of the most striking
reports annually sent in by the school inspectors, and among
these a large number were written by Arnold. It need not be
said that these reports of his are excellent reading, and that
they abound in telling phrases and in piquant statements of
opinion. More than this, they are full of wisdom ; of views
based upon wide observation and solid reflection, of pleas for the
steady and practicable improvement of elementary education.
They hold up a high ideal, but one which an observation of
what has been done in other countries had shown the writer
to be attainable. For, as is well known, his educational
work was not confined to inspecting the schools in his own
country. In 1859, when the public conscience had begun to be
seriously stricken with respect to the state of our primary
schools, and when such a measure as was afterwards brought
into being by Mr. Forster had begun to loom before the minds
of statesmen, Mr. Arnold was sent abroad as Foreign Assistant
Commissioner to inquire into the state of education in France,
Germany, and Holland. Six years later he went again with a
special mission to inquire into the state of middle-class educa
tion abroad, and in 1867 a volume appeared embodying his
investigations into this subject. These professional tours had
an immense effect upon his mind. They gave him an answer
to the question how to make the English middle-class less con
tented with commonplace ideals, or, in the phrase which he
was the first to make popular, less Philistine. He never till
the end of his life ceased from efforts to carry into practical
effect his desire to get our middle-class education, our secondary

MATTHEW ARNOLD 91
schools, better organised. It was to his mind the one crying
want of English civilisation. He traced to the chaotic condition
of our middle-class schools by far the larger part of the moral,
social, and political faults which, with all his love for England,
he could not help seeing in her. " Porro unum est necessarium ! "
he cried, and that one thing was to be education for the middle-
class, organised as well as the education for the working class is
now organised, and as well as middle-class education itself is
organised in Germany and in France. " Schools for the licensed
victuallers, schools for the commercial travellers, schools for the
Wesleyans, schools for the Quakers — to educate a middle-class
in this way is to doom it to grow up on an inferior plane, with
the claims of intellect and knowledge not satisfied, the claim of
beauty not satisfied, the claim of manners not satisfied."
One of the chief causes of his discontent with English party
government was the fact that both parties alike thought the
organisation of secondary schools no business of theirs. The
Conservatives would not undertake it, and " at this hour,"
wrote Mr. Arnold a few years ago, apropos of an article of the
Liberal leader, "in Mr. Gladstone's programme of the twenty-
two engagements of the Liberal party there is not one word of
middle-class education. Twenty-two Liberal engagements, and
the reform of middle-class education not one of them ! " It is
one of Mr. Arnold's chief titles to the regard of his countrymen
that in spite of the indifference of party leaders he continued to
the end to press, with all the force of exhortation and of irony
of which he was master, for this most penetrating of all
reforms. It is time, however, to turn from this aspect of Mr. Arnold's
work to those achievements by which he is and will continue to
be most widely known — his achievements in literature. The
Poems by A. made a profound impression upon the very limited.
class of readers who cared for scholarly poetry. In 1853, five
yeara after the appearance of the first little volume, he published
Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems, but in a very short time,
becoming dissatisfied with the poem that gave its title to the
book, he withdrew the volume from circulation, so that it is
now, as all bibliophiles know, extremely rare. Next year he
published in his own name a new volume of poems, partly new
and partly selected from those issued already, and a second
series followed soon afterwards. The impression made by these

92 EMINENT PERSONS
in academical circles was so great that in 1857 he was elected
to a Chair which he was destined to raise to a position of greater
importance and influence than it had ever reached before— the
Chair of Poetry at Oxford. Next year appeared Merope, a
tragedy after the Greek manner, which was in itself perhaps not
quite successful, but which gave him the opportunity of writing
a preface that contained one of the most valuable expositions of
the principles of criticism ever produced in England. Then
followed the Lectures on Translating Homer and the Last Words,
in both of which he put forward his plea for the English hexa
meter. That plea has not generally been allowed, but every
one who heard the lectures, or has since then studied those
scarce little volumes, was struck with the breadth and the
enlightenment of their tone, at that time so new to English
criticism. The Essays in Criticism, a collection of articles and lectures,
appeared in 1865, twenty-three years ago. How faintly does
the young writer of to-day, to whom its methods and maxims
have almost unconsciously become the commonplaces of his
literary education, realise all he owes to that modest little
volume ! But as one traces back the stream of thought, as one
lecalls Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt and Macaulay, as one thinks of
the older Quarterly and Edinburgh and the lumbering conscien
tiousness of the Retrospective Review, one gradually becomes
aware of all that the essays and their successors have done
for us.
The critic, by that book, acquired a new dignity and im
portance. It both enlarged his functions and abated his
pretensions. Thenceforward criticism, among those who aspired
to any eminence in it, was to be a much humbler and sincerer
thing than it had been in the omniscient days of Jeffrey and
Croker ; and at the same time it was to deal with a wider
world than that of which Lamb or Hazlitt had had knowledge.
"A disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best
that is known and thought in the world" — so Mr. Arnold
originally defined his task, and his whole literary life has been
an effort to fulfil it. The essays themselves were an adequate
comment on such a definition. To many persons even of the
reading class such studies as those on Joubert, on Eugenie and
Maurice de Guerin, or on The Literary Influence of Academies,
were a revelation. " All can grow the flower now, for all have

MATTHEW ARNOLD 93
got the seed." But twenty-five years ago Mr. Arnold by such
work opened new worlds of thought and feeling to those who
had eyes to see and ears to hear ; he taught us sympathy with
fresh and varied forms of thought, and so made us think for
ourselves in a fruitful way. He bade us shake off convention,
and see "the thing in itself," without prejudice and without
conceit, personal or national. And, on the way, what beauties
of perception and style, what felicities of manner ! Who that
has read it will easily forget the address to Oxford — " home of
lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and
impossible loyalties " — which closes the preface, or the transla
tion of Maurice de Guerin's Centaur, or the summing up of
Heine and Byron with which the Heine article ends, or the
delicate truth and originality of all that moral observation in
which the Joubert essay abounds 1 To look at these passages
again is to understand, even apart from Mr. Arnold's poems,
what Sainte-Beuve meant when five or six years before he
drew the attention of the French public to a young English
writer, " dont le talent reunit la puret6 et la passion."
Mr. Arnold was of course re-elected at the end of his five years,
and at the end of ten many were the complaints in Oxford that
the statutes did not permit a " third term." More than once,
as vacancies occurred in later years, efforts were made to induce
him to come forward as a candidate once more, but by that
time he had made himself, or believed that he had made him
self, unpopular with the clergy, and he shrank from the danger
of what he used to call " an odious contest." So he never stood
again, and though he now and then lectured at the Royal Insti
tution, in provincial towns, and during two visits to America,
Oxford knew him officially no more. But he loved Oxford to
the end ; " that sweet city " which he celebrated in Thyrsis and
in the famous preface to the essays always continued to exercise
her spell upon him, and he was interested to the last in watching
the part that she played in the life of England, in the men who
were conspicuous in her colleges, in the books that she pro
duced, in the " movements " which from time to time passed
over her.
But after he ceased to be Professor of Poetry the subjects of
his critical writing underwent a change. He would not have
been his father's son had he not been profoundly interested in
religion ; he would not have been the open-minded critic that

94 EMINENT PERSONS
he was had he not seen that upon many classes in modern
England religion was losing its hold. Therefore he set himself
to consider whether a way might not be found of preserving
what was essential in religion while giving up whatever modern
criticism had shown to be untenable. His fastidious taste
revolted against the crude attempts of some modern reformers
of religion, and in what we believe to have been his earliest
writings on these subjects, certain articles published in Mac-
millan's Magazine, he dealt rather unmercifully with the
mechanical methods of Bishop Colenso. His own views he
expounded some ten or twelve years later in the book called
Literature and Dogma ; in its successor, God and the Bible ; and
in 1877, in the volume of collected papers called Last Essays
on Church and Religion. It is remarkable that the latest but
one of his writings was an article in the March number of the
National Review on disestablishment in Wales ; so impossible
did he find it to keep his hand and his pen from touching sub
jects of pressing ecclesiastical or theological interest.
Mr. Arnold must be pronounced to have been much less
successful as a theologian than as a critic and a poet. Un
doubtedly his own object was to preserve the Bible against the
consequences of a purely destructive criticism. But to many
he seemed to destroy the substance of religion, while he pre
served merely a kind of aroma or tradition. Even those, how
ever, who deplore his rejection of dogma, and see a lamentable
want of logic in his argument, can admire the spirituality of his
work, and the salutary manner in which he constantly dwells
on the importance of " conduct " in life. It is a tribute to the
wide effect produced by his principal work of this class, Litera
ture and Dogma, that many of the phrases with which it abounds
have passed into common speech, although much of its meta
physics is more than questionable, and the Hebrew scholarship
of this and the other volume is avowedly second-hand.
We have reserved to the last Mr. Arnold's work in poetry —
that work which is represented by the five or six little early
volumes so dear to collectors, or by the two volumes of Complete
Poems issued in 1876, or by the three volumes, containing these
and fortunately a few more recent verses, which Messrs.
Macmillan published two or three years ago. It is worth while
here to quote a judgment written twenty years ago by a brother
poet, a judgment of which it is easy to discount and to pardon

MATTHEW ARNOLD 95
the enthusiasm, and which, after all, tells the truth, if it tells it
too forcibly. "For some years past," wrote Mr. Swinburne,
" the fame of Mr. Matthew Arnold has been almost exclusively
the fame of a prose-writer. Those students could hardly find
hearing — they have nowhere of late found expression that I
know of — who with all esteem and enjoyment of his essays, of
the clearness and beauty of their sentiment and style, retained
the opinion that if justly judged he must be judged by his
verse and not by his prose — certainly not by this alone ; that
future students would cleave to that with more of care and of
love ; that the most memorable quality about him was the
quality of a poet. Not that they liked the prose less, but that
they liked the verse more. His best essays ought to live longer
than most, his best poems cannot but live as long as any, of the
time." The statement that comparatively few of Mr. Arnold's
readers cared for his poetry was quite true in 1867 ; it is less
true now, though it would be inaccurate to say that he is a
popular poet. His muse is too austere, the subjects with which
he deals are too remote from the ordinary superficial interests
of the many. But to a certain number of readers Ee has as a
poet a place apart ; a place in the inmost shrine of their affec
tions. To them the early poem Resignation, with its Words-
worthian severity, its air of bracing moral freshness, as though
newly blowing from the Westmoreland fells ; to them Dover
Beach, with its noble music and the grave stoicism of its tone ;
to them The Strayed Reveller, with its magical realisation of the
Greek spirit, The Sick King in Bokhara, and Sohrab and Rustum,
which profess to be pictures of the mysterious East, and are so
much more ; to them Heine's Grave, Rugby Chapel, the Lines
written in Kensington Gardens — all these are among the most
precious, the most abiding gifts that any modern mind has
bequeathed to the English race.
But it is invidious to name some poems and leave the others.
When, some ten years ago, Mr. Arnold made a " selection " of
his own poems for the Golden Treasury series, and when his
friends complained to him of the omission of one or other of
their favourites, he laughingly answered, " Of course, if I had
consulted my own taste I should have inserted everything."
And, indeed, he would not have been far wrong ; for so care
fully modelled and welded are his poems, so sincerely are they

96 EMINENT PERSONS
felt, that there are hardly a dozen among the whole that one
could wish away.
Mr. Arnold was personally one of the most charming of
men. On first acquaintance, indeed, there was something in
his manner which might set matter-of-fact people against him ;
but if they were sensible they soon got over what was in reality
purely superficial His geniality and kindness of nature, his
tolerance, his humour soon won their way ; and hence there
were few men who had more or warmer friends. Even the
egotism of which readers who did not know him used to com
plain was, for the most part, a rhetorical device ; and where it
was not, it was so frank, so good-natured, that it was soon
forgiven. No one could be more missed in London than he,
though for many years he had not actually lived in London.
While his boys were growing up he lived at Harrow, that they
might go to the school ; of late years he occupied a pretty
cottage at the foot of Pain's Hill, near Cobham. He loved the
country ; he had a strong affection for animals (who does not
remember his poem Geist's Grave f) ; and his love for flowers
was keen. In all family relationships he was admirable ; and
it may be of interest to mention that a vast number of letters
from him to various members of his family are in existence,
which are full of the personal and the literary charm that
attaches to the best of his writings.

THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III.
Obituary Notice, Saturday, June 16, 1888
Frederick William Nicholas Charles, eighth King of Prussia
and second German Emperor, whose pathetic reign of three
months came yesterday to a close, was the only son of the
Emperor William I. and the Empress Augusta, daughter of the
Grand Duke of Saxe -Weimar. Thirty years before his father
came to the throne, he was born in the new Palace of Potsdam
on the 18th of October 1831, the anniversary of the battle of
Leipsic. All the princes of Prussia were early trained in arms,
and " our Fritz," who was destined worthily to keep alive the
military fame of the royal house, was no exception to the rule.
At the age of seven and a half years he presented himself to his
father as a trained recruit, and made the following announce
ment : " Report from Potsdam sentinel. Nothing fresh from
outpost on watch. Its strength is one sub-officer, one bands
man, and eighteen grenadiers." On his tenth birthday, in
1841, the Prince entered the Colonel's Company of the 1st
Regiment of Foot Guards as second lieutenant. His uncle,
King Frederick William IV., in introducing the new second
lieutenant to his regiment, said, " You are a little fellow, Fritz,
but you must pay attention to these gentlemen, so that some
day you may be able to inspect them as they now inspect you."
Prince Frederick William's first tutor was the Rev. W. Godet,
of Neuenberg, who was succeeded by the eminent scholar and
historian Dr. Ernst Curtius of Lubeck. He subsequently com
pleted his education at Bonn, and in September 1848 made his
confession of the Evangelical faith in the chapel of the Castle
at Charlottenburg. On the 3rd of May 1849 the young Prince
vol. iv h

98 EMINENT PERSONS
was incorporated by his father into the Colonel's Company of
the 1st Foot Guards. Prince William, as he then was, made a
touching address to his son's future comrades on this occasion,
and then, turning to the youth, observed, "And for you, I
would covet that you may some day experience what your
father has experienced before you. The highest joy of my life
has been to feel that in times, however hard, remote, or near,
the confidence and sympathy of my subordinates have never
been denied me. It is that joy which I desire for you. Go ;
do your duty." When the Prince came of age, on the 18th of
October 1849, being then eighteen years old, he received
numerous addresses from Berlin, Potsdam, Brandenburg, etc.
In reply to a deputation of magistrates, he replied that the lofty
pattern that had been set him by his ancestors could not fail
to teach him, if ever he should hold the sceptre, to be a just
and true King. After studying at Bonn, in 1849-50, he
travelled through Switzerland, the Tyrol, the north of Italy,
and the south of France.
In 1851 the Prince visited England for the first time. He
was cordially welcomed by Her Majesty the Queen and the
Prince Consort, and became acquainted with his future bride,
the Princess Victoria, then a graceful and winning girl of eleven.
The royal visitor remained nearly a month in England. After
his return to Berlin he was promoted to the rank of captain,
"with the special commendation of His Majesty for zealous
service" ; and in the course of a few months he visited St.
Petersburg, where he became deeply interested in the exercises
of the Russian Guards. In November 1853 we find him
admitted by his father to the Berlin Order of Freemasons. At
this time he was closely studying the art of war under Moltke,
and was gradually rising in the ranks of the Prussian army.
The close of the year saw him in Rome, where he had an
audience of Pope Pius IX. Being ordered to serve with the
dragoons, his commander, Colonel von Griesheim, had inter
views with the Prince's mother, who did not allow her maternal
love, or her anxiety to ensure his personal comforts, to stand in
the way of his duty ; on the contrary, she begged that the
Colonel would in no way unduly spare the Prince, but insisted
upon his learning his profession in every branch, so that he
might know the actual labours and duties of a soldier's calling.
In all this Frederick William but followed his father's example.

THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III. 99
In 1854 he was appointed a member of the Commission to test
the Minie rifle, and shortly afterwards he was nominated to the
command of the 2nd Landwehr Guards.
The Prince again visited England in 1855, and before he
returned had become betrothed to our Princess Royal. He
won golden opinions from all with whom he came in contact
for his straightforwardness and candour, and his absolute free
dom from prejudice. The Queen thus wrote in her " Journal "
respecting the betrothal, the Court then being at Balmoral :
" September 29. — Our dear Victoria was this day engaged to
Prince Frederick William of Prussia, who had been on a visit
to us since the 14th. He had already spoken to us on the
20th of his wishes ; but we were uncertain, on account of her
extreme youth, whether he should speak to her himself, or wait
till he came back again. However, we felt it was better that
he should do so, and during our ride up Craig - na - Ban this
afternoon he picked a piece of white heather (the emblem of
' good luck '), which he gave to her ; and this enabled him to
make an allusion to his hopes and wishes as they rode down
Glen Girnoch, which led to this happy conclusion." There was
a strong attachment on both sides, and Prince Albert, in a
letter to Baron Stockmar, observed : " The young people are
passionately in love with each other, and the integrity, guile-
lessness, and disinterestedness of the Prince are quite touching."
The condition of things in Prussia at this time was ex
tremely critical The reactionary party were strongly in
evidence, and the Prince Consort trembled for the destruction
of a burdened constitution. After Prince Frederick William's
return to Berlin, Prince Albert wrote him a letter full of excel
lent suggestions and advice as to the bearing he should adopt
towards the people during the constitutional struggle. This
letter bore good fruit in strengthening the liberal sentiments of
the Prince, and in animating him with a desire to understand
the true principles of government.
In company with Von Moltke, the Prince was present at
Moscow on the 12th of August 1856, as the representative of
the Prussian royal house, on the occasion of the coronation of
the Emperor Alexander. Upon his return to Berlin he was
present at the marriage of his only sister, the Princess Louise,
with the Grand Duke Frederick of Baden. In the following
December he visited the Emperor and Empress of the French

100 EMINENT PERSONS
at the Tuileries, and in letters written by his illustrious hosts
we have personal glimpses of the Prince at this time. " The
Prince pleased us very much," remarked Napoleon, writing to
Queen Victoria, " and I have no doubt he will make the Prin
cess Royal happy, as he seems to me to possess every quality
fitted for his age and position." The Empress Eugenie, in a
letter to Countess Walewski, thus referred to the Prince and his
companion, the great German strategist : " The Prince is tall
and handsome, almost a head taller than the Emperor ; he is
slight and fair, with a straw-coloured moustache, a German (as
Tacitus might describe him) of chivalrous courtesy, with some
thing of the Hamlet about him. . . . His companion, a
General Moltke (or some such name), is a taciturn gentleman,
but by no means a dreamer, and, being perpetually on the look
out, takes one by surprise with his pointed remarks. They are
an imposing race, these Germans. Louis calls them the race of
the future. Bah! nous n'en sommes pas encore la." Little could
the writer imagine that within fourteen years from that time
the two men thus described would play such an important part
in the destruction of the French Empire.
There are many who will remember the interest evoked by
the marriage of Prince Frederick William of Prussia with the
Princess Royal of England. This happy event was solemnised
in the chapel of the historic palace of St. James's on the 25th
of January 1858. The youthful bride was given away by her
father, and the ceremony was performed by the Archbishop of
Canterbury, assisted by the Bishops of London, Oxford, and
Chester, and the Dean of Windsor. It was the first break in
the Queen's family. The wedding day was observed as a
holiday all over the United Kingdom ; bells were rung, flags
were hoisted, and there were great rejoicings in every city,
town, and hamlet, throughout the length and breadth of the
land. The bride and bridegroom left England on the 2nd of
February, and on the 8th made their public entry into Berlin.
For some days congratulations continued to pour in upon the
young couple from every part of the Prussian kingdom.
In 1861 William I. ascended the throne of Prussia, and
Frederick William, becoming Crown Prince, naturally took a
more prominent part in public affairs and public ceremonies.
He was sworn in a member of the King's Council, and he also
had a seat upon the commission for the reorganisation of the

THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III. 101
army. In 1862 he came over to England to represent Prussia
at the opening of the International Exhibition, and was as
sociated with the Duke of Cambridge as one of Her Majesty's
representatives at the inaugural ceremony. He spoke at the
Royal Academy banquet, and referred with great satisfaction
to the fact that his wife, the Princess Royal of England, was
one of the foremost representatives of British art in Germany.
In May 1863 Prussia was in the throes of a constitutional
crisis. King William and Prince Bismarck were pursuing a
drastic policy, and among other measures which caused great
dissatisfaction a stringent decree was issued against the Liberal
newspaper press. This arbitrary action led to a temporary
estrangement between the King and his son, whose views were
shared by his royal consort. The Prince addressed a letter to
his father, remonstrating against the unconstitutional course
which the King and his Government were pursuing. This he
followed up on the 3rd of June by a formal protest addressed
to the Cabinet against the decree affecting the Press, which he
declared to be " both illegal and injurious to the State and the
dynasty." At Dantsic, in reply to an address from the munici
pality, he spoke in a similar spirit, whereupon the King
demanded a disavowal of his reported sentiments, on pain of his
being recalled to Berlin and deprived of his military command.
The Prince replied that he could not retract his speech ; that he
was obliged to make as courageous a stand for his future as his
father was making for his own ; and that he was ready, if
required, to lay down his commission in the army and resign
his seat in the Council of State. " If I am not allowed to
speak my mind I must naturally wish to dissever myself
entirely from the sphere of politics." The storm blew over,
and domestic legislation in Prussia was soon overshadowed by
the war with Denmark. The Crown Prince went through the
Danish War, which arose out of the disputed succession to the
Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. He was present at the
battle of Duppel and at the subsequent operations of the
Prussian and Austrian forces, which resulted in the defeat of
Denmark after a gallant, but very unequal, struggle. On his
return to Berlin he was nominated to the general command of
the 2nd Army Corps. In June 1865 the Crown Prince, as
Governor of Pomerania, received the King in the old market
place at Stralsund, the occasion being the fiftieth anniversary

102 EMINENT PERSONS
of the dependence of New Pomerania and Riigen upon the
State of Prussia.
Having on many occasions given proof of his military
capacity, the Crown Prince was shortly to be entrusted with
a command calculated to test .to the uttermost all his adminis
trative abilities and his warlike ardour and energy. The
struggle for supremacy in Germany had long been impending
between Austria and Prussia. Diplomacy failed to compose the
differences which arose out of the disputed occupation of the
Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. But although this was a
main ostensible cause of the war, the real reason lay in the
rivalry subsisting between the two leading German Powers.
Ultimately Prussia withdrew from the Germanic Confederation,
and by that step virtually declared war against Austria. On
the 12th of May 1866 the whole of the Prussian army was
called out, and the Crown Prince was placed at the head of the
Second Army, forming the left wing of the forces in Silesia.
He was also appointed General of Infantry and Military
Governor of Silesia during the continuance of hostilities. The
King of Prussia drew up the Bohemian army in three divisions
¦ — the first marching through Saxony under Prince Frederick
Charles, the second covering Silesia under the Crown Prince,
and the third, or army of the Elbe, being placed under General
Herwarth von Bittenfeld. The Crown Prince was directed to
march through the long and narrow passes of the Sudetian
mountains, leading from Silesia into Bohemia.
In order to deceive the enemy, various movements were
made by the Prussians on the south-east frontiers of Silesia, as
if their object was to cross into Bohemia from Neisse, by way
of Weidenau. But while the Austrians were expecting the
invaders to debouch in that direction, the mass of the Second
Army turned to the right and suddenly made its appearance on
the west at Nachod and Trautenau in Bohemia, having passed
the frontier without opposition. Before entering the defiles of
the mountains which separate Silesia from Moravia, the Crown
Prince issued from Neisse a spirited general order to his troops,
defending the course of Prussia, and expressing the pride, "as
the King's first servant," which he felt in staking his life and
his fortune to secure the possession of all that was dearest to
his country. The Crown Prince fought victorious engagements
at Trautenau and Nachod, coming up to the latter place at a

THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III. 103
critical moment in support of General Steinmetz. Fighting
proceeded until the 29th of June, and on that day the Prince
and his army pushed forward as far as Skalitz and took posses
sion of the town. On the 1 st of July the Crown Prince issued
from Prausnitz a general order, in which he recapitulated the
glorious events of the brief campaign. The soldiers under
his command had done all that was expected of them, and
had captured 5 colours, 2 standards, 20 guns, and 8000
prisoners. The great battle of Sadowa, or Koniggratz, the crucial
engagement of the war, was fought on the 3rd of July. The
Prussian advance commenced at eight o'clock a.m. with the
whole line of the First Army, and before this was well engaged
it was joined by the army of the Elbe. Prince Frederick
Charles's division was compelled to hold out for four or five
hours with the aid of the Third Army alone, and at one o'clock
the reserves had to be called up to the Prussian centre. The
Austrian fire was terrific, and affairs became critical. The
" Red Prince," like Wellington at Waterloo, looked anxiously
for his Blucher in the person of the Crown Prince. Another
hour of severe tension ensued, and then at two o'clock the
Second Army appeared on the field, after a difficult march.
The heights of Chlum, the key of the situation, were stormed
and captured by the Prussians, and other positions succumbed
to their impetuous attacks. The opportune arrival of the
Crown Prince gave the victory of Koniggratz to the Prussians,
after one of the most sanguinary engagements of modern
times. The Crown Prince thus wrote concerning this memorable
day in his diary .- " After much search and many inquiries we
found the King ; I informed him of the presence of my division
on the battlefield and kissed his hand, whereupon he embraced
me. For some time we could neither of us speak ; he was the
first to find words, and said how rejoiced he was that I had had
such good fortune, and had shown my capability as a leader ;
he also stated that (as his telegram must have already informed
me) he had conferred upon me the Order of Merit for my
victories. That telegram I had never received, so it happened
that on the very battlefield in which I had shared the victory I
received from my royal father our highest award for military
service. I was deeply affected, and even the bystanders seemed

104 EMINENT PERSONS
moved." King William subsequently wrote a letter to his son,
congratulating him upon the great victories won by the Second
Division, which had given it a place of high renown in the
annals of the Prussian army. Shortly after the close of the
struggle, the Crown Prince was appointed President of a
Military Commission of Inquiry, appointed to analyse and
formulate the experiences of the war.
Early in October 1869 the Crown Prince took leave of the
King at Baden-Baden, previous to proceeding by way of Vienna
to the East to attend the opening of the Suez Canal. He was
accompanied by Prince Louis of Hesse and attended by a
brilliant suite. After brief sojourns at Vienna, Venice, Athens,
and Constantinople, he pursued his journey towards Egypt by
way of Rhodes and Jerusalem. On the 4th of November he
entered the ancient capital of the Jews, and in the name of his
royal father formally took possession of the ruins of the former
Hospital of the Knights of St. John and of the church attached
to it, which the Sultan had ceded to the King of Prussia. The
spectacle, seen from the Mount of Olives, of the sun setting over
Jerusalem, appears, to judge from his diary, to have specially
affected and impressed the princely traveller. Lebanon,
Damascus, Jaffa, and Beyrout were all visited by the Crown
Prince, and on the 17th he reached Suez, where he found the
Emperor of Austria and the Empress of the French. After the
inaugural ceremony and a journey up the Nile, he intended to
return to Berlin, but went on to Cannes in consequence of the
illness of his youngest son, Prince Waldemar.
The great Franco-German War, which had long appeared
inevitable, broke out in July of the next year. Its final cause
was the candidature of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern Sigma-
ringen for the Crown of Spain, which France regarded as
detrimental to her interests, and wliich she called upon Prussia
to repudiate. Her demands upon the German Power were
accompanied by humiliating requisitions which the King of
Prussia peremptorily declined to comply with, and on the
19th of July war was declared by the French Government.
Events proved that for this momentous struggle Germany
was thoroughly prepared, while the French military system
ultimately broke down in disaster and defeat.
The Prussian forces were distributed in three armies. The
first, or right wing of the entire force, was under the command

THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III. 105
of General von Steinmetz ; the second, or centre army, was
commanded by Prince Frederick Charles ; and the third army,
consisting of the armies of the South — viz. those of Bavaria,
Wurtemberg, and Baden — and of the 5th, 6th, and 11th North
German Corps, was commanded by the Crown Prince. The
whole number of the three armies amounted to about 450,000
men. The first great military triumph of the war was won by the
Crown Prince, whose movements were as rapid as they were
effective. On the 4th of August His Imperial Highness, at the
head of some regiments of the 5th and 11th Prussian and of
the 2nd Bavarian Army Corps, surprised at daybreak a division
of Marshal MacMahon's army, under General Douay, posted at
Wissembourg on the Lautre. The Germans, who possessed the
advantage of numbers, stormed a strongly intrenched position
at the point of the bayonet, in face of mitrailleuses and chasse-
pots, and put the French to rout. General Douay was killed,
and 18 officers and 1000 soldiers were taken prisoners.
This German success was followed up two days later by the
great battle of Worth, when the Crown Prince, on his further
advance towards the passes of the Vosges, encountered the main
body of MacMahon's army, under the orders of the Marshal
himself. The French were not in full strength, though they
had a splendid position. The ground was desperately contested
for fifteen hours, but the engagement ended in a great German
victory. The French dead and wounded numbered 10,000 ;
and 2 standards, 6 mitrailleuses, 30 guns, and 6000 prisoners
fell into the hands of the enemy. Napoleon could not conceal
this serious defeat, but he telegraphed to Paris, " Tout peut
se rdtablir." So far from recovering themselves, however,
the French forces were doomed to further and still greater
disasters. By the 11th of August the Crown Prince had passed the
Vosges mountains, and effected a junction with the First and
Second German Armies. Success continued to attend the
German forces, and the 2nd of September saw the French
capitulation at Sedan, with the surrender of the Emperor
Napoleon. In the memorable engagements which culminated
at Sedan the Crown Prince's troops and those of Prince
Frederick Charles were engaged against the greater part of
MacMahon's forces, and the Germans succeeded in crossing the

106 EMINENT PERSONS
river Meuse, this extremely difficult operation being effected by
the Crown Prince with his Prussians and Wiirtembergers,
supported by the Bavarians under General von der Tann.
The expectation that the war would cease after Sedan proved
to be vain, as the French continued the struggle under the
guidance of the Republican Government and its most active
member, Gambetta. At Rheims, on the 6th of September, the
Crown Prince put forth, under the sanction of the King, a
national and well-considered scheme for establishing a benevol
ent institution for the support of the disabled soldiers of
Germany. On the 20th the headquarters of the Third German
Army were established at Versailles, the abode of Louis XIV.
A few days later the Crown Prince made a distribution of the
Iron Cross in the Grand Court of Versailles, delivering an
address in tones so distinct that they were heard everywhere
throughout the courtyard. The highest military dignity of
Prussia, that of Field-Marshal, was conferred by King William
upon his soldier son on the 28th of October. The King took
the opportunity afforded by the fall of Metz and the surrender
of the second great French army to grant this distinction to the
Crown Prince, and it was the first time the title of Field-
Marshal had ever been borne by a prince of the reigning
line. In his difficult position as commander of a large army the
Crown Prince never failed to draw out the love and enthusiasm
of his men. His Imperial Highness was present at that
memorable scene in the Palace of Versailles on the 18th of
January 1871, when King William became the head of a united
German Empire. He also entered Paris after the capitulation,
and at Nancy, on the 14th of March, he issued a farewell
manifesto to the soldiers of the Third Army, recapitulating its
brilliant achievements, and expressing a hope that the bond of
comradeship formed between Prussians and Bavarians and the
troops of Wurtemberg and Baden on the field of battle would
never be torn asunder, but rather strengthened by time for the
honour, renown, and wellbeing of the common German Father
land. Replying later to an address from the communal
authorities of Berlin, the Crown Prince observed that the result
of the glorious struggle was " as unexampled as its progress —
Germany united, the Emperor established in his Empire, the
Fatherland secured by strong and extended frontiers, and its

THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III. 107
power and influence firmly and (if God will) permanently
settled." For his distinguished services in the fie1 d the Crown Prince
received the Grand Cross of the Order of the Iron Cross, the
Grand Cross of the Wurtemberg Order for military service, the
Swords of the Duchy of Anhalt, Albert Order of the Bear, the
Hessian Grand Ducal Cross for military service, and the Lippe-
Schaumburg Cross. Accompanied by the Crown Princess and
the royal children, on the 4th of July he came over to England
on a visit to the Queen, that he might give Her Majesty a
personal description of the war in which he had borne so
prominent and so successful a part.
During the time of peace which now succeeded the Crown
Prince manifested a keen interest in the development of
Germany. Matters political, social, religious, artistic, and
industrial claimed his attention in turn, and he was indefatig
able in travelling to the most remote parts of the Empire in
furtherance of German interests. The unveiling of the Stein
memorial drew from him the expression of an earnest hope that
the work of the great regenerator of Germany would not be
forgotten, but as his ideas had already resolved themselves into
deeds of deliverance, so might they continue thoroughly to
pervade the body politic, that in them the Empire should find
a pledge of a great and happy future. In June 1875 he laid
the foundation-stone of the monument to be raised in honour
of his great ancestor, the conqueror of Fehrbellin, and, speaking
afterwards at a banquet, he said, " In this place we stand as it
were in the very cradle of the Prussian State. Great and
noble are the deeds that have been wrought since that small
beginning from which the House of Brandenburg has attained
its high predominance ; but let us ever be on our guard, let
our sentiments ever be those of simple gratitude, for only in the
temper of humility can we venture to anticipate that it will be
granted to the Emperor to see, during the time of peace, the
ripening of the fruit which was sown amid the conflicts of
war." The Emperor William's life was twice attempted in 1878,
the second time by the assassin Nobiling, on the 2nd of June.
His Majesty was seriously injured, and, in consequence of his
wounds, he appointed the Crown Prince provisional Regent,
with full authority to act in all affairs of urgency. At this

108 EMINENT PERSONS
time the Prussian conflict with the Vatican was in progress.
The Prince adopted the same attitude as his father on this
question, and in a letter to the Pope he thus emphatically
expressed himself : " To the suggestion in your Holiness's
letter that the laws of Prussia should be so modified as to
accord with the statutes of the Romish Church no Prussian
monarch could listen for a moment. The independence of the
Monarchy, which as a patriot and as my father's heir I am
bound to maintain, would at once be compromised if its freedom
of legislation were subordinated to any external power." At the
command of the Emperor, the Crown Prince wrote a letter of
thanks to the German people for their spontaneous expressions
of sympathy in connection with the attempts made to assassinate
His Majesty ; and in response to an address from the municipal
authorities of Berlin, the Regent, after acknowledging the
gravity of the times, said : " The Empire is loyal, it is sound
at the core ; and in this conviction I take courage and find
strength to fulfil the duties that devolve upon me."
At the conclusion of the Berlin Congress — which was
attended by Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury as the
English Plenipotentiaries — a grand banquet was given (13th
July 1878) in the White Hall of the Royal Palace at Berlin.
The Crown Prince, speaking in French, thus adverted to the
labours of the Congress : " The hopes which I ventured to
express a month ago, when, in the name of the Emperor, I
welcomed the distinguished statesmen who have assembled here,
have attained a happy fulfilment. The peace for which Europe
so earnestly longed has crowned their labours, and, as the
interpreter of the sentiments of my illustrious father, I am
rejoiced to pay my tribute to the wise and conciliatory spirit
which has contributed to this great result." In the following
December the Prince's regency terminated, his venerable
father being now happily restored to health. The Emperor
William addressed an autograph letter to his "well-beloved
son," warmly thanking him for the scrupulous care and efficiency
with which he had administered the affairs of the Empire. The
Crown Prince, setting duty and the prospective good of the
country above immediate popularity, had maintained order
during a very critical period by his firm and judicious action.
The death of the lamented Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of
Hesse, on the 14th of December 1878, plunged the German

THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III. 109
Court, and especially the Crown Prince's household, into profound
grief. In almost all German as well as English circles this
mournful event stirred the liveliest feelings of sorrow and
sympathy. Not long afterwards the Crown Princess was
alarmed on her husband's behalf, for in driving up to the
Palace in his carriage the horses became restive, and the Prince
was thrown violently out. Fortunately he escaped without
injury. In March 1879 the Crown Prince and Princess
visited England, and were present at the marriage of the
Princess Louisa Margaret (daughter of Prince Frederick Charles)
to the Duke of Connaught, at St. George's Chapel, Windsor.
Only a fortnight after this the Crown Prince and Princess
sustained a heavy affliction by the somewhat sudden death at
Berlin of their youngest son, Prince Waldemar, who expired of
heart disease. As joy treads upon the heels of sorrow, a
pleasing event occurred on the 15th of June following, when
the infant grandchild of the Crown Prince and Princess, and
daughter of the Hereditary Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Meiningen,
was baptised in the new Palace at Potsdam, in the names of
Feodora Victoria Augusta Marianne Marie, after one of its
grandmothers and four of its surviving great-grandmothers.
The Emperor William and the Empress Augusta, with the
Crown Prince and Princess, visited Cologne on the 15th of
October 1880, and were present at the festival on the completion
of the famous cathedral. A grand historical procession was
formed on the following day, and a banquet was held, at which
the Crown Prince spoke of the extreme gratification which the
Emperor felt that the great architectural work had been so
nobly finished. In February 1881 the Crown Prince's eldest
son, Prince William, was married at Berlin to the Princess
Augusta, daughter of Duke Frederick of Schleswig -Holstein.
A few days later the Imperial family was plunged into the
deepest grief by the assassination of the Emperor of Russia.
The Crown Prince set out for St. Petersburg to attend his
obsequies, and when a question of his safety was raised, the
Emperor William characteristically said, Faisons notre metier.
In consequence of the threats of the Nihilists, however, it was
not without a feeling of relief that the Crown Prince was
welcomed back at Berlin. In May 1882 a son was born to the
Prince and Princess William, and there were great rejoicings at
the advent of a Prince who was third in the direct line of

110 EMINENT PERSONS
descent as heir to the Imperial throne. Such an occurrence was
probably unexampled in the history of Royal and Imperial
families. In July the Crown Prince and Princess and the
Princess Victoria went upon a tour through Switzerland and
Italy, first visiting the King and Queen of Saxony, and also
passing through Vienna.
On the 25th of January 1883 the Crown Prince and
Princess celebrated their silver wedding, but in consequence of
the death of Prince Charles, the Emperor William's brother, the
public rejoicings were necessarily curtailed. Great interest was
nevertheless shown in this happy celebration, and Queen
Victoria was represented at Berlin by a special envoy. The
Imperial couple published a letter of thanks to the German
nation, in which they expressed themselves as deeply touched
by the countless proofs of affection shown to them. At the great
Luther festival held at Wittenberg on the 13th of September
to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Reformer's birth, the
Crown Prince represented his father, and spoke admirably of
the influence which the spirit and work of Luther had exercised
upon the German nation. Towards the close of the year the
Crown Prince visited Spain, and in January 1884 he passed on
to Rome, where he had an audience of the Pope. The relations
between Germany and the Vatican were not now of so strained a
character as in former years. There were still some outstanding
differences, however, which were amicably discussed by His
Holiness and his illustrious visitor. Between 1884 and 1887
the Prince took part in many public functions in the German
capital, and also in various parts of the Empire. It was in
June last, and in England, that he made his last important
appearance in public, when he rode in his white cuirassier's
uniform by the side of the Prince of Wales at the head of the cortige
of Princes which preceded the Queen's carriage on the celebra
tion of her Jubilee. Amid all that brilliant galaxy there was no
figure more noble or more striking than that of Frederick
William of Germany.
But the enthusiasm with which the famous Crown Prince
was greeted by innumerable spectators in the Abbey and along the
streets of London was not the expression of an unclouded
popular delight. With the interest that surrounded so notable
a personage, and the eager acclamations extorted by his con
spicuously noble bearing, and due to one so nearly related to

THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III. Ill
our Queen, there mingled the strong undercurrent of a more
personal sympathy ; for it was known that the hero of whom
all were speaking was the subject of a mysterious malady which
was even then recognised as grave, and about which those best
informed had begun to whisper dark forebodings. For in May
the public had been told that the Crown Prince was suffering
from an affection of the throat, which had proved unusully in
tractable. Since the previous January there had been a local
inflammation, accompanied by a slight cough and much hoarse
ness, and these symptoms refused to yield to the ordinary treat
ment, until suspicion was at length aroused that they indicated
disease of a malignant type. A prolonged stay at Ems did
nothing to abate the more persistent symptoms, and in Kay the
German physicians, suspecting cancer, proposed the partial extir
pation of the larynx, an operation attended, as was admitted, by
the gravest danger.
However, it was determined that, before this extreme step
was resorted to, some other specialist should be called in, and
Dr. Morell Mackenzie was summoned from London for a con
sultation. His strong objections to a dangerous operation were at
once made known. On the 22nd of May he successfully removed
a portion of the diseased tissue from the Crown Prince's throat.
This was examined microscopically by Professor Virchow, with
what was for the time a reassuring result, and all idea of the
serious operation that had been contemplated was abandoned.
But the progress of the disease was not arrested, and a prolonged
stay in this country after the Jubilee celebrations, first at Nor
wood, and then in the Isle of Wight and the Scottish Highlands,
though benefiting the general health of the patient, left the local
malady very much as before. On leaving England the Prince
went to Baveno, attended by Mr. Mark Hovell, who has latterly
been as constantly by his side as Sir M. Mackenzie himself.
In the autumn the Crown Prince removed with his family
to San Remo for the winter, and Sir Morell Mackenzie was
summoned thither early in November. At San Remo the
disease assumed a more serious shape. On the 11th of November
a bulletin was issued by Sir Morell Mackenzie, Professors
Schroetter and Krause, and Drs. Schmidt and Hovell, announc
ing the existence of a swelling in the Crown Prince's throat,
which there was reason to hope would disappear under suit
able treatment. It was determined to watch the growth care-

112 EMINENT PERSONS
fully, but to postpone an operation until a new tumour which
suddenly sprung up either disappeared or became small. Sir
Morell Mackenzie was able to leave his patient for several weeks,
but he returned at the close of last January. Early in February
the condition of the Crown Prince became most alarming. On
the 9th the symptoms were so serious that the medical authori
ties decided it was no longer safe to postpone the operation of
tracheotomy. The cause of the obstruction to respiration — an
increased thickening of the mucous membrane in the front of the
lower part of the larynx, under the right vocal chord — threatened
at any moment to close the orifice of the windpipe. The danger
of suffocation rendered an immediate operation necessary, and
this was performed by Dr. Bramann, in the presence of Sir
Morell Mackenzie and the other doctors. Time did not permit
Dr. Bergmann to be sent for. The operation was successfully
performed. No chloroform was administered, and the Prince
bore the ordeal with characteristic fortitude. The beneficial
effects of the operation became immediately apparent in the
great relief afforded to the powers of respiration and deglutition.
Breathing was effected by means of a curved silver tube or
cannula introduced into the throat as an artificial respiratory
organ. In the course of a fortnight or three weeks, however,
distressing symptoms again presented themselves, though they
were somewhat relieved by the specialists in attendance. Prince
William of Prussia proceeded to San Remo on the news of his
father's relapse.
While Germany was mourning over the condition of the
Crown Prince at San Remo, the national grief was intensified
by the rapid failure in the health of the Emperor William, which
was not unconnected with the venerable monarch's anxiety for
the life of his son. Never was any people so severely smitten ;
the reigning Sovereign at Berlin and the next heir at San Remo
both lying at the same time in a critical condition. Europe
wondered from which city would first be despatched mournful
and fatal tidings. At length, on the 9th of March, after a long
and glorious reign, the Emperor William passed away.
The new Emperor was proclaimed under the title of Frederick
III., and His Majesty forwarded from San Remo the following
telegram to Prince Bismarck, the Imperial Chancellor : " In
the moment of deepest sorrow at the home-going of the Emperor
and King, my beloved father, I must express my thanks to you

THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III. 113
and to the Ministers of State for the devotion and loyalty with
which you all served him, and I rely upon the assistance of you
all in the arduous charge which has devolved upon me." The
Emperor Frederick and the Empress Victoria departed from
San Remo by special train the next morning, accompanied by
Sir Morell Mackenzie. They met the King of Italy on the
journey, and on the evening of the following day (Sunday) they
arrived at the Palace of Charlottenburg. To outward seeming
the Emperor was almost as strong and stalwart as ever, as he
walked into the vestibule with a firm step that resounded
through the lofty hall, lifted his hand to his throat, undid the
clasp of his fur -lined military cloak, and shook it from his
shoulders before assistance could be rendered to him.
In his proclamation to his people, the Emperor first paid an
eloquent tribute to the memory of the dead Kaiser. " The
faithful Prussian people," he said, " have lost their fame-crowned
King, the German nation the founder of its unity, the newly-
risen Empire the first German Emperor." Then, with regard
to himself, he added : " Imbued with the greatness of my
mission, I shall make it my whole endeavour to continue the
fabric in the spirit in which it was founded, to make Germany a
centre of peace, and to foster the welfare of Germany in agree
ment with the Federal Goverment as well as with the constitutional
organs of the Empire, and also with Prussia. To my faithful
people who have stood by my house throughout the history of a
whole century, in good as in evil days, I offer my unbounded
confidence. For I am convinced that on the basis of the un
breakable bond between Sovereign and people which, independ
ently of every change in the life of the State, forms the unalter
able inheritance of the House of Hohenzollern, my crown rests
henceforward as securely as the devotion of the country to the
government of which I am now called, and of which I solemnly
promise to be the faithful King, both in happiness and in
sorrow. God grant me His blessing and strength to carry out
this work, to which my life shall henceforth be devoted."
But barely a fortnight had elapsed after the Emperor's
accession before his illness again took an unfavourable turn.
Consequently an Imperial decree, dated the 21st of March,
was addressed to the Crown Prince and published, expressing
the wish of the Emperor that the Prince should make him
self conversant with the affairs of State by immediate participa-
vol. iv i

114 EMINENT PERSONS
tion therein. His Imperial Highness was accordingly en
trusted with the preparation and discharge of such State
business as the Emperor should assign to him, and he was
empowered in the performance of this duty to affix all necessary
signatures, as the representative of the Emperor, without
obtaining an especial authorisation on each occasion. This step,
though a natural one to take in view of the Emperor's condition,
gave rise to the most gloomy anticipations. The Emperor's
health, however, temporarily improved, and on the 22nd of
March he was present at the memorial service in the chapel of
Charlottenburg, held in commemoration of his august father's
birthday. He likewise attended to the major portion of his
State duties, and among other things issued an interesting
Imperial rescript upon the condition of the army and the new
drill regulations.
About this time a difference of opinion arose between the
Emperor and Empress and Prince Bismarck on the subject of
the contemplated betrothal of the Emperor's eldest unmarried
daughter to Prince Alexander of Battenberg, the late Prince
of Bulgaria. The young couple were understood to be much
attached to one another, but their union was opposed by
Prince Bismarck for reasons of State policy, and because of the
effect it would have upon Russia. Matters went so far that
Prince Bismarck threatened to resign, but the projected
marriage was ultimately abandoned. One marriage in his
family the Emperor was permitted to witness, that of his
second son, Prince Henry, to Princess Irene of Hesse, which
took place only three weeks ago.
A semi-official announcement appeared in the North German
Gazette on the 13th of April to the effect that in consequence
of a contraction which had taken place in the Emperor's throat
a new cannula had become necessary. This change was
accordingly effected and His Majesty's general condition was
not thereby affected. But on the 14th the Emperor was not
so well, and on the following day bronchitis supervened. A
medical bulletin stated that the bronchitis was attended with
high fever and quickened breathing ; and it was evident that
the Kaiser was once more in a critical state. Consultations
were held on the 16th and the members of the Imperial
family were summoned. But the worst symptoms passed away
again, and the Emperor temporarily rallied. It was after this,

THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III. 115
on the 24th of April, that Queen Victoria visited Charlotten
burg, 'and conveyed to the sick chamber of her son-in-law, amid
the grateful appreciation of his subjects, the sympathy of an
entire nation. This was not the only visit paid to the dying
Emperor by a European monarch. As recently as Wednesday
last, two days before his death, he dressed in uniform to receive
the King of Sweden, who had travelled to Berlin to make his
inquiries in person.
The insidious malady from which the Emperor suffered
exhibited many fluctuations, but towards the close of May the
illustrious patient seemed so much better that he was able
to be moved to the Friedrichskron Palace at Potsdam, and
the hope was indulged of a considerable prolongation of his
life. Early in June, however, His Majesty began to experience
difficulty in swallowing, and he also suffered a gradual
diminution in weight. There was a marked loss of appetite,
the Emperor grew weaker, and liquid nourishment had mainly
to be relied upon. The bulletins issued on the 12th were of
a very disturbing character. The local malady had begun to
affect the wall of the food-duct, and as the area of the disease
had rapidly extended the physicians took a very serious view
of the case. It became apparent that the long-suffering Monarch
would not long be able to cope with the complications which
had attacked him. Three more days of brave battling with
death, and now the end has come; and for the second time
within a very brief period the German people have been called
upon to mourn the death of its leader and its head.
The Emperor Frederick, whose illustrious career has thus
come to a sad and premature close, was beloved by his subjects
for his sterling uprightness of character, his enthusiasm for the
arts and letters, and his interest in everything that concerned
the welfare of his people. A successful soldier, he had a great
horror of war. He was a man of broad and liberal views,
alike in theology, literature, and politics, and had he lived
would have deeply impressed his personality upon the immediate
future history of Prussia and Germany. He was strongly
opposed to the persecution of the Jews, and his intention to
liberalise the institutions of the country as far as possible was
shown by his intense dislike of autocratic ideas, and by the
recent enforced retirement of the somewhat reactionary Minister,
Herr von Puttkamer. It was the Emperor's earnest desire to

116 EMINENT PERSONS
reconcile the Monarchy with popular aspirations, and almost
his last publicly expressed command was one enjoining perfect
freedom at the elections. In all his efforts for the good and
advancement of the German nation the Emperor was cordially
seconded by his Imperial consort, whose devotion to her husband
has been unremitting. The manner in which the Emperor
bore his sufferings during the closing months of his life formed
one of the most heroic features in his brave, noble, and honour
able career.
Of the children born to the Emperor and Empress the
following survive: Prince William, born in 1859 (married
to the Princess Augusta Victoria) ; Princess Charlotte, born in
1860 (married to the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Meiningen) ;
Prince Henry, born in 1862 (married last month to his cousin,
Princess Irene of Hesse), Princess Victoria, born in 1866 ;
Princess Sophia Dorothea, born in 1870 ; and Princess
Marguerite, born in 1872.
The Emperor Frederick is succeeded by his eldest son, the
Crown Prince, who now becomes Emperor William II. He
has four sons, the eldest of whom, Frederick William, born,
as we have already seen, in 1882, becomes Crown Prince of
Prussia. The new Emperor has been brought up in the school
of Moltke and Bismarck, and is distinguished for much force
of character. His people predict that, like his grandfather, he
will become a great King and Kaiser.

GENERAL SHERIDAN
Obituary Notice, Tuesday, August 7, 1888
Philip Henry Sheridan, Commander-in-Chief of the United
States Army, and the last and most brilliant of the great
generals of the North, was born at Somerset, Ohio, 6th March
1831. He had few advantages of early education and training,
but in 1848 he obtained a cadetship at West Point. Sheridan's
hot blood and impulsive temperament were manifested even in
his student days, and a quarrel with a comrade resulted in his
suspension for a year. He was consequently unable to graduate
in 1852 as he should have done, but in the following year he
concluded his studies and was appointed a brevet second
lieutenant of infantry. In 1854 he was assigned to the 1st
Infantry in Texas, and the same year he received his commission
as second lieutenant of the 4th Infantry. With the latter regiment
he served during the next six years in Washington Territory
and Oregon. In the attack upon the Indians at the Cascades,
Washington Territory, in April 1856, the United States
troops landed under fire, and routed and dispersed the enemy
at every point. General Scott drew special attention to Sheri
dan's bravery on this occasion.
But it was the great Civil War which developed Sheridan's
talents, as in the case of many other distinguished officers, and
made promotion rapid. The resignation of commanders with
southern sympathies and the creation of new regiments secured
Sheridan a first lieutenancy in the 4th Infantry in March
1861, and a captaincy in the 13th Infantry in the following
May. Yet that memorable year in the history of the United
States " brought him little employment and no laurels." After

118 EMINENT PERSONS
various minor services he was commissioned as colonel of the
2nd Michigan Cavalry on 25th May 1862. He at once engaged
with the regiment in Elliot's raid against the railroad, which
was destroyed at Booneville. During the month of June he
commanded the 2nd Cavalry Brigade in several skirmishes,
and on the 1st of July gained a brilliant victory at Booneville
over a superior cavalry force. His appointment as brigadier-
general of volunteers dated from this action. In the autumn
of 1862 Sheridan received the command of the 11th Division
of the Army of the Ohio, under General BueU. Moving out
of Louisville with Buell against Bragg, he took part, on the
8th of October, in the stoutly-contested battle of Perryville,
where he manoeuvred his division with conspicuous skill and
effect, holding the key of the Northern position, and using the
point to its utmost advantage.
At the famous battle of Murfreesboro, which was one of the
bloodiest and most prolonged of the campaign, Sheridan held
the key-point for several hours in the first day's fighting, "dis
playing superb tactical skill and the greatest gallantry." After
repulsing four desperate assaults, his ammunition unfortunately
gave out. He then ordered a bayonet charge and withdrew his
lines from the field ; but by his obstinate resistance invaluable '
time had been gained for his chief, General Rosecrans, to make
new dispositions. Sheridan's commission as major - general
followed upon these services. From this time little of interest
occurred until 19th to 20th September 1863, when Sheridan again
distinguished himself at the battle of Chickamauga, rescuing his
division from a perilous position. General Thomas was trans
ferred to the command of Rosecran's besieged army at Chatta
nooga, and thither General Grant arrived with reinforcements
from Vicksburg. Grant was determined to dislodge the Southern
commander, Bragg, who was posted on Lookout Mountain and
Missionary Ridge. Hooker carried Lookout Mountain, and
Thomas captured the Ridge on 25th November. In the latter
operation Sheridan's division was the first to cross the crest, and
it pressed the enemy's rear-guard until long after dark, seizing
waggons and artillery. By his successful conduct in the West,
Sheridan had now thoroughly established his military reputa
tion. Grant, who had now become lieutenant-general, established
his headquarters in Virginia in March 1864. He was very

GENERAL SHERIDAN 119
badly off for an energetic commander of cavalry there, and dis
cussed the matter with General Halleck. The latter at once
suggested Sheridan, remembering his splendid dash and bravery
at Missionary Ridge. " The very man ! " exclaimed the laconic
Grant, and Sheridan accordingly became commander of the
Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac. Sheridan's pro
gress during the campaign of 1864 was like a whirlwind. His
troops covered the front and flanks of the infantry through the
battles of the " Wilderness " until 8th May, when the greater part
of the force was withdrawn, and next morning Sheridan started
on a raid against the enemy's points of communication with
Richmond. Getting within the Confederate lines, he dashed
upon the outworks of Richmond itself, where he took 100
prisoners, and thence moved to HaxalPs Landing, from which
point he returned to the Northern army, having destroyed
many miles of railroad track, besides trains and a great quantity
of rations, and liberated 375 Union soldiers. This expedition
included repulses of the enemy at Beaver Dam and Meadow
Bridge, and the defeat of the enemy's cavalry at Yellow
Tavern, where their best cavalry leader, J. E. B. Stuart, was
killed. From 27th May to 24th June Sheridan was engaged in
almost daily engagements and skirmishes, harassing the
enemy, and, with that good fortune which sometimes attends
the most daring soldiers, resisting all attempts to defeat or
capture him.
The Middle Department and the departments of West
Virginia, Washington, and Susquehanna were constituted the
"Middle Military Division" in August 1864, and General
Grant put Sheridan in command of the same. He chafed for
opportunities of further distinguishing himself and justifying his
appointment ; but the enemy, under General Early, had been
reinforced, and for six weeks Sheridan was kept on the defensive
near Harper's Ferry. At length, when Early's forces had been
diminished, Sheridan expressed such confidence of success if he
were allowed to attack that Grant gave him permission in only
two words of instruction, " Go in ! " Sheridan went in, attack
ing Early with great vigour on the 19th of September at the
crossing of the Opequan. After a severe battle the enemy
was routed ; Sheridan captured 3000 prisoners and 5 guns,
and sent Early, as he expressed it, " whirling through Win
chester." Next day, President Lincoln, on Grant's recommenda-

120 EMINENT PERSONS
tion, appointed the victorious soldier a brigadier-general in the
regular army. Taking up the pursuit of Early in the Shenan
doah Valley, Sheridan found him on the 20th strongly posted
on Fisher's Hill, just beyond Strasburg. Quietly moving
Crook's command through the wood, he turned the enemy's left
on the 22nd, and drove him from his stronghold, capturing 16
guns. The losses of Sheridan and those of Early in these two
battles were almost precisely equal, being about 5400 men
each ; but the Northern general had captured many guns and
small arms. Sheridan continued the pursuit up the Valley, but
finding it impracticable to proceed either to Lynchburg or
Charlottesville, he returned through the Valley, devastating it
on his way and rendering it untenable for an enemy's army.
By Sheridan's successes Grant obtained the unobstructed use of
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio
Canal, whereas his defeat would have exposed Maryland and
Pennsylvania to invasion.
Sheridan's next operations, however, were the most im
portant, as they have become the most renowned, in his career.
Passing through Strasburg, he posted his troops on the further
bank of Cedar Creek, while he himself, on the 16th of October,
went to Washington in response to a request from Secretary
Stanton for consultation. Before the sun rose on the morning
of the 19th, Early, who had been reinforced, surprised during a
fog the left of the Union army, and uncovered the position also
of the 19th Corps, capturing 24 guns and about 1400
prisoners. General Wright succeeded in retaining his grasp on
the turnpike by moving the 6th Corps to its western side and
the cavalry to its eastern ; but the whole army in the process
had been driven back beyond Middletown.
Sheridan was at Winchester at this time, on his return from
Washington. Hearing the noise of battle, he dashed up the
turnpike with an escort of twenty men, rallying the fugitives on
his way, and after a ride of a dozen miles reached the army,
where he was received with indescribable enthusiasm. This
famous incident gave rise to Mr. Buchanan Read's stirring poem
of Sheridan's Ride, now one of the most popular pieces in the
repertoires of public readers both in England and the United
States. After the lapse of a few hours spent in preparing his
forces, Sheridan ordered an advance, and literally swept the

GENERAL SHERIDAN 121
enemy from the field in one of the most overwhelming and
decisive engagements of the war. All the lost Union guns
were retaken, and 24 Confederate guns and many waggons
and stores were captured. Congress passed a vote of thanks to
Sheridan and his troops for the "brilliant series of victories in
the Valley," and especially the one at Cedar Creek. Sheridan
was appointed by the President a major-general in the regular
army, " for the personal gallantry, military skill, and just
confidence in the courage and patriotism of your troops,"
as the order expressed it, "displayed by you on the 19th of
October." On 27th February 1865 Sheridan, with his cavalry, 10,000
strong, moved up the Valley, destroying the Virginia Central
Railroad, the James River Canal, and immense quantities of
supplies, and defeating Early again at Waynesboro. He then
made his way towards Grant's army, and arrived at White
House on 19th March. In subsequent operations he acted imme
diately under General Grant. The final campaign of the war
began, and on the 31st of March Sheridan was attacked by a
heavy force of Lee's infantry under Pickett and Johnson ; but
on the following day, being reinforced by Warren, he entrapped
and completely routed Pickett and Johnson's forces at Five
Forks, taking thousands of prisoners. Sheridan displayed great
tactical skill and generalship on this occasion, and the decisive
battle of Five Forks compelled General Lee to evacuate Peters
burg and Richmond. Lee was soon in flight, but Sheridan was
speedily on his trail, and, far away in the Northern van, he
constantly harassed the enemy. Overtaking the flying army at
Sailor's Creek, he captured 16 guns and 400 waggons, and
detained the enemy until the 6th Corps could come up, when a
combined attack resulted in the capture of more than 6000
prisoners. On the 8th of April Sheridan again engaged the Confederates
at Appomattox Station. Early on the morning of the 9 th the
enemy endeavoured to break through, but abandoned the
attempt when Sheridan, moving aside, disclosed the infantry
behind. Sheridan mounted his men and was about to charge,
when the white flag betokening surrender was displayed in his
front. This brought the war in Virginia to a close, though in
Alabama and other districts the conflict continued to a somewhat
later period. The Confederate power, however, was broken by

122 EMINENT PERSONS
the surrender at Appomattox Court-house, which practically
ended the Civil War.
Sheridan subsequently conducted an expedition into North
Carolina. On 3rd June 1865 he took command of the military
division of the South- West, at New Orleans, and was appointed
to the fifth military district (Louisiana and Texas) in March
1867. President Johnson, being dissatisfied with his adminis
tration, relieved him of his appointment during the reconstruc
tion troubles in Louisiana, and transferred him to the department
of the Missouri. He continued in command until 4th March
1869, when he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general,
and assigned the command of the division of the Missouri, with
headquarters at Chicago.
During the Franco-German War of 1870-71 General Sheridan
visited Europe, and was present as a spectator with the German
forces at several celebrated engagements. He was held in high
esteem by Prince Bismarck and Count von Moltke. After the
sanguinary battle of Gravelotte, which Sheridan witnessed, Bis
marck returned with the King to Pont-a-Mousson, and on the
evening of the next day the German Chancellor entertained to
dinner General Sheridan and his American companions, " with
whom he talked eagerly in good English, while champagne and
porter circulated." At one point of the Franco-German War,
when Bismarck was at Versailles, anxiously desiring a French
Government with which he could conclude a durable peace, "it
almost seemed," says Mr. Lowe in his Life of Bismarck, " as if
he had no other resource but to pursue the war on the prin
ciples laid down by General Sheridan." The American soldier
had said to the Chancellor : " First deal as hard blows at the
enemy's soldiers as possible, and then cause so much suffering to
the inhabitants of the country that they will long for peace and
press their Government to make it. Nothing should be left to
the people but eyes to see and lament the war ! "
In 1875, during the political disturbances in Louisiana,
General Sheridan was sent to New Orleans, returning to Chicago
on quiet being restored. On the retirement of General Sher
man, in March 1884, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of
the Army of the United States. General Sheridan was the
most brilliant cavalry officer whom America has produced.
In addition to conspicuous personal bravery, he had an
eagle eye for piercing through the designs of an enemy and for

GENERAL SHERIDAN 123
detecting at a glance all their weak points. He possessed
wonderful energy, remained undepressed in the presence of
overwhelming odds, and had a superb confidence in moments
of the greatest danger. His career was one of the most
romantic and adventurous called forth by the great American
Civil struggle.

MARSHAL BAZAINE,
Obituary Notice, Monday, September 24, 1888
Franqois Achille Bazaine, French General, ex -Marshal of
France, and Senator of the Empire, who died at Madrid, of
heart disease, on the 23rd inst, came from a family well known
in the military annals of France, and was born at Versailles on
the 13th of February 1811. He went through a course of
study in the Ecole Polytechnique, entered the army in 1831,
and in the following year served in Africa. In 1836 he was
advanced to the grade of lieutenant, having won the Cross of
the Legion of Honour on the field of battle. In 1837 he
accompanied the Foreign Legion into Spain, and after two
vigorous campaigns against the Carlists, he returned to Algeria
in 1839 with the rank of captain. During the next nine years
Captain Bazaine saw much active service. On the outbreak of
the war in the East in 1854 he was chosen to command the
brigade of infantry formed out of the Foreign Legion. During
the siege of Sebastopol the bulletins of Generals Canrobert and
Pelissier bore frequent testimony to the bravery of Bazaine and
his power of organisation ; and on the retreat of the Russians
he was named Governor of the place and promoted to the rank
of General of division. He next commanded the French portion
of the expedition against Kinburn, which surrendered to the
allies, with 1420 prisoners and 174 cannon. In the Italian
campaign Bazaine "was wounded on the 8th of June 1859, while
commanding a division, in the attack upon Melegnano, and he
also took a conspicuous part in the battle of Solferino.
When the French expedition against Mexico was despatched
in July 1862, Bazaine was entrusted with a distinguished

MARSHAL BAZAINE 125
command. He exhibited his accustomed dash and energy, and
owing' to' the success of his tactics he succeeded to the supreme
command in 1863, on the retirement of Marshal Forey.
Bazaine, who had been nominated Commander of the Legion of
Honour in 1856 and Grand Cross in 1863, received his
Marshal's baton in September 1864. Pursuing the war in
Mexico at first with great vigour, he drove back President Juarez
to the furthermost frontiers of the country ; made himself
master of the fortified city of Oajaca, the garrison of which
(consisting of 7000 men) surrendered to him unconditionally in
February 1865 ; and further organised against the soldiers of
the Republic a system of guerilla warfare which was carried
into effect with considerable bravery, but at the same time with
great barbarity, by Colonel Dupin.
Even at this stage of his career, however, there were not
wanting those who accused Marshal Bazaine of treachery. It
was said that though he persuaded Maximilian to issue the
most rigorous decrees against the Juarists, and himself relent
lessly executed them, he was engaged in secret plottings with
the enemies of the unfortunate and ill - starred Emperor, in
pursuance of personal ambitious schemes. The Marshal married
a rich Mexican lady whose family were supporters of Juarez.
What is certain is that serious misunderstandings arose between
the Emperor Maximilian and the leader of the French expedition,
the latter alleging that he was greatly embarrassed by the obstinate
resistance of the natives and the policy pursued by the United
States. At a final council of Mexican notables held by Maximilian,
Marshal Bazaine declared the maintenance of the Empire to be
impossible, and the prolongation of the struggle against Juarez
utterly hopeless. Accordingly he commenced preparations for
conducting his troops back to France. Concentrating them on
Vera Cruz, he prepared for a general embarkation, defending
himself meanwhile against the attacks of the natives. He left
Vera Cruz on the 12th of March 1867, with the whole of the
expeditionary forces. Marshal Bazaine's conduct in the Mexican
campaign gave rise to severe criticism, and on his arrival in
France he was made the object of violent public denunciations.
Nevertheless, he took his seat in the Senate, and shortly after
wards was appointed to the command of the Third Army Corps
stationed at Nancy. In October 1869, after the death of St.

126 EMINENT PERSONS
Jean d'Angely, he was nominated commander-in-chief of the
Imperial Guard at Paris.
The name of Marshal Bazaine is inextricably interwoven with
the two most disastrous campaigns in modern French history.
Though distrusted by the French people, this soldier of evil
fortune managed to retain the confidence of the Emperor. Never
had Sovereign such bitter cause to lament the results of implicit
trust reposed in another as in the case of Napoleon III. and
Marshal Bazaine. In the great war of 1870, so dramatic in its
surprises, and so swift as regards the collapse of the French armies,
the deceased general was destined to bear a conspicuous but
unenviable part. The Empire set in gloom, its armies were
decimated upon the field, and the only compacted force that
remained of the mass which had moved against the Prussians
was that of Bazaine, held fast in Metz. Paris had many
sanguine patriots who believed that the beleaguered Marshal
would yet force his way through his enemies, but it was also
reported that famine had begun to tell seriously upon the army,
and that the Marshal himself, after the proclamation of the
Republic, had conceived the possibility of playing an Imperial
restoration game.
After fruitless efforts to secure favourable terms, the
Commandant of Metz signed a capitulation on 27th October.
Three Marshals of the Empire — Bazaine, Leboeuf, and Canrobert
— more than 6000 officers, 173,000 subalterns and private
soldiers, 3000 guns, 53 eagles, and 40,000,000f. in treasure
fell into the grasp of the victors. A capture of such magnitude
was hitherto unparalleled in the annals of war. It was afterwards
stated that the French soldiers in Metz had continually begged
to be led out against the enemy, being prepared to face death in
the struggle, but that they had implored in vain. A corre
spondent within the walls, referring to Bazaine's waiting policy
and his indecisive attitude as regarded the Republic and the
deposed Emperor, wrote : " To this course alone is due the
abandonment of a fortress almost impregnable, which never
fired a shot from its walls, and into which no shot ever fell ;
which sent away an army ' vanquished by famine ' with six days'
full rations ; the soldiers, as I saw myself, handing out from
their fourgons huge portions of bacon to the people as
they were led away into captivity ! " The terrible news
caused the profoundest indignation all over France. " Such

MARSHAL BAZAINE 127
a crime," Gambetta said, "is beyond even the chastisements
of justice." The prosecution of the war in the French provinces and the
siege of Paris diverted for a time the public attention from
Marshal Bazaine. But in August 1871 he was summoned to
Versailles by the Military Commission of the National Assembly.
The disasters of the war were passed in review by a Council of
Inquiry, with Marshal Baraguay d'Hilliers at its head. Bazaine,
instead of waiting for the decision, offered himself as an accused
man for trial by Court-martial. The trial was postponed from
time to time, while legal investigations continued to be made,
but at length, on the 6th of October 1873, it came on at the
Grand Trianon of Versailles. The Court-martial of general
officers was presided over by General the Due d'Aumale. The
whole scene was one of painful interest. The Marshal was
defended by Lachaud. When the Duke ordered the accused
to be brought in, the Marshal entered in full costume, wearing
the red cordon of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour and
the Star. In the act of accusation he was charged not only
with military incapacity in allowing himself to be blockaded
by a nearly equal force in Metz and in his ultimate capitulation,
but also with a treasonable design of making himself, by the
aid of his army, and with the connivance of the enemy, in
dependent of the Government of National Defence, which had
been universally acknowledged by France.
After the evidence had been heard, and Maitre Lachaud had
delivered his speech for the defence, the Due d'Aumale asked
the Marshal whether he had anything to add to what had already
been urged. In the midst of profound silence the Marshal
stood up and said, " I bear on my breast two words, ' Honour
and Country.' They have been my motto for the forty years
during which I have served France, alike at Metz and elsewhere.
I swear it before Christ." While uttering this the prisoner
appeared deeply moved ; but his voice was clear and sonorous.
The Council adjourned during pleasure, and on its reassemb
ling the Due d'Aumale, in a firm and energetic voice, spoke as
follows : ' In the name of the French people, the Council of
War, etc., delivers the following judgment: Frangois Achille
Bazaine, Marshal of France, is he guilty, first of having capitu
lated before the enemy in the open field ? — Unanimously, yes.
Secondly, had this capitulation the effect of making those under

128 EMINENT PERSONS
his command lay down their arms 1- — Unanimously, yes.
Thirdly, is he guilty of having negotiated with the enemy
before liaving done everything prescribed by duty and honour ?
— Unanimously, yes. Fourthly, is he guilty of having sur
rendered a fortified place, the protection of which had been
entrusted to him 1 — Unanimously, yes. In consequence of
this Marshal Bazaine is condemned to the .penalty of death,
with military degradation, and ceases to belong to the Legion
of Honour, and besides is condemned to pay the expense of the
trial as regards the State. The Council orders that the sentence
shall be read to the Marshal in the prison, in presence of the
assembled guard under arms." But in pronouncing this sentence
— which' public opinion both in France and out of France
generally regarded as a just one — the judges unanimously
agreed that a recommendation for mercy should be addressed
to Marshal MacMahon. In consequence of this recommendation
the Chief of the Republic commuted the punishment into one
of twenty years' seclusion. The military degradation inflicted
on the culprit was also allowed to be divested of the humiliating
ceremonies usually attending it. The place chosen for Bazaine's
incarceration was the Isle Ste. Marguerite, whence he effected
his escape in 1874.
Bazaine, who was taken on board a ship lying off the island,
escaped into Italy. He afterwards proceeded to Cologne, then
visited England for a short time, and finally took up his abode
in Madrid. On two occasions he endeavoured to vindicate his
conduct when in command of the French army within Metz.
The first of these occasions was in September 1874, when he
addressed an elaborate apologetic statement to the New York
Herald; and the second in April 1883, when he published a
volume of the same exculpatory character, dedicated to Queen
Isabella II.

VISCOUNT EVERSLEY
Obituary Notice, Saturday, December 29, 1888
It is with deep regret that we have to announce the death of
Viscount Eversley, well known even to the present generation
as a distinguished Speaker of the House of Commons and a
remarkable figure in the history of his time.
Lord Eversley was descended, on his father's side from a York
shire family, and through his mother from a Norman stock.
Pierre Lefevre, the first known of the latter race, was born in
Normandy in 1650, and settled in England in 1688 to evade
the persecution of the Protestants after the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. One of his sons, John Lefevre, was High
Sheriff of Essex in 1756. Another son, Isaac, was the pro
genitor of succeeding generations of this family. His grand
daughter, Helena, was an heiress, and married Mr. Charles
Shaw, the father of Lord Eversley, who assumed the name of
Lefevre in addition to his own. This gentleman was too
considerable a person to be passed over without a few words
of introduction. The only son of Mr. George Shaw, of an old
Yorkshire family, he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge,
and was afterwards called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn. For
some years he went the Midland Circuit ; but after his marriage,
in 1789, he settled at Heckfield, the home of his wife's family,
near Reading, and became so active and capable a magistrate
that he was chosen Chairman of the Hampshire Quarter Sessions
and appointed Recorder of Basingstoke. In 1796 he entered
Parliament as member for Newton in the Isle of Wight, and in
1802 he was elected for Reading, which he continued to represent
until he retired from Parliament in 1820. In connection with
vol. iv K

130 EMINENT PERSONS
his son's future career it is instructive to learn that in the House
of Commons he devoted himself to the study of Parliamentary
procedure and to assiduous attendance in Committees ; while in
his own county he raised and commanded a troop of yeomanry.
His figure being tall and imposing and his manner somewhat
pompous, Canning mischievously remarked, " There are only
two great men in the world — Shah Abbas and Shaw-Lefevre."
Charles Shaw-Lefevre, the eldest son of this worthy, was
born in London in February 1794 ; was educated at Winchester
and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in
1815 and M.A in 1819. In the latter year he was also called
to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn. But, while pursuing his studies
with all diligence and success, he proved himself so keen a
sportsman and so accomplished a shot that his serious mother,
slow to discern the greater qualities of her first-born son, sorrow
fully observed, "As for Charles, he is only fit to be a game
keeper." But, whatever her estimate of his intellect, she was
assuredly proud of his person, as he grew to be one of the tallest
and handsomest men of his generation.
In 1817 he married Emma Laura, the youngest daughter of
Mr. Samuel Whitbread, the eminent Whig statesman, by Lady
Elizabeth, the sister of Charles, Earl Grey, the future Premier.
He thus became connected with two influential political families.
But, while keenly interested in politics, he was not impatient
to enter upon a political career. That he was already well
qualified to seek his fortunes in that exciting field was soon to
be shown. In 1820 his brother-in-law, Mr. Samuel Whitbread,
contested the county of Middlesex, upon Liberal principles, when
he threw himself eagerly into the contest. He canvassed electors,
organized local committees, and addressed popular meetings from
the hustings, at Brentford and other strongholds of the Liberal
cause. In the same year, on his father's retirement from public
life, he was invited to succeed him in the representation of
Reading, but, from motives of prudence, he declined the proffered
honour. Meanwhile, he continued his legal studies, and figured
in the Courts as junior counsel as often as discerning clients
discovered his merits.
By the death of his father, in 1823, he acquired a more
important position in his own county, and was soon distinguished
as an able magistrate, an influential member of the Court of
Quarter Sessions, and a zealous officer of the Yeomanry. But

VISCOUNT EVERSLEY 131
perhaps he was still better known to the Hampshire squires as
the best shot in the county. At length, in 1830, Lord Radnor
introduced him to the House of Commons as member for Down-
ton ; and in 1831 he was returned, after a severe contest, as
one of the members for his own county, which had hitherto been
under the exclusive influence of Tory families. He entered
Parliament at the midst of the great struggle of the Reform
crisis, and steadily supported Lord Althorp, Lord John Russell,
and the Ministry of Earl Grey throughout their momentous
contest with the . Tory Opposition and the House of Lords.
After the passing of the Reform Act, in 1832, he was elected
to the northern division of Hampshire, in which he resided.
Ever ready to support his own party with his vote and prudent
counsels, it formed no part of his ambition to thrust himself
forward as a debater in season and out of season, like too many
of our younger school of politicians at the present day ; but in
1834, at the request of Lord Althorp, he gladly undertook to
move the Address. He was the more gratified at the compli
ment paid him, as his father had, on a former occasion, dis
charged the same function, by desire of Mr. Pitt.
Following in the footsteps of his father, he applied himself
to the study of the rules and practice of the House, and to the
useful, but comparatively modest labours of Committees. For
some years he was Chairman of a Committee of forty-two, on
Petitions for Private Bills ; and did good service to the House
and to suitors. In 1835 he was Chairman of a Committee on
Agricultural Distress, and, his report not having been accepted,
he published it as a pamphlet addressed to his constituents.
Here he acquired a high reputation for judicial fairness, for a
rare aptitude in business, and for the tact and courtesy which
distinguished him throughout his long career in public life. In
1837 his honourable position in the House was acknowledged
by his choice as the proposer of Mr. Abercromby for re-election
to the Chair in the new Parliament.
Such were his Parliamentary standing and reputation when,
in 1839, Mr. Speaker Abercromby suddenly retired from the
Chair. He himself has often related that, while standing
behind the Chair surrounded by a group of county members,
among whom were Mr. Ashford Sandford, and his old friend
Mr. Robert Palmer, one of the party said, " Now, Lefevre, we
mean to have you as our Speaker," and this friendly joke was

132 EMINENT PERSONS
soon found to express the general sentiment of the country
gentlemen and the Ministerial party. The Ministers who had
favoured the claims of Mr. Spring Rice were soon forced to
defer to the unmistakable choice of their followers. Nature,
had, indeed, marked him as the fittest representative of a great
assembly of English gentlemen. His lofty stature and manly
bearing, his handsome features, and frank and open countenance
commanded the ready confidence of men of his own class, of
whom he formed an admirable type.
On 27 th May he was formally proposed as Speaker, but his
election was not unopposed. The Ministry of Lord Melbourne
was losing ground in Parliament and the country, and Sir
Robert Peel was the leader of a formidable Conservative
Opposition. Mr. Goulburn, a friend and former colleague of
the Conservative leader, was therefore put forward as a rival
candidate. He was a more experienced member of the House,
he had held high offices under the Crown, and he was proposed
by Mr. Williams Wynn, the greatest living authority in Parlia
mentary lore, who had himself been designated by general
consent, as worthy to adorn the Speaker's Chair. An excellent
man of business, of unblemished character, and many high
qualities, Mr. Goulburn, in form and features, presented an
infelicitous contrast to his rival. But, in truth, the choice
depended mainly upon the relative strength of parties, and Mr.
Shaw-Lefevre was elected by a majority of 18 — 317 members
having voted for him, and 299 for Mr. Goulburn.
Mr. Shaw-Lefevre succeeded to the Chair in no easy times.
Party feeling was inflamed, by many burning questions ; the
rude spirits of a Reformed Parliament had not yet been broken
to the rules and traditions of order. Ministers had been
weakened by successive defeats and failures ; their party was
disunited ; and the Radicals and O'Connell's tail were uneasy
allies on their left flank. The Opposition, supported by the
House of Lords in every assault upon the Ministerial policy,
were hostile, aggressive, and confident. There were fierce
passages of arms between Lord Stanley and O'Connell ; Ministers
were hotly pressed, alike by friends and foes ; and the excite
ment of the strife too often found expression in unaccustomed
clamour and disorders. Such was the assembly over which the
new Speaker was now called upon to preside ; and he at once
proved himself equal to the occasion. His dignity and firmness

VISCOUNT EVERSLEY 133
his tact and temper, were never at fault. He called unruly
members to order with a smile which disarmed all anger ; he
ruled them without offence to their amour propre ; but, when
he was obliged to exert a sterner authority, his manner was
resolute and commanding. In his intercourse with men of all
parties he displayed the genial spirits and humour of his healthy
nature. When twenty members had started to their feet at
once, he was asked how he had singled out his man. " Well,"
he replied, " I have been shooting rabbits all my life, and have
learnt to mark the right one."
His services were not confined to the more conspicuous
functions of the Chair. Many old rules of procedure and debate
had proved an incentive to the restless activity of a Reformed
Parliament. Mr. Speaker Abercromby's rule had already been
signalised by a bold innovation upon ancient traditions. In
cessant debates on the presentation of petitions having threatened
a dead -lock upon all legislation, they were peremptorily forbidden,
and his successor, finding that other customary forms had become,
unnecessary impediments to the effective discharge of the
proper duties of Parliament, applied himself to their amend
ment. His valuable reforms may now be forgotten ; but we
venture to affirm that, without the facilities which they afforded,
the great legislative measures of the last forty or fifty years
could not have been brought to a successful issue. In his own
library he was ever ready to solve a knotty question ; and he
was as keen in a search for precedents as in the pursuit of hares
and pheasants. Whatever he undertook, either in business or
pleasure, he followed up heartily and with a will. Even his
work was seasoned with play. Studies which other men thought
tedious and irksome were enlivened by his happy temper until
they were found to be no more than an amusement. The
Commons were not slow to congratulate themselves that they
had chosen the right man as their Speaker ; and two years later
they were invited to repeat their choice.
After several years of conflict a dissolution was forced upon
Lord Melbourne in 1841 ; and the new Parliament met on
19th August. The elections had entirely changed the relative
position of parties. Sir Robert Peel returned to the House of
Commons with a Conservative majority of ninety-one, and was
master of the Ministry and the Parliament. The late Speaker
was at his mercy, but, bearing in mind the memorable contest

134 EMINENT PERSONS
for the Speakership in 1835, he again contended against the
doctrine that a Speaker "who had conscientiously and ably
performed his duties should be displaced because his political
opinions were not consonant to those of the majority of the
House," and gladly bore witness that Mr. Shaw-Lefevre "by
his ability, impartiality, and integrity had secured the confidence
of the House." No other candidate was proposed ; and Mr.
Shaw-Lefevre was called to the Chair by the unanimous voice
of a crowded House.
The accession of Sir Robert Peel to power with a strong
Administration and an assured majority in both Houses brought
comparative tranquillity into the discussions of the House of
Commons ; but the Free Trade policy of Sir Robert Peel,
culminating in the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, aroused
the bitterest animosities and passions. The scathing sarcasms
of Mr. Disraeli, the fierce denunciations of Lord George Bentinck,
and the wild clamour of enraged protectionists assailed the
falling statesman ; and rarely have the walls of the House of
Commons witnessed more exciting scenes than during the closing
months of his last painful struggles. These stormy contests
were a severe ordeal to the Speaker, but he passed through it
with courage and unfailing tact.
When the next Parliament met, on 18th November 1847,
Lord John Russell's Ministry was in power, and Mr. Shaw-
Lefevre's re-election was secure ; but he was now above all
considerations of party. Lord George Bentinck declared that
all " will join with acclamation in conceding to him pre-eminence
over all those illustrious and distinguished men who, on former
occasions, have filled the Chair." And in this high praise
another notable Conservative, Sir Robert Inglis, expressed his
concurrence. Again Mr. Shaw-Lefevre was conducted to the
Chair, amid hearty cheers from all parts of the House.
When another Parliament met, on 4th November 1852,
Lord Derby was Premier, and Mr. Disraeli, as Chancellor of the
Exchequer, had become Leader of the House of Commons. But
political changes did not affect the assured position of Mr. Shaw-
Lefevre ; and for the fourth time he was elected, with acclama
tion, to the Chair. Throughout this Parliament he continued,
with unflagging energy and undiminished popularity, to discharge
the arduous duties of his office. But in the spring of 1857 Lord
Palmerston being driven to a dissolution by an adverse vote on

VISCOUNT EVERSLEY 135
the China question, the Speaker, after eighteen years of laborious
service, shrank from the responsibility of presiding over the
Commons in another Parliament. He had already been elected
by four successive Parliaments ; he had witnessed the fall of
four Administrations ; he had won the confidence and friendship
of all parties, and he had served longer than any of his pre
decessors except the celebrated Arthur Onslow. Nay, if his
service could have been computed in toilsome days and midnight
hours, he would have surpassed that worthy himself in actual
labours and endurance. On 11th March 1857 Lord Palmerston,
in proposing a vote of thanks to the retiring Speaker, said, " It
is needless to remind those who have watched your proceedings
how you have combined promptitude of decision, justness of
judgment, firmness of purpose, with the most conciliatory
manners ; and how that dignity — that natural dignity which
belongs to yourself, which is most striking when accompanied
by simplicity of mind, and the absence of all affectation — how
that natural dignity which adorns yourself has been communi
cated, through your direction, to the general proceedings of the
Commons House of Parliament."
On behalf of the Opposition, Mr. Disraeli said, " We, too, sir,
have been witnesses to the blended firmness and courtesy with
which you have regulated our debates, and, when necessary,
controlled them. We also can bear witness to the learning
which has guided and enlightened our labours, and to the high
bearing which, at all times and under all circumstances — even
the most trying — has sustained the dignity of your exalted
office." This vote of thanks was followed by an address praying Her
Majesty to confer some signal mark of her royal favour upon
the retiring Speaker. A handsome pension was granted to
him, and on 23rd March he was raised to the peerage as
Viscount Eversley, of Heckfield, in the county of Southampton.
He had bidden farewell to the stormy scenes of the House of
Commons, but had no thought of retiring from the labours and
responsibilities of public life. He rarely engaged in the debates
of the House of Lords, but he constantly attended its delibera
tions ; he was often appealed to as an authority on constitutional
questions and points of order ; and he served upon many im
portant Committees. In his heart, however, he was still faithful
to his early friends, the Commons. The Upper Chamber was

136 EMINENT PERSONS
too cold and listless for one who had spent the best days of his
life in the exciting atmosphere of a popular assembly. Nor was
he content with its lax observance of those rules of debate which
he had been so long in the habit of enforcing, and, being appealed
to by Lord Granville, in a Committee, upon a question of pro
cedure, he replied, " I know the rules of the House of Commons,
but I have not yet been able to learn by what particular rules
your lordships are supposed to be governed."
But his own county was the principal scene of his activity
and public services. He was High Steward of the ancient city
of Winchester ; Governor and Lord Lieutenant of the Isle of
Wight ; Colonel of the Hampshire Yeomanry ; and Chairman
of the Court of Quarter Sessions. Inspecting officers regretted
that he had not the command of regular cavalry ; learned
judges said he would have been an ornament to the Bench.
For twenty-nine years he continued to preside over the adminis
tration of the civil affairs of the county with conspicuous ability,
and it was not until 2nd July 1879 that he placed his resigna
tion in the hands of the Court. A resolution proposed by the
Marquis of Winchester was then unanimously agreed to by the
magistrates, who were " anxious to place on record their grateful
acknowledgments for the successful manner in which he had
discharged his important duties, and to assure him that he
carried with him into his retirement the cordial regard and
respect of every member of the Court." At the same time he
was presented with his portrait, accompanied with every ex
pression of friendship and affection on the part of his colleagues.
Lord Eversley has been an Ecclesiastical Commissioner since
1859. He was also a Trustee of the British Museum.
As a relief from his public duties he devoted himself to
practical farming and gardening. The gardens of Heckfield
were among the shows of the county. Never was their master
so happy as when, surrounded by his friends, he could point
out some new triumph of the gardener's art, a further encroach
ment of the velvet lawn upon the park, a pattern flower-bed, a
scarce variety of pear, or grapes, fit for the table, every day in
the year. Nor did advancing years affect his cheerfulness, his
hospitality, or love of sport. Age sat lightly on him. Till
quite recent years his powerful frame was unbent, and his step
was free and elastic, while his face was ever bright with the
natural animation of his youth. Few lives have been happier

VISCOUNT EVERSLEY 137
or more prosperous. His early married life was saddened by
the death of two sons, cut off in their infancy, and his recent
honours were overshadowed, in 1857, by the untimely loss of
his wife, who had shared the happiness and the hopes of his
youth and the successes of his later years. He has left no heir
to his title ; but two daughters survive him. The eldest, the
Hon. Emma Laura Shaw-Lefevre, did her best to supply her
mother's place in his family and household, and was inde
fatigable in her care for his health and comfort. His second
daughter was married, in 1851, to his friend and neighbour,
Sir Henry St. John Mildmay, of Dogmersfield Park. His third
daughter became the wife of Captain Mildmay, R.N., and died
at an early age. Lord Eversley has survived his brothers, Sir
John George Shaw-Lefevre, K.C.B., the distinguished Clerk of
the Parliaments, and Mr. Henry Shaw-Lefevre, although they
both lived to an advanced age. The sole male representative of
his family is his nephew, the Right Hon. George Shaw-Lefevre,
only son of Sir John Shaw-Lefevre.

MR. BRIGHT
Obituary Notice, Thursday, March 28, 1889
Mr. Bright came of one of those old middle -class Quaker
families in which the registers of pedigree are as carefully kept
as in the most aristocratic houses. It is thus easy to trace his
descent from the Brights who in James II. 's reign were farmers
in the neighbourhood of Lyneham, in Wiltshire. Half a century
later a member of the family, Abraham Bright, migrated to
Coventry, and there his grandson Jacob was born. He married
Martha Lucas, and the youngest of his eight children, named
Jacob after himself, was born in the same town in 1775. This
Jacob was Mr. John Bright's father. He was one of the early
pupils of the Friends' School at Ackworth, near Pontefract,
which he left to become an apprentice of one William Holme,
a farmer and manufacturer on a small scale at New Mills, in
Derbyshire. In the beginning of the century two of Mr. Holme's sons
removed to Rochdale, and built a cotton mill called Hanging
Road Mill, and young Bright accompanied them and was
employed in their business. It could have been, however, in
no very highly paid capacity, for in one of his earliest elec
tioneering speeches at Durham Mr. Bright spoke of his father
as having been at one period of his life as poor as any of the
working men who were gathered before the hustings. But he
was endowed with no little energy and with real business talents,
and when in 1809 he set up on his own account in a mill close
to Rochdale, he very soon began to prosper. Some friends who
had marked his ability found him capital to start with ; but in
a very few years he was able to dispense with their assistance,

MR. BRIGHT 139
and in 1823 we find him the sole proprietor of an important
and flourishing business. He was three times married, and it
was his second wife, a Miss Wood, of Bolton, who was the
mother of John and Jacob Bright, of Mrs. M'Laren, of Mrs.
Lucas, and a number of other sons and daughters whose names
are less generally known.
John Bright was the second child, but his elder brother died
at four years old, so that he was almost from the time of his
birth the eldest of the family. He was born at Green Bank,
Rochdale, on 16th November 1811. His first schoolmaster was
a Mr. Littlewood, of Townhead, Rochdale ; at eleven years of
age he went for a year to Ackworth ; then for two years to a
Mr. Simpson's school at York ; and, finally, for eighteen months
to another school at Newton, near Clitheroe, close to the river
Hodder, where he first formed that taste for fishing which never
left him, and in the gratification of which he found to the end
of his days his chief out-door amusement. It may be supposed
that a boy changing school so often, and leaving for the practical
business of life at fifteen, could not lay any very deep founda
tions of learning ; and, indeed, Mr. Bright, like so many other
men whose influence in their time has been considerable, may
be described as almost entirely self-educated. From his earliest
years he was a careful student of English poetry, and English
political history always interested him keenly, no small part of
his stock of enthusiasm in favour of the Liberal cause arising
from his study of the history of the early Quakers, especially
that of his great-great-grandfather, John Gratton, one of the
victims of the penal laws of Charles II.
The first record that we have of Mr. Bright's interest in
actual politics dates from the Preston election of 1830, when
the late Lord Derby, then Mr. Stanley, was beaten by the
celebrated " Orator Hunt," to the great delight of the Radicals
of Lancashire. But it was not on a political question that the
young politician made his first speech. About this time, or a
little later, Mr. Silk Buckingham, well known in his day from
his connection with the Athenosum newspaper and with many
other literary ventures, went down to Rochdale to deliver a
lecture on the then unhackneyed theme of Eastern travel ; and
young John Bright, at that time not more than twenty years
of age, moved a vote of thanks to the lecturer. Some record
of the speech has been preserved, enough, at all events, to show

140 EMINENT PERSONS
us that, though his style was as yet a little boyish and florid,
Mr. Bright had already the root of the matter in him, and could
express such ideas as a popular audience could appreciate in
language that would move them. A short time afterwards we
have more interesting evidence of the care with which he was
beginning to devote himself to the art of public speaking. Mr.
Aldis, a Baptist minister of distinction, came to Rochdale to
speak at a meeting of the Bible Society, and has himself told
the story of what occurred in words which, though Mr. Barnett
Smith has already quoted them in his life of Mr. Bright, may
well be repeated here. Mr. Aldis is telling how he was staying
at a friend's house before the meeting :
" Soon a slender, modest young gentleman came, who sur
prised me by his intelligence and thoughtfulness. I took his
arm on the way to the meeting, and I thought he seemed
nervous. I think it was his first public speech, at all events in
such connection. It was very eloquent and powerful, and
carried away the meeting, but it was elaborate and memoriter.
On our way back, as I congratulated him, he said that such
efforts cost him too dear, and asked me how I spoke so easily.
I then took the full advantage of my seniority to set forth my
notions, which I need not repeat here, except this — that in his
case, as in most, I thought it would be best not to burden the
memory too much, but having carefully prepared and committed
any portions where especial effect was desired, merely to put
down other things in the desired order, leaving the wording of
them to the moment. Years rolled away. I had entirely
forgotten the name of the young Friend, when the Free Trade
Bazaar was held in London. One of those engaged for it — Mr.
Baker of Stockport — calling on me, asked if I had called on
Mr. Bright. I said I had not been able to attend the meetings,
and did not personally know him at all. He replied, 'You
must, for I heard him say that you gave him his first lesson in
public speaking.' I went to a subsequent meeting, and recog
nised the young friend of 1832."
Though Rochdale, like the rest of Lancashire, was deeply
stirred by the Reform agitation of 1831-32, young Bright did
not personally take any part in this agitation. During these
and the following years, however, he continued to practise
himself in public speaking, especially in the debates of the
Rochdale Literary and Philosophical Society, in connection

MR. BRIGHT 141
with which the notes of Several of his speeches have been
preserved. It is still more interesting to find that he delivered
an elaborate speech about the year 1830 on Disestablishment —
a speech of which it may fairly be said that it anticipated nearly
all the arguments with which the Liberation Society has since
then made us familiar.
It was a short time before this utterance that Mr. Bright had
first declared himself on the subject which was for the next ten
years to occupy his mind to the exclusion of almost every other
question, and in connection with which he was destined to
become one of the most conspicuous men of the day. In
1836 Mr. John Feilden, the member for Oldham, published a
pamphlet called The Curse of the Factory System, in which
he took up ground which was very commonly occupied during
the coming debates on factory questions— namely, that the great
danger to English trade lay in the hard treatment of the factory
operatives by their masters. Sir Robert Peel had spoken more
or less in this sense in the year 1816; in 1833 a Commission
had investigated the matter, and much of the evidence taken
before it was quoted by Mr. Feilden in confirmation of his
views. It was natural that this way of putting the matter
should excite the wrath of a Liberal manufacturer of Mr.
Bright's stamp ; and in a pamphlet written in answer to Mr.
Feilden he anticipated most of the arguments which he was to
use eight years later in the important speech which he delivered
against Lord Ashley's amendment to the Government Bill for
the regulation of labour in factories. It is only of consequence
here to notice this pamphlet on account of the manner in which
Mr. Bright, while endeavouring to show the impossibility of
proposals like Mr. Feilden's, pointed to quite a different source
as the danger to English trade. The Lancashire operatives, he
fully admitted, were over-worked and under-fed, but the real
remedy for these evils was to be looked for in the abolition of
the Corn-Laws, which would, by cheapening food and raising
wages, make such slavery unnecessary to them.
The story of the struggle for Free Trade is one of the most
familiar episodes of modern English history, as it well deserves
to be. It is the history of a revolution as important in its
results as any political revolution of which this country has
been the theatre, carried on by perfectly legitimate and peaceful
means. It attacked .a monopoly cherished as the apple of their

142 EMINENT PERSONS
eye by the privileged class ; and even in 1840, after eight years
of a reformed Parliament, the power of the privileged class was
almost irresistible. The leaders of the assault were men who
had to make their position for themselves ; they belonged to
neither Whig nor Tory families ; they were at first not even
members of Parliament ; they had no great newspaper strongly
on their side. They were forced to trust to facts, to reason,
and to eloquence alone. They rested neither on social and
political prestige on the one side, nor on intimidation on the
other. Their aim from the beginning of the contest till the
moment of final triumph was to act upon the Government and
upon Parliament through the constituencies ; to convert the
minority, first among the voters and then among their repre
sentatives, into a majority, and to sweep away the obnoxious
impost by a vote that expressed the fairly-formed opinion of
the country. It was, indeed, natural that they should incur
unpopularity, and that those who felt themselves attacked and
defeated by them should, for many years after the triumph of
the League, speak of Cobden and Bright with hostility and
bitterness. Mr. Bright, indeed, gave grounds enough for such language.
Essentially combative by nature, he seemed to enjoy assailing
an abuse ; and, with the instinct of the popular orator who
knows that abstractions are far less effective than concrete
instances, he was always glad to identify the abuses with some
class of living men whom he could hold up to the reprobation of
his audience. Landlords, bishops, soldiers, and the Tory party
in general— Mr. Bright seldom spoke to a popular audience
without denouncing one or other of them. He did it so
thoroughly and with such unquestionable force that the victims
and their friends would have been more than human had they
been disposed to forgive their assailant all at once. But
nevertheless there was an openness and a degree of fair play
about Mr. Bright's fighting which won him forgiveness in the
end. In the very crisis of the struggle for Free Trade, when
issues were at stake on which he honestly believed the happiness
and even the very life of millions to depend, he never stooped
to use the weapons of illegality and outrage.
In 1836, when Mr. Bright first wrote against the Corn-Laws,
and in 1838, when he first spoke against them in public, though
every Parliamentary division on Mr. Villiers's annual motion

MR. BRIGHT 143
showed a majority of over 100 against repeal, an acute observer
might have foretold that repeal was not far off. The feeling
against the law was already very strong in the country, not only
among the working men, who felt the pinch of high prices, nor
only among the manufacturers, who longed for new markets, but
among the farmers as well. The law relating to the importa
tion of foreign corn had undergone many modifications since
1815. At that date, and for many years after, the importation
of foreign wheat was totally prohibited until the average price
of wheat reached 80s. per quarter — say, Is. 4d. for the quartern
loaf. In 1822 Lord Liverpool's Government so far modified the
law as to admit foreign corn at a high duty when the average
price was 70s., decreasing to a duty of 5s. 2d. when that average
was 85s. The concession had been forced from a Parliament of
landlords by the bad harvests of 1816 and the following years,
during which — and at a time, be it remembered, when the
country was exhausted with the gigantic war through which it
had just passed — the price rose to 112s. 8d. per quarter. But
high prices were not the only evil that befell just at that time.
It is obvious that very great and rapid fluctuations in price are
just as disastrous to a country as a succession of very high prices.
The latter may find their remedy in emigration ; the former is
sure to produce all the misery that attends upon violent reactions
in trade. Great supplies of foreign food found their way to
England in consequence of the high prices of 1817, but too
slowly and fitfully to bring relief at the moment when it was
most wanted. Then followed a series of good harvests ; wheat
fell in the autumn of 1821 to 56s., and in December to the
surprising figure of 38s. 8d. per quarter. The poor man got
his quartern loaf for sixpence, but the farmer, whose rent had
been estimated on the higher basis, could not pay, and was
ruined. " An unnatural and unblessed state of things truly,"
writes one of the historians of the Free Trade movement, " since
under it, if the nation enjoyed plenty, the farmers perished ;
and in order that the latter should prosper, it was necessary
that the people should partially starve."
The consciousness that something was wrong led to Lord
Liverpool's modified Corn-Law of 1822, and to the still more
important alterations in the sliding-scale of 1828. Huskisson
was then a member of the Duke of Wellington's Government,

144 EMINENT PERSONS
and it was to him, who had already struck a blow against both
the Navigation Laws and the law forbidding the importation of
foreign manufactured silk, that the new scale of corn duties was
due. The essence of the reform was as follows : When the
average price of English wheat was under 62s., foreign corn was
to pay a duty of 25s. 8d. per quarter, which duty was to decline
gradually till it became Is. per quarter, when the current price
was 73s. or more. Although from time to time attempts were
made in Parliament to reform these duties, nothing was really
done. In 1837 Mr. Clay carried Lord Hawick and four other
members of the Government with him in his proposal to
substitute a fixed duty of 10s. for the sliding-scale ; and in
1841 Lord John Russell went still further in his scheme for
establishing a fixed duty of 8s. per quarter on corn, 4s. 6d. on
barley, and 3s. 4d. on oats. The measure never came to the
vote ; the Ministry were defeated first on the question of the
Sugar Duties, and then on a motion of want of confidence ; a
dissolution followed, and Sir Robert Peel came in. He came in
to support the Corn-Law of 1828 ; and in five years, as every
one knows, he abolished it altogether.
The active movement in favour of Free Trade may be said
to have really begun in the autumn and winter of 1836-37.
The harvest had been very bad ; a commercial crisis brought
about numerous heavy failures ; the distress among the working
population was severe. At this time the first of the Anti-Corn-
Law Associations was formed in London, numbering twenty-two
members of Parliament, and many other well-known persons.
Grote, Sir William Molesworth, Roebuck, Silk Buckingham,
Joseph Hume, and Colonel Thompson among the members of
the House of Commons, the poets Campbell and Ebenezer Elliott,
men of letters like Laman Blanchard, William Howitt, and
Archibald Prentice (the future historian of the League) were
enrolled in its list.
It was not till the next year, however, that the work began
in serious earnest, and then it was from Manchester, not from
London, that the impulse came. At a meeting hastily sum
moned to welcome Dr. Bowring, in September 1838, a proposal
was made to form an Anti-Corn-Law Association in Manchester ;
seven men — all, it would seem, Scotchmen by birth — met next
day to arrange details ; and in a short time a first list of the
Provisional Committee was issued. It contained the name of

MR. BRIGHT 145
John Bright, of Rochdale ; and a second and fuller list, published
immediately afterwards, contained that of Richard Cobden, of
Moseley. Other local associations were formed very soon after
wards. In January the first subscription list was opened, and
in a month the sums given amounted to £6136. On 20th March
1839, after one or two Parliamentary defeats, a meeting of the
provincial delegates took place in London, and it was there
agreed to recommend " the formation of a permanent union, to
be called the Anti-Corn-Law League, composed of all the towns
and districts represented in the delegation, and as many others
as might be induced to form Anti-Corn-Law Associations and to
join the League." The work before the League had been laid
down just before by Cobden. The House of Commons had de
clined to hear representatives of the Manchester Association at
the bar. " The delegates," said Cobden, " had offered to instruct
the House ; the House had refused to be instructed. But the
House must be instructed ; and the most unexceptionable and
effectual way will be by instructing the nation."
It is not necessary to pursue here the history of the League
in general, or to tell the often-repeated story of its long and
arduous campaign against prejudice and monopoly. We may
confine ourselves to the work done by Mr. Bright, who, though
he was not, like Cobden, at once " the organiser of victory " and
the most unanswerable of Parliamentary debaters, was the man
whose noble eloquence gave a force and colour to the movement
without which it would have hardly prevailed.
The first public meeting addressed by Mr. Bright on this
subject seems to have been one held in the open air at Rochdale,
early in 1839. At that time the Free Traders had to contend
not only against the agricultural interest on the one hand, but
against the Chartists on the other ; these latter, who were find
ing at that moment great support among the working men of
Lancashire, holding that political reform must come before fiscal
reform, and that no House of Commons elected on the suffrage
of 1832 would ever repeal the Corn- Laws. It was urged with
convincing force on the other side that no such House of
Commons would ever grant the Charter and establish manhood
suffrage ; but the answer was not deemed conclusive, and the
Chartists were for some years one of the great difficulties with
which the Free Traders had to contend. In this particular
meeting a Chartist amendment was carried against Mr. Bright,
VOL. IV L

146 EMINENT PERSONS
and the Rochdale operatives for some time longer chose to dream
of the blessings of the ballot, manhood suffrage, and equal elec
toral districts, rather than to put their hands to the removal of
a practical grievance which pressed heavily upon them all.
For a year or two longer Mr. Bright's interference was only
occasional ; the League was doing well, and he had other mat
ters to think of. In 1839 he married Elizabeth, daughter of
Mr. Jonathan Priestman, of Newcastle, but in less than two
years she died. The touching story of her death and of the
influence which it indirectly had upon his career was told by
himself, in a passage that has become historical, in the beautiful
speech which he delivered at the unveiling of the Cobden statue
at Bradford, in July 1877 ; and at the risk of undue repetition
we may quote it again :
"It was in September in the year 1841. . . . At that
time I was at Leamington, and I was, on the day when Mr.
Cobden called on me — for he happened to be there at the time
on a visit to some relatives — I was in the depths of grief, I
may almost say of despair ; for the light and sunshine of my
house had been extinguished. All that was left on earth of my
young wife, except the memory of a sainted life and of a too
brief happiness, was lying still and cold in the chamber above
us. Mr. Cobden called upon me as his friend, and addressed
me, as you might suppose, with words of condolence. After a
time he looked up and said, ' There are thousands of houses in
England at this moment where wives, mothers, and children are
dying of hunger. Now,' he said, ' when the first paroxysm of
your grief is over, I would advise you to come to me, and we
will never rest until the Corn-Law is repealed.' "
The invitation was accepted, and from that time to the day
when total repeal was granted Mr. Bright flung himself heart
and soul into the agitation. His speech at a great meeting at
the Crown and Anchor Hotel, in the Strand, in February 1842,
has been generally marked as that which first brought him
very prominently before the public, at least in London and the
south of England. He aided in the formation of provincial
branches of the League, and during the summer and autumn of
that year he is said to have made important speeches in fourteen
large towns at least, his greatest and most successful effort being
the speech which he delivered at the Manchester Corn Exchange
on 29th December.

MR. BRIGHT 147
By this time people were naturally beginning to talk of
sending so powerful a speaker to Parliament ; and accordingly
in the following March (1843) he came forward as a candidate
for the city of Durham, in the room of Captain Fitzroy,
appointed Governor of New Zealand. Mr. Bright only appeared
as a candidate on the very day of the nomination, well knowing
that he was fighting on a forlorn hope. Lord Dungannon, his
opponent, had the advantage of family influence, which had been
exercised through a careful canvass, while Mr. Bright had
nothing to trust to but his cause and his power of pleading it.
His speech was, as might have been expected, a vigorous on
slaught upon the system of which the Corn-Law was the
expression — an attack, carried out with all the force of which
he was master, upon the law that impoverished the many in
order to keep up the rents of the few. " Men," he said, " are
almost fighting with each other for employment and wages and
food. And no power under heaven can diminish that com
petition, or give increased comfort, or cause a steady demand
for labour, unless it be the repeal of that law which diminishes
the demand for labour, reduces wages, makes you compete
with each other constantly and of necessity, and turns the whole
force and beggary of this competition into the means of increas
ing the rental of the noble lords and landlords who made that
law." Before a popular audience, it was evident that a respectable,
quiet gentleman like Lord Dungannon could have no chance
against the tremendous Quaker from Rochdale, who cared
nothing for the influence of noble families and put the case of
the workmen in so captivating a manner. The show of hands
— it was in the days of an open hustings — was all in Mr.
Bright's favour. Next day came the poll ; Lord Dungannon
received 507 votes and Mr. Bright 405 — a much closer fight
than any one could have foretold under the circumstances.
Shortly afterwards the new member was unseated on petition ;
Mr. Bright again came forward, and, having by this time become
well known to the Durham people and having a feeble candidate
opposed to him, was elected by 488 votes to 410.
Mr. Bright took his seat on 28th July 1843, amid the accla
mations of the Free Traders throughout the kingdom. He
did not remain silent long, but delivered his maiden speech on
7th August on Mr, Ewart's motion in favour of carrying out the

148 EMINENT PERSONS
recommendations of the Import Duties Commission of 1840.
The House was thin — much thinner than would be the case
at the present day on the occasion of the first appearance of
a newly-elected member of great outside reputation ; but Mr.
Bright, though to speak to empty benches was to him a novelty,
made a vigorous oration which at once showed that he would
be a power in the House as well as in the country. What was
especially remarkable in this first utterance of his was its closing
exhortation to Sir Bobert Peel, whom Mr. Bright was already
endeavouring to separate from his party and to convert into
what he called a Minister of the people. " I should rejoice,"
he said, "to see the right hon. baronet disconnect himself from
the party whose principles he declares to be unsound. . . .
He may have a laudable ambition— he may seek renown, but
no man can be truly great who is content to serve an oligarchy
who regard no interest but their own, and whose legislation
proves that they have no sympathy with the wants of the great
body of their countrymen."
It was in the winter of this year that the celebrated election
for the City of London took place, in which Mr. Thomas
Baring and the Conservatives were beaten by Mr. Pattison, the
Free Trade candidate. At the same time it was proposed to
raise a fund of £100,000 in furtherance of the objects of the
League, and at the first meeting in Manchester £12,500 were
subscribed in the room. This was the occasion on which a
leading article in the Times (November 1843) made the admis
sion, so distasteful to the opponents of Free Trade, " The
League is a great fact." Soon afterwards the Marquis of West
minster sent £500 to the fund, and the League could boast of
having secured in his person and in those of Mr. Jones-Loyd
and Mr. Marshall, of Leeds, the three wealthiest living repre
sentatives of the noblemen, financiers, and manufacturers of the
country. In the coming session the Corn -Law question was twice
raised in the House, though the most that the Free Traders
could muster was about 130 votes. Mr. Bright spoke, of course,
upon both occasions, and, indeed, he was not slow to turn every
debate that referred in any way to " the condition of England
question" into a means for advocating RepeaL But it had
already been borne in upon the mind of the League that it was
of little use to petition the existing Parliament. Instead, the

MR. BRIGHT 149
registers began to be looked into carefully, and in many parts
of England with the most promising results ; in Lancashire, for
example, the majority for the Free Traders seemed secure.
Cobden's famous suggestion that the party should secure its
hold upon the counties by a large creation of forty shilling
freeholders was widely adopted ; and meanwhile the propa
ganda of the League doctrines did not slacken. The activity of
the leaders grew all the greater as they began to see victory
within their grasp.
Then came the potato famine, and its well-known results.
The Times of the 4th of December 1845 startled the country
by the announcement that Parliament would meet early in
January, and that the Queen's Speech would announce the
intention of Ministers to propose an immediate repeal of the
Corn- Laws. In vain this statement was described in other
journals as " an atrocious fabrication." The event proved that
it was true. What followed is known to every one. The
Ministerial crisis took place, Sir Robert resigned, and on the
failure of Lord John Russell to form a Ministry was at once
replaced in power, his Cabinet having only been modified by
the substitution of Mr. Gladstone for Lord Stanley (the late
Lord Derby) as Secretary for the Colonies.
When Parliament met on 22nd January Sir Robert Peel
announced that his opinions on the Corn-Laws were completely
changed, and during the next week, in a long and elaborate
speech, he set forth the programme of the Government. The
Corn-Laws were to cease to exist at the end of three years. In
the meantime the duty was to be reduced to a maxvmum of
10s., falling to the minimum of 4s. when the price of wheat
reached 53s. per quarter. Grain from British colonies was to
be admitted free of duty, and Indian corn at a nominal duty,
while many hundreds of miscellaneous articles were to be
struck out of the tariff.
It is not necessary to dwell upon the general aspects of this
celebrated debate and of those which followed it, made historical
as they were, not only by the importance of the issues involved,
but by the philippics which Mr. Disraeli delivered against his
former leader. We need only remark upon the part which Mr.
Bright took. He spoke with all his accustomed animation, and
warmed by a generosity that was inspired by the consciousness
of success. Speaking on the night after the Prime Minister,

150 EMINENT PERSONS
" I watched the right hon. baronet as he went home last night,
and for the first time I envied him his feelings. That speech
has circulated by scores of thousands throughout the kingdom
and throughout the world ; and wherever a man is to be found
who loves justice, and wherever there is a labourer whom you
have trampled under foot, that speech will bring joy to the
heart of the one and hope to the breast of the other."
Peel carried the abolition of the Corn-Laws, but could not
take the house with him in other measures. He fell, as is well
known, on the Irish Coercion Bill, and Lord John Russell
reigned in his stead, with Lord Palmerston for Foreign Secre
tary, Sir George Grey at the Home Office, and Macaulay as
Paymaster-General, with a seat in the Cabinet. The expected
dissolution took place in 1847, and Mr. Bright was at once
requested by the Liberals of Manchester to become their repre
sentative. He could not decline an invitation from the capital
of his own county and the centre of the population among
whom he had spent his life. He parted regretfully from
Durham, and with the late Mr. Milner-Gibson presented him
self to the Manchester electors, to be returned without a contest.
In the same year he married for the second time, his wife being
Miss Margaret Elizabeth Leatham, daughter of the well-known
Wakefield banker.
The Free Trade controversy once settled, Mr. Bright had
time to turn his mind to other great questions — Ireland, India,
Russia, and Parliamentary reform. With these his name is
inseparably associated, while few other questions of importance,
domestic or international, could be seriously discussed in Par
liament during the years of his prime without some elaborate
contribution from him. His speeches on the Civil War in
America, for example, did much to keep the advanced Liberal
party firm in its allegiance to the cause of the North ; and,
again, whenever in or out of Parliament the question of
religious establishments has been raised, he has always had
something effective to say in defence of those principles of pure
voluntaryism in which he was brought up. Collateral ques
tions, of which the three most important have been Church
Rates, University Tests, and Burials, always found in him a
powerful partisan, and few finer speeches were ever made by
him than that which he made just before the Burials question
was finally settled. He also made several speeches in favour of

MR. BRIGHT 151
the Abolition of Capital Punishment. In this review of his
career, however, we must confine ourselves to the chief of those
questions which during his long life were advanced or illus
trated by his energy and eloquence, and first of these, after the
Corn- Laws, ranks Ireland. "You have toiled at this Irish
difficulty," he said to the House in 1848, "session after session,
and some of you have grown almost from boyhood to gray-
headed old men since it first met you in your legislative career ;
and yet there is not in ancient or modern history a picture so
humiliating as that which Ireland presents to the world at this
moment." This was Mr. Bright's language just after the potato
famine ; and it is, unhappily, language which is not wholly
inapplicable in 1889.
Speaking generally, it may be said that Mr. Bright, in the
views which he has from the beginning expressed on Irish
matters, anticipated all the legislation of recent years. He
never was wholly opposed to Coercion Acts ; he saw their
necessity in 1847 as he saw it in 1882 and in 1887. Quaker
though he was, and author of the phrase, " Force is no remedy,"
he was early convinced that unless you sometimes employ force
you may have no opportunity of applying your remedy. But
in the main his treatment of Irish questions may be described
as a long endeavour to discover such remedies for Irish griev
ances as should satisfy the wants of reasonable men, and should
make the phrase, " the United Kingdom," the expression of a
fact. From the beginning he always attacked the Irish Church
Establishment in the most uncompromising way. In 1850 he
wrote a letter to the late Sir John Gray detailing an elaborate
scheme for buying out the Established Church from its con
nection with the State, for bestowing a reasonable endowment
upon the Roman Catholics and upon the Presbyterians, and for
bidding them go their own way and manage their own affairs.
In 1853 he speaks of Ulster as purchasing Protestant ascend
ency and paying the price in the ruin and degradation of their
country ; and about the same time he describes the question of
Church Establishment as " the poisonous and pestilent question
in Ireland." It is hardly necessary to go over ground so
familiar as the history of the Disestablishment of the Irish
Church, brought to an issue as it was in the general election of
1868, and in Mr. Gladstone's Bill of the following year. It is
enough to say that of all the public advocates of such a measure

152 EMINENT PERSONS
Mr. Bright had probably been the most persistent and the
most influential.
The large majority with which Mr. Gladstone took office
stood pledged to Disestablishment, and from the beginning of
the session of 1869 no doubt remained that the Bill would pass
the Commons, and that, though it would be opposed in the
House of Lords, there also the reasons in its favour would pre
vail. Mr. Bright's speech on the second reading, which was
delivered on 19th March, was generally considered at the time to
be one of his greatest efforts, and it will probably continue to
rank among them in the minds of future readers of his speeches.
As was natural to one who brought into his politics a large
amount of religious fervour, a measure which was intended, as
he would put it, to make the political course of Ireland easier
by liberating religion was likely to fill him with enthusiasm,
and to urge him to flights of eloquence which no ordinary
measure could have inspired. None who were present in the
House at the time are likely to forget the words in which Mr.
Bright supported the proposals for the distribution of the sur
plus, with which provision was to be made for the blind, the
deaf and dumb, and the insane, when he said :
" We can do little, it is true. We cannot re-illumine the
extinguished lamp of reason. We cannot make the deaf to
hear ; we cannot make the dumb to speak. It is not given to
us ' From the thick film to purge the visual ray,
And on the sightless eyeballs pour the day ; '
but at least we can lessen the load of affliction, and we can
make life more tolerable to vast numbers who suffer ; " — or the
fervid expressions of hope and trust in the future of Ireland when
this Act and those which were to follow had had time to work.
The Bill passed the Commons by large majorities, and in the
House of Lords, in spite of the eloquence of the Bishop of
Peterborough, the second reading was carried by 179 to 146.
Then Mr. Bright and his friends began to prepare for dealing
with the land question — a question to which, as recent experi
ence has shown us, that of Disestablishment was but child's
play. Early in 1870, addressing his constituents at Birming
ham, Mr. Bright gave general expression to the principles which
were to underlie the Government policy towards Ireland in the

MR. BRIGHT 153
coming session. His language, as was always the case when
great Liberal measures were in contemplation, was the language
of optimism — of an optimism in this case on which the history
of recent years offers a melancholy comment. After describing
in outline what was to be the new legislation, Mr. Bright
proceeded :
" If we are able to suppress conspiracy ; if we are able to
banish agrarian crime ; if we can unbar the prison doors ; if we
can reduce the excess of military force ; if we can make Ireland
as tranquil as England and Scotland now are ; then at least I
think we may have done something to justify the wisdom and
the statesmanship of our time."
It is small wonder that, after entertaining with all the
passion of which he was capable hopes like these, and after
seeing his own measures carried into law, Mr. Bright should
have been almost more profoundly depressed than any living
Englishman by the Irish agitation of 1880-82 and its deplorable
consequences. Of his action when Mr. Gladstone adopted the
policy of Home Rule we shall speak later. As regards the first
Land Bill, a breakdown in health in the early part of 1870 pre
vented Mr. Bright from .taking any share in the debates. He
gave his name to certain incomplete " purchase clauses," which
represented a part, and only a part, of a policy that he wished
to see incorporated in the Bill, and which were all that a division
of opinion in the Cabinet enabled him to introduce ; for Mr.
Bright was at this time a -Cabinet Minister. The general
election of 1868 had returned, as we have said, a large Liberal
majority to Parliament. It was a Disestablishment majority,
and nothing could be more natural than that the man who had
been foremost in his advocacy of Disestablishment should find a
place in the Ministry which was to carry out that policy. Mr.
Gladstone first proposed that Mr. Bright should become Secre
tary of State for India, but he shrank from so arduous a post on
the ground of the state of his health, and finally accepted that
of President of the Board of Trade. But his health gave way,
and in December 1870 he resigned, to re-enter the Cabinet on
its reconstruction in 1873 as Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster. To consider Mr. Bright's attitude towards the second of the
four great subjects which we have specified, it is necessary to go
back some twenty years. It was undoubtedly a bold measure

154 EMINENT PERSONS
for Mr. Gladstone to propose in 1868 that Mr. Bright should
become Secretary for India, though, indeed, the condition of the
Indian Empire at that period was very different from what it
had been in 1853, and even later, when Mr. Bright had thun
dered in the House of Commons and on public platforms against
the enormities of the East India Company. His first important
speech on the subject was delivered in June 1853, in the debate
on Sir Charles Wood's Bill for the Better Government of India
— a Bill which may be shortly described as attempting a via
media, to reform the Company by introducing a number of
Crown nominees on the Board of Directors. Mr. Bright was
against any such compromise. He attacked the whole system of
the Company's government. He thought the Leadenhall Street
system far too irresponsible, and far too likely to produce a
tyrannical and short-sighted method of government, and, more
over, he objected to its ill-defined and clumsy relations to the
Board of Control. He said :
"If the Government thinks it right to have six good
directors, let them abolish the twelve bad ones. . . . What, I
should like to know, would have been done if India had been
conquered by the troops of the Crown ? We should then never
have sent some thirty men into a by-street of London to distri
bute patronage and govern a great country. The government
of India would then have been made a department of the
Government, with a Council and a Minister of State. But it
appears that the old system of hocus pocus is still to be
carried on."
The proposals of Mr. Bright were not carried into effect at
the time, but four years later came the Indian Mutiny, and in
the beginning of the session of 1858 Lord Palmerston's Govern
ment introduced a Bill for putting the possessions of the East
India Company under the direct authority of the Crown. Then
came the Conspiracy Bill and the fall of Lord Palmerston, after
which the question was taken up by the new Government ; a
second India Bill was introduced and withdrawn, and a third
India Bill, which ultimately became law, was brought in in the
month of June. It was on this occasion that Mr. Bright pro
posed a great measure of decentralisation, going so far as to
suggest the abolition of the office of Governor-General and the
construction of five presidencies, with capitals at Calcutta,
Madras, Bombay, Agra, and Lahore. Mr. Bright proposed also

MR. BRIGHT 155
a large number of remedial measures, and the issuing of a pro
clamation offering a general amnesty, maintaining the sacred-
ness of adoption, and announcing complete equality in all
religions. Again, in the same session, we find him speaking
with great force and eloquence in defence of a despatch of Lord
Ellenborough's condemning the proclamation in which Lord
Canning had threatened something like confiscation to the
talookdars, or landowners, of Oude. Next year he took up the
question of Indian finance, and spoke very earnestly on Sir
Charles Wood's proposal to raise a loan of £5,000,000 for the
Indian Exchequer. He dwelt on the alarming financial condition
of India, and on the great and increasing responsibilities which
this country was undertaking with regard to it, and after
enlarging upon the vast and increasing expenditure, he asked
what was the end to which things must come. " Either," he
replied, "the Government of India must come to an end, or
England itself must become tributary to India " ; and in a
peroration, which, though it excited great anger in some
quarters, yet had a powerful effect of another kind in others, he
added :
" I hope that you will not show to the world that although
your fathers conquered the country you have not the ability to
govern it. ... I hope that no future historian will have to say
that the arms of England in India were irresistible, and that an
ancient Empire fell before their victorious progress, yet that
finally India was avenged, because the power of her conqueror
was broken by the intolerable burdens and evils which she cast
upon her victim, and that this wrong was accomplished by a
waste of human life and a waste of wealth which England, with
all her power, was unable to bear."
The subsequent occasions on which Mr. Bright has spoken
on Indian affairs have not been very numerous, but his language
has always been of the same kind ; his cry has uniformly been
that the responsibilities of the Empire were so great already
that a wise policy should aim rather at diminishing than at
extending them. He has, therefore, been always opposed to
frontier wars, more especially to the last Afghan War, and he
has always warmly supported any measures for the development
of the native resources of India.
Another marked and important episode in Mr. Bright's
career is that of his opposition to the Crimean War. Both in

156 EMINENT PERSONS
and out of Parliament he was from the beginning consistently
opposed to anything which might lead to war, and when war
had broken out he anxiously sought to suggest opportunities for
bringing it to an end. His first public speech against inter
vention was at that curious conference of the Peace Society at
Edinburgh on the 13th of October 1853, when Sir Charles
Napier had ventured to present himself among the quiet people
there assembled and to put in a vehement plea in favour of
large armaments and of "soldiers as the best peacemakers."
The external agitation against the war was, however, of a very
limited kind. Cobden himself regretted afterwards that he had
not tried to raise Yorkshire ; and in the Lancashire towns, as
throughout the country, the advocates of military measures
had their own way completely. The biographer of Cobden

" The tide of popular passion rose with extraordinary
rapidity. The tardiness of the diplomatists gave time for all
that deep anger with which the people of England had watched
the Tsar's proceedings in Hungary, five years before, to burst
forth with a vehemence that soon became uncontrollable. The
statesmen who ought to have exercised a counteracting control
over it were hurried off their feet. Lord John Russell and
Lord Palmerston were rivals for popularity, and neither could
endure to surrender the prize to the other by making a stand
against the public frenzy."
Mr. Bright made at least three of his most moving and
eloquent speeches in the House of Commons against the war,
but without avail. Nothing that he ever said was more effective
than his allusions to Colonel Boyle and Colonel Blair, lost for
ever to their colleagues in the House, or than the famous passage
where, in the midst of dead silence, he told the House of
Commons " the Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the
land ; you may almost hear the beating of his wings." The
position of Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden, who acted in complete
harmony on this matter, as on every other, has often been
misunderstood, and Mr. Kinglake has gone so far as to say that
Mr. Bright's condemnation of that particular war failed because
he was known to be opposed to all wars. He may have been
so, though Cobden was certainly not ; but he was always careful
in his speeches at that time, as he was careful in 1877, to base
his opposition to a war between England and Russia on the

MR. BRIGHT 157
ground of British interests. He was even attacked for taking a
mean and low view of national duty when he showed at the
Peace Conference to which we have referred that the mere
rumour of war had already cost this country no less than
£200,000,000 sterling ; and he was always ready to argue
with the supporters of what was called a policy of action on
the ground that the true interests of the vast working popula
tion of this country demanded an understanding with Russia,
and not a quarrel.
The agitation and excitement of this stormy period had the
result of breaking down Mr. Bright's health. His nervous
system was for the time greatly shattered, and early in the year
1856 he was compelled to withdraw from public life. Lord
Brougham offered him his villa at Cannes, but Mr. Bright pre
ferred to spend some months in Yorkshire, at the shooting-box
of his friend, Mr. Edward Ellice, at Glengarry, and at Haddo
House. In the autumn he left England for Algiers and Nice,
and in January, finding himself but little better, he offered to
resign his seat for Manchester. The offer was not accepted, but
two months later there came the Parliamentary defeat of Lord
Palmerston on the question of the quarrel with China. A
dissolution followed. Mr. Bright was unable to fight his own
battle, and without his powerful voice to aid his cause that
cause was defeated. He and Mr. Milner-Gibson were rejected,
to the consternation of the Advanced Liberal party throughout
the country. But a few months later, though he was compelled
to abstain from taking an active part in public affairs of any
kind, it was proposed that he should fill a vacancy in the
representation of Birmingham, and he was elected without
opposition to the seat, which he continued to hold until Bir
mingham was divided by the Ac^of 1885, after which he was
chosen for the Central Division.
The period was approaching in which Parliamentary reform
was about to occupy the first place among English political
questions ; and, next to the cause of Free Trade, there is no
doubt that it was on this question that Mr. Bright spoke with
the most consistent force, directness, and effect. The struggle
that preceded 1832 came at a critical moment for him — at that
moment when the boy was passing into the man, and when the
eagerness of youth would lead him to fasten earnestly upon the
questions of the day. From the beginning to the end of his

158 EMINENT PERSONS
public life it may be said that Mr. Bright was consistent in the
cause of Parliamentary reform ; as a lad he was eager for the
Bill of 1832, as a man of middle age he took the lead in the
popular agitation for the Bill of 1867, and as an old man, at a
time when his health and strength were failing, he spoke
powerfully in support of the County Franchise Bill of 1884.
We need here only refer to his conduct with regard to the
great measure brought in by Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone,
and to Mr. Disraeli's measure which took its place in the follow
ing year. No doubt the former was Mr. Gladstone's Bill, and
not Mr. Bright's ; the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and not the
member for Birmingham, had the responsibility for its pro
visions, and had the task of steering it through the House of
Commons till it was wrecked on the rock of Lord Dunkellin's
motion. But it is no exaggeration to say that the outside force
which brought the question to the forefront of practical politics,
and which in the following year compelled Mr. Disraeli not
only to handle it, but to present it ultimately in a form even
more thorough than Mr. Gladstone had ventured to advocate,
was due in the first place to Mr. Bright. In January 1865, in
a speech to his constituents at Birmingham, he sounded the note
of Reform in a manner which all could understand, and which
neither Government nor Opposition could afford to neglect. " I
speak," he said, " out of no hostility to any class or any institu
tion. That man who proposes to exclude permanently five
millions of his countrymen from the right which the Constitu
tion makes sacred in his eyes — I say that is the man who
separates Englishmen into two nations, and makes it impossible
that we should be wholly or permanently a contented people."
When Parliament was dissolved in the following July,
Parliamentary Reform was fjie question for the country, and
Mr. Bright's speech at his unopposed nomination was in reality
a complete statement of the case in favour of such a measure as
was introduced next year. Then on 18th October Lord Palmer
ston died ; and early in the next session Mr. Gladstone brought
forward the Government Reform Bill. The debates which
followed were made memorable by the speeches delivered
against the Bill by Mr. Horsman and Mr. Lowe, to whose
arguments and assertions Mr. Bright especially continued to
address himself, both in the House of Commons and out of
doors. The occasion was worthy of the contest, for though

MR. BRIGHT 159
the immediate proposal was merely the enfranchisement of
some 400,000 voters, of very much the same class as many
of those who already possessed the franchise, still no careful
watcher of events could doubt that now, once for all, was to be
settled the question of democratic reform in England. It is
unnecessary to tell over again the story of the means by which
the Bill itself was defeated, of the resignation of the Goverment,
of the accession of Mr. Disraeli to power, of the organisation of
the Reform League, of the demonstrations at Birmingham and
Manchester, of the Hyde Park riots, and of the new measure,
moderate enough in its first introduction, but transformed
during the dinner hour of one day of the debate by Mr.
Disraeli's acceptance of an amendment giving household suffrage
pure and simple to the boroughs.
Mr. Bright's part in the whole affair was that of the
authorised spokesman and champion of the working classes,
whom he felt it a duty to defend against the too indiscriminate
indictments of Mr. Lowe. When the day came for the Bill to
be read a third time in the House of Commons Mr. Lowe made
a speech accepting the inevitable, and putting in his famous
plea for the necessity of compulsory education, on the ground
that, now the working classes were to sway the polls, " we must
induce our masters to learn their letters." The bitterest speech
of the evening was delivered by Lord Cranborne, now Marquis
of Salisbury, who had seceded from Mr. Disraeli's Cabinet, and
who, with merciless persistency and cruel logic, throwing his
incisive phrases one after another at the Treasury Bench, de
monstrated that the Bill, as the House was about to pass it, was
not the Bill of the Conservative Government at all, but a Bill
which had been transformed by Mr. Gladstone according to the
principles of Mr. Bright.
We have already spoken of the general election of 1868, and
of Mr. Bright's entry into the Cabinet. The present generation,
which has justly come to regard him as by no means one of the
most extreme of the Liberal leaders, and as, in fact, more Con
servative — he has said so himself — than many of the influential
persons by whom he was surrounded, can hardly understand the
impression which this event made upon Mr. Bright's own
contemporaries. By the Conservatives, who had fought for
privilege in 1832, for protection in 1845, and for all the other
relics of a bygone age which the legislation of the following

160 EMINENT PERSONS
twenty years swept away — nay, even by the moderate Liberals,
who had been accustomed to see a Whig Government composed
almost exclusively of members of aristocratic families, this
admission of a popular leader into the charmed circle was
regarded as a portentous sign of the times. Yet no very alarm
ing results flowed from it, and the world in general came to
admit that if this was the logical consequence of the Reform Act
of 1867, that Act, the passage of which had been witnessed
with such keen apprehensions, was likely to do but little
harm. The truth is that, though Mr. Bright made many fine
speeches after 1868, especially at his annual visits to his
constituents at Birmingham, after the first two or three years of
Mr. Gladstone's first Ministry he ceased to take that active part
in regard to public affairs which he had held till then. He had
been greatly moved by the death of Cobden in 1865 ; in 1870,
as we have said, a second attack of his old illness compelled him
to withdraw for a period from public life ; and in 1878 a fresh
blow fell upon him in the sudden death of his wife. During
the latter period of his life, from 1870 onwards, his speeches,
with a few noteworthy exceptions, had too much the character
of political retrospects, and though his immediate audiences
seemed to like them none the less on that account, those with
a long memory for politics who read the reports in the news
papers came to weary somewhat of his reiterated demonstrations
of all the good that had accrued to England from Liberal
agitation and Liberal legislation during the past half century.
When, however, there was an attack to be made upon what he
considered an abuse, or upon a course of policy which he
believed to be disastrous, Mr. Bright retained much of his old
fire ; and his speeches at Birmingham in 1877 against the idea
of a Turkish alliance, and afterwards against the Afghan and
Zulu Wars, were as animated and as effective as those of his best
days. When the general election of 1880 returned Mr. Gladstone
to power with an immense majority, Mr. Bright again entered
his Cabinet on the understanding that his share was to be
consultative, and that a minimum of departmental work was to
be expected of him. He remained in office until the middle of
1882, and resigned, as our readers will remember, on account
of the bombardment of the Alexandrian forts, his long devotion

MR. BRIGHT 161
to the cause of peace not permitting him to form part of a
Government that was entering upon war. During these two
years he frequently spoke in defence of the Government
measures, especially of the Irish Land Bill of 1881, while he
did not shrink from supporting, on the other hand, the coercive
measures which it was found necessary to apply to Ireland, and
the means which were taken by the House of Commons to
maintain its own independence and efficiency against the
Obstructionists. In the years that immediately followed his resignation, Mr.
Bright did not appear very frequently before the public. There
were, however, two notable exceptions in 1883 — in March,
when, having been elected Lord Rector of the University of
Glasgow, he delivered the customary address to students, and in
June, when the town of Birmingham celebrated the twenty-fifth
anniversary of his political connection with that borough. At
Glasgow Mr. Bright admitted that he had had but little to do
with universities, and his speech, to tell the truth, had little to
do with University studies ; but it was interesting in itself, and
interesting indirectly, since exactly one hundred years before
1883 the post of Lord Rector had been held by another
illustrious public man and another great master of English,
Edmund Burke. The ceremonial at Birmingham had a more
strictly personal interest, for of the vast crowds that lined the
streets — and it was said that they numbered several hundreds of
thousands — there was hardly a man or a woman who did not
look upon the great popular representative with feelings of deep
affection as well as of admiration. Two years later, in the
election of 1885, before the old party lines had become confused
by Mr. Gladstone's evolutions on the Irish question, Mr. Bright's
seat was attacked by Lord Randolph Churchill, that being the
first occasion in which Birmingham was broken up into several
separate constituencies ; but though the gallant invader made a
good fight he was easily defeated, and in the general election of
1886 Mr. Bright was returned unopposed. By that time, how
ever, he had taken the important step on which all his subse
quent political action depended. He had declined in the
strongest possible way to follow Mr. Gladstone in his advocacy
of Home Rule for Ireland.
This decision of Mr. Bright's was undoubtedly of immense
importance to the Unionist cause. It is true that his speaking
vol. iv m

162 EMINENT PERSONS
days were nearly over, that owing to his advanced age he could
not be counted on as an active soldier in the struggle which
then began ; but the weight of his authority made him almost
as valuable an ally as even Lord Hartington or Mr. Chamberlain.
In the one important speech delivered in 1886, that in which
he thanked his constituents for electing him (1st July), he recalled
with just pride his own long services in the cause of "justice to
Ireland"; he pointed out that for twenty-three years before
Mr. Gladstone took up the Irish question he himself had been
urging remedial legislation, and he rightly claimed no small
share of whatever credit is to attach to the Liberal party for
disestablishing the Irish Church and for reforming the Irish
Land Laws. It was natural that large numbers of the English
and the Scottish people, to whom the name of John Bright had
for forty years been synonymous with an impassioned regard
for the rights of the many, should be profoundly moved when
they heard him denouncing as rash, headstrong, and pernicious
the new policy to which Mr. Gladstone was striving to pledge
the Liberal party. From the time of the first announcement of
a Home Rule policy down to the last months of his life Mr.
Bright continued to remind the country that his opinion was
unchanged. He only spoke once, at the Liberal Unionist
banquet to Lord Hartington in August 1887, partly because
speaking on any exciting topic was more than his strength
would permit, and partly, as he said in a letter dated 7th
December 1886, because he could not bear to attack his old friend
and leader. He said :
".The course taken by Mr. Gladstone since the close of the
session has astonished me and given me great trouble. His
speaking and writing, and especially his reception of the Irish
deputation, seem to me to have driven him so far on a wrong
course that we can have no hope of any more moderate policy
from him. If I had to speak, what could I say ? I could
only deplore and condemn, and it would be impossible to avoid
opening still more widely the breach which now exists between
us and which has given me so much pain. ... I abstain from
attacking him on account of my personal regard for him, which
cannot greatly diminish."
In point of fact the July speech, to which we have already
referred, was followed by a long letter of protest from Mr.
Gladstone, who was indignant at the charge that he had taken

MR. BRIGHT 163
his party by surprise in going over to Mr. Parnell. Mr. Bright,
like a plain, sensible man, answered that he, with all the rest of
the world, had supposed that when Mr. Gladstone at the end of
1885 had asked for a majority over the Conservatives and
ParneUites combined, he had meant the Liberals to believe that
he desired to oppose Mr. Parnell ; and the rest of the answer was
equally simple and equally conclusive. But, of course, it had
no effect upon Mr. Gladstone's mind, and we can easily under
stand that Mr. Bright shrank from further personal controversy
with his lost leader. Though Mr. Bright felt strongly down to
the close of his life about Mr. Gladstone's recent political
conduct, the two statesmen resumed their friendly personal
relations, and in the course of Mr. Bright's last illness affec
tionate messages passed between them.
If, however, he did not speak on platforms or in the House
of Commons, Mr. Bright continued to serve the cause of the
Union by frequent letters. Acquaintances and strangers wrote
to him from time to time for his opinion on the question of the
day, and, though he always used to declare himself an unwilling
letter-writer, he was never remiss in answering. We may
quote a few typical sentences from these letters. On 31st May
1886 he wrote— and the truth of his remark will not be doubted
by any person whose political memory is good : " If Mr.
Gladstone's great authority were withdrawn from these Bills I
doubt if twenty members outside the Irish party in the House
of Commons would support them." Three weeks later he wrote
to Mr. Caine : " At this moment it is notorious that scores of
members of the House of Commons have voted with the Govern
ment who in private have condemned the Irish Bills." In the
same month, in a letter to Mr. Peter Rylands, he said :
" It is grievous to see with what bitterness Liberals can
treat Liberals whose fault is that they have consistently
supported the principles which all Liberals accepted less than
a year ago. Honesty and capacity in a member are with some
of small value in comparison with the suppleness which enables
him to turn his back upon himself when a great political
leader changes his mind and his course."
In November he repeated the same charge, applying it
more definitely to "clubs and political associations," which,'
he said, " mainly support Mr. Gladstone on the Irish question ;
a year ago they would have repudiated any candidate who was

164 EMINENT PERSONS
in favour of a Dublin Parliament." In later letters he formulated
more precisely his principal objections to a Home Rule policy
— namely, that it ignored the interests of two million Loyalists ;
that it was advocated and paid for by the enemies of England
in the United States ; that it would infallibly lead to separation,
to the injury of England and the ruin of Ireland. Mr. Bright
was especially interested in the articles of the Times on
" Parnellism and Crime," and throughout his prolonged last
illness he continued to express the keenest interest in the pro
ceedings of the special Commission. To Mr. Arthur Elliot
Mr. Bright wrote in October 1887 :
"Mr. Parnell's right hand clasps the hand of Mr. Gladstone
on this side of the Atlantic, and with the other he maintains
a fraternal greeting with the gang in New York by whom
outrage and murder were and are deemed patriotism in Ireland,
and who collect the funds out of which more than half the
Irish party in the Parliament at Westminster receive their
weekly and monthly pay to insult the Speaker and to make
useful legislation impossible."
Mr. Bright was not afraid of supporting the Crimes Act,
regarding it as a painful necessity and as the only means
by which government could continue to exist in the face of
such an organisation as that of the National League. He
described his position thus :
"Force is no remedy for a just discontent, but it is a
remedy, and often the only remedy, for the disorder and the
violence against which our laws are provided. I supported
the Acts of Mr. Gladstone's Government in 1881 and 1882
to put down the Land League and the disorder in Ireland ; I
now support the Government in their endeavour to suppress
the rebel movement of the National League, which is the
Land League under another name."
It can easily be supposed that Mr. Bright did not thus
separate himself from the majority of the party for which he
had worked so long without the deepest pain. He found
himself opposed not only by his own colleagues in the Ministry
and in the House of Commons, but by many, though not by
any means by all, of his brother Quakers, by his personal
friends, and even by members of his own family ; and this to
a man whose main interests had been political was a cause of
sincere grief. But he saw no help for it ; he could not- turn

MR. BRIGHT 165
round upon the convictions of a lifetime ; and he remained
" constant as the northern star " to the traditions of Liberalism
as it was always understood up to the month of December
1885. "I am," he wrote in one of his later letters, "and
always have been, against having two Parliaments in the United
Kingdom, and so long as the Liberal and Gladstone policy is in
favour of two Parliaments, I must follow my own judgment
and conscience, and not the voice of any party leader."
When Mr. Bright was but thirty years of age Alexander
Somerville, " The Whistler at the Plough," wrote of him :
" John Bright is, in talent, a second Peel ; he was born in
the same atmosphere. Let his career be observed — he has
entered upon it." The comparison with Peel was not altogether
happy, but the instinct which told Somerville that the young
Friend possessed abilities of the first order was true enough,
and Parliament, as well as the people of the North, was soon
to admit the truth of it. In spite of obloquy, in spite of the
opposition which he was too contentious and too outspoken to
disarm, Mr. Bright steadily made his way, until he gained the
unquestioned position of one who was at once the authorised
spokesman and the trusted adviser of the working classes
throughout the country. He was conscious of this position ;
he was keenly conscious of its responsibilities. He was fully
alive to the fact that on a statesman whom the people trust
there lies the duty of holding the people back when their
objects are unsound, just as much as the duty of urging them
forward when their object is legitimate and beneficial.
A curious and little-known instance may be quoted here.
When the Tichborne case was before the public, Mr. Bright,
whom a profound study of the evidence had brought to the
conclusion that the Claimant was an impostor, thought very
seriously of issuing a manifesto in that sense to the working
classes, multitudes of whom he saw led astray by the sophisms
of the Claimant's counsel and by a natural and generous desire
to side with the weaker. He came to see that he had better
let the superstition die out, but the example is characteristic
of that constant desire of his to see justice and right reason
hold sway in the minds of the people. With this simplicity
of purpose, it was natural that he should be really conservative
in his methods, distrustful of new-fangled devices in politics,
like the "fancy franchises" and the minority vote, distrustful

166 EMINENT PERSONS
of woman suffrage ; above all, firmly resolved to grant nothing
which could impair the sovereignty of Parliament. With these
feelings there went, in him, a certain distrust of other and
more legitimate objects and influences — he disliked, for example,
the representation of the Universities on '.the governing bodies
of local grammar schools, and his antipathy to Church Establish
ments went beyond the bounds of reason. For he had " the defects
of his qualities "• — the limitations of a man who had been
imperfectly educated in his youth, and whose early associations
were somewhat narrow, provincial, and Puritan. But it is an
immense thing for a leader of vast masses of men to be
absolutely pure, loyal, and disinterested ; and great has been
the fortune of England that in so critical a period of her
history — the period of the enfranchisement of the working classes
— the acknowledged leader of those newly -enfranchised men
was one so pure, so loyal, so disinterested as John Bright.
Leading Article, Thursday, March 28, 1889
An unique figure has disappeared from the political scene.
The death of Mr. Bright, after his long illness, of which the
vicissitudes were anxiously followed by the public, cannot be
said to have come as a surprise, but it has certainly come as a
shock upon the national mind. It is difficult to conceive of the
House of Commons without Mr. Bright as one, at all events,
of its potential members. His manhood and his age have
measured the political movement of two generations, and he
had already entered upon a third, in which new ideas and new
conditions were becoming dominant. We narrate elsewhere
the principal events of his public life, which witnessed the
overthrow of aristocratic government in England, the rise and
progress of middle-class rule, the struggle for the admission of
the artisans to political power, and, finally, the enfranchisement
of the rural labourers. The successive questions which formed
the battle-ground of this long controversy drew forth Mr.
Bright's strength as a Parliamentary orator and a " tribune of
the people," and though there was a certain monotony in his
invective and a certain narrowness in his convictions, he never
failed, whether in the right or in the wrong, whether defeated
or triumphant, to impress his personality upon the public
imagination. He was essentially a popular leader, rather than

MR. BRIGHT 167
a Parliamentary statesman ; he scarcely aspired to striking
legislative achievements, or to the fame of administrative
success ; but there never was less of the popularity-hunter in
any public man. The severity of temper, the concentrated heat
of passion, the rigorous conception of duty, the combative force
of character which distinguished Mr. Bright were most con
spicuous when he had arrayed against him, to use the slang of
recent politics, not only the classes, but the masses. Much of
what constituted both his weakness and his strength came from
his Puritan origin and training ; much, also, from the fortunate
circumstance which brought him, early in his career, into
close association with a man so different from him in his gifts
and so thoroughly in agreement with him on all questions of
principle as Richard Cobden.
The impression which Mr. Bright has left on the history of his
own time was produced more by his moral than by his intellectual
qualities. He started in life with a stock of political ideas
which he hardly thought of enlarging or modifying, and which
he applied with a resolute optimism unquelled by a long series
of disappointments. He had witnessed the successful working
out of all those changes in political machinery which at the
time he entered public life were advocated by the party of
reform. The results, however, failed to realise his sanguine
predictions. The victory achieved by the Anti-Corn-Law
League over English Protectionism — an enterprise in which he
had so glorious a share — has not been followed by the rapid
spread of free-trade principles throughout the civilised world.
The policy of concessions to Ireland within the limits of the
Constitution, of which Mr. Bright was the earnest and consistent
advocate, has not prevented the rise to power in the sister
island of that which he eloquently condemned as a "rebel
party" associated with and dependent upon the alien enemies
of this country. The extension of the suffrage, through which
political power in every part of the kingdom has passed into
the hands of the working classes, has left as yet almost un
touched the objects of Mr. Bright's early animosity, the Church
Establishment and the House of Peers, the traditional foreign
and colonial policy of the Empire, which refuses to be restricted
within merely insular limits, and those military and naval
services which, to his fervid imagination, seemed nothing better
than sacrifices to a " foul idol."

168 EMINENT PERSONS
The truth is that the problems of practical politics are more
complicated than Mr. Bright could be brought to see, and thus
it was that he failed to add much of importance to the sum of
political thought and argument. Yet his voice was always
potent as a moral force while he was still able to speak on the
platform and in Parliament, and the vigorous letters from his
pen on public affairs during the past three years brought
home to the conscience of Englishmen those aspects of the
Irish controversy which mere politicians find it convenient to
ignore. What Mr. Matthew Arnold finally said of Byron may be
applied, with absolute truth, to Mr. Bright's influence in
politics : " He taught us little, but our soul had felt him like
the thunder's roll." It was often observed that he had some
thing of the Hebrew prophet about him, and his style was
strongly coloured with the characteristics of the prophetic books —
the solemn appeal to the inborn sense of duty and the tribunal
of conscience, the stern rebuke of levity and vanity, the grave
accents of righteous indignation, the terrible chastisement of
bitter irony or mocking scorn. The leonine aspect of the orator,
his striking features, set most commonly in an expression of
Puritanic severity and even sadness, softened, however, by an
occasional gleam of humour in the eye or touch of pathos about
the mouth, riveted the attention before he rose to speak. Every
thing was in harmony with the matter and manner of the
speech, and though Mr. Bright often failed to convince, none
who listened to him could doubt that his oratory reached, if
not the very highest level, at least a level higher than that
attained by any other Englishman of our time. " By pride
made stately and by anger strong," it caused the heart to throb
and the blood to tingle. The deep, but clear and melodious,
voice, the deliberate and distinct utterance, the rare and care
fully-controlled gestures instinct with impressive dignity, the
wealth of sarcasm and of pathos, combined to produce an
indelible effect. But the peculiar quality of Mr. Bright's
eloquence was that no one could conceive it to be turned on
to order. Those who differed from him as well as those who
agreed with him — and no contemporary orator had, perhaps, an
equal gift of rousing opposition — felt always that what Mr.
Bright had to say came from the depths of his soul. Its logic
might be faulty, its fairness might be questionable, but of its

MR. BRIGHT 169
earnestness there could not at any time be the faintest shadow
of doubt. A perfect command of plain, straightforward, pellucid
English, not, however, without an appreciative and discrimi
nating use of the richer and more picturesque elements of
literary colouring drawn from the classical languages, gives Mr.
Bright's speeches a high place among the most admirable models
of oratorical style. He was not sparing in the use of quotations
whether for serious or for humoristic purposes. His mind was
well stored with the results of varied reading, especially among
the earlier English poets. Next to the Bible the books which
left the deepest traces on Mr. Bright's oratory were Spenser and
Milton, but he quoted freely and with much effect from less
known writers, such as Samuel Daniel and George Wither. He
sought always for something that addressed itself to the human
conscience, and, strongly as he believed in the democratic
doctrine, intolerantly as he often opposed the rights of minorities,
no man was less willing, for one instant, to subordinate the voice
of duty to the voice of a majority. His deepest feelings were
expressed in a striking couplet from one of his Puritan favourites,
which he introduced into one of his Birmingham speeches :
There is on earth a yet auguster thing,
Veiled tho' it be, than Parliament or King.
He appealed always to the high tribunal that is seated in the
breast of every responsible human being.
It was this feeling which sustained him during his later
years, when he had to bear the pain of a breach with Mr.
Gladstone and with the majority of the Liberal party. Mr.
Bright's moral sense had been revolted by what he conceived to
be the profoundly immoral character of the Irish movement
headed by Mr. Parnell. Proud as he was of having led the
Anti-Corn-Law agitation, which won its victories by addressing
the conscience and the reason, he thought it his duty to separate
himself publicly from those who, as he sincerely believed and
repeatedly asserted, had resorted to the weapons of terrorism and
outrage, and played a double game by posing in Parliament as
constitutional politicians while confederated with and subsidised
by the avowed enemies of England and the Union. Mr. Bright
exposed and denounced this alliance in the House of Commons
amid the cheers of the men who have since, at the orders of Mr.
Gladstone, entered into close alliance with the ParneUites ; and

170 EMINENT PERSONS
no one, not even Mr. Gladstone himself, was assailed, at the time,
from the Parnellite benches with more indecent brutality. The
independence of Mr. Bright's character forbade him to palter with
his conscience for the sake of securing the success of his party,
and, painful as it was to him to have to see questions postponed
in which he was deeply interested, he never for a moment
hesitated in his course, but unflinchingly obeyed the call of duty.
Herein he was consistent with the rule of his public life,
throughout which, popular leader though he was, he repeatedly
faced unpopularity when he might have won applause by
suppressing his convictions. This spirit it is that has hitherto
kept English politics from putrefaction. It will be an evil day,
indeed, when it is exchanged for any intellectual gifts, however
splendid, or any Parliamentary arts, however ingenious. Mr.
Bright was, in our opinion, often in the wrong and not seldom
unjust to those from whom he differed, but his manly independ
ence and his strong sense of conscientious obligation will not
be soon forgotten even by those of his countrymen who did not
share his political faith.

LORD MALMESBURY
Obituary Notice, Saturday, May 18, 1889
The Right Hon. James Howard Harris, G.C.B., D.C.L., third
Earl of Malmesbury, was born on the 25th of March 1807, so
that he had completed his eighty-second year. Though the family
from which he sprang has only been ennobled a century, one of its
early representatives was settled upon his own estate in Wiltshire
at the commencement of the sixteenth century. The first earl
was a diplomatist, and a friend of the Prince Regent. He died in
1820. The second earl was for a short time Under-Secretary
to the Foreign Office, and subsequently Governor of the Isle of
Wight. He married a daughter of Mr. F. B. Dashwood, of Well
Vale, and their eldest son was the nobleman whose death we
now record. The late Lord Malmesbury's charming Memoirs of
an ex-Minister, published in 1884, give a full account of his
life. He was educated first at a private school at Wimborne,
whence he proceeded to Eton. Here he was fag to Trench,
brother of the ex-Archbishop of Dublin. He inherited much
of his father's love of outdoor exercise and sport, being till
late in life an excellent sportsman, and delighting in his visits
to his Scotch shooting-box at Achnacarry.
At Wimborne and Eton he was not noted for his application
to study. " We used to search Moore's Almanac for obituaries
of great men," he says in his Memoirs, speaking of his Wimborne
days, " and each hero's anniversary was considered too sacred
for school work." On going up to Eton he was accompanied by
his tutor Bowie, who did his lessons for him, while the pupil
boated and shot moor-hens. In 1825 he proceeded to Oriel
College, Oxford. Copleston was Provost, and Tyler Dean,

172 EMINENT PERSONS
Durnford and Newman were tutors. " Of this last celebrated
writer and divine, and now a Cardinal," he remarks, " no one at
that time would have predicted the future career." Some other
observations which he made respecting Newman as a tutor have
since been traversed by the Cardinal.
After taking his degree in 1827, Lord Malmesbury (then
Lord Fitzharris) travelled abroad. He gives an entertaining
account of these travels and of the famous people whose ac
quaintance he made. He became great friends with the
Countess Guiccioli, who told him much concerning Lord Byron,
his eccentricities, his writings, and his habits. At Rome he
met with Queen Hortense and her son, Louis Napoleon, then
just of age. " He was a wild, harum-scarum youth, or what
the French call un crane, riding at full gallop down the streets
to the peril of the public, fencing, and pistol -shooting, and
apparently without serious thoughts of any kind, although even
then he was possessed with the conviction that he would some
day rule over France. We became friends, but at that time he
evinced no remarkable talent, or any fixed idea but the one I
mention. It grew upon him with his growth, and increased
daily until it ripened into a certainty." Lord Fitzharris re
turned to England in the midst of the Reform fever, and upon
this, in 1831-32, the cholera trouble supervened. He suffered
like many others from the cholera, and carried a small bottle of
spirits of wine about with him to relieve the spasms.
In 1834 Lord Fitzharris made the acquaintance of Lord
Derby, then Lord Stanley, which ripened into a mutual and
sincere friendship, lasting until the latter's death in 1869. In
1838 we find him visiting the crofters in Skye, and his obser
vations upon their condition will be of interest at the present
moment. " I found the state of the population," he observes,
" rather deteriorated than otherwise since my last visit. The
crofters seem to have entirely worked out their plots and have
no manure to refresh them. Lord Macdonald has done all he
could to improve their position by building new and clean
cottages ; but so fond are they of their old state of dirt that
they pulled up the planks of the floor, preferring to lie on the
bare ground. What is to be done with these Celts 1 " In the
year 1845 Lord Malmesbury went to visit Louis Napoleon in
the Castle of Ham, where he had been a prisoner since 1840.
The Prince recounted the causes of his failure at Boulogne, and

LORD MALMESBURY 173
said that now the soldiers had mostly been gained, while the
prestige of his name in the French army was universal. To
prove this he said, "You see the sentry under my window.
I do not know whether he is one of mine or not ; if he is he
will cross his arms, if not he will do nothing when I make a
sign." The Prince went to the window and stroked his mous
tache, but there was no response until three were relieved, when
the soldier answered by crossing his arms over his musket.
The Prince then said, " You see that my partisans are unknown
to me, and so am I to them. My power is in an immortal
name, and in that only ; but I have waited long enough, and
cannot endure imprisonment any longer." Not many weeks
after this interview Lord Malmesbury was in London, returning
home from White's Club, when to his great surprise he found
himseK stopped in the street by Prince Louis Napoleon, who
had just landed in England after his escape from Ham.
Lord Malmesbury has stated that when the great disruption
of the Tory party took place under Sir Robert Peel in 1846 he
for the first time took a strong part in politics — not from any
liking of that stormy life, but from a conviction that the pro
posed abolition of the Corn-Laws would be the ruin of all who
depended, directly or indirectly, upon land. He became one of
the Tory Whips in the House of Lords, and was instrumental
in putting forward Lord Stanley as leader of the House of Com
mons, in opposition to Sir Robert Peel. But when Lord George
Bentinck died he saw that no one but Mr. Disraeli could fill his
place. He admitted that Lord George's death left Disraeli
without a rival, and enabled him " to show the great genius he
undoubtedly possessed without any comparisons."
As a statesman, Lord Malmesbury had no great ambition,
and he was not distinguished for any conspicuous power or
originality. Neither was he very happy in his attempts at
Parliamentary oratory, and some of his own political friends
could not refrain from little pleasantries at his expense. His
grammatical eccentricities and curious infelicities of phrase
ology were frequently the subject of comment, good-natured or
ill-natured. But on more than one occasion the late Lord
Derby chivalrously came to the defence of his Foreign Secretary,
and paid a high tribute to his industry and the great care with
which he transacted the official business that devolved upon
him. It must be confessed also that the Memoirs reveal a

174 EMINENT PERSONS
vivacity and acumen for which their author had never up to
the time of publication received due credit.
Although, as we have seen, it was not until the time of the
Corn -Law agitation that he took a deep interest in public
affairs, he really began his political career in 1841, when, as
Lord Fitzharris, he was elected a member in the Conservative
interest for the borough of Wilton. This was in June, and the
new member's experience of the House of Commons was very
brief, for in the following September he succeeded to the peerage
on the death of his father. In 1852 the Liberal Government
introduced a Reform Bill which greatly astonished and non
plussed the Earl of Derby. Lord Malmesbury was very anxious
that he should meet it by a counter Bill or resolution, but the
Tory leader would not hear of it, and treated Disraeli coldly
when he proposed it, as we read in the Memoirs. However, if
Lord John Russell was not defeated on the Reform Bill, he was
in a minority on the Militia Bill, and the Government resigned.
Mr. Disraeli was delighted at the idea of coming into office, and
said he "felt just like a young girl going to her first ball."
Lord Derby did not view the prospect with the same equanimity,
and predicted that " Benjamin's mess would be five times greater
than that of his Ministerial brethren." The Conservatives suc
ceeded to office, and Lord Malmesbury was appointed Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs. He writes :
"I had published in 1844 the Diplomatic Journal and
Correspondence of my grandfather, the first Lord Malmesbury,
and the experience I gained by reading and collating, with
great trouble, the contents of above two thousand letters and
despatches from him and to him by all the important person
ages of the period from 1768 to 1800 stood me in good stead
at this trying time. Without this accidental education I should
have been as great a novice in political business as were most of
my colleagues."
There are other naive confessions respecting this Conservative
Cabinet of 1852. Lord Derby himself said to Lady Malmesbury
at Northumberland House, " I have been driving a team of
young horses this morning ; not one had ever been in harness
before. They went beautifully ; not one kicked amongst them."
Lord Malmesbury was the first to recognise officially the French
Empire, and he contributed largely to bring about the good
understanding which, with little interruption, subsequently

LORD MALMESBURY 175
existed between Napoleon III. and the Court of St. James's.
His intimate friendship with the Emperor was of considerable
service to him in the conduct of the affairs of the Foreign
Office. Nevertheless, when Lord Malmesbury's announcement of the
establishment of the French Empire was made in the House of
Lords, his speech was severely criticised. He was charged with
exhibiting a more than due deference to power, and an over
weening confidence in the assurances of the new Emperor.
Before the close of the session, also, his foreign policy generally
was subjected to a severe examination. The occasion for this was
a debate arising out of an outrage committed upon a British subject
named Mather, who was cut down in the streets of Florence
by an Austrian officer. Lord John Russell, in condemning the
foreign policy of the Government, as expressed through its
mouthpiece, Lord Malmesbury, said that Ministers had taken
office upon a distinct understanding that they were to declare
what their policy was, whereas they seemed to have been
studiously concealing it. Mr. Bernal Osborne charged the
Foreign Minister with having trifled with the honour of the
country and disgraced it in the eyes of the whole continent of
Europe. But Lord Stanley and Mr. Disraeli defended Lord
Malmesbury, the former with warmth and the latter with
efficiency. The Derby Ministry, however, was very short
lived, enjoying only ten months of office. Mr. Disraeli's
financial schemes were the prime cause of its collapse.
It is but just here to cite the compliment which Lord
Derby paid to his Foreign Secretary on leaving office. "I
rejoice to have this opportunity," said the retiring Premier, " of
bearing my testimony in reference to one man than whom no
person has been more unsparingly and, I will venture to say,
more unjustly maligned, and of stating that from the first to
the last I have had no cause for anything but self-congratula
tion in having obtained in the Foreign Department the services
of one who, without previous political experience, has brought
to bear a diligence, ability, and good judgment on the affairs of
that great department which reflect the highest credit on him
self, and which, I may venture to say without fear of con
tradiction, have extorted the applause and admiration of old
and experienced diplomatists, whose views on more than one
occasion he has combated, and successfully combated."

176 EMINENT PERSONS
In the session of 1853 Lord Malmesbury delivered one of
the most extraordinary speeches ever heard in the House of
Lords. Rising during the discussion on the Succession Duties
Bill, he strongly denounced the scheme as cruel in principle.
It took, he said, a man at a time and fleeced him ; and when
he had disappeared, it took another and fleeced him ; so that
it would be impossible ever to collect a numerically strong
expression of opinion respecting it against the Minister of the
day. He held that by the Bill Chancellors of the Exchequer
would in future be " like vultures soaring over society, and
watching for a harvest of dead meat." The speech from which
this extract is taken caused mingled astonishment and amuse
ment ; and Lord Granville, in a sarcastic reply to it, com
plimented Lord Malmesbury upon the introduction of a new
style in debate. In contrast to this is the calm and statesman
like view Lord Malmesbury took of the conduct of the Prince
Consort, when absurd reports were rife concerning His Royal
Highness, and it was even said that he would be sent to the
Tower for unconstitutional practices. The Prince was accused
of writing letters to turn out Lord Hardinge and take his place
as Commander-in-Chief, or at least to share his power and
patronage ; of giving audiences to the Ministers privately, and
thus substituting himself for the Queen. " Time will do
him justice," said Lord Malmesbury, " and convince the world
that no Sovereign could have at his side a better counsellor,
removed as he is from all personal disputes of parties."
Early in 1856 Mr. Disraeli thought there was an excellent
opportunity for the formation of a Coalition Ministry, but Lord
Derby held firmly to the opposite view. Mr. Disraeli was very-
angry in consequence, and roundly charged Lord Malmesbury
with being to blame for the fiasco, by leaving Lord Derby at
the critical moment when he required support and encourage
ment. The charge was almost as absurd as it appears to have been
incorrect. At this time there were some Tories who believed
that Mr. Disraeli would like to place himself at the head of the
Conservative party to the exclusion of Lord Derby. Lord
Malmesbury was himself sounded upon the subject, but indig
nantly repulsed his questioner. In 1857 it was said that Mr.
Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert were anxious to join Lord
Derby, but while this would have been an accession of talent it
would have led to Tory secessions. The Duke of Beaufort told

LORD MALMESBURY 177
Lord Malmesbury that if the Tories coalesced with the Peelites
he would leave the party ; and in 1855, when Lord Derby
attempted to form a Government and offered places to Mr.
Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert, no fewer than eighty
members of the House of Commons threatened to leave him.
In February 1858 Lord Palmerston was defeated on the
Conspiracy to Murder Bill, and the Earl of Derby again came
into power. Lord Malmesbury was appointed to his former
office of Foreign Secretary, and in this capacity he zealously
laboured to avert the war between France and Italy and Austria.
On the 4th of May 1859 he issued a circular to Her Majesty's
Ministers abroad, instructing them as to our position in the
probable conflict between France and Sardinia on the one side
and Austria on the other. It was, he announced, the earnest
desire and firm intention of the Government to observe the
most scrupulous neutrality between the contending parties ;
but they would at the same time be ready to avail themselves of
any opportunity that might arise for the exercise of their good
offices in the cause of peace.
Defending his policy subsequently in the House of Lords,
Lord Malmesbury affirmed that he had done all he could to
induce France and Austria to come to an understanding ; and
he cited the evidence of the Blue-books in his favour. He
denied Lord Palmerston's assertion that he had patronised
Austria. He had, in fact, told Austria that nothing should
induce the English Government to support her in Lombardy
against her own subjects. He had told her that England would
stand by her in maintaining her treaty rights, but not in
exercising improper administrative and military influence. He
had recommended a Congress, but he had never passed the bounds
of neutrality. The Foreign Minister, who had already settled
the Cagliari affair and extracted compensation from the King of
Naples for two English engineers illegally made prisoners by
this vessel, was again called upon to defend his conduct in
reference to the case of the " Charles et Georges." This was a
French ship which the Portuguese seized on the ground that
she had been fitted as a slaver. The Portuguese claimed the
right of seizure, according to our treaties, and took her into the
Tagus. A fierce diplomatic war ensued, and Lord Wodehouse
made a vehement speech in the House of Lords, to which Lord
Malmesbury replied that he had done all that could be done
vol. IV N

178 EMINENT PERSONS
without going to war with France. The motion of censure was
withdrawn, and eventually, after a great deal of noise on both
sides, the dispute was satisfactorily arranged.
Ill and tired, Lord Malmesbury was not sorry to be released
from the cares of office when Lord Derby's Government was
beaten in June 1859, and consequently resigned office. There
was an extraordinary scene in the lobby of the House of
Commons when the defeat was made known. Azeglio, the
Italian Ambassador, and some other foreigners were waiting in
the lobby, and when Lord Palmerston appeared redoubled their
vociferations. "Azeglio is said to have thrown his hat into the
air and himself into the arms of Jaucourt, the French Attache,
which probably no Ambassador, or even Italian, ever did before
in so public a place."
With regard to this second Administration of Lord Derby,
though the Opposition in the Commons had a majority, Lord
Malmesbury always maintained that the Ministry would not .have
been beaten on the Address if Mr. Disraeli had previously laid on
the table the Blue-book containing the Italian and French corre
spondence with the Foreign Office. Why this was not done he
never knew, but twelve or fourteen members of the House of
Commons voluntarily assured his lordship that if they had read
the correspondence before the debate they would never have
voted against the Government. Mr. Cobden was one of these.
Lord Derby himself did not order the Blue-book to be produced,
because he was worn down with toil and the gout, and wanted
to go out. Men of both parties finally admitted that the
Ministry would have secured a majority if the French and
Italian correspondence had been laid on the table in time.
Repeated entries in Lord Malmesbury's diary at this period show
the high regard in which he was personally held by Her Majesty
the Queen, and there are numerous interesting anecdotes about
distinguished persons, including the Princess Alice, Garibaldi,
Mr. Gladstone, and notably the Emperor Napoleon. His lord
ship seems to have been thrown into contact with the late
Emperor at almost all the important crises in his career, down
to the dramatic closing episodes of his strange life, when he died
in exile. When the Dano-German question arose in 1864, Lord Mal
mesbury (in the absence of Lord Derby) brought forward the
following vote of censure :

LORD MALMESBURY 179
" That this House has heard with deep concern that the sittings
of the conference recently held in London have been brought to a
close without accomplishing the important purpose for which it
was convened. That it is the opinion of this House that, while
the course pursued by Her Majesty's Government has failed to
maintain their avowed policy of upholding the integrity and
independence of Denmark, it has lowered the just influence of
this country in the councils of Europe, and thereby diminished
the securities for peace."
His lordship said that the violation of the treaty of 1852 had
set a bad precedent, which might at any future time be quoted
as an excuse for violence and wrong. The German Diet had
exceeded its powers in interfering with a European treaty, by
asserting the principle of nationality against it. He believed
that if the Government had been firm and decided the present
conflict might have been prevented. Lord Russell had placed
himseK both in the position of partisan and judge between
Denmark and Germany, and had, therefore, pleased neither
party and destroyed his own influence as an English Minister.
The vote of censure, which involved the fate of Lord Palmer
ston's Administration, was carried in the House of Lords by a
majority of nine ; but in the Commons, where it was moved by
Mr. Disraeli, a different result was recorded. Mr. Disraeli's
resolution was rejected by a majority of eighteen, and a Minis
terial crisis was in consequence averted.
Lord Malmesbury seldom took part in discussions upon
domestic affairs, but he felt a considerable interest in the
Reform question. In 1866, during the great Reform agitation,
he spoke at Christchurch, and denied Mr. Bright's statement
that if a Reform Bill were passed by the Commons it would
be rejected by the Lords. His lordship held that there was
nothing in the past history of the peers to justify such an
assertion, and he believed that the members of that assembly
would always be ready to accept the clear and deliberate
judgment of the country whenever it should be manifested
through the votes of the representatives in the other House
of Parliament. When Lord Derby became Prime Minister for the third
time, in 1866, he again offered Lord Malmesbury the Foreign
Office. In consequence of ill-health, however, his lordship
declined this onerous post, and accepted that of Lord Privy

180 EMINENT PERSONS
Seal. This office he likewise subsequently held under Mr.
Disraeli in 1868 and 1874, until 1876, when he resigned on
account of his increasing deafness, which prevented him from
being useful either in the Cabinet or in the House of Lords.
For some time he acted as leader of the Conservative party in
the Upper House, being succeeded by Lord Cairns, Lord
Salisbury having at that time declined the honour. In the
session of 1869 Lord Malmesbury made a vigorous and suc
cessful effort to defeat the Life Peerages Bill His speeches on
this subject were probably the most telling he ever delivered,
and brought over to his side both his leaders and many others
who had supported the Bill. On the motion for the third
reading the Lords threw out the measure by 106 to 77 votes.
Of recent years Lord Malmesbury's appearances in the House
of Lords were very infrequent, but when it was proposed in
1881 to commemorate the services of Lord Beaconsfield by
the erection of a monument in Westminster Abbey, he attended
the House and spoke of the distinguished statesman and his
old colleague in the warmest terms. After denying that Lord
Beaconsfield was a mere Parliamentary gladiator, without
sensibility and feeling, he said, " I know no man who felt
disappointment more, or so much enjoyed triumph. It was
his indomitable courage which enabled him to master his
features, as it supported him through all the difficulties of his
career. He had every domestic virtue which I consider a man
need have." The speaker then proceeded to pass a glowing
eulogium upon Lady Beaconsfield, and he added concerning
the late statesman, and speaking from a long personal acquaint
ance, " I have not known a more complete character, as far as
regarded the good nature, amiability, and sincere friendship
which he always displayed."
In 1859 Lord Malmesbury was created a G.C.B., and the
degree of D.C.L. was conferred upon him by Oxford University.
He edited, as we have already had occasion to note, the Diaries
and Correspondence of his Grandfather, published in 1844, and
The First Lord Malmesbury and his Friends. A Series of Letters
from 1745 to 1820. His lordship was one of the General
Commission of Fine Arts in the International Exhibition of
1862. Alike in public life as in his private relations, he was
highly esteemed for his urbanity and the unfailing courtesy
and amiability of his demeanour.

JEFFERSON DAVIS
Obituary Notice, Saturday, December 7, 1889
Jefferson Davis, President, during its brief and stormy
existence, of the Confederacy of the Southern States of America,
notwithstanding the great part he once played upon the
political stage, lived during the last twenty years in retirement
and almost in obscurity. In other words, he became an
historical personage during his own lifetime. His name can
never be forgotten while the American Civil War is remembered,
though the judgment of posterity alike upon him and the other
chief actors in that great struggle will no doubt be something
different from any that is now possible. Jefferson Davis was
born in Kentucky on 3rd June 1808, and had consequently
completed his eighty-first year. While he was still a child
the family removed to the State of Mississippi, with which
he was ever afterwards closely connected. His early education
was of the ordinary American type, and at the age of sixteen
he went to the Military Academy at West Point, obtaining
four years later a commission as second lieutenant. For the
next seven years he seems to have been occupied with military
duties, which consisted chiefly in keeping the Indians in check.
In 1835 he married the daughter of General, afterwards
President, Taylor, and settled down in Mississippi as a cotton
planter upon the estate left him by his father. He appears
to have led an uneventful life, relieved by a certain amount
of local political activity, until 1845, when he was returned as
one of the members for Mississippi to the house of representa
tives. There he took part in debates upon the burning questions
of the time — the state of the army, the tariff, and the joint

182 EMINENT PERSONS
occupation of Oregon. His speeches of that period are some
what high-flown, and contain much indignant rhetoric concerning
the aims of Southern men and the misconstructions placed upon
them by those of the North.
Upon the breaking out of the Mexican War he was chosen
Colonel of the Mississippi Volunteers, whereupon he resigned
his seat and joined the army of his father-in-law on the Rio
Grande. He served with distinction at the battle of Buena
Vista, assisted at the storming of Monterey, and was one of the
commissioners appointed to arrange its capitulation. In recog
nition of his services, President Polk offered to make him
Brigadier-General of Volunteers, but he showed his characteristic
political bias by declining the honour on the ground that it was
not in the gift of the Federal Government, but of the individual
State. In 1847 Davis was elected Senator for Mississippi, and con
tinued with, if possible, increasing energy his advocacy of State
rights against what he conceived to be the unjust and uncon
stitutional encroachments of the Federal Executive. In 1850
he became Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, and
in March 1851, was re-elected Senator for Mississippi, a position
thus secured to him for six years. At that time the public
mind was greatly agitated by the " compromise measures " of
the previous year on the slavery question. The result was a
proposition from the people of the different Southern States for
a Convention of Delegates to consider what steps should be
taken to preserve their constitutional rights and to ensure future
peace. There was a good deal of doubt and hesitation as to the
means by which these desirable ends were to be secured. Some
thought that arrangements might be made which would prevent
the interference of the North with the " domestic institution,"
while others, perhaps more alive to the signs of the times and
more impressed by the growing numerical preponderance of the
Northern States, had begun to regard secession as the only way
of avoiding the pressure of the Federal Government.
Mr. Davis had taken so prominent a part in the Senate in
discussing everything connected with the pending controversy
that he thought himself bound to meet the people of Mississippi
face to face and give an account of his stewardship. He accord
ingly made a tour through the State, expounding his views and
defending his actions, which, however, do not seem to have ever

JEFFERSON DAVIS 183
been seriously challenged by his own constituents. His tour
ended just at the time appointed for the meeting of the Demo
cratic Nominating Convention of the State, and while the canvass
for the State Legislature was going on simultaneously with that
for the State Convention just named. The Convention election
came off first, and the Democrats were beaten by more than
7000 votes. Mr. Davis was then urged to become a candidate
for the Governorship instead of General Quitman, who retired
in view of the demonstrated weakness of the party. In order to
do this he had to vacate his seat in the Senate ; and though he
failed to secure election, he had the satisfaction of reducing the
majority from 7000 to less than 1000.
For some eighteen months Mr. Davis was free from the yoke
of public cares and devoted his time and attention to his planta
tion. In the end of 1852, however, he was asked to join the
Cabinet of the President-elect, Mr. Pierce, who would come into'
office in the following March. Mr. Davis declined, but being
again pressed, after the inauguration of the President, he became
Secretary for War. Under his administration considerable
activity was shown in surveying routes for railway communica
tion between the Mississippi Valley and the Pacific coast, in
increasing the efficiency of the army, and in carrying on experi
ments in gunnery. He seems also to have made some attempt
to break through the pernicious system by which every Govern
ment post down to the humblest is made part of the plunder of
the party attaining to power.
During this Presidency the contention between North and
South gained in bitterness, and even in ferocity. The attention
of Congress was largely occupied by the affairs of Kansas, in
which disorder had attained the proportions of civil war. A
committee of the House visited Kansas to verify by personal
observation the accounts which reached Washington, and were
rewarded with indubitable proof that armed invasions from
Missouri were a constant feature of election days. Mr. Charles
Sumner denounced in the Senate what he called the " crime
against Kansas," and made uncomplimentary allusions to Butler,
the Carolina Senator. Two days afterwards he was attacked
while sitting at his desk in the Senate-house with so much
violence that his life was at first despaired of. Preston Brooks,
the representative for South Carolina, was the principal assailant,
and was expelled from the House of Representatives in con-

184 EMINENT PERSONS
sequence. His constituents immediately returned him, and in
two weeks he again took the oaths and his seat. He had the
sympathy of the Southern leaders, including Mr. Jefferson
Davis, who approved " the feeling which prompts the sons of
Carolina to welcome the return of a brother who has been the
subject of vilification, misrepresentation, and persecution, because
he resented a libellous assault upon the representative of their
mother." There is a curious Hibernian flavour alike about the
logic and the rhetoric of this passage.
At the close of Mr. Pierce's Presidency, in 1857, Mr. Davis
was again chosen Senator for Mississippi, and immediately had
ample opportunities for plunging into the great quarrel which
had always attracted him. The constitutional battle was then
raging around the organisation of Kansas, which was in process
of settlement, and, therefore, well fitted to bring the dispute to
a point. On one side it was maintained that whatever element
of slavery might unhappily have been incorporated in the
Union, the American people ought at any rate not to tolerate
its extension. On the other side it was held that the migration
of slaves into new territory did not constitute an extension of
slavery, and also that the Constitution required that the people
of every district should be left free to say for themselves whether
they would have slaves or not. This theory of popular rights
was at last pushed to such an extent under the name of squatter
sovereignty, that it actually split the Democratic party itself,
the more sensible men being unable to concede that the first
few hundred persons who happen to settle upon a new area are
entitled to fix the form of government for all time, without any
external check or restraint whatever.
The fact was, however, that at this time, under the adminis
tration of President Buchanan, America was definitely organ
ising itself into two opposed camps, and it mattered compara
tively little what were the particular questions discussed.
American parties, after having passed through a period of con
fusion which makes it difficult for the student to follow their
struggles, were settling down into two solid masses inspired by
very definite principles and animated by mutual hatred.
American politicians have borrowed our political epithets, but
have affixed to them meanings entirely different from and some
times directly opposed to ours. American Institutions seem to
us at once so Republican and so Democratic that we vainly seek

JEFFERSON DAVIS 185
in European experience any clue to the nature of the parties
calling themselves Democrats and Republicans. These names,
however, are hardly older than the period of which we are now
speaking, at all events as applied to the parties they now con
note. The present Democrats were originally Republicans, or,
to speak more accurately, the party which has always insisted
more strongly on State than on Federal authority has at different
times borne both these names. The old Federal party was
succeeded by the Whigs, having nothing in common with our
Whigs ; they in turn produced the American or Know-nothing
party, and that again yielded to the Free-State party, the great
anti- Democratic force during Buchanan's Presidency, and the
nucleus of the party, partly made and partly consolidated by
the war, now calling itseK Republican. While the names have
changed, and while accidents have changed the superficial
appearance of parties themselves, the real dividing line of
American politics has never shifted. Two principles are em
bodied in the American Constitution — that of national unity
and that of State independence. Either carried to extremes
would produce intolerable results ; and the precise compromise
to be effected between them is a matter of perpetual struggle
between conflicting interests.
Notwithstanding all that has been said about slavery and the
righteous passion for its abolition in the North, we venture to
think that the dispassionate historian will pronounce the Civil
War to have been the result of the rooted antagonism between
the theory which derives Federal power from the delegation of
the States, and the theory which makes State privileges practi
cally the delegation of the nation. Slavery merely happened
to be the practical interest upon which it was convenient to
bring the contest to an issue. To the South slaves were of the
highest importance, because its most lucrative crops could not be
advantageously cultivated by white men, and without the most
extensive powers it was held impossible to make black men
work. To the North slaves were of no use, because the climate
suits white men, whose labour is immensely more valuable and
productive than that of negroes. Abolition was as easy and
agreeable to the North as Protection, and for very much the
same reason — that its inconveniences fell upon others.
Federal rights at the same time were naturally advocated in
their most extreme form by those whose numerical preponderance

186 EMINENT PERSONS
promised the best results from the manipulation of Federal power,
while State rights were no less naturally dear to minorities
who saw in them the only means of maintaining their peculiar
institutions. Thus, the combination of Abolition with mainten
ance of national unity, and of slave-holding with insistence
upon State sovereignty, was a mere accident. Had the South
been the more powerful, slave-holding and Federal authority would
have gone together, while the North would have been the great
advocate of State independence. The essence of the quarrel
lies in the political antagonism latent in the Constitution, and
capable of being called into action whenever any serious diver
gence of interests and aims arises between peoples of different
temperament living under different skies and subject to different
conditions. It is not unreasonable to anticipate that the doctrine
of State sovereignty will some day be revived by the great negro
population in whose interest it was denied.
Two incidents occurred during Buchanan's Presidency which
added fuel to the flames of party passion. The first was the
" Dred Scott " case, in which the Supreme Court held that ac
cording to the Constitution the idea could not be entertained that
negroes were citizens, as the only two provisions which point to
them and include them treat them as property. This decision,
presenting slavery in all its naked hideousness, stirred the
public sentiment of the North to its depths. The raid of John
Brown into Virginia at the head of a force of fourteen white
men and five negroes, which ended in a fight with United
States troops, in which thirteen were killed or mortally wounded,
and in the hanging of the seven who remained, created not less
excitement in the South. It added enormously to the strength
of the party which held that there could be no real independ
ence for the South except in secession. Mr. Davis always
maintained that secession was forced upon him and the greater
number of the Southern leaders ; but there can be little doubt
that an idea which logically grows out of the theory of State
sovereignty was sufficiently familiar to their minds long before
things came to a crisis. Indeed, Davis always stoutly maintained
the right of secession though he long denied its expediency.
It was with minds inflamed by mutual provocations that men
approached the Presidential election of 1860. The Democrats
were hopelessly divided into the Constitutional union party, the
popular sovereignty party, and the State rights party. The

JEFFERSON DAVIS 187
result was the election of Mr. Lincoln by a majority of electoral
votes, which, however, represented only between a third and a
half of the popular vote. His views and those of Mr. Seward,
the most prominent member of his Cabinet, were known to
be of an uncompromising kind ; and, in addition to this, every
effort to find some modus vivendi between the opposing sections
had failed alike in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
On the 20th of December the Convention of South Caro
lina unanimously adopted an ordinance revoking her dele
gated powers, and withdrawing from the Union ; and on the
following day her representatives retired from their places in
Congress. Her example was followed on the 9th of the
following month by Mississippi, and before the end of January
Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana had seceded from the
Union. These States lost no time in organising themselves into a
Confederacy, and on the 9th of Febuary 1861 Mr. Jefferson
Davis was chosen its President.
So far everything had gone on peacefully, and few people
shared Mr. Davis's opinion that the North would not permit
secession without war. The leading organs of the victorious
party admitted the right of secession, and even taunted the
seceding States with not being worth the trouble of retaining in
the Union a day longer than they wished to stay. President
Lincoln himself, in his inaugural address, distinctly deprecated
anything in the nature of armed invasion of the seceding States.
He announced, indeed, his intention to see that all the ordinary
functions of the Federal Government were carried on as usual,
but said that " beyond the force that might be necessary for that
purpose, there would be no invasion, no using of force against
or among the people anywhere." He even went so far as to
add that where hostility to the Central Government might be so
strong as to prevent resident citizens from holding Federal offices,
the strict legal right of the Government to fill these offices
would not be insisted on. Thus the majority of the Southern
people clung to the belief that their secession would be regarded
as a voluntary withdrawal from a partnership terminable by any
of the parties to it. It is to the credit of Mr. Jefferson Davis's
political sagacity that he more accurately gauged the temper of
his countrymen, and was not deceived by the calm which pre
ceded a tremendous outburst of popular excitement.
The first overt act of war was committed by the Confederates

188 EMINENT PERSONS
in reducing Fort Sumter; yet it is difficult to see, as was
admitted at the time by some of their severest critics, how, in
the circumstances, they could have acted otherwise. The
Federal Government twice showed bad faith in dealing with
that question. It assured the Confederate representatives
at Washington that the fort would be evacuated forthwith,
although it was then equipping an expedition to reinforce its
garrison. Again, it endeavoured to smuggle soldiers into Fort
Sumter from the hold of a small and innocent-looking vessel.
It was not wonderful if after these breaches of faith the Con
federates thought they had no alternative but to blow up the
fort or endure serious disadvantages in an inevitable struggle.
They were, however, saddled with the technical responsibility
of striking the first blow, and the response of the Washington
Cabinet was a proclamation calling out 75,000 men. On its
appearance the States of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee,
and Arkansas seceded from the Union, and joined the new
Confederacy. From this point the biography of Jefferson Davis is the
history of the Civil War. In organising his administration he
had the advantage of considerable experience in one of the
highest posts in the United States Cabinet, and his special
military knowledge doubtless proved exceedingly useful. But
the task before him was Herculean. The Confederacy had
everything to construct from the beginning. The army, the
navy, the arsenals, the munitions of war, the manufacturing
centres, and in many cases even the raw material for necessary
manufacture were with the North. The rivers could not be de
fended for want of iron to protect the gunboats ; even iron rails
were scarce, and the factories for producing powder, percussion
caps, and other indispensable articles had to be created. Circulat
ing medium was scarce, and communication with the outside
world was difficult and precarious. In short, the business in
hand was not merely the organisation of a government, but
the creation of everything by which governments assert their
authority. No matter how ably seconded he may have been — and Davis
had abundance of able and enthusiastic helpers — the mass of
business to be attended to by the head of so complex an under
taking must have been enormous. Mistakes, of course, were
made in plenty, and not on the Confederate side alone, but they

JEFFERSON DAVIS 189
were never suffered to damp the spirits or extinguish the zeal of
the Confederate leader. As he was the first to perceive the true
nature of the struggle, so was he the last to admit that the battle
was lost. To his indomitable energy and courage the seceding
States undoubtedly owed in no small degree the respect which
they extorted from all who witnessed their desperate fight against
overwhelming odds. Americans have hardly yet learnt to take
a dispassionate view of the war or to appreciate the display of
qualities identical with those which finally secured victory for
the North. Popular histories of the war still paint the two
parties as models of all that humanity venerates, and as wretches
without a single virtue to redeem them from universal execration.
That simple method of meting out praise and blame has never
permanently held its ground in respect of any human transac
tion, and it will not be accepted as appropriate to a war between
men of the same race, the same language, and the same tradi
tions. At the outset of the struggle, and, indeed, until near its
close, the Confederates fought with so much bravery and success
that the general opinion of Europe more than once inclined to
believe that they would achieve independence of the North.
Looking at the great disparity in men and material resources
between the two combatants, it was not, indeed, easy to question
the ultimate success of the North. But, on the other hand,
history shows us many cases of successful opposition to appar
ently overwhelming forces, and it appeared to not a few that the
Confederate defence might be reckoned among that class. Un
certainty as to the issue and the anomalous character of the
relations between the belligerents produced a most trying
situation for neutral Powers. Perhaps the best testimony to the
general correctness of the policy of this country is found in the
fact that each party hotly accused us of favouring the other.
It might have been deemed some expiation for unavoidable
faults that next to the belligerents themselves England suffered
most acutely from the effects of the war, owing to the total
stoppage of her cotton supplies.
After four years of the most desperate efforts to shake off the
Northern invaders the Confederate defence was at last broken
down, and the fall of Richmond on 5th April 1865 put an
end to the Government of Jefferson Davis. Accused by angry
partisans of complicity in the plot to assassinate President

190 EMINENT PERSONS
Lincoln, a reward of $100,000 was offered for his capture.
This was effected about six weeks after his flight from
Richmond, and he was carried to Fort Monroe, where he was
jealously guarded pending a trial which never took place. The
delay caused by the difficulty of deciding in what manner he
should be tried probably saved his life by giving time for the
dissipation of the absurd suspicion that he had stooped to plan
a treacherous murder. In June of the following year an effort
was made to procure his release, but, although no resolution
had been come to concerning his trial, Congress decided by a
large majority that he should remain in prison. At length,
after two years' confinement, he was set at liberty, but it was
not until another two years had passed that all proceedings
against him were formally abandoned.
After the failure of his great enterprise he took no part
in public Life, and, indeed, it may be doubted whether any
considerable r6le was open to him. The reconstruction of
the Union -was badly begun under President Johnson. The
Secession States were given over to military law and to the
machinations of carpet-baggers ; while in the Northern States
the Ex-President of the Confederacy could have had no chance
of political success. Jefferson Davis was, besides, probably wise
enough to know how great a mistake is an anti-climax. He
could not have hoped by any chance to occupy a position
comparable to the one he had lost, and his wisest course was
the one he took, to retire altogether into private life. He
engineered a Texan Railway to the Pacific, wrote a voluminous
account of the rise and fall of the Confederate Government, and
finally undertook the management of a life assurance company.
Three years ago, when the Democrats were in power, he
emerged from his retirement in spite of feeble health and for
no reason apparent to the world. He made a sort of political
progress through Alabama and Georgia, delivering historical
speeches which the Northern Press not inaptly described as
the funeral orations of the Confederacy, and calling forth a
considerable amount of popular enthusiasm. But the crowds
and the shouting had no real significance, and his tour was
brought to an abrupt termination by the apprehension of his
political friends that it might provoke an injurious reaction
of public sentiment. The leader of the greatest Home Rule
movement of modern times was possibly roused to temporary

JEFFERSON DAVIS 191
activity by the spectacle of another attempt to disrupt a great
Empire made by the man who prematurely committed himself
to the opinion that Jefferson Davis had created a nation. The
Southern leader at all events had material to deal with out of
which a nation could be constructed, while his English imitator
has attempted the impossible task of making a nation which,
even if the British Empire were annihilated, could not maintain
its independence for a single year. Though identified with
a gigantic public blunder, Jefferson Davis has never been
convicted of the tergiversation and self-seeking which are the
besetting sins of politicians in troublous times. To have
occupied with credit a difficult position, to have fought a losing
battle with unquestionable ability and unflinching courage, to
have shown magnanimity under a tremendous reverse, and to
have borne through all vicissitudes an unstained character, are
achievements which will secure to him an honourable place in
his country's history.
Leading Article, Saturday, December 7, 1889
The death of Mr. Jefferson Davis, at the age of eighty-one,
awakens memories which, though they go back in reality only
a quarter of a century, seem to be related to a far distant
chapter of history. The War of the Secession in America had,
like the great French Revolution, been long anticipated by keen
observers, but predictions of disruption and conflict were so
often apparently confuted by events that men had come to look
upon them as having no practical bearing upon politics. Those
who were themselves deeply interested in the game for the most
part knew better, but upon the mass of Americans, both in the
Northern and in the Southern States, the attempt to break up
the Union fell with a startling shock. Names which previously
had at the most a local celebrity quickly rose to world-wide
fame, and among these none was more conspicuous during four
eventful years than that of Mr. Jefferson Davis. His character
was deeply impressed upon the public declarations and the
diplomatic intercourse of the Confederacy. His policy, or that
which was believed to be his, was identified in the eyes of all
the world with the Confederate cause. When that cause was
overwhelmed in utter ruin, Mr. Jefferson Davis sank with it, to
rise no more as a public man. Others as devoted as he was

192 EMINENT PERSONS
to the independence of the South — Mr. Alexander Stephens,
Senator Lamar, Senator Gordon, and others — re-entered the
political arena as soon as the military yoke was lifted from
the necks of the Southerners, but to the ex-President of the
Confederacy all the gates of public life were inexorably closed.
He was ostracised, not by the malignity and rancour of his
enemies, but by the distrust and aversion of those who had
formerly believed in him, had followed him into a hopeless and
disastrous enterprise, and persisted in defying at his bidding
forces as sternly irresistible as those of the great movements of
nature. The vanquished Southerners were not wanting either in
sagacity or in generosity, but they had enough of human nature
in their composition to seek a scapegoat when their ambitious
and adventurous schemes were turned into crushing defeat. It
is probable that President Davis was much to blame in secondary
matters for the collapse of the Confederate resistance, but, after
all, the rarest and highest qualities of statesmanship and of
strategy could not have averted the issue if the problem were
left to be determined, as in fact it was, by measuring the forces
of the South directly and simply against those of the North.
If the Chief of the Confederacy had combined the lofty spirit
of Chatham with the indomitable resolution of Frederick, the
single-minded purpose of Washington with the eagle eye of
Napoleon, he would still have been unequal to the struggle
upon which he rashly launched his country. Being as he was
of far inferior quality, it was easy when the end came to discern
the causes of disaster in his errors. The closing campaign of
the Confederacy left behind it among the Southerners feelings
as bitter as, and perhaps not less unfair than, those which, in
the minds of the majority of Frenchmen, have established an
inseparable connection between the fallen dynasty of the
Bonapartes and the humiliation of Sedan.
In truth, the policy of Mr. Jefferson Davis, stripped of its
rhetorical trappings and calmly viewed nearly thirty years after
its initiation, was nothing more than a superb game of brag.
When he and his friends representing the Gulf States drove the
South into secession against the better judgment of the older
Slave States, they were not the dupes of the high-flown language
in which they defied the North and expressed their resolution
to "maintain, if necessary, by the final arbitrament of the

JEFFERSON DAVIS 193
sword, the position which we have assumed among the nations
of the earth." They were well aware that the resources of the
North, in men, in money, in capacity for bearing taxation
and providing food and munitions for vast armies, exceeded
enormously those of the South. But they believed that the
North, if fully persuaded of the determination of the South to
break away from the Union, would not attempt to use its power
for coercion, or that if such an attempt were made it would be
neutralised by the internal divisions of Northern politics and by
the lack of any steady conviction or predominant sentiment to
touch with fire the crude masses of a half-organised democracy.
Nor were the promoters of the secession far wrong in their
premisses, though they went widely astray in the conclusions
they drew from them. The only section of Northern society
which had shown the true fighting spirit were the Abolitionists,
who were altogether without weight in politics, and whose
doctrines seemed to their neighbours to be impracticable and
fanatical. The people of the North were generally most
unwilling to enter upon a crusade for the abolition or even the
restriction of slavery, as a succession of abortive "compromise
policies " had testified ; they disliked and had little knowledge
of war ; the great majority of the trained military and naval
officers in the Federal service when the war broke out were
Southerners. These facts encouraged President Davis and his
colleagues to confront the North not only boldly, but menacingly.
With extraordinary energy and perseverance the Confederate
Government proceeded to create, not only the material of war,
but the machinery of civil and military administration. If
many mistakes were made, and many hardships inflicted, it
must be borne in mind that the conditions under which the
work was done were without precedent.
The policy of Davis, however, met with a fatal check when
it was shown that the maintenance of the Union was a rallying-
cry potent enough to efface divisions of opinion throughout the
North, to turn a pacific community into one panting for war, to
make a nation of traders and farmers willing to submit to the
levying of immense armies by conscription, the suspension of
popular liberties, the imposition of extraordinary taxation, the
raising of enormous loans, and the issue of a forced paper
currency. The South were prepared to do all these things on
their own account, but they were not prepared to be met in
vol. iv o

194 EMINENT PERSONS
the same spirit by the North. Still Davis and his associates
did not despair. If they were unable to drive the North to
acquiesce in the disruption of the Union by a show of force,
the game of brag might be played, with scarcely less prospect of
success, in another quarter. The European Powers might be
induced to intervene, in the interests of humanity, to put an
end to the strife. To this object all the efforts of the Confeder
ate statesmen were exclusively directed, though with ever
declining hopes from the moment when it became plain that
the North would not be overawed into submission, but would
fight to the last for the Union. The incapacity of the Federal
War Department and of some of the Northern generals gave
President Davis the material for vehement and highly-coloured
appeals to the public opinion of Europe. On the other hand,
the Confederates displayed military genius in some of its highest
forms, and in almost all ranks maintained a high level of
soldierly qualities. But as the months and years glided by,
and no help came, as the Confederacy was worn out while the
North showed no sign of weariness, President Davis must have
felt the situation to be a hopeless one long before Lee's surrender
to Grant at Appomattox Court-house.
To the charge of President Davis have been laid many of
the faults which vitiated and perverted the Confederate Ad
ministration. It is alleged that he thwarted and crippled the
ablest of his Generals, and that he sacrificed the common
interest to personal prepossessions or sectional demands. Vir
ginia and the Border States complained that he thought less of
them than of his beloved Mississippi and the neighbouring
communities. But, in truth, the cardinal vice of his policy was
that it failed. If it had succeeded its critics would have been
silent, if not effusive in their praise.
Measuring, as we can now measure, the conditions of the
problem with which Jefferson Davis had to deal, we are unable
to see how he could have hoped even against hope to secure the
independence of the South, except by an audaciously assertive
and domineering attitude. The stake for which he was playing
was a high one ; it was nothing less than the future of the
Slave Power, no longer fettered by alliance with the Northern
States, but permitted to extend its territory to the farthest
limits of Texas, and at no distant time to absorb the dominions
of the enfeebled Mexican Republic, Slavery in the Southern

JEFFERSON DAVIS 195
States was doomed to perish, and to bring to ruin the class of
whom Jefferson Davis was an able and bitter champion, unless
it could obtain opportunities of expansion. This was the
inducement which led the South to accentuate the doctrine of
State rights, and to imperil nominally on that issue the large
share of political influence and administrative authority mono
polised by Southerners under the Union. For yielding to the
temptation the South was promptly and sharply punished ; long
before the close of the war it was manifest that, whatever the
result, the property of the slave-owners was destroyed.
Jefferson Davis himself had nothing to expect but ruin. His
career after the fall of the Confederacy was not in all respects
worthy of his high place. He was the most conspicuous example
of the clemency of the Government of the Republic, yet he rarely
spoke a good word for the institutions and the politicians of the
North. With all his activity and audacity, all his firmness and
force of character, there was in him more than one mark of a
narrow mind — an unforgiving moroseness, a determination to
make himself out in the right on all occasions, and an inability
to estimate truly the relative value of men and things. These
defects, as well as others of a literary sort, unfitted him for the
task, which he undertook in his declining years, of writing the
history he had so large a share in making.

ROBERT BROWNING
Obituary Notice, Friday, December 13, 1889
It is with deep regret that we announce the death of Robert
Browning, the illustrious poet. Up to quite recently he was
singularly well and vigorous ; indeed, few men of his age —
seventy-seven — were so strong and capable of such multifarious
exertions as he. He could not only work for hours together,
producing such work as that which was only yesterday reviewed
in these columns, but he could walk and talk with the energy
of youth or middle age. Few men of letters were so sociable,
and hardly any was such a favourite in so varied a world.
Unlike almost every other poet, Mr. Browning knew everybody
and went everywhere. Society never seemed to fatigue him, or
to dull the edge of his creative talent. He talked weU on many
topics, and if his conversation of late rather took the form of
reminiscences, that was the natural privilege which people were
always very ready to grant to his age. He was young in mind
and manner ; and to hear him at the dinner-table it was difficult
indeed to believe that this was the man who, in the year of the
Queen's accession, had written Strafford for Macready, and who
had flung Sordello into a world that still read the poetry of
Mr. Robert Montgomery.
Robert Browning was born in 1812, at Camberwell. His
father was a clerk highly placed in the house of Rothschild, and
there are still living those who remember the excitement of the
elder man and of his friends in New Court when the time came
for the son's play to be produced at Covent Garden. He was a
Dissenter, and for this reason his son's education did not proceed
on the ordinary English lines. The training which Robert

ROBERT BROWNING 197
Browning received was more individual, and his reading was
wider and less accurate, than would have been the case had he
gone to Eton or Winchester. Thus, though to the end he read
Greek with the deepest interest, he never could be called a
Greek scholar. His poetic turn declared itself rather early, and
in 1835 he had a poem, Pauline, ready for the press. But
publication costs money, and his business-like father did not
see any chance of returns from poetry. A kind aunt, however,
came to the rescue, and presented the young poet with the cost
of printing the little book, £30. It was published at the price
of a few shillings, and of course did not sell ; but the author
had the curious satisfaction of seeing a copy of this original
edition bring twenty-five guineas under the hammer a year or
two ago. Pauline was not reprinted till the issue of the six-
volume edition of Mr. Browning's works in 1869. It was
followed by the more ambitious Paracelsus, a striking attempt
to fill a mediaeval outline with a compact body of modern
thought ; but in spite of the lovely lyric "Over the sea our galleys
went," and in spite of other beauties, the public did not heed
the book, and it had no success except with a very small circle.
It must be remembered that those days were days of poetic
exhaustion. Shelley, Byron, and Scott were dead ; the year
before, Coleridge had followed them to the grave ; Wordsworth
was old, and his muse no longer spoke with her accents of an
earlier day. Amid a mass of " keepsake " literature, affectations,
and mediocrity, the still, small voice of the Poems by Two
Brothers was heard by few, and that of Paracelsus was heard by
fewer still.
Two years later the young poet came forward with the
historical play of Strafford, which, as we have said, was produced
at Covent Garden with Macready in the title-part. It was not
exactly a failure, but though the play itself and Macready's
acting attracted the admiration of the critics, it was at once seen
that the drama contained too much psychology and too little
movement for a popular success. Mr. Browning, however, did
not for a long time to come cease to be a " writer of plays,"
though it was not till eleven years after that another drama of
his, A Blot on the Scutcheon, was performed on the stage. The
interval, however, was full of poetic activity. The energetic
search of the members of the Browning Society, and especially
of its founder, Mr. Furnivall, has succeeded in putting on record

198 EMINENT PERSONS
the place of first publication of several scattered poems of about
this date. Four of them, including Porphyria and Johannes
Agricola, appeared in the Monthly Repository, edited by W. J.
Fox, the Unitarian minister who was afterwards so well known for
his eloquent speeches against the Corn Laws. In 1840 came a
small volume, bound, after the fashion of the time, in gray
paper boards, and called Sordello, after the Provencal poet
mentioned in the Purgatory of Dante. The book appeared
without preface or dedication, but in the collected edition of
1863 it bears a note addressed by Mr. Browning to his friend
Monsieur Milsand, of Dijon, which contains the characteristic
expressions, " I wrote it twenty -five years ago, for only a
few. . . . My stress lay on the incidents in the development
of a soul ; little else is worth study. I, at least, always thought
so." Sordello in its original form is very rare and valuable now,
as all the early editions of Mr. Browning's poetry have become ;
but on its first appearance nobody cared for it — it was regarded
as nothing but a hopeless puzzle by a bewildered and defeated
public. Even now, when Mr. Browning has long since formed
his own public, Sordello is probably less read than any other
work of his ; it is too obscure and confused both in plot and in
thought. Irreverent people, indeed, have been found to say
that the only two intelligible lines in it were the first —
Who will, may hear Sordello's story told — ¦
and the last — Who would, has heard Sordello's story told.
But all the same, there are many interesting things in Sordello,
and among them, especially at this moment, are the references
to the place which, for fifty years, has fascinated the poet.
Only the other day he wrote Asolando, and forty-nine years ago
we find him writing :
Lo, on a heathy brown and nameless hill
By sparkling Asolo, in mist and chill,
Morning just up, higher and higher runs
A child, bare-foot and rosy.
Asolo appears again very soon afterwards in the lovely open
ing of the play Pippa Passes. This came first in the series
which appeared in the years 1841-46 under the odd title

ROBERT BROWNING 199
of Bells and Pomegranates. There were eight numbers of this
publication — thin yellow-covered pamphlets, printed in double
columns of small type by Mr. Moxon ; surely as unattractive a
way as a poet ever attempted of bringing his wares before the
world. Doubtless it was done in order that the low price might
appeal to a large audience, but we doubt whether the sale of
Bells and Pomegranates was ever large. The series is exceedingly
rare now, and the curious who prefer to read these noble poems
in this unsightly form have to pay £10 or £12 for the privilege
of possessing them. In this series first appeared all the
author's plays except Strafford — namely, Pippa Passes, King
Victor and King Charles, The Return of the Druses, A Blot
on the Scutcheon, Colombe's Birthday, Luria, and A Soul's
Tragedy. But alternating with these appeared many of the
shorter poems which have long since passed into the common
treasure-house of all who care for poetry throughout the
English-speaking world. One of the numbers contains the set
called "Dramatic Lyrics," including In a Gondola, Waring,
and The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Another number contained
" Dramatic Romances and Lyrics," among which are to be found
such favourite poems as How they brought the Good News from
Ghent to Aix, and Saul. In this group of poems were also to
be found the celebrated lines called The Lost Leader. People
at the time supposed that these indignant verses were aimed at
the Tory backsliding of Wordsworth ; and, indeed, though Mr.
Browning in after years denied their special applicability to the
old Laureate, there can be no doubt that when he wrote them
he had Wordsworth more or less in his mind.
In 1846 there happened to Mr. Browning something much
more important than the publication of this or that poem ; for
it was then, on 12th September, in Marylebone parish church,
that he was married to the poetess, Elizabeth Barrett. Their
union was the direct result, in the first instance, of poetic and
intellectual sympathy, and it was to the admiration which Miss
Barrett, then an invalid, felt for the author of Bells and Pome
granates that they owed their first introduction. For the
greater part of their married life Mr. and Mrs. Browning lived
almost entirely in Italy, and especially at that house in Florence,
close by the Porta Romana, which now bears a tablet with her
name, and which gave its title to one of her best-known volumes
of poetry. They had one child, born in 1849, Robert Barrett

200 EMINENT PERSONS
Browning, favourably known as a painter and sculptor. After
just fifteen years' marriage, Mrs. Browning died in 1861 ; the
frail body almost literally burnt up by the fiery soul within.
Of the closeness of their union Mr. Browning, of course, never
spoke, except to his intimate friends, but that it was of a degree
of happiness to which it is seldom given to poor humanity to
attain was made evident to the world when he wrote the splendid
invocation to his Lyric Love at the opening of The Ring and the
Book. During the first years of married life Mr. Browning wrote
little, but he read widely and deeply, and in 1849 he republished,
in two reasonable-sized volumes, Paracelsus and Bells and Pome
granates, under the title of "Poems, by Robert Browning."
Next year followed his most definitely Christian poem, Christ
mas Eve and Easter Day — a small volume in which the
mysteries of the Christian religion were handled in their
relations with the modern world. Then, in 1852, followed a
prose publication, which was, unfortunately, founded upon a
mistake and which was at once suppressed and not brought to
light until the Browning Society reprinted it years afterwards.
This was the celebrated introductory essay to a volume purport
ing to consist of letters from Shelley. The letters were soon
discovered to be fabrications, but Mr. Browning's essay was
quite independent of their genuineness, being really a very
interesting discussion on subjective and objective poetry, and of
Shelley's writings as a type of the former. In 1855 came the
two volumes called Men and Women, and in their pages were to be
found many of the poems best worth reading of all Mr. Browning's
productions, and many of those that are best remembered at the
present day.
It is only somewhat exasperating to the student to find that
in subsequent collected editions of his works Mr. Browning has
allowed his fondness for renaming and rearrangement to break
up these volumes and to distribute the greater part of their
contents under other titles. In Men and Women the intensely
dramatic quality of his genius found its best scope, for here are
to be found such masterpieces as Karshish, the Arab Physician,
Fra Lippo Lippi, Bishop Blougram, and Cleon. It is amusing
to note, if the authority of the bibliographers is to be
trusted, that these volumes were reviewed in the Roman Catholic
paper called the Rambler by no less a person than Cardinal

ROBERT BROWNING 201
AViseman, who was extremely complimentary to Bishop Blou-
gram, and did not by any means despair of the writer's
conversion. After Men and Women the poet was silent for
a long time. His wife's health was failing, though at the time
of the war in Lombardy her burning energy burst out in the
" Poems before Congress," and though she watched the course of
the struggle with never-ceasing excitement.
In 1861 the great grief of his life fell upon Mr. Browning,
and he published nothing new till 1864, when there appeared
the volume called Dramatis Persona;. It is pretty safe, however,
to declare that in this volume, with The Ring and the Book,
which was published in 1868, he reached his greatest height of
performance. It is enough to recall the memory of readers that
Dramatis Persona? contains James Lea's Wife, Rabbi Ben Ezra,
and Prospice. Then, four years later, as we have said, appeared
four volumes of that marvellous performance, The Ring and the
Book, a poetic and psychological grappling with the question
suggested to the poet by the account of a Roman trial that took
place a couple of centuries ago. Whether any one else in any
country has ever before ventured to publish a poem in four
simultaneous volumes we cannot say ; but, in spite of its
length and difficulty, Tlie Ring and the Book was and is one of
the most successful of the author's works. It has every right
to be so, for nowhere does he exhibit in a manner so sustained
and yet so varied his own extraordinary insight into characters
and motives entirely dissimilar.
Since that remarkable work was given to the world Mr.
Browning has attempted nothing approaching it in magnitude
or in the demand it made upon the sustained exertion of high
intellectual powers. But he left his admirers no room to
complain of diminished fecundity or of decaying vigour.
Balaustion's Adventure, including a transcript from Euripides,
appeared in 1871 to prove his undiminished insight and
inexhaustible interest in spiritual analysis. It was followed
by Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society, a book
suggested by the collapse of the French Empire, and recalling
the scathing satire with which he lashed the impostures of
spiritualism in Sludge the Medium. In 1872 he published
Fifine at the Fair, to the delight of those who loved him, and,
as usual, to the irritation of those who did not. Red Cotton
Nightcap Country appeared in the following year; and, after

202 EMINENT PERSONS
an interval of two years, was followed by Aristophanes' Apology.
Again, after a similar interval, he gave us The Agamemnon of
JEschylus Transcribed. In 1879 came Dramatic Idylls, with
the stirring ballad of Hervi Riel, which, as some think, roused
the Laureate to emulative effort. Jocoseria, published in 1883,
reclaimed many of his earlier admirers who had been estranged
by what they regarded as the extravagance and whimsicality,
not to speak of the obscurity and ruggedness, of so many of
his later works. Jocoseria, in fact, recalls Men and Women
rather than the Fifines, the Hohenstiel-Schwangaus, and the Red
Cotton Nightcap Countries of a later and less happily-inspired
period. Ferishtah's Fancies and Parleyings with Certain People
of Importance in their Day was the rather cumbrous title of a
still later volume ; and but yesterday appeared Asolando, a
work which displays all the old qualities, the old fire, and the
old audacity, apparently untouched by advancing years or even
by imminent death.
It has been Mr. Browning's fate to divide the reading world
into two hostile camps. There are no lukewarm friends on •
his side ; and from those who have never acquired a taste for
the strong wine of his muse it is sometimes difficult to extort
recognition of the vigour, the insight, the tenderness, and the
variety of intellectual sympathy which characterise the man
even if we make abstraction of the poet. An industrious and
enthusiastic society has devoted itself during his lifetime to the
promotion of a taste for his writings, but even that singular
tribute to the strength of his personality does npt shut the
mouth of the sceptic. Those who love the poets of prettinesses,
of artificial measures, and dainty trifles have at the present
day an almost embarrassing wealth of choice. But Mr.
Browning in his own sphere had no rival and no imitator.
No other so boldly faces the problems of life and death, no
other like him braces the reader as with the breath of a
breeze from the hills, and no other gives like him the assurance
that we have to do with a man. His last public words are the
fit description of his strenuous attitude through all his literary
work : "Strive and thrive ! " cry "Speed — fight on, fare ever
There as here ! "

THE BISHOP OF DURHAM
Obituary Notice, Monday, December 23, 1889
By the death of the Bishop of Durham last Saturday afternoon,
the Church of England has been too soon deprived of one of
the greatest minds by whom it has been served and adorned,
not only in the present generation, but in its whole history.
He has left behind him contributions to theological literature
and ecclesiastical history which will be permanent treasures,
not only to the Church of England, but to the Church at large ;
while at the same time in his administration of his diocese he
has left the impress and the impulse of the most earnest
devotion and practical energy. He was at once one of the
greatest of theological scholars and an eminent Bishop, and the
loss of a man with these achievements and capacities at such a
time as the present is most deeply to be deplored. The rapid
termination of his life was, we believe, quite unexpected. He
had been dangerously ill last year ; but long change and rest
had, it was hoped, restored him to his diocese. He was,
however, seeking necessary change this winter at Bournemouth,
and was working hopefully at one of his great theological works,
when a chill, taken on Tuesday last, brought on an acute
relapse, and he succumbed almost suddenly to an attack of
acute congestion of the lungs.
It is scarcely possible to estimate adequately as yet the
influence of his work and his life ; but a brief review of his
career will suffice to indicate the characteristic services which
he rendered. Joseph Barber Lightfoot was born in 1828 at
Liverpool ; and, if we are not mistaken, he was one of several
eminent men who owe their first impulse in learning to the

204 EMINENT PERSONS
late Dr. Prince Lee, headmaster of King Edward's School,
Birmingham, and afterwards Bishop of Manchester. From his
hands he passed to Trinity College, Cambridge, and obtained
the highest honours in his degree. He was Senior Classic and
Senior Chancellor's medallist in 1851, and was also a Wrangler,
or a First Classman in mathematics. His subsequent life was
for many years mainly devoted to the University, to which he
was intensely attached. He became Fellow of Trinity in 1852,
and subsequently Tutor. In 1861 he became Hulsean Professor
of Divinity, and in 1875 Margaret Professor. He combined
with these University offices, indeed, various other important
duties. He became chaplain to the late Prince Consort in
1861, chaplain to the Queen in 1862, and Deputy Clerk of
the Closet in 1875, and examining chaplain to Dr. Tait, both
as Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury, from
1862-79. In 1871, moreover, he was appointed Canon
Residentiary at St. Paul's Cathedral. His name will always
be cherished in that Cathedral as one of its great ornaments,
and we observe that Dr. Liddon, in his sermon yesterday after
noon, paid a grateful tribute of honour and regret to his
former colleague in the Chapter. His influence there was of
the utmost value, as he brought the gifts of his unsurpassed
learning to the work of the practical instruction of a great
London audience.
But during this period of his life the centre of his energies
was at Cambridge, and it was there that the foundations were
laid and the main structure framed of the noble edifice of
Christian learning which he erected. His influence at the
University as a great Christian teacher was, we believe, of
incalculable importance. His personal character carried
immense weight ; but his great position depended still more
on the universally-recognised fact that his belief of Christian
truth, and his defence of it, were supported by learning as solid
and comprehensive as could be found anywhere in Europe, and
by a temper not only of the utmost candour but of the highest
scientific capacity. The days in which his University influence
was asserted were a time of much shaking of old beliefs. The
disintegrating speculations of an influential school of criticism
in Germany were making their way among English men of
culture, just about the time, as is usually the case, when the
tide was turning against them in their own country.

THE BISHOP OF DURHAM 205
It was quite impossible, however, to assume that the verdict
of real learning was on the side of the Tubingen School when
such a scholar as Dr. Lightfoot, supported, as he would have
wished it to be remembered, by the friend to whom he has
offered so many tributes of honour and affection — Dr. Westcott
— was convinced that it was on the side of the old beliefs.
The peculiar service which was rendered at this juncture by
him and the " Cambridge School," to whom Dr. Liddon referred
yesterday at St. Paul's, was that, instead of opposing a mere
dogmatic opposition to the Tubingen critics, they met them
frankly at once on their own ground ; and instead of arguing
that their conclusions ought not to be and could not be true,
they simply proved that their facts and their premisses were
wrong. But it was a characteristic of equal importance
that Dr. Lightfoot, like his brother divine, Dr. Westcott, never
discussed these subjects in the mere spirit of controversy. It
was always patent that what he was chiefly concerned with
was the substance and the life of Christian truth, and that his
whole energies were employed in this inquiry, because his
whole heart was engaged in the truths and facts which were at
stake. He was not, therefore, diverted by controversy to side
issues ; and his main labour was devoted to the positive
elucidation of the sacred documents in which the Christian
truth and life is enshrined.
He has himself described, in the preface to his greatest work,
published four years ago, the nature and course of his theological
studies. We refer to his great edition of St. Ignatius and
St. Polycarp, with Introductions, Notes, Dissertations, and Transla
tions — a monument of learning which can be paralleled only
by the works of the very greatest scholars of the past, and
which, as Dr. Liddon yesterday said, has probably set at rest
one of the most thorny and vehement controversies of modern
times, or rather, of two centuries. He says :
" The present work arose out of a keen interest in the Ignatian
question which I conceived long ago. The subject has been
before me for nearly thirty years, and during this period it has
engaged my attention off and on in the intervals of other literary
pursuits and official duties. Meanwhile my plan enlarged itself
so as to comprehend an edition of all the Apostolic Fathers ;
and the portion comprising St. Clement (1869), followed, after
the discovery [of a complete MS.] of Bryennios, by an Appendix

206 EMINENT PERSONS
(1877), was the immediate result But the work which I now
offer to the ¦ public was the motive, and is the core, of the
whole." A further passage from the same preface indicates the point
of view from which he approached this study, and at the same
time affords a brief summary of his mature conclusions respect
ing the controversy in which he has played so great a part.
He says :
" The Ignatian Epistles are an exceptionally good training
ground for the student of early Christian literature and history.
They present in typical and instructive forms the most varied
problems — textual, exegetical, doctrinal, and historical. One
who has thoroughly grasped these problems will be placed
in possession of a master key which will open to him vast
storehouses of knowledge. But I need not say that their
educational value was not the motive which led me to spend
so much time over them. The destructive criticism of the last
half-century is, I think, fast spending its force. In its excessive
ambition it has 'o'erleapt itself.' It has not indeed been
without its use. It has led to a thorough examination and
sifting of ancient documents. It has exploded not a few errors,
and discovered or established not a few truths. For the rest,
it has by its directness and persistency stimulated investigation
and thought on these subjects to an extent which a less aggres
sive criticism would have failed to secure. But the immediate
effect of the attack has been to strew the vicinity of the fortress
with heaps of ruins. Some of these were best cleared away
without hesitation or regret. They are a rallying point for the
assailant, so long as they remain. But in other cases the re
building is a measure demanded by truth and prudence alike.
I have been reproached by my friends for allowing myself to
be diverted from the more congenial task of commenting on St.
Paul's Epistles ; but the importance of the position seemed to
me to justify the expenditure of much time and labour in
'repairing a breach,' not indeed in 'the House of the Lord'
itself, but in the immediately outlying buildings."
This extract appears to possess a varied interest ; and it
indicates to some extent the manner in which Dr. Lightfoot,
when once engaged in an inquiry such as that respecting the
Epistles of St. Ignatius, pushed his researches into every field
and corner of learning connected with the subject, and would

THE BISHOP OF DURHAM 207
not rest till every circumstance had been investigated which
could throw light upon it. This characteristic of his work led
to some disappointments to the learned world and to the public,
since it led him to keep his books back for so long, rather than
publish them while there was anything left unfinished which
might be made perfect. This unwearying and fastidious con
scientiousness has no doubt been rewarded by the permanence
of his work ; but it has had one consequence which must for ever
be regretted. It is one of the causes — for his public labours at
Durham must be reckoned another — which prevented the comple
tion of that Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles which is also
referred to in the above extract. The earliest of this great
series of commentaries — that on the Epistle to the Galatians —
was published in 1865, and the preface states that "the present
work is intended to form part of a complete edition of St. Paul's
Epistles, which, if my plan is ever carried out, will be prefaced
by a general introduction and arranged in chronological order."
This was followed in 1868 by a Commentary on the Epistle to
the Philippians, and in 1875 by a Commentary on the Epistles
to the Colossians and to Philemon ; and there, alas ! this in
valuable series came to a close.
We can only hope that among Dr. Lightfoot's papers may
be found commentaries on others of St. Paul's Epistles suffi
ciently far advanced for publication ; but it will for ever be a
matter for the deepest regret that, from whatever cause, the
most thorough and satisfactory commentary ever published on
this momentous portion of the New Testament cannot be
completed by the author's own hand. It supplies at once the
most complete elucidation ever afforded of the Apostle's text and
of the circumstances with which he was dealing, and at the
same time the most solid and earnest practical exposition. Each
commentary is accompanied by excursuses, which of themselves
throw invaluable light on important but obscure problems of
early Church history. One, for instance, on the Christian
ministry has a permanent value as one of the chief contributions
to the much- vexed question whether Apostolic succession through
bishops is essential to a valid ministry. By the High Church
school Dr. Lightfoot is deemed to have made some undue
surrender on this point, and accordingly his essay has been
much criticised by the latest representative of the extreme High
Church view on this subject — the Principal of the Pusey House.

208 EMINENT PERSONS
For the rest our readers may be referred to the appreciative
observations in the passage we print from Dr. Liddon's sermon
on the value of these commentaries.
During this period Dr. Lightfoot exerted a very important
influence in the movement which led to the preparation of the
Revised Version; and a volume which he published in 1871
On a Fresh Revision of the English New Testament, though
published after the Company of Revisers had met, exerted an
important influence in encouraging that enterprise. Perhaps
it was the only scholarly undertaking in which he engaged of
which the results have not, in all points of view, been successful ;
and it is the only one, so far as we know, in which he was
encountered by another scholar in a debate of which the issue
was at least doubtful. But the change introduced by the
revisers into the Lord's Prayer of" Deliver us from the evil one,"
instead of " Deliver us from evil," was challenged at once by
the late Canon Cook, of Exeter, with a learning which proved
a match even for that of Dr. Lightfoot ; and Canon Cook's final
paper, though the then Bishop of Durham intimated an intention
of replying to it, was never answered.
Another important service which, during the University
period of his life, he rendered to the English Church was his
masterly series of papers in the Contemporary Review of 1874-77
in reply to a pretentious, but essentially unscientific and un-
candid book entitled Supernatural Religion. These essays were
republished only this year, with a preface dated from Bourne
mouth, in which the first motive of the series is explained.
He says that when he first took up this book he felt that " its
criticisms were too loose and pretentious, and too full of errors,
to produce any permanent effect ; and for the most part attacks
of this kind on the records of the Divine life are best left alone.
But I found that a cruel and unjustifiable assault was made on
a very dear friend, to whom I was attached by the most sacred
personal and theological ties ; and that the book which contained
this attack was, from causes which need not be specified, obtain
ing a notoriety unforeseen by me. Thus I was forced to break
silence ; and, as I advanced with my work, I seemed to see
that, though undertaken to redress a personal injustice, it might
be made subservient to the wider interests of the truth."
It was characteristic of Dr. Lightfoot that he should thus
enter on an unwelcome controversy out of regard to his friend

THE BISHOP OF DURHAM 209
Dr. Westcott ; but his series of essays, as its republication
indicates, possesses, as all he published, a permanent value of
very high kind. With the exception of Dr. Salmon's Intro
duction to the New Testament, which is by its nature more
complete, the volume of republished essays is perhaps the most
effective explanation of the real results of modern criticism on
the most important questions respecting the authenticity of the
books of the New Testament. On the whole, as Dr. Liddon
said, he and his school " rolled back the most formidable assault
which had been made since the early days of Christianity on
the documents which are the title-deeds of the Church."
But in 1879 he accepted, though not, we believe, without
the utmost reluctance, the bishopric of Durham, in succession
to Dr. Baring. It was a bold step to appoint the most learned
scholar of the Church to a post which made the most arduous
call on practical ability and energy. But it was felt that the
presence of a scholar on the Bench would vastly strengthen its
authority, both within and without ; and the appointment has
been eminently justified by the result so far as the diocese of
Durham is concerned, and through that diocese the whole Church.
The Bishop never ceased his learned labours, and his grand
work on the Ignatian Epistles was completed amidst the dis
charge of his diocesan duties. We believe he regularly reserved
time for prosecuting his studies ; and he made Bishop Auckland
a centre of learning and teaching for his clergy.
But he devoted himself with unstinted energy to the
practical work of his see, and soon became beloved and trusted
throughout his diocese for the impulse and support which he
gave to every good work. He threw himself, indeed, into
some movements, such as the work of the Church Temperance
Society and the White Cross Army, with an enthusiasm rarely
combined with so much knowledge and solidity of judgment ;
but these were illustrations of that simple Christian devotedness
of character of which Canon Liddon yesterday spoke with such
feeling. His munificence was understood to be unbounded,
and one of his last acts was to build a church at Sunderland as
a thank-offering for what every one hoped was his recovery
from illness last year. More and more will be heard of his
labours as a Bishop, and to-day we can only refer to their
general character. Such masterly learning and wisdom, com
bined with such earnest and simple-minded devotion, has been
vol. iv P

210 EMINENT PERSONS
rarely seen. He was a worthy successor, in his services to
Christian truth, of his great predecessor, Bishop Butler, and he
surpassed him, partly no doubt under the stimulus of different
circumstances, in his practical labours. Some, perhaps, will
always doubt whether any services which he rendered, or could
render, as a Bishop could compensate for the partial sacrifice of
his services to theological learning. But that, we believe, will
not be a doubt entertained in his own diocese, as the mourning
now felt for him abundantly shows. His name will be held in
the highest honour as long as the English Church lasts — or
rather as long as any Church lasts in which English or European
theology is known. Dr. Lightfoot was never married.

DR. DOLLINGER
Obituary Notice, Monday, January 13, 1890
John Joseph Ignatius Dollinger, the distinguished theologian,
historian, and controversialist, was born at Bamberg, in Bavaria,
on the 28th of February 1799. He was the son of Ignaz
Dollinger, a famous physiologist. He became chaplain to the
diocese of Bamberg in 1822, almost immediately after receiving
priest's orders in the Roman Catholic Church. Subsequently he
was a Catholic curate in Franconia, and this charge he resigned
to become Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the Church
Training School at Aschaffenberg. After holding this appoint
ment for a short time he was nominated Professor of Ecclesias
tical History in the University of Munich, a chair which he
afterwards resigned to Mohler, taking himself that of dogmatic
theology. His lectures on the history of the Church, delivered
before the University, were distinguished for their erudition and
their breadth of thought.
In 1826 Dr. Dollinger made an important mark by his first
published work, entitled The Doctrine of the Eucharist during the
First Three Centuries. This was followed in 1828 by his
Manual of the History of the Church, which embodied the
substance of his lectures delivered at the University of Munich.
In 1838 appeared his Treatise on the History of the Church. It
was practically an expansion of the preceding work, and it not
only superseded a standard work by Hortig on the same subject,
but foreshadowed the independent position taken up later by the
writer. At this time, as editor of the Historisch-politische Blatter,
Dr. Dollinger discussed many subjects of a semi-political
character, as, for example, the mixed marriage question, then

212 EMINENT PERSONS
warmly debated between the Archbishop of Cologne and the
Prussian Government. Tractarianism and other questions of
the day were also handled from time to time with much
dialectical skill. Between 1833 and 1835 he wrote his
Origins of Christianity, and The Religion of Mahomet appeared
in 1838. Turning his attention to politics in 1845, he entered the
Bavarian Parliament as representative of the University of
Munich ; but he lost his seat in Parliament, as well as his chair
in the University, through the influence of the notorious Lola
Montes. He was a delegate to the National Parliament of
Frankfort, however, in 1851, and in this capacity he elaborated
a definition of the relations of Church and State which
amounted almost to complete separation. Following his views
to their logical issue, he voted for the absolute severance of the
Church from the State. The Reformation was at this period in
his career a subject of special study with Dr. Dollinger, the
result being that he produced two works upon this great
religious movement, one being A Sketch of Luther, and the other
a historical dissertation entitled The Reformation, its Interior
Development and its Effects. In 1853 he protested against the
proposed coronation of Napoleon III. by Pope Pius IX., and
also produced his well-known Hippolytus and Kallistus, a work
on the Church in the third century, written against the views
of Baur, Bunsen, Lenormant, etc. By a further work, published
in 1857, Dr. Dollinger made an attempt to appreciate the social
forces which favoured or retarded the spread of Christianity.
In 1861 he delivered a series of lectures in which he advocated
the abandonment of the temporal power by the Holy See. His
work on The Church and the Churclies ; or, the Papacy and the
Temporal Power, was (like many other of his treatises) translated
into English. He here formulated at greater length his reasons
and arguments for the surrender of the temporal sovereignty of
the Pope. In 1864 he incurred considerable odium amongst his
more orthodox Catholic brethren by strongly resisting the
doctrines of the Papal Encyclical of that year.
Although he had long been known throughout Germany and
other European States, it was not until the year 1870 that the
name of Dr. Dollinger acquired a world-wide fame. He was
one of the most strenuous opponents of the decrees of the
Vatican Council, and he especially rejected that one which

DR. DOLLINGER 213
¦ieclares the Pope to be infallible when addressing the Church
ex cathedra on questions of faith and morals. In some obser
vations which he drew up on the petition for infallibility he
directed his attack not merely against the inopportuneness of
tha decree, but undisguisedly against the doctrine itself. His
letters caused considerable excitement, and when he further
stated in his manifesto that what he had maintained was nothing
mote than what the majority of the episcopate in Germany
substantially held, the excitement by no means diminished.
Indeed his declaration alarmed not a little that large proportion
of the German Bishops who were anxious at all costs to escape a
point-blank contest with the Pope, and who had taken care so to
word their counter-petition as to leave the actual doctrine of
infallibility an open question. They by no means desired the
reputation of complicity with so very prominent and uncom
promising an opponent as Dr. Dollinger ; and when some of
them, the Bishop of Mayence at their head, proceeded distinctly
to repudiate the allegation that they were opposed to the dogma
of infallibility, it was manifest that the German opposition camp
was disorganised ; and that, while some of its leaders were
doubtful or dissentient on the point, there were others who
really accepted the dogma of infallibility in its entirety. The
German Bishops in general subsequently made a formal sub
mission, but Dr. Dollinger stood to his guns. Bavaria supported
the learned doctor. Though conservative of the past, she was
opposed to the new Ultramontane influences, and heartily
acquiesced in the stand made against the infallibility doctrine.
The Municipality of Munich presented Dr. Dollinger with the
freedom of the city for his courageous attitude on this all-
absorbing question. He had now become the acknowledged
leader of all those who, within the pale of the Romish Church,
were disaffected towards the Holy See ; but he was to pay for
this position of eminence.
The Old Catholic movement soon drew upon itself the
hostility of the ecclesiastical authorities. On the 1 9th of April
1871 Dr. Dollinger was formally excommunicated by the
Archbishop of Munich, on account of his refusal to retract his
opposition to the dogma of infallibility. The Archbishop of the
day, a dull, illiterate, and weak man, was completely under the
influence of Melia, the Papal Nuncio at Munich, the same
individual who had been Papal Nuncio in Mexico in the

214 EMINENT PERSONS
Emperor Maximilian's time, and was not altogether without
responsibility for the tragedy at Queretaro. This Melia was
distinguished as a fanatic among fanatics. Instead of proceeding
in a conciliatory manner towards Dr. Dollinger, he and the
Archbishop endeavoured to force on him the acceptance of the
new dogma in its crudest, most offensive, and most absurd form.
When Dr. Dollinger declined, as was to have been expected, to
deny his most solemn convictions, the excommunication followed.
The Archbishop himself was too undiscerning a man to under
stand what he was doing ; but others saw the folly of the step,
and lamented to see turned out of the Papal Church its most
learned priest and one of the greatest ecclesiastical historians
that had ever adorned it. Fessler, Bishop of St. Polten, who had
been secretary to the Vatican Council, when he heard of the
intended action of the Archbishop, came post haste to Munich to
try to arrange matters ; but he arrived too late, and indeed any
attempt to influence either the narrow-minded prelate or the
fanatical Papal Nuncio who urged him on was hopeless. Pope
Leo XIII. has repeatedly expressed his own great regret for
what took place, and has, it is said, taken more than one
opportunity of having his views on the matter conveyed to Dr.
Dollinger. A paper war of great magnitude followed the excommunica
tion. Most of the doctor's colleagues in his own divinity school,
together with not a few canons of his cathedral, a vast number
of the Bavarian lower clergy, and nearly all the laity, testified
their agreement with him. The young King of Bavaria, more
over, lent the support of his personal sympathies to Dr.
Dollinger's movement. Herr von Lutz, the Bavarian Minister
of Worship, addressed a letter to the Archbishop of Munich
which was nothing' less than a declaration of war against the
politics of the high clerical party. He challenged the proceed
ings against Dr. Dollinger ; he declared the infallibility dogma
to be an innovation pernicious to the interests of the State ; he
asserted the right of the Placitum Regium, by acting without
which the Bishops who published the decrees of the Vatican
Council had been guilty of a breach of the Constitution.
A Congress of Old Catholics was held at Munich in Septem
ber, when an Anti-Infallibility League was formed ; and the
cause soon afterwards experienced a triumph in the election of
Dr. Dollinger to the Rectorship of the University of Munich by

DR. DOLLINGER 215
a majority of fifty-four votes against six. At Cologne in the
following year an Old Catholic Congress assembled, and delegates
attended from various foreign States. There were present from
England the Bishops of Lincoln and Ely and the Dean of
Westminster. Amongst others were to be seen Reinkens,
Michelis, Huber, Pere Hyacinthe, Bluntschli, and the Jansenist
Bishop of Utrecht. The president's chair was occupied by
Professor von Schulte, while the prime leader of the movement,
Dollinger himself, the foremost object of attraction and sympathy
to the foreign guests, sat in a corner of the hall of assembly
almost out of sight, and took little part in the proceedings.
Dr. Dollinger, indeed, was always glad to give the Old Catholic
body the benefit of his advice, and he presided over the Congress,
mainly of Old Catholics, which was held at Bonn in 1874 to
promote the reunion of Christendom ; but we believe he never
formally joined their Communion, and, at the outset, at any
rate, he strongly opposed its constitution as a distinct Church.
From the day of his excommunication by the Archbishop of
Munich he abstained from performing any ecclesiastical function.
He always continued a strict observer of the disciplinary rules
and commandments of the Roman Catholic Church.
In January 1871 the University of Oxford conferred the
honorary degree of D.C.L. upon Dr. Dollinger ; and in the
following year the King of Bavaria decorated him with the
Order of Merit, while he received from the University of
Edinburgh the diploma of LL.D. He was appointed President
of the Royal Academy of Science at Munich, on the death of
Baron Liebig, in May 1873 ; and early in the succeeding year
the German Emperor rewarded him for his opposition to the
Catholic party by conferring upon him the Order of the Red
Eagle, Second Class. He was, however, much opposed to the
Prussian Culturkampf, and used all his influence, with consider
able success, to prevent its spreading to Bavaria. He was
particularly opposed to the expulsion of religious orders of
women from Prussia. In the autumn of 1873 Dr. Dollinger
received a visit from Mr. Gladstone, with whom he has, for a
period approaching to half a century, been on terms of friend
ship, and whose pamphlet on Tlie Vatican Decrees created much
excitement in Catholic circles.
It was in September 1874 that Dr. Dollinger presided over
the Congress at Bonn. It was manifest during this conference

216 EMINENT PERSONS
that his views on ecclesiastical questions had advanced greatly
since his rupture with the Church, and he frankly declared that
he and his colleagues did not consider themselves bound by the
Council of Trent. He further introduced a declaration, which
was unanimously adopted, that the Eucharistic celebration in
the Church was not a continuous repetition or renewal of the
great propitiatory sacrifice. But the Old Catholic movement
did not generally make that headway upon the Continent which
its sanguine promoters had hoped speedily to witness, though it
was helped in Germany by the passing of a Bill for transferring
ecclesiastical property to a committee of the ratepayers and
communicants in each parish of the empire. When the third
synod of the Old Catholics was held at Bonn in June 1876 it
was stated by Dr. von Schulte that there were then thirty-five
communities in Prussia, fourty-four in Baden, five in Hesse, two
in Birkenfeld, thirty-one in Bavaria, and one in Wurtemberg.
The whole number of persons belonging to the body of Old
Catholics was — in Prussia, 17,203 ; Bavaria, 10,110 ; Hesse,
1042 ; Oldenburg, 249 ; and Wurtemberg, 223. The number
of Old Catholic priests in Germany was sixty. Subsequently
some advance was recorded over these numbers.
Dr. Dollinger had a wide acquaintance among the leading
statesmen of various countries, and with many of them he was
on terms of close and lifelong friendship. At the age of ten he
was presented to Napoleon, a few weeks before the battle of
Wagram, and he always preserved a lively recollection of the
scene. The personality of the great Emperor made an enduring
impression on his mind. He was on intimate terms with Sella
and Minghetti among the Italians, and with General Radowitz,
a distinguished Roman Catholic Prime Minister of Prussia, in
the days of Frederick William IV., and father of the present
German Ambassador at Constantinople. His most intimate
French friend was Count Montalembert ; he had a warm ad
mirer in M. Guizot, and was much looked up to by many other
distinguished Frenchmen, such as Lacordaire, Gratry, Dupan-
loup, and Falloux. His correspondence was most varied, not
only with scientific theologians, historians, men of letters, and
statesmen, but with ecclesiastics, particularly Roman Catholic
ecclesiastics of all grades, from cardinals to curates. Could it
be published, it would afford most valuable material for the
intellectual and political history of our times. Up to this last

DR. DOLLINGER 217
fatal attack of illness he remained perfectly clear and vigorous
in mind. Dr. Dollinger's friendship with Mr. Gladstone, as already
observed, is of very old standing. When Mr. Gladstone declared
in favour of a separate Parliament and Executive for Ireland,
Dr. Dollinger was much distressed. The subject was painful to
him and he avoided talking about it ; but when he did speak
of it, it was always to express his astonishment. Writing to
an English friend in July 1888, the venerable doctor said :
"Gladstone is to me a riddle, which I can solve only on the
supposition that he knows little of Irish history, and still less
of the character of the Irish people and of the spirit of the Irish
priesthood. If he succeeds, what a frightful legacy will he
leave to the generations which come after him ! It is, in truth,
the most threatening crisis which has occurred in England
during the present century. God grant that she may surmount
it happily." No foreigner of our time has understood England so well.
His knowledge of English literature and of the writings that
have helped to form the English mind was extensive and pro
found. He had the greatest respect for the character and genius
of Cardinal Newman, and always expressed regret that the
latter had not found time to give more attention to the history
of the Middle Ages. His learning was immense. It may prob
ably be said without exaggeration that he had as minute a
knowledge of the history of the Christian Church in every age
as Ranke had of the political and diplomatic history of Europe
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In addition to the works referred to above, Dr. Dollinger
was the author of, among other compositions, Prophecies and the
Prophetic Spirit in the Christian Era: an Historical Essay,
translated into English by Mr. A. Plummer, 1873, and of a
History of the Council of Trent, published in 1876. In quite
recent years he republished the autobiography of Cardinal
Bellarmin, with a critical introduction ; and also, with the
assistance of Professor Reusch, of Bonn, two volumes on the
moral teaching of the Jesuits. Only the other day these were
followed by a work on the sects of the Middle Ages, and by two
volumes of collected speeches or lectures. As a writer Dr.
Dollinger was distinguished by the vigour and perspicacity of
his style. Though an eager and combative controversialist, he

218 EMINENT PERSONS
was personally one of the most modest and retiring of men.
He was an exceedingly abstemious man ; he never drank the
beer of his country, and wine only rarely and in the smallest
quantity. He was, however, no friend of fanatical teetotallers.
He was exceedingly charitable and eminently hospitable, and
delighted in having people to dine with him, as is well known
to many Englishmen who have been fortunate enough to make
his acquaintance in Munich.
Leading Article, Monday, January 13, 1890
One of the two most commanding personalities among
theologians of the nineteenth century is no longer to be
numbered in the list of living celebrities. Dr. Dollinger has
finished his course. After more than sixty years of incessant
activity, such was still the vigour of the man and of his
labours that his name, when he was silent no less than when
he was most eloquent, has continued to be the support of a
great cause. At ninety he was not suffered to resign the
leadership he had won before he was thirty. To the hour of
his death he remained a force in European thought. Seldom
as his voice has recently been heard, there was always a sense
in the ranks of ecclesiastical controversialists that it might be
uplifted. They debated with eyes turned to the master's
modest abode in Bavaria, as if some final word were about to
issue thence, and decide the direction of the onset or the
defence. Though the real vitality of his career will not be checked
by the consignment of his body to the grave, no fresh achieve
ments can now be added. The sum of his literary and
educational enterprises can be reckoned up, and it is enormous.
When he was scarcely more than a boy he entered the field of
theology armed with a store of learning which an ordinary
life might have been supposed to be too short to collect. For
the next half- century he went on constantly increasing the
mass. The quantity was prodigious, the area covered was
immense, and the whole was as accurate as it was vast.
Antagonists could contend in favour of contrary inferences
from the propositions he enunciated. They could not dispute
his facts, or convict him of dishonesty in the manner of their
compilation. Almost more surprising than the extent and

DR. DOLLINGER 219
quality of his industry was the unity of its aims and character.
It has been penetrated throughout with the same idea, though
naturally that was developed with greater clearness and fulness
as his researches in church antiquities advanced.
'Theology is a study which is apt to lead its scholars by
circuitous roads. They are wont to find themselves in strange
quarters. In ancient opponents they recognise guides, and
they have to discard many former allies. Before their journey
is terminated they frequently have to face the necessity of
shutting their eyes and precipitating themselves down a descent
they would originally have condemned as fatal. Dr. Dollinger
was made of different stuff. He was never exposed to the
painful necessity of abdicating his freedom of will. His
investigations never chilled his faith or dulled his enthusiasm.
They compelled him to set up no new idols nor to dethrone
the old. He started with a devotion to the Church which the
most minutely microscopic scrutiny of the blunders and crimes
of its successive rulers never inclined him to forswear. His
views on specific dogmas were modified by reflection and
experience. The opinions, for instance, expressed by him in
1826 on the doctrine of the Eucharist during the first three
centuries do not accord with the resolution he introduced at
the Old Catholic Congress of 1874 on the same subject. When
he wrote in 1828 his manual of Church history, he had not,
as at Bonn, emancipated himself from the trammels of the
Council of Trent. He may not have been as conscious in his
earlier stages of the numberless evils inherent in an Ultramontane
dictatorship. But to the Church, the Mother Church, as he
understood it, of Christendom, he maintained his allegiance
unabated. In spirit, and in the principles of the construction of
Church evidences, the distance between the young Professor of
the first quarter of the century and the nonagenarian Rector
of Munich University of the last quarter is imperceptible. At
all times, and undaunted by any hindrances and hostilities, he
sought for means by which his Church should be best equipped
for performing its task successfully and conciliating the sincerest
obedience. His resistance to Papal absolutism and infallibility
was justified by his knowledge of the entire want of a historical
basis for the tenets. The indignation they awakened in him
arose chiefly from his conviction that they were a sword for

220 EMINENT PERSONS
parting Christians, and could not be a bond for reuniting them.
His uninterrupted aspiration as a scholar and a teacher was
after the pacification of Christian dissensions. That burning
desire can be traced in his writings long before, as chief of the
Old Catholic movement, he drew near to Protestantism. In
Old Catholicism he saw, not a sect, but a leaven which was
gradually to fuse struggling Christians into one happy society.
Leaders of an appeal against torpor or tyranny in the
hierarchy of a Church usually end by flying before the ban
pronounced by the dominant coterie upon their rising. They
leave the enemy in possession, and withdraw to a camp of their
own. Such probably may be, if it has not already become,
the position of Old Catholicism. It has proceeded from no
choice on the part of the founder ; and the propensity never
governed him personalty. All the artillery of ecclesiastical
thunder was levelled at his head. He was upbraided and
taunted. He was warned and threatened. He was solemnly
excommunicated as an impenitent heretic and infidel. Nothing
was of avail to affect his attitude. He bore himself always
as if it depended on himself, and not on Popes and Archbishops,
whether he should or should not be within the Communion of
his Church. As he was not disqualified by rebellion against
any of the canons his historical learning showed him that the
Catholic Church had promulgated, there he stayed ; and as a
Catholic he died.
Of the grandeur of the man and the dignity of his demeanour
there can be no doubt. Foes as well as friends admired him.
The open war declared against him by Ultramontane authorities
was felt far and wide within the Church of Rome itself to be a
grievous error. Had Pope Leo been in power instead of Pio
Nono, it would hardly have been permitted. By the Bavarian
people, with all its inveterate Catholicism, the violence attempted
against its most illustrious citizen was resented as a national
insult. Dr. Dollinger's own serenity was but little ruffled by
the tempest. He pursued his habitual course, reading, writing,
thinking, and believing, as K every Catholic church were
ready to welcome him at its altar.
The condition, present and future, of the particular com
munity which owes to him its existence is a different question.
The Old Catholic body is composed of excellent Christians,
sincere and amiable. They are served by ministers who are

DR. DOLLINGER 221
devout, and exemplary in conduct. The few Bishops who rule
them are diligent and discreet in the discharge of their
functions. Yet the movement does not move. Possibly some
advance may statistically be noted. It is not of a kind to
amount to an element in European life. Against the wishes
of its eminent leader, and by no active fault in its members, it
seems fated to become simply one more in the crowd of fighting
Christian denominations. Political combinations have helped
to impede its progress. Since the reconciliation of Prince
Bismarck and the Vatican, it has been an embarrassment rather
than a support to German policy. It could no longer hope for
especial countenance from the mighty Chancellor. In itself,
however, there has ever been a deficiency of proselytising
energy. Its virtues have retarded it as much as its mistakes.
The assault it conducted on the strongholds of Rome was in
tentionally too gentle and deprecatory to carry them by storm. If,
in order to keep itself breathing, it agree upon further doctrinal
amendments of importance, they, while they may enable it to
subsist, must sway it so far from the Communion it was created
to reform that its lines will have to be formally relaid.
As with many agitations within religious societies which have
sprung from the wrath of faithful sons at the ravages of
intestine corruption, the true benefit of the South German
revolt from Ultramontane usurpations will doubtless be found
to have been not so much the rise of another independent
association as the resulting compulsion upon the authorities of
the established Church to mend their ways. Dr. Dollinger's
weight of learning and argument has taught the Vatican the
danger of straining the yoke too hard. He has given his
Catholic brethren, though they may not acknowledge him as
of their fold, the most cogent reasons for imitating, so far as
they can, his exalted standard of public duty. Whatever the
fortunes hereafter of Old Catholicism, Dr. Dollinger has earned
the right to be numbered high among the teachers and doctors
of the Church of Rome. He shares the honour with other
divines for whom Rome feels even less charity — with Wycliffe,
Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin.

LORD NAPIER OF MAGDALA
Obituary Notice, Wednesday, January 15, 1890
We announce with much regret the death of Field-Marshal Lord
Napier of Magdala. The whole country has reason to deplore
the loss of one who was so admirable an example of what may
be accomplished by untiring energy, devotion to duty, and an
indomitable spirit of enterprise.
The Right Hon. Sir Robert Cornells Napier, G.C.B., G.C.S.I.,
Lord Napier of Magdala, was the son of Major C. F. Napier, of
the Royal Artillery, and Catherine, daughter of Mr. Codrington
Carrington, of Barbados. Lord Napier was born in Ceylon, in
the year 1810. He was brought over to England and educated
at the Military College, Addiscombe. In December 1826 he
received his commission as a second lieutenant in the Bengal
Engineers. Proceeding to India, he found himself at Calcutta,
to use his own language, " without friends or connections,' and
with nothing but his own stout heart, and his commission in
his pocket." For many years his brilliant talents did not find
full opportunity for their exercise. For almost a generation he
was engaged in building up, bit by bit, his great reputation as
a military engineer. He rendered important service in the
construction of the magnificent barracks at Umballa, and in
1845 he assisted Sir Henry Lawrence in the foundation of the
Lawrence Asylums, " in which hundreds of orphan children of
the British soldiers in the three Presidencies are trained to
habits of industry and morality."
In January 1841 Napier received his commission as captain,
and, having afterwards served with distinction in the Sutlej
campaign, he was advanced to the rank of major. Chosen by

LORD NAPIER OF MAGDALA 223
Lawrence for the responsible post of engineer to the Durbar
of Lahore, he had now an opportunity of acquiring special
knowledge of the Punjab, an opportunity which he fully
embraced. At the two sieges of Mooltan he acted as chief
engineer, and was severely wounded. On the fall of that place
Napier accompanied General Whish in his expedition to join
Lord Gough. He was present at the victory of Goojerat, being
commanding engineer of the right wing of our army. He was
also with General Gilbert at the surrender of the Sikh army.
Napier's services having been frequently mentioned in the
official military despatches, he received the brevet rank of
lieutenant- colonel, and the war medal with two clasps for
Mooltan and Goojerat.
When Colonel Napier returned to his duties as chief engineer
under the Punjab Administration, he executed his long-projected
plans of intersecting the country with military and commercial
highways. Having provided for the efficient administration of
a great province, he was summoned to Calcutta to assume the
post of chief engineer of Bengal. When the Mutiny broke out,
Napier acted as chief of the staff to Sir James Outram through
out the operations conducted by Havelock for the relief of
Lucknow. He planned the bridging of the Goomtee River,
which exercised an important influence on the operations for
the overthrow of the enemy, and he was subsequently appointed
to the command of the force employed to destroy the rebels
reunited under Tantia Topee. The conduct of the latter
undertaking, however, having been claimed by Sir Hugh
Rose, Colonel Napier acted as his second in command. With
regard to the operations at Lucknow, Outram wrote : " Skilful
and courageous as have been the engineering operations, and
glorious the behaviour of the troops, their success has been
in no small degree promoted by the incessant and self-
denying devotion of Colonel Napier — who has never been
many hours absent by day or night from any one of the points
of operations — whose valuable advice has ever been readily
tendered and gratefully accepted by the executive officers, and
whose earnestness and kindly cordiality have stimulated and
encouraged all ranks and grades amidst their harassing diffi
culties and dangerous labours." Napier, now Brigadier- General,
gained a brilliant victory at Joura Alipore, which he followed
up by the reduction of the large and strong fort of Powree.

224 EMINENT PERSONS
After the capture of Gwalior he engaged in the pursuit of
Tantia Topee, who was eventually taken and executed. The
riband of the Bath was conferred upon Napier for his services
during the Indian Mutiny, and he also received the thanks of
Parliament. The surrender of Pekin and the burning of the Summer
Palace are events intimately associated with the names of Sir
Hope Grant and Lord Napier of Magdala. In the Chinese War
of 1860 he was second in command under Sir Hope Grant. In
the middle of August the allied army of French and English
began its march on Pekin. At the assault on the Taku Forts
Napier's force was chiefly engaged. Sir Hope Grant relied
upon the experience of Sir Robert Napier in his measures for
the capture of these formidable works. On the 20th of August an
attack was made on the Great North Fort by the British regiments
of the second division, commanded in person by Napier. The day
following the fight waxed fierce, and at seven o'clock the grand
magazine of the fort exploded. The defence, however, was
stubbornly carried on until eight o'clock on the following
morning. At this hour the storming parties, consisting of the
44th and 67th Regiments, followed by the Marines, with the
pontoons, gradually closed round the rear, opened a very heavy
fire on the parapet and embrasures, and, in conjunction with
the French, effected a footing on the walls and ultimately killed
or drove the gallant defenders out of the fort at the point of the
bayonet. Napier was in the thickest of the fight, and narrowly
escaped death. One bullet knocked his binocular out of his
hand, and another ripped open his boot ; he was struck five
times altogether during the assault. Sir Robert Napier followed
Sir John Michel's division in the advance upon Tientsin. They
remained in reserve upon the right bank of the Peiho, while Sir
Hope Grant pressed forward to Pekin with the first division.
Consequently, Napier was not in the action of the 28th of
September at Chang-Ria-Wan, nor in the fight some days later,
which placed the allied army in position before Pekin. He
was, however, sent for by Sir Hope Grant, and on his arrival
with the second division the army moved forward on Pekin.
The duplicity of the Chinese in the antecedent negotiations had
left the allies no option but to advance to the attack. On the
6th of October the Emperor's Summer Palace was taken, the
French being the first to enter. As a measure of retribution

LORD NAPIER OF MAGDALA 225
for the sufferings of the European prisoners, it was set on fire
by a detachment of British troops and totally destroyed. By
the 12th of October every preparation had been made for
bombarding Pekin. Sir Robert Napier had brought his siege
guns into position, and the Chinese Government were informed
that the cannonade would be opened on the following day at
noon unless the city previously surrendered. The demands of
the allies were at length unconditionally acceded to, and the
gate was thrown open to the troops.
On the 14th of February 1861 the thanks of Parliament
were voted to Sir Hope Grant, Sir Robert Napier, Admiral
Hope, and others for their services during the brief but brilliant
Chinese War. Sir Robert Napier was rewarded for his services
by being made Major-General and a K.C.B. He was also
appointed successor to the late Sir James Outram as a military
member of the Council of India. This post he resigned in
January 1865, when he was nominated to succeed Sir W.
Mansfield as Commander-in-Chief at Bombay, with the local
rank of Lieutenant-General. When the Order of the Star of
India was instituted he was made a Knight Commander, and
afterwards advanced to the dignity of a Grand Cross of that
Order. But the most remarkable military undertaking in the career
of Lord Napier of Magdala was the war in Abyssinia. His
successful conduct of that brief but dramatic campaign has
rendered his name memorable in history. A few words will
suffice to explain the origin of the war. In October 1862
Consul Cameron, who had been appointed to succeed Mr.
Plowden as our representative in Abyssinia, was received by
King Theodore. He was sent away with a letter for the Queen,
desiring alliance against the Turks. This letter reached England
in February 1863, but the Government decided not to answer
it. Captain Cameron was ordered by Earl Russell to remain
at Massowah, but he returned to Abyssinia in June. The
following October the Rev. H. Stern, an English missionary,
was beaten and imprisoned for an alleged intrusion upon
Theodore. Shortly afterwards Mr. Cameron and all British
subjects and missionaries in Abyssinia were seized and im
prisoned for pretended insults. The prisoners were sent to
Magdala, and chained like criminals. In July 1864 Mr.
Hormuzd Rassam, a Chaldee Christian and first assistant
vol. rv Q

226 EMINENT PERSONS
British political resident at Aden, was sent on a peaceful
mission to Abyssinia, Lieutenant Prideaux and Dr. Blanc being
appointed to accompany him. Mr. Rassam having carried on
fruitless negotiations for a year, Earl Russell appointed Mr.
Gifford Palgrave on a special mission to King Theodore. Mr.
Palgrave was proceeding on his mission when he was stopped
and informed that Theodore had sent for Mr. Rassam. In
January 1866 Rassam, Prideaux, and Blanc were well received
by the King, and on the 12th of March the prisoners were
released. Scarcely a month had elapsed, however, before they
were again seized and imprisoned. In December 1866
Theodore received an autograph letter from the Queen, but he
still did not release the prisoners. On the 16th of April 1867
Lord Stanley sent an ultimatum to the King, demanding the
release of the captives within three months. A second formal
letter from the British Government was despatched to King
Theodore, but neither of these documents arrived at its destina
tion. Meantime, the English Government determined to send a
military expedition to Abyssinia, with the object of releasing
the prisoners by force. Sir R. Napier was appointed to the
command of the expedition, which was fitted out in India.
The first detachment of troops arrived in Annesley Bay, on
the coast of Abyssinia, in October 1867. The advanced guard,
under Brigadier-General Merewether, pushed on to Senafe, on
the highland of Abyssinia, and on the 3rd of January 1868
General Napier arrived in Annesley Bay. Issuing an address
to the troops, he expressed his confidence that every soldier in
the force would appreciate the honour of having been selected
to carry out the commands of Her Majesty the Queen, and that
neither hardships nor dangers would be suffered to arrest the
army in achieving its objects, and releasing English prisoners
from a painful captivity. When Theodore was told that the
English would be compelled to fight him he replied, " Let them
come, and call me a woman if I do not beat them."
The march of the army over the rocky highlands of Abyssinia
was successfully and rapidly accomplished, and the troops were
soon beneath the stronghold of Theodore. So little did the
King relish his first engagement with the enemy that he sent
Mr. Flad and Lieutenant Prideaux to the British camp with a
flag of truce in order to make terms. General Napier, however,

LORD NAPIER OF MAGDALA 227
insisted that the prisoners should be unconditionally surrendered,
and the result was that they were all sent into the camp.
Hostilities, however, continued, King Theodore refusing to
make his own submission.
Few episodes in the history of the British army can compare,
for rapid and startling effects, with the storming of Magdala.
On the 13th of April two brigades, consisting of 5000 men,
under Sir Charles Staveley, moved forward to attack the King's
stronghold. They marched along the road which led up to
Fahla and through what had been Theodore's camp at Islamgee
to Selassee and Magdala. The three hills all flank and protect
each other, and are connected by a mountain, isolated, and
rising many hundred feet above the plain, and with its sides
broken up into scarps and terraces, most of them perfectly
precipitous, thus forming together a natural stronghold which
has not its fellow perhaps in the known world. It was by the
northern gateway, as being on the side commanded by Selassee,
that the British and native Indian troops had to effect an
entrance. As they approached the stronghold the troops opened
a hot fire of shot, shell, and rockets, but this made no impression
upon the gateway, which was protected by a strong stockade.
The King had stationed himself here with a smaU band of his
faithful followers, but the rest of his army had abandoned the
place. The attacking troops resolutely forced their way over
the stockade, and rushing into the fortress cut down the few
Abyssinians, who died fighting bravely to the last. The King
nevertheless retreated to a spot higher up, and there shot him
self with a pistol before the troops could reach him. His body
was found dead on the ground. There were three wounds
upon him, one of which had been inflicted by his own hand.
The slaughter of the enemy was great, but our entire loss was
only that of ten men wounded. Thus ended one of the most
brilliant and surprising of military campaigns.
In an address to the army, the victorious General con
gratulated them on the way in which they had fulfilled the
commands of their Sovereign. "You have traversed, often
under a tropical sun, or amidst storms of rain and sleet, 400
miles of mountainous and difficult country. You have crossed
many steep and precipitous ranges of mountains, more than
10,000 feet in altitude, where your supplies could not keep pace
with you. When you arrived within reach of your enemy,

228 EMINENT PERSONS
though with scanty food, and some of you for many hours
without either food or water, in four days you passed the
formidable chasm of the Bashilo, and defeated the army of
Theodore, which poured down upon you from their lofty fortress
in the full confidence of victory. . . . You have released not
only the British captives, but those of other friendly nations.
You have unloosed the chains of more than ninety of the
principal chiefs of Abyssinia. . . . Indian soldiers have for
gotten the prejudices of race and creed to keep pace with their
European comrades. The remembrance of your privations will
pass away quickly, but your gallant exploit will live in
history." The Queen despatched a congratulatory telegram to Sir
Robert Napier and the army, and the news of the successful
result of the Abyssinian expedition was received with the
liveliest satisfaction throughout the country. On the return of
General Napier, for a third time in his career he received the
thanks of Parliament. Mr. Disraeli, in moving the vote,
observed that happy was the man who had thrice thus been
honoured by his country ; and he added respecting the expedition
that he had " transported the ordnance of Europe, on the
elephants of Asia, across the mountain ranges of Africa." Mr.
Gladstone, in seconding the motion, remarked that the expedition
would stand upon record as a rare example among those occasions
when a nation resorted to the bloody arbitrament of war, in
which not one drop had been added to the cup of human
suffering that forethought or humanity could spare, and in
which the severest critic would find nothing to condemn.
The Queen conferred on Sir Robert Napier the dignity of
a peerage, with the title of Lord Napier of Magdala, and an
annuity of £2000 per annum was granted to the new peer, to
be continued to his next surviving male heir.
In 1870 Lord Napier was appointed Commander-in-Chief
in India, a post which he held for the usual period of five
years. On his return to England he was named Governor
and Commander-in-Chief at Gibraltar, from which post he
retired in 1882. In that year he was appointed a Field-
Marshal, and in 1886 Constable of the Tower. In the middle
of 1878, when there seemed every probability of a war between
this country and Russia, Lord Napier was selected for the
command of an expeditionary force, and he was summoned to

LORD NAPIER OF MAGDALA 229
England to consult with the authorities of the War Office on
the preliminaries of the expected campaign.
All who knew Lord Napier will bear witness to his high
personal qualities. It has been pointed out by one writer that
he bore a great resemblance to his old commander and friend,
Sir James Outram. " There was the same gentleness, combined
with fiery valour, the same unassuming manner, coupled with
a noble contempt of danger, and withal, in a not less degree,
did he possess the fascination which bound to him, by the ties
of affection, his staff and others thrown into official contact with
him, no less than his personal friends." In short, in him were
admirably blended those typical virtues which have made the
British soldier beloved at home and feared abroad. Mr.
Gladstone expressed but the general sentiment when he said
in the House of Commons that "Burke would never have
lamented the decay of the age of chivalry had a Robert Napier
flourished in his day."
The University of Oxford conferred the honorary degree of
D.C.L. upon Lord Napier of Magdala in 1878, and he was also
elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His lordship was
honorary colonel of the 10th Volunteer Battalion King's Royal
Rifle Corps. Lord Napier was twice married — first, in 1840,
to the daughter of Dr. Pearse, of the Madras Medical Establish
ment. This lady, who bore him six children, died in 1849.
In 1861 his lordship married, secondly, a daughter of General
Scott, of the Bengal Artillery, by whom he had a family of
seven children. He is succeeded in the peerage by the eldest
son of his first marriage, Colonel the Hon. Robert William
Napier. Leading Article, Wednesday, January 15, 1890
Not in the British Isles alone, but throughout the whole
Empire, the news of the death of Lord Napier of Magdala wiU
be received with the deepest regret. The loss of an eminent
public servant will be lamented, no less than the disappearance
of a familiar figure from contemporary history. An element of
selfishness in the grief is the highest tribute which can be paid
to his memory. Though military records supply exceptions to
the rule, generally at the age of eighty a soldier must be
presumed to have finished his active work. If another hostile

230 EMINENT PERSONS
cloud, as in 1878, had blown up in the direction of England, it
is not likely that, in later years, Lord Napier of Magdala would
have consented to be designated for the command. But the
opinion of the country continued to rest upon him as the
foremost of surviving British officers ; and statesmen retained
their faith in him as the sagest of military counsellors.
National confidence is not earned in a moment, and, once won,
it is steadfast. Lord Napier of Magdala had conquered it
slowly and surely.
Never was there a career which ascended along more regular
and indisputable stages. At every point it was able to bear the
minutest inspection. Nothing in it was due to favour. It
owed nothing to accident, unless of the sort which offers con
spicuous occasion for failure as weH as for distinction. Long
before his name was current at home he had done enough to
demonstrate capacity for the loftiest of military trusts. The
engineer to the Durbar of Lahore, and to the Administration of
the Punjab, the chief engineer at the sieges of Mooltan and on
the field of Goojerat, Outram's Chief of the Staff, the victor of
Joura Alipore, the second in command to Sir Hope Grant at
Pekin, and the Commander-in-Chief in Bombay, had civilised
kingdoms, captured famous forts, been again and again face to
face with death, performed an infinity of splendid exploits,
and remained one of a mass of officers indiscriminately able
and meritorious. Thanked by Parliament, decorated by his
Sovereign, praised by every superior he had served, and
advanced to exalted and lucrative posts, he was still compara
tively unknown. Then came the opportunity which always
arrives at last. He led a British army over the mountains of
Abyssinia, routed Theodore's forces at Islamgee, and stormed a
citadel which else might have been accounted impregnable.
Thenceforward his countrymen recognised him for that he had
proved himself full twenty years before, a military genius, fitted
for any and every task which war can set a people.
The feature of a career, thus completed with a brilliancy
which never afterwards faded, is the conjunction, before the
climax, of abundance of success and • an absence of notoriety.
Few soldiers who have finally attained to his celebrity have
been so constantly and worthily occupied, and yet been left so
long in a dignified background. At the commencement the
ascent for him was necessarily uphill. An officer in the Indian

LORD NAPIER OF MAGDALA 231
army had to be satisfied at first with a local reputation.
Engineers, whether Indian or British, probably would say that
entrance into their branch must have been an additional
impediment to advancement to the highest military grades. In
any case he succeeded with sufficient facility and celerity in
overcoming preliminary difficulties. Arduous and important
duties were pressed on him while he was young. Before the
eyes of the- world he accomplished considerable things, and was
not refused the credit of them. He was frequently mentioned
in despatches. He was never neglected ; yet, until his Bombay
command pointed him out for the conduct of the Abyssinian
expedition, invariably somebody stood in front and intercepted
popular admiration. His magnificent roads in Oude and the
Punjab redounded to the fame of Sir Henry Lawrence. His
skill and gallantry at Goojerat heightened the glory of Lord
Gough. His part in the siege of Lucknow was overshadowed
by the laurels of Clyde and Outram. The arrival of Sir Hugh
Rose took from his hands the immediate honour of the rout of
Tantia Topee. Sir Hope Grant had precedence of him in the
triumph over China.
All the chiefs he ever had were generous in their personal
acknowledgment of his surpassing deserts. They testified
enthusiastically to his engineering dexterity, to his perfect
courage, to the wisdom of his advice, to his incessant and self-
denying devotion. Their praises secured him employment
rather than celebrity. Though it was not their fault that he
was ever second, the public gaze cannot but be concentrated
upon the first, and the consequence was that Robert Napier
stayed in a sort of twilight to the mature age of fifty-seven.
That may possibly have been temporarily prejudicial to the
national interests, which he was well suited to have furthered,
long before 1867, in a conspicuous position. It was scarcely to
the detriment of his durable utility and value. As soon as he
had really been found out, and became imperially visible, his
claim to the nation's confidence was seen to be founded upon a
life of noble service. A long vista of strenuous labours and
brave deeds could be perceived, leading straight to an enterprise
as astonishing as Suwarrow's in the Alps, but better planned
and more victorious. His past, when duly discerned, was
irrefutable evidence of his title to be trusted in the future. The
Empire is fortunate, during the twenty-two years which have

232 EMINENT PERSONS
passed since Magdala was stormed, in not having had to call
upon him. It would be hard to exaggerate the worth to it of
the sense that it possessed in him a leader ascertained, both in
battle and in council, to have been most competent to lead the
forces of England in a great European war.
Great Britain loses in Lord Napier of Magdala an illustrious
soldier, and one of the kindliest and most estimable of men.
In the race for renown, which he was far from despising, he
was often outstripped. The more rapid progress of others left
no touch of bitterness on him. He never scorned to be a
lieutenant because he might reasonably have expected to lead.
By an experience which is almost more extraordinary, when it
was his turn to go manifestly and irreversibly to the front, his
ascendency provoked no jealousy or envy. He had been
nobody's enemy or maligner. His reward was to enjoy the
somewhat unusual converse, and to be without detractors.
Goodness and graciousness, such as his, are not substitutes in a
campaign for professional intelligence and strategy. But in
combination they become military virtues themselves. Troops,
believing in their chiefs fortune and abilities, will let them
selves be conducted to victory by Marlborough who grudges
them their bread. For one who sympathises with them, who
would suffer rather than they, for whom his subordinates are
all of them comrades, they will be heroic against desperate odds.
Lord Napier of Magdala, if he is not to be reckoned among
the foremost captains of history, had the true General's insight ;
and he was, moreover, an admirable English gentleman. His
countrymen are proud of him, and will mourn sincerely for his
death. They would be inconsolable if they did not feel that he
was a type of a class of British officers. The Queen's army,
both in India and at home, contains others as capable as was he,
as modest and as sympathetic, as equal to the utmost demands
which circumstances can make upon them, though only now
and then will a conjuncture happen which, like an Abyssinian
Expedition, throws the light backwards along a soldier's past,
and shows him to have been, through the whole, potentially, as
rightful an owner as was Robert Napier of the Field-Marshal's
baton, and of an Empire's regard.

SIR WILLIAM GULL
Obituary Notice, Thursday, January 30, 1890
Sir William Withey Gull was born at Thorpe-le-Soken, in
Essex, in December 1816, so that he had recently completed his
seventy-third year, and, like many men who have risen to
eminence, he was of humble origin. His father, a barge owner
on the river Lea, was a tenant of Guy's Hospital, and received
from the then treasurer, Mr. Benjamin Harrison, a presentation
for his son to Christ's Hospital. After completing his education
there, the future baronet took an engagement as usher in a school
at Lewes ; and, while he was so employed, a need arose for some
one who wrote a good hand, and understood Latin, to prepare a
new catalogue for the Museum of Guy's Hospital. The treasurer
thought of young Gull, who accepted the position offered him,
and he soon afterwards showed a desire to become a member of
the medical profession.
He entered as a pupil at Guy's in 1837, was a very zealous
and distinguished student, and, when he had graduated as
Bachelor of Medicine at the University of London, in 1841, the
treasurer determined to secure his future services for the hospital.
He was appointed assistant resident medical officer, and medical
tutor, and afterwards resident superintendent of a small asylum
for twenty insane women which formed part of Guy's. In 1843
he was appointed lecturer on natural philosophy, and, in 1846,
on physiology and comparative anatomy. In the same year he
took his degree as Doctor of Medicine, with honours, and in
1848 was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.
In 1847 he became Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the
Royal Institution, and, in 1848, he gave the Gulstonian lectures

234 EMINENT PERSONS
(on paralysis) before the Royal College of Physicians. He was
appointed assistant physician to Guy's Hospital, and afterwards,
in due course, physician and consulting physician. In 1856 he
became Lecturer on Medicine, and held this office until 1867.
He was Censor of his college for the years 1859-61 and 1872-
73, and delivered the Harveian Oration in 1870. His first
great step in practice was in connection with the last illness of
Bishop Blomfield, in 1857, and after this he rapidly rose in the
estimation of the public until the time when, as Physician in
Ordinary to the Prince of Wales, he took the chief direction of
the treatment of His Royal Highness during his attack of typhoid
fever at the close of 1871. In acknowledgment of his great
services on that occasion, he was created a baronet in January
1872, and Physician Extraordinary to the Queen, and was made
Physician in Ordinary in 1887. In the autumn of the same
year he was for the first time attacked by paralysis when in
Scotland ; and, although he rallied, and recovered to a great
extent, he has not since been able to engage in practice.
In the course of Sir William Gull's long and honourable
career, many distinctions of various kinds were bestowed upon
him. He was made a D.C.L. of Oxford in 1868, a Fellow of the
Royal Society in 1869, LL.D. of Cambridge in 1880, and of
Edinburgh in 1884. He was a Crown member of the General
Medical Council from 1871 to 1883, and representative of the
University of London in the Council from 1886 until his illness
in the following year.
Sir William Gull was not a large contributor to the literature
of his profession, but what he did in this direction was work of
a high order. Perhaps the best-known of his writings was the
report on cholera for the Royal College of Physicians, which he
prepared conjointly with the late Dr. Baly. He was also the
first to describe, under the name of " a cretinoid condition in the
adult," the disease which has since received the name of
myxcedema. Sir William Gull's success in practice was largely due to his
minute attention to details, and to his unremitting care in the
management of his patients. When the Prince of Wales had
passed through the worst portion of his illness, the Times, on
19th December 1871, contained a letter from a correspondent
who was enabled to express the opinion of the royal family,
and who said :

SIR WILLIAM GULL 235
" Sir W. Jenner would be the first to extol the exertions
of the colleague who has earned from all at Sandringham what
he valued probably only second to the approbation of his own
conscience — the deepest gratitude. In Dr. GuU were combined
energy that never tired, watchfulness that never flagged, nursing
so tender, ministry so minute, that in his functions he seemed
to combine the duties of physician, dresser, dispenser, valet,
nurse — now arguing with the sick man in his delirium so softly
and pleasantly that the parched lips opened to take the scanty
nourishment on which depended the reserves of strength for
the deadly fight when all else failed, now lifting the wasted
body from bed to bed, now washing the worn frame with vinegar,
with ever-ready eye and ear and finger to mark any change and
phase, to watch face and heart and pulse, and passing at times
twelve or fourteen hours at that bedside. And when that was
over, or while it was going on — what a task for a physician ! —
to soothe with kindest and yet not too hopeful words her whose
trial was indeed great to bear, to give counsel against despair
and yet not to justify confidence."
The high encomium which these words conveyed would be
repeated, in some degree, by all who had ever watched his
solicitude for a case of serious illness.
In 1848, while still a resident official at Guy's Hospital, Sir
William married a daughter of Colonel Lacey, of Carlisle.
Lady Gull and a son and daughter survive him. The son, Mr.
William Cameron Gull, who inherits the title, is a barrister, and
the daughter is married to Dr. Acland, of Brook Street, son of
Sir Henry Acland.

LORD CARNARVON
Obituary Notice, Monday, June 30, 1890
Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, fourth Earl of Carnarvon,
and Baron Porchester, was born on 24th June 1831, and was
the son of Henry John George, the third Earl, and of his wife,
Henrietta, daughter of Lord Henry Molyneux Howard, and
niece of the twelfth Duke of Norfolk. He was descended from
that Henry Herbert, grandson of the eighth Earl of Pembroke,
who in 1780 was created Baron Porchester, and in 1793 Earl
of Carnarvon. His father, the third Earl, was a man of some
literary and scholarly distinction in his day ; and the late Earl,
with his two brothers and his sister, Lady Portsmouth, inherited
the father's tastes. His next brother, Dr. Alan Herbert, has
been for many years the well-known physician to the British
Embassy in Paris ; and the third brother is the Hon. Auberon
Herbert. Lord Carnarvon distinguished himself early ; he
made his mark at Eton, and at Christ Church he read to such
good purpose that in 1852 he obtained a first class in Uteris
Humanioribus. Three years before he had succeeded to the
title on the death of his father ; and soon after taking his
degree he began to take part in the debates in the House of
Lords. Lord Derby, the leader of his party, complimented him
on his maiden speech, and six years afterwards, in 1858,
appointed him Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. It
is somewhat curious to observe that Lord Carnarvon never
took office in any other than the Colonial Department until he
became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1885. He was ready
enough to take his part in the general political business of
the country, frequently speaking and writing on non-colonial

LORD CARNARVON 237
subjects, but as a Minister his Department was always the
Colonies. Lord Carnarvon, as a young man, had his fair share of
travelling, and in 1860 published a book on The Druses of the
Lebanon. Nine years later he edited some journals of a visit to
Greece made in 1839 by his father. At this time he was
already the holder of a position of great dignity in the world of
scholarship, having been in 1859 appointed High Steward of
the University of Oxford. Meantime, however, he had an
abundance of official and parliamentary work to do, and was
gradually attaining a position of influence in the councils of the
Conservative party. His name is frequently to be found in the
records of the Lords' debates of the time, and he obtained for
himself an excellent reputation for industry, moderation, and
good sense.
When, in the summer of 1866, the Government of Lord
Russell and Mr. Gladstone were defeated on one of the clauses
of their Reform Bill, and when on their resignation the late
Lord Derby was called upon to form a Ministry, Lord Carnarvon
entered the Cabinet as Secretary for the Colonies. In this
capacity it fell to him to propose the measure which, next to the
Reform Bill, was the most important of the session of 1867 —
the Bill for the Confederation of the British North American
Provinces. The time was ripe for such a change. Fore
shadowed in Lord Durham's famous Report thirty years before,
it had frequently occupied the minds both of Canadian and of
English statesmen, and the principal lines of the Bill had in
•point of fact been laid down by Mr. Cardwell, the out-going
Secretary for the Colonies. Lord Carnarvon found much of the
work done to his hand, and he took it up with enthusiasm.
He moved the second reading on 19th February in a speech of
considerable eloquence, and had the satisfaction of seeing his Bill
passed through the Lords with scarcely a dissentient voice. The
reception which it met with in the House of Commons was not
so unanimously favourable, several members of the House object
ing, in their usual fashion,' to the companion Bill which proposed
a guarantee for the inter-colonial railway. Mr. Lowe's political
economy, for instance, was outraged by the proposal, and another
member declared that the railway " would never pay for its own
grease." In those days the notion of a Canadian Pacific, success
fully competing with three or four other great trans-continental

238 EMINENT PERSONS
lines, would have seemed the wildest dream. In spite of opposi
tion, however, both Bills became law, and the " Dominion of
Canada" began what we may confidently hope will be a long
career of public prosperity in close union with the mother-
country. Unfortunately, however, Lord Carnarvon had ceased to be a
member of the Government before his Bill had gone very far on
its way. He was never what is called a robust politician, but
carried scrupulousness and sensitiveness in public life almost to
a fault. No less than three times during his career did he find
himself obliged to part from his colleagues, and he thus affords
probably the only instance in our history of a Cabinet Minister
who, after twice resigning, has again been begged to take office.
The first occasion was early in March 1867, when, together
with Lord Cranborne (the present Lord Salisbury) and General
Peel, he resigned office because he could not assent to the pro
visions of the Reform Bill. The curious circumstances of the
case are still fresh in the memory of all who were witnesses of
the events of that momentous year, the turning-point in the
political history of modern England, when, by a series of
dramatic surprises, Mr. Disraeli transferred the political power
of the country from the middle to the working class, and
changed our constitution into what is practically a democracy.
The resignation of the three Ministers was one of the surprises.
According to the explanatory speech made a few days later
by Sir John Pakington to his constituents, when the Cabinet
meeting broke up two days before the introduction of the Bill
it was believed that everything had been settled and that aU
the Ministers were unanimous. The night brought counsel to
the three dissentients ; they came to the conclusion that the
proposed measure went too far in the direction of democracy ;
and they resigned. This was on the Monday morning. At
half-past twelve the remainder of the Cabinet, hastily summoned,
met again, with an extremely disagreeable situation to face. At
two Lord Derby was to address the party at the Carlton Club ;
at half-past four Mr. Disraeli was to explain the Government
Reform Bill to the House of Commons. But there had been in
fact two draft Reform Bills — draft A, less democratic and sur
rounded with supposed safeguards, and draft B, more democratic
and more simple. It was draft B that had been adopted at the
former Cabinet Council, but now, in the hope of retaining the

LORD CARNARVON 239
three rebellious members, the Cabinet, driven to make a hurried
decision, threw it over and reverted to the other measure — the
measure which, on the strength of Sir John Pakington's speech,
was henceforth irreverently called by its opponents the "ten
minutes' Bill." We are not concerned with the subsequent
history of the session, and it is enough to say that none of the
three Ministers consented to resume office, and that the safeguards
had to be abandoned.
During the next seven years Lord Carnarvon contented him
self with performing the ordinary duties of a peer in opposition.
He spoke from time to time in the House of Lords on questions
where the Conservative party undertook to oppose the acts of
Mr. Gladstone's Ministry ; but his opposition was seldom
without reservations. For example, in the famous debate on
Mr. Gladstone's Bill for disestablishing the Irish Church, he
criticised, but he did not condemn ; he was for accepting with
modifications and not, like the Bishop of Peterborough, for
rejecting the Bill altogether. Next year he gained much
admiration for a speech on the massacre of Englishmen by
Greek brigands — one of the victims having been a near relative
of his own. And on many different occasions he took a part in
the debates of the day, retaining his position as something of a
specialist in colonial affairs.
When, in 1874, Mr. Disraeli returned to power, finding
himself for the first time at the head of the majority in the
House of Commons, he again offered Lord Carnarvon his old
post at the Colonial Office. The breach was by this time healed ;
household suffrage had long been an accomplished fact, and on
the strength of the handsome majority which it had just given
to their party, Lord Carnarvon and Lord Salisbury were free to
confess that their fears in 1867 had been exaggerated. By this
time, too, they had more or less got over their distrust of the ,
remarkable man, three parts genius and one part charlatan, who
led the Tory party in the House of Commons and in the country.
Accordingly, Lord Carnarvon accepted the Colonial Office with
the understanding that he should attempt in another important
part of our colonial Empire to carry out a similar policy to that
which had succeeded so well in Canada. The problem of South
African Confederation, however, proved to be far more difficult
than the similar problem in North America, and the manner
in which the Secretary of State and Sir Bartle Frere, the

240 EMINENT PERSONS
Governor of Cape Colony, endeavoured to push it forward
produced considerable irritation. Probably the time was not
' yet ripe. Lord Carnarvon had quitted office before the Zulu
War opened a period of disaster for South Africa, for on 24th
January 1878 he resigned in consequence of the Cabinet having
decided to order the British fleet to proceed to the Dardanelles.
This was at the most critical moment of that phase of the
Eastern Question ; the moment when, the forces of Turkey
having been defeated in the field by Russia, peace was about
to be concluded, but on terms which, in the opinion of Lord
Beaconsfield and his friends, were thought to threaten the
interests of this country. Lord Beaconsfield, questioned as
to the movements of the fleet, explained that the Govern
ment had directed it to proceed to the Dardanelles, and thence,
if necessary, to go to Constantinople " to defend the lives and
properties of British subjects in that city and to take care of
British interests in the Straits" ; that a telegraphic despatch to
the Powers had been prepared with this information ; but that
when the news of the proposed conditions had arrived the
Admiral had been ordered to remain in Besika Bay. Lord
Carnarvon then explained why he had resigned. He confessed
that his relations with the Prime Minister had during the
whole of the month been somewhat strained ; that on the
12th he had opposed in the Cabinet Council the proposal to
send the fleet to the Dardanelles ; that on the 15th, when
the Government determined to send it, he handed in his
resignation, but withdrew it when the decision was rescinded ;
but that on the 23rd he definitely resigned on the Cabinet's
resolving that the fleet should be sent to Constantinople. Lord
Derby had also given in his resignation at the same time, but
had withdrawn it only to hand it in again in the month of
.March, when the Cabinet decided to call out the Reserves. The
loss of two important colleagues was, of course, a serious thing
to Lord Beaconsfield ; but, considering the extremely critical
state of our relations with Russia during the whole of that
winter and spring, the manner in which events developed
themselves from day to day, and the moral burden which
inevitably lies upon Ministers when they feel that they may
very likely be leading their country into war, it was not surpris
ing that two of them should give way ; and it was evidently
natural that one of the two should be Lord Carnarvon.

LORD CARNARVON 241
It was not till June 1885, when Lord Salisbury formed his
first and short-lived Administration, that Lord Carnarvon took
office again. In the interval he filled what was in some respects
the more congenial position of President of the Society of
Antiquaries ; for, though not a learned man in the German
sense of the term, he was eminently accomplished, he took a
real interest in the past, and he was equally happy in translat
ing the Odyssey into verse and in discussing points of the
archaeology of Berkshire and Hampshire. He was an excellent
president of the Society, extremely courteous in manner and
gifted with a considerable power of speech ; but when it came
to the severer work of political administration, his success, it
must honestly be said, was not so great. He joined the
Salisbury Government as Lord -Lieutenant of Ireland with a
seat in the Cabinet, his Chief Secretary being Sir William Hart
Dyke, and the event for which it will be remembered in history
is the celebrated and ill-omened interview which he had with
Mr. Parnell in what the latter called " an empty house in
London." The accounts given of this interview by the two
persons concerned were diametrically opposed. Mr. Parnell
said that "Lord Carnarvon expressed to him the strongest
belief that only by the concession of an Irish Parliament could
the Irish question be settled ; that it was to be a Parliament, and
that it was to be called a Parliament ; that it was to have the
most extensive powers, even going as far as the right of protect
ing Irish industries by the imposition of protective tariffs." In
the House of Lords, on 3rd May 1888, Lord Carnarvon declared
that all this was correct, with one important exception — that
it had been said not by him, but by Mr. Parnell. And, of
course, the English believed Lord Carnarvon's version, and the
Irish believed Mr. Parnell's. Lord Carnarvon resigned the
Lord -Lieutenancy before the resignation of the Government,
and there followed the curious little episode of Mr. W. H.
Smith's appointment as Chief Secretary — a post which he only
held long enough to pay one flying visit to Dublin before the
Government came to an end.
Lord Carnarvon's literary .productiveness was considerable.
Besides the books that we have mentioned he edited in 1875
a posthumous work of Dean Mansel, the celebrated Oxford
logician, Conservative politician, and humorist, who at the
end of his life found himself appointed to the Deanery of St.

242 EMINENT PERSONS
Paul's. Lord Carnarvon prefaced this book on the Gnostic
Heresies of the First and Second Centuries with a sketch of the
life and character of the author — a sketch of one man by another
as totally unlike him as it is possible to conceive. In 1879*&fi<,
published a verse translation of the Agamemnon and some years
after another of the Odyssey. Our readers will remember that
he was a frequent correspondent of the Times, both on political
and literary subjects ; and quite recently contributed to the
discussion on the execution of Charles I. He was a hard-|
working member of the Historical Manuscripts Commission and,
in another line of life, held the high posts of pro-Grand Master
of the Freemasons of England and Grand Master of Somerset.
He was Constable, of Carnarvon Castle, High Steward of New
bury, and Lord - Lieutenant of Hampshire. He was twice
married, first to Lady Evelyn Stanhope, sister to the late Lord
Chesterfield, and, secondly, to Elizabeth Catherine, daughter of
the late Mr. Howard, of Greystoke, and sister to Mr. Stafford
Howard, formerly M.P. for East Cumberland. His eldest son
and heir, Lord Porchester, was at Trinity College, Cambridge,
and has for some years past travelled much in distant parts of
the world ; his eldest daughter, Lady Winifred, who was for a
short time married to the late Captain the Hon. Alfred Byng,
has recently formed a second marriage with Mr. Herbert
Gardner, M.P. It should be added that to his connection
with the Chesterfield family Lord Carnarvon owed the oppor
tunity of making his last and most interesting publication, that
volume of Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Godson which was
one of the great successes of last autumn and which was reviewed
at length in these columns.
Lord Carnarvon's loss will be sincerely mourned by a very
wide circle, and will be felt in many different sections of society.
We do not speak so much of the political world, where, though
he spoke well and always with sincerity, his over-sensitiveness
made him often rather an element of weakness than of strength
to his allies. But in many other relations of life he was
altogether admirable ; not only to his family and intimate
friends, who loved him devotedly, but to his tenants, to his
colleagues in many public bodies, and to all those who
were on terms of ordinary social intercourse with him. He
was high-minded, accomplished, sincere, kindly ; a devout
member of the Church of England, and an eminently good man.

LORD CARNARVON 243
He was not born to lead in troublous times, but he was born to
fill a prominent place in our complex society, and to keep in
touch with many and diverse interests ; and now that he has
gone, the worst that can be said of him is that he was too
conscientious for partisanship and too scrupulous for political
success.

SIR EDWIN CHADWICK
Obituary Notice, Monday, July 7, 1890
We regret to record the death of Sir Edwin Chadwick. He
had more than completed his ninetieth year, and seemed to be a
living proof of the personal application of those sanitary laws
and principles he had so indefatigably advocated. To the last
the veteran sanitary reformer had preserved his intellectual
faculties with something of his bodily vigour. It is true that in
his own case nature had given good materials to work with, for
he had inherited a sturdy frame, a sound constitution, and an
indisputable family title to longevity. Both his father and
grandfather had been spared to ages almost patriarchaL
To the last Sir Edwin Chadwick was a familiar figure at
his club, and many an habitue' of the Athenaeum will miss the
benevolent and leonine face, wrinkled with the lines of thought,
and surmounted by the black skull-cap. His features, as they
well might, wore an expression of serene complacency ; for it has
been given to few men to do more or better work in his own
special departments. He had turned his long IKe to good ac
count, for he had early recognised his special bent, and had
thenceforth followed it out with steadfast determination. His
shortcomings were those of a will strong to excess, which had
always striven to assert its ascendency. But he would never
have wielded the influence he did wield over the statesmen who
controlled public legislation had he not impressed them with
his thorough knowledge of his subjects and swayed them by the
logical reasoning which was solidly based on statistics. Figures
and undeniable facts were the talismans with which he accom
plished achievements which to the contemporaries of his early

SIR EDWIN CHADWICK 245
manhood would have seemed miraculous. He may be said to
have been the father of modern sanitary science. We have been
told that that man is a benefactor of the human race who makes
two blades of grass grow where one grew before. Then what is
to be said of one who did so much towards prolonging innumer
able human lives ?
Edwin Chadwick was born in 1800, with the beginning of
the century. He came of a family long settled near Rochdale,
where there is a hamlet bearing the name of Chadwick. His
grandfather, locally known as " Good old Andrew," had been
the friend of John Wesley, and had founded the first Sunday
school in Lancashire. The venerable sage set his face against
the snares of riches, and so conscientiously did he practise the
opinions he preached that he declined to put in his claim to a
valuable inheritance. Old Andrew's eldest son never had a
similar opportunity ; he emigrated to America, where he followed
the calling of a journalist, and seems to have left little behind
him. Young Edwin had his way to make in the world, and
although his education was not neglected, he had no great
advantages. He was taught at private schools and by tutors ;
he went into an attorney's office when a mere lad, but he soon
determined to try his fortunes at the Bar, and entered himself
a student at the Inner Temple. He read and studied with the
resolution of getting on in his profession, but in the meantime
he had to support himself. So he betook himseK to reporting,
and then tried Uterary work, and the remarkable success of his
first literary efforts gave an unexpected turn to his career.
It was more than sixty years ago that he wrote an essay on
" Life Assurance," which appeared in the Westminster Review. It
is characteristic of the maturity of reflection shown even in his
earliest writings that they attracted the attention of eminent
statistical authorities. To the essay on " Life Assurance " he was
indebted for the notice and countenance of Mr. Grote and the
two Mills, and, indeed, it contained the germs of those ideas
which were to give definite purpose to his life. So when he
wrote a second article, on " Preventive Police," it was the means of
introducing him to Jeremy Bentham. Bentham, who was then
in his eighty-second year, engaged the young economist's assist
ance in the completion of his work on the Administrative Code.
Chadwick, who in the meantime had been called to the Bar,
went to reside with Bentham, and was under his roof when he

246 EMINENT PERSONS
died. So highly did the old philosopher value his young protege
that he offered to assure him an independence on condition of
his becoming the priest and interpreter of the Benthamite Revela
tion. Chadwick declined the offer, although he had adopted his
master's views. But he came in for a legacy, which probably
gave him leisure for reflecting as to whether he should persevere
with his profession or trade with his peculiar talents. It is
certain that his mind was engrossed with his favourite sanitary
subjects, and in exploring the dens and slums of East London
while an epidemic was running its course he was struck down
by malignant typhus, and nearly sacrificed his IKe to his
enthusiasm. Soon after his recovery the question of his future pursuits
was finally determined by an offer of employment in the public
service, and thenceforth one official appointment was to lead on
to another. In 1832 Lord Grey's Government nominated the
first Poor Law Commission, and Chadwick was offered the place
of an Assistant Commissioner. He stood at the parting of the
ways, and he repeatedly told his friend Mr. Richardson that he
hesitated anxiously over the decision. He liked the law, and
believed he had fair prospects. On the other hand, the employ
ment offered him was temporary and precarious and might lead
to nothing further. The hesitation was natural, but, knowing
him as we know him now, the decision could hardly be long in
doubt. He went into Government harness. It was his business
to conduct investigations in the country districts ; he threw
himself with his whole soul into his duties, and accumulated
such a mass of novel and startling facts that in the following
year he was invited to become a Commissioner. We fancy his
colleagues soon found that they had given themselves a master.
The man of decided opinions and exceptional knowledge, who
is always ready for work, is sure to engross the lion's share of
authority. For good and evil, to Mr. Chadwick must be chiefly ascribed
the root-and-branch work which was made of the old system.
It is true that there was much abuse in the old methods, and
that this was inevitable when each of some 16,000 parishes was
supposed to be ministering to its own poor. The neglect in the
more benighted districts was often shameful ; and there was
great waste of money in the excessive decentralisation.. But the
sweeping and radical reformation, although it fell far short of

SIR EDWIN CHADWICK 247
Mr. Chadwick's fond aspirations, really amounted to revolution.
It indiscriminately condemned everything existing as abuse ; it
enforced rigorous laws with too relentless logic, and it carried
the principle of centralisation very unnecessarily far. The
suddenness of the sweeping changes made the hardships more
severely felt, and sundry bitter complaints of the victims en
listed the sympathies, not only of the benevolent, but also of
some of the shrewdest and best men in the country. Sir Edwin
Chadwick always protested that he had no exclusive responsi
bility for the harshest and most oppressive measures.
In 1833 Chadwick was actively employed for six weeks on
the Royal Commission appointed to investigate the condition of
factory children, and of course he had a chief concern in drawing
up the exhaustive report which afterwards became the basis of
the Ten Hours Act. In the following year he was nominated
to be paid Secretary to the new Poor Law Board, which, though
it appeared to be a step downwards into a subordinate position,
we are told was really intended to strengthen his executive
power. That he exerted his power to the uttermost may be
taken for granted ; and for a time the Board was pretty con
stantly in hot water. He was resolutely opposed to outdoor
relief on any terms to the able-bodied. We may be sure that
the strong-willed and somewhat domineering Secretary was not
always in the right when we remember that the colleagues from
whom he chiefly differed were Sir George Cornewall Lewis and
Sir Francis Head. Whether right or wrong, he must have been
an aggravating colleague, and the inevitable cause of much
friction and irritation. For he was always recalling his fellow-
councillors to a sense of their duties, and sending in protests
and appeals to the Minister at the head of the department.
As to the inestimable value of his sanitary labours there can
be no room for dispute. It is to him the country is indebted
for the first Sanitary Commission, which inaugurated the era
of reforms. It was appointed in 1838 in consequence of an
application to Chadwick by the authorities of Whitechapel parish,
who had been paralysed and driven to despair by an epidemical
outbreak. Tracing the outbreak to its foul sources, the Commis
sion threw a flood of light on the unwholesome conditions of the
over-crowded tenements in those poverty-stricken districts.
Moreover, it awakened scientific and intelligent interest in the
practicable measures for prevention and cure. The report was

248 EMINENT PERSONS
circulated throughout the country, and used as a suggestive
manual of reference, not only by the municipalities of the
great manufacturing cities, but by the magistrates of old-
fashioned towns, which paid for their picturesqueness in their
death-rates. As to the death-rates, Mr. Chadwick had already been
agitating for an inquiry into the causes as well as the number
of deaths. Lord John RusseU, who had approved all his Poor
Law policy, was somewhat indifferent on the subject. So
Chadwick turned from the Whigs to the Tories, and succeeded
in securing the eloquent advocacy of Lord Lyndhurst, who
introduced a clause at his dictation into the new Act, which was
carried' smoothly through the Lords and subsequently passed the
Commons. Thus was established the Registrar-General's office.
Statistics, scientifically analysed and prepared with infinite care,
have furnished standards for estimating the comparative salubrity
of cities, and, what is more important, for getting at the bottom
of the causes of any abnormal rates of mortality. Intemperance
was, of course, found accountable in a great degree for hereditary
diseases and premature death. As to that, Mr. Chadwick gave
elaborate evidence before a Committee of the Commons. He
dwelt upon the large sums that were squandered on drink,
and proposed to grapple with the evil by many of the means
which are now the familiar "planks" of the platforms of
the Total Abstinence Society. Some of the facts he men
tioned illustrate the minuteness and exactitude of the new
methods of statistical research, although the figures must be
taken as merely approximative. It had been calculated, for
example, that in a single East End parish £30 in each £100
distributed in outdoor relief was spent on liquor in the same day.
Things were bad enough everywhere, and the sanitation was
sufficiently infamous. Yet the tables of Chadwick and Dr. Farr,
of the Registrar-General's office, established what Macaulay and
other modern historians maintained — that the health of the
country, and consequently the condition of the poor, had been
steadily improving. The mortality even in Elizabeth's time was
40 in 1000, and immense progress had been made in dealing
with epidemics since the terrible Black Death had devastated
the Eastern Counties in the reign of the third Edward. Another
Sanitary Commission was appointed by Sir Robert Peel in 1844,
and very much at Mr. Chadwick's suggestion, in order to make

SIR EDWIN CHADWICK 249
a general investigation into the national health and the best
means for improving it.
In 1846 the Poor Law Board was dissolved, Chadwick having
come to an open quarrel with his brother-commissioners, and
from that time we may say that his attention was wholly turned
to sanitation. In 1847, with other distinguished sanitarians, he
was sitting on a commission to inquire into the health of London.
In 1848 he was nominated one of the permanent commissioners
of the original Board of Health. When the Board of Health
was broken up he withdrew from public life on a well-earned
pension of £1000, residing first at Richmond and afterwards at
Sheen. But although unemployed officially, he was not inactive.
His advice was often asked, and when it was not asked it was
offered. He did excellent service in the Crimean campaign by
persuading Lord Palmerston to send out commissioners to
inquire into and relieve the sufferings of the soldiers. The
result was so satisfactory that it led to a similar investigation as
to the heavy rate of mortality in our Indian forces, which had
equally beneficial effects. In 1867 he offered himself unsuccess
fully as a candidate for the representation of London University,
and his failure, perhaps, was not to be regretted, for specialists
who enter Parliament so late in life seldom increase their
influence or reputation. Since then he found more suitable
opportunities for rehearsing and enforcing his views as president
of Sanitary Congresses, as president of the Society of Sanitary
Inspectors, and as president of the Economical Section at meet
ings of the British Association. In 1848 he received the
Companionship of the Bath ; but he had to wait for his knight
hood till last year, when his deserts were tardily recognised by
promotion to the rank of K.C.B.
His voluminous writings in their comprehensive scope,
although dry enough reading as a rule, abound in curious facts
and valuable suggestions. His numerous letters to this journal
will be fresh in the recollection of our readers. He never
under-estimated the evils with which he undertook to cope, yet
he was no pessimist. We have shown that he had satisfied
himself of the improved condition of the poor, even before he
had begun to labour for their benefit, and he noted a more
than corresponding advance in the morals and physique of the
upper classes. The aristocracy were much the healthier for
having given up hard drinking, and, unlike the blue-blooded

250 EMINENT PERSONS
grandees of Old Spain, they had sensibly bettered the quality
of the breed by condescending to plebeian marriages. As to
drinking, though he set himself against intemperance on every
ground, he never advocated total abstinence. Discussing the
manKold causes of death, he directs attention to mental as well
as bodily maladies. He speaks of the slow tortures endured in
the old days by the inmates of debtors' prisons, and in a striking
passage he asks if it would be possible to calculate the average
mortality among the harassed suitors in Chancery.
In an interesting exchange of letters with Professor Owen
he examined the psychological limits of mental labour, more
especially in the case of the young. He gave great consideration
to physical training ; he laid down sound rules for sanitary archi
tecture ; he thought out the treatment of the sick and insane ; he
did much to do away with the horrors and dangers of intramural
interment ; and from the time when, as a young man of twenty-
nine, he wrote his second essay on " Preventive Police," he had
never ceased to interest himself in the subject, offering practical
suggestions, which were embodied in legislation. The sanitary
works that have been undertaken during the last haK-century
in every civilised nation may be said to be so many monuments
to Chadwick's memory.

CARDINAL NEWMAN
Obituary Notice, Tuesday, August 12, 1890
The greatest name in that matter which most occupies, most
unites, and most divides men is now resigned to history.
Cardinal Newman is gone to that rest which for him will not be
happiness if it does not give work to be done. His disappear
ance from the stage of life is no sudden event. It is not as if
an army had lost its commander in mid -battle, or as if the
tongue of the orator had become suddenly mute, or the lyre had
dropped from the poet's hand. It is not a future that has
vanished with the past, or a cataract of life that has been
arrested in full flow. The truth is the great Cardinal has
occupied so exceptional a place in human affairs that, while he
has largely influenced them, he has had himself to discover and
even to recognise that they could go on without him. Standing
apart from the world, he has long been on excellent terms with
it, and they part in peace. Rome, wisely and happily for its
credit and its influence, eleven years ago added his name to its
highest list of honour ; but, otherwise, Cardinal Newman may
be said to have been without a place in the earth's pedigrees
and successions ; to have been left out of common reckoning,
tied by no allegiance, complicated by no secular ties, " without
father or mother," in the links of causation and the rolls of
time. Forty years have now shown that the Church of England
can pursue its course without his guidance or his warnings ;
still more have they shown that it is not such men the Church
of Rome most trusts and employs. The Cardinal has long
taken his position as a " Father " of we know not what century
in that constellation of acute and saintly minds that still

252 EMINENT PERSONS
illumines the dark interval between ancient and modern
civilisation. It was his own choice to be Athanasius contra
mundum. Whether from his ashes will rise the avenger, to do
for him the work he has not seen done with his own eyes, and
so reverse the judgment of time, is beyond even conjecture.
For the present a mighty man has fallen, yet we are much as
we were.
John Henry Newman began his life with the century, for
he was born in the City of London on 21st February 1801.
His father was a partner in two successive banking firms, from
the French Revolution to the disastrous crisis of 1816, when
his firm, like a crowd of others, had temporarily to suspend
payment. His mother was of a Huguenot family long resident
in London, and remarkable for ingenuity and enterprise. Two
of her brothers brought over, perfected, and established the
paper-making machine. John H. Newman, with his not less
remarkable brother Frank, was sent to Dr. Nicholas, at Ealing,
the best private school in England, at a time when the tide of
opinion had turned against public schools. Newman was easily
and soon the top boy of the school. He had already shown a
decided taste for music, becoming at thirteen a proficient on the
violin, and composing a sort of opera. Music was in the blood,
and also in the Newman circle of friendship.
At fifteen he received the impulse, ever after credited
with the formation of his career. This was through Mr. Walter
Mayers, who had much talk with him, and lent him books,
which were devoured, probably, as they had never been before.
As far as Englishmen can be described in Continental terms,
this excellent and very amiable clergyman was a Calvinist.
Through him, and especially through one of Scott's works lent
by him, Newman felt himseK converted. From that year he
ever dated his spiritual life, or his "regeneration." In his
Apologia he utterly ignores the first fifteen years of his Ufe,
including all that father, mother, brothers, sisters, clergymen,
or other friends might have done for him. In so doing he has
given scope for inferences for which he seemed not to have been
quite prepared. Of course, he learned the Church Catechism,
but he also read the Bible thoroughly, and acquired a great
liking for it, which is by no means a matter of course in boy
hood. Did he read the Bible without any interpreter ? Did
he read it, also, without profit? Did he return again and

CARDINAL NEWMAN 253
again to the study of the Word without being yet a child of
grace 1 That at fifteen he might be persuaded to think little
of himseK is likely enough, but it is strange to find so little
felt, at least said, for his natural teachers. Yet every one who
has had to do with the teaching or training of boys must be
painfully aware that in one sense it is a most thankless task.
At about fifteen there is such an expansion of mind and real
development of character that in the new vision of life the old
is forgotten. A grown-up man looks back and sees himseK
emerging out of the bright mist separating boyhood from youth.
That is the beginning of his mental history.
Still under these novel impressions, Newman went to Trinity
College, Oxford. About the same time the family came down
from affluence to simple competency, and Newman, who had
been destined for the Bar, felt a higher calling. His own
religious feelings disposed him to friendships in what were then
the not very large or very distinguished, or, indeed, very refined
Evangelical circles. But the College system operates as a cross
division in all social matters, and just as it brings together
different classes, so it gives to different schools of opinion the
opportunity of friendly disagreement and sometimes final approxi
mation. Newman's Trinity friendships were his longest and,
perhaps, his deepest ; but they were out of the Evangelical
circle in which he first appeared at Oxford. As all the world
knows, and as has happened to many others from whom great
things were expected, Newman failed for honours. His reading, he
used to say, had been too discursive. His health, however, had
broken down. He was only nineteen, the age at which many men
now enter the University. Much also depends on the Examiners.
Perhaps it may be added that Newman's independent and auto
cratic character might easily put him out of the groove of an
examination. He certainly was more likely to say things his
own way than in the way expected by an Examiner ; and, if
the Examiner could only understand things in his own way,
there would ensue a continual misunderstanding. It was as a
Scholar of Trinity, and residing in that very pleasant college,
that Newman, together with his dear friend John Bowden,
wrote and published the now famous poem on St. Bartholomew's
Eve. The Cardinal was always proud of that work, perhaps as
his first-born, and he even took the pains to put on record his
share of it. This might be to show that it was from no ignorance

254 EMINENT PERSONS
of Rome, or early leaning, that he finally submitted to her and
became her foremost champion.
Three years after taking his degree Newman was elected
FeUow of the College with which his name will ever be most
associated, and which is proud to place him by the side of
Raleigh, Butler, and, we may add, Copleston in the highest
rank of its worthies. Though evidently not understood by the
last-named, who was then Provost, and who measured men by
the figure they made in a literary tournament, Newman rapidly
won a place in the hearts of many good men. It was here, and
in this interval of peace and quietness, that he became Whately's
ally and Vice-Principal and the long-attached friend of Keble,
Pusey, Froude, and Robert and Henry Wilberforce. It was
here that he learnt to love and revere Edward Hawkins, in
whose long and steadfast course the Cardinal's Oxford career
seems but a brief episode. Dr. Hawkins was a member of
Oriel College seventy years, Provost fifty-five.
Though Newman lived long in a short time, his whole con
nection with the College only extended to twenty-three years.
His mental acquaintance with the future Provost began as early
as his own undergraduate days, when he heard the latter's
sermon on " Unauthoritative Tradition," which sent his thoughts
in a new direction. When he became better acquainted with
the preacher he learnt from him to weigh his words and to be
cautious in his statements. Hawkins bestowed friendly and
useful criticisms on the first sermon he wrote. He lent New
man Sumner's treatise on Apostolical Teaching, which Newman
says dispelled his remaining Calvinism. If he did not receive
this creed tiU fifteen, he could easily dismiss it at twenty-three.
The doctrine of "Apostolical Succession," he said, he received
from Mr. William James, a very good and very sensible Fellow
of the College, but not the man one would expect to change the
current of a national theology. Long before this, in his un
converted state as he afterwards deemed it, he had employed
himself with evidence, reading The Age of Reason, Hume's Essays,
and Voltaire. Later on he wrote a long but now forgotten
article on the miraculous story of Apollonius Tyaneeus, to
distinguish between false miracles and true.
Of all his contemporaries, or early friends, the one whose
relations with him have excited the most curiosity is Keble.
Newman has put on record that Keble was shy of him at first

CARDINAL NEWMAN 255
and for some time. Being where they then were they had
every reason for being shy of one another ; but the truth is
Keble was shy of everybody at first, and at that time Newman
was also. At this distance of time it seems almost inconceivable
that for several years the most constant and familiar member
of Oriel society was that very interesting but very singular
personage, Blanco White, with his mediaeval lore and his
philosophical ideas. Like many other brooding spirits, he
deeply felt the power of music, and, though an indifferent
performer, had frequent quartettes with Newman at his
lodgings. At twenty -three Newman was ordained deacon, and took
charge of the Trasteverine parish of St. Clement's for four years.
There is a certain mystery about his preaching during this
period, for aU his published sermons bear St. Mary's on their
face. The old church of St. Clement's was a mean little
structure, on the eastern slope of the weU-known bridge, which
of late years has had to sacrifice its picturesque features to give
space to a tramway. Newman had to see to the building of a
new church on a conspicuous but not very accessible site. His
preaching excited some curiosity, not so much in the University
at large as in Evangelical circles, where close agreement and
familiar phrases were wont to be expected, and could not be
missed without suspicion.
In 1825, on the death of Peter Elmsley, Whately became
Principal of St. Alban's Hall, and invited Newman to share the
teaching of his small and awkward squad as Vice -Principal.
Whately always liked to have somebody about him ready and
competent to receive his emanations. The habit is a good one,
but risky, and Whately had his failures. To judge by the
sequel, Newman was one of these. For the present, however,
they appreciated one another, and there was even a. time when
Newman had a better opinion of Whately's orthodoxy than
Whately of his. Very quickly, however, Newman made the
discovery that Whately's turn of mind was negative and
destructive; that logic was the one thing not to be found in
his book on that subject, and that he could only lash the
waters, without having his net ready to secure the fish. Yet
in after years Newman felt he had to thank Whately for
weaning him from the Erastian views of Church polity which
he believed to have been part of his own original composition.

256 EMINENT PERSONS
Up to 1826 Newman had held loyally to the ideal of Church
and State as shown in Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity ; but at
this day he and all Oxford were greatly stirred by an anony
mous pamphlet, generally ascribed to Whately, and never
repudiated by him, to the effect that this was a double usurpa
tion and a double injury.
In this year Newman became tutor of his college in place
of Jelf, who was now tutor to Prince George of Cumberland.
Lloyd, whose private theological lectures Newman had been
attending, sent for him first, but finding him two years under
the stipulated age, had to pass him over for Jelf. Few will
now doubt that the latter was the better adapted for the
purpose. It would, indeed, have been hard to find any one
better adapted. Up to that date the undergraduates of Oriel
had been equally divided between four tutors, each of whom
stood in loco parentis to his own men, a score perhaps. The
relation was variously understood, and variously carried out,
but it was a tradition of the University that the office admitted
of a large significance. Newman immediately let it be known
that he was only too willing to give his pupils all the direction,
advice, assistance, and actual instruction they might desire, and
some half-dozen or more gladly availed themselves of the
invitation. There ensued in most instances a lifelong friend
ship. Two younger tutors, as they succeeded to office, followed
the example, and there was a time when the greater part of the
College stood thus restored to what was really the original idea.
Newman was soon after appointed a public examiner in Lit.
Hum., and for a year he was to be seen every day in High
Street in the velvet-striped gown indicating a Pro-Proctor.
The year after Newman had taken his tutorship, Copleston
was called to St. Paul's and Llandaff, and a new Provost had to
be elected. No election has ever been more discussed ; no
choice ever more wondered at, perhaps unnecessarily. Keble
had just presented himself as the Christian poet of the age, an
age that had come to think the Christian faith incompatible
with poetry. He was also a scholar of a high and then expiring
class. He had been a tutor for some years, and his name was
great in provincial circles. There was no doubt of his readiness
to resume his Oxford residence. By the light of other times we
all see that he and Newman were weU-nigh brothers in theology.
Why was he not elected as a matter of course ? There was

CARDINAL NEWMAN 257
another candidate, Tyler, recently appointed rector of St. Giles,
a sound working scholar, and a good, hearty, honest man, who
could get on weU with everybody. The choice fell on Hawkins,
and it has always been stated, without contradiction, that New
man turned the scale. We are not aware whether this has ever
been stated as a fact by any one who could certainly know it.
But it is hardly necessary to reopen the whole question, when
the choice has really justified itself. There can be no doubt Dr.
Hawkins was the better man for the almost unparalleled
difficulties to be encountered. They required strong practical
powers, perfect command of temper, strict impartiality, fondness
for business, and knowledge of the world. In these and other
points Hawkins was known to excel, while even his failings, it
may be said, leant on virtue's side, for without a prompt,
critical, and decisive style of expression and action, coupled with
a reasonable jealousy of interference and tenacity of power, he
could not have maintained his ground so long, and. with so much
credit. It has sometimes been said that he sought power at the
cost of love, but it was a time of war, when love had not fair
scope. Very soon after his election there arose the " little cloud "
which eventually deluged the land. The three tutors who
were of one mind wished to remodel the whole system of
tuition, both as to the men and as to the books. The new
Provost took a defensive position, and was impracticable. He
probably felt he would be nowhere in the College if he ever
left the tuition entirely to the tutors. As they persisted, he
announced that for the future no young men coming to the
College would be entered in their names or assigned to them as
pupUs. As this would give him pupils without tutors, and none
of the younger Fellows were immediately ready to accept office,
the Provost took what was then the very extraordinary step of
inviting Hampden, a married FeUow, with a fanuly, taking
private pupils in Oxford, to fill the gap. He complied, and
walked into the College every morning to take his class, which
done, he walked out again.
If the confederate Fellows were surprised, or if they even
felt aggrieved, theirs was only the common case of those who,
upon the inducement of some momentary advantage, drive an
opponent to bay, without remembering the counsels of despair
to which they are driving him. Hampden was a hard-working,
vol. iv s

258 EMINENT PERSONS
able, and conscientious man, after his light and his fashion, and
was more than equal to the demands made on him. The three
FeUows were checkmated, at least they gave up the game, and
the Provost, before long, had the tuition whoUy under his
control and upon his own lines. On the other hand, upon
becoming Provost, Hawkins had had to leave to Newman what
proved, in his hands, the far more important and influential
position of vicar of St. Mary's, including the parochial occupancy
of the pulpit from which the University sermons were delivered.
Hawkins himself had shown the use that could be made of it,
for he always had full congregations, and they included many
members of the University. This latter feature increased
rapidly under Newman's preaching. His sermons became the
staple of many a college conversation ; admired by all, though
here and there the objects of an indefinite suspicion.
His first public act was in a strictly Anglican direction.
He was secretary of the Oxford branch of a religious society —
the Church Missionary, we believe — of a liberal and compre
hensive character. In this capacity he found himself allied
with persons taking small account of Episcopal authority and
organisation. He resigned the office and circulated a pamphlet
explaining his reasons for so doing. About the same time he
heartily responded to a call to protect the Church of England
from attack, or, at least, from indignity, in another direction.
The mode in which Catholic emancipation was suddenly forced
on the Church, like the springing of a mine, set Oxford in a
blaze ; and when Peel placed his seat at the disposal of the
University, the majority of Convocation were resolved that he
should be taken at his word, and full use should be made of the
opportunity. Looking down the Christ Church list they found
in Sir R. H. Inglis an eminently genial, safe, and respectable
representative. As a dispensation rather than a boon, Newman
and his friends accepted the choice, and thenceforth Sir R. H.
Inglis became the type of old Oxford.
The year 1831 — that is, the year after the "July Revolu
tion" at Paris — saw some great beginnings in this country.
The Reform Bill was introduced into Parliament and battled
over for a twelvemonth. Nothing else was read or thought
about. There were those, however, who saw a rift in the
political storm. Newman undertook to prepare for a theological
" series " a handy volume on the Church Councils ; and Blanco

CARDINAL NEWMAN 259
White, on the same day and hour, undertook the " Inquisition."
The subject was new to Newman, and overtaxed his time and
strength. The compass of his thoughts and the range of his
design expanded every day, and in that visit to the buried past
he roused the ghost that ever pursued him, and finaUy drove
him to seek shelter in Rome. The meaning of this statement,
afterwards repeated at much greater length and in various
forms, was that the study of the Fathers could no more lead
to truth than the study of the Scriptures, without an infallible
guide. Newman simply lost himself in a task for which a lifetime
had been insufficient. Laying his foundation deep in the
centuries, and resolved to prejudge the question at issue, he does
not arrive at the first Oecumenical Council till the 270th page.
To the Council itself he gives six pages. He then wanders at
large in a succession of biographical sketches and generally
lamentable incidents, till, at page 416, he comes to the second
Oecumenical Council, to which he gives four pages, and then
closes the volume with a thundering anathema on the Papal
Apostasy. Whether on Mr. Rivington's line or his own,
whether as history or as theology, the work is an utter break
down. Tone and style, however, carried the day. The work
has only to be compared with any other history of theology, or
of the Church, to account for its enthusiastic reception, and its
effect on the rising movement. Such is the work generaUy, but
incorrectly, known as the History of the Arians. Newman was
now a " Select Preacher," and it was when he had just
plunged out of his depth — indeed, out of all human depth — into
anti-Nicene controversy that he made a great sensation by a
University sermon on "Personal Influence, the means of
propagating the Truth." In this he compared the continual
transmission of the light of faith from age to age to the beacon
fires described in a Greek play. If any one sermon is to be
credited with the first start of the "Movement" it is this,
preached 22nd January 1832.
After completing his task — or rather leaving it scarcely
begun — Newman started with Froude on a tour of several
months on the Mediterranean, seeing much and having many
interesting experiences. It is evident that Newman, at least, if
not Froude also, shrank from Rome, as from one whose charms
were dangerous and well-nigh irresistible. It is not the ordinary

260 EMINENT PERSONS
English tourist who avoids all religious ceremonies and functions,
who will not be entrapped even into a momentary act of united
worship, and who comes home with his mouth full of hot things
against Rome. It is the man with much sympathy for that
from which he violently recoils. Two men, however, the
travellers saw and conversed with at Rome, and even liked, as
far as can be seen, pretty equally. These were Bunsen and
Wiseman. While Newman's heavier labours were necessarily
suspended these six months, the outpourings of his heart were
fresh and abundant at every stage of his wanderings. Most of
his contributions to the Lyra Apostolica, including several
pieces that have won a world-wide acceptance, were written at
this time. Retracing his course alone from Rome to Sicily, for
a more leisurely contemplation of its manifold beauties, Newman
caught a fever, in which he was nursed by a monk, and the
traces of which were still upon him when he returned home.
It was not to the " sweet home " of song and story that he
returned, for all the minds, aU the pens, and aU the tongues
were there contending for the glory of regenerating this isle, and
Newman came in, so to speak, on the top of a scramble. Hurrell
Froude was before him, thundering and lightning, out-talking
and out-doing everybody, but compeUed soon to collapse within
the dimensions of his frail earthly tenement. Strange as it may
now seem, thus far, the event that most angered Newman and
drove him into an irreconcilable course was the suppression of
ten Irish bishoprics. A see once founded he believed to be in
destructible. Hugh James Rose was then the tallest, grandest, and, his
contemporaries say, the most winning figure in the Church of
England. Round him gathered A. P. Perceval, Froude, and
another, at what came to be called the " Hadleigh Conference."
After considering various suggestions, they agreed that some
thing should be done, and that everybody was to do and say
what he thought best, without inviting the criticism or expect
ing the agreement of the others. On this basis of a wide
authorisation and personal liberty Newman at once proceeded
to write and issue the Tracts for the Times, of which the first
famous words were, " I am but one of you, a presbyter." At
this distance of time it costs an effort to conceive how these
simple and very off-hand productions should stir up a whole
Church and rend it almost in twain. As a matter of fact they

CARDINAL NEWMAN 261
did. Tract after tract was read, though they inculcated much
that was impracticable, not to say impossible. Everything
that came from Oxford was read. The Christian public wanted
and waited, and could hardly be supplied quick enough. Even
when the heat and stir of the movement had somewhat abated,
it was found strong enough to give a wide circulation, and even
a popularity, to bulky volumes on the distinctive doctrines of
the Church of England, to endless "catenas," series, and
" libraries." As soon as Newman saw the vast superstructure of religious
literature arising upon his first flaming tracts, he felt that the
fire stood some chance of being stifled under its smoke, so he
opened a new crater of his own in a succession of volumes of
sermons preached at St. Mary's. Hitherto he had been rather
shy about publishing sermons, but such scruples do not last
long. Immediately all the world read his sermons, and few
other. To educated men they still hold their ground, and may
be said to have eclipsed and superseded all sermons of an earlier
date, unless a man can gird his loins and prepare himself to
read a sermon by Jeremy Taylor, or one of the few that Ken
has left us. But the most ardent admirers of John Henry
Newman must still admit a defect of fatal significance dimly
observed fifty years ago, known by its fruits now. That defect
it is needless to describe, were it even possible. These sermons
have not reached the hearts and understanding of the masses,
who, upon any theory, are the persons most to be considered,
and for whom Divine ordinances and human institutions are
most designed. We now see, and are not even surprised to see,
that Newman has not carried the people of England with him ;
and when we look to his works we see that he was not likely to
do so. However, in the three years following the first stir of
the movement, its progress was rapid and brilliant.
Meanwhile the Provost of Oriel was loyal and constant to
his friend in need, and the College now saw the influence and
patronage which the usage of the University leaves to the
Heads of Houses heaped upon the unwelcome intruder.
Hampden reaUsed' and utilised his position, seeing within his
grasp both an academic and a political harvest. He delivered
the famous Bampton Lectures, which have yet to be read,
understood, and fairly estimated. To make sure he translated
some of his hieroglyphics into language which " they that run

262 EMINENT PERSONS
can read," and if he did not propitiate Dissenters, he much
troubled Church people. He was admitted into the then Sacred
CoUege of Heads of Houses as Principal of St. Mary's Hall. By
the favour of his fast friend, he became Professor of Moral
Philosophy. The two antagonist leaders of thought were at close quarters.
Hampden was lecturing and writing, Newman was preaching,
writing, and talking, within a few yards of one another.
Hampden had secured the Hall, Newman the Church, included
in the foundation of the College. The latter had also the
hamlet of Littlemore, three miles out of Oxford, the ancient
nunnery of which was the true founder of St. Mary's, of Oriel
College, and of a great part of the University. Here he built a
church. Two such opposite personalities, acting, growing,
developing side by side, within sight and hearing, could not but
come into collision. The inevitable hour arrived in 1836,
when Lord Melbourne recommended Hampden for the Chair of
Theology vacated by Burton's premature death. The note of
alarm had already been sounded in the metropolis, and most
provincial centres, and now the worst had come to pass. The
anti-liberal members of the University, in much haste, confusion,
and prejudice, met and agreed on a proposal to meet the
Premier — that is, the Crown — with a statute disabling the
nominee of the Crown to the utmost in their power. The non
resident members of Convocation responded to the appeal, and
after a temporary hitch, caused by a procuratorial veto, this
violent and probably iUegal resolution was carried, and the
Crown deprived of more than half the substance of that which
it had supposed itself able and entitled to confer. The notes of
triumph were loud, and it was plain there was now a new power
in the land. As to the measure itself, there was more insult
in it than injury. The authorities took Hampden's side, and
his friends had no reason to complain of exclusion from the
University pulpit. When the opportunity arrived, they acted
as lawlessly as the other side had done ; if one Canon of Christ
Church was not allowed a voice in the selection of preachers,
another found himself excluded from the University pulpit.
But the greater the noise, the greater the disturbance, the
greater the lawlessness, just in the same proportion was the
growth of the " Oxford party." It was idle to fight about the
occupation of the University pulpit, when not only that very

CARDINAL NEWMAN 263
pulpit every Sunday afternoon, but some thousand other
pulpits, were open to a party that courted persecution, and
would have been disappointed had they not been paid in their
own coin. The remembrance of that time suggests a terrible
misgiving as to the true character of the centuries in which the
magnificent fabric of Christian theology was elaborated and
finally established. The present generation, that knows of the
Cardinal chiefly in the comparatively quiet retreat of the Oratory
and in the continual ovation everywhere and by almost all
people accorded to his pre-eminent character, can be little aware
of the inexhaustible energy and indefatigable industry with
which he fought, what no doubt he believed the fight of faith.
It would be exceeding the limits of our space to do common
justice to his manifold labours. He was incessant in correspond
ence ; he was always accessible to visitors ; he kept journals
and wrote Memoires Justificatives : he read, translated, analysed,
and abstracted ; he wrote and delivered sermons of the most
intense originaUty ; he lectured, he kept account of his army of
followers. Before the publication of the Tracts, he wrote letters
to the Record newspaper, which he had helped to start, and
which inserted his letters till he had taxed to the utmost its
forbearance and its space.
Some years afterwards, upon the occasion of Sir R. Peel's
delivering a "march of mind" address on the opening of
Tamworth Reading Room, he wrote, with the signature of
Catholicus, a series of letters in this journal, read with
eager interest by many who never guessed the author, still less
that he would one day be a member of the " Sacred CoUege."
He and his friends were large contributors to the British
Magazine, which somehow came to an end in the conflict
between the new and the old materials now to be found in it.
All that is now remembered of either is the Lyra Apostolica,
reprinted from its pages.
While still enjoying Uberty of thought and of action,
Newman "lectured" alike Romanists and Dissenters from St.
Mary's. He preached and published six volumes of Parochial
Sermons that have not yet lost their hold on the religious public,
and that have been republished by an old and early friend
within the last few years. In 1837 he published "Romanism
and Popular Protestantism," or, to give the volume its fuU title,
Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church viewed relatively to

264 EMINENT PERSONS
these two systems. Were it true that a lady's meaning is to be
found in the postscript, or that the best way to read a book is,
as Whately once suggested, to begin at the end, then we might
believe that Newman, at the above date, loved Rome as little as
he did Arianism and Dissent. His work on Justification was
either very right, or very wrong, for the Evangelical party at
once pronounced that the author had confounded, or misplaced,
justification and sanctification. A work on Development in
Matters of Doctrine, though the theme has been since extensively
enlarged upon, was a great shock to the fixed ideas and
conservative instincts of English Churchmen. The British
Critic, the old-established organ of the " High and Dry," now
lay athwart the path of the movement. It was in the hands of
an amiable and even brilUant writer seeking peace in a mid
course. By successive encroachments, one involving another,
Newman became editor, and for five or six years under his
direction, or influence, the British Critic kept the Church of
England in one long agony of surprise and alarm as to the
results of its trenchant criticisms and reckless speculation.
Though Rome was repeatedly the subject of an energetic protest,
and the Church of England warned against her seductions, it was
still felt that the underlying mass of feeling and of argument was
moving towards her. In mathematics two lines can be for ever
approaching without falling together, but it is not so when the
heart is concerned, or when every day gives birth to new motives.
The Tracts for the Times pursued what can hardly be called
their steady course. If some of them might kindly give repose,
and even sleep, whenever Newman's pen took its turn all were
roused from their tranquiUity or their slumber. Taking the
Bible in one hand and the Mediaeval Church in the other, he
would command his readers to accept both or neither. Culling
from the indictments or the declarations of his antagonists their
most felicitous and irresistible arguments, he would hurl them
at the sacred object of their common reverence, the inspired
Scriptures themselves — the only rule of faith. The stoutest
Protestant ceased to throw stones when he found them falling
on his own head. Reason itself, the old foe of authority, seemed
now a renegade.
There still remained, however, a good many thousands in the
land who could hold to the faith of their fathers, without the
aid of reason or the pomp of a scientific theology.

CARDINAL NEWMAN 265
The publications of the day were equally divided between
the Tractarian and the anti-Tractarian writers. Learned clergy
men, who but for the " Movement " would have read and dozed
in their studies, produced heavy octavos. Religious novelists
supplied lighter stuff. The Bishops were bound to make an
appearance, and they did. All must have felt the father's
yearnings for the son that only erred by excess of zeal — Bishop
Bagot certainly did — but they had to stand by their own order
and law. Some delivered censures at once unscientific and
unmitigated. No historian describes the order of attack, for it
told its tale in the result. At length No. 90 challenged the
forbearance of the Church and University to the utmost, for had
it been endured there was nothing that might not plead the
example. At the invocation of " Four Tutors," one of them the
late Primate, the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Houses exercised
that domestic authority with which they are armed for matters
affecting the discipline of the undergraduate crowd. They pro
nounced a pubUc censure of the Tract without waiting for a
defence, and evidently without caring to know what the author
might have to say for it. This seemed very harsh, and is still
so thought by many. But power and authority cannot afford to
be always logical.
Newman's case was the historical fact that the Thirty-nine
Articles are older than the decrees of the Council of Trent, and
were meant to be comprehensive. Accordingly, as he maintained,
they only condemned certain popular abuses or excesses, and
cannot be interpreted as in direct conflict with existing Roman
Catholic doctrine. This was a question which neither Oxford,
nor the Bench of Bishops, nor the people of England were
willing to entertain. Newman bowed to the censure, and
perhaps felt it a deliverance. He professed to be always guided
by circumstances. It was for the Church of England, not him
self, to pronounce it no longer Catholic. The Tracts for the
Times, which had now attained to the bulk of five octavo
volumes, and which, in the original editions, are now hardly to
be got at any price, were stopped. This, however, only created
a new position, with new opportunities, which Newman was
quick to discover. Rome had as yet made few or no converts.
The Tracts taught that Christians had all they wanted in the
Anglican Communion. Deny this, and you drive them to
Rome. The sequel seemed to bear this out. At the very time

266 EMINENT PERSONS
that the scheme of comprehension propounded in No. 90 was
formally condemned, there was suddenly started another scheme
of comprehension in the Jerusalem bishopric, aiming to combine
in one communion Anglicans and German Protestants. Against
this Newman made a solemn public protest, to which his own
position now gave the greater influence and authority.
Newman held on for a time at St. Mary's, and then, step by
step, withdrew to Littlemore, where he finally ensconced himseK
with a small band of faithful adherents.
The end of one question was now the beginning of another.
Was a new Anglican Church to rise on this spot of mysterious
and immemorial sanctity ? Had the nuns of Littlemore, the
true founders of half the University, been heard to invoke
nostris ex ossibus ultor to avenge their wrongs ? A great Univer
sity was thrown into alternative paroxysms of curiosity and
terror by a new neighbour, somewhat resembling the epipolis
thrown up for the occasion by a besieging host. Was this to be
a new Oxford 1 Fate has otherwise ordered. Littlemore is now-
best known for its county lunatic asylum, while a couple of miles
off the mUitary centre has transformed the neighbouring plain
into a gay and busy suburb. What has been called the crash
of the party had now begun. " Ideal Ward," as he came to be
called, from the most irreconcilable of his many utterances, pro
voked his fate with an impetuosity that could not be resisted,
and he was finally stripped of his degrees and consequently of
his Fellowship, by an assembled University, only to appear at
the altar of the English Church with a beautiful young bride a
few weeks after. By a happy intervention the University was
saved the disgrace of an ill-considered sentence on Newman's
own work, as had been proposed. Nor was there occasion for
such a step. A few months afterwards, Newman sent for a
foreign monk of the Order of St. Dominic, and through him
submitted to the Church of Rome.
As the greater part of the English public had long been
expecting the news, and could not understand a position between
two rival and antagonistic Churches, nobody now asked what
had finally decided Newman. It was his way, however, to
assign to every act its own proper occasion and motive, and it is
stated that an article by Dr. Wiseman on the Donatists turned
the scale. This would imply that the chief obstacle in Newman's
mind, up to this time, had been the moral scandals affecting the

CARDINAL NEWMAN 267
Church of Rome, alike priests and people. These the Donatists,
who were the Protestants of their day, held to vitiate orders,
nullify ordinances, and destroy authority. But Newman had
no need to go to the pages of the Dublin Review to learn that a
mixture of good and bad is a universal condition of human life.
Calumny itself was silenced by the very act that might be
accepted as its justification. Before this, controversialists had
freely charged Newman with a secret intention. In after years
Newman was frequently consulted by young people " on the
move," but not prepared to face the difficulties of a decision.
He uniformly counseUed against concealment and reserve, or any
course that would be one thing to the actor, another to the world.
From that hour the Church of England has regarded New
man at an increasing distance, but with an increasing favour.
Yet it has been but a cold and profitless regard ; a just pride and
a high admiration, but little more. As a nation and a race we
now boast to have contributed to Rome one of her greatest
minds and one of her best men. Yet we do not foUow. The
captain has led the way, but the column lags behind. The
foUowing has been almost wholly confined to the educated and
refined, to the classes to whom religion is a luxury, an amuse
ment, an agreeable relief from the frivolities and vulgarities of
the hour Several thousand have thus accompanied Newman,
not into the wilderness, but into magnificent churches, and into
well-furnished and well-frequented drawing-rooms. But that
multitude which responded to the Gospel-call on the shores of
Gennesaret holds aloof and hears not the voice of a shepherd.
The wise and prudent are many in the crowd that has left
us, but of the babes there are none. As soon as he had crossed
the Rubicon, Newman, like the conquered kings of antiquity,
had to show himself at Rome. He appears to have wished to
remain and study there, but he was sent back to work on the
English masses, if haply he could break or soften them.
The Pope then, or soon after, gave Newman the degree of
D.D, and it is a remarkable fact that this addition to his name
had the effect of raising the degree in English estimation. Up
to that date any aspirant for the merely nominal honour was
credited with sheer vanity, or some pecuniary motive, and any
one of high standing would much rather be caUed Canon than
D.D. Englishmen are no longer ashamed of a title which
places them next to saints in the Celestial Hierarchy.

268 EMINENT PERSONS
Newman must himseK have suggested Birmingham, for it
was one of Froude's ideas, possibly because to an Oxford man
the most repulsive and self-denying that could be imagined.
There Newman founded the Oratory ; a society, not an order —
and under a comprehensive engagement to do all kinds of duty
and kindness to all sorts of people, at all times, and as much
as possible in all places. Another branch, we presume, was
founded in King William Street, Strand ; and more recently the
one magnificently housed in Brompton Road, and for a long
time under Father Faber. There could not be a stronger test
of sincerity, or a higher proof of devotion, than for a great
theologian and scholar to resign Oxford and Littlemore, and
bury himself in the throng, smoke, and din of a great manufac
turing centre. Newman retained his hold on the place ever
after, though he did not reside there constantly.
In the year 1854 he accepted the Rectorship of the Catholic
University at Dublin, and persevered through the manifold and
growing difficulties of that position six or seven years. The
Irish never get on weU under Englishmen, and Newman is said
to have found his position neither easy nor always agreeable
under a board of management consisting of his superiors in rank
and authority, if not always in other respects. At one time
there went round a story that, in order to save his dignity, and
enable him to take his due share in the management, he was to
be made a Bishop in partibus ; but this was not done. Newman
did his best during his brief sojourn to educate the Irish mind
up to his idea of a University, and he made some attached
friends, but upon the whole he thought it best to leave Ireland
to the Irish. One old friendship he found to be lost beyond
recovery. After some ineffectual attempts at mutual civility,
he and Archbishop Whately found it more convenient to pass
without recognition, painful as it might be to both of them.
The Irish failure, as it might be called, was a great disap
pointment, for the turn of Newman's mind was always rather
academic than ecclesiastical. From the time of his "con
version " to Rome, at least from the date of his visit to the Holy
See, he earnestly desired to see a Roman Catholic College at
Oxford, no doubt under his presidency. For this he worked,
canvassed, and obtained flattering assurances, but in vain. A
party of his own friends at home, headed by Ward, continually
counteracted his efforts, and whether they were right from a

CARDINAL NEWMAN 269
Roman point of view it is not easy or necessary to say. But it
was the disappointment that most preyed on Newman's mind,
and that extorted from him some rather hard sayings upon
the Italian notions of veracity, to which he preferred the
English. Returning to Birmingham, Newman found no difficulty in
winning the love, if not the obedience, of a population specially
addicted to having a way of its own, and to take that way. No
doubt they were proud to have so great a man among them.
But a residence in the provinces is a sort of banishment, even if
it be accompanied with important work ; and Newman's retire
ment to Birmingham has been regarded by the public generally
much as his retreat from Oxford to Littlemore. He established
a school for Catholic noblemen and gentlemen, and his pupils
have succeeded in due time to their hereditary positions ; but it
can hardly be said that any have brought with them the traces
of a great teacher. They are "good Catholics," and no more.
He has published sermons, lectures, treatises, and theological
works, but they have not penetrated into the Church of England,
not at least beyond a circle of devoted admirers. His lectures
on " Anglican Difficulties " may have helped to unsettle some
hundred clergymen. His lectures on the office and work of
Universities would seem to have had no other result than
further to liberalise Oxford and Cambridge, and provoke the
godly jealousy of the Congregationalists. His history of the
Turks, on the spur of a sudden occasion, is an amazing feat, but
as a contribution to the poUtics of the day is far too much on
the " bag and baggage " line.
It is not every great author who will venture to write tales.
Newman did. His Callista and his Loss and Gain were received
with great interest, necessarily confined to those who feel dog
matic truth the supreme object of inquiry. The Grammar of
Assent, which is said to contain some wonderful passages and to
develop the principles of No. 90, and some other tracts were
written ; but the mass of ore out of which the precious metal is
to be extracted is immense. Newman often overtaxed the time
and patience, as well as the subtlety, of his readers, and, like
some other great men, he may be found in after-times buried
under the pile of his own works, or represented by one small
volume or two out of half a hundred.
On several occasions was Newman dragged out of his provincial

270 EMINENT PERSONS
obscurity. In 1851, in the course of some lectures given at
Birmingham, he delivered a tremendous philippic against one
Achilli, an Italian monk, who had been driven out of Italy and
his Church, and was now declaiming against them, much to the
delight of our Protestant gentlemen and ladies. The man had
now to fight for dear life, and he had friends. They brought
an action for libel against Newman, and, as he also had friends,
he brought over a host of witnesses. There was no doubt as to
the Ubel, and the truth of the libel was no defence. Newman
was fined £100, but the expenses were many thousands, and
they were cheerfully subscribed for him. The only result of
the action has been to write on the roll of history a character'
and career which Englishmen will henceforth be apt to associate
with mountebanks of AchilU's description.
In January 1864 Kingsley, under some unaccountable,
perhaps quite momentary, impulse, writing for a magazine,
charged Newman with teaching that truth need not be a virtue
to the Catholic clergy, and, indeed, ought not to be ; that
cunning is the proper weapon of the saints ; and that, whether
this notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is historically true.
Newman at once demanded a justification of this libel, which
Kingsley found himself unable to produce. Instead of proofs
he went into generalities, into which Newman followed him.
After a long stage of personalities, as they must be called,
happily the assailed party changed his key and ascended into
the most interesting of all his writings, and the one which put
him once more in accord with the English public.
The Apologia is a household word in this country : nor is the
interest of it diminished by the fact that it is the history of a
mind rather than of a course of events ; and that it is the inner
life of one man without much attempt to enter into other per
sonal experiences. It is Newman, and very little more. Even
Hamlet, monopolist as he is, leaves more room and more honour
to inferior personages. But, whatever the faults, if faults they
be, the Apologia wUl ever hold its ground in English Uterature.
At the time of the " (Ecumenical Council " Newman was said
to be adverse to an authoritative definition of Papal infallibility.
His objections were so delicately and mildly expressed that to
an ordinary English eye they looked more like a pious perform
ance necessary to the idea of a discussion than a real opinion.
Indeed, most Englishmen will think it a matter of indifference

CARDINAL NEWMAN 271
how infaUibility is defined, one definition in an impossible
matter being as good as another. It must be considered,
however, that Newman's whole life had been one long con
troversy, and where there is no beginning there is likely to be
no end. A definition, if it be worth anything, must preclude
some alternatives, and so far stop discussion. But, as there were
said to be more than sixty distinct definitions of Papal infalli
bility before the year 1870, it can hardly be supposed that one
more will make a material difference. The Vatican Council
was a grand and imposing demonstration, and as such it has told
on the open field of human affairs.
Eleven years ago a great omission was repaired, a great
inequality removed. So high was the regard that England had
for Newman, on whatever grounds, that it felt really aggrieved
at what seemed to be the denial of a Cardinal's hat. English
men are apt to talk and write on stilts, so to speak, and in this
vein they do not take much account of Cardinals. But nature
will come out. We have all been children in our time, and the
child never wholly departs from our nature. So all England
was delighted when Newman went to Rome, which, at his age
and in his infirm health, was a service of danger, and came back
with his long-due decorations. Already his own first college at
Oxford had been proud to restore his name to its books and to
raise him from a scholar to an Honorary Fellow. Fastidious
critics observed that he had left Oxford a believer and returned
to it in the guise of a liberal ; the change, however, was in the
University, not in himself ; and in this country we give every
body license to avail himself freely of its varying and not
entirely consistent opportunities. Things must be done by hook
or by crook, or not at all. Yet it is an amazing sign of the
times that a Cardinal should head the list of names in an
Oxford college. A few months after Newman acknowledged
this compliment by a visit to Oxford, where he was entertained
by Trinity CoUege. The chief feature of the visit was a call
on Dr. Pusey, for a long interchange of guarded sympathies and
old memories. Two years after he paid Oxford a second visit,
for a large garden party at his college, and to preach a sermon
at the new Roman Catholic Chapel.
Newman never lost a friend if he could help it, and always
took care that it was not he that cut the sacred tie, as he deemed
it. About this date he travelled into the western counties,

272 EMINENT PERSONS
seeing old friends in the way, and full of old thoughts and
feelings. On this occasion he had to seek in vain for an
admission to Exeter Cathedral at an hour when he had fair
reason to expect it would be open to strangers, as the Continental
churches are. Oddly enough, the single reason of his exclusion
was that the cathedral authorities, with a large party of invited
friends and partisans, were engaged in a discussion upon the
unhappy reredos, which proved a bone of contention between
Bishop Temple and the Chapter. At Edgbaston he was always
most easy of access, and ready to see an old friend, or a stranger,
even to the interruption of some important work, or of the brief
mid-day repose. When much pressed, or worn, he retired for a
short holiday to a cottage at Rednal, on the Lickey Hills, a few
miles from Birmingham.
Now, for many years, aU Englishmen have vied in rendering
the proper homage, whatever it might be, or whatever its worth,
to the most conspicuous and interesting name in our theological
or literary annals. Unless it be on some rare occasions and
instances, Newman was singularly free from the weaknesses and
misfortunes that so often make polemics a plague and literature
a grief. There are great and even good men who repel
sympathy, and even forfeit it ; Newman could not do either.
With aU his faults — for all have faults — England has loved
him stiU.
The truth is we are a nation of hero-worshippers, sometimes
to the extent of holding one hero as good as another, though
they may have considerable differences to settle between them
selves. Such feelings, often the suggestions of the hour, have
to stand the severer test of years to come. Will even the next
generation read Newman's now voluminous works 1 Will it
enter upon a course the termination of which is already histori
cal ? Every work of man is measured by its results. The
narrow range of human power and opportunity has to be taken
into account. Near home, on this very spot, we have frequent
and melancholy experiences of the fate that may await the fruits
of industry and genius. As one hour succeeds another, import
ant matter has to give way to the latest arrival, and has to be
first minished, and then, perhaps, finally squeezed out of our
columns. Enter any good old-fashioned library that has had
the rare luck to escape fire, the auction-room, and the waste-
paper store. In long rows are the works of the twenty or thirty

CARDINAL NEWMAN 273
great divines, the delight and the support of their respective
generations. Of most of these good men, so great in their day,
it is now rare to find anybody who has read even a page, or can
so much as say what manner of men they were, or what were
their distinctive opinions, or where they preached or wrote, or
where they lived and died. Over every library, even such as
those now annually scattered, volume by volume, over all lands,
may be written the warning not to work for posterity, but for
the present day, and for those that share it with us.
Leading Article, Tuesday, August 12, 1890
A great man has passed away ; a great link with the past
has been broken. Yesterday, after a very short illness, Cardinal
Newman died at the Oratory, Edgbaston. Thus enviably closes
a most noteworthy life ; a life that in itself sums up in the best
and most attractive way one side of the religious life of the
century. At ninety years of age, full of years, full of honour
but not of honours, in the obscurity of his almost private home,
the great man receives the last summons and quietly obeys. A
most interesting chapter of our history closes with his death,
and a life that bears strange testimony to the permanence of
certain types in human nature becomes a part of the past.
Once more the world is reminded of the degree in which respect
and love still attach to the saintly life, when it is coupled with
one or another kind of intellectual leadership.
Cardinal Newman is literally the last of his generation.
Many of his old friends and colleagues he has long survived ;
others have but lately passed away ; but he, to aU appearance
the most fragile of all, has remained till now. It is nearly fifty
years since Arnold died ; Whately has been gone twenty-seven
years ; Keble died twenty-four years ago, Pusey eight, and
Hawkins and " Ideal " Ward at the same distance of time. The
men who followed Newman in his passage across the Roman
Rubicon have almost all predeceased him. He has remained,
looking out from those mysterious eyes of his upon a world that
has changed enormously since the days of the Tractarians, and
changed, it must be feared, in ways that he often liked but little.
He liked them less, perhaps he understood them less, than the
eminent foreign contemporary with whom one naturally com
pares him, Dr. DoUinger. Far more learned than Newman, far
VOL. iv t

274 EMINENT PERSONS
more active, endowed with more physical vigour and a greater
force of will, Dollinger never stood aside, like the great English
dialectician, from the course of affairs. The one, therefore, is
the more interesting as an example of intellectual energy and
critical alertness ; the other, as a poet, a mystic, and as a thrice-
refined example of the unworldly life.
We publish on another page a full account of Dr. Newman's
career, from its beginning in the earliest years of the century.
For much of it he is himself, in his famous Apologia, the chief
authority ; since he may be said to have Uved no other life
than the reUgious life, the life in constant and conscious com
munication with the Unseen, that he there describes. His
history is the history of religious opinions, and of actions based
on them. We trace the workings of his mind as he passes out
of the EvangeUcalism of his boyhood — an effective school for
the religious emotions — into the historical and logical stage from
which grew the Tracts for the Times. The story of this central
moment of the modern religious history of England is always
fascinating, and to those who have any personal links with the
Oxford of that day it still has a curious and a powerful interest.
It has to be told over again from the point of view of each
actor in it — of Keble first, then of Pusey, lately, in a much-read
book, of William George Ward, and now of Newman, the chief
of the band, the head and front of the offending. And yet,
from the, standpoint of to-day, how incredibly remote it all
seems ! It divided educated England into two hostile camps ;
it filled the English world with the noise and the smoke of
controversy ; it led a grave University into a number of
scandalously intolerant acts ; it ended by threatening the dis
ruption of the Church of England. The controversy was
professedly historical. Yet of history, in the modern scientific
sense, there was very little in it ; and neither side seemed to
suspect that behind the question whether the Fathers thought
and wrote so-and-so lay the question of the grounds on which
the Fathers formed their opinions. But sufficient for each age
are the controversies thereof.
In 1840, or thereabouts, the question which concerned the
religious mind of England was the question whether what was
called " Catholic Truth " was attainable within the Church of
England or not. We know the way in which Newman decided
it, in his converse with Pusey and others, in his published

CARDINAL NEWMAN 275
writings, and in the almost cloistral solitude of Littlemore. He
would have rejoiced to carry a greater following with him, but
that was not essential. His own path seemed marked out to
him and he took it, leaving many friends behind him — leaving
Pusey to become graduaUy the head of a great Anglican com
munity, to the outside spectator scarcely distinguishable from
the Roman, and yet separated from it, if we are to believe its
spokesmen, by the most vital differences ; and leaving Pattison
to go his solitary way in the pursuit of pure knowledge entirely
unfettered by formulas or creeds. From the moment of that
great step Newman became, to the bulk of English people, a
mere memory. Oxford long retained the tradition of his
wonderful personality ; of the charm of his character, of the
pure beauty of his style. But he passed out of the life of the
place and of the many who had read and admired him. Fifteen
years or more passed by tiU the world heard of him again, when
the Apologia was published. The cause seemed a mere accident :
a chance phrase of a man who was not given to measuring his
words. One does not need to be a Roman CathoUc to appreciate
the thoroughness of the punishment which Kingsley received
from his veteran antagonist. The amateur had chaUenged the
old swordsman ; and he became as a child in his hands.
And yet the Apologia is not an altogether pleasant book to
read, if one wishes to keep fresh the old belief in Dr. Newman
as a sort of angelic doctor of the nineteenth century — a saint,
who is at the same time a master of dialectic. Perhaps an
Apologia must always be somewhat painful ; at aU events this
one is, from the air of absolute certainty that pervades it, and,
shall we say, from the evidences of nothing short of superstition
with which it abounds. These things, however, are the almost
invariable marks of religious biographies, whether the subject
be a Wesley or a Newman. Men like this are better than their
biographies. Newman certainly was, as every one who knew
him will maintain, especially the survivors of those old Oxford
days when he held congregations speU-bound in St. Mary's,
and threw over companionship a charm which was scarcely of
this world. The worst of such a charm as this is that it is
evanescent ; that it depends on the memory of a generation.
Will Newman's survive in the estimation of his country 1 Will
his books maintain it ? That is a question which may be asked
to-day, but which the future only can answer. Of one thing

276 EMINENT PERSONS
we may be sure, that the memory of his pure and noble life,
untouched by worldliness, unsonred by any trace of fanaticism,
wiU endure, and that whether Rome canonises him or not he
will be canonised in the thoughts of pious people of many
creeds in England. The saint and the poet in him will survive.
" Lead, kindly Light " is abeady something better than a classic ;
the life at Littlemore and at Edgbaston will engrave itself deep
into the memory of all to whom religion and lofty human
character are dear.

CANON LIDDON
Obituary Notice, Wednesday, September 10, 1890
We deeply regret to announce the death of Canon Liddon.
With him the Church of England loses her foremost preacher,
and the High Church party its most powerful champion.
Henry Parry Liddon was born at Taunton in 1829, and had,
therefore, barely completed his sixty-first year at the time of his
death. He received his early education at King's College School,
then a young institution, founded, as will be remembered, on
Church of England principles ; and in or about 1847 he was
nominated a student of Christ Church. Those who recollect
him as an undergraduate speak of him as having been already
keenly interested in religion, and as having professed himself a
loyal follower of the Tractarian leaders — men whose influence,
though it had been momentarily checked by the secession of
Newman, was still very considerable. The young student of
Christ Church was especially brought in contact with Pusey, and
also, away from Oxford, with the gentle personality of one whom
he afterwards described as " the best and wisest man whom he
had ever known intimately in Ufe " — John Keble.
Meantime he read for the schools ; but by some accident,
though he was a good scholar and a keen logician, he only
obtained a second class in the examination for his degree (1850).
In the next year, however, he obtained a University distinction,
the Johnson Theological Scholarship, and he was in due time
confirmed in his studentship. He was ordained deacon by
Bishop Wilberforce in 1852 ; and there are still those, who
remember the keen interest with which, in the intervals of the
examination, he discussed theological questions in the garden of

278 EMINENT PERSONS
Cuddesdon Palace. He was at this time, indeed, studying not
only the matter but the form ; and already he had laid to heart
the lessons of that great school of ecclesiastical preaching, as
distinguished from the popular preaching of Protestantism, which
had never died out in France from the days of Massillon and
Bourdaloue to the days of Lacordaire. Of the last-named,
Liddon always professed himself a devoted admirer ; but it was
rather on the school than on any single member of it that he
formed his own well-defined and most impressive style. But
his early work as a clergyman did not lie much, or at least
exclusively, in the direction of preaching. In 1854 he was
appointed Vice- Principal of Cuddesdon College, then recently
founded by Bishop Wilberforce as a nursery of young clergy ;
and it may truly be said that the influence of Liddon, during
the five years that he held the post, had much to do with fixing
the character of the college and determining its success.
A very important epoch in Liddon's life was his appointment
as examining chaplain to the then Bishop of Salisbury, Dr.
Walter Ker Hamilton, a man of saintly Ufe, and a pronounced
High Churchman. He was one of the three men who most
influenced the life and thought of Liddon, the other two being
Keble and Pusey. Not even Samuel Wilberforce, during the
years at Cuddesdon, was so much to the young ecclesiastic as
was the Bishop of Salisbury, of whom he wrote, at the time of
the Bishop's death, a touching memoir. In 1864 Bishop
Hamilton appointed Liddon to the Prebend of Major Pars Altaris
in Salisbury Cathedral. By this time his fame as a preacher
was beginning to spread, and when, in 1863, he was for the
first time appointed Select Preacher to the University of Oxford,
St. Mary's was soon crowded. Already the voice, the manner,
and the style were there which have since that date charmed so
many scores of thousands of hearers ; but at that time all was
new except to those who, in some foreign church, had chanced
to hear a Dominican brother. The sympathetic tones, the subtle,
insinuating argument, the rhetorical artifice, concealed behind
extreme simplicity of language ; the dogmatic certainty of the
preacher's central positions ; above all, the fervour of his own
personal persuasion, making itself felt through physical exertion
that was plainly too severe for him — these things at once made
it apparent that a new great preacher had come before the world.
Accordingly, when it was announced that Prebendary Liddon

CANON LIDDON 279
was to be the Bampton Lecturer for 1866 the interest of the
announcement was felt far beyond the limits of the University.
The subject chosen showed the preacher's courage ; it was nothing
less central, nothing less vast, than " The Divinity of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ." This is not the place to criticise
these celebrated lectures, or even to follow their argument.
Enough to say that they were an elaborate attempt to meet
modern criticism on its own ground ; to answer Strauss and
Baur and Renan, and par parenthhe to prove to the Broad Church
party in the English Church that reason was not on their side.
The lectures showed no little learning ; as printed, with a full
apparatus of notes, they show a great deal ; but their real
strength lay in the skill with which the orthodox case was pre
sented, the weak points in the opponents' case laid bare, and the
religious feeUngs and hopes of Christians appealed to. From
the time of the delivery and publication of the Bampton Lectures
there was no doubt whatever that, among the more scholarly
and controversial preachers of the Church of England, Liddon
had taken the leading place.
In the year of the Bampton Lectures, Mr. Liddon was chosen
as a member of the Hebdomadal Council at Oxford ; and this
position he held for three "turns" of three years each, till 1875.
He was at the time, as the election implied, resident in Oxford ;
and his nomination may be said to have signalised the fact that
he was regarded, and consented to be regarded, as one of the
active leaders of the Church party in the University. He filled
in University politics the anomalous position of one who, though
a Liberal in the politics of the country, held tenaciously to the
old lines, especially on such points as the retention of Greek,
and, until 1871, the retention of religious tests. He acted, in
fact, with Dr. Pusey, whose lieutenant he really was ; and on
all such matters as the founding and organisation of the Theo
logical Honour School, he naturally represented the clerical
claims in their extreme form. In 1870 he accepted the appoint
ment to Dean Ireland's Professorship of Exegesis, and it need
not be said that his lectures, during the twelve years that he
held the post, were crowded, not only by candidates for orders,
but by others. It can hardly be said that his influence in
Oxford, outside the lecture room, the Council, and the University
pulpit, was quite as great as that of some of his contemporaries.
Probably his coUeague Dr. King, the present Bishop of Lincoln,

280 EMINENT PERSONS
had more direct personal influence upon the characters of young
High Churchmen.
In 1870 Liddon was appointed Canon Residentiary of St.
Paul's, and about the same time was made D.D. and Hon. D.C.L.
The partial removal to London which the canonry impUed
brought his person, his voice, and his work before the notice of
thousands of those to whom he had till then been a mere name.
His first systematic appearance in London, however, was not at
St. Paul's, but as Lent Lecturer at St. James's, Piccadilly, where
he delivered to thronged congregations the sermons which have
since become so generally known under the title of Some Ele
ments of Religion. These, and, still more, the sermons preached
during his annual residence at St. Paul's, differed in many
respects from the sermons preached at Oxford. Like a true
orator, Dr. Liddon had a ready perception of the character of
his audience. At Oxford he was didactic, dialectical, even
learned on occasion. In London, though the religious basis
was the same, his aim was to be above all things simple, clear,
and consistent.
It has been said by an experienced observer that Dr. Liddon
at St. Paul's offered an almost unique example of a preacher
who habitually held the close attention of a middle-class audience
for an hour at a time, by sermons each of which was a con
secutive argument. The argument may not have been com
plicated ; the premisses were generally familiar ; but to follow
the discourse at all implied steady attention, and this the vast
audiences beneath the dome were always ready to give. It
must, however, be admitted that the necessity of preaching to
congregations so large and so mixed had an injurious effect on
Dr. Liddon's style. The physical exertion was more than he could
stand ; the necessity of repeating old arguments, the absence of
criticism, and the various other conditions of the case tended to
lower the extraordinarily high level to which he had attained
at Oxford and in Piccadilly. But what man of any generation
could continue to preach freshly and without loss of power to
congregations like those for twenty years 1
In two ways Dr. Liddon took an active part in the public
affairs of his time. He was, as we have said, a Liberal in
general politics, or it would be more correct to say that he was
a follower of Mr. Gladstone in most of the courses which that
statesman has pursued. Especially did he foUow, or perhaps

CANON LIDDON 28]
help to lead, Mr. Gladstone in the anti-Turkish campaign of
1876-78. Dr. Liddon, as a High Anglican, was full of sympathy
for the Greek Christians; and espoused their cause against the
Turks with all the energy of which he was capable. He visited
Servia and the neighbouring countries, and the controversy is
still remembered which he and Canon MacCoU kept up in these
columns against many opponents as to the impalement of a
Christian by Turks, of which they declared themselves to have
been eye-witnesses. Some years before this Dr. Liddon had
shown equaUy strong sympathy with another body of persecuted
Christians, the Old Catholics, of whose Congress at Bonn in
1874, he drew up, or edited, an interesting report.
But these instances of his intervention in public affairs were
less important than his frequent interventions when the interests
of the Church of England were, as he thought, directly attacked,
as by the Church Discipline Act of 1874, by the Purchas
judgment, and other examples of what, in the title of a little
volume, he called Troubles of the Church. He entirely disliked,
denounced, and repudiated the supreme authority of the
Judicial Committee. In a "letter to Sir John Taylor Cole
ridge" (1871) he vigorously attacked the Purchas judgment, and
frankly told the judges that a large body of the clergy would
meet it with passive resistance. In the preface to the sermons
just referred to, he declares that the decisions of such a tribunal
" wiU always be respectfully considered as the work of trained
minds of the highest ability," but will not " command the sub
mission which is due from a Christian conscience" to the
spiritual heads of the Church. The logical outcome of such a
position is, of course, to accept disestablishment ; and, as to
this, his opinion was clear. In the same preface (1881) he
wrote, "Few, if any, Churchmen desire to see the Church
disestablished and disendowed ; but, if it be a question whether
it is better to be turned out of house and home without any
clothes, and even on a winter's night, or to be strangled by a
silken cord in a well-furnished drawing-room, what man or
church can have any difficulty in arriving at a decision ? "
For several years past Dr. Liddon has been engaged upon
what he hoped and believed would prove the great work of his
life, the biography of his friend and master, Dr. Pusey. It
was to this constant engagement, as much as to any other cause,
that we must attribute his refusal of all Church preferment.

282 EMINENT PERSONS
But the " Life " has not been concluded, and it is not known in
what state it has been left. It may, however, be assumed that
Dr. Liddon, a most methodical worker, and one endowed with
the valuable gift of a good handwriting, has left his papers in
order, ready to be taken up by some faithful successor. It
should be added that Dr. Liddon was largely instrumental in
founding the two institutions at Oxford which are named after
Keble and Pusey ; and to the end he was equally interested in
the College and the House. But, of the remarkable literary
outcome of the Pusey House which this year has seen — the
book caUed Lux Mundi — he did not approve ; he thought it too
great a concession to modern criticism ; and he viewed its
publication and success with no little pain. Like Plato and
Luther, he found himself, before his death, outrun by his
pupils. Though Dr. Liddon did not mix very much in society, his
social gifts were very considerable. His manners were exquisitely
courteous ; he could tell a story to perfection ; and he had a
keen sense of humour. His weak health, however, and perhaps
a growing dissatisfaction with the position and prospects of his
beloved Church, kept him more and more in retirement, from
which he only emerged for the performance of his great public
duties.

PROFESSOR J. E. THOROLD ROGERS
Obituary Notice, Tuesday, October 14, 1890
We regret to announce the death of Mr. Thorold Rogers, the well-
known Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, which occurred
on Sunday night, somewhat suddenly perhaps, but not altogether
unexpectedly, at his residence at Oxford. Hardly any man of
his time has been better known or more conspicuous in Oxford for
the last thirty or forty years than Professor Rogers. His person
ality was at once impressive and aggressive, and even those to
whom it was least congenial were fain to acknowledge his peculiar
qualities and gifts. He was educated at King's College, in
London, and matriculated in due course at Magdalen Hall, a
society which at that time was not remarkable for academical
distinction, though Jacobson, afterwards Regius Professor of
Divinity and Bishop of Chester, had been its vice-principal, and
Macbride, a lay divine of high Evangelical repute, was and re
mained for long afterwards its principal. Rogers obtained a
first class in classics under the old system in 1846, and might
well have looked forward to a distinguished academical career.
But open FeUowships were rare in the days before the first Uni
versity Commission, and Rogers never obtained one. The circum
stance may perhaps account for the bitterness with which in after
years he was wont to attack the University system, though it
must be acknowledged that his criticisms were occasionally just
as well as pointed.
After taking his degree Rogers took holy orders, and for
some years in early manhood was either curate or incumbent
of Headington Quarry, a poor and somewhat neglected district
in the neighbourhood of Oxford. But the bent of his mind

284 EMINENT PERSONS
and temperament was decidedly anti -clerical, and though he
stiU retained the title of reverend for several years he subse
quently relinquished it, having been largely instrumental in
procuring the passing of the statute whereby clerks in holy
orders are now enabled to divest themselves of the disabilities
attaching to the sacred office. He married early and settled in
Oxford, taking private pupils in large numbers, occasionaUy
examining in the schools, devoting himself to literary pursuits,
and graduaUy taking a large share in the administrative business
of the University — he used often to declare that he was the largest
holder of unpaid offices in Oxford and to contrast himself in that
respect with the more fortunate holders of comfortable sinecures.
His reading was wide and varied, including a vast range of
classical and modern literature, but his scholarship was discursive
rather than profound, and perhaps somewhat deficient in accuracy.
It was one of the disappointments of his life that the Delegates of
the Clarendon Press declined many years ago to undertake the
publication of an Aristotelian dictionary which he had prepared
with much labour and erudition.
In 1 862 he became a candidate for the Professorship of Political
Economy founded by Henry Drummond, and vacated at that
time by the retirement of Charles Neate, sometime FeUow of
Oriel and M.P. for the city of Oxford. The Chair was at that
time tenable for five years, but the Professor was re-eligible, the
election being vested in the Convocation of the University.
Rogers, though a noted Liberal and a friend of Bright and
Cobden, with the latter of whom he was connected by marriage,
had not at that time become notorious and obnoxious in certain
quarters as a Radical politician, and he was elected without diffi
culty. He devoted himself with characteristic energy to the
duties of his office, and his studies thenceforth took that dis
tinctively economical turn which resulted some years afterwards
in the publication of his well-known History of Agriculture
and Prices in England — a learned and elaborate work founded
largely on his own personal examination of the accounts of
several of the colleges of Oxford, especially those of Merton
College. He was a stimulating and suggestive lecturer, inter
spersing his graver disquisitions with many a racy anecdote, not
always of a strictly academical type. But his labours in the
Chair of Political Economy were not destined to be continued
without intermission. When the time came for his re-election

PROFESSOR J. E. THOROLD ROGERS 285
in 1868 an opposition was raised in circumstances which we
described as follows in recording the death of Professor Bonamy
Price in 1888 :
" The Chair had been held for the previous five years by Mr.
Thorold Rogers, and Mr. Rogers offered himseK for re-election.
He had, however, made himself highly unpopular with the
Conservative majority of Convocation, and especially with its
leaders in Oxford, by his extreme political opinions and his
not too discreet expression of them. The contest was accord
ingly waged, not so much by the candidates themselves as by
thbir respective supporters, on purely party grounds. In special
qualifications for the duties of the Chair the two candidates were
not unequal, and no attempt was made by his opponents to impugn
the fideUty, industry, and ability with which Mr. Rogers had
discharged those duties. Both were Liberals in politics, but Mr.
Price, though at one time an advanced Liberal, was now incUning
towards the right wing of his party, while Mr. Rogers was
regarded by his opponents as an extreme, and even dangerous,
Radical. An active canvass was conducted, less in favour of
Mr. Price than in opposition to Mr. Rogers, and political ani
mosities of thai peculiar type which characterised Convocation
and inspired its local leaders in those days were enlisted on behalf
of Mr. Rogers's opponent. The result was a foregone conclusion.
Mr. Price was elected by a large majority, the University
obtained an exceUent professor, and Mr. Rogers was duly
punished for his political opinions."
The only effect on Rogers was to intensify his Radical
sympathies and to leave him more unmuzzled than ever in the
expression of his poUtical opinions. He began to take a more
active part in politics, and in 1874 he was an unsuccessful
candidate for Scarborough. In the general election of 1880 he
was returned for Southwark as a colleague of Mr. Arthur Cohen,
Q.C., and he represented that borough until it was divided by
the Redistribution of Seats Act, when he became a candidate for
Bermondsey and was returned for that division in the general
election of 1885. But in 1886, having declared himself in
favour of the Gladstonian policy for Ireland, he was defeated by
the present Conservative member, Mr. Lafone.
It is unnecessary, and would not be very profitable for us
to follow Mr. Rogers's Parliamentary career in detail. He will
be remembered not as a politician — for in this capacity he pre-

286 EMINENT PERSONS
sented the more aggressive and least temperate side of his
character to the public gaze — but as a man of letters, a student,
and a dUigent, thoughtful, and suggestive compiler of economical
data and statistics. On the death of Mr. Bonamy Price, with
whom after some few years of estrangement his personal re
lations had become cordial and friendly, he was re-elected to the
Chair of Political Economy, from which he had been some
what unceremoniously ousted twenty years before. The election
had now been transferred to a Board of which Lord Salisbury, as
Chancellor of the University, and Mr. Goschen, as ChanceUor
of the Exchequer, were members, and it was generally believed
at the time that both statesmen, forgetting political differences,
and recognising the value of Rogers's economical researches,
concurred in his nomination. For the last year or two it was
evident to his friends that his health was seriously impaired,
and his death, though somewhat premature, for he was by no
means as old as he looked, can hardly have come as a surprise to
those who observed his rapidly aging figure and the decay of
his once inexhaustible vivacity.
Professor Rogers's contributions to economical and political
literature were numerous and important. We. have aUeady
mentioned his History of Agriculture and Prices, and to this
may be added his Six Centuries of Work and Wages. He
edited the speeches of his friends Bright and Cobden, pro
duced for the Clarendon Press an annotated edition of Adam
Smith's Wealth of Nations, and collected and edited, with histori
cal elucidations, the Protests of the House of Lords. His minor
works, often the product of wide reading and research, are too
numerous for detailed mention.
Of his personal character many different estimates will be
formed by those who knew him in different capacities. He was
boisterous and uncompromising in the expression of his often
aggressive opinions, but of kindly nature and generous'sympathies.
His talk was racy and often too full-bodied to satisfy a fastidious
taste, but he was generally well worth hearing, for his knowledge
was wide and various, and he applied it with no little ingenuity
to the support of the opinions he espoused. His wife survives him,
and he leaves several children. His eldest son died very suddenly
some years ago — it was uncertain whether by his own hand or as
the result of an untoward accident. Many of the late Professor's
friends wiU recollect the very touching letter which he wrote

PROFESSOR J. E. THOROLD ROGERS 287
on that occasion in response to their widespread expressions of
sympathy and in repudiation of the hypothesis of suicide. A
younger son distinguished himself some ten years ago by a
brilliant mathematical career at the University. His only
daughter was trained by her father in classical studies, and was
the first lady admitted to the privileges of University examina
tion at Oxford who obtained a distinction pronounced by the
examiners to be equivalent in all respects to a first class in
Classical Moderations.

SIR RICHARD BURTON
Obituary Notice, Tuesday, October 21, 1890
We announce with much regret the death of Sir Richard Burton,
the eminent Eastern traveller and Orientalist, at the age of
sixty -nine. In him there has passed away one of the most
remarkable and cosmopolitan, and at the same time one of the
most scholarly, explorers of our time. Sir Richard Burton's
name is in popular estimation associated with Africa, and
rightly so, for there he did his most valuable and most original
work. His discovery of Lake Tanganyika, especially when
combined with that of the Victoria Nyanza by his companion
Speke, deserves to rank with Stanley's memorable journeys.
He and his companions were lions in their day, and if the
excitement then was less than it has been over Mr. Stanley's
recent expedition, it was not due to the fact that the geographical
work they did was less important or accomplished with less
hazard. The conditions which fan excitement and nurse en
thusiasm had not reached the development thirty years ago
which they have attained now.
Richard Francis Burton was born on 19th March 1821, at
Barham House, Herts, the son of Colonel Netterville Burton,
of the 36th Regiment, and his wife Martha Baker. Richard's
grandfather was rector of Tuam, in Ireland, and his grand-uncle
Bishop of Killala. They were the first of the family to settle in
Ireland, and belonged to the Burtons of Barker Hill, near Shap,
Westmoreland, who, again, are connected with some of the
leading Burton families all over the kingdom. Much of Richard
Burton's eccentricity was inherited both on the father's and
mother's side. Most of his boyhood and youth was spent at

SIR RICHARD BURTON 2^9
Tours and in wandering with his restless father over the
Continent, from one temporary place of residence to another.
Burton's training and education were thus of an irregular and
spasmodic character, ill fitted to qualify him for the routine of
an official career. It, however, fostered his powers of observation,
and gave him ample opportunity of exercising his wonderful
faculty for the acquisition of languages. The Burton children
were left very much to themselves, so that Richard's innate
wayward disposition had little check.
At last, in 1840, the family returned to England, and
young Burton was entered at Oxford, going into residence at
Trinity College in the Michaelmas Term of that year. His
previous training was not conducive to compliance with
Oxford ways. He was leader in the wildest pranks of his time ;
in Latin and Greek he made little headway, but he quickly
mastered Arabic. Burton soon got disgusted with University
life and resolved to quit it. This he did by deliberately
attending a race meeting against orders, and was of course " sent
down." This was precisely what he wanted. When he arrived
suddenly in London (in 1842), he told his friends that he had
been aUowed an extra vacation for taking a double first-class
with the very highest honours. Of course the truth was soon
discovered, and in the end he obtained a commission in the East
India Company's service. He sailed from England on 18th
June 1842, his only companion being a bull-terrier of the
Oxford breed. He landed at Bombay on 28th October, and was
posted as ensign to the 1 8th Regiment Bombay Native Infantry,
which he joined at Baroda. He soon became master of Hindu
stani and fencing, and astonished his fellow -officers and dis
pleased his superiors by the eccentricities of his conduct.
Nevertheless in 1843 he was made regimental interpreter,
and succeeded in indulging his wandering propensities by
expeditions to various parts of India. Burton's career as
an explorer, however, may be said to have begun in 1852,
when he undertook, in the disguise of a Pathan, that
journey to Medina and Mecca, the description of which forms
one of the most interesting of his many narratives. His life
thenceforth, until he settled down as Consul at Trieste, was an
almost uninterrupted series of exploring expeditions. Before
this (1851) he had published a volume on Scinde, giving the
results of his observations while resident in the "unhappy
VOL. iv u

290 EMINENT PERSONS
vaUey," and in the same year a volume on Goa and the Blue
Mountains. t
Burton's next expedition was to Somaliland, even now but
little known, and then fuU of dangers. The expedition was
undertaken by the Directors of the East India Company, and
Burton was accompanied by Lieutenant Speke. The expedition
left Aden at the end of 1854, and Burton alone, again in disguise,
succeeded, amid the greatest risks, in entering the sacred city of
Harrar. Returning again to Berbera in the beginning of 1855,
Burton intended to penetrate to the NUe, but shortly after
landing the expedition was attacked, Burton and Speke being
wounded, and narrowly escaping with their Uves. The narrative
of this hazardous expedition was published in 1856, under the
title of First Footsteps in East Africa.
After a run to Constantinople in 1856, in the vain hope of
being employed in the war against Russia, Burton returned to
England still more disgusted with officiaUsm, and stiU more
determined to distinguish himself as an African explorer. He
now undertook, after a trial trip to Zanzibar and other coast
towns, the expedition into the heart of Africa on which his
fame wiU mainly- rest. For years rumours had been reaching
the coast of great lakes in the interior ; and Krapf and
Rebmann, two missionaries, had actually seen a snow-covered
mountain just under the equator. Livingstone had made his
great journey across the continent (he arrived in England in
December 1856), and had aroused an interest in Africa which
has been increasing in intensity ever since. We have heard
much recently of the great lakes and rivers and mountains
which covered the old maps of Africa, but which D'Anville
rightly swept away. A great lake was reported to exist in
the Zanzibar interior, and it was to find this that Burton and
his companion Speke left Zanzibar in June 1857, under the
auspices of the Royal Geographical Society. For the first time
the route which has now become a weU-trodden highway, from
Bagamoyo to Ujiji, was traversed by the feet of white men.
After more than the usual trouble, a final start was made, and
through many trials and sufferings Ujiji was reached on 14th
February 1858, about eight months from leaving Bagamoyo.
Thus the first of those great lakes of Central Africa which
probably form its most remarkable feature found its place on the
map. Moreover, the expedition went over hundreds of miles

SIR RICHARD BURTON 291
of new country, and in addition Speke made a run to the north
to find that other great lake, Victoria Nyanza, around which
English and German interests have of late been mainly
centred. Altogether this may be regarded as one of the most
notable of African expeditions, and Burton was rightly hailed
on his return to England in 1859 as an explorer of the first
rank. He weU deserved the gold medal which the Royal
Geographical Society awarded him and the many other honours
which were showered upon him. He may justly be regarded
as the pioneer in a region where subsequently splendid work was
done by Livingstone, Cameron, and Stanley. To the unhappy
dispute which foUowed between Burton and Speke, and which
gave rise to so much bitter feeling, it is not necessary to do
more than aUude.
After a run to the United States in 1860, when Burton
visited Salt Lake City and the West (about which he wrote in
his City of the Saints), he was once more back in Africa. Mean
time, 22nd January 1861, he had married the lady who has
been his loyal and helpful companion through life. Lady
Burton belongs to the ArundeUs of Wardour. In August
1861 Burton and his bride sailed for "the Foreign Office
Grave," Fernando Po, to which he had been appointed Consul.
His three years' stay here was spent in exploring the whole
of the coast region round the Bight of Biafra, varied by a
special mission to the King of Dahomey, the results of which
are recorded in two separate works. Burton's excellent work
in this unhealthy region brought him promotion, and in 1865
he went as British Consul to Sao Paulo, in Brazil. As usual,
this born explorer could not rest. He traversed all his
province, voyaged down the San Francisco, visited the La
Plata States, and subsequently crossed the continent to Chili
and Peru, returning by the Straits of Magellan. As usual the
result was a big book, The Highlands of Brazil (1869).
From Brazil Burton was transferred to Damascus, where he
landed in October 1869. Damascus he made the basis of an
exploration of Syria, but on the reduction of the Consulate he
returned to England in 1871. A visit to Iceland in 1872
resulted in an elaborate work on the island, one of the most
complete in our language. In the same year Burton was
appointed to the Consulship at Trieste, and that post he filled
till the day of his death. But even there he could not rest.

292 EMINENT PERSONS
In 1876 and 1877-78 he made two visits to the Land of Midian
to explore the old mines, the result being two works, too full
of learning to be quite popular. In 1882, in company with
Commander Cameron, Burton made an expedition to the interior
of the Gold Coast for the purpose of prospecting the mines in
that unhealthy region, but the only result was another book.
This may be regarded as Burton's last expedition. Since
then his health began graduaUy to break down, and no wonder,
considering the hardships he had had to endure from his boy
hood upwards. But idleness with Burton meant unhappiness,
and if he were not exploring, he was engaged in some scholarly
investigation or some literary enterprise. His translation of
Camoens (1880) is in itself a masterly performance, abounding
with the most recondite and learned annotations. His Uteral
translation of the Arabian Nights is the work of an accom
plished Eastern scholar, who could treat the curious questions
suggested by these stories of a comparatively primitive Ufe with
the frankness and some of the recklessness of science. Many
memoirs and papers, besides the works we have mentioned,
have come from Burton's busy hand, all of them marked by
that keen research, frank criticism, and scholarly annotation
which make his works a mine of knowledge, but which at the
same time render them somewhat difficult reading.
Burton, as might have been expected, was never an official
favourite, and his numerous friends are of opinion that his
many services entitled him long ago to a handsome retiring
pension ; but Government was inexorable, and his only reward
was a K.O.M.G., bestowed in 1886. Notwithstanding the
apparent brusqueness of his manner and the frankness of his
talk, Burton had many warm friends. No man ever succeeded
better with the natives either of Africa or Asia ; indeed, with
barbarism he had almost more sympathy than with civUisation.
He was a man of real humanity and an unwavering friend.
Like Livingstone and Stanley, .he was one of those determined
men of action who carry out their purpose through every
obstacle. As an observer he was keen and accurate, and, in
spite of his perplexingly aUusive style, was clear and graphic
in his descriptions. In many respects Richard Burton was
one of the most remarkable men of his time ; but he will
probably be longest remembered as the first pioneer in Central
Africa, the discoverer of Lake Tanganyika.

SIR BARNES PEACOCK
Obituary Notice, Thursday, December 4, 1890
Sir Barnes Peacock, the last acting paid member of the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council appointed under the statute
of 1871, died yesterday morning at 40 Cornwall Gardens,
Kensington, from failure of the heart, the final sign of the
wearing out of a vigorous constitution which had resisted Bengal
summers and London winters since 1810. Sir Barnes Peacock
had a hereditary connection with the law. He was the third
son of Mr. Lewis H. Peacock, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, solicitor,
and entered at the Inner Temple at the age of eighteen. He was
not immediately caUed to the Bar, but practised for five or six
years as a certificated special pleader at 1 Paper Buildings, a
mode of preparation for the career of an advocate which was
then very often adopted. Admitted to the degree of barrister-
at-law in 1836 he joined the Home Circuit, when Lord
Bramwell was among his contemporaries, and had chambers in
Harcourt Buildings. As might have been expected from his
physique and training, Mr. Peacock's speciality was in raising
and arguing refined points of law rather than in imposing his
wiU upon common juries, and it was by a nicety of criminal
pleading that he made his great mark in the profession.
In 1843 Daniel O'Connell had entered upon his campaign of
monster meetings for the repeal of the Union. Beginning with
an assemblage of 30,000 at Trim on 14th March, the numbers
at these gatherings had increased to 250,000 at Tara, and on
the 8th of October a stiU vaster multitude was expected to
assemble at Clontarf. The Government prohibited the Clontarf
meeting by proclamation, and arrested O'ConneU, Gavan Duffy,

294 EMINENT PERSONS
and others. O'ConneU was sentenced to a year's imprisonment
and a fine of £2000 ; the Irish Court of Queen's Bench upheld
the conviction ; and the accused appealed by way of writ of error
to the House of Lords. Not even the recent legal proceedings in
relation to Irish matters more vividly excited the public interest
and attention than did this State trial. The case was argued
for the several defendants by a number of learned counsel, of
whom the then Mr. Barnes Peacock was nearly the junior,
taking precedence only of Sir Colman O'Loghlen. Sir Thomas
WUde (afterwards the first Lord Truro) was the leader of this
band of counsel, while FoUett and Thesiger (afterwards Lord
Chelmsford) were against them for the Crown. Mr. Peacock
took an objection which, though technical in point of form,
brought in question the substantial justice of the proceedings.
The whole bench of English Common Law Judges had been
called in to advise the Law Lords. One of the most acute, Mr.
Baron Parke of the Exchequer (afterwards Lord Wensleydale),
confessed and avoided what he styled " the ingenious argument
of Mr. Peacock."
But when the Law Lords came to give judgment (which
they did in the teeth of the advice solicited from and given by
the judges), Lord Denman delivered his elaborate speech adopt
ing the objection of Mr. Peacock, and on that and another
ground moved the House to reverse the decision of the Irish
Court. Lord Cottenham and Lord Campbell supported the
same view, and, in spite of the opinion of the Chancellor
(Lyndhurst) and Lord Brougham, the sentence pronounced upon
O'Connell and his companions was quashed and the prisoners
released from custody.
The occasion was rendered the more striking historically
because at this trial the lay lords practically renounced their
right to take part in the decision of legal appeals. Messrs.
Clark and Finnelly, the House of Lords' reporters, quote com
paratively modern instances in which a case involving the rights
of individuals was discussed and voted on in the House of Lords
as if an ordinary debate on a poUtical subject or a private Bill
had been in question. So, in the O'Connell appeal, Lord
Stradbroke wished to vote against the acquittal ; but the
common-sense and fairness of the House, even of those most
bitterly opposed to O'Connell, prevaUed, and a precedent against
the interference of those peers who have not the training of

SIR BARNES PEACOCK 295
lawyers with the judicial business of the House was definitively
established. The argument by which Mr. Barnes Peacock on
this great occasion prevailed was briefly as follows : The
indictment was of monstrous length, and contained several
counts or separate charges. Some of these counts were held to
be void in law. Yet the verdict and judgment were general ;
that is, given generally upon the whole of the indictment, not
separately on each separate count. The objection was that such
general judgment was bad and could not be taken to apply to
the good counts only. The other objection (for which Mr.
Peacock was not responsible) was founded upon a curtaUment
of the jury panel.
Sir Joseph Arnould, from whose account of the trial we
have freely borrowed in this summary, observes that the decision
in O'ConneU's case has entirely put an end to the loose practice
which had so long prevailed of giving a general verdict and
judgment on an indictment comprising several distinct charges.
It is obvious that such a practice deprived the accused of the
opportunity of meeting each charge one by one. But the.
practice had long prevailed, and Lord Denman said, referring
to Mr. Peacock's address, which had converted him, " I
felt, as my learned brothers did, great surprise when I heard
the most able and ingenious argument that was addressed
to the House on this point, and I confess I had never felt
any doubt on the subject tiU that argument was submitted to
my mind."
After this great victory, as brilUant and useful a success as a
stuff gownsman could achieve, Mr. Peacock practised six years
on the back benches. He took silk in 1850, and was at once
made a Bencher of his Inn. Two years later he was appointed
to be a Legal Member of the Supreme Council of India at
Calcutta. A special pleader necessarily cultivates precision and
accuracy of language. The work of the legal members of the
Council of India is largely concerned with codification, and the
training which Sir Barnes Peacock had received in the painful
exactitude of the common law was naturaUy of great service to
him in fulfilling his new functions. Sir Whitley Stokes couples
his name with those of Macaulay, Sir Henry Maine, Sir James
Stephen, Lord Hobhouse, and William Macpherson among the
authors of the Indian Codes, those remarkable summaries of law
compiled by Englishmen for India, which in turn have exer-

296 EMINENT PERSONS
cised and are still exercising a valuable reciprocal action in
simplifying English law in England.
Sir Barnes Peacock was destined not only to frame laws, but
to expound them on the Bench. In 1859 Sir James Colvile,
with whom Sir Barnes Peacock afterwards sat so many years in
the chamber of the Judicial Committee in Downing Street,
retired from the Chief Justiceship of the Supreme Court of
Calcutta. Sir Barnes Peacock succeeded him, was made Vice-
President of the Legislative Council of India, and knighted. In
1862, when the Indian judicial institutions were remodelled,
he became Chief Justice of what was henceforth called the High
Court of Judicature at Bengal. The judgments of the Court
have been of the greatest assistance to students of Indian law,
not only as expositions of the Codes, but as repositories of
learning on native customs.
In 1870 Sir Barnes Peacock returned to this country, and
he has since 1872 been a member of the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council, which has in later years, some time sub
sequently to his appointment, been strengthened by the addition
of the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. He returned with a great
and deserved reputation from India. His work at the Privy
Council has been marked rather by caution than by showy or
brilliant qualities. He gave evidence of possessing great endur
ance and persistence, and we reported on Monday a case in
which he took part so recently as last Saturday. His illness
lasted only three days, and on its fatal termination being com
municated yesterday to the Court in which he had sat for
eighteen years, it immediately adjourned as a mark of respect
to his memory. Sir Barnes Peacock was twice married, first in
1835 to Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. W. Fanning. She died in
1865, and he wedded in 1870 Georgina, daughter of Major-
General Showers, C.B., who survives him. His eldest son, Mr.
Frederick Barnes Peacock, C.S.I., has attained high office in the
Indian Civil Service.

LORD COTTESLOE
Obituary Notice, Thursday, December 4, 1890
It is with much regret that we announce that Lord Cottesloe
died at Swanbourne, his residence near Winslow, Bucks, yester
day morning, at the great age of nearly ninety-three years. The
deceased nobleman came of an ancient Hampshire family, which
in the middle of last century migrated into Buckinghamshire.
His grandfather, Mr. ' John Fremantle, was for some time
Secretary to the Customs Board. This gentleman's third son,
Sir Thomas Francis Fremantle, was an eminent naval officer.
He took part in the battle of Copenhagen, and was with Nelson
at Trafalgar. For his eminent services he was advanced to the
rank of Vice-Admiral of the Blue, and was created a G.C.B.
He was also the recipient of many distinguished foreign orders,
and was created by the Emperor Francis Knight Commander of
the Order of Maria Theresa and a Baron of the Austrian
Empire. Admiral Fremantle, who became a baronet in 1821,
had married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of the late Mr.
Richard Wynne, of Falkingham, Lincolnshire. By this lady he
had five sons and four daughters. His eldest son and successor,
Thomas Francis Fremantle (the peer who died yesterday), was
born on the 11th of March 1798. The second son, Admiral
Sir Charles Howe Fremantle, G.C.B., attained considerable
distinction in the Crimean War ; and the third son, William
Robert Fremantle, D.D., who is well known in the Church,
became Dean of Ripon.
Lord Cottesloe was educated at Eton and at Oriel College,
Oxford, where he took his degree with high honours in the year
1819. As Sir Thomas Fremantle, he entered Parliament at

298 EMINENT PERSONS
the general election of 1826, being elected for Buckingham in
the Conservative interest. The first time he addressed the
House of Commons was in connection with the labourers and
the Poor Laws. He gave his personal testimony as to the
abuses of the Poor Laws in his own vicinity. In the session
of 1829 he returned to the subject, strongly condemning the
existing mode of paying labourers' wages. He showed that
under its influence whole districts had been reduced to pauperism ;
and asserted that aU the labourers in the country would be
placed in a simUar situation if the practice were aUowed to
continue. In many parishes the labourers were put up to
auction, and their labour sold for 2s. or 4s. per week. Sir
Thomas Fremantle was appointed in 1833 chairman of a
Select Committee to inquire into the bribery which had been
prevalent at Stafford in Parliamentary elections. The facts
brought before the committee were of so heinous a character
that it was resolved to recommend the disfranchisement of the
borough. It was proved that there were not more than 200
persons out of the whole electorate who had not taken bribes in
money. Sir Thomas brought in a disfranchising BiU, and
although it met with much opposition its introducer succeeded
in carrying it through.
When Sir Robert Peel came into office for a brief period in
1834, Sir Thomas Fremantle was appointed one of the Secre
taries to the Treasury. This office he also held for three years
in Peel's Administration of 1841. In 1844, however, he was
offered the important post of Secretary at War, and in 1845-46
— the last year of Sir Robert Peel's Administration — he was
Chief Secretary for Ireland. In the session of 1845 there was
a good deal of excitement respecting the dismissal of Lord Lucan
from the Irish magistracy, and his subsequent restoration to the
bench ; and it feU to Sir Thomas Fremantle to defend the course
taken by the Government. When the Maynooth CoUege Bill
was introduced by Sir Robert Peel, he took a prominent
part in the discussions. Speaking on the second reading, he
answered some of the objections raised by Mr. Gladstone.
He asked if it was to be supposed, whether they gave a
better or a worse education to the priests, that the extension
of the priesthood or of the Catholic religion would be affected
one way or another by the education or the non-education of
these individuals 1 At a later stage of the measure Sir Thomas

LORD COTTESLOE 299
Fremantle delivered a lengthy speech, advocating a policy of
liberaUty towards the Roman Catholics. The speech was a
well-reasoned one, and full of weighty arguments, which told
upon the House.
During his tenure of the Irish Secretaryship, Sir Thomas
Fremantle initiated many important legislative measures. One
of these was a Bill for establishing a central asylum for criminal
lunatics and for amending the Acts relating to lunatic asylums
in Ireland. This BiU he carried through the House, and it
became law. Another important measure was the Public
Works (Ireland) Bill, introduced in January 1846. Great
apprehension existed at this time of a deficiency of food in
Ireland in the ensuing spring and summer. The Government
were, therefore, desirous of affording every encouragement and
facUity for the employment of the population in public works
and otherwise. Sir Thomas Fremantle accordingly introduced
the above measure as the first step in this direction.
A few days later a second important step was taken, when
the Chief Secretary brought forward a BUI to afford encourage
ment to the construction of small piers and harbours, with the
object of extending the fisheries in Ireland. He proposed that
the sum of £50,000 should be voted, to extend over five years
at the rate of £10,000 a year, for the construction of piers and
harbours for fishery purposes. The Treasury, or Board of
Works, were to advance three-fourths of the sum required for
the construction of each of these piers and harbours, and the
remaining fourth was to be provided for in a way to be sub
sequently decided. A third important scheme introduced by
Sir Thomas Fremantle for the benefit of Ireland was a measure
amending the Drainage Acts, which were in a most unsatisfactory
condition. By the existing Acts the Government were empowered
to expend money for the promotion of public works in Ireland,
but the grant for that purpose was exhausted. It was therefore
proposed to vote a further sum out of the Exchequer which
would stimulate public enterprise and find employment for the
people ; and it was also proposed to provide for the further
drainage of the land, and to render the rivers navigable through
out the country. All these measures were successfully piloted
through the shoals and quicksands of Parliamentary debate, and
eventually became law. Their introducer was warmly compli
mented upon the skUl with which he had drawn the measures

300 EMINENT PERSONS
and the ability he displayed in explaining and defending their
provisions. Sir Thomas Fremantle resigned his seat for Buckingham in
1846, when he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Board
of Customs. He was subsequently promoted to the Chairman
ship of this department, a post wliich he held down to the year
1873. On the accession of Lord Beaconsfield to power, in
1874, he was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron
Cottesloe. Though the new peer was a constant attendant in
the House of Lords, his appearances as a speaker were not very
frequent. In the session of 1875 he took a considerable interest
in Lord Lyttelton's Bill for the Increase of the Episcopate, and
on the motion for the third reading he moved an amendment
limiting its operation to five places : Guildford or Southwark
(diocese of Winchester), Bodmin or Truro (Exeter), Southwell or
Nottingham (Lincoln), St. Albans (Rochester), and Liverpool
(Chester). He disclaimed hostility to the principle of the Bill,
but thought it unwise to send to the Lower House a measure
which provided for an indefinite extension of the Episcopate.
On the recommendation of the Government, the amendment
was not pressed.
A question of a very different character was raised in the
session of 1879, when Lord Cottesloe moved for a statement of
the trade of the United Kingdom with the United States of
America for the years 1873-78, in continuation of the annual
statement of trade for the year 1877. He adduced a formidable
array of statistics to prove that the balance of trade between this
country and America had been unfavourable to England, and
that while the exports had been faUing off year by year the im
ports had increased in a greater proportion. He maintained that
the information he asked for was necessary to enable aU persons
embarking their capital in trade and agriculture to know how
to conduct their business. It was not his intention, he said, to
complain of free trade. The only complaint was that free trade
had been too successful. It had added vastly to the wealth of
the country, and had introduced habits of luxury and increased
expenditure into all ranks of society. Neither was he in favour
of reciprocity. But, be the result of freedom of trade what it
might, it was weU to know thoroughly how matters stood and
where the shoe pinched, and for producers to understand how
it was that prices of agricultural produce had fallen in the

LORD COTTESLOE 301
markets of the United Kingdom. The return asked for by his
lordship was prepared and produced, and it formed the subject
of much comment in the newspapers.
Lord Cottesloe took a considerable interest in the temperance
question, and was a member of the Select Committee of the
House of Lords on Intemperance wliich sat in 1880. Another
question in the ventilation of which he took an active part was
that of safety in railway travelling. When the lamentable fatal
accident occurred to Sir F. Goldsmid on the MetropoUtan
RaUway, his lordship brought the matter before the House of
Lords, and he spoke upon the general subject on other occasions,
Lord Beaconsfield thanking him in the course of one discussion
for Iris soUcitude upon this question.
The deceased peer married in 1824 Louisa Elizabeth, eldest
daughter of Field-Marshal Sir George Nugent, and by her he
had a family of five sons and six daughters. His eldest son
(now the second Baron Cottesloe), born in 1830, is married to a
sister of the Earl of Eldon. His second son, the Rev. W. H.
Fremantle, is a Canon of Canterbury, and a weU-known liberal
clergyman ; the third son, Mr. Charles W. Fremantle, C.B., is
Deputy Master of the Mint ; and the fourth son, Vice-Admiral
Sir Edmund Fremantle, K.C.B., C.M.G., Naval Aide-de-Camp to
the Queen, served in the Burmese War of 1852 and the Ashantee
campaign of 1874, and recently, while in command of the East
India station, has distinguished himseK in the delicate operations
which have resulted from British co-operation with Germany on
the East African coast. The fifth son, who was in holy orders,
predeceased his father. The dignity of Baron of the Austrian
Empire, conferred upon Lord Cottesloe's father, was continued
to Lord Cottesloe, who had the royal permission to bear the
arms and use the title of such baron.
On completing his ninetieth year Lord Cottesloe celebrated
the event by inviting his friends to receive the Holy Com
munion with him at St. Michael's, Chester Square. No fewer than
sixty friends responded, including Sir Harry Verney (himself
then eighty-seven years of age), Lord and Lady Midleton, Mr.
and the Hon. Mrs. Farrer, the Hon. St. John Brodrick, M.P.,
General Julian HaU,*Mr. Nugent, and many members of the
Fremantle family. The noble lord's chUdren and grandchildren
subsequently presented him with a cabinet in which to keep the
decorations gained by his father, who commanded a ship at

302 EMINENT PERSONS
Trafalgar, and his uncle, Sir W. Fremantle, K.C.B., an intimate
friend of George III. We may add the probably unprecedented
fact that Lord Cottesloe was present in the House of Commons
during the delivery of over fifty Budget speeches by various
Chancellors of the Exchequer.

MR. BARON HUDDLESTON
Obituary Notice, Saturday, December 6, 1890
With Mr. Baron Huddleston passes away one of the few relics
of an ancient order of things. Baron Pollock happily remains
with us, a soUtary survivor. The deceased Judge was often
humorously caUed during his life "the last of the Barons,"
as his was-the latest appointment to the old Court of Exchequer,
and the title by which he was always proud to be distinguished
was one of the most interesting in English history. It went
back to a period before the days of professional Judges,
when the barons of the realm sat and heard causes in the
Court of the King. After the regular courts kad been
established, the Court of King's Bench to try suits in which the
Crown was concerned, the Common Pleas to adjudicate between
subject and subject, the Barons of the Exchequer long remained
laymen in the eyes of the lawyers, a sort of Lords of the Treasury
or members of a non-Judicial Committee ; and accordingly it was
only in the absence of other Judges, and in the case of the superior
official of the Exchequer possessing a special personal qualifica
tion, that he was permitted to try ordinary questions in Utigation.
" If it happen," says the Statute of Edward IIL, " that none of
the Justices of the one Bench nor the other can come into the
country where the inquests or juries have to be taken, then the
Nisi Prius shaU be granted before the Chief Baron of the
Exchequer, if he be a Man of the Law (qi soit homme de lei)."
But the convenient practice of appointing men of law pre
vailed increasingly, as it has a tendency to do, and the men of
law contrived to draw much business into the Exchequer, by
allowing the attorneys ingeniously to aver that the plaintiff was

304 EMINENT PERSONS
the King's subject and could not pay his debt by reason of the
defendant's default. Accordingly, from the twenty -first year of
Elizabeth the Barons of the Exchequer, other than the Cursitor
Baron, were selected, like the rest of the Common Law Judges,
exclusively from the Serjeants-at-Law ; and Mr. Huddleston,
Q.C., who had been formally admitted a member of Serjeants' Inn
to qualify him for his seat in the Court of Common Pleas, was
thus rendered eligible for the place in the Court of Exchequer to
which he was shortly afterwards transferred.
John Walter Huddleston was born in 1817, the son of a
merchant captain, Thomas Huddleston, who had also some ex
perience in the Royal Navy, by that gentleman's marriage with
Alethea, daughter of Mr. H. Hichens, of St. Ives, Cornwall.
Captain Huddleston, when he retired from the sea, lived at Dublin,
and the late Judge matriculated in that city at Trinity CoUege.
He came to England to seek his fortune as usher in a school, but
afterwards made a more promising start in life as a barrister at the
Central Criminal Court. It is noteworthy that the Judge, whose
charm of manner and skiR in conversation made him afterwards
peculiarly acceptable in distinguished society, began his ascent
in not the most fashionable or promising surroundings. Mr.
Huddleston was admitted a student of Gray's Inn on 1 8th April
1836, and was caUed to the Bar by that society in the summer
of 1839. He took chambers in Hare Court, went the Oxford
Circuit, the Worcester and Stafford Sessions, and became a
dUigent attendant at the Old Bailey. Many quaint stories the
late Baron had to tell of his early training in that nursery of
advocates, when Charles PhilUpps was busily employed in
restoring burglars to their friends and relations, while a friendly
turnkey went up and down the corridors of Newgate touting for
dock briefs on behaK of another habitue' of the Court. Mr.
Huddleston brought into the Court quite another rank of
character and ability, and his early successes led him to add to
his field of practice the Middlesex Sessions, between which and
the Old Bailey Bar there has always been an intimate con
nection. In later forensic experience Mr. Huddleston is remembered
as admirable in the conduct of a cause, dangerous in cross-
examination, and above all things skilful in presenting his
points to the jury. It wUl be a surprise to many to learn that
in this early period of his career Mr. Huddleston's speciality lay

MR. BARON HUDDLESTON 305
in the argument of Poor Law cases, a province of law depending
on a great variety of statutes and decisions. It will have been
noted, however, by aU that, to the end, one of his most valuable
qualities was his lucidity. He was always at the greatest pains
to secure that what he meant should be clearly comprehended
by his hearers, and whUe still on his promotion he also took the
trouble to master legal problems, which had, however, in them
selves no fascination for his mind. A contemporary, whose
criticism was more brUliant and amusing when it was not checked
by the responsibility of print, has given the following sketch of
Mr. Huddleston and some of his principal antagonists at the
Middlesex Sessions. Referring to the Poor Law appeals, Serjeant
BaUantine writes, in his memoirs :
" These involved intricate points of law, and a great deal of
money was spent in ridiculous contests between parishes in
relation to the support of paupers. Mr. Bodkin, who afterwards
became Chairman, or as it was then called, Assistant- Judge, of
these sessions, was an extremely able advocate in this kind of
case, and from his early experience possessed much practical
knowledge. Mr. Clarkson, at first his usual antagonist, contrived
to blunder through them, but he and others shortly yielded to
Mr. Huddleston, afterwards and now a Baron of the late
Exchequer, and one whose mind was of an order peculiarly
qualified to master the technicalities of this description of
business. This gentleman was one of my earliest friends at the
Bar. He possessed qualities which made his success only a
matter of time. He was fond of society, but never neglected
work, and his thorough knowledge of his causes made him a
most powerful and efficient advocate. His career has been in
all respects a successful one, and there are few men who are
able to reflect, as he can, that both in public and in private life
he has attained every object of an honourable ambition."
Mr. Huddleston's position on the Oxford Circuit warranted
him in accepting sUk in 1857 from Lord Cranworth, then Lord
ChanceUor. He was at the same time elected a Bencher of
Gray's Inn, but continued to have his chambers in the Temple,
at No. 2 Paper BuUdings, to which he had removed from the
Inner Temple Lane, having left Hare Court in 1 844. Mr. Huddle
ston had already, in 1852, contested Worcester unsuccessfully as
a Conservative, and was in the year of his appointment as Queen's
Counsel again on the losing side at Shrewsbury. In 1859 and
vol. iv x

306 EMINENT PERSONS
in 1861 he fared equally iU at Kidderminster. At last Mr.
Huddleston went off to seek ParUamentary honours far away
from his circuit, and found a seat at Canterbury in 1865. He
gratified the Kentish growers by passing the Act for preventing
fraudulent marks on hops, but not even thus could he retain the
favour of the archiepiscopal city, and Parliament met without
him after the general election of 1868. Next came an un
successful assault on Norwich in 1870. Four years later Mr.
Gladstone went to the country with his famous bid for the
abolition of the income-tax.
In the meanwhile, Mr. Huddleston, Q.C., had sensibly in
creased his attractions in the eyes of electors by marrying Lady
Diana Beauclerk, sister of the Duke of St. Albans. The wedding
is thus laconicaUy recorded by Bishop Wilberforce, who charac-
teristicaUy forgets to mention in his diary the less highly-
placed of the parties to the union : " 1872, Dec, 18. To All
Saints', Knightsbridge. To marry Lady Di. Back, and to
Zanzibar Committee."
Lady Diana's ponies were often driven through the streets of
the East Anglian capital. The Duchess of St. Albans accom
panied her daughter, and proved an indefatigable canvasser.
Mr. Huddleston defeated Mr. TiUett by forty-seven votes, and
twelve months afterwards Mr. Disraeli offered him the SoUcitor-
Generalship. It had fallen vacant in painful circumstances.
During the long exclusion of the Tories from office Sir John
Karslake had become over-ripe for that partial retirement which
the judicial bench affords to leading advocates. Compelled to
keep in the front rank and to compete for place in it with the
keenest inteUects of the day, Sir John Karslake had overtasked
his magnificent endowments, and the failure of the nervous
powers which was shortly to prove fatal to him had already
attacked his eyesight and rendered him now incapable of «ven
the lighter work of the bench. Sir Richard Baggallay, succeed
ing to the Attorney-Generalship, left the post of Solicitor to be
filled up. Mr. Huddleston, however, did not feel sufficiently
sure of his seat to court re-election. He refused the law officer-
¦ ship, while reserving his claims to a judgeship, and Sir John
Holker, who was considerably his junior, went into place.
Mr. Huddleston was now incontestably among the leaders of his
profession, and had for many years been undisputed head on the
Oxford Circuit. In 1865 he had succeeded Mr. Phinn, Q,C, as

MR. BARON HUDDLESTON 307
Judge Advocate of the Fleet and counsel to the Admiralty, and
although he knew less of the lines of a ship than of the points
of a horse, he yet managed to hold his own against the skilled
mercantile lawyers of his day, men like Mr. Field and Sir G.
Honyman, wherever knowledge of human nature and adroitness
in influencing a finding on the facts could come in to supplement
a comparatively superficial study of the law reports. A familiar
figure as counsel in the Divorce Court, where he has been heard
repeatedly impressing upon a common jury the precise signi
ficance of French words of endearment, which he pronounced,
probably on purpose, with the most EngUsh of accents ; often
briefed in the most important civil cases in London, as invariably
on his circuit, — he still went for great trials to the Old Bailey,
where, in 1871, he conducted one of the most memorable and
successful defences, that of Edward Pook, who was accused of
the murder of a servant-girl named Clousen in a deserted lane
near Eltham in Kent.
A murder of the foulest dye had certainly been committed,
there were circumstances of suspicion against the young man,
the police had made up their minds from the first that he was
guilty, and the zeal of some members of the force had con
siderably outrun their discretion. Mr. Huddleston annihilated
the evidence of one important witness, Perrin, a singer, on
cross-examination, pointed out the weaknesses of the pro
secution, and then attacked the police as severely as if his
instructions had been similar to the time-honoured "No case,
abuse the opposing attorney." Chief Justice Bovill seconded-
his efforts, and the verdict of the jury was an acquittal ; but
feeUng ran high on the subject in the town of Greenwich, where
the girl and the prisoner had Uved ; stump orators on
Blackheath continued most unfairly to denounce the accused
person, and proceedings for defamation were by no means so
invariably successful as had been Mr. Huddleston's defence at the
trial. Almost equally victorious was his defeat, turned afterwards
into a substantial victory, in the case of Toomer or Toomey tried
on circuit for a felonious offence against the chastity of a woman.
The girl's story prevailed with both judge and jury, but the
decision seemed monstrous to those who read the evidence
calmly and uninfluenced by the beauty of the principal witness.
Mainly, we believe, through the intervention of an accomplished

308 EMINENT PERSONS
Irish lawyer, now Lord Justice Barry, Mr. Spencer Walpole
re-investigated the case. The Home Secretary, sitting with two
assessors, caUed witnesses and counsel before him. Mr. Huddle
ston argued, as it were on appeal, not in Court indeed, but yet
before a trained lawyer. It was clear that the verdict ought not
to stand, and the convict was pardoned by Her Majesty.
It would be impossible to mention all the causes ceUbres with
which Mr. Huddleston was concerned. He defended one of the
Chartists, prosecuted in the Countess of Derwentwater's case, was
junior to Sir Alexander Cockburn in the prosecution of Dr.
Palmer, the betting-man and medical practitioner, for wholesale
poisoning at Rugeley ; and he vindicated the character of Mrs.
Firebrace in the court for matrimonial cases.
In February 1875, Sir G. Honyman having retired from Ul-
health after a very brief period of service as Judge, Mr. Huddle
ston was appointed in his stead, took his seat at the Common
Pleas, was duly knighted, and was in May of the same year
transferred to the Court of Exchequer, on the death of Mr.
Baron Pigott. He proved on the bench what is caUed a strong
Judge, taking a view of his own, and almost invariably leading
the jury to the same opinion. His court, which he always
insisted on having heated and protected from currents of air till
the atmosphere was oppressive to the verge of endurance, was
enlivened by the genial exercise of his great powers of memory
and of anecdote. One day he communicated to his hearers a
valuable unreported precedent, to wit, that he himseK had
granted an injunction whUe walking on the pier at Brighton,
and he added that Vice-ChanceUor Sir Lancelot Shadwell had
made a similar order while bathing in the Thames.
His stories had usually a real bearing on the matter in hand,
and were far from being told without a purpose. Thus he
encouraged counsel, the counsel be it remembered for the side
which the Judge thought to have the better case, in the
" RosherviUe bear" action (in which he influenced the jury to
give £400 damages for the bite of a bear) by recounting a story
well known on the Oxford Circuit. A bearish Judge had been
finding fault with Mr. Maule, and in the course of his observa
tions spoke of him as a chUd. The retort was that it was
better to be a child than to be a bear, for a child might become
a man, but a bear would always remain a brute. He was
named in the special Commission in 1882 to try Maclean for

MR. BARON HUDDLESTON 309
high treason ; but his best-known trial was that of the action of
" Belt v. Lawes," in which he asserted the rights of juries to be
art-critics for themselves, and won a verdict of £5000 for Mr.
Richard Belt against Mr. C. B. Lawes. Judgment, though
giver, with costs, was not fruitful upon execution. The successful
plaintiff and the unsuccessful defendant went through the Bank
ruptcy Court. A stiU worse fate awaited the plaintiff. He was
brought up on another matter at the Old BaUey, found guUty, and
sentenced by Mr. Justice Stephen to twelve months' imprisonment.
Another action in which a jury directed by Mr. Baron Huddleston
gave heavy damages was that of " Bryce v. Rusden." An author
writing a history of New Zealand was informed that a states
man of the colony had committed atrocious cruelties. The
historian pubUshed the inteUigence thus communicated, but
unfortunately he had been deceived by the political opponents
of the man traduced. In the impartial atmosphere of Nisi
Prius the charges proved baseless, and the disseminator of the
libels was heavily mulcted. It is impossible not to pity the
Thucydides whose Cleon Uved and instructed counsel.
On many occasions, outside merely professional or Parlia
mentary life, Mr. Baron Huddleston has sustained rdles
of dignity and importance. He represented Gray's Inn at the
funeral of Berryer in 1868, pronounced an dloge in French over
the tomb of the great advocate, and was himself entertained by
the French Bar under the presidency of M. Grevy. When
Birmingham was erected into an assize town in 1884, Mr. Baron
Huddleston went the circuit as senior Judge with Mr. Justice
WiUs, and at the Mayor's banquet made what may be called the
dedicatory oration, declaring the independence of the Judges and
the claims of Birmingham which had at length been satisfied ;
gracefully alluding to his own old friends, and finding words of
commendation for his political opponents, Mr. Bright and Mr.
Chamberlain. In 1885 he made a deliverance against the
system of sending Judges singly on circuit. At his houses in
Ennismore Gardens and at Ascot, as well as at the residences of
his great acquaintance, he was fond of exercising the remarkable
powers of genial and fascinating address which he undoubtedly
possessed, whether or not at heart he was more amiable or less
selfish than the majority of successful men. Society, indeed,
played a large part in his later Ufe, and did not leave him that
leisure for study which a Judge who is satisfactorily to dispose

310 EMINENT PERSONS
of legal arguments requires, especiaUy in days like the present,
when law and legal practice change rapidly. Even in his room
at the Royal Courts of Justice a French edition of the works of
Comte VasiU might be found on his table, where one would have
expected to see the Judicature Acts. This was the foible of a
man whose character had otherwise much in it that was
eminently deserving of esteem and affection.

DEAN CHURCH
Obituary Notice, Wednesday, December 10, 1890
Richard William Church was born at Lisbon on 25th April
1815. His father, John Dearman Church, had married a lady
of EngUsh famUy but German extraction, living in that city,
Bromley Caroline Metzner.. He was a merchant whose inclina
tion or business had made him cosmopolitan. Living first at
Cork, then at Lisbon, and, when he had retired from business,
at Ashwick Grove in Somerset, he passed the years immediately
preceding his death in 1828 at Florence. Sensibility to the
attraction of foreign interests ran in the family. His younger
brother was the well-known Sir Richard Church, who, after
distinguished . service in the British army throughout the
Napoleonic War, was invited to lead the Greeks in their war of
liberation in 1826. Having brought the struggle to a success
ful issue, he resided for forty years in Athens, taking a keen
interest in Greek politics, which made his house the resort of
motley groups of patriots of all parties and every rank. He
retained to the end the love and admiration of the Hellenes.
When he died, full of years, in 1873, his funeral was attended
by the King and chief officers of the nation ; and his monument
in the Athenian cemetery was raised and inscribed at the national
expense. It is remarkable that the parents of both these
brothers, and therefore the grandparents of the Dean of St.
Paul's, were members of the Society of Friends. Sir Richard
Church broke the connection at the early age of sixteen by
running away from home, and enlisting in the army ; but his
brother John remained in the Society till his marriage in 1814.
This variety of family antecedents and connections may

312 EMINENT PERSONS
have had its influence in forming the Dean's character. He
combined with a very firm grasp of his own principles a wide
toleration of views extremely different from his own, and a
singular power of entering with a vivid interest and just
appreciation into the pursuits and studies of men of the most
various countries and occupations. Whatever tendency he may
have inherited in this direction was, indeed, increased by his
own early experience. His youth was chiefly spent in Italy ;
but when the family returned to England, after the father's
death in 1828, and settled in Bath, he was sent to school for
two years with the Rev. Dr. Swete at Redland Hill, near Bristol.
Dr. Swete was a leading member of the Evangelical party at
Bristol. He was afterwards rector of Blagdon, in Somerset,
and his name has become known to a later generation by the
recent election of his son to the Regius Professorship of Divinity
in Cambridge. From Dr. Swete's he entered the University of
Oxford as a commoner of Wadham CoUege in 1833. That his
somewhat irregular education and the absence of the discipline
of a public school had not disqualified him from gaining the
highest prizes of Oxford ambition was proved by his acquisition
of a first class in the classical schools in 1836, and an Oriel
feUowship two years later.
Oriel was then in the full flush of its reputation. The glory
achieved by Copleston, Whately, and Arnold was sustained,
though with a different colour, by Keble, Pusey — who had,
however, rejoined his original CoUege of Christ Church as a
canon — Hurrell Froude, and Newman. The latter was then
in the zenith of his career. He had resigned his college tutor
ship in consequence of a disagreement with the Provost, but
was devoting his energies all the more completely to his
theological campaign. The tracts which convulsed the English
Church were issuing in rapid and as yet unchecked succession
under his editorship. Froude's Remains had just astonished the
world by the exhibition of the same principles in the practical
conduct of an individual ; the famous sermons were gathering
in St. Mary's Sunday after Sunday a select audience of the
choicest intellect of the rising generation of Oxford men ; and
the high table and common-room of Oriel were frequented by
able and earnest men, who shared the vicar's sentiments and
sometimes took part in his labours.
Such a society was eminently adapted to captivate the new

DEAN CHURCH 313
Fellow. Its combination of audacity with reserve, its daring
exploration of neglected or despised paths of history, its manifest
religious earnestness, its accurate perceptions of taste, were all
exactly suited to the fine edge of his powerful but restrained
intellect, and the delicate susceptibility of his moral nature.
With the leader himself Church contracted a close friendship,
which was never broken by the subsequent incidents which
drove their careers far asunder. Nothing but death closed an
affectionate, if intermittent, correspondence between the Cardinal
and the Dean. But it is characteristic of Church that his
devotion to his leader never involved the surrender of his own
judgment. The difference between Newman and the Provost
did not prevent him from accepting a tutorship in the CoUege,
which he held for some years, and only resigned that he might
devote his time to other objects. And the aid that he rendered
to the Oxford movement was never directly theological, but
was given in the subsidiary line, which suited his own genius
and the wide range of his sympathies, of history and general
literature. The articles which he contributed to the British
Critic in 1843 on the conflict of St. Anselm with William Rufus
and Henry I. at once revealed to the readers the advent of a
vigorous and original writer. They have since been combined
and rewritten to make a volume of the Sunday Library ; but
what they have gained in completeness by this process they
have lost in the fire and freshness which gave special animation
to their first production.
When, after the shock of Newman's conversion, the friends
who had not seen their way to follow him were obliged to
reconsider their position and remodel their arrangements, the
British Critic became the Christian Remembrancer, and found
in Church a frequent contributor. He gave to it a graphic
description of a " Pardon " in Brittany, the result of personal
observation— an elaborate picture, severely just, of the Court of
Leo X., constituting at least a partial justification of the revolt
of Luther — a sketch, vivid with the recollections of his own
travel in the previous year, of the results left by the great
popular commotions of 1848 in France and Italy — a defence of
Pascal against the revived Ultramontanism of the present century
— and last, but greatest, of all, the famous essay on Dante,
which has served as an inexhaustible quarry for aU subsequent
translators and commentators. These writings were afterwards

314 EMINENT PERSONS
coUected and reprinted in a volume of Essays and Reviews, as a
tribute of affection to the writer from some of his friends, when
he was leaving Oxford in 1853. Their gift was requited by a
touching dedication, in which he commemorates his debt, " in
past years of much anxiety but much happiness, to the intimacy
of many and the kindness of all." But his name was then
hardly heard beyond his immediate Oxford circle ; the book
was not got up with the attractions appropriate to its purpose ;
the world took Uttle notice of it at the time, and Church
remained still practicaUy unknown. A considerable portion of
his work was indeed stiU anonymous.
One of the first efforts of the reconstituted Anglican party
after Newman's secession was the establishment of a journal to
maintain the via media theory, which Newman's departure
seemed for the moment to have crushed. The result was the
formation of the Guardian, which the lapse of nearly fifty years
still leaves in vigorous maturity. In this Church bore a
leading part along with James Mozley, Mountague Bernard, and
his lifelong friend Sir Frederick Rogers, then a brother Fellow
of Oriel, and afterwards Lord Blachford. He was a frequent
contributor to its columns, as he was in later days also to those
of the Saturday Review, though in both cases his subjects were
literary, historical, and philosophical, rather than theological.
But though his main occupation at this period of his life was
literary, he did not shrink from action when he felt the call
of duty. Such an occasion occurred in 1844, when "Ideal"
Ward was cited to show cause in Convocation why he should
not be degraded from his University degree. Ward's case did
not probably rouse in Church any very keen sensation ; but
when the Heads of Houses fancied they saw in it an opportunity
of securing a vote of Convocation condemnatory of Newman
and Tract 90, his indignation was kindled, and he happened
to have the means of giving effect to it. He was junior Proctor
for the year ; GuUlemard, the senior Proctor, shared his feeling ;
and when the Vice-OhanceUor put the condemnatory vote to
the meeting in the usual form, it was at once quashed by the
rarely-used veto, expressed in the formula Nobis Procuratoribus
non placet. The words were uttered by the senior Proctor, but
the current opinion of the University assigned the motive power
to the junior.
But the life which had flowed thus evenly for so many years

DEAN CHURCH 315
was broken at length by the cause which changes the current
of so many lives. In 1853 Richard Church married Helen
Frances Bennett, daughter of the squire and rector of Sparkford
in Somerset. He had previously been presented by Mrs. Horner
of Mells Park in the same county to the neighbouring rectory
of Whatley, and with a view to that had received priest's orders
in the previous year from Bishop WUberforce. He had shown
his choice of a vocation in 1838 when he was ordained deacon,
but had seen no reason before, during his residence at Oriel, to
proceed to the second and decisive step. Whatley is a country
viUage a couple of miles from Frome, with a population of
about 200 farmers and labourers and one gentleman's house.
Here the accomplished writer and scholar, who had enjoyed for
fifteen years the most intellectual and refined society of Oxford,
was content, and more than content, to dwell, ministering dili
gently and conscientiously to the simple wants of the poor.
The friends who knew his powers and were unwiUing to see
them, as it seemed to them, wasting on the desert air, tried hard
but unsuccessfuUy to draw him into public Ufe. Many tempt
ing offers were made and refused. He would not even accept
the Archdeaconry of Wells, which Lord Auckland, then Bishop
of Bath and Wells, pressed on him. A turn as Select Preacher
at Oxford in 1869, and occasional sermons and lectures else
where, including a sermon before the Queen at Windsor, were
aU that could be obtained from him ; though when his relative
Dr. Moberly was made Bishop of Salisbury he consented to
become his chaplain.
At length in 1871 Mr. Gladstone offered him the Deanery
of St. Paul's, vacant by the death of Dr. Mansel. An instant
refusal was only arrested by a telegram from the Prime Minister
requesting a personal interview. He complied, and, yielding
to the joint persuasion of Mr. Gladstone and Dr. Liddon, he
reluctantly accepted the great office. The appointment was
haUed with delight by all who knew him, and by none more
cordially than by Stanley, who had then been Dean of West
minster some eight years. If we cannot now do something for
London, he wrote — we give the substance and not the words of
his note — " may the malison of St. Peter and St. Paul light on
us." Separated widely by religious affinities, the two men were
united by old Oxford friendship and mutual literary appreciation.
Very much was done for London under the auspices of the

316 EMINENT PERSONS
two Deans. St. Paul's, which not so long before had been
jealously guarded by a 2d. fee at the door, and a path strictly
hedged in from door to choir to prevent sightseers evading the
fee under the pretext of worship, was thrown open to aU the
world. Its services were multiplied ; its nave was fitted up for
worship ; great preachers of every shade of theology were invited
to fill the pulpit ; the multiform resources of sacred music,
under the able direction of Sir John Stainer, were exhibited in
ways hitherto unthought of; every society or guUd that was
doing any good work was heartily welcomed ; the disused
Chapter-house was turned to good account as a place of inter
course between the young men of the City and the canons ; and,
in short, the great Cathedral became, as it ought to be, the home
and centre of the Church life of London. Dean Church would
have been the first to say that aU this was due not to himseK
but to the energetic Chapter over which he presided — com
prising such men as Canons Liddon and Gregory and the late
Bishop Lightfoot. But it is nevertheless true that it could not
have been done unless the Dean had given his fuU sympathy
to the movement ; and no one probably, outside the Chapter,
knows how much it was indebted to his wide sympathies, his
deUcate perception, and his firm but quiet guidance.
In one particular, at least, he contributed his fuU share to
the work. His thoughtful and pregnant sermons, clothed in a
style at once pure and rich, and delivered with a clearness of
articulation that carried a voice not strong over a considerable
portion of the vast area of the Cathedral, enchained the attention
of large congregations at first, and secured a far wider audience
of admiring readers afterwards. The sermons covered a large
ground, but one thought lay beneath most of them. Like his
friend Cardinal Newman, Church was deeply impressed with
the contrast between modern society and the life of the New
Testament ; but he recognised that each was fitted to its place
in the world's history ; and his constant endeavour was, not like
Newman, to bring back the later to the earUer form, but to
harmonise the two by discovering and exhibiting the working
of the same spirit under different external aspects. The preface
to his first volume of University sermons describes them as an
attempt to "touch, but only touch, the relations between
Christianity and the ideas and facts of modern civilised society."
It is an inexhaustible and most attractive theme ; and the

DEAN CHURCH 317
sermons which the Dean preached in St. Paul's, whether in his
own turn, or on several occasions when he occupied, as a worthy
substitute, Canon Liddon's place, aU bear, directly or indirectly,
on the same topic.
But sermons were far from exhausting his literary activity
at this time. Two volumes in Mr. John Morley's series of
" Men of Letters " on Spenser and Bacon display the exhaustive
treatment, independent judgment, and clear and forcible ex
pression which he brought to bear on every subject that he
touched. The internal decoration of the Cathedral was another
matter in which he took the warmest interest, but which the
differences of opinion in the directing committee did not allow
him to complete. Something, however, has been done to reUeve
the bareness of the walls by the mosaics in the dome, and by
the imposing reredos, round which a fierce contest, both of taste
and law, is stiU raging.
In various ways the period of Church's occupation of the
Deanery wiU leave a strong mark in the annals of the Cathedral.
To the outer world he was not much more than a name, over
which a great reputation hovered, though men might be puzzled
to say on what it rested. He was not, in the ordinary sense of
the word, a popular preacher ; he was never to be heard on
platforms, or seen, if he could help it, at public dinners ; he
sedulously avoided controversy, and kept aloof from the dust
and din of London society. But his literary force and finish
were evident to aU who were capable of appreciating the finest
workmanship ; and his high moral and religious worth were
known to a large circle of friends in various stations of life.
For he had a remarkable faculty of attracting and retaining the
most opposite natures. The intimate friend of Newman, James
Mozley, and Charles Marriott, he was yet on the best of terms
with Clough and Fraser in his own college, and outside of it
with Stanley, Jowett, Lake, and Temple.
Nor were his sympathies confined to literature or theology.
He took a lively interest in politics, and for a long time foUowed
Mr. Gladstone, whose friendship he enjoyed, but parted from him,
as so many of his old friends have done, when Home Rule
became the question of the day. All the rising talent of Oxford,
in physical as well as mental science, was sure to be recognised
by Church. Frank Buckland and Dr. Sclater were to be seen
in his rooms, and Professor Asa Gray was a close friend and

318 EMINENT PERSONS
active correspondent. Church was himself a good botanist, and
amused himself with something of a chemical laboratory in
Whatley Rectory. He took also great interest in naval affairs,
and delighted to watch the stately ships go by at Portsmouth
and Folkestone, to which latter place he was wont to retire
when winter fogs drove him from London ; and he displayed
no smaU taste and skiU as a draughtsman and painter.
It was no common mind which could entertain so many
unconnected pursuits and hold pleasant relations with so many
different men. Those who knew him well beUeved him fit for
any office that might be thrust upon him. Many offices were
vainly thrust upon him ; it is an open secret that he might
have held, if he pleased, the highest place in the English Church.
But he was utterly devoid of the ambition which is gratified by
the possession of office or rank or social distinction ; and though
he yielded so far to persuasion as to accept the Deanery of St.
Paul's, and though, when he had accepted it, he never shrank
from its necessary duties, he avoided, as far as was possible, all
publicity or display. A studious life amongst his books and
papers, with the companionship of a few dear friends and choice
spirits, was always the object of his desire. He enjoyed it
completely in Oxford, in a less degree, perhaps, at Whatley,
where he had more tranquillity but fewer friends, but he con
trived even in the heart of London to secure stiU a good deal of
both. He will remain a rare and striking example of a man of
singular mental gifts, who found his chief happiness in their
mere exertion, irrespective of any material results which might
flow from them, but who, nevertheless, was always ready to
discharge ably and conscientiously whatever practical duties
might be laid upon him by circumstance or station.
The Dean leaves a widow and three daughters, one of whom
is married to Canon Paget. His only son died three years ago.
We understand that, in accordance with the Dean's special desire,
he is not to be buried in St. Paul's, but at Whatley — the quiet
country home which he always remembered with peculiar
affection.

THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK
Obituary Notice, Friday, December 26, 1890
William Thomson was the son of Mr. John Thomson, of
Kelswick House, Whitehaven, a man largely interested in the
trade of that town and district, and was born on 11th February
1819. He was sent to Shrewsbury School, then under Samuel
Butler, the author of a weU-known atlas, who was appointed
Bishop of Lichfield about the time that Thomson left school.
In due course he proceeded to Oxford, to Queen's, the college
which was then, even more than now, a distinctively north
country college ; and he naturaUy obtained one of the scholar
ships which at that time were confined to natives of certain
counties. Few traditions of his undergraduate days remain ; it
is only certain that, passed as they were in the midst of the
" Oxford Movement," he was left untouched by it ; for, orthodox
as he always was, the romanticism of Newman and Pusey had
no attraction for his mind.
In 1840 he took his degree, obtaining, strange to say, only
a third class in the Literee Humaniores school. This faUure,
however, did not interfere with his election as Fellow of his
college ; and in that position his real abilities soon began to
teU. Ordained deacon in 1842 and priest in 1843, he took a
spell of clerical work at Guildford and at Cuddesdon, and in
1847 he returned to Queen's, to be appointed tutor and dean.
In 1848 he received University recognition by being made
Select Preacher, and five years afterwards he preached the
Bampton Lectures, the subject being "The Atoning Work of
Christ." In the same year he published a book of another
kind, which attracted much more attention and had a more

320 EMINENT PERSONS
direct effect on his career. This was a Uttle volume on Logic,
entitled An Outline of the Necessary Laws of Thought. Being
written in a clear and readable style, it had an immediate
success. The title implies the school of thought to which the
writer belonged; the word "necessary," in that connection,
meant that he was on the side of Mansel and Sir WiUiam
Hamilton and against J. S. MiU, whose advocacy of the
philosophy of experience was at that time beginning to attract
many adherents in Oxford. Thomson's Uttle handbook, though
in the preface to a later edition (1860) he stood up for its
originality, served to introduce to the Hamiltonian philosophy
many who could never have understood the writings of the
Edinburgh Professor at first hand. It was a book with few
pretensions to learning, as Mansel or Mark Pattison would have
understood the phrase, but it was the book of a man who had
read his subject with a good deal of care, and who could state
his views methodicaUy and clearly. There is no doubt that it
helped Thomson's worldly advancement not a little ; that, for
instance, when he stood for the Preachership of Lincoln's Inn
in 1858, votes were turned by it in his favour.
Before that date, however, several important events took
place in his life. In 1855 he married a young lady Uving in
Oxford, Zoe, the daughter of Mr. J. H. Skene, a gentleman
belonging to the Embassy at Constantinople, and afterwards
Consul at Aleppo. There were no married Fellowships in those
days, and Thomson had to look elsewhere for occupation. He
was aUeady so weU known that no surprise was expressed at his
appointment to the Crown Uving of AU Souls', Marylebone.
This church, however, he held but a very short time, for he
was scarcely inducted when Dr. Fox, the Provost of Queen's,
died, and Thomson was elected in his place. It was a triumph
for the Progressists, for he had taken a strong part on that side
before the University Commission of 1854, and his enemies
were, consequently, not few. He remained in this important
post some six years, adding to it the Preachership of Lincoln's
Inn (1858), and a Chaplaincy in Ordinary to Her Majesty
(1859). From this time his rise in the Church was extremely
rapid. His relations with the Court became naturally close, and
his strong personality and savoir faire appear to have impressed
the Queen and the Prince Consort Many stories have been

THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK 321
told of the manner of his promotion, but it seems at least
certain that both the Court and Lord Palmerston were struck
by him, so that when Dr. Baring was translated from Gloucester
and Bristol, Thomson was appointed at once to the see. He
was consecrated on the day of . the Prince Consort's death,
15th December 1861, and his first sermon in Gloucester Cathedral
had that sad event for its subject. He occupied the see only
long enough to organise and become sponsor to one of the
counter -demonstrations which the Essays and Reviews called
forth. In 1861 he edited the book called Aids to Faith, in
which writers like Mansel, Ellicott, Harold Browne, and F. C.
Cook replied to the arguments of the other volume. The book
had a fair success, though nothing Uke that of its antagonist,
and nothing like that of the more or less orthodox Lux
Mundi, which now, after an interval of nearly thirty years,
once more comes out from Oxford to excite and interest students
and theologians. Then early in 1863 came the vacancy at
York. Dr. Sumner, the Archbishop of Canterbury, died, and
the Archbishop of York — Longley, a man of saintly life, but of
Uttle force — was appointed in his place. What foUowed has
been told in many versions ; the true one, we believe, is that
given in the recently-pubUshed Life of Lord Houghton. Lord
Palmerston desired to give the post to Dr. Waldegrave, of
Carlisle, one of the Bishops whom he had appointed after con
sulting with Lord Shaftesbury ; but the Queen herself is said
to have interfered, and to have declared that she would have
no other than Thomson.
It was only to be expected that so sudden a rise, in the case
of a man who had no great family alliances to help him, should
give occasion to a good deal of jealousy and many attacks.
Oxford was sore at the promotion of a third-class man to the
second place in the Church, especially as that promotion was
made over the head of her own brilliant Bishop, Samuel
Wilberforce. His own Dean (Duncombe) showed what he
thought of the appointment by asking Wilberforce, and not
Thomson, to preach in the Minster on the first public occasion
after the Archbishop's consecration. The world in general
asked what the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol had done to
justify such an advance after so brief an episcopal apprenticeship ;
and the High Churchmen throughout the country may be said
to have regarded the appointment with dislike.
vol. iv Y

322 EMINENT PERSONS
It must be admitted, however, that during the twenty-eight
years of his tenure of the see Dr. Thomson's general success
justified those who appointed him. He was not a briUiant
man, nor was he a man to inspire strong personal attachment ;
but he was endowed with a large amount of common sense ;
he was just and moderate, and in the conduct of the great
affairs of his see he showed both strength and tact. There are
among his admirers some who go so far as to caU him the only
considerable Archbishop of York since Wolsey. We will not
venture an opinion upon so large a historical statement ; but
at least it may be said that Thomson was a very different
Archbishop from the Longleys, the Musgraves, the Vernon
Harcourts, who immediately preceded him. He recognised
from the beginning the fact that K the Church of England was
to keep up its influence upon modern society it must condescend
to employ modern methods. In an age of railways and
telegraphs, he saw that it behoved the Church's organisation
to be ubiquitous, and its means of intercourse rapid. Thus he
was active in his support of diocesan conferences and Church
Congresses, and it was a real grief to him that iUness prevented
him from presiding at the Congress held at Hull last autumn.
He was an excellent president, and his natural tact and long
experience often enabled him to carry to a peaceful issue
meetings that in other hands might have ended in storm. Not
the least successful of his public appearances on these occasions
were when he presided over meetings of working men, with
whom he would discuss on equal terms social, economical, and
politico-religious questions.
Archbishop Thomson did not often speak in Parliament on
debated questions. But he supported Archbishop Tait's motion
for the Commission on the Ecclesiastical Courts, though it has
been published that he was at first opposed to it, and returned
afterwards to his first opinion when he saw how the Commission
was constituted by Mr. Gladstone. And though he signed the
general report, he, with a third of the whole body, issued a
dissentient report ; and it is no secret that he was the author
of a very severe criticism of the work of the Commission in the
Edinburgh Review of January 1884, remarking also on the
disastrous effects of the loss of Archbishop Tait before the report
was even drafted. He had concurred with Archbishop Tait
in the introduction of the Public Worship Regulation Bill in

THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK 323
1874, which, it must be remembered, differed considerably from
the unfortunate Act into which it was gradually transformed,
and for which he had a right to disclaim all responsibility.
That, however, can hardly be said of another Act which, after
some years' trial, was absolutely condemned by a Committee of
the Commons, but yet remains unrepealed — viz. the Dilapida
tions Act, 1871, which was introduced by him and Bishop
Jackson, and has been called " An Act for the endowment of
diocesan surveyors at the expense of the clergy," and said also
to have been " invented by two or three Bishops who did not
understand what they were doing, and two or three astute
surveyors who did." Certainly the Bishops ignored or were
ignorant of an Act of Elizabeth which gave them power to
make incoming clergy spend their dilapidation money bond fide
on repairs, and forgot that no legislation wiU prevent them from
dying insolvent after running their houses down to ruin.
Dr. Thomson's last Parliamentary interposition was on the
third reading of the Clergy DiscipUne (Immorality) Bill of 1888.
It had been remodelled, but very imperfectly, after second
reading, in consequence of an exposure of its numerous defects
in these columns, and he did not receive the new Bill at Bishop-
thorpe till the day when it was to go into Committee. But he
came up to the third reading and, though he did not move to
reject it, he made a speech which was immediately felt to have
kiUed it. No more was heard of it either in that session or
the next, and in 1890 a very different Bill was introduced, but
too late to be discussed, which had been settled at Lambeth by
a meeting of Bishops and lawyers, and unanimously on all
but one minor point, as was stated publicly at the Peterborough
diocesan conference in 1890.
In November 1887 the Archbishop of York appeared in
person in the Queen's Bench Division to show cause against a
rule nisi for a mandamus to him to admit as a proctor in
Convocation a canon of Durham who had been elected by the
parochial clergy against a candidate, with a minority of votes,
who was one of such clergy, which he had refused to do in
accordance with what he believed to be the law of Convocation.
But he took the preliminary objection that the High Court
has no such jurisdiction, except by the consent of both parties,
which had been given in another case in order to obtain an
independent determination of the law. Having argued that

324 EMINENT PERSONS
objection, he suggested that the Court should first dispose of it,
for if they agreed with him there would be no need of the
longer argument on the merits of the case. They thereupon
caUed on the counsel for the other side to argue that question,
and at the end of their argument intimated that it would
probably not be necessary to hear the Archbishop in reply, but
they would not give judgment at once. After consideration
they gave judgment in his favour ; and all the three Judges
expressed to their and his. friends admiration of his argument,
which we know from very good authority he entirely prepared
himself, though he was advised by a lawyer to divide it as
above and suggest the decision on the jurisdiction question first.
Archbishop Thomson was little pleased with the judgment
of the Privy CouncU on the Essays and Reviews case, and he
addressed a strong letter to his clergy on the subject. Soon
afterwards he officially condemned the Rev. Charles Voysey for
heresy ; a condemnation that could hardly be avoided when
the editor of Aids to Faith had to sit in judgment on the author
of The Sling and the Stone. Perhaps it was owing to the some
what rigid position which he took up with regard to theological
differences that he unfortunately failed of late years to cultivate
cordial relations with the Dean and Chapter of York — a failure
which, whoever may have been mainly to blame for it, naturaUy
reacted in no very happy way upon the diocese at large. Yet
it cannot fairly be said that the Archbishop's purely intellectual
interests were narrow. He kept himself, to a remarkable
extent, abreast of the scientific movement of the day ; he
studied economical problems with no little care ; and in his
own special department the well-known " Speaker's Comment
ary," of which he is said to have been the projector, and in
which he wrote the Introduction to the Gospels, is evidence that
he did not aUow himself to be entirely absorbed in the details
of his diocese and his province.

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