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THE DERBY MINISTRY. 




^p<t^. 






DERBY MINISTEY: 



A SERIES 



OF 



CaHitrf ipittttres. 



BI^ mask: EOCHESTEE. 



LONDON: 
O. ROUTLEDGE & CO. FARRINGDON STREET; 

NEW YOBK: 18, BEBKMAN 8TBEET. 

1858. 

TAe AMlthor retervet the Bight of Trantlati&n. 



3r .1:1^6.73 



HARVARU 
UNlvEI->S:TV 



\tx PajMtg's §a)ittmmi 



Page 
The Eabl of Dbbbt, First Lord of the TrecLtury 1 

The Bight Hon. Benjamin Disbaeu, Chancellor of the 
Exchequer 33 

Lord Ohelmsfobd, Lord Chancellor 71 

The Mabquess op Salisbubt, President of the Council 87 

The Eabl op Habdwioke, Lord Privy Seal 99 

The Bight Hon. Spenceb Walpole, Secretary for the Home 
DepartfMiU 113 

The Eabl op Malmesbubt, Secretary fo^ Foreign Affairs . . 123 

The Bight Hon. Sib £dwabd Bulweb Lytton^ Babt.^ 
Secretary for the Colonies 141 

Genebal Peel, SecrOary for War 195 

LoBD Stanley, Secretary for India 207 

The Bight Hon. Sib John Paeington, First Lord of the 
Admiralty 226 

The Bight Hon. Joseph Henley, President of the Board 
of Trade 239 

LOBD John Mannebs, Chitf Commissioner of Parks and 
Palaces 247 



THE EARL OF DERBY, 



THE EARL OF DEEBT. 



Attaining power for a second time towards the close of 
February, 1858, Lord Derby, at the period of his re-accession 
to office as First Minister of the Crown, naturally assumed, 
by right of that position, the foremost place among his con- 
temporaries. It happened, however, oddly enough, that about 
the same time the new Premier was otherwise brought rather 
conspicuously under the notice of his fellow-countrymen. It 
so chanced, of course, by the merest coincidence, by a purely 
accidental combination of circumstances — yet the incidents 
somehow occurring together so very opportunely, concentrated 
the public gaze for awhile in a most unusual manner upon this 
one prominent individuality. 

As a statesman, his rank has been such for a considerable 
number of years past, that his sovereign has five times selected 
him—twice effectually— to be the chief of her constitutional 
government. 

Early in 1858, however, Lord Derby — at the moment when 
power came anew within his grasp — ^found himself, ina mann/^r, 
pre-eminently placed, socially as well as politically, among the 
national sports of the field, no less than among the imperial 
toils of the administration. His cabinet being constructed 
during the interval which elapsed between the death of 
Bertram Arthur, seventeenth earl of Shrewsbury, and the 
recognition of the validity of the title of Henry John 
Chetwynd, third Earl Talbot, claiming, as his collateral 
successor, to be eighteenth earl of Shrewsbury, the Premier 
of England was also (until those claims were allowed) 
Premier Earl of England, by simple right of the order of 
precedence. His hand^ moreover, had scarcdy closed once 

B 



2 THE DEEBT MfNISTRY. 

more upon the reins of government, when he seemed to hold 
no less securely in his possession the guarantee of proving at 
length the winner of the highest prize in the Olympic gapies 
of Englishmen. 

It was altogether a conjunction of events so curious and 
even whimsical of its kind, that sporting men, unknown 
to have ever fingered a page of Hansard, found them- 
selves abruptly becoming politicians; while politicians, who 
never before had an eye for the turf, began to look askance 
day after day with lively interest at the varying quota- 
tion of the odds at Tattersall's. Lord Derby's name was 
not only audible continually at the Clubs, it resounded 
during many weeks together as a word of momentary utter- 
ance at the Comer. Nay, as the critical 19th of May 
approached, the First Lord of the Treasury became in a great 
measure subordinate to the owner of Toxophilite. And, 
what has of late years become sufficiently noteworthy to be 
particularized as by no means a mere matter of course, the 
favourite in this instance continued to be the favourite up to 
the last moment of starting, — up to the last frenzied babel of 
the ring, — till the breathless cry, "They're oflF!" — till even the 
tail of the ruck had passed Tattenham Comer, and Beadsman 
had shot ahead when within a few strides of the chair, amidst 
an universal buzz of astonishment. Lord Derby winning 
the Derby — the investiture of the true-blue Premier with 
" the blue ribbon of the turf" — was, up to that instant, matter 
of pretty general anticipation. It is doubtful even now 
whether the majority of the non'Spoiiing and non-political 
world were not really somewhat chagrined by the unex- 
pected eclipse of the glory of Toxophilite. Since that event, 
however, the noble earl has signaKzed in a somewhat unusual 
manner his own high estimate, at once of his political security 
and of his all-absorbing responsibilities as head of the new 
Government. The sale of his stud on Saturday, the 18th of 
September, intimated his total withdrawal from the turf, or, at 
auy rate, temporary retirement. 

Precisely the very man, therefore, who has the reputation 



THE EAUL OF DEBBT. 8 

of most scorning the more vulgar evidences of popularity—- 
the digito monstrari—was the very man towards whom every 
finger was pointed, at that period of anxious solicitude, when 
he was a fifth time invited, and a second time consented, to 
organize a new administration. Already, six years previously. 
Lord Derby had evidenced his ability to preside over the 
destinies of the British government. His capacities as a 
statesman he had signalized during twice six years, by guiding 
the councils and marshalling the ranks of his party, as its 
honoured and authoritative chief, both in office and opposi' 
tion. His intellectual repute, combined with his great social 
status, had led, moreover, in another direction, to his being 
unanimously chosen to preside over the most ancient seat of 
learning in the land — his own alma mater, the University 
of Oxford: at the head of which venerable institution his 
name has been now during five years past enrolled a/ 
Chancellor. 

As an orator, his reputation stands almost (in somei par- 
ticulars altogether) unrivalled among his contemporaries: 
far beyond which, however, it should be added that he has 
perhaps never in all the past had any superior among the 
most gifted debaters in parliament. In many of the subtler 
devices of oratory he has long been recognized as an exqui- 
site proficient ; while to an acquired but perfected mastery 
of that art of arts, he has brought those manifold natural 
endowments which are so essential to complete the influence, 
the charm, the glamour of the accomplished rhetorician. 
And what more admirable intellectually than qualities like 
these P — " Quid subtilius, quam acutae crebraeque sententisB ? 
Quid admirabiUus, quam res splendore illustrata verborumP"* 
Not that his diction is ever ornate, being at all times, indeed, 
superb in its graceful simpHcity ; but that in the very terseness 
and lucidity of his "silver style" there are witcheries of 
sound far beyond the reach of mere verbal adornment. His 
language, in truth, is always as devoid of ornament as it is 
replete with a nameless and irresistible fascination. It is to 

* Cicero, De Oratore, ii. 84. 
15 2 



4 THE DERBY MINISTRY. 

the manly purity and strength of his Saxon English that ho 
owes much of his extraordinary power in discussion — the vital 
force of one surpassed by few as an orator, by none as a 
debater. 

The Derby ministry sits nowadays, in 1858, as formerly ia 
1852, thirteen at the council-board : consisting, as it has 
done upon both occasions, of the very number not usually 
regarded as auspicious. It was agreeably observable, how- 
ever, upon its first construction, six years ago, that out 
of those thirteen members of the cabinet, there were 
actually not two who could claim kindred with each other, 
— a wonderful consideration, remembering the snug Family 
Parties gathered together under the form of successive 
Whig administrations ! Recollecting, for example, that out 
of the two latest specimens the nation has had of Whig 
\5abinets, each extending to the full complement of fifteen, 
— ten under the Palmerston rule were distinctly related to 
one another, and eleven under Lord John Russell's peculiarly 
touching and affectionate organization of government. Bear* 
ing these melancholy truths in mind, it is really pleasant 
to revive the memory of that unusual fact— namely, that 
the first ministry of Lord Derby included within it no two 
naembers in any way connected one with another by the 
familiar bonds of relationship. As with the first, so with 
the second Derby cabinet— saving and excepting the one 
notable instance of the eldest son of the Prime Minister : an 
obviously exceptional instance in every particular, seeing that 
Lord Stanley has for a considerable time past been eagerly 
sought as a ministerial colleague, on all sides, and by all 
parties — the last of these preceding lures to office having been 
proffered to the gifted offspring of the now First Lord of the 
Treasury, by his immediate predecessor, the noble viscount at 
the head of the late administration. The nomination of Lord 
Stanley, therefore, to a seat in his father's cabinet is no evi- 
dence of the Prime Minister's even momentary toleration of 
Nepotism — it is rather the result of a happy Necessity. We 
may reiterate, indeed, in allusion to the second Derby cabinet. 



THE EABL OF DEEBT. 6 

what has been already remarked in respect to the first— that 
its members trace their origin to no common genealogy: 
their houses are neither related by blood, nor connected 
by marriage. Six out of these thirteen ministers of state 
are not members of the hereditary aristocracy; another, 
a seventh — giving the balance to an equal division of 
the cabinet between peers and commoners — entered the 
House of Lords only, as we have seen in the instance 
of the Chancellor, at the date of the original formation of 
the government. 

The Right Honourable Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, 
fourteenth Earl of Derby, was bom on the 29th of March, 
1799, in the ancestral home of his family, at Knowsley Park, 
near Preseot, in the county palatine of Lancaster. His 
father, Edward, thirteenth Earl of Derby, K.G., popularly 
known during the greater portion of his lifetime as Lord 
Stanley, was (unlike his more distinguished son) in politics 
a thorough-going Whig, but (in this more like his filial 
successor) in personal habits a lover of manly sports and 
rural pastimes. 

The heir to the ancient earldom of Derby, and future Prime 
Minister of England, was educated in the first instance at Eton 
CJollege, and was thence removed to Christchurch, Oxford^ 
where, as George Canning and the Marquess of Wellesley had 
done before him, he signalized his success in scholarship by the 
elegance of his Latin versification. Lisomuch so, that, at the 
Commemoration in 1819, while still a minor, he obtained the 
Chancellor's prize for Latin verse, reading his poem,* accord- 
ing to custom, from the rostrum of the Sheldonian theatre, 
the very building which was to witness, thirty-four years 
afterwards, his own stately installation as Chancellor. The 
incident of his writing thus early this prize poem, the subject 
of which was Syracuse, we remember, indeed, to have been 
thus gracefully reverted to upon the latter occasion, in the 
Latin ode delivered before the noble earl, on Tuesday, the 7th 

* Syracuse : a Poem. By the Hon. E. G. S. Stanley. Oxford, 
1819. 



6 THE DEEBY MINISTRT. 

of June, 1853, as he sat there, in the old theatre, in his robes, 
as Chancellor of the University :— 

Te fronde cinctum tempora DolphicA, 
Inter catervas laude faventium, 
Testes SyracusaD beatam 

Carminis abripuisse palmam. 

Eminently successful, and even distinguished, though his 
academical career liad been otherwise. Lord Derby, then, of 
course, the Hon. Edward Stanley, nevertheless quitted the 
university, strange to tell, without taking his degree as B.A. 
It has been conjectured, in explanation of this circumstance, 
that, with a haughty reserve, in every way characteristic, he 
abstained altogether from entering his name for examination, 
because uncertain at the moment of eclipsing all competitors ; 
the "first place," according to his ambitious view, being 
alone worth the toil of acquisition. 

Immediately upon attaming his majority, namely, in 1821, 
Mr. Stanley entered the House of Commons as member for 
Stockbridge, an insignificant borough, since then judiciously 
disfranchised. His maiden speech, however, was not de- 
livered until three years afterwards; when, upon Tuesday, 
the 30th of March, 1824, the Manchester Gas-light Bill came 
under the consideration of the popular branch of the legisla- 
ture. In reference to the debate upon this question, it is 
recorded, upon the eleventh page of the eleventh volume of 
Hansard, that Mr. Stanley, addressing the House for the first 
time, opposed the motion of the hon. member for Sussex 
(Mr. Curteis) "in a maiden speech of much clearness and 
ability." The success achieved, indeed, was so far unmis- 
takable that it elicited the instant yet elaborated encomium 
of a master of oratory, no less authoritative as a parliamentary 
critic than Sir James Mackintosh. Another and more studied 
display of his rhetorical powers the hon. member for Stock- 
bridge gave not long afterwards during the same session ; the 
subject under discussion being connected with the complex 
problem involved in the maintenance and ors^anization of the 



THE EABL OP SEEBT. 7 

Irisli churcli establishment. The young patrician's science as 
a debater appeared to be intuitive. It has since then, indeed, 
been sagaciously remarked by Lord Macaulay, when speaking 
of the Earl of Derby's knowledge of that profound science of 
parliamentary defence and attack, that it resembles rather an 
instinct than an acquisition ; and that he alone, among all oar 
great senatorial reputations, seems to have made himself, upon 
the instant as it were, master of his art, instead of effecting 
this— as in other instances — slowly, and " at the expense of 
his audience." Triumphant though the noble earl's career 
as an orator unquestionably was, however, during the chief 
portion of his twenty years' continuance in the House of 
Commons, his true arena has proved beyond a doubt that 
"other place," so often mysteriously and awfully mentioned as 
such among the popular representatives. Hence has it been 
sung of him by one of his appreciative colleagues in the epio 
upon our English Charlemagne, — 

" How like the vigour of a Celtic stream 

Comes Lolod's rush of manly sense along. 
Fresh with the sparkles of a healthful beam. 

And quick with impulse, like a poet's song. 
How listening crowds that kniglvtly voice deliglds — 
Jf'fi^m those- crowds are banish'd all hU knights / " 

While scarcely yet in the first flush of the early dawnings 
of his parliamentaiy reputation, Mr. Stanley married, on the 
31st of May, 1825, the Hon. Emma Caroline Wilbraham 
second daughter of Edward, first Baron Skelmersdale : the 
offspring of this union being, besides two infant sons and a 
daughter deceased, the noble lord the member for King's 
Lynn, heir to the earldom, and now ruler of our Indian empire, 
together with' the Lady Emma Charlotte and the Hon. 
Frederick Arthur Stanley, now an ensign and lieutenant in 
the Grenadier Guards. A twelvemonth after his nuptials, 
namely, in 1826, Mr. Stanley was chosen M.P. for Preston, 
his grandfather, the twelfth Earl of Derby, having considerable 
influence in that perhaps the most ancient of all the old 
boroughs of Lancashire. 



8 THE BEBBT MIKISTRT. 

During the spring following— to be precise, upon the 11th of 
April, 1827 — George Canning's brief but memorable cabinet 
vas suddenly called into existence. It was in bis capacity as a 
subordinate member of this four months' administration that 
the present Prime Minister of England first participated in the 
labours of government. His position was that now occupied 
by the young Earl of Carnarron under her Majesty's Secretary 
of State Sir Bulwer Lytton ; namely, the arduous and to some 
extent responsible post of Under-Secretary for the Colonies. 
Upon the premature and lamented death of the Premier, the 
then chief of the Colonial department, Viscount Goderich, 
previously known as Mr. Robinson, and subsequently, and still 
surviving, as Earl of Kipon, undertook, on the 10th of August, 
1827, to reconstruct the cabinet ; and afterwards, during ^ve 
months, continued to preside over what has since been held in 
rather dubious repute as the Goderich administration. Mr. 
Stanley throughout those five months retained his place as 
Under-Secretary for the Colonies, the new Secretary oC State 
being no other than the Right Hon. William Huskisson. 

Subsequently came the three remarkable years--1828, 1829, 
and 1830— of the Duke of Wellington's demi-military, semi- 
aristocratic government, during which the Whigs remained 
uninterruptedly but hopefully, and from first to last giving 
signs of pertinacious activity, in opposition. At length came 
to them, on the 22nd of November, 1830, the blissful signal 
for the formation of Lord Grej^s all but four years' adminis- 
tration. It was then that Mr. Stanley strode forth more 
prominently to view than hitherto upon the arena of public 
life, assuming to himself a more conspicuous rank among the 
recognized leaders of Parliament. His appointed office was 
one at that moment surrounded by no inconsiderable diffi- 
culties, requiring at times exquisite adroitness, but more 
frequently yet, consummate audacity. This was the delicate 
post of Chief Secretary for Ireland during the anxious period 
defined by the vice-royalty of the Marquess of Anglesey, when 
the parliamentary vindicator of the policy of Government, in 
regard to the affairs of the sister country, was perpetually called 



THE ElBL OF DEBBT. 9 

upon to encounter in discussion alike the keen and dazzling 
sword-play of the CJeltic Saladin of debate, and tlie terrible 
and burly blows dealt by the brazen club of the Milesian Coeur- 
de-Lion« The matchless intrepidity, the perfect self-possession, 
the instant tact and inimitable dexterity displayed by the Eight 
Hon. Edward Stanley througbocit the whole of those frequent 
and stormy encounters with Eichard Shiel and Daniel 
O'Connell have long since become matters of history, and 
still illuminate many of the otherwise sombre pages of the 
annals of Parliament. 

On presenting himself anew to the electors of Preston as a 
candidate for their suffrages, Mr. Stanley had the mortification 
of finding his fair fame eclipsed by the tawdry popularity of 
Henry Hunt, the ultra-EadiealEoanerges. The demagogue was 
returned, and the statesman rejected. Thanks to the courtesy 
of Sir Hussey Vivian, however, who resigned his seat as M.P. 
for Windsor in favour of the Irish Secretary, the ex-meniber 
for Preston came in immediately afterwards for the royal 
borough, retaining his seat till 183S as its representative; 
namely, until the date of his telection for one of the divisions 
of his native shire, the county of Lancaster. Subsequently to 
which last-mentioned period, Mr. Stanley, afterwards Lord 
Stanley, sat in the house exclusively as member for Lan- 
cashire. 

It was during the session of 1832 that the Eeform Bill was 
under discussion; and it is especially worthy of remembrance — 
now that we are on the eve of the session which is to witness 
the introduction of its successor, the Eeform Bill of 1859— that 
to Mr. Stanley's resplendent talents as a debater that earlier 
measure was largely indebted for the successful defence of 
many of its most important, and therefore, most seriously 
opposed, provisions. He it was, moreover, who had tl>e glory, 
in his official capacity, of carrying, during the same remarkable 
year, the first bold measure securing to Ireland the benignant 
boon of National Education. 

The following session, however (that of 1833), is the one 
especially deserving of commemoration in Mr. Stanley's 



10 THE DERBY MIinSTBT. 

regard^ constituting as it did for bim the year in wbieb bis 
extraordinary powers, both as an orator and as a debater, were 
the most brilliantly signalized. By the sheer force of his 
withering and crushing invectives he overwhelmed the arro- 
gance of the Irish repealers, led on against bim by their giant 
chief, the Liberator. Often and often did that Goliath among 
bis assailants bite the dust, strucb^own by the pebble of his 
hrony. His intolerable hamteur and patrician scorn at length 
extorted from- the principal victims, complaints against his 
pride of bearing, complaints openly articulated in Parliament^ 
and thus repelled by Sir Robert Peel with a sententious and 
sarcastic disdain in every way congenial : " Often," said Sir 
Kobert, ** have I beard the right hon. gentleman taunted with 
his aristocratic demeanour. I rather think I should hear 
fewer complaints upon that score if he were a less powerful 
opponent in debate." No wonder bis foes winced, indeed — 
the shafts of his ridicule were so dexterously winged, and 
barbed, and poisoned. 

Besides carrying the Cburcli Temporalities Bill, Mr. Stanley 
secured ihe triumph of the far grander measure for the 
emancipation of the West-Indian slaves^* having, to that end, 
and with this one object especially in view, been previously 
nominated Secretary of State for the Colonies. His earliest 
admission into the cabinet a» one of the chief ministers 
of the Crewn was thus nobly and signally inaugurated. 

Having heretofore acted cordially with the Whigs, while 
the Whigs were really proving themselves, for once during 
that halcyon interval, in truth as well as in name, Reformers — 
having voted for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, 
for the Reform Bill, for Catholic emancipation, for Negro 
emancipation — Lord Stanley (his father having now succeeded 
to the earldom, Mr. Stanley thenceforth became known by 
bis title of courtesy) abruptly, in 1834, seceded from office, 

•Speech on the Emancipation of the Slaves, 14th May, ]833. 
By the Right Hon. E. Gr. Stanley. Re-published in " Speeches of 
Eminent British Statesmen." Second series. Griffin & Co. 12mo. 
pp.23— 82. 1857. 



THE EABL OF BEEBT. 11 

resigning his Colonial Secretarysbip. His nnnisterial resigna- 
tion was no insnlated proceeding ; for he was accompanied 
to the benches below the gangway by three of his late 
official colleagues, statesmen at that time noticeable as fore- 
most among the ex-secretary's train of political followers : 
these companions in his retirement from the ministry being 
Sir James Graham, the late First Lord of the Admiralty; 
the Earl of llipon, Lord Privy Seal ; and the Postmaster- 
General, his Grace the Duke of Richmond. They constituted 
what was then familiarly known as the " Canning leaven of 
the Whig administration." And the reason for their seces- 
sion was their undoubtedly conscientious alarm at the minis- 
terial project for the still further diminution of the Irish 
Church establishment. That conscientious alarm drew down 
upon the little cluster of the resigned the whimsical derision 
of one who was in every •sense of the word their arch anta- 
gonist. It is yet to this day the theme of traditional merri- 
ment down yonder in the parliamentary precincts at West- 
minster—that ludicrous application by Dan— with a twitch of 
his wig and a twinkle of his eye,- while he trolled the words 
with his unctuous and irresistible brogue— tbat preposterous 
application tx) the ex-secretai*y and his ex-colleagues of the 
thenceforth more than ever famous couplet from Canning's 
" Loves of the Triangles," in the witty pages of the. jU^»- 
Jacobin^ — 

" Still down thy steep, romantic Ashboumej^glides 
The Derby Dilly, with its six insides." 

Thereupon, unleavened by the Canningites, the Whig cabinet, 
reconstructed under the premiership of Viscount Melbourne, 
became, in four months' time, — ^namely, between the July and 
November of that same twelvemonth, altogether unpalatable 
at any rate to the sovereign. During nearly a month — that is, 
from the 16th of November until the 8th of December — the 
Iron Duke held gathered up in no silken glove, but in the 
firm grip of his mailed gauntlet, the various reins of the king's 
government. During that unwonted interregnum his Grace 



13 THE DEEBT UINISTBT. 

occupied the factotum place of My Lord High Everything m 
the burlesque. Sir Robert Peel was posting across Europe to 
assume the responsibilities reserved for him as leader of the 
new administration. A fortnight before the Christmas of 
1834 he had completed the hasty formation of his cabinet. 
Lord Stanley declining, however, to take part in it in any 
capacity whatever. Oa Wednesday, the 17th of December, 
he consented, nevcrthdess, to assume the honorary and some- 
what less onerous post of Lord Rector of the University of 
Glasgow, delivering a masterly harangue* upon the day espe- 
cially set apart for the ceremoay of his inauguration. 

Everybody know« how rapidly tbe radiant vision of the first 
Peel ministry faded away within little more than a quarter of 
a year from the time of its apparently auspicious establishment, 
It " paled its ineffectual fires" before the glare of the new 
Whig Parliament, and from the April of 1835 until the 
September of 1841, during a whole golden age of Whig domi- 
nation of from six to seven years' consecutive continuance, 
Lord Melbourne may be not inaccurately said to have ruled 
the roast as a loyal 4iner-out, chief of a grand laissez-aller, 
iaissez-faire, do-nothing, routine, red-tapist administration. 
There, during more than half a dozen "delightful years, sai; 
the ruler of the British empire, reclining negligently upon 
his accustomed bench in the House of Lords, conducting all the 
complicated affairs of state with the ready grace of a perfect 
gentleman. Then, for six years and upwards, beamed upon the 
nation, in the person «f Viscount Melbourne, that extraordinary 
spectacle, depicted with such poigaant wit by Sydney Smith — 
^ Everything about him seeming to betoken careless desola- 
tion;" so that any one might suppose from his manner, " that 
he was playing at chuck-farthing with human happiness, that 
he would giggle away the great Charter, and decide by the 
method of teetotum whether my lords the bishops should retain 
their seats in the House of Lords 1" There he posed and 
reposed impcrturbably from the first to tlie last, — that " man 

* Inaugural Oration as Lord Rector of the University, Glasgow, 
1834. 



THE EABL OF DERBY. 13 

of good understanding and good principles, disguised in the 
eternal and somewhat wearisome affectation of a political 
roue! '* 

Throughout the whole of this long interval, it is worthy of 
especial note in Lord Stanley's regard, that he acted con- 
sistently and persistently with the Conservative Opposition. 

At length arrived the close of the long Whig surfeit upon 
the loaves and fishes of government. In 1841 ministers were 
brought down with the partridges. Scarcely had the efiete 
and expiring cabinet prepared the way for getting somehow or 
another through the session, when Lord Stanley administered 
to its magnum opus, fiscal and financial,* one of those merciless 
and crushing blows with which he was wont (with which, 
upon occasion, he is still wont) to demolish the labours of an 
antagonist. On the 3rd of September Sir Robert Peel 
formed his second and more-renowned administration. It was 
built up, at the very outset, upon the broad basis of an immense 
majority in both houses of parliament. It survived, with the 
exception of one stormy month towards the close of 1845, for 
a period of very nearly five years' duration — during upwards 
of four of those years, with the power of the Premier streugth- 
ened to the authority of a paiiiamentary dictatorship. 
Throughout that more extended and vigorous epoch of Sir 
Byobert Peel's government. Lord Stanley occupied the post of 
the Colonial Secretaryship. Already, with the hereditary 
disease creeping upon him prematurely, he contrived, invari- 
ably, in spite of even the sharpest twinges of the gout, to sus- 
tain, and, in some instances very materially to enhance, his 
high and haughty repute both as an orator and as an admi- 
nistrator. His were the repellent powers most dreaded in 
debate at every sortie adventured upon by the pining Op» 
position. Dreaded sometimes even by his own party were 
the side-blows dealt about him with unhesitating audacity by 
the most thoroughly independent of all the great ministers in 

* Speech on the Ministerial Financial Budget, delivered in the 
House of Commons, on Wednesday, May 21, 1841, by the Boght 
Hon. Lord Stanley. 12mo. pp. 36. John Murray. 1841. 



14 THE DEKBY MINlSTET. 

the Government. Lord Stanley was to the cabinet of Sir 
Robert Peel what the Earl of Durham had been in Lord 
Grey's administration — its glory and its terror, the conscious 
genius of a cliief restrained for a while in the irritating tram- 
mels of a subordinate. 

Wherefore, in 1844, Lord Stanley — until then, as we 
have said. Lord Stanley only by courtesy — was, at the 
instance of his political chief, summoned to tlie House of 
Peers, in his father's barony, as Lord Stanley of Bickerstaffe. 
Thenceforth the noble lord assumed the high position he 
has since occupied there uninterruptedly as leader of his 
party, alternately either in office or on the benches of the 
Opposition. 

The ministerial changes consequent upon the adoption of a 
free-trade policy by the Protectionist Premier are matters of 
such universal notoriety as to need not one syllable by way 
of explanation. Pamiliar though the fact is in itself, however, 
it is here deserving of particular mention, in regard to Lord 
Stanley's resolute adherence at that crisis to his former 
principles and preconceived opinions in regard to the main- 
tenance of prohibitive duties upon foreign corn and other 
cereal importations, that immediately upon Sir Bx)bert's 
resignation, upon the eve of that momentous Christmas of 
1845, her Majesty was, according to constitutional usage, recom- 
mended by Lord John Russell — then himself in a minority 
painfully undeniable — to send for Lord Stanley, as leader of 
the Opposition, to the end that that nobleman might endeavour 
to construct a Protectionist administration. It was only upon 
Lord Stanley's respectfully but resolutely declining the oppor- 
tunity proffered by his sovereign, that Lord John, in loyal 
obedience to the exigencies of the time and of his position, with 
that constitutional pluck attributed to him by the author of 
" Peter Plymley" — a pluck compounded of the resolution of a 
statesman, and the heroism of an admiral, and the daring of a 
lithotomist — raised, like a house of cards, the cabinet having 
three whole weeks as the term of its un-natural existence. 
Upon the subsequent reconstruction of Sir Robert's govern* 



THE EAUL OF DEKBT. 15 

ment, the one determined administrator who remained true 
to the very last to the fiscal and financial dogmas marking 
out the plan of its original and deeply-rooted foundations, 
returned no more to his former oflice as Secretary for the 
Colonies. At the commencement of 184!6, on the contrary, 
he appeared as the avowed champion and leader of the Pro- 
tectionist Opposition, the interests of that Opposition being 
notably sustained in the House of Commons— we must 
acknowledge this mucli perforce, even as free-traders — by 
the indomitable zeal and industry of Lord George Bentinck, 
enforced by the genius, the wit, and the eloquence of his suc- 
cessor and future biographer, the present Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. 

Stanchly supporting the hopes of his political adherents, 
through periods apparently fraught to them with incentives 
only to despair, if not, at moments, with auguries of their 
absolute extinction, Lord Stanley illustrated his public career, 
during the six or seven years in which he sat at the head of 
the Conservative ranks on the benches of the Opposition, by 
a course that was never factious, that was always characterized, 
from first to last, by its frankness and its magnanimity. His 
sedulous regard to the interests of the nation, both at home and 
abroad, during this protracted interval — namely, througliout 
the last half-year of Sir Eobert PeePs chequered administra- 
tion, and during the several successive sessions from June, 
1846, until February, 1852, in which Lord John presided over 
the destinies of the Whig government — was manifested by his 
yet well-remembered participation, from time to time, in the 
discussions of the hereditary branch of the legislature. His 
eealous solicitude for the happiness of Ireland, already 
signalized years before by his administrative labours as her 
Chief Secretary, was indicated anew on the 9th of February, 
1849, by his comprehensive speech upon the Irish poor- 
laws,* as afterwards, in the year following — viz. on the 
18th of February, 1850 — by his statesmanlike oration in 

* Speech on the Irish Poor Laws. By Lord Stanley. Svo. pp. 39. 
OUivier. 1849. 



16 THE DEBBY MINISTBT. 

rcj^ard to the lamentable affair at DoUy'g Brae.* In evi- 
dence that his attention was not less vigilantly directed to the 
fluctuating phases of our foregin policy, it is only necessary 
to glance cursorily at one striking example, to wit, his 
remarkable harangue in reference to the affairs of Greece,t 
— affairs which at that precise period had just contrived to 
attain one of their periodical, and at this time more than 
usually delicate, complications. 

Another glimpse of power came to the now Premier while 
yet Lord Stanley, at a moment of no little confusion — ^in the 
early spring-time of 1851, immediately upon the eve of the 
great Hyde Park International Exhibition. On Thursday, 
the 20th of February, the Russell cabinet was defeated by a 
majority of forty.eight in the House of Commons, upon the 
Hon. Locke King's motion for an extension of the franchise. 
The coveted seab of office were again placed at the disposal 
of the ambitious statesman, who had been but yesterday, and 
during so many previous yesterdays, at the head of her 
Majesty's Opposition. Again the tempting symbols of power 
were declined, through motives, moreover, as patriotic as 
ever actuated a minister in their acceptance. Those mo- 
tives the noble lord took an early opportunity of publicly 
reiterating. Having explained the reasons for his non-accept- 
ance of the premiership in an impressive speech, delivered 
from his place in the House of Lords on Friday, the 28th of 
February, he repeated that explanation, accompanying it with 
an elaborate expositionf of what would have been the policy 
of his government, supposing it to have been then formed, 
upon the occasion of a banquet given in his honour on^ 
Wednesday, the 2nd of April, at Merchant Taylors' Hall, in 
the city of London. 

* Speech on the Affair at Dolly's Brae. By Lord Stanley. 8vo, 
pp. 28. Ollmer. 1850. 

t Speech on the Affairs of Greece. By Lord Stanley. 8vo. pp. 69, 
Ollivier. 1850. 

:|: Speech at Merchant Taylors' Hall. By Lord Stanley. 8vo. 
pp. 16. 1851. 



THE EABL 07 DEBBT. 17 

Another quarter of a year had not elapsed, when (upon the 
demise of his father^ on the 30th of June, in the 76th year of 
his age) the future Premier succeeded to the earldom, as 
fourteenth in direct descent from the valiant Lord Stanley 
who was its first recipieut. The present earl, it is observable 
by the way, is on both sides, through both parents, essentially 
by blood a Stanley ; his father having espoused a cousin in 
Charlotte Margaret, second daughter of Geoffrey Hornby, by 
his wife (one of his lordship's aunts) the Hon. Lucy nee 
Stanley. Litellectually and morally, the influence of Lord 
Derby over his party, and through that party over the country 
at large, scarcely admitted at that moment, and long before 
that moment indeed, of any appreciable enhancement. Hb 
social position was inevitably affected, however — could not 
possibly have failed to be so — by his teansformation from 
the heir into the actual possessor of that ancient title, 
together with those ample territorial possessions. As 
fourteenth Lord Derby, he inherited (besides a baronetcy 
more thau two hundred years old) an earl's coronet, dating 
back to a period nearly four centuries anterior, namely, 
to the year 1485, when King Henry VII. gratefully re- 
compensed by its bestowal the bold baron who had, on the 
field of Bosworth, torn the crown from the helmet of the 
dead Richard, and placed it, in the midst of the yet reeking 
battle-field, upon the head of the new sovereign. As 
descendant from that first Earl of Derby, the Premier 
is representative of the heroic rdce, the founder of whose 
fortunes was that Sir John Stanley who, in 1375, — now 
nearly five centuries gone by, in the days of our Third Edward, 
— married Isabella, the daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas 
Latham ; by that union constituting the Stanleys one of the 
most powerful and wealthy of all the great families in the 
land. A race long afterwards not simply possessors of broad 
and princely domains, but exercising sovereign rights in one 
portion of the British archipelago, as Lords of the Isle of 
Man— the earls of Derby, as such, according to Blackstone, 
" maintaining a sort of royal authority therein ; by assenting 

c 



18 THE DESBT MINISTRT. 

or dissenting to laws, and exercising an appfellate jurisdiction.'** 
Sans changer is the antique motto emblazoned upon the 
heraldic banners of the house : and so England witnesses 
nowadays, in regard to the Stanleys under Victoria, what she 
has never once witnessed since the time of the first Cecils under 
Elizabeth — a father and son members of the same cabinet, the 
father as Prime Minister of the Crown, the guiding genius of 
the State, the dominant intellect of the Government. An 
enactment passed through the legislature during the reign 
of her Majesty's royal grandfather, t it may be further 
remarked, unalienably vested at last in the Crown the 
island of Man and its dependencies. But, in spite of an 
Act of Parliament, the Stanleys J are true to their ancestral 
device, — the Earl of Derby being at the head of her Majesty's 
government, and the heir to his fortunes ruler of from 
100,000,000 to 200,000,000 of her Majesty's subjects in 
Hindostan. 

Within less than a year from the date of his succession to 
the earldom. Lord Derby had, at length, consented to under- 
take the weighty responsibility of forming an administration. 
Another defeat had been experienced by Lord John Russell's 
cabinet, and again, as it had chanced to fall out during the 
previous session, upon the fatal 20th of February ! It occurred, 
this time, upon Lord Palmerston's amendment upon the 
Militia Bill, when the discomfited Ministry, as in duty bound, 
at once gave in their resignation. The Earl of Derby, a third 
time called upon by his sovereign to assume the reins of 
government, undertook to do so within two days afterwards, 
on the 22nd of February, 1852, and forthwith organized 
his first, comparatively shortlived, but busy and energetic 
administration. His ministerial statement in the House 

* Blackstone's Commentaries, book I. § iv. p. 105. 

t5 George III. cc. 26 and 39. 

:|: For a succinct account of tliis remarkable feimily, see ** The 

History of the House of Stanley, from the Conquest. By 

Seacome.'' A romantic and authentic narrative, full of heroic 
adventure. 8vo. pp. 616. E. Sergent : Preston. 1793. 



THB SAHL OV DERBT. 19 

of Lords on Friday, the 27th of Febroary,* exactly one 
week after the downfall of his Whig predecessors^ closed, 
after a candid and succinct foreshadowing of his intended 
policy, with a peroration eloquently expressive of sentiments 
not very soon, we believe, to be forgotten in his regard by the 
more thoughtful of his contemporaries. " Be the period of 
my administration," he said, " longer or shorter, not only 
shall I have attained the highest object of my ambition, but I 
shall have fulfilled one of the highest ends of human being, if 
in the course of that administration I can, in the slightest 
degree, advance the great object of peace on earth and good- 
will among men; if I can advance the social, moral, and 
religious improvement of my country, and at the same time 
contribute to the safety, honour, and welfare of our sovereign 
and her dominions." That he spoke thus with conscientious 
truthfulness, the simple record of the ministerial achievements 
illustrating the brief period of his first tenure of office, distinctly 
enough and signally enough attested. 

As reformers sympathizing not one iota in what is signified 
by the old-world word of Toryism— as liberals, abhorring root 
and branch everything that is implied in these latter times 
by that most monstrous humbug and blague, in an age not 
wholly free from impostures, Whiggery — we cannot but 
recall vividly to remembrance the chief among the ministerial 
achievements accomplished six years ago during the ten fruitful 
months of Lord Derby's government. 

Foremost among them all, those bold and comprehensive 
measures of Chancery reform,t which were the despair of 
''Bleak House," and the cherished day-dream only of con- 
firmed visionaries. 

* Ministerial Statement in the House of Lord% Friday, 27th 
February. 8vo. pp. 16. Ollivier. 1852. 

i* Measures of legal reform, oondooted throughout under the 
wise and Tigilant supervision of the greatest lawyer and one of 
the most profound and subtle intellects of his age, the Bight 
Hon. Edward Sugden, Baron St. Leonards, then Lord High 
Chancellor. 

c2 



20 THE DERBY MINISTBY. 

Simitltaiieoasly with the carrying of those wholesome and 
sweeping changes through the Augean precincts of the law, 
there were the rapid and effectual strengthening of the hitherto 
neglected and dilapidated national defences : a militia bill of 
a rational kind, not merely talked of but actually and rapidly 
passed— creating a national guard suddenly, by the magical 
words la reine le veut, among the teeming ranks of our insular 
population ! And, meanwhile, the true palladium of the land, 
the wooden walls of the snug little island, were so energeti- 
cally advanced, extended, and multiplied, that besides the 
extraordinary circumstance of a Channel fleet no longer 
existing merely upon paper, the maritime resources of England 
were enhanced to such an extent, during that restricted interval, 
that when war seemed imminent, towards the close of the 
ensuing year, England found herself happily prepared for the 
emergency,* thanks, literally, to the forethought of Lord 
Derb/s zealous and prescient administration. 

Beyond all this, moreover, it was during the same narrow 
span of time marking the limits of the Derby government in 
1852, that the Anglo-French alliance was secured and con- 
solidated. It was to the frank and cordial recognition of the 
Emperor Napoleon III., — ^it was to the acceptance, as a lawful 
European event, of the lawless coup d*etat, legalized imme- 
diately upon its successful accomplishment by the approbation 
of 8,000,000 out of the 10,000,000 of the adult male popula- 
tion of France, — ^it was tq the ready and instant acknowledg- 
ment of a rule founded literally upon the basis of a heroic 
conspiracy, of which the avowed ringleader was the thrice- 
chosen chief of the state, having a whole nation as his accom- 
plices, — it was to this simple and manly course of proceeding 
on the part of Lord Derby and his colleagues, upon the 
morrow of the revival of the Napoleonian empire, that the 

* It is due to the gallant sailor-peer to recall to remembrance 
in this place, now that he no longer occupies a seat in Lord 
Derby's cabinet, that the af&irs of the Admiralty were then 
presided over by Vice- Admiral his Grace Algernon Percy, Duke 
of Northumberland. 



THE EAEL OF BEBBY. 21 

world became indebted for that alliance which has since then 
subsisted uninterruptedly during the greater portion of one 
entire decade, during war, during peace — the alliance with 
which are so intimately and inextricably bound up all the 
sunnier and more golden hopes of civilization. The inci- 
dent furnished at once the most signal vindication of the 
great principle of non-intervention upon which England had 
ever yet adventured. It was the expiation at last of the old 
kingly confederations. It was the deliberate recognition, at 
length, of the inalienable right possessed by every independent 
state— the right of constituting and modifying at pleasure its 
own internal form of government. 

It must be remembered that the Derby ministry of six 
years ago existed from the outset with an unmistakable 
minority in the lower branch of the legislature. This necessi- 
tated, in the end, what was indeed effected on the 1st of July, 
1852,— the formal dissolution of Parliament. The succeeding 
House of CJommons had not been long assembled, however, 
when by an adverse decision of its members, in a committee 
of ways and means, the Ministry still found themselves to be 
in a positive minority— a clear minority of nineteen — ^upon a 
division of very nearly six hundred of the newly-elected repre- 
sentatives. It occurred — ^this division — on Thursday, the 16th 
of December, and resulted, as a matter of course, in the in- 
stant resignation of the seals of oflBce by Lord Derby's govern- 
ment. Thereupon followed the redoubtable Ministry of All 
the Talents, the grand hocuspocus cabinet of the Aberdeenites ! 
An administration so excessively clever, and so exceedingly 
perverse, that one longed at last for that rule of "little 
wisdom" by which men are so easily governed, according to 
witty old sardonic Mynheer Oxenstiem. 

A fourth time — upon the occasion of the long-delayed but 
inevitable, expiatory, ignominious downfall of the Aberdeenites 
in 1853 — the wand of ministerial power was proffered for Lord 
Derby's acceptance by his sovereign. A third time the noble 
earl abstained from grasping it; again, as in each former 
instance, upon the ground that the only ministry he could 



22 THE DEBBY MIKISTBT. 

reasonably hope to form at the moment must have depended 
for its existence upon the forbearance of political antagonists. 
Three years later on, however, that sufficient reason was in 
truth no longer valid. The majority of nineteen, by which 
Lord Derby in 1852 had been compelled to tender the resig* 
nation of himself and his colleagues, was avenged in 1858 by 
that other majority of nineteen, suddenly striking down in its 
"pride of place" the vaunted strength of Lord Palmerston's 
dictatorial administration. Oddly enough too, it transpired 
upon that same mysterious 20th of February which had 
twice witnessed — once in 1851, once in 1852 — the over» 
throw of Lord John Russell's government. It was on Satur- 
day, the 20th of February, 1858, that by the whilome decisive 
majority of "nineteen" the Great Minister was suddenly shorn 
of his power, and awoke on the morrow to find himself stripped 
also of his popularity. 

The second Derby administration was within a week after- 
wards formally installed in office, and, though hastily summoned 
into existence, it was in all essential respects satisfactorily 
organized. At the very outset, one of the bitterest but one 
also of the least formidable of its foes, the whimsical ex- 
Secretary to the Admiralty, said of it candidly in the hearing of 
his own pqlitical chief, then moodily observant upon the front 
bench of the Opposition^" For ability, the present Ministry 
may fairly challenge comparison with any of its predecessors :" 
an admission so superfluous, however, under the circumstances, 
that one might say with Hamlet, " It needs no ghost to tell 
us that" — not even the ghost of a House of Commons wag ! 
Half a year, howbeit, has ab*eady elapsed since the cabinet of 
an emergency was hurriedly called into existence by a sort of 
political impromptu, and already it has long ceased to be a 
Doinistry upon sufferance. It has already won for itself a repu- 
tation. It has traversed a busy, energetic, and laborious session 
without a single reverse, with scarcely one solitary blunder. 
It has added various and important reforms to the statute- 
book. It has reorganized, and by reorganizing reconsolidated, 
the whole fabric of our Indian government. It has in a totally 



THE EABL OF BEKBT. 23 

Opposite direction driven home the wedge for the subversion 
of another monstrous anomaly in the conduct of the affairs of 
our vast and scattered possessions. Tor by resolutely sum- 
moning a new colony into existence, in the instance of British 
Columbia, it has secured to the empire a guarantee for the 
ulterior overthrow of the Hudson's Bay Company's monopoly, 
and for the opening up to Anglo-Saxon energies of our gigantic 
but hitherto neglected North-American dominions. 

!Fiscally, moreover, the Cabinet has met the deficiency of 
£4,000,000 bequeathed to them by their Whig predecessors, 
by faithfully adhering to the pre-arrangement of a graduated 
diminution of the income-tax, evading, at the same time, 
the apparently inevitable alternative — that of inflicting 
additional imposts upon any single article of general con- 
sumption. The maintenance of our alliances— the presc rva- 
tion of European tranquillity — ^the vindication of the national 
honour (here by the penning of a despatch, there by the ex- 
torted liberation and compensation of our imprisoned country- 
men) — these are already among the fruits of the foreign policy 
firmly but dexterously developed by a cabinet that twenty- 
four hours before the division upon the 20th of Tebruary was 
certainly altogether unpremeditated. 

The abrogation of the law relating to property qualifications, 
the admission of Jews into the House of Commons — these, and 
less striking, though hardly less important innovations effected 
during the late session of Parliament, if not distinctly origi- 
nated, have most assuredly, we must admit, been in no way 
perversely obstructed, by the members of Lord Derby's 
government. 

The professed Liberals, the nominal Liberals, those dear 
old Torified Whigs pining miserably with Lord Palmerston 
behind the table, with Lord John Russell below the gangway, 
all of them on that chill, shivering side of the house to the 
left hand of Mr. Speaker, as a matter of course cried out 
with one choral voice, that ministers in all these doings were 
mere plagiarists and pilferers. 

It is an old story, truly, a senile song, a most trite ai^d 



24 THE DEBBY MINISTRY. 

vapid retaliation. It was directed, that same specious and 
formidable accusation, now more than half a century ago, 
against Mr. Canning's policy in the Foreign Secretaryship. 
He was taunted with that systematic purloining by one who 
possessed then a grand reputation as a reformer — Henry (now 
Lord) Brougham. What said Mr. Canning in scornful and 
sarcastic repudiation of the charge ? It was one of the happiest 
of his many brilliant rejoinders. He said, "It is not very 
easy for ministers to do anything without seeming to borrow 
something from the honourable and learned gentleman. Break 
away in what direction we will, whether to the right or left, 
it is all alike. ' Oh,' says the hon. and learned gentleman, 
'I was there before you ; you would not have thought of that 
if I had not given you a hint.' In the reign of Queen Anne," 
continued Mr. Canning, " there was a sage and grave critic of 
the name of Dennis, who, in his old age, got it into his head 
that he had written all the good plays that were acted at that 
time. At last a tragedy came forth with a most imposing 
display of hail and thunder. At the first peal Dennis exclaimed, 
'That's my thunder!* So with the hon. and learned gentle- 
man; there is no noise and stir for the good of mankind in any 
part of the world, but he instantly claims it for his thunder." 
It is precisely the same now with that Dennis of politics, your 
true Whig — immemorial monopolist of wise change and 
sagacious liberalism. After (thanks to the ex-ministers) a 
dull, protracted, wearisome interval of silence and stagnation, 
there breaks upon us the late storm of reforms which are 
calculated at the very least to clear the political atmosphere — 
when lo — "That's my thunder !" cries the Opposition. 

And now, what have we here before us prospectively P A 
reasonable hope that there will be an end, at last, of the long 
and often reiterated grace, delivered annually with so much 
pious unction by the Whigs, before that eagerly awaited 
banquet of reform, that even yet, during all these dozen years 
past, has never once actually been commenced — leaving us 
still famished at the close of every session, without the solace 
of one momentary nibble, though it were but at the driest old 



« 

(t 



THE EABL 07 DEBBT. 85 

mouldy crust of iniioyation ! Sanchos hungering in the midst 
of plenty in a new island of Barataria ! Starveling guests, year 
after year gathered together ostentatiously at the feast of the 
political Barmecides ! " Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! " throughout 
the melancholy reign of these same tantalizing Whig econo- 
mists, have we not, in every successive February, seen the 

funeral baked meats" of each dead session, in its turn, 

coldly furnish forth the marriage-table " of the two houses 
on the re-assembling of Parliament P 

Happily, however, there is to be an end at length of this 
distracting display every twelvemonth of a legislative anti- 
climax, — this plethora of promises, followed by an actual 
atrophy in the way of anything like performance. 

Instead of those "fine words '' that, according to old vulgar- 
minded Lord Duberley, in the Heir at Law, " butter no pars- 
nips," we are to have Acts, that, when laid upon the tables of 
the Lords and Commons, will certainly prove fare at once 
abundant, substantial, and wholesome. 

As the piece de resistance, there will be, let us hope, a resolutie 
and comprehensive measure of Parliamentary Reform; no longer 
kept "dangling," like bob-cherry, before the yearning gaze of the 
community, but deliberately placed before the country for — 
discussion. Hitherto these so-called reformers (who were 
virtually for no reform at all), these giiasi-&d\oca.tes of the 
advance movement (who were really for the pleasant alternative 
apparently either of retrograding or remaining obdurately 
stationary) —hitherto, we say, these arrogant pretenders to a 
monopoly in patriotism and enlightenment, have kept this 
question (to employ once more Lord Derby's admirable 
phrase) " dangling " thus perpetually before the eyes of the 
nation, because of their regarding it simply as a literal pendant 
to the enactment cf the 7 th of June, 1832. Tae cabinet now 
holding office— not merely to talk, but to do, not to promise 
but to perform — has, we know, undertaken, if not to accom- 
plish, at any rate to attempt, the conscientious solution of this 
eminently difficult problem of Parliamentary Reform, hereto- 
fore the Shibboleth of Whitehall, with no servile remem- 



26 THB DEEBY MIKI6TBT. 

brance of the inadequate sclieme first sketched now more than 
six-and-twenty years ago, but with a vigilant eye to the parti- 
cular exigencies of the time, and with a philosophic and states- 
manlike regard to the intricate and exquisitely-balanced 
mechanism of the constitution. So considered by ministers 
bent upon governing their fellow-men according to the dictates 
of reason, not in blind and slavish obedience to the mere rote 
of certain wretched, old-world, worn-out party dogmas, the 
Keform Bill of 1859 will not, by inevitable necessity, lead, 
like the Reform Bill of 1832, to much instant, and to more 
ulterior, disappointment. Examined thus, prepared thus, 
with the design of benefiting the whole mass of the popula- 
tion, and not alone one favoured and insulated section of it — 
the new scheme of reform gives promise of realizing the more 
cherished aspirations of the general multitude. Loyaliy oon- 
serratiye in character, the Administration has already shown, 
nevertheless, that it has wisely appreciated the secret of 
Danton— to dare ! Otherwise, for example. North America 
would still be under the taboo of one trading company, while 
Hindostan, because of another, might still be groaning under 
the old, agonizing, dislocating ban of a double government. 
As in the latter instance they had the moral audacity to weigh 
scrupulously in the balance, one after another, each of the far- 
famed Resolutions, and out of the enlarged knowledge thus 
sagaciously acquired, to build up for our Indian empire the 
complicated fabric of an entirely new organization ; so, with 
regard to Parliamentary Reform, ministers are prepared 
doubtless to deal with its several divisions boldly, frankly, 
and resolutely. Demonstrate the advisability, and with that, 
the applicability, of the ballot, and, we doubt not, even the 
ballot wiU be given ungrudgingly. A considerable extension 
of the elective franchise, a cautious modification in the dis- 
tribution of the electoral districts, a judicious solicitude for 
the equable recognition of the claims of property, of intellect, 
and of industry— these characteristics of the forthcoming 
measure may, we trust, be already regarded as certain, and 
not simply hypothetical. 



TH£ £ASL OP SEELBT. 27 

ElsewWe, moreover, may be recognized in Lord Derby's 
colleagues, and in tbe manner in which the various offices of 
administration have been distributed amongst them, happy 
auguries of other reforms— reforms for the most part as im- 
portant as they are miscellaneous. National education is secure 
of no mean advocates at the cabinet council-board, where are 
seated side by side the noble lord the member for King's Lynn 
and the right hon. baronet the member for Droit wich— champions 
of the cause, as true and earnest as have ever trodden the path- 
way first marked out in all its devious windings by the adven- 
turous footprints of her Majesty's present ambassador to the 
Greek government. Improvements in the law, we may feel 
perfectly well assured, are not necessarily abandoned, now that 
a nisi prim advocate has been installed in the Court of Chan* 
eery. Never was any ministry more rich in lawyers. And 
lawyers, be it said to their honour, are not simply the right, 
but the only wise (or almost, we had said, possible) law re- 
formers. Instance this, the greatest of all living law reformers. 
Lord Brougham, and hardly less remarkable theoretically, as a 
law reformer, practically, in many important particulars, Lord 
St. Leonards, the Derbyite ex-Chancellor. The organization of 
an efficient and sufficient maritime force; the amelioration of 
the hitherto, in several respects, most lamentoble condition of 
our warriors by sea and by land ; above all, the systematic 
continuance of a tender and reverent regard for the social 
wants of the multitude, more especially of the industrial popu- 
lation—these, while they are the peculiar requirements of our 
age, are also not merely themes, but favourite themes, to the 
consideration of which, and to the development of which into 
philanthropic measures, several members of the cabinet of 
Lord Derby have a natural, it might even be said, an instinc- 
tive and resistless tendency. 

That Lord Derby himself should now prove an energetic re- 
former is, indeed, only reasonable and consistent in one who, as 
we have seen, has been mainly instrumental during the last 
thirty years in carrying through Parliament some of the most 
judicious and comprehensive measures of legislative improve- 



28 THE DBBBT MINISTRY. 

ment. As a cbivalroiis chieftain of the senate, not as a mere 
stubborn obstructive, in him has long since been recognized "the 
Rupert of debate." The magnanimity of the emancipator of the 
slaves, the liberalism of the supporter of the Reform Bill, the 
generous sentiments actuating the advocate for the removal of 
disabilities from both Catholics and Dissenters, still, judging 
from the obvious policy of his cabinet, remain vital in the 
nature of the leader of the Derby government. His antago- 
nists in discussion still find, no less, that there, in the midst 
of his varied oratorical powers, lurks yet the sting of sarcasm 
which extorted from O'Connell the designation of " Scorpion 
Stanley," — an epithet, coming from the outspoken lips of 
Dan, complimentary rather than the reverse, remembering 
those other charming flowers of rhetoric flung about him with 
such lavish prodigality and such reflned taste by the Libe- 
rator ; such as " the base, bloody, and brutal Whigs," or, as 
"old buccaneering Wellington ! " 

Happier phrases, scarcely, have not been fathered upon any 
one than those somewhat more refined ebullitions of good- 
humour attributed to the Prime Minister himself, — bon-mots 
which he has given utterance to precisely at the right mo- 
ment, here and there, at intervals during his energetic 
parliamentary life, upon the rare temptation of some most 
alluring opportunities. 

What more felicitous in this way than his comment upon 
that first among the many notable occasions on which the 
noble lord the member for the city of London has caused the 
blundering overthrow of a cabinet ?— " Johnny 's upset the 
coach ! " It was a momentary flash of fun, as vividly ludi- 
crous in effect as the drollest woodcut of Leech or the whim- 
sicalist lithograph of Phillipon. 

What more fantastically ridiculous again, remembering the 
Greek imbroglio, and the fire-and-fury reputation of the diplo- 
matist, than his christening Lord Palmerston, once upon a 
time, " Don Pacifico " ? 

Incidentally it has been here already remarked, that the 
Earl of Derby occupies, either by birth or by genius, in many 



THE EASL OF DEKBT. 

partictilars, a high, in some a supreme position, among the 
ranks of the most distinguished of his contemporaries. Toge- 
ther with his ancient title, he has inherited the patronage of 
seven livings, besides ample estates in Ireland, at Ballykis- 
teen, near Tipperary ; in England, at Knowsley, in Lanca- 
shire : the latter a seat, some of the peculiarities of which the 
noble earl has himself indicated through one of his own autho- 
rized publications.* He has won for himself, however, by his 
chivalrous character and his splendid talents, far more than he 
has in any way inherited — his influence over his fellow- 
countrymen, his name in history, his power, now greater than 
ever, of moulding the fortunes and guiding the destinies of his 
fatherland. 

His election as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, 
already mentioned, was consequent upon the death of Arthur, 
the great Duke of Wellington : the installation of the new 
chancellor beginning on Tuesday, June 7, 1853, and terminating 
on the Thursday following. Besides this, the noble earl 
occupies several other honorary posts — posts of distinction, if 
not of responsibility. He is, in this way, an elder brother of 
the Trinity House, a governor of the Charter House, a 
trustee of the British Museum, and a trustee of the Hun- 
terian Museum. His literary abilities, but more than that, the 
fervour of his religious convictions, he has impressively indi- 
cated through the pages of a little volume written by him 
several years ago — a book relating to the "Parables of our 
Lord/'t eulogistic allusions to which effusion of his ethical 
scholarship, allusions uttered in a formal oration by one of the 
high academical authorities of the University of Oxford, 
formed not one of the least interesting incidents in the stately 
ceremonial of the earl's inauguration as Chancellor. 

Nothing is more strikingly characteristic at once of the 

* Gleanings from the Menagerie and Aviary of Knowsley Hall. 
59 coloured plates, from drawings by Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, 
and 74 pages of letter-press. Taylor. Folio. 1850. 

t Conversations on the Parables of the New Testament. By 
Lord Stanley. One voL 18mo. New edition. Nisbet. 1849. 



80 THE DEBBT MINISTRY. 

whole genius and temperament of Lord Derby, than his 
manner in the House of Peers upon the night of some great 
discussion— upon the occasion, let us say, of one of his im« 
portant ministerial statements. Every one is in expectation. 
The building is comparatiyely crowded— the Lords in unusual 
attendance, the Ck)mmons clustered below the bar, strangers 
grouped upon the steps of the throne, or to the right and 
left upon the floor of the house behind the woolsack. 
Although the Premier is seated, in the midst of his colleagues, 
upon the front Treasury bench, he among them all is at once 
readily distinguishable. You recognize him at once by the 
watchful glance— that frequent look of vivid and vigilant 
observation. If you mark him keenly before he rises, more- 
over, you fail not to note the nervous anxiety betrayed in his 
every lineament, in the compression of the firm lip and the 
knitting of the broad forehead. When at length, amid the 
breathless silence of the assembly, he has gained his feet, 
how, through the clear and unstudied exordium, he rapidly, 
yet by imperceptible gradations, wins upon the sympathy of 
his audience by his evident sincerity and earnestness. Later 
on, when he has passed the outskirts of his argument, and 
has fairly warmed to his theme, all the more genial qualities of 
his mind become apparent, shining out winningly, delightfully, 
playfully, with an air of exhilaration. It is a vivacity with 
him "ever young** in its easy animation. Yet, suddenly, in 
the midst of this, if he is desirous at any moment of reverting 
to a more serious tone, of recalling himself and his hearers to 
a mood of gravity befitting some impressive and emphatic 
declaration — his look, his voice, his bearing are instantaneously 
invested with the dignity of the senator and the statesman. 
The management of his harmonious voice, above aU, is 
throughout marked in every turn and inflection by an almost 
perfect art, and a nearly matchless dexterity; more especially, 
as we have heard it inimitably described, when— upon occa- 
sion—it is*o managed that " the cadence falls like the running 
bullet in a loaded bludgeon.** And, peculiarly noticeable in 
all these orations of the Premier, from the first syllable uttered 



THE EABL 07 DE£BT. 81 

to the lingingr close of the peroration, the langraage is always 
80 pure and idiomatic, so wonderfully terse and translucent ! 

Personally, Lord Derby is a favourable specimen of a 
patrician Englishman : his figure tall and well-proportioned : 
his eyes eagle in their glance : his features, under their 
more agreeable aspect, expressive of a disposition dis- 
tinguished above all things by frankness, dignity, and 
resolute determination. Deighton's sketch of the Premier, 
though slight and touched off lightly with a careless 
hand, is perhaps, of all his portraits, the most life-like 
and characteristic. It gives the manner, the bearing, the 
expression, not less distinctly or less accurately, than the 
grizzled whiskers and the spectacles. It is the very man him- 
self, the same familiar form so often seen passing through the 
porch of Westminster Hall, on his way to the House of Lords, 
sauntering thither, perhaps to deliver a great speech in some 
historic debate, without one pencilled note in his pocket, or a 
single set phrase in his memory. 



THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI, 



THE RIGHT HON. B. DISEAELI. 



SiKCE the death of George Canning, no snch remarkable 
instance of a man of the people elevating himself to the 
dignity of leader of the British House of Commons has been 
witnessed as that afforded by the career of the right honour- 
able gentleman now for a second time her Majesty's Chancellor 
of the Exchequer. 

Beginning life, like Canning, as a lover of letters, but with- 
out the advantages of a university education, he has attained 
his present eminent— ^in many respects pre-eminent— position 
by the pure exercise of his intellectual powers, by indomitable 
energy, and unflagging perseverance. Perhaps no leader of 
party has ever lived down so much laughter, or lived it down 
so triumphantly. Somehow he always has the laugh with 
him nowadays; and the derided "new member" of 1837 has 
long since become the most dreaded antagonist in discussion, 
and in several particulars, among all his surviving contem- 
poraries, the most accomplished debater in Parliament. Woe 
be to him, indeed, who rashly crosses foils now with this 
dexterous fencer, and, doing so, lays himself open to a home- 
thrust from that poignant ridicule ! At a lunge, the button has 
flown off, and the keen weapon, pointed with wit, and poisoned 
with satire, quivers to the hilt in the transfixed. 

The later, and in every way incomparably the most remark- 
able, successes attained by Mr. Disraeli, — ^those won by him 
not as an aspirant for literary honours, but as one of the most 
conspicuous of the political chiefs of Parliament, — are attri- 
butable, in a great measure, to the absolute dedication of all 
his energies, unreservedly and unconditionally, to the further- 

D 2 



36 THE DERBY MINISTRY. 

ance of one grand ambition, — ^that of assuming the foremost 
place in the House of Commons, as leader of the popular 
branch of the legislature, and representative there of the 
supreme councils of her Majesty's Government. Everything 
in any way calculated to interfere with the advancement of 
this lofty purpose, the right honourable gentleman has 
notoriously, long since, and, we dare say, without one 
momentary pang of regret, voluntarily sacrificed. Predilec- 
tions and partialities, whims and fancies, habits seemingly 
engrained by custom, preferences apparently altogether in- 
eradicable, have all been swept aside by the inexorable mastery 
of this one dominant and absorbing aspiration. Recollect 
for a moment what the present Chancellor of the Exchequer 
was, even before he first learnt to call himself B. Disraeli, 
M.P.; namely, in that earlier stage of his career when he 
loved to sign his name Disraeli the Younger. 

Remember him as he was then, in appearance and tempera- 
ment, as his individuality is still vividly preserved to us by 
the graceful pencil of Chalon, or by that whimsical etching- 
needle with which Maclise, long before he became an Acade- 
mician, adorned the earlier pages of Fraser's Magazine, 
Chalon's sketch — that delicate sketch of the oval face, the 
Byronic collar, and the Sidonian ringlets — ^is well enough 
known to the generality. It still occasionally appears in the 
windows of the printsellers, and has been prefixed to the 
popular edition of " Coningsby," as a frontispiece. Not so the 
serio-comic etching by Maclise, — a portraiture, in its peculiar 
way, infinitely more characteristic. There it lies, buried away 
in that early volume of " Regina," among an ingenious little 
biographic series, one instalment of which astounds us with the 
very surprising intimation that a man of letters still living, 
Mr. Jerdan, to wit, of the Literary Gazette, must be now 
somewhere about 130 years of age, in fact, only just a little 
below Parr; the contributor to Fraser announcing this re- 
markable fact through the simple device of a misprint of 1730 
for 1780, as the date of the birthday of the veteran journalist. 
In a companion embellishment to the same series, moreover. 



THE BIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI. 37 

appears that fantastic limmng by D. M. of the author of 
"Pelham," standing with his back to yon, before a cheval 
glass, in the midst of his toilet, lather on chin, razor in 
hand, shaving! Turning the sere old pages of the maga- 
zine, we come at last to the artist's waggish outline of 
Disraeli the Younger, as he appeared and was then, while his 
name still bore upon it the gloss of "Vivian Grey's" showy 
and sudden popularity. Ringlets, of course, as in the minia- 
ture of Chalon, as afterwards in the profile by Count d'Orsay, 
as later on, indeed, in the admirable portrait by Francis 
Grant, the Boyal Academician. But beyond the mere 
external adornments of the countenance, Daniel Maclise 
has here caught, with the point of that wicked etching- 
needle of his, the evanescent peculiarities of the air, the 
manner, the bearing, what the French call the je ne saia 
quot, constituting the individuality. The likeness, which 
is full-length, represents the young novelist leaning negli- 
gently upon a mantel-shelf, clad, among other gorgeous 
articles of costume, in a radiant vest, and trousers of velvet; 
smoking contemplatively from a meerschaum, the bowl of which 
is nothing less than Brobdignagian. By the time Disraeli 
the Younger had merged into B. Disraeli, member for the 
county of Buckingham, an extraordinary change had become 
perceptible. That change has now grown into something 
almost bearing about it the semblance of a transformation. 
The fashionable lounger in the "gilded saloons" of May fair 
and Belgravia is forgotten in the statesman, orator, and 
administrator, whose every thought, hope, or aspiration has 
long been directed exclusively to the precincts of the 
legislative palace at Westminster. No more has he leisure 
now for burning the weed in whose pungent incense there are 
floating daydreams. No longer has he time, or, possibly, even 
inclination, for penning three volumes octavo of sparkling 
fiction, political novel, or ethical romance. The imaginative 
writer has for now more than ten years past fixed his whole 
ambition — not a considerable portion of it, but the whole of 
his manifestly large and lofty ambition— upon the practical 



3S THE DERBY MINISTRY. 

labour of not simply influencing, but leading and guiding, the 
destinies of the British Government. 

The remarkable consequence of this undivided dedication of 
the whole of his intellectual powers to the development of 
this one paramount design, is assuredly by this time suf- 
ficiently apparent. It was strikingly demonstrated, indeed, 
as far back as six years ago, when, in 1853, Mr. Disraeli 
first occupied the high position he again assumed in 1858 
under Lord Derby's premiership. The unappreciated M.P. 
for Maidstone, who closed his maiden speech in the House of 
Commons amidst shouts of scornful merrimept, is once more the 
recognized and authoritative leader of that great assembly; he 
is there, moreover, continuously, whetlier seated on the front 
bench of the Treasury, or on that of the Opposition, at the 
head of the country gentlemen of England, a knight of the 
shire represented by John Hampden in the Long Parliament, a 
member of the Privy Council, and at the present moment, in 
his ministerial capacity, her Majesty's Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. 

The Right Honourable Benjamin Disraeli, bom in London 
during the December of 1805, is descended from one of 
those Hebrew families known by the venerable title of the 
Sephardim. According to the most simple definition, the 
Sephardim were those among the children of Israel who never 
deserted the shores of the Mediterranean until driven thence 
by adverse circumstances. The majority of these took up 
their abode in the cities of Arragon and Andalusia, where they 
continued to reside until expelled by the authority of Torque- 
mada. The ancestors of the member for the county of Buck- 
ingham were, in this manner, compelled to emigrate from 
the Peninsula towards the close of the fifteenth century, 
in consequence of the extraordinary severities then inflicted 
by the Inquisition. Thereupon they selected the Venetian 
republic for their place of residence, and having assumed, 
instead of their Grothic surname, the more suggestive and 
appropriate Hebraic title of D'Israeli, flourished as merchants, 
under the banners of St. Mark, for upwards of two centuries. 



THE BIGHT HON. B. DISBJLELI. 39 

A little more than a hundred years a^ the great-grandfather 
of the subject of this biography sent his yonngest son Benja- 
min to these islands, in order that he might pnsh his fortunes 
under the shelter of a more liberal and enlightened system of 
administration. Mr. Pelham being then prime minister of 
England, and favourably disposed towards the descendants 
of Abraham, Benjamin Disraeli— grandfather of the present 
leader of the House of Commons— became, in 1748, an English 
denizen. Having married, in 1765, he appears to have ulti- 
mately settled down at Enfield in comparative luxury. There 
it was that he continued for many years to airiuse himself 
during the intervals of leisure snatched from commercial avo- 
cations sufficiently profitable in their results, — occasionally 
playing whist with Sir Horace Mann, sauntering through an 
Italian garden he had planted, and eating macaroni prepared 
by the hand of the Venetian consul, — down even to a period as 
recent as 1817, the year of his dissolution. 

There is a pleasant story told of the parent of Bartholdy, 
the composer, whose grandfather had previously been scarcely 
less renowned as a metaphysician ; namely, that he used to 
remark, not long before his decease, " I am, as it were, a link 
of mediocrity connecting together the genius of two distinct 
generations : in my youth I used to be pointed out as the son, 
as now, in my old ^e, I am pointed out as the father, of the 
Great Mendelssohn!" Although different in some respects, 
the position of Benjamin Disraeli the Elder might in others 
have been somewhat analogous to the position of the elder 
Mendelssohn. At ninety he was cheered by the celebrity of 
his son. Had he passed yet further beyond the allotted age of 
man, he might have found still greater reason to exult in the 
reputation of his grandson. 

At the period of his arrival in England, about the middle of 
the eighteenth century, Benjamin Disraeli of Enfield, mer- 
chant and dilettante, had discovered in this country repre- 
sentatives of other families of the Sephardim; such as the 
Medinas, and the Villa Beals, and the Laras (kinsmen of the 
Disraelis), and the Mendez da Costas. At the time of his 



40 THE DERBY MFNISTRY. 

demise, only the last-mentioned are believed to have left sur- 
vivors; whereas, with himself, his name has not only been 
perpetuated through two- generations, but imperishably in- 
scribed upon the scroll of our national literature, and embla- 
zoned even upon the records of the national administration. 
His son, Isaac Disraeli, besides giving to the world many other 
luminous volumes, in which he analyzed with much subtlety 
the joys, and the sorrows, and the peculiar and hitherto 
bewildering idiosyncrasy of the student, has written the most 
classic miscellany in the language, — "The Curiosities of 
Literature." His grandson and namesake, on the other 
hand, has combined a brilliant success in letters with an 
undeniable triumph over the almost countless difficulties 
besetting a political gladiator in the arena of the legis- 
lature. A popular novelist, he has, nevertheless, ventured 
to aspire to the highest offices within the grasp of a states- 
man ; and, what is yet more, his aspirations have long since 
been fully realized. 

During his minority, Disraeli had not only travelled through 
the principal cities of Germany, but had published his novel of 
" Vivian Grey,"* which, by the freshness of its manner and 
the originality of its very impertinence, — girding, as its strip- 
ling author had done throughout, sometimes at the most 
venerable foibles, sometimes at the most venerated absurdities 
of the social system,— at once fixed upon him the attention, 
if it failed to secure to him permanently the admiration, of his 
contemporaries. The work, appearing originally without any 
author's name upon the title-page, was conjectured by some to 
be a posthumous effusion of Lord Byron, who had expired 
then but little more than a year previously at Missolonghi. 
The narrative was grotesquely inscribed " To the best and 
greatest of men;" this mysterious dedication being accom- 
panied with the pert, odd, explanatory words following: — 
" He for whom it is intended will accept and appreciate the 
compliment ; those for whom it is not will — do the same." 
The sparkling vivacity of the work rendered it the rage for 
♦ Vivian Grey. 8 vok. 12mo. Colbum. 1826. 



THE BI&HT HON. B. DISBAELI. 41 

more than one season, and at once drew down npon its preco- 
cious writer the favour of the gay world of fashion. 

Simultaneously with the production of his maiden fiction, 
young Bisr^li formally made his appearance in the political 
circles as a London journalist. He undertook, in fact, while 
yet under twenty-one, the editorship of a new morning news- 
paper, entitled The Representative. It was an enterprise then 
boldly adventured upon by John Murray, the late eminent pub- 
lisher ; and although the journal terminated its existence within 
the first half-year from the date of its commencement, it is 
said to have involved the expenditure altogether of fully 
£70,000 sterling. The costly half-year in question was the 
earlier moiety of 1826, the first number of the journal appearing 
on the 25th of January, and the last number on the 29th of 
July. Sic transit— The Representative . Whatever anecdotes 
may yet be laughingly told in its regard, it is only fair to 
remember that its editorial "we" was but the symbol of a 
stripling. 

Subsequently, on attaining his msjority, Mr. Disraeli, in 
1827, traversed the classic regions of Italy and Greece, 
ultimately witnessing some of the incidents of the civil war 
then desolating the fair fields of Albania. During the year 
following appeared his second work, a single volume,* re- 
counting, in nineteen chapters, the surprising adventures and 
whimsical experiences incident to " The Voyage of Captain 
PopanUla." Having wintered in 1829-30 at Constantinople, 
the young novelist travelled through Syria in the spring, 
crossing the desert itito Egypt, and proceeding up the Nile 
until he had penetrated into Nubia, along the route already 
familiarized to the English scholar by Abyssinian Bruce, and 
eventually brought home still more vividly to our insular ima- 
ginations by the vivid pages of Eothen Kinglake. During these 
oriental peregrinations, the future romancist of " David Alroy, 
the Prince of the Captivity," drew doubtless from the sugges- 
tive scenes then traversed, but more especially from the sacred 

* The Voyage of Captain Popanilla. By the Author of " Vivian 
Grey." One vol. 12mo. pp. 243. Colbum. 1828. 



42 THE DEBBT MINIStAT. 

regions regarded by him as his ancestral fatherland,— the land 
governed of yore by the tetrarch and song by the trouba- 
dour, — those original fantasies out of which rose, a summer 
or two later, as spectral shapes in a magic circle, the forms of 
Honaim the Hakim, and Jabaster the Cabalist ; of Kisloch the 
Kourd, and Calidas the Indian ; of Miriam and Bostenay, of 
Hassan Sabah, the governor of Hamadan, and Scherirah, the 
captain of the robbers. It could only have come, one would 
say, from the influence of actual wanderings like these, that 
casual meditations over the old rabbinical and talmudic anno- 
tators could evoke those mystic warnings of the Daughter of 
the Voice, the Beth Kol, or Filia Focis, or those grisly 
phantoms of the ghouls, swarming and muttering in the Cim- 
merian darkness of that grimly cave of Genthesma. 

Lnmediately prior, however, to the production of the gor- 
geous and fantastic romance here indicated as the ulterior 
fruit of his travels in Africa and Palestine, Mr. Disraeli 
produced another tbree-volumed novel of modem society,* — 
"a moral tale, though gay,"— entitled "The Young Duke." 
He had by this time returned homewards, where, in 1831, he 
found the people of England agitated by the influence of a 
great political movement. 

His ambition now received an impulse in an entirely new 
direction. He aspired— at first ineflfectually — to obtain a seat 
in Parliament ; his efforts to this end being vainly, though 
strenuously, concentrated at the outset upon the one particular 
enterprise of securing, if possible, the representation of the 
borough of High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire. The 
Wycombe electors, however, entertaining a preference for the 
two other (more common-place) liberal candidates, pertina- 
ciously rejected the young literary aspirant for legislative 
honours, notwithstanding the circumstance of his having 
been formally introduced by Joseph Hume to the especial 
notice of the constituency. It was an incident, this intro- 
duction last mentioned springing directly from Mr. Disraelf s 
profound and ineradicable animosity to the Whigs, — that one 

* The Young Duke. 3 vols. 12mo. Colbum & Bentley. 1831. 



THE lilGHT HON. B. DISIULBLI. 43 

dominant conviction of his life (with him at once a passion, 
a principle, and a sentiment), running afterwards uninter- 
ruptedly, but deviously, through all the phases of his parlia- 
mentary career, and furnishing (through all) the clue to his 
political consistency. Hence, distinctly and deliberately as an 
anti-Whig, Disraeli associated his own name thus conspicu- 
ously with the most stanch among aU the ultra-reformers, — 
with that radical, outspoken Joseph Hume, who had given the 
watchword or battle-cry of the whole reform agitation,—" The 
bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill." Twice the 
would-be M.P. for Wycombe had the mortification of appear- 
ing upon the local hustings in the character of a discomfited 
candidate : and from a recollection of these incidents, we 
may presume that he turned with additional zest from the 
dusty highroad of politics to the cool and sequestered garden 
of literature. 

Precluded, as yet, by adverse circumstances, from realizing 
his design of taking his place among the national representa- 
tives, Mr. Disraeli, in 1832, — the memorable year of the E^eform 
Bill, — issued from the press his next imaginative effusion, a 
fiction emphatically pronounced by Heinrich Heine to be " one 
of the most original works ever written," — a production ex- 
tending to the length of seven parts or books, the first edition 
being published in four octavo volumes. It was entitled 
" ContariniFleming, "* and received from its author the supple- 
mentary and explanatory designation of a Psychological Auto- 
biography. Appearing in this avowedly autobiographic form, 
it endeavoured to portray the gradual and almost imper- 
ceptible development, not merely of a generous and passionate 
nature, but of an elevated and poetic temperament. It was 
suggested, it cannot but be conjectured, not so much by the 
marvellous reveries of " Wilhelm Meister," as by that more 
sombre effusion of the genius of Goethe, the "Sorrows of 
Werter," in which it is impossible not to discover the germ of 
what subsequently expanded into the "Apprenticeship." There 

* Contarini Fleming : a Psychological Autobiography. 4 vols. 
8vo. Murray. 1832. 



44 THE DEKBT MndSTRT. 

is discernible, moreover, a wonderful resemblance between 
the diplomatic career of Werter before he first had the rap- 
turous happiness of beholding Charlotte, and those passages 
in the life of Fleming which involved him for a while in the 
subordinate avocations of government ; — ^the same distaste for 
office, the same volatility, the same restlessness. There is a 
graceful reminiscence of Disraeli's own origin in the genealogy 
of his hero,— deriving the name of Fleming from the Saxons, 
and that of Contarini from the Venetians. In the yearning of 
the young child for nature, when he exclaims, " And I too will 
fly to Egeria!" the author dreams again the sylvan dream of 
Pompilius, the exquisite dream of the pure and the beautiful. 
When, however, he imagines that the spirit of Egeria becomes 
incarnated in the woodlands, he does more than revive the 
visions of antiquity, — he anticipates those bewitching reve- 
lations d,* Outre Tombe among which was long afterwards 
recognized the phantom seen in solitude, and loved with an 
unutterable and more than earthly tenderness by Ren6 de 
Chateaubriand. 

More remarkable in every respect, howbeit, than the fore- 
going production, was the romance from the same pen, which, 
in 1833, made its somewhat eccentric appearance. This was 
the " Wondrous Tale of Alroy," * the purely oriental story to 
which we have already referred, and to the third volume of 
which was appended (pp. 115 — 291) a miniature fiction entitled 
" The Rise of Iskander." The larger work, although replete in 
several parts with rhetorical extravagance, and overladen with 
the barbaric pomp of a gorgeous and even at times mere- 
tricious decoration, may be considered as, in some respects, 
the most remarkable contribution made by the younger Dis- 
raeli's hand to the stores of our romantic literature. Its style 
was a mistake, — blending prose with rhythm, and interrupting 
this rhythm with an occasional jingle of rhymes, — a style cal- 
culated more than any other to alternate between the vapid 
and the hyperbolical. Otherwise, "Alroy," in the splendour 

* The Wondrous Tale of Alroy. — ^The Rise of Iskander. 3 vols. 
12mo. Saunders and Ottley. 1833. 



TH£ BIGHT HON. B. DTSB^ELI. 45 

of its descriptions, might be regarded as perhaps the finest 
Oriental fiction written in our language since the incomparable 
" Vathek" of Beckford. It was a noble and touching tribute, 
moreover, offered by the romancist to the memory of his 
Hebrew ancestors, recounting, by events datmg back to the 
twelfth century, the rise and fall of " David Alroy, the Prince 
of the Captivity." 

It is a gorgeous romance, in which a descendant of a family 
of the Sephardim has celebrated the career of a Hebrew 
adventurer. Its barbaric pomp is not the least appropriate 
characteristic of a narrative, the glow of which is a reflex 
from the " Arabian Nights' Entertainments." Over the stirring 
fortunes of Alroy, his love for the beautiful Schirene hangs 
like the roseate haze enveloping the magic palace of Aladdin, 
investing with a new splendour the precious stones on the 
pavement, the ceilings of spicewood, and the columns of por- 
phyry. The various passages relating to this tenderness 
between the Princess of Bagdad and the Prince of the Cap- 
tivity are coloured with a truly oriental magnificence. The 
love that inspired them, one might conjecture, was not the 
offspring of the Cyprian Venus, but rather that Hindoo Cupid, 
the gaudy and fantastic Monmadi, with a bow of sugarcane, 
and arrows tipped with flowers, sailing among the branches of 
the palm and the cypress, between the wings of a parrot ! 

Still ambitious of gaining a seat in Parliament, still striving 
pertinaciously to grasp the t&ni&Uzmg iffnis/atuus down among 
the constituencies of that implacable little borough in Buck- 
inghamshire, Disraeli heard of the taunting query, " What is 
He ?" uttered one day (in reference to himself as a politician) 
at one of the London clubs, by one of those dear old detested 
Whig antagonists. Forthwith, a little pungent pamphlet,* 
"a thin acid pamphlet," pertinently entitled " What is He ?" 
was issued across the counter of Mr. Hatchard, in Piccadilly. 
It was a sixpenny brochure, in which the young writer ex- 
plained his political views as frankly, though necessarily not 
as fully and succinctly, as he afterwards contrived to do in his 
•What is He? An 8vo pamphlet. 6d. Hatchard. 1834. 



46 THE DEUBX MINISTBY. 

more popular and more elaborated literary performances-*^ 
his triad of political novels and his one important political 
biography. 

Singularly inferior to the least worthy among his foregoing^ 
effusions was his next volume — a literary production, given 
to the world; we caimot but think, in a moment when judg- 
ment was suffering eclipse from ambition. The author must 
long since have repented the publication of the quarto volume 
entitled "The Revolutionary Epick,"* regarding it, as he 
infallibly must, as the ill-fated fruit of an unlucky hallucina- 
tion. Although the prefatory remarks commenced with the 
somewhat pretentious declaration, " It was on the plains of 
Troy that I first conceived the idea of this work," and closed 
with the seemingly arrogant assumption, that if read aright it 
might " teach wisdom both to monarchs and to multitudes," — 
the writer, in another part of his introductory observations, can- 
didly and modestly confessed that, in the event of the "Epick" 
being condemned by his contemporaries, he should " without 
a pang hurl his lyre to limbo." Three books, constituting 
we may presume, merely a quarter of the entire composition, 
were issued in 1834 ; since which period no further instalment 
has been demanded even by the malicious curiosity of the re- 
viewers. Demogorgon is revealed upon a throne surrounded 
by celestial beings "with amethystine wings and starry 
crowns," in the opening of the poem, which subsequently 
relates to the rivalry exercised on earth by Magros, the genius 
of Eeudalism, and Lyridon, the genius of Federalism. The 
interest, as is but natural, breaks down altogether under the 
weight of a cumbrous aUegory. Against its deadening and 
depressing influences are required, indeed, either the elevating 
expansiveness of a faith like that of Bunyan, or the vivifying 
sensuousness of a genius like that of Spenser. 

Shortly before the Christmas of 1836, namely, on the 16th 
of December, the indefatigable candidate for the votes of the 
borough electors of High Wycombe again addressed himself— 
still however in vain— to that most dogged and immovable 

* The Revolutionary Epiok. One vol. 4to. pp. 206. Moxon. 1834. 



THE BIGHT BON. B. BISBAELI. 47 

constituency. His speech was immediately afterwards pub- 
listed in a separate form, under the title of "The Crisis 
Examined."* 

Discouraged as a poet, Mr. DisraeU adventured anew 
(through the medium of an ambitious treatise) upon the 
homelier labours of a pamphleteer. Submitting his argu- 
ments to the general public in the shape of a letter addressed 
to a noble and learned lord, — ^the then Chancellor Lyndhurst, — 
he pronounced what he designated on the title-page a "Vindi- 
cation of the English Constitution,"t the argument extending 
over upwards of 200 pages, and claiming for itself, not without 
reason, the importance of a political disquisition. Besides 
vindicating the English constitution, it comprised two subor- 
dinate vindications ; namely, a vindication (pp. 193 — 197) of the 
Tories, and a vindication (pp. 199 — 201) of Sir Robert Peel and 
his colleagues. With a variety of shrewd comments upon the 
relative value and diversity of our institutions, the work 
fails to combine what would have at once constituted it an 
authority,— a concise and specific definition of the manifold 
forces of government. Clever as one of the more remarkable 
among the "paper pellets" of Party, the volume afforded 
no insight into what may be termed the science of political 
dynamics. 

During the same year which witnessed the appearance of 
his political treatise, Disraeli became a candidate for the 
borough of Taunton, the Tories having once more resumed 
the reins of government. Nevertheless, again his attempt to 
enter the House of Commons proved signally unsuccessful, his 
opponent, Mr. Labouchere, obtaining a majority of nearly two 
to one in a constituency still remarkable as one composed 
chiefly of the most Whig-loving pot-wallopers in all Somerset- 
shire. What was yet more unfortunate in regard to this 
rather irritating contest, was the circumstance that the elec- 
tioneering excitement brought him into collision with the Irish 

* The Crisis Examined. Svo. pp. 31. Saunders and Ottley. 1834. 
+ A Vindication ot the English Constitution. One vol. Svo. 
pp. 210. Saunders and Ottley. 1835. 



48 THE DEBBY MINISTRY. 

Liberator, all but leading to a duel, and productive of— what 
it is unnecessary here to revive— an angry correspondeilce, 
ending in a series of the most bitter recriminations. 

The grotesque phases of this quarrel have long been suffi- 
ciently notorious. Everybody remembers 0*Connell's scornful 
conjecture as to young Disraeli's pedigree — ^the challenge that 
instantly followed, only to be instantly refused— the episodical 
but equally ineffectual squabble with Dan's eldest son — all 
ending with a threat like a flourish of trumpets, or what we 
may call a pleasant little example of epistolary fanfaronnade. 
Any one who still cares to hear the whole story related anew — 
with all the zest, too, of a malignant scandal-monger — may 
find it told, with every kind of circumstantial detail and particu- 
larlity in that " thing of shreds and patches," called a Political 
Biography,* the maiden work (as it was designated by one of 
the popular critics immediately upon its first appearance) of 
Mr. Bandal Leslie, a masterpiece of sneering scurrility and 
atrabilious vituperation. 

Still denied access to the House of Commons, Mr. Disraeli, 
in 1836, avenged himself as a politician by publishing in the 
Times newspaper a series of witty and caustic letters, signed 
"Runnymede," — a series read at the time of its appearance 
with lively interest, but never subsequently issued as a separate 
publication. 

Towards the close of that same year appeared his impassioned 
love-story, in three volumes, entitled " Henrietta Temple,"t a 
work genially dedicated to the then arbiter of fashion, the 
Count Alfred d'Orsay, as the memorial of an "affectionate 
friendship." Early in the following spring — ^namely, in May, 
1837 — came forth the attractive fiction in which our novelist 
has shadowed forth, under fictitious names, the forms and cha- 
racters of Byron and Shelley,— a romance called "Venetia," J 

*The Right Hon. Benjamin Disraeli, M.P. : a Literary and 
Political Biography, addressed to the New Generation. By 
Thomas Macknight. One vol. 8vo. pp. 646. Bentley. 1854. 

i* Henrietta Temple : a Love Story. Svols. 12mo. Colbum. 1836. 

i Venetia. 3 vols. 8to. Colbum. J 837. 



TH£ SIGHT HON. B. DISSi.£LI. 49 

Bubdwided into seven books, and inscribed, as a tribute 
of "respect and affection," to the noble and learned lord to 
whom had been already addressed the epistolary Vindication 
of the English Constitution. 

At length, in 1837, Benjamin DisraeU, then thirty-two years 
of age, entered Parliament as the representative of Maidstone, 
Wyndham Lewis being his colleague in the representation of 
that Conservative constituency. The failure of his maiden 
speech — extorting from him a distinct prediction that the 
time would yet come when he would be listened to by the 
members of the legislature, and reminding one in this of 
Sheridan's well-known exclamation under the like circum- 
stances, "It w in me, and by it shall come out!" — ^is 

certainly not the least interesting among the many similar 
anecdotes related in the annals of the British Parliament. 

It was delivered — this notable maiden speech of the now 
formidable and official leader of the House of Commons — 
towards the close of an important debate upon the Irish election 
petitions, on the evening of Thursday, the 7th December, 1837. 
It is recorded— this startling failure (really inaugurative of a 
most brilliant future success) — ^in an almost forgotten volume 
of that same Hansard^ long afterwards, wittily dubbed by 
Mr. Disraeli " the Dunciad of Politics ! " Taking down the old 
dusty volume from the book-shelf, and turning the yellowing 
leaves until we come to the debate already specified, how 
the names of the parliamentary chiefs taking part in this dis- 
cussion recall to mind a legislative epoch long since faded out 
of the recollection of the generality ! Every name upon the 
list of the debaters of that evening is famous, historical, — ^tbe 
name more or less of a celebrity. Half of the number — the 
elders among this group of orators— have long since been 
swept away into their graves ; the other half, then inspirited 
by the earlier and halcyon visions of a youth kindling with 
ambition, still survive, — one alone among them soured and 
disappointed, the others with many, at least, of their more 
golden hopes realized,— statesmen at this moment both re- 
nowned and powerful. 

£ 



50 THE DEBST 1CINISTET. 

The solitary unfortunate is no other than poor, crack-brained 
Smith O'Brien, who, Hansard tells us, opened the debate on 
that evening of Thursday, the 7th of December. He is fol- 
lowed immediately by a future minister of the Crown, — ^now 
her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, — ^Mr. Bulwer, 
then also in his thirty-second year, and in the first radiance 
of his varied reputation, meditating the sequel of " Ernest 
Maltravers," potent, though so young, as a politician, if only 
by reason of his pamphlet on " The Crisis," fresh from the 
successful completion of the two first volumes of his history of 
" Athens and the Athenians," already standing midway in his 
brilliant career as a novelist, having even then produced half 
the number of his far-famed works of imagination. The 
speech delivered by Mr. Bulwer on this December evening, 
1837, is altogether manifestly one of the most effective he has 
yet uttered within the walls of Parliament. He is followed in 
turn by Sir William FoUett, the great advocate, destined to 
expire, a few years later on, in the very act of extending his 
hand to grasp the seals of the Chancellorship. A once- 
familiar figure rises directly afterwards—Old Glory yonder, in 
the blue coat, the buckskins, and the top-boots — pleasant- 
featured, bald-headed Sir Francis Burdett. Afterwards 
wigged, and often it might be said also wigging, — ^the Celtic 
Thunderer of the house, the hon. and learned " member for 
Ireland," Daniel O'Connell, — the very man the member for 
Maidstone has threatened to meet here in this House of 
Commons, " at Philippi." 

Scarcely is O'Connell reseated, when Disraeli rises for his 
maiden speech. It is worthy of particular remembrance now, 
— the total and absolute failure of this maiden speech! — to the 
leader of the House of Commons himself assuredly an especial 
subject, in one sense, of proud and exultant recollection. 
Glancing down the pages of Hansard that record this fore- 
shortened harangue, we see sprinkled plentifully in parentheses^ 
laughter, loud laughter, renewed laughter ; and ultimately, 
towards the end, this unwonted intimation, '^ The shouts that 
followed drowned the conclusion of the sentence." But^ 



THE EIGHT HON. B. DISKAELI. 51 

what followed the shouts of laughter ? The New Member is 
still speaking. The words— reading them nowadays—are 
without doubt sufficiently remarkable. They are these, and 
Hansard is our authority : — 

" I would certainly gladly hear a cheer, even though it came 
from a political opponent. I am not at all surprised at the 
reception I have experienced. I have begun several times 
many things, and I have often succeeded at -last. I shall 
sit down now ; but the time will come when you will 
hear me." 

It is, we repeat, a distinct prediction, a prediction of which 
we have long since witnessed, of which we are still witnessing, 
the brilliant fulfilment. 

Immediately those indignant and prophetic words were 
articulated,— it is interesting to note that the debate was at 
once continued by no other than Lord Stanley, now Earl of 
Derby, and First Minister of the Cabinet among the foremost 
chiefs of which Mr. Disraeli is now, for a second time in his 
parliamentary career, leader of the House of Commons and 
Chancellor of the Exchequer : the last important speech in 
the discussion being the one pronounced by Sir Bobert Peel, 
then assuredly all unconscious that in that silenced New 
Member lurked his future dread antagonist ! 

Undoubtedly, as Mr. Disraeli has since then himself ob- 
served (" Tancred,'* book iv. c. 11), " a failure is nothing ; it 
may be deserved, or it may be remedied : in the first instance, 
it brings self-knowledge ; in the second, it develops a new 
combination, usually triumphant.'' His failure being of the 
second class, produced, accordingly a new combination, and 
that combination, it must be admitted, has proved in every 
way unusually triumphant. 

Eighteen months later on, indeed, Mr. Disraeli began 
already to win his way with the House of Commons. In 
the July of 1839 he so spoke as to produce a noticeable 
impression upon the auditory he was ultimately (before the 
close of thirteen years) to bring under his unquestioned leader- 
ship. In the month immediately preceding his first appre- 

£ 2 



52 THE DEEBT MINISTRY. 

ciable parliamentary success, — that is, in June, 1839, —he 
published his next literary effusion, a five-act tragedy, founded 
upon the very same theme upon which Lord John Russell has 
also written his five-act tragedy entitled " Don Carlos," the 
story recounted in the old Spanish ballad of ''The Count 
Alarcos and the Infanta Solisa." Dramatized by the member 
for Maidstone, the hero's name was preserved upon the title- 
page, and "The Count Alarcos"* appeared with a courtly 
dedication from the English playwright to the late Earl of 
EUesmere, then Lord Francis Egerton. Familiar though the 
ballad had been rendered, not merely by the accurate version 
of Dr. (now Sir John) Bowring, but by the nervous and 
impassioned paraphrase of the late Mr. Lockhart, it was 
agreeable to remark the skilful employment in a dramatic form 
of the materials analyzed with so much subtlety by Bouterwek 
in his ** History of Spanish Literature." Whatever vagueness 
there was in the ballad became necessarily dissipated in the 
tragedy. Time and place had alike to be selected. The time 
chosen was the thirteenth century ; the scene Burgos and its 
picturesque vicinity; Burgos being at that period the capital 
of the kingdom of Castille. Among the characters introduced, 
it is amusing to observe the name of Sidonia, a name after- 
wards rendered sufficiently famous by the pen of Disraeli, as 
that of a Hebrew Crichton with the wealth of a Bx)thschild, 
the knowledge of a Humboldt, and the capacity for languages 
of a Mezzofanti. 

Distinguished as the year which witnessed the appearance 
of his tragedy and the commencement of his parliamentary 
reputation, 1839 was rendered yet more agreeably remark- 
able to the dramatist-politician, by witnessing his marriage 
with Mary Anne, daughter of John Evans, Esquire, of Brance- 
ford Peak, in Devonshire, and relict of one whom we have 
abready mentioned as Mr. Disraeli's colleague in the repre- 
sentation of Maidstone, the late Wyndham Lewis, Esquure, 
of Greenmeadow, in Glamorganshire. The happy influence 
of this union upon his after-life he himself has gracefully 
* The Count Alaroos : a Tragedy. 5 ects. Colbum. 1839. 



THE BIGHT HON. B. DISBAELI. 53 

celebrated by that tribute to "A Perfect Wife," which con- 
stitutes one of his most charming dedications. 

Returned for Shrewsbury in 1841, the author became more 
than ever assiduous in his application to his parliamentary 
duties ; yet the M.P. did not altogether absorb the energies 
of the man of letters. Having thoroughly acquainted himself 
by practice with the qualities most acceptable in a novelist, 
Disraeli, nineteen y ftara ftffi >f t.hft appearance o f '* Vivian 
Grey,'* and consequently when his faculties had been matured 
by his having doubled the age at which he first adventured 
into the literary arena, issued a work from the press, which, 
by its immediate and sustained popularity, reduced all his 
previous successes to insignificance. 

It still remains, among all his various writings, his un- 
doubted masterpiece. It appeared in 1844!, and was entitled 
** Coningsby ; or, the New Generation."* Within a quarter 
of a year three large editions were exhausted. Translated 
into several of the European languages, it was circulated 
forthwith extensively upon the Continent. Across the Atlantic, 
fifty thousand copies were at once sold in the United States 
alone. Without depreciating in any way its literary merits, 
it must be allowed that what obtained for " Coningsby" its 
almost instant reputation was the fact of its pages being 
crowded with sketches of well-known characters, not less 
unmistakable in their way than the caricatures of H.B., with 
as much eccentricity and as little exaggeration. Nor were 
the individuals thus portrayed simply politicians, although 
the fiction itself was eminently political in its tendency. 
Lucian Gay, whom "Nature had intended for a scholar and 
a wit," but " Necessity had made a scribbler and a buffoon," 
was no less true to the life than Messrs. Taper and Tadpole,' 
and the rest of the mob of place-hunters frequenting the 
lobbies at Westminster. But the merit of "Coningsby" is 
far from being restricted to that of mere exactitude in the 
resemblance traceable through these singularly cunning 

* Coningsby ; or, the New Generation. 3 vols. 12mo. Colbum, 
1844. 



64 THE DERBY MINISTET. 

delineations. People laughed heartily, of course^ at that 
outline of the Bight Hon. Nicholas Rigby, burnt in, so 
to speak, with lunar caustic — ^the pencil of your true satirist. 
They were no less amused with every circumstance relating 
to that personage with the '* harsh voice and arrogant man- 
ner/' than with the momentary glimpse of the gentleman 
whose train starts at 9.15 — ^Mr. G. 0. A. Head, of Staleybridge. 
Sidonia, however, among all the diversified characters intro- 
duced, most quickly fascinates the reader's observation.^ From 
the moment of his reining in his Arabian, the Daughter of 
the Star, at the forest tavern in the thunderstorm, he piques 
the reader's curiosity by his extraordinary peculiarities. His 
preference at the frugal repast for perry and crusts, the com 
and wine of England, affords the first inkling of his origin- 
ality. Com and wine, he sententiously reminds Coningsby, 
have been deified; but the Chinese have -never raised temples 
to tea, nor the Irish to potatoes. Fervid in his declamation 
upon the text, "Genius when young is divine;" — ^startling 
in the announcement of his religion at the porch of the farm- 
house when departing, " I am of the faith that the Apostles 
professed before they followed their Master," — ^all are indica- 
tions consonant with the nature of Sidonia, as later on 
revealed, in Sequin Court as the greatest financier in Europe, 
and in Carlton Grardens as the luxurious but not effeminate 
millionnaire. 

Altogether, however, among the more remarkable portrai- 
tures scattered through the work, the Marquess of Monmouth 
is unquestionably of all the most ingeniously elaborated 
delineation. Every glance, every attitude, every syllable, is 
scrapulously, but without an effort, characteristic. A selfish 
voluptuary from the commencement, but princely withal in 
his habits, he has the manners of the " grand seigneur," and 
the temperament of the epicurean. He receives his grandson 
for the first time with the bow of Louis Quatorze ; and if he 
is assisted up a flight of steps at Paris by " La Petite/' it is 
with an acknowledgment of no less punctilious courtesy. 
Once only the heart of the man seems to throb perceptibly 



TEE BIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI. 55 

under the robe of the luxurious patrician. It is when Harry, 
liaving arrived at Coningsby Castle, greets the marquess in 
the midst of a crowded and distinguished assembly, with the 
inquiry, " How do you do, grandpapa P" Yet even then^ says 
the author, with a subtle sense of truthfulness in the por- 
traiture, " It would be exaggeration to say that Lord Mon- 
mouth's heart was touched : his good nature effervesced, and 
his fine taste was deeply gratified." The conclusion of the 
narrative, it may be added, by the way, is conceived in a spirit 
eminently dramatic and picturesque. 

Another twelvemonth, and " Coningsby " was followed by 
" Sybil; or, the Two Nations,"*--a fiction somewhat loftier in 
imrpose, being iUustrative, not onlyof the diversities of party, but 
of the social privations and political miseries of an entire popu- 
lation. What the "Epick" writer had unsuccessfully attempted, 
the novelist here effectively accomplished. He depicted, not 
merdy "the age and body of the time" in vivid colours, but, 
far more than that, described, occasionally with almost painful 
distinctness, "its form and pressure." Nevertheless, in spite 
of all its tragic under-currents, the fiction was superficially as 
reqoarkable for its vivacity as its predecessor. The denizens 
of Belgravia moved as gaily as ever, though in a more sombre 
atmosphere ; and the epigrammatic wit with which each person 
was sketched in a sentence, or an epithet, rendered the work 
no less acceptable than " Coningsby" to the admirers of what 
is merely sparkling in light literature. Conspicuous among 
the individuals thus delicately sketched with a dextarous pencil, 
Lord Mamey — " a man who was conscious you were trying to 
take him in, and rather respected you for it, but the working 
of whose cold, unkind eye defied you," and from whom you 
shrunk accordingly. Disagreeable though several of the 
patrician characters in the book, others are no less amusingly 
delightful, — ^from Alfred Mountchesney, "the Cupid of May- 
fair," to Captain Grouse, strutting over the product of the 
looms of Axminster "in very tight pantaloons, to show his 
very celebrated legs : " from Kremlin, "who had only oneidea» 
. • Sybil ; or, the Two Nations. 3 vols. 12mo. Colbum. 1845. 



56 THE DERBT HINISTBY. 

and that was wrong," to Wriggle, " who went with the times, 
hnt took particular good care to ascertain their complexion:" 
from Floatwell, who swore by Lord Dunderhead, to Mr. 
Ormsby, demurely observing, as a diplomatist moves past, 
highly starred and ribboned, " The only stars I have got are 
four stars in India stock." It is particularly observable, 
mOTeover, in regard to " Sybil," that, although the writer 
discourses at times, as the nature of his undertaking required, 
about twaddlers like Bombastes Eip, and about such themes 
of tedium a» debates in the House, when " Wishy is up, and 
Washy follows," the narrative repeatedly becomes invested 
with an absorbing interest, rising at intervals into a strain of 
solemn and pathetic eloquence. The closing passage of the 
first book, relating to the young Queen's accession, is, in this 
manner, elevated to the dignity of a noble and affecting pero- 
ration. Altogether the fiction is one which has visibly stamped 
upon it the impiint of an age the matrix of which was a 
revolution. 

Heturned to the House of Commons at the general election 
of 1847, as knight of the shire for Buckingham, Disraeli, in the 
same year, published the last of his series of novels, " Tancred ; 
or, the New Crusade,"* a work expressing some of his 
most cherished views upon religion, and some of the loftiest 
among his political aspirations. Incongruous though its mate- 
rials were, and these, moreover, connected together somewhat 
inartistically, the work, nevertheless, commanded attention by 
its very singularity, while it won the respect of many by its 
unaffected enthusiasm. Here, too, we are led saunteringly 
through the fashionable circles, where we are again intro- 
duced to several of our favourites in "Sybil" and "Co- 
ningsby," the thread of the narrative straying through an 
entangled plot, and trailing across the Desert into the 
Holy Land, until abruptly broken off at Jerusalem. Con- 
spicuous among the "familiar faces" seen before our 
departure for Palestine, is that of Edith, strangely trans- 
muted into a sarcastic lady, who can "describe in a sen- 
* Tancred ; or, the New Crusade. 3 vols. 12mo. Colbum. 1847. 



THE RIGHT HON. B. DISBAELI. 57 

tence and personify in a phrase." In the employment of this 
twofold capacity as a satirist, the author himself proves in 
"Tancred " that he has become more than ever a proficient. 
Speaking of Lady Valentine, for example, he depicts her after 
this amusing fashion,— as a personage "who had once been a 
beauty, with the reputation of a wit, and now set up for being 
a wit on the reputation of having been a beauty." While of 
Lady Hampshire he contents himself with remarking that she 
"spoke in a sawney voice of factitious enthusiasm." As a 
couple of titled parvenus, Lord and Lady Mountjoy are in like 
manner branded as persons " who, with a large fortune, lived 
in a wrong square, and asked to their house everybody who 
was nobody." Colonel Brace is humorously delineated as 
"robust, a little portly, but weU-buckled, still presenting a 
grand military figure ;" while the clever and beautiful Lady 
Constance Eawleigh, who is said to have " guanoed her mind 
with French nove'?," is described as having possessed the 
reputation of " breathing scorpions as well as brilliants and 
roses." Even Hillel Besso, although an Asiatic, and, what is 
more, a Caucasian, does not escape the accusation of "uttering 
common-places, as if they were poignant originalities." It is 
in the more serious portions of the romance, however, that its 
principal attraction is discoverable, where the writer illus- 
trates anew his sympathies for that sacred and ancient race of 
whose descendants he had already mournfully asserted that 
they had too long "laboured under the odium and stigma of 
mediaeval malevolence." His veneration for the memory of his 
forefathers may surely be comprehended by those who, like 
the Gentile nations of Christendom, are indebted to the Hebrew 
prophets for the light, and the music, and the poetry of so 
many august revelations. Eeminding his readers how pro- 
foundly they are under obligations to the children of the 
Chaldean Abraham, the author at last conducts his hero to the 
tomb where the Prince of the house of David has for eighteen 
centuries been adored by pilgrims from the remotest quarters of 
the earth, — ^in Jerusalem. There he descants eloquently enough 
upon that ancient and mystic race, — ubiquitous in spite of 



58 THE DERBY MIKISTEY. 

persecution, and flourishing although expatriated ; — that vene- 
rable race, out of which grew originally, like the leaves, and the 
flowers, and the fruit of a tree, the virtues, and the precepts, 
and the beneficence of Christianity. 

Nulla silva talem profert 
Fronde, flore, germine ! 

Principally because of its earnest advocacy of the race of his 
progenitors, " Tancred " may be said to have confirmed rather 
than extended its author's reputation. 

Meanwhile, the member for Buckinghamshire had been 
creating for himself, in the House of Commons, as a debater, a 
very different repute, — and not simply a repute, but an autho- 
rity. Long before the dose of his career as a novelist, he had 
rendered his name distinguishable among those of the leading 
notabilities of Parliament. He was not merely tolerated— he 
had become formidable. ' 

A supporter of Sir Robert Peel*s government for some time 
after its inauguration, Mr. Disraeli eventually withdrew from 
the encouragement of a cabinet which he boldly reprobated 6ib 
"an organized hypocrisy.*' It was not so much the policy 
commenced in 1842 which estranged him from those who still 
owned allegiance to that illustrious statesman, as it was the 
very method, according to which, in 1834, by his celebrated 
Tamworth manifesto, Sir !Robert may be said to have created 
the system of Conservatism. Alluding to that document, Mr. 
Disraeli observed in " Coningsby " (book II. c. 5), that it was 
** an attempt to construct a party without principles j its basb, 
therefore, was necessarily latitudinarianism ; and its inevitable 
consequence has been political infidelity." Instead of an ad- 
ministrative experiment like that, he declared himself to be 
enamoured with the Toryism ** breathed in the intrepid elo- 
quence and patriot soul of William Wyndham,"— the Toryism 
which he believed to be " vindicated in golden sentences " by 
the " fervent ai-guments and impassioned logic " of Bolingbroke. 
Smitten with love for this ideal of his political day-dreams, 
and incited, it may be, by the very sense of the brilliancy and 



THE HIGHT EON. B. DISKA-ELI. 59 

daring of his enterprise, the member for Buckingliam (som- 
menced in 1844 those memorable attacks upon the First 
Minister of the Crown which eventually preluded that eminent 
man's retirement from the conduct of the administration. 

Already Disraeli had upon occasion displayed very rare 
abilities in discussion ; as for example, in the remarkable and 
argumentative harangue delivered by him in 1842, upon the 
subject of our consular establishments. His political reputa- 
tion, indeed, was such, even at the period of the original for- 
mation of the Peel government, that Sir Eobert is known to 
have entertained for awhile the idea of securing his consider- 
able talents, if possible, to the cause of the new administra- 
tion. The indirect advances made in consequence of that half- 
formed intention, although in no way repelled, never resulted 
in any definite arrangement, nor arrived, indeed, at any distinct 
understanding. The position of the Ministry became modified, — 
its policy underwent a series of surprising developments. 
Early impressions in its regard were confirmed and rooted 
in the mind of the member for Buckinghamshire. And at 
length, during the course of the very year in which "Co- 
ningsby " made its brilUant appearance, the author of 
" Coningsby " began those audacious attacks upon Sir Eobert 
l*eel, which may certainly be said to have prepared the 
way for his ultimate downfall from the command of 
what was, nevertheless, in truth, at first, one of the most 
powerful and, without doubt, at last, one of the most 
popular of all our modem administrations. The daring 
onslaught thus made by Disraeli upon that authoritative 
leader of the House, — that chief of a strong, apparently 
impregnable government, then the most practised among 
Uving debaters, one whose perfect mastery of all the arts 
of discussion was such, that his assailant has since written 
of him emphatically, "he played upon the House of Commons 
like an old fiddle" — the defiant, single-handed, unflinching 
onslaught thus adventured upon by Disraeli, in 1844, must 
ever remain upon record as one of the most surprising incidents 
in the annals of the British Parliament. The missiles hurled 



/ 



CO THE DERBY MINISTRY. 

by the assailant, with an aim that seldom, if ever, missed, were 
each as slight apparently, but as potent as a pebble of the 
Terebinthine valley. A deadly irony, a barbed sarcasm, a 
"withering ridicule, — ^here the stab of a sneer, — here the thrust 
of a taunt, — here the blow of an imputation. In a single sentence 
Disraeli sometimes struck to the right and to the left, at the 
domineering leader of the Commons, Sir Robert Peel, and at 
the despotic leader of the Lords, the Duke of Wellington* 
"Another place," he exclaimed bitterly, in the parliamentary 
phrase signifying the House of Peers — "another place may be 
drilled into a guard-room, and the House of Commons may be 
degraded into a vestry." The principal, almost the exclusive 
object upon which, with a view to its demolition, he plied all 
the keen and polished weapons of his satirical armoury, session 
after session, was the overshadowing reputation of the one domi- 
nant statesman on the Treasury bench in the popular assem- 
bly, one until then unassailed, and by many deemed unassailable. 
Several of the gibes then directed against Sir Eobert are as 
famous, as ridiculous, as laughter-moving as a caricature 
by GiUray or by Eowlandson. "The right hon. gentle- 
man had caught the Whigs bathing, and had run away 
with their clothes." The great minister's solemn array of 
arguments he coolly degraded into so many fallacies based 
upon "teakettle precedents." Peel himself was flagrantly 
dubbed " a great parliamentary middleman." ^ t was impos- 
sible even for his devoted partisans and personal adherents to 
listen and preserve a grave countenance. One while Sir 
Robert was earnestly recommended, by the implacable and 
relentless wit, "to stick to quotation ; because," said the 
arch foe, " he (the Premier,) never quoted any passage that 
had not previously received the meed of parliamentary 
approbation." Another time, the House was entreated "to 
dethrone a dynasty of deception, by putting an end to this in- 
tolerable yote of official despotism and parliamentary impos- 
ture." The speeches of Sir Robert Peel, as reported m Hansard, 
were summarily characterized as "Dreary pages of interminable 
talk, full of predictions falsified, pledges broken, calculations 



/ )^ \^1^. 



THE BIGHT HON. B. DIS&AELI. 61 

that had gone wrong, and budgets that had blown up ; and all 
this not relieved by a single original thought, a single generous 
impulse, a single happy expression." 

The political tactics of his government were epitomized with 
a subtle and exquisite witj, as "A system so matter-of-fact, yet 
80 fallacious,— taking in everybody, though everybody knew he 
was deceived ; a system so mechanical yet so Machiavellian, 
that he could hardly say what it was except a sort of humdrum 
hocuspocus, in which the order of the day was moved to take 
in a nation!" No marvel that the great minister winced 
under this deadly ridicule, and at last succumbed. No wonder 
the House learnt at length to recognize in the ex-member for 
Maidstone the most brilliant satirist and one of the most gifted 
and daring debaters within the walls of the legislature. For 
the acerbity of these attacks, in which every sentence had the 
point of an epigram, Disraeli has magnanimously compensated 
since the death of his great antagonist, by a generous tribute 
to his genius, expressed in the language of admiration. Yet, 
as Wilmot says in the comedy, — 

*' 'Gad, if I were a ' statesman/ I'd rather, instead, 
Have the epitaph living — ^the epigram dead." 

Howbeit, those passages in the Political Biography of Lord 
George Bentinck (hereafter to be mentioned), those passages 
in which the character of Sir Robert Peel is discriminated, are 
scarcely less admirable in truth than the portions of the same 
work relating to the gallant-hearted and chivalrous leader of 
the Protectionists. If there be one peculiarity, however, more 
conspicuous than another in the temperament of the present 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, it is that of his possessing a 
generous capacity for the magnanimous appreciation of his 
parliamentary antagonists. Witness this, not merely his 
panegyric on Sir Robert Peel, here especially referred to, 
but his noble eulogium on Lord Palmerston in one of the 
chapters of " Tancred," and his graceful but earnest en- 
comium on Mr. Hume in the earlier pages of his latest 
composition. 



62 THE DERST MINISTRY. 

Besuming the enumeration of his literary labours, now 
becoming more and more rare and brief until they at length 
appear nowadays to have altogether terminated, we may note 
that in 184'9 he prefixed, with a reverent and filial hand 
of affection, a graceful, critical, anecdotal " Life of Isaac 
Disraeli,"* to a reprint of that delightful author's authoritative 
and classic " Curiosities of Literature." Although, of course, 
the biographic sketch is necessarily restricted in its dimen- 
sions, being comprised indeed within the compass of a moderate 
pamphlet, it constitutes one of the most charming of all our 
author's compositions. As a tribute to the memory of a father, 
who is declared to have been without " a single passion or 
prejudice," it secures a respect which, before the con- 
cluding passages are read, has become heightened into 
admiration. Here, in one of the earlier pages of this 
memorial chapter, is mentioned that touching incident so 
simply and yet so exquisitely told, of the poem submitted 
to the judgment of Dr. Johnson by the future author 
of the " Curiosities of Literature, " an incident since 
selected by a writer in Charles Dickens's Household Words 
as the first in a series of sitoilar " Stepping -Stones," 
taking us from the present age by a few gigantesque strides 
back to a distance removed from us by some three or four 
centuries. 

By this brief but brilliant memorial of Disraeli the Elder, 
Disraeli the Younger proved himself eminently qualified, in a 
literary sense, to produce in 1851 his latest work, entitled 
"Lord George Bentinck: a Political Biography ."f During 
several years previously, he had qualified himself, in other 
respects, to compile a volume consisting chiefly of the record 
of events in the evolving of which he himself had prominently 
participated. 

As the utterance of friendship for one prematurely snatched 
from life, this volume must be regarded in the literature of 
politics as not less touchingly commemorative than, in poetry, 

* Life of Isaac Disraeli. By his Son. Svo. pp. 44. Moxon. 1849. 
*)* Lord George Bentinck : a Political Biography. One vol. 8vo. 
pp. 588. Colbum. 1852. 



THE UIGHT HON. B. BISAAELI. 63 

were the "Lycidas" of Milton, the "Adonais" of Shelley, or 
the " In Memoriam " of Tennyson. 

Apart, moreover, from it« intrinsic excellence as a bio- 
graphy, the work is remarkable among the literary productions 
of Disraeli, as defining that important epoch in his political 
career when he first realized to the fnll his supreme and daring 
ambition in Parliament. That ambition aimed at the attain- 
ment not simply of a high position, but of the highest. Imme- 
diately after the sudden and lamentable death of Lord George 
Bentinck, it was signally and completely realized ; the member 
for Buckinghamshire thereupon assuming by right — by the 
double right of his great talents and his great senrices--the 
leadership of the Conservatire party in the British House of 
Commons. The son of a man of letters, himself also a man 
of letters, he had the proud satisfaction of taking his place at 
the head of the country gentlemen of England. That distin- 
guished position he has since then maintained uninterrupt- 
edly, sometimes with conspicuous ability, always with ad- 
mirable discretion. His capacity at once as a leader of party 
and as a master of debate, he had repeatedly and signally 
evidenced long anterior to that fatal 21st of September, IS^^S, 
when death abruptly snatched from his mourning friends and 
supporters the gallant three years' champion of the Con- 
servatives. As if in anticipation of the necessity arising out of 
that terrible catastrophe following thus hard upon the close of 
the protracted session of 1848, Mr. Disraeli had, upon two 
important occasions, in the earlier sittings of the Commons in 
that year of turmoil and revolution, afforded the House and 
the country new and striking proof of his perfect mastery of 
two of the most delicate and difficult questions then under the 
consideration of Parliament, — one of them affecting the whole 
complex problem of our foreign relations and the balance of 
power in Europe ; the other inextricably bound up with the 
entire scheme of our home administration. On the 19th of 
April, 1848, the member for Buckinghamshire delivered his 
elaborate and comprehensive speech* upon the Danish 

* England and Denmark : a Speech delivered in the House of 
Commons, by B. Disraelii M.P. 8vo. pp. 29. Ridgway. 1848. 



64> THB DERBT UINI8TKT. 

question ; and on the 20th of June following, a speech, hardly 
less remarkable in its way, in reference to the Eeform ques- 
tion, then revived upon the motion of the hon. member for 
Montrose * Immediately upon the reassembling of the legis- 
lature, in 1849, Mr. Disraeli, then in his forty-fourth year, 
appeared at the head of the country party in the House of Com- 
mons, as the recognized leader of her Migesty's Opposition. 

Eventually, three years later, upon the formation of Lord 
Derby's first cabinet, in the February of 1852, many even 
among those usuaUy reputed to be shrewd political observers, 
were startled to find that the official post awarded to the 
popular novelist was that of Minister of Pinance to the most 
wonderful commercial empire in Christendom. It was imme- 
diately remembered by some, however, that only as recently 
as the preceding midsummer, the romancist had opportunely 
given, in debate, a very brilliant illustration of his skill as a 
theoretical financier. This was no other than the searching, 
analytic speechf delivered by him on the 30th of June, 1851, 
upon the fiscal and financial policy of the Russell government. 
In the same year in which that notable speech was given to 
the House by the future Chancellor of the Exchequer, he 
found leisure to edit his father's biography of " King Charles 
the First,"J prefixing to the work a few sentences by way of 
editorial introduction. Excepting only those filial labours of 
love, — ^labours now collectively in course of renewal in connec- 
tion with the cheap re-issue of the elder Disraeli's works 
periodically,— the literary avocations (aj one timft a^^ }nt^ . 
lectual necessity with the member for Bucki nghamshire) had 
'ceased altogether: fH^novelist bad thrown aside his pen, — 
the statesman had assumed the red box of office as Chancellor 
of the Exchequer. 

♦ Parliamentary Reform : a Speech on Mr. Hume's motion. 8vo. 
pp. 16. Painter. 1848. 

f Speech on the Financial Policy of the Government. 8vo. pp. 16. 
Lewis. 1851. 

t An Advertisement by the Editor, prefixed to Isaac Disraeli's 
Life of Charles I. 2 vols. Colbum. 1851. 



THE BIGHT UOS. B. DISBAELI. 65 

Entering upon life as the son of a secluded scholar, Ben- 
jamin Disraeli had, by the sheer force of his own unassisted 
abilities, reached the elevated position he has now again attained 
as cabinet minister and privy councillor— the doubly eminent* 
and enviable position of one who is the leader of the English 
House of Commons, and, under Lord Derby, the presiding 
intellect in the councils of the British Government. 

His earliest budget, submitted to Parliament on the 30th 
of April, 1853, at once manifested on the part of its author 
that ready grasp of detail, and that intuitive adroitness 
in combination, which gave instant auguries— especially to 
those who " heard " the ^^e hours* speech — of his ulterior 
if not immediate sncoess as an administrator. During 
the last parliamentary session that augury reached at length 
the moment of its complete realization ; the fulfilment of its 
every promise being clearly enough visible in the almost un- 
precedented circumstances attendant upon Mr. Disraeli's second 
financial statement. The triumph, indeed, achieved by his 
budget of the 19th of April, 1858, is in some particulars not 
easily to be paralleled. The treasury had been entirely cleared 
out by the preceding government; not a doit remained in 
the exchequer when Lord Derby and his colleagues accepted 
the responsibilities of the administration. Nay, they were con- 
fronted by that very stubborn thing, the "fact " of a deficit of 
nearly 4,000,000/., or, to be precise, a deficiency of exactly 
3,990,000/. According to the ingenious scheme, however, of 
the masterly budget submitted to the consideration of the 
Commons by the newly-appointed Chancellor of her Majesty's 
Exchequer, the House learnt, with a satisfaction afterwards 
participated in by the whole country, how, without the in- 
fliction of any new and grinding impost, without foregoing the 
tulfilment of the promised reduction of sevenpence to fivepence 
upon the income-tax, simply by the rational postponement of 
the operation of the war sinking fund to the extent of 
1,500,000/., and by the no less rational renewal for a little while 
longer of Exchequer bonds, then falling due inconveniently to 
the tune of 2,000,000/., the threatened deficiency of 3,990,000/. 

p 



66 THE DESBT MINISTRY. 

upon the financial year might be readily reduced to a deficit of 
no more than 400,000/. altogether ! A trivial deficiency, which 
the budget then proposed to cover by the honest device of an 
equalization of the spirit duties, — placing Irish spirits at 
last, where they ought in reason to have been long since, in 
the same category with Scotch and English spirits, — a 
change securing, at the most moderate estimate, an in- 
crease to the revenue of from 400,000/. to 500,000/. There- 
upon, with an eye to a "something" in the way of a 
surplus, the Chancellor of the Excliequer proposed to secure 
(as a surplus) 300,000/. by a compulsory stamp upon bankers' 
cheques — a tax immediately accepted — as no new tax was ever 
accepted before — ^without a murmur, — even with an air of cor- 
diality.* Such, briefly epitomized, was this remarkable finan- 
cial statement, forthwith accepted entire by the House of 
Ccnnmons, being passed without a single change, or a shadow 
of opposition. It deserves to be still borne vividly in the 
popular recollection as a budget which proved at once to be a 
great parliamentary success, and what was yet more, a great 
administrative achievement. 

Although Mr. Disraeli has thus, for some years past, been 
labouring almost exclusively to enhance his reputation as a 
statesman, — voluntarily sacrificing to this end all his earlier 
and once dierished predilectipns for literature, — he is still, in 
the very realization of his more mature ambition, sustaining 

* It was speciously insinuated to be a very clumsy device, this 
proposed postponement of the operation of the war sinking fund, 
coupled with the suggested renewal of the Exchequer bonds, — 
amounting collectively to an aggregate of £3,500,000. But, said 
Mr. DisraoH, in shrewd antidpation of the sophistry, ''Is it not 
the last resource of an individual in distress, to raise money in order 
to pay debts, and to get deeper in debt in consequence ?" Every- 
thing that needed to be said was comprised in that one terse interro- 
gation. And now — ^upon the judicious postponement of the liability 
for £1,500,000, and the renewal of the other liability for £2,000,000, 
comes the prospective windfall, or Godsend, call it what you 
please, of the Sycee silver about to be rung out to us again in the 
agreeable form c^ a Chinese indemnity. 



THE BIGHT HOK. B. DISBAELI.' 67 

his social repute as a wit, and enhancing^ his parliamentary 
fame as an orator. Badiant evidence of this has been but very 
recently imprinted upon the later pages of Hamard, and in 
the columns of the doQy newspapers. His exquisitely appro* 
priate phrases are still scattered about him upon occasion 
unsparingly, and they invariably stick like burrs to the popular 
remembrance. And so, the same mimitable satirist who 
years ago dubbed one individual (a predecessor) "the Arch* 
Mediocrity," and another (a contemporary) " Mr. Wordy, the 
Historian," during the course of this last session convulsed 
the House by his allusion to ''the wild shriek of Hberty" 
indulged in by the hon. and gallant member for Dover, and 
elicited a smile even from the sourest visage by his allusion to 
"the phylactery of party" bound around the forehead of the 
Earl (^ Shaftesbury. Felicitous epithets like that in which 
he once humorously defined Italicized writers as "the forcible 
feebles," still frequently drop from his lips in the midst even 
of the dullest discussions, seldom passing unnoticed— more 
frequently, indeed, becoming hackneyed by constant repe- 
tition. Frivolous they are not ; for they help to vivify, to 
extend, and to popularize his reputation. There are senti- 
meats, however, no less than facetife, to which Mr. Disraeli 
has given utterance, either in his speeches or in his 
writings, that it would be well to hear passing current with 
his popular witticisms. Such, let us say, as that casual 
remark in "Coningsby"— "Life is too short to be little." 
In a similar mood he has somewhere (if we remember aright 
it is in "Sybil") finely termed the youth of a nation "the 
trustees of posterity." Eegarding them thos, it must assuredly 
have been thrice grateful to him., on Tuesday, the 7th of June, 
1868, when advancing in his scarlet gown towards the University 
Chancellor, to receive from the noble earl his degree of D.C.L., 
the novelist-statesman was greeted with thatringing ovation 
by the Oxford undergraduates : Disraeli's welcome having been 
incomparably the most enthusiastic among those accorded, one 
by one, to the recipients of an honour, in no instance idly 
bestowed, upon the occasion of Lord Derby's installation. 

v2 



68 THE DERBY HINIST&T. 

Bjeverting, however, to our previoas theme, we would here 
add incidentally, that were we required to adduce crowning 
testimony of our author's capacity as a wit, we should at once 
refer to that suggestion in "Tancred" with which he follows up 
his lamentation that London, with all its vastness, is wholly 
devoid of the attribute of grandeur, either topographical or 
architectural. It occurs after a reflection somewhat similar to 
his remark in a previous work, that ' " a great city is the 
type of some great idea ;" as Paris of Manners, London of 
Commerce, Rome of Conquest, Athens of Art, and Jerusalem 
of Faith. "Whereupon, alluding to the possibility of even now 
investing our metropolis with an aspect of majesty, he writes : 
" The purest administration of justice dates from the deposition 
of Macclesfield. Even our boasted navy never achieved a great 
victory until we shot an admiral. Terror has its inspiration as 
well as competition. Suppose an architect were hanged?" 
Than this we know scarcely any more delightful example of 
wit — an example perfect of its kind, being productive of pre- 
cisely that surprise which is declared to be essential to true 
wit by the more subtle among our metaphysicians. 

As a parliamentary orator, Mr. Disraeli stands forth, in some 
respects, almost without a rival among his contemporaries. It 
is only, however, upon very rare occasions that those prominent 
powers in debate are conspicuously manifested. Under the 
influence of ordinary circumstances, his manner in speaking is 
cold, impassive, cautious, marked at times even by an almost 
painful deliberation. Even when most earnest, he scarcely ever 
indulges in very animated gesticulation. His eyes downcast, 
his brows raised, his voice low but singularly clear in its 
articulation, he has the appearance of one who is addressing 
the House by an eflbrt of condescension, with an undisguised 
air of supercilious indifference. 

Irritated by a rash taunt, roused by the imminence of some 
critical juncture, incited by the pressure of an emergency, or 
goaded by any unwonted display of opposition,— Disraeli, in 
voice, look, manner, in his every movement, in his whole 
appearance, is like one suddenly transformed. His delivery at 



THE EIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI. 69 

these times we have heard likened, and not inaptly, to that of 
Edmund Kean, the tragedian. A glance of the eye, an inflec- 
tion npon a syllable, a sudden gesture towards an antagonist — 
something as slight altogether in itself as a glance, or a tone, 
or a movement, has lent a barb to the arrow of invective, 
suffusing upon the winged steel as it flies the poison of a 
deadly derision. It is thus that has been driven home to the 
heart of some formidable foe many a rankling dart of scorn 
and ridicule. The cutting jibe, for example, inflicted only last 
session upon the Whigs, when taunted upon the morrow of 
their ignominious overthrow, as an " obsolete oligarchy ;" or, 
years ago, that still more pitiless alliterative allusion to " the 
catastrophe of a sinister career," completing the peroration of 
one of his most memorable outbursts of vituperative eloquence. 
The rhetorician, here, is also a consummate actor— and it is the 
highest kind of acting : it is upon the stage of history, in the 
arena of Parliament. 



LORD CHELMSFORD, 



LORD CHELMSFORD. 



As occupant of the woolsack, the Lord High Chancellor of 
England takes precedence of all the other subjects of the 
Orown. He assumes, by right, the foremost place among the 
stately ranks of the aristocracy: he stands upon the first 
step of the throne, above the rest of the peers, beside the 
footstool of the sovereign. In reference to this high dignity, 
the eloquent voice of Mr. Canning once exclaimed, "How 
proud a thing it is for the Commons of England to see a 
private individual, elevated from obscurity solely by the force* 
of talent, take precedence of the Howards, the Talbots, and 
the Percys—of the pride of Norman ancestry, equally with 
the splendour of royal descent !" It was the ennobling sense 
of this absolute pre-eminence in the House of Lords that 
carried to so rhetorical and scornful a climax the famous reply 
of Lord Thurlow to the Duke of Grafton's taunt in respect to 
his plebeian origin, when— repudiating beforehand any notion 
as to his remarks being in any way depreciatory of the peerage, 
but adding, " My lords, I must say the peerage solicited me, 
not I the peerage" — Lord Thurlow thus closed his magnificent 
rejoinder : " As a peer of parliament, as speaker of this right 
honourable house, as keeper of the great seal, as guardian of 
his M^esty's conscience, as Lord High Chancellor of England, 
nay, even in that character alone in which the duke would 
think it an aflfront to be considered, but which none can deny 
me—Sk MAN, I am at this moment as respectable — I beg leave 
to add, I am at this moment as much respected — as the 
proudest peer / now look down upon/" It was the haughty 
but extorted epitome of the supreme dignities combined in 
the person of England's Lord High Chancellor. 

And to that lofty position there has recently attained one 



74i THE DEBBT MINISTBY. 

who, though popularly known for some years past as the 
most accomplished advocate of his time, originally, at the 
outset of his career, in the days of his early boyhood, 
was walking the quarter-deck of a line-of-battle ship, in 
the midst of the roar and smoke and carnage of a bom- 
bardment, as a light-footed, light-hearted young stripling of 
a midshipman. 

There are so many romantic incidents, however, recorded 
in the history of our lord chancellors, that the instance of 
Sir Frederick Thesiger cannot be regarded in this particular 
as in any way exceptional. Indeed, it has been related of 
Lord Erskine, that prior to the date of his first dedicating his 
rare abilities to the study of the law, he had passed several 
years of his life in the royal navy, and afterwards in the king's 
army, nevertheless ultimately reaching the highest distinction 
in a totally different profession, being, moreover, the only one 
among all the keepers of the great seal whose effigy, carved 
in white marble, stands to this day upon its pedestal upon the 
floor of the court of Chancery. 

Opposite that statue there sits now, in term time, at the 
appointed hours, another lord chancellor, the commencement 
of whose career and the fulfilment of whose ambition have 
been strictly speaking identical. 

The Right Honourable Frederick Thesiger, first Baron 
Chelmsford, and Lord High Chancellor of England, was bom 
in London, in the July of 1794, so that he has but very 
recently passed that mystical age of sixty-three, popularly 
known as the grand climacteric. Lord Chelmsford is the 
youngest and only surviving son of the late Charles Thesiger, 
Esquire, some time collector of customs in the island of St. 
Vincent, in the West Indies. A brother of this civil servant 
of the Crown — godfather, and, until recently, in the strictest 
sense of the word, namesake of the now Lord ChancellOT — 
was a naval officer, who obtained considerable distinction as such 
even in that peculiarly heroic generation, and who has left a 
name since then become doubly famous in our liistory as Sir 
Frederick Thesiger. The maritime Sir Frederick Thesiger, 



LOBD CHEI«MS70BI>. 75 

uncle of the forensic Sir Frederick Thesiger, can never snrely 
have his name obliterated from among the glorious memories 
inscribed upon the marine annals of England. He it was 
who, as aide-de-camp of Lord Nelson, on board the old 
74f, H.M.S. the Elephant, carried to the Crown Prince 
of Denmark, on the 2nd of April, 1801, that celebrated 
letter penned by the great sea-captain in the crisis of battle — 
that remarkable letter, which more even than the thundering 
broadsides of our men-of-war, won for this country the 
immortal victory of Copenhagen. Who does not remember 
the incident of the writing of that famous epistle, one of the 
most characteristic incidents emblazoned upon that luminous 
scroll of fame, the life of Nelson ? Have we not all of us 
paused in imagination upon the threshold of the admiral's 
cabin, looking in upon the little group gathered about the 
one-armed hero as he writes — " Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson 
hajs been commanded to spare Denmark/' and so forth, — words 
pregnant with life and death, penned in the very midst of 
that vortex of excitement with the calm precision of a diplo- 
matist. The rejected wafers are there beside the candle, 
hastily brought from the cockpit. The letter lies there for a 
moment sealed with wax, the seal impressed upon it appearing 
larger than that usually vouchsafed by Lord Nelson to his 
correspondents ; "This being," as he says himself, " no time in 
which to seem hurried and informal." And yonder, waiting 
for the important missive, — his cocked hat in one hand, his 
flag of truce in the other,— one of the principal actors in this 
world-famous incident, the aide-de-camp on duty. Captain Sir 
!Frederick Thesiger. The young post-captain has no need of 
further titles of honour than that secured to him by his having 
been twice the bearer of that flag of truce from Lord Nelson 
to the vanquished defenders of Copenhagen. The association 
of his name with this one renowned anecdote is better surety 
of his being borne hereafter in the national remembrance than 
anything that might have ostentatiously rendered him the 
theme of a hundred duller pages in another biography. It 
is the fortunate moment of his life, imprinting his name 



76 THE DEEBT MINISTRY. 

indelibly and conspicuously — monumentum are perennitis — ^upon 
the heroic annals of the old fatherland. 

It is perfectly conceivable that the boy-nephew of this 
gallant sea-captain should have found in the exploits of Lord 
Nelson's messenger at Copenhagen an irresistible incitement 
to his own high and ambitious aspirations. One could fancy 
him saying to his brother, as Horatio Nelson had said to his, 
almost in the self-same words as those familiar to us at the 
outset of the great historic memoir : " Do, William, write to 
my father, and tell him I should like to go to sea with uncle 
Maurice." Frederick Thesiger, now the Lord Chancellor 
Chelmsford, by reason, doubtless, of the inspiriting example 
before him in the person of his "uncle Maurice," entered the 
royal navy at an early age, on board H.M.S. Cambrian, as a 
midshipman. It was while on board this frigate, indeed, that 
— following as closely as possible in the footsteps of his brave 
godfather— Frederick Thesiger, then a child of thirteen, wit- 
nessed, on the 7th of September, 1807, the second bombard- 
ment by a British fleet of that ill-fated city of Copenhagen. 
It was in the expedition despatched against the maritime 
capital of Denmark, under the command of Admiral (after- 
wards lord) Gambler. Brief, therefore, though his stay in the 
royal navy, — for young Thesiger quitted it within a year from 
the date of this last sanguinary achievement, — Lord Chelmsford, 
in his boyhood, was no mere rose-water middy, playing at being 
a sailor ; but, afloat upon the salt-water with his messmates, 
took part, however subordinately, in a fierce and memorable 
engagement. 

The reasons for Frederick Thesiger*s preference, upon 
second thoughts, of the legal for the maritime profession, are 
suflSciently remarkable to be here particularized. It happened 
about this time that his father's property in the island of 
St. Vincent was suddenly destroyed by the irruption of the 
neighbouring volcano of Mount Soufflier. The explosion has 
eventually proved to have been of extraordinary advantage to 
the family, having, some fifty years afterwards, landed the 
young middy that was then, upon that "coign of 'vantage/* 



LOBD CHELMSPOBD. 77 

that loftiest throne of honour within the scope of an ambitious 
Englishman's attainment — the woolsack. 

Child though he was, when the news reached him of the 
paternal disaster, the young midshipman aspired even then to 
retrieve the family fortunes, incited all the more to this 
generous purpose by the recent death of his elder brother, — 
a casualty leaving Frederick, the second son, the head and 
hope of the new generation. How resplendently he has 
fulfilled that hope, how entirely he has realized his own high 
ambition, we all know. He could not have done so more 
effectually had he remained in the warlike service originally 
chosen for his profession, supposing him there to have been 
heartened, through a career of conflict and conquest, by 
Nelson's own favourite battle-cry, "A peerage, or Westminster 
Abbey ! " 

Without influence at the Admiralty, — without friends any- 
where in power capable of forwarding his individual exertions 
or abilities, it seemed idle to dream of any sufficiently rapid 
promotion for a middy seriously resolved upon building up the 
fabric of a fallen house from its foundations. A little reflection 
showed this clearly enough to himself and his relations. He 
doffed his uniform, laboured assiduously to improve his early, 
but interrupted education, and at length, as a duly enrolled 
member of Gray's Inn, entered his name upon the books of 
the society as a student at the bar. It was not, however, 
until after the lapse of upwards of ten years from the date of 
his quitting the naval service that Trederick Thesiger, then 
twenty-four years of age, was called to the bar of Gray's Inn, 
in the Michaelmas term of 1818. His attainment of practice, 
and his rise into repute as a junior barrister, were then, how- 
ever, rapid,— far beyond the average precedent. It was the 
briefest of intervals, the period during which he still remained 
briefless. Having at once selected the Home circuit, he there 
speedily acquired for himself both occupation and reputation. 
He was already, indeed, fast winning his way to distinction, 
when, in 1822, he became united in marriage to Anna Maria, 
now Lady Chelmsford, the youngest daughter of William 



78 TffiB PEBBT MINISTET. 

Tinling, Esquire, of Southampton. The offspring of this union 
form a numerous family : one of the sons (the eldest), the Hon. 
Frederick Thesiger, being captain and lieut.-colonel in the 
Grenadier Guards, a regiment the colonel of which is Eield- 
Marshal H.R.H. the Prince Consort ; one of the daughters 
(the second), the Hon. Julia, now Lady Inglis, being the wife 
of the heroic Major-General Sir John Eardley Wilmot Inglis, 
the gallant defender of the long-beleaguered city of Lucknow. 
It was in allusion to the glorious and successful defence of 
that desperately impeiilled stronghold by Sir John Inglis and 
his little band of heroes, and in reference, at the same time, to 
the repeated accidents (of which more hereafter) depriving 
the now Chancellor again and again, at the eleventh hour, of 
his seemingly all but inevitable promotion to a chief-justice- 
ship, that a personal friend of his lordship recently remarked, 
on his acceptance of the great seal, and his elevation to the 
peerage, that his new title ought by rights to have been, not 
Chelmsford, but Lucknow 1 In aU the perils and hardships of 
that desperate siege, it may, furthermore, be here observed inci- 
dentally, thfit the Lord Chancellor's daughter shared with her 
dauntless husband unceasingly, — shared with the devotion 
admirably befitting the tender wife and the courageous 
Englishwoman. 

Both on circuit and at nisi priua the success attained by 
Mr. Thesiger as a junior is still remembered as something 
truly remarkable. He rose at last to a position, retained by 
him during many eminent and laborious years, — that of leader 
of the Home circuit ; securing a very considerable and always 
increasing practice there, as well as in the courts of West- 
mmster. His influence, especially as a niii prim advocate, 
was recognized as powerful and authoritative. His statements 
of cases in banco, always distinguished for their perfect clear- 
ness and lucidity, soon enough became, in his regard, the parti- 
cular theme of professional admiration. Beyond all which 
more than simply adequate reasons for the briefs pouring in 
upon him, his avocations were from an early date considerably 
enhanced in responsibility by his being continually and sys- 



LOBD CHLLU8F0BD. 79 

tematically retaiDed at the Surrey sessions by the parish of 
Christchurch. 

Sixteen years' standing at the bar brought Mr. Thesiger his 
silk gown. It was during the second chancellorship of Lord 
Lyndhurst, in 1834, that be was inscribed upon the list of his 
Majesty's counsel learned in the law ; and almost immediately 
after this official recognition of bis abilities, the new K.C. 
justified and confirmed all the more sanguine hopes enter- 
tained in his regard by those who had already marked with 
interest the development of his fast-extending reputation. The 
circumstance alluded to arose out of the severe contest for the 
imrliamentary representation of the city of Dublin, the elec- 
tion taking place in the December of that same year, 1834, and 
resulting in the return of the Liberal candidates, Mr. O'Connell 
and Mr. Ruthven, and the irritating and stormy rejection of 
their Tory antagonists, Mr. West and Mr. Hamilton. The 
latter, as petitioners against the result of the poll, brought 
their case under the consideration of the House of Commons. 
A select committee of inquiry was thereupon formed, and 
occupied several months of 1835 in the conduct of a most 
searching investigation. The result was, that Mr. O'Connell 
and his colleague were eventually unseated, their opponents 
being declared by the report of this election committee to have 
been legally chosen representatives, and thereupon taking 
their seat in the house accordingly. Mr. Thesiger, who had 
been retained upon this remarkable case, displayed throughout 
such consummate sagacity, such zealous devotion to the in- 
terest of his clients, such abounding resource and unfailing 
ingenuity, that his fame as an advocate of the highest order 
was from that time forth securely established. From the date 
of that committee of inquiry, he was a marked man among his 
contemporaries, a man of note and eminence, even in the midst 
of the brilliant group to which he was welcomed as an acces- 
sion. An opportunity was now eagerly watched for, through 
availing himself of which he might obtain access to another 
and more conspicuous arena for the display of his oratorical 
powers, and of his all but perfect mastery of the manifold 



80 THE DEEBY MINI8TET. 

graces of the rhetorician. As with almost every eminent man 
at the bar, the time at last arrived with him when he aspired 
to assume his place among the ranks of the popular repre- 
sentatives. 

In the February of 1840 Mr. Thesiger contested the borough 
of Newark unsuccessfully ; but in the March following was 
returned as M.P. for Woodstock, and as such took the oaths 
and his seat in Parliament. Without the walls of the legis- 
lature, in his professional capacity, he soon afterwards obtained 
fresh distinction. The ringleaders of the Chartist insurrection 
at Newport, in the previous winter, were ultimately brought 
up for trial upon a charge of high treason ; and it was subse- 
quent to this historical event that the honours of knighthood 
were conferred by the young Queen alike upon Sir Fitzroy 
Kelly and Sir Frederick Thesiger, respectively, at this moment, 
her Majesty's Attorney-General and the Lord High Chan- 
cellor. 

Sir Frederick's maiden speech, delivered in the house soon 
after the date of his admission, curiously enough bore referwice 
to the self-same theme which furnished the subject for one of 
the latest harangues addressed by him to the Commons, shortly 
before his removal from the lower to the upper branch of the 
legislature. It was a speech in each instance upon the Chinese 
war, — th» alpha relating to the war of 1840, the omega to the 
war of 1857. In the former instance the impression produced 
upon the House was considerable and instantaneous. It was 
felt at once that the new member was one endowed with gifts 
of oratory, not in any way exclusively forensic, but in the 
highest degree parliamentary. In the latter instance, while 
the profound attention awakened in his audience by Sir Fre» 
derick Thesiger upon the moment of his rising, testified that 
his influence as a debater had during the intermediate lapse of 
seventeen years been very appreciably enhanced, it became a 
matter of personal interest to note the breathless silence with 
which the House listened to the eminent advocate (then, uncon- 
sciously to himself and to his hearers, upon the eve of realizing 
the very summit of his ambition by accepting the great seal^ 



LOBB CHELUSPOED. 81 

and taking bis seat upon the woolsack), while he spoke in 
thrilling accents of the warlike recollections of his boyhood, 
depicting in vivid colours the carnage he himself had witnessed 
half a century before as a midshipman on board the Cambrian 
frigate^ and all the varied havoc resulting among both 
conquerors and conquered from that bombardment, by the 
British fleet under Lord Gambler, of the city and seaport 
of Copenhagen. 

As member for Woodstock, Sir [Frederick retained his seat 
in the House of Commons till 1844, when he was elected M.P. 
for Abingdon, a borough thenceforth represented by him until 
1852, in which year he was first returned by the constituency 
of Stamford. It was, moreover, as M.P. for Stamford that he 
still continued to occupy his accustomed place in the house up 
to the day of his final acceptance of the Chiltem Hundreds, 
in anticipation of his recent elevation to the peerage as Baron 
Chelmsford, of Chelmsford. 

Throughout the whole of the seventeen years during which 
Sir Frederick Thesiger took part, at uncertain intervals, in 
the discussions of the lower House of Parliament while repre- 
senting successively" those three boroughs, Woodstock, Abing- 
don, Staitiford, he sustamed a high repute as a debater. 
Beyond which, upon one question of peculiar importance (a 
question, oddly enough, oiily settled at last immediately after 
his removal to the House of Peers), he assumed the distin- 
guished and responsible post of leader of the greiit Conserva- 
tive party. It will be at once understood that the particular 
qnestion referred to was no other than that relating to the 
admission of Jews into the legislature. Prom the outset of 
the agitation, every one understood perfectly well how it 
chanced that Mr. Disraeli was precluded by the very fervour 
of his convictions from continuing, upon this one topic, to 
marshal the ranks of his party, whether in office or in oppo- 
sition. His authority as chief of the Conservatives in the 
House of Commons was consequently waived, upon every 
revival of the Jew debates, in favour of one who showed from 
first to last a chivalrous sense of the noble and knightly quali- 

G 



82 THE DERBY UINISTBY. 

ties befitting even tlie temporary and casual possessor of tbat 
delegated prerogative. Thrice, moreover, daring the lapse of 
his parliamentary career in the Commons, Sir Frederick had 
officially occupied a prominent position upon the front Trear 
sury bench as a law officer of the Crown,— twice as the first 
law officer of the Crown, and previously, from May, IS^I;, 
until June, 1845, as Solicitor-Greneral under Sir Eobert Peers 
administration. 

It was upon the occasion of the premature and universally 
lamented death of Sir William Follett, at the date last men- 
tioned, that Sir Frederick Thesiger first obtained the Attorney- 
Generalship. A twelvemonth from that period, however, had 
scarcely elapsed, when, together with the rest of his colleagues, 
in the July of 1846, he had given in his resignation. Eight 
years later, namely in 1852, Sir Frederick was again Attorney- 
General for another interval of ten months, — ^from the rise of 
Lord Derby's ministry to power in February, until its down- 
fall in December. Upon each of these occasions, by some 
strangely tantalizing coincidence, the Attorney-General was 
balked in regard to that reasonable and customary hope 
appertaining to his office, — ^the hope of succeeding, upon a 
casual vacancy, to one or other of the lord chief justice- 
ships. His disappointment in that respect seemed at last in 
the popular estimation to amount almost to a fatality. Nor 
can it be recalled to mind even now, without something like a 
sympathetic qualm of vexation, that within a few hours from 
the time of Sir Frederick Thesiger's first retirement from 
the Attorney-Generalship in the summer of 1846, the Chief 
Justiceship of the Common Pleas became vacant, upon the 
demise of Sir Nicholas Tindal. Whereupon, thanks to the 
accidental difference of a day, Sir Thomas Wilde succeeded to 
the judicial honour that must otherwise have belonged of 
right to his immediate predecessor in the Attorney-Generalship, 
During his late occupancy of the post in 1852, Sir Frederick 
was pertinaciously denied all chance of promotion by the irri- 
tating health enjoyed continuously by the three chief justices 
— ^Pollock, Jervis, Campbell — from the spring of his accept- 



LOBO CHELUS70BD. 83 

ance of office to the winter of his resignation. His ultimate 
attainment of the woolsack, indeed, came at length almost as 
a relief to the community. It was certainly regarded by the 
generality as in a manner directly compensative for all those 
previous and most vexatious disappointments. As in the 
instance of so many of his illustrious precursors, it was attained 
at last by Lord Chelmsford per saltum, without any preliminary 
elevation in another capacity, from the bar to the bench, — pre- 
cisely, for example, as it had chanced previously to Lord 
Erskine, to Lord Lyndhurst, to Lord Brougham, and to Lord 
St. Leonards. Though it should bo remembered of Sugden, 
that he had at an early period occupied the post of the Lrish 
Chancellorship; and of Copley, that subsequently to his first 
resignation of the great seal, be assumed the ermine as Lord 
Chief Baron of the court of Exchequer. There was this 
remarkable difference, moreover, in the instance of Lord 
Brougham, — a peculiarity unparalleled, we believe, in the 
history of the Chancellorship,~that that great man strode at 
once horn the first grade to the first rank in his profession, 
exchanging the stuff gown of a barrister for the scarlet robes 
of the Lord High Chancellor. 

Long anterior to his eventual elevation to the woolsack, Sir 
Frederick Thesiger had found his practice at the bar almost 
bewilderingly accumulated. It had increased so enormously, 
indeed, of late years, that a rumour was prevalent, shortly after 
Lord Derby's second acceptance of the responsibility of forming 
an administration, that the hon. and learned gentleman the 
member for Stamford, while prepared to accept for a third 
tune the office of Attorney-General, could not afford to take 
the great seal, even though baited with a peerage, a pension, 
and a yearly income, while held, of £10,000. 

The professional rise of this gifted advocate had been 
appreciably accelerated, in truth, by the successive removal 
from the scene of their intellectual rivalry, of the two most 
formidable among all his great competitors, — ^the removal by 
death, in 1845, of Sir William Eollett, and that effected in the 
instance of Sir Thomas Wilde, in the year following, upon his 

G S 



84 THE BESBY MINISTRY. 

first elevation to the judicial bench, preparatory to tlie time 
when, as Lord Truro, he attained the supreme dignity of tlie 
Chancellorship. 

It is especially observable, in regard to Sir Frederick 
Thesiger*s career at the bar, that perhaps no one has ever yet 
risen to the woolsack through a more diversified practice, or 
with a more comprehensive experience. Already it has beea 
remarked how high the distinction won by him through his 
lucid statements of cases in banco, as well as through his 
energetic bearing as a nisi prius advocate ; and it has been 
noted, moreover, how his brilliant success on circuit was from 
first to last but strictly parallel with his no less brilliant 
forensic triumphs in the courts at Westminster. Throughout 
the latter portion of his career, especially,— indeed, in a great 
measure, almost from the date of its early commencement, he 
managed to obtain no inconsiderable amount of crown prac- 
tice ; while, both as Solicitor and Attorney-General, he was 
sometimes engaged ex officio in cases before the Court of 
Chancery. 

Hardly has there been a trial of any importance whatever 
for some years past, but there, upon the record of it, appears 
conspicuously, as that of a leader, the name of Sir Frederick. 
It was so, for example, in regard to those daring and ingenious 
forgeries by which the notorious Tom Provis attempted to 
establish a fraudulent heirship to the estates and baronetcy of 
the late Sir John Smyth, of Long Ashton, near Bristol, a 
cause celebre brought on for trial in 1853, down at Gloucester. 
It was so, again, in reference to the no less notorious action 
for libel, before the Lord Chief Justice of England and a 
special jury in the court of Queen's Bench, in the case of 
" Achilli versus Newman," an action brought on during the 
previous midsummer, and conducted on the part of the prose- 
cution by Sir Frederick Thesiger, then Attorney-General. It was 
precisely the same likewise in regard to the extraordinary issue 
directed out of Chancery in respect to the last will and testament 
of her Grace the late Duchess of Manchester, an intricate and 
difficult case, in the unravelling of which the sagacity of this 



LOBD CHELMSFOBD. 85 

eminent connsel was strikingly manifested. Yet more recently 
there was the remarkable victory won by him, as crown pro- 
secutor, against the directors of the Eoyal British Bank, an 
occasion upon which his rare abilities were revealed in a 
manner more than ever noteworthy. 

The conspicuous qualities displayed by Lord Chelmsford 
while at the bar were those of dignity and of energy,— of 
explicit accuracy and implicit acuteness,— of entire command 
of temper and perfect self-possession. His mastery of the 
facts of a case was rapid, powerful, and consecutive : his 
acquisition of all the law in any way applicable to it, while it 
was the result undeniably of profound and laborious research, 
was faciHtated in a suiprising manner by what might almost 
be termed an innate aptitude. 

With the personal appearance of "the elegant Thesiger" 
thousands have long since become familiarized. The handsome 
features, the tall and graceful figure, the clear and sonorous 
voice, so voluble and yet so distinct in its articulation, will 
henceforth be missed from the bar, of which they have for years 
past been recognized as among the most prominent, and other- 
wise—a few of them, it must be confessed-the somewhat 
unwonted adornments. The countenance, however, that was 
unmarred by the barrister's wig, and the bearing by the sombre 
silk gown of the queen's counsel, have learnt each to receive an 
additional and statelier touch of grace from the flowing peruke 
and the scarlet and ermine rObes of the Chancellor. 



THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY, 

fori |mar«tt of % (f otmal. 



THE MABOUEaS OF SALISBURY. 



»o*' 



Although Lord Derby's administration is especially 
remarkable for the "new men" it has suddenly inducted into 
office, for the new blood it has generously infused into the 
veins of gOTemment, for the magnanimous disregard shown 
by its chieftain during the process of its formation, at once for 
the ties of party, and for the purely accidental links of mere 
relationship, it is nevertheless, strange to say, hardly less 
remarkable as a ministry combining within it some of the most 
renowned and historical names in the annals of English states- 
manship. 

Colleagues of a self-made statesman like Mr. Disraeli, tliere 
are seated together in this distinguished cabinet, participating 
in the guidance of the destinies of the British empire, a Cecil, 
a Walpole, and a Peel — ^representatives of the races of the 
three great Sir Rob£bts who, each in turn, at different 
epochs in our history, were pre-eminent among the chiefs, 
either of the Opposition or of the Government, under three 
illustrious female sovereigns. A brother of the late (and 
great) Sir Robert Peel — a collateral relative of the famous 
Sir Bx)bert Walpole — ^the seventh in direct succession from 
the celebrated Sir Bobert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, himself 
a younger son of the yet more celebrated Sir William Cecil, 
better known in our annals as Lord Burghley, the Lord High 
Treasurer— carry us back, by the mere force of association, 
from the days of our own gracious sovereign, through the 
later years of the reign of Anne, to the chivalrous age of our 
great Elizabeth. 

Avoiding, however, for the moment, as frivolous, or, at any 
rate, as foreign to our immediate purpose, any such remote 



90 THE DEBST MIKISTRT. 

retrospect; it will be sufficient (it cannot fail to be interesting) 
if we remark upon this point, that the father of the Lord 
President of the Council in the Derby cabinet was Post- 
master-General under the Pitt administration. 

The Most HonouraHe James Brownlow William Gascoigne- 
Gecil, second Marquess and eighth Earl of Salisbury, was bom 
in London now more than sixty-seven years ago, on the 17th 
of April, 1791, at the family mansion (No. 20) in Arlington- 
street, Piccadilly. His- lordship was an only son, but had two 
sisters : in regard to whom it may be here briefly remarked, 
that the elder. Lady Charlotte Georgiana Augusta, still sur- 
yives as relict of the late Bight Hon. Henry Wellesley, first 
Earl Cowley, one of the brothers of Arthur, the great Duke 
of Wellington ) the younger. Lady Emily Anne Bennet Eliza- 
beth, having expired as recently as the spring-time of the 
present year, being at the period of her decease widow of the 
late Marquess and Earl of Westmeath. The immediate pro- 
genitors of the Lord President of the Council were, James> 
the seventh Earl oi Salisbury, who, in 17S9, ^as raised to the 
marquisate, and his wife, the Lady Mary Amelia Hill, daughter 
of the first Marquess of Bownskire. 

The education of the noble administrator, who is now him- 
self, by his -ministerial position, Piesident of the Council of 
Education, was conducted partially in the seclusion of his 
ancestral home, under the- care of a private tutor, partially at 
Eton College, but never at either of the Universities. Lord 
Salisbury has subsequently, however, received the honorary 
degree of LKB. from the University of Cambridge, beside 
being more recently enrolled as D.C.L. by the University of 
Oxford. Beyond which it may be here added cursorily, that 
the marquess has been endowed with the honourable initials 
E.R.S., by the Boyal Society, one of the most distinguished 
among all our many learned institutions. 

Shortly after attaining his majority, his lordship, then known 
as Viscount Cranbome, was returned, upon an accidental 
vacancy, as M.P. for Weymouth, to a seat in the popular 
branch of the legislature. During the ten years following. 



THE MABQUS8S 07 8ALI8BUBT. 91 

the young heir to the marquisate of Saiiabury continaed to 
represent the same borough in that and the two subsequent 
parliaments. In short, up to the period of his father's demise, 
on the 13th of June, 1823, when he succeeded in due course 
to all the ancient titles and ample estates of the house : titles 
dating back to the barony called into existence two centuries 
and a half ago, the barony of Cecil of £ssendon, in the county 
of Rutland : estates comprising among them Fort William, 
N. B., and that superb old «trttcture, with its surrounding 
domains, extending far and wide orer a beautiful and culti- 
vated landscape— Hatfield ' House, still, what it was three 
hundred years gone by, 'Conspicuous, if not unrivalled, among 
the many architecturalradomments of Hertfordshire. 

While yetj however. Viscount Cranbome by courtesy, the 
noble lord, on the 2nd of February, 1821, had espoused his 
first wife (for the President of the Council has been twice 
married), a lady whose family name he assumed upon the 
occasion, by royai< license, as a pr^Ek' to his own more famous 
patronymic/. Frances Mary, only daughter and heiress of the 
late Bamber Gaseoigne, Esquire, M.P., of Childwall Hall, in 
Lancashire. In the thirty«eighth year of her age, Lord Salis- 
bury's first marchioness expired, onthedSth of October, 1839, 
leaving her widowed lord two daughters--one, the Lady 
Mildred, married toAIexander Hope, Esquire, M.P. ; the other, 
the Lady Blanche, married to James Balfour, Esquire, of 
Whittinghame — and three sons, the eldest, of course, being 
Viscount Cranbome; "the second. Lord ^bert Cecil, M.P. for 
Stamford; and the youngest, the Lord Eustace, who, in 1854, 
was gazetted as »oaptain in the Coldstream Xjuards, on the 
26th of December. 

Lord Salisbury's subsequent-marriage was contracted within 
eight years from the demise of his first marchioness, the noble 
widower being united, on the 29th of April/ 1847, to the Lady 
Mary Catherine Sackville-West, second daughter of Geoi^e, 
fifth Earl de la Warr ; the fruits of this union being a youthful 
family of three sons and two daughters. 

Already, as far back as 1826, but two or three years from 



98 THE DEBBT MISISTRT. 

the date of his accession to the marquisate. Lord Salisbuy 
bad been dnly sworn in among the ranks of the privy coun- 
cillors. Sixteen years afterwards, the highest badge of distinc- 
tion in the gift of the soyereign was awarded to him, when, in 
1842, he was invested by the hands of her present Majesty 
with the most noble order of the Garter. The distinction in his 
instance, however, was in no way exceptional, the arms and 
banner of a Cecil being suspended, almost by right of here- 
ditary succession, above one or other of the antique stalls in 
the Chapel Royal at Windsor, from the founder of the house 
downwards, generation after generation : insomuch that, in 
regard to this branch of the family, the supplementary initials 
K.G., after the name of each Marquess of Salisbury, have 
become almost as inevitable an adornment as the addition of 
that wonderful little hieroglyphic flourish at the tail of the 
autograph of every educated Frenchman. 

During the ten years in which, as Viscount Cranbome, bis 
lordship retained his seat in the House of Commons, he con- 
tented himself with silently voting in support of the Tory 
governments successively presided over by the accomplished, 
but incoherent. Lord Castlereagh, afterwards second Marquess 
of Londonderry, and by that extremely respectable specimen 
of ministerial mediocrity. Lord Liverpoolj some time— and a 
very tedious and laborious time it was, moreover — dull, 
excellent, painstaking, entirely intolerable, Mr. Robert 
Jenkinson. 

It was, therefore, by a very abrupt transition that the 
Marquess of Salisbury, in 1852, on the formation of the first 
Derby cabinet, suddenly became transformed into a minister of 
the Crown, after having passed so many years in comparative 
seclusion as a patrician magnate, never aspiriug to be regarded 
as anything more conspicuous than the great man of his shire, 
an honoured landlord, neighbour, and magistrate, locally pos- 
sessed of very considerable influence, owner of broad acres, 
patron of eight livings, High Steward of Hertford, major com- 
manding the South Herts yeomanry cavalry, colonel of the 
Hertfordshire militia, and, ever since the retirement from that 



THE MARQTTESS OF SALISBURT. 93 

position of the Dake of Portland, in 1843, Lord-Lieutenant and 
Gustos Eotulorum of the metropolitan county of Middlesex. In 
assuming office for the first time as Lord Privy Seal six years 
ago, under the Earl of Derby's premiership. Lord Salisbury occu- 
pied what has been often, and not inaptly, designated a purely 
decorative post in the government, a position awarded now to 
the noble and gallant earl who then acted as postmaster- 
general. In this second, and, in many respects, more carefully 
organized Derby administration, the marquess has risen to a 
place of far greater responsibility,* being installed, in his sixty- 
eighth year, in the Presidency of the Council ; thus, in loyal 
obedience to the ancient motto of his haase— Sero 9ed 8erio, 
virtnally beginning his administrative career in earnest-late, 
but seriously. 

The President of her Majesty's Council has the reputation 
of being conspicuously distinguished, even among the more ad- 
vanced of his ministerial colleagues, by the largeness and libe- 
rality of his general views in regard to the political principles 
constituting the "motive power " of the Queen's government. 
It is auspicious, we cannot but conceive, to the immediate cause 
of reform, that one of the very ministers to accept it the most 
frankly, to weigh its interests in the balance the most scrupu- 
lously, to watch the phases of its development with the most 
sympathetic and cordial solicitude, was erroneously regarded, 
in a manner but yesterday, as prominent among the types of 
the antique Toryism. Nor so very unnaturally, all things 
considered, when we remember that to the multitude at large 

*The occupant of this high ministerial post of Lord President of 
the Council, under Lord Derby's former administration, it should 
be remarked, was the Bight Hon. William Lowther, second Earl of 
Lonsdale, a nobleman possessing vast estates scattered over the 
counties of Rutland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland ; patron of as 
many as thirty -three livings ; and one who had previously been in - 
stalled in office, upon different occasions, as Chief Commissioner of 
Woods and Forests, as Treasurer of the Navy, as Vice-President of 
the Board of Trade, and as Postmaster-General, under preceding 
governments. 



94 THE DERBT HINI8T&T. 

the noble marquess at the head of the council-board,— silent 
in the House of Commons as Lord Cranbome, hardly less 
silent in the House of Peers as Lord Salisbury,— has hitherto 
been little more than the son of a Pittite, and the supporter 
of the cabinets of Castlereagb and Liverpool. The impression 
produced upon the public mind by these purely Conservative 
antecedents, modified somewhat in 1852, by the participation 
of the then Lord Privy Seal in the innovating labours of the 
Derbj ministry from February to December, has been in a 
great measure— if it be not jBven now altogether — obliterated 
by the ready acquiescence of the Lord President of the Council 
in the ameliorative measiu;eS' already adventured upon by 
the new reforming government. Educated in the school of 
the heaven-born minister — a school half of retrogrades, half 
of obstructives — Lord Salisbury has, nevertheless, advanced 
with the advancing views of his generation, and that, more- 
over, in spite of his being himself perpetually surrounded, 
from childhood upwards, by associations the most adverse, 
one might imagine, to the growth of a popular policy and of 
liberal statesmanship : being, from first to last, purely patri- 
cian, intrinsically conservative, essentially aristocratic. Yet 
the generous heart and the cultivated intellect have won 
their way through every opposing obstacle, and the stanch 
Tory of yore proves himself to-day to be none the less a true 
and zealous reformer. 

The egregious mistake among all the political mistakes of 
our age, has been one implying some mysterious prerogative 
conferring upon the Whigs the immemorial right to an absolute 
monopoly in all liberal measures of improvement. Experience, 
history, truth, scatter to the winds of heaven this utterly pre- 
posterous pretension. Glance — it matters nothing how briefly 
or how casually— down the records of the last half-century, 
and there, towering above the lesser labours of the legislature, 
during parliament after parliament, are discernible upon the 
instant, in that one momentary glance, each of those grand 
reforms which constitute, in a manner, the triumphal arches, 
defQoting the advance made in the onward and conquering 



THE MASQT7E88 07 BAU8BUKT. 95 

march of ciyilization. Examine them, one by one, and how 
many of these are the achievements, not of Whig, but of Tory 
governments P The Test and Corporation Act was repealed 
in 1838— and it was the work of a Tory government. The 
Act of Catholic Emancipation was passed in tbe year imme- 
diately following; and it, too, was the work of that same 
Tory government —the government of the Duke of Wellington. 
Coming down more nearly to our own time, there occurred, in 
1846, the ever-memorable repeal- of the Com LawSy together 
with the comprehensive reducticm of tbe customs duties — 
beneficent changes, effected, not under a Whig, but, on the 
contrary, under Sir Robert Feel's Conservative administration. 
Nor could any sane reason ever be adduced why a Tory should 
not make, to all intents and purposes, as good a reformer as 
a Whig ; why improvements, the most varied and the most 
extensive, may not be carried out consistently witb the main* 
tenance (with a direct view to insure and secure the main- 
tenance) of the abstract principle of Conservatism. That 
rational principle, the wholesome and vitalizing principle, of 
Conservatism, is not less dear to the heart, and reverenced in 
the conscience, of every philosophic liberal, even though he 
be one coming under the denomination of an ultra-reformer, 
than it is distinctly foremost among the conspicuous and 
distinguishing attributes of the genius of our constitution. 
Speaking in the abstract, it is this great principle of Con- 
jservatism which forms, in truth, the veritable palladium of 
our liberties, — the one grand security for our good govern- 
ment. It is this which has preserved to us, under the lapse 
of centuries, and through all the turmoil of struggling genera- 
tions, intact and entire, the guarantees of our national and 
social independence, the pledges and securities for tbe per- 
petuation of our freedom as a people— Magna Charta, Habeas 
Corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement. It is, we 
may well believe, as a Conservative, that Lord Salisbury is a 
Reformer. It is beyond a doubt, as Reformers, that he and his 
ministerial colleagues are still to the last— and in the noblest 
sense of the phrase— essentially Conservatives. 



96 THE DEBBT MINISTRY. 

Although the noble marquess even now participates but 
seldom in the discussions of the npper House of Parliament, 
and when he does speak addresses the Lords but yery briefly 
and colloquially, his words derive a weight from the influence 
of his social rank and political character, and are, in conse- 
quence, always listened to with respectful consideration. Nor 
does the personal bearing of the man fail to aid materially the 
effect not unnaturally produced upon that congenial audience 
by his official status and his individual reputation. The fea- 
tures stamped with the hereditary expression of the Cecils, 
the bold bald forehead, the kindly eye, the genial mouth— not 
a lineament in the countenance but is in perfect keeping with 
the repute long since acquired and sustained throughout his 
county, but more particularly in his own immediate neigh- 
bourhood, as a generous landlord and a beloved and honoured 
neighbour. 

It is in the stately seclusion of bj^^rician home at Hat- 
field House that Lord Salisbury passes 'the chief part of his 
existence. With the appearance of the old red-brick man- 
sion every traveller upon the Great Northern Railway is, of 
coarse, familiar. As the train carries you onward towards 
Hatfield station, you cannot but mark with interest the lordly 
and spacious pile of buildings yonder, glowing in the midst 
of the verdure of the surrounding park and woodlands— the 
cynosure of the whole green country-side. It is reared upon 
the site of that palatial residence in which once dwelt the 
nursling Prince of Wales, afterwards the boy -king Edward VL, 
in the time of his happy childhood, before the date of his 
precocious accession to the English sovereignty. There too 
lived, some time afterwards, his more famous sister, while 
yet a gay young slip of a princess — the red-haired coquette, 
with the lithesome figure and the laughing eye, in whom 
none could have foreseen the germ of the all but masculine 
genius characteristic of Queen Elizabeth. Yonder in the 
grounds hard by is still shown, to this day, the very tree under 
which the princess was seated when news was brought to her of 
Queen Mary's death, and of the consequent accession, in her own 



THE ICABQUESS OF SA.USBUBY 97 

I>erson, of the third child of King Henry VIII. to the throne 
of the Tudor dynasty. There, immediately upon that intelli- 
l^ence, she assembled her first privy council : Hatfield, no less 
*' a palace in a garden/' being to Queen Elizabeth, exactly 
three centuries ago, namely, in 1558, what the old palace at 
Kensington was at the moment of her accession to Queen 
Tictoria, — ^the porch to Windsor, the watch-tower from which 
w^as taken in at a glance the whole wide range of that awful 
and sublime dominion. 

When, moreover, those broad domains at Hatfield had 
passed away in the succeeding reign from the Crown (in 
exchange for Theobalds, in the parish of Cheshunt), into the 
possession of the Crown's illustrious subject and authoritative 
adviser. Sir Robert Cecil, later on Baron Cecil, Viscount Cran- 
bome, and Earl of Salisbury — ^the original structure, saving 
only the ancient gateway and the western portion of the old 
palace still preserved, gave place to the far more splendid 
mansion of Hatfield, ever since, from father to son, the home 
and haunt of his direct lineal descendants. 

Historical associations alone, however, are not bound up, 
alas, be it said ! with the family remembrances of that lofty 
roof-tree ; for there, in the November of 1835, when the west 
wing was totally destroyed by fire, Lord Salisbury's mother, 
the dowager marchioness, perished in the conflagration. Yet, 
excepting that one terrible recollection— the veiled sorrow of 
the house— Hatfield is peculiarly one of those abodes where 
one could fancy the statesman and administrator, secluding 
himself at intervals from the toilsome responsibility of partici- 
pation in the affairs of government, might enjoy the Ciceronian 
repose, otium cum dignitate, to the uttermost. Throughout 
the interval of leisure vouchsafed to our legislators during the 
autumnal and winter months, it may be presumed that the 
several members of a cabinet fail not to meditate betimes over 
the probable labours of the ensuing session, and in a more 
peculiar manner over the especial requirements, each one of 
his own particular department. Hence, let us hope, from 
these holiday meditations down at Hatfield, among the flower- 

H 



98 THE DEBBY MINISTBT. 

ing shrubberies of the green pleasamice, may come practical 
measures of reform and amelioration: such, to be specific, 
instead of dealing only in generalities, such, let us say, for 
example, as that sweeping innovation, the encouragement of 
which would, indeed, eminently well befit Lord Salisbury, in 
his capacity as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Boads, the' 
Rebeccaite scheme for the abolition of all turnpike tolls within 
a given distance from the central point of our twin capital of 
London and Westminster. Beyond a mere local change like 
this, however, we would fain anticipate, as among the fruits 
of Lord Salisbury's musings during the recess, as a cabinet 
minister, the steady and appreciable advance of the educational 
movement ; and, above all, the maturing of the general project 
for the comprehensive and systematic reform of Parliament. 



THE EARL OF HARDWICKE, 

^0ri ^ribg Sitixh 



H 2 



THE EARL OF HARDWICKR 



Ajs in the instance of his immediate predecessor in the office, 
the Lord Privy Seal in the Earl of Derby's administration had 
previously occupied ministerial rank in the more responsible 
position of her Migesty's Postmaster-General. 

It is observable, moreover, in regard to the Lord Privy Seal 
of 1858, that, although six years ago entirely new to office as 
a minister of the Crown, the noble earl then displayed those 
business capacities, and that general sagacity as an adminis- 
trator, which enabled him during ten months to preside most 
creditably to himself over the delicate and complicated ma- 
chinery of our vast postal organization. True, doubtless, that 
the nominal and ostensil^le chief at St. MartinVle-Grand is 
relieved from considerable anxiety by that extraordinary apti- 
tude for his position which constitutes Secretary HowlandHill 
(among all the officials upon our various governmental esta- 
blishments) the very archetype and model specimen of "the 
right man in the right place :" yet a statesman of less shrewd 
perceptions than Lord Hardwicke might have failed to appre- 
ciate so very readily those high qualities, that instantaneous 
grasp of detail, that instinctive tact in combination, which 
render the author of the penny postage the gemus loci at that 
central point in the perpetually whirling maze, hither and 
thither, of the million atoms of the world's correspondence. 
Whatever difficulties it may have encountered elsewhere, the 
new system, inaugurated by the reffime of Rowland HiU, 
certainly found no obstructive in the person of the Post- 
master-General under Lord Derby's first administration. 

The Bight Honourable Charles Philip Yorke, fourth Earl of 



102 THJ! DERBY MINISTET. 

Hardwicke, bom fifty-nine years ago, on the 2nd of April, 
1799, was the eldest son of the late Vice- Admiral of the Blue 
Sir Joseph Sydney Yorke, K.C.B., and some time M.P. for 
Reigate, by his first wife, Elizabeth Weake, daughter of James 
!Rattray, Esqnire, of Atherstone. The mother of Lord Hard- 
wicke halving expired prematurely on the 29th of January, 
1812, his lordship's father espoused, within little more than a 
year afterwards, the Lady Urania Anne Paulet, daughter of 
George, twelfth Marquess of Winchester, a lady already twice 
widowed, first as Marchioness Dowager of Clanricarde, and 
secondly, as the relict of Colonel Peter Kington. Seventeea 
years after, her third marriage, the Lady Urania (herself sur- 
viving until the 27th of Pecember, 1843) again wore the weeds, 
h£r third husband having unhappily lost his life, on the 5th 
of May, 1830, in the sixty-third year of his age, through the 
accidental upsetting of a yacht during the course of a pleasure 
excursion. 

Sir Joseph's immediate progenitors, the grandfatherand great- 
grandfather of the present Earl of Hardwicke, each in turn held 
tbe great seal as Lord High Chancellor of England : the father 
of Admiral Yorke retaining that elevated position during 
little more than two days altogether, his grandfather through- 
out a period of nearly twenty years' duration consecutively. 
It cannot even now be borne in recoUection without a pang of 
sympathy, how, imder very deplorable circumstances, Charles 
Yorke (grandfather of the present Lord Privy Seal), eminent 
son of a pre-eminent sire, great in the law-courts, great in 
parliament, twice solicitor-general, twice attorney-general, was 
induced, by the mingled blandishments and reprehensions of 
the reigning sovereign, to accept, on Tuesday, the 16th of 
January, 1770, what he had akeady, for party reasons, again 
and again refused— his appointment as Lord High Chancellor. 
Junius has "pointed the moral," Walpole has ''adorned thQ 
tale"— the terrible moral, the lamentable tale— of the tragic 
consequence of this most mistaken accession to the cabinet of 
the then premier, of this most ill-judged secession from the 
parliamentary ranks marshalled under Lord Bockingham as 



THE EAUL OF HAKDWICKE. 103 

leader of the Opposition. Scarcely is the royal autograph dry 
upon the warrant signed by the king for the patent raising 
the new occupant of the woolsack to the peerage by the name, 
style, and title of Baron Mordon, of Mordon, in the county of 
Cambridge, when, three days after his being hastily sworn into 
office, at six o'clock in the evening of Saturday, the 30th of 
January, 1770, the Lord Chancellor Charles Yorke is lying dead 
in his house in London, under very mysterious and suspicious 
circumstances. It is in allusion to the overthrow of Camden and 
to the demise of Yorke that (shall we say r) Sir Philip Francis, 
in his thirty-seventh letter,* daringly taunts his Grace the Duke 
of Grafton with having "discarded one chancellor and killed 
another." It is in recording the incidents leading to this same 
deplorable catastrophe that the Earl of Orford enumerates 
one by one the various particulars which, says he,t at the 
time of the occurrence, when the grave had not yet closed 
over the illustrious and lamented victim of that dark state 
intrigue, " convinced everybody that he had fallen by his own 
hand, whether on his sword, or by a razor, was uncertain." 
However the dread event may, indeed, have actually come to 
pass— this startling death, as it were, upon the threshold of 
the House of Peers, of the second son of the great Lord 
Hardwicke — the incident Ms, in truth, the one tragic page in 
the family history. 

A brighter record is the one immediately preceding it — that 
recounting the origin and career of the famous lawyer, who 
was the creator of his own fortunes, and of the wealth and 
honours transmitted by him to his descendants — ^Philip Yorke, 
the first Earl of Hardwicke, one who was, in every sense of 
the phrase, the Lord Privy Seal's great-grandfather, he of 
whom the biographer of the chancellors, the present Lord 
Chief Justice of England, has spoken emphatically as "the 
most consummate judge who ever sat in the court of Chan- 
cery." Aikhough the son of an obscure but honest attorney 
at the seaport of Dover, by his wife Ehzabeth, daughter of 

* Woodfall's Junius (Bohn's edition), vol. i. p. 273. 

t Horace Walpole's Memoirs oi George III. vol. iv. p. 53. 



KM THE DEEBT MINISTfiT. 

Richard Gibbon, of Eolveden, in the county of Kent— an ancient 
but impoverished family, numbering amongst its members at 
least one name of world-wide renown (that of Edward Gibbon, 
the historian)— Philip, the first Earl of Hardwicke and Lord 
High Chancellor, could trace back his ancestry far away into 
the dim past, before the race became reduced in circumstances 
about the early part of the seventeenth century, when the 
heads of the house held considerable landed possessions in 
Wiltshire. 

Tragical though, as we have seen, the story of his second son, 
the short-lived chancellor, the biography of the first Lord 
.-— -ffifdwicke is sufficiently comic in some of its particulars ; the 
truth being, that the great lawyer was also, let it be added, 
a great humorist. Early evidence of this he enshrined him- 
self betimes among the classic records of our national litera- 
ture ; namely, when, shortly after attaining his majority, he 
dropped one day with nervous trepidation into the far-famed 
lion's mouth, a now celebrated letter, signed Philip Homebred — 
an epistle which directly afterwards, to the inexpressible 
joy of the stripling admirer of Captain Sir Eichard Steele and 
Mr. Secretary Addison, appeared on Monday, the 12th of 
April, 1712, as No. 364 of The Spectator, 

The exquisite sense of the ridiculous preserved throughout 
life by the great Lord Hardwicke may, perhaps, be still better 
illustrated by a momentary reference to one of the most pre- 
posterous among the many laughter-moving anecdotes he 
loved, with a grave face and a twinkling eye, to relate at his 
own board during the palmy days of his Chancellorship. It 
is an anecdote preserved to us by Cooksey, the Spence of 
law and politics, comparable only to what we may imagine 
to have been that wonderful jest, the favourite jeu d'esprit 
of Mr. Hardcastle, in Goldsmith's comedy, the story never yet 
heard but so often roared at,— that tale of Old Grouse in the 
gunroom, which was at once the dread and the delight of 
Diggory ! It related— this pet joke of the Lord Chancellor 
Hardwicke — to his bailiff Woodcock, " who," quoth the pre- 
server of the anecdote, " having been ordered by his lady to 



THE EAKL OF HABDWICKE. 103 

procure a sow of the breed and size she particularly described 
to him, came one day into the dining-room when full of great 
company, proclaiming, with a burst of joy he could not sup- 
press—* I have been at Boyston fair, my lady, and got a sow 
exactly of your ladyship's breed and size ! ' *' One can still 
biear them, shaking their sides with laughter, there in the 
banqueting-room at Wimpole. That purple-faced lout yonder 
behind the earl's chair can certainly be no other than friend 
Diggory. Surely, we have got, at last, here, to the true 
version of Old Grouse in the gunroom ! 

Somewhat of a humorist himself, like his illustrious great- 
grandfather, — if we may judge of Ids temperament in this 
respect by some of the whimsical incidents of his boyhood, — 
the now Lord Privy Seal began his career in the congenial 
atmosphere of a midshipman's berth, cracking jokes and 
weevilly biscuits, with the gold lace " curse" upon his shoulder 
and a brine-tarnished cap awry upon his bead, — keen of eye, 
light of heart, ready of wit, full of high spirits and of higher 
ambition. 

Nearly a twelvemonth before the date of his entrance, on 
the 4th of February, 1813, into the Royal Naval CJollege at 
Portsmouth, the present Earl of Hardwicke's uncle and god- 
father, the Bight Hon. Charles Philip Yorke, had closed his 
official career — a career extending over some two years and a 
half, namely, from the November of 1809 to the March of 
1812~as First Lord of the Admiralty. It was not through 
the paltry aid of mere nepotism, therefore, that the future 
peer and administrator advanced, as he did afterwards rapidly 
enough, through the various grades of his gallant profession. 

Having successfully carried off the second medal in the 
examination, young Yorke, then just turned fifteen, embarked, 
for the first time, on the 15th of May, 1815, immediately 
before the close of the Napoleonian wars upon the field of 
Waterloo, as midshipman on board the Prince, 98 guns 
(Captain Fowke), then the flag-ship at Spithead. Daring 
that and the year following, he removed successively into the 
Sparrowhawk, 18 guns (Captam Frederick Burgoyne) ; into 



106 THE BEHBY ministet. 

the Leviaihatt, 74 guns (Captain Thomas Briggs) ; and ulti- 
mately into the Qtieen Charlotte, 100 guns (Captain James 
Brisbane), then the flag-ship of Admiral the Bight Hon. 
Edward Pellew, Viscount Exmouth. 

It was while a middy on board the Queen Charlotte ih&t 
Charles Yorke first, as the phrase is, smelt gunpowder. The 
occasion was one of the most glorious ever recorded among 
all the glorious annals of the royal navy of England. It was 
on the afternoon and evening of the immortal 27th of August, 
1816 — the day of the ever-memorable victory won in the Bdy 
of Algiers, a victory achieved in the interests of humanity, for 
the suppression of piracy, for the liberation of from 1,000 to 
2,000 enslaved Christians. As affording evidence of the esti- 
jaatioa in which that true tar, the gallant maritime com- 
mander-in-chief of the expedition^ held both the daring and 
discretion of a stripling like Charles Yorke, then little more 
than sixteen years of age, it is interesting to note that here, 
at the battle of Algiers, he was intrusted by Lord Exmouth 
with the charge of a gunboat during the very height and fury 
of the bombardment. And admirably did the young midship- 
man acquit himself of the perilous duty, with all its weighty 
responsibilities. Throughout the principal part of the contest, 
the gunboat under his command was stationed directly under 
the bows of the Leander, hard by the terrible Fish-market 
Battery ; and there, in the very core and centre of that 
whirling eddy of death, not only did good service but acquired 
for itself and its crew no inconsiderable distinction. 

Almost immediately upon the return of the victorious fleet 
homewards, Charles Yorke joined the Leander, 62 guns 
(Captain Edward Chetham, now Sir Edward Chetham Strode), 
the Leander then bearing the flag of Admiral Sir David Milne. 
Throughout the whole of the ensuing winter, that noble old 
frigate, battered and splintered and riddled by the shot of the 
Algerines, remained at Portsmouth, repairing and refitting, 
until the date of her departure, in the spring of 1817, for the 
North-American station, the point of her pre-arranged desti- 
nation. There, indeed, the Leander remained, chiefly off the 



TH£ £ABL OP HAKDWICKE. 107 

coast of Nova Scotia, until the July of 1819, when she was 
ultimately relieved by the Newcastle. During this iutenral — 
in fact, throughout the whole of the year 1818— Charles Yorke 
commanded the admiral's yacht, a tender, the Little Jane, a 
small vessel more or less continually employed in conveying 
despatches to and fro between Halifax and Bermuda— between 
the '' still-vexed Bermoothes" and the capital of the Nova- 
Scotian peninsula. 

Is there not a glimpse at once of the precision of the old 
Scotch admiral and of the perfectly cool and high-bred effroatery 
of the young English midshipman in that faiat echo from a 
point of time lying far away there at the extremity of that 
perspective of forty years P 

Dinner in the admiral's cabin^ on board the Leander—ooxksA 
iying — ^glasses replenished. 

Admiral (looking askance, with a grim watchfulness, at 
one of the youngest of his guests, then drinking hilariously). — 
' Misturr Yawrk ! hadn't ye betturr drink the champagne in 
toomblers?" 

Mix>i>T. — " Thank you. Sir David. Here, waiter, bring me 
9k tumbler." (Tills it to the brim, and then bending forward, 
glass in hand, with the politest of smiles)— "Sir David, X 
drink your very good health." 

Admirals-grimmer than ever, and breathing hard— is '' shut 
up." accordingly. 

Having acted during a brief interval as lieutenant of the 
Grasshopper, 18 guns, Charles Yorke was, on the 14!th of 
August, 1819, confirmed in that rank by commission ; and on 
the 29th of the following October joined the Fhaeton, 46 
guns (Captain William Montague), remaining still on the 
Halifax station until the date of his being advanced another 
step in his profession. That advance at length arrived, on the 
18tli of May, 1832, the day when the young lieutenant became 
commander. 

Betumed homewards. Captain Yorke was speedily appointed 
to take the command of the Alacrity/, 10 guns, at the period 
when that vessel was fitting out for active service in the 



108 THE DERBY MINISTRY. 

Mediterranean. There it was that the captain of the Alacriijf 
signalized his energy for a considerable time, being off and on 
perpetually engaged, alternately in the suppression of the 
accursed crime of piracy, or in maintaining a vigilant and 
jealous observation of the movements of the allied forces, 
the combined armament of Turks and Egyptians. 

The young commander— thanks to his personal merits and 
his high reputation for seamanship coming in aid of his 
undoubtedly large family influence and powerful connections 
— had not long to wait for his post rank; the 6th of June, 18^, 
being the date of his next commission. 

Three years afterwards, Post-Captain Yorke took the 
command, on the 20th of November, 1828, of the Alligator^ 
'^8"g«B8', and for nearly three years after that— namely, till 
the summer of 1831 — continued upon the Mediterranean 
station, as captain of the Alligator, assisting in no unimpor- 
tant manner in bringing the distracted affairs of Greece to 
something bearing the semblance, at least, of a satbfactory 
settlement. 

Arrived once more in England, our gallant saUor resumed 
his place permanently — saving two brief intervals of final 
service on ship-board, hereafter to be particularized — ^among 
the ranks of his civilian fellow-countrymen. He was heir 
presumptive to the earldom of Hardwicke. He became a 
member of the imperial legislature, occupying a seat during 
one brief interval among the powerful phalanx of the Con- 
servative representatives. 

It was not until the 14th of October, 1833, that Captain 
Yorke, E,. N., was united in marriage to the Hon. Susan 
Liddell, sixth daughter of Thomas Henry, the first, and 
sister of Henry Thomas, the present and second. Lord 
Bavensworth. The fruits of this union have been eight 
children ; the eldest son, known by his father's second title as 
Viscount Eoyston, having, in the spring of last year, attained 
his majority. Within less than thirteen months after their 
nuptials, the sea-captain's wife became a countess. Quitting 
the House of Commons in 1834 as Captain Yorke, the now 



THE EAJLL 0? HABDWICKE. 109 

Lord Privy Seal assumed Ms place among the peers of the 
realm as Charles Philip, fourth Earl of Hardwicke. This 
occurred upon the decease, on the 18th of November, of his 
uncle, Philip Yorke, the third earl, and formerly lord-lieutenant 
of Ireland. Incidentally, moreover, it may be mentioned, in 
regard to a yet earlier generation of the Yorkes, that one of the 
grand-uncles of the present Lord Hardwicke expired in 1808, 
as James, the Lord Bishop of Ely ; another grand-uncle, the 
late Lord Dover, K.B., who occupied a distinguished rank in 
the king's army, having taken part on the famous 30th of 
April, 1745, in the baUle of Eontenoy, as aide-de-camp of 
H.R.H. the Duke of Cumberland. 

Obedient throughout life to the haughty and almost super- 
cilious device of his family — Nee cupias, nee metuas — Lord 
Hardwicke, while disdaining, apparently, at any period to 
struggle for honour, has never shrunk from accepting it when 
proffered to his grasp by fortuitous circumstances. His mari- 
time career drew to a close in 1844, when his lordship assumed 
the command of the Black Eagle steam yacht, on board of 
which vessel he had the honour of conveying to our shores, 
upon that now doubly famous visit to Queen Victoria at 
Windsor, his imperial majesty Nicholas, the Czar of all the 
Russias. It was upon this occasion that the emperor pre- 
sented to the noble and gallant skipper of the Black Eagle a 
gold snuff-box, decorated with a portrait of his imperial 
majesty, surrounded with brilliants, a souvenir estimated 
altogether at the value of one thousand guineas. 

Subsequently, in 1845, Post-Captain the Earl of Hardwicke 
completed the requisite period of his service afloat by taking 
command of the magnificent first-rate man-of-war, H.M.S. the 
St. Vincent y 120 guns ; and, in consequence, by the 12th of 
January, 1854, became, in due course, enrolled upon the 
British navy-list among the ranks of our rear-admirals. His 
position upon that list, however, it should be remarked, is 
among the flag-officers on reserved half-pay, according to the 
stipulations made under the order in council, dated the 25th 
of June, 1851, whereby it was arranged that those officers. 



110 THE DEKBT MINISTET. 

while receiving, as at present, the half-pay of reai'-admiraJs, 
should, nevertheless, be allowed the same advantage of rising 
in rank as though they had remained upon the list of those in 
active service. 

The political career of Lord Hardwicke is familiarly known 
to the generality, having come within the scope of very much 
observation. His first acceptance of office invested him with 
the dignity of privy councillor and the responsibilities of the 
Postmaster-Generalship, and gave him, moreover, what is not an 
inevitable accompaniment to its duties, a seat in the cabinet. 
That position, accepted by him in the spring of ] 862, he re- 
tained, together with his ministerial colleagues, uninter- 
ruptedly from February to December. It is a position since 
resumed, as we all know, by the Earl of Hardwicke in a 
very different character ; nam*ely, as the Lord Privy Seal in 
tlfe^arl of Derby's second administration. 

Meanwhile, apart from his administrative labours, Lord 
Hardwicke has not been otherwise inactive among his con- 
temporaries. He has frequently been in attendance at the 
court as one of the lords in waiting on the Queen ; he has 
for some considerable time past been numbered among the 
members of the council of the duchy of Lancaster. Previously 
having had his name inscribed as E.R.S. on the books of the 
Royal Society, the noble earl received the honorary degree 
of D.C.L., on Tuesday, the 7th of June, 1853, at the Sheldonian 
Theatre, in the University of Oxford, from the hands of the 
newly-installed Chancellor. 

Inheriting with the dignity of the earldom the patronage of 
no less than ten livings, besides an ample fortune, embracing 
within it various and considerable landed possessions, the 
Lord Privy Seal, with a town house at (No. 37) Portman- 
square, has three separate country seats, the chief among 
these, his ancestral home of Wimpole Hall, near Arrington, in 
the county of Cambridge : the remaining two being Sydney 
Lodge, near Southampton, and Tittenhanger Hall, in Hert- 
fordshire. 

Three out of the five brothers of the earl are still surviving; 



THE EAEL OP HARDWICKE. Ill 

one, the Hod .Elliot Yorke, being M.P. for Gambridgeshlre; while 
the others are both clergymen of the Church of England : the 
Hon. and Rev. Henry Yorke, archdeacon of Huntingdon ; and 
the Hon. and Eev. Grantham Yorke, prebendary of Lichfield 
and chaplain to the l^ord Bishop of Worcester. 

The distinguished head of the house, as, indeed, befits him 
as Earl of Hardwicke, is Lord-lieutenant and Gustos Rotu- 
lorum of Cambridgeshire. The characteristic and sailor-like 
frankness of the earl he has carried with him, not unbecomingly, 
from the quarter-deck of a line-of-battle ship to the council- 
board of his sovereign. His loyal gallantry, so often evidenced 
afloat, while in command of gunboat, frigate, or man-of-war, 
is not less signally manifested nowadays, while participating, 
as one of her principal officers, in the far more responsible 
duty of guiding into smooth water, among shoals and breakers, 
through storm and darkness and hurricane, the old metaphorical 
ark of the State — ^the good ship Britannia— the time-worn and 
time-honoured vessel of our Constitutional Government. 



THE RIGHT HON. 8. H. WALPOLE, 

i^urttars td i$tate for t|^t ^onu ^^axhntnt* 



THE EIGHT HON. S. H. WALPOLK 



Eyebt one knows Charles Anbrey, Esqnire, M.P. for the 
borough of Yatton, in Yorkshire — ererybody, that is to say, 
who is familiar with one of the most brilliant masterpieces 
in modem English literature — ^noble-hearted Charles Aubrey, 
the good hero of " Ten Thousand a Year/' the antithesis, the 
antipodes, the zenith to the nadir, of that abominable, execrable, 
detestable little reptile who is remembered 'to have once upon 
a time dyed his carroty hair, eyebrows, and whiskers of a 
genteel apple-green, by the magic agency of the far-famed 
Cyanochaitanthropopoion ! 

Every one does not know, howerer, what is nevertheless a 
reality, that the original of Charles Aubrey, the unconscious 
sitter for that life-like portraiture, is no other than the right 
honourable gentleman now, for a second tinie, her Majesty's 
principal Secretary of State for the Home department. 

The likeness d^icted by the hand of friendship, now more 
than eighteen years ago, still retains to this day the evidences 
of its vivid resemblance. Several of the colours even have 
mellowed and ripened upon the canvas. The auspicious 
promise of many a genial line has deepened, in one or two 
instances, to the precision of a perfected and literal fulfilment. 

Let us glance, then, for a moment at Mr. Aubrey as he 
appeared at that time, in his thirty-fourth summer, to the 
keen and searching eye of this literary Academician, whose 
brush had only previously depicted the sombre and tragic 
incidents of human woe and suffering, recorded in pictorial 
words (blotted and blurred with tears of sympathy) in "The 
Diary of a late Physician." 

Mr. Warren is opening the second book of his prose epic 

l2 



116 THE D£B£T HINISTBT. 

delineative of English life, in this motley, busy, worldly-wise, 
aspiring, thoughtful nineteenth century. He has just described 
Yatton — dear, beautiful, picturesque old Yatton — ancestral 
home of the Aubreys of Yorkshire. He has come, at length, to 
the master of the domain, the head of the house, the real, living, 
breathing, flesh-and-blood hero of his fictitious narrative! 
As admirable a specimen of a Christian hero as one could 
reasonably hope to meet with in our every-day existence ; cer- 
tainly one far more within the scope of ordinary comprehension 
than Sir Bichard Steele's idealised and fantastical imagining. 
Mr. Thackeray, it is true, in one of the later chapters of his 
great Book of Snobs, has the charming effrontery to dub as a 
snob this very Mr. Aubrey of Yatton. But he does so, as 
we well recollect, in one of his most whimsical moods, and, 
as it appeared to our wounded sensibilities when we read it» 
out of pure affectation. But we are leaving the author of 
" Ten Thousand a Year," pencil in hand, at the moment when 
he is about to shadow forth the outline of that true gentleman, 
in a sketch as suggestive in a few rapid touches as one of 
those marvellous limnings from the crayon of Moritz B/ctzsoh. 
It is no mere blank silkouette, but a profile portrait daintily 
delineated. " He has a reserve,*' we are told, " which is not 
cynical, but only diffident ; yet it gives him, at least at first 
sight, and till you have become familiar with his features, 
which are of a cast at once refined and aristocratic, yet 
full of goodness, an air of hoMteur, which is very, very far 
from his real nature." And so on, through all the more 
sensitive and melancholy peculiarities of his composition. 
Furthermore, we read of Mr. Aubrey, " He is a man of supe- 
rior intellect ; a capital scholar ; took the highest honours at 
Oxford [for Oxford, read Cambridge] ; and has since justi- 
fied the expectations which were then entertained of him ;" 
as, indeed, is but now doubly true, uttered in reference to his 
career at the bar or in the legislature. "He has entered 
upon politict" says the novelist in italics of his own, " with 
uncommon, perhaps with an excessive ardour." And the 
writer adds, prophetically, now nearly a score of years gone 



THE SIGHT HON. S. WALPOLE. 117 

by — ^half a dozen years, in truth, before the original of his 
portrait had ventured upon crossing the threshold of St. 
Stephen's — '' I think he is likely to make an eminent figure 
in Parliament ; for he is a man of very clear head, very patient, 
of business-like habits, ready in debate, and, moreover, has at 
once an impressive and engaging delivery as a public speaker." 
Precisely the very qualities he has, since then, distinctly mani- 
fested. A little later on we read, " He is a man of perfect 
simplicity and purity of character.*' And, after a tribute to 
his private virtues, described as " virtues sublimed by Christi- 
anity — as it were the cold embers of morality warmed into 
religion" — we come to the description of his outward appear- 
ance, as vividly punctilious in its accuracy (save only in 
regard to the colour of the hair) as that most reflective anti- 
thesis, the negative and positive of a successful photograph. 
" In manner, Mr. Aubrey is calm and gentlemanlike ; in person, 
rather above the middle height, and of slight make." Then 
follows a mournful anticipation of consumption as an incipient 
disease, happily not since realized, succeeded, in turn, hj 
this mystical shadowing upon the camera obscura of letters, 
meaning, of course, each virginal page lying before your 
true romancist to be scribbled into manuscript — " His coun- 
tenance has a serene manliness of expression when in repose, 
and great acuteness and vivacity when animated. His hair, 
not very full, is black as jet ; his forehead ample and marked ; 
and his eyes are exponents of perfect sincerity, and also acute- 
ness." It is the true mirror held up to nature— a leaf, in the 
hand of a writer of genius, sensitized by the collodion of his 
imagination. 

The Bight Honourable Spencer Horatio Walpole, bom on 
the nth of September, 1806, is the second son of Thomas 
Walpole, Esquire, of Stagbury, in Surrey, by his wife, the Lady 
Margaret Perceval, youngest daughter of John, second Earl 
of Egmont. He is, consequently, related by blood to two 
celebrated prime ministers of England, tracing his genealogy 
back through the paternal line to Sir Robert Walpole, and, 
by means of his own marriage-knot, drawing yet more closely 



118 THE DEBST MINISTBY. 

the ties of kindred through the maternal line originally, linking 
together his own family with that of the Bight Hon. Spencer 
Perceval, the unfortunate victim of the pistol-shot of the assas- 
sin Bellingham. 

Mr. Walpole received his earlier education at Eton, com- 
pleting his academical course of studies with more than 
ordinary distinction as a member of Trinity College, in the 
University of Cambridge. He here won for himself the first 
English declamation prize, — a success significant of his more 
important after-triumphs in the parliamentary arena at West- 
minster : obtaining beyond this a prize medal that might 
almost have been envied him by one earlier and later in the 
^saSie fi^— Thomas Babington, afterwards Baron Macaulay^ 
earlier in the University, later and more eminent in the 
Panegyric — a prize awarded for the best essay upon the cha- 
racter and conduct of King William III., him of Orange — 
that pink, paragon, and phenomenon, who is the pattern hero 
of the eloquent Whig historic-pamphleteer. 

Having entered his name, immediately on leaving Cambridge, 
as a student of Lincoln's Inn, Mr. Walpole was, in 1831, 
called to the bar of that honourable society : so that, even now, 
though he has apparently arrived but in the meridian of his 
public career, he can look back, down more than one whole 
quarter of a century of varied professional experience. 
Although his way was at first, as with the majority, won but 
slowly, he ultimately contrived to secure what he thenceforth 
sustained increasingly up to the close of his labours at the bar, 
— namely, up to the commencement of his loftier course as an 
administrator — a very considerable and important practice in 
the court of Chancery. 

Within one lustre from the date of his call to the bar, Mr. 
Walpole was married, on the 6th of October, 1835, to his 
cousin Isabella, the fourth daughter of the Bight Hon. Spencer 
Perceval, the minister already referred to as having been mur- 
dered in the second year of his premiership. Four children 
still survive as the offspring of that marriage ; namely two 
sons and two daughters. 



THE SIGHT HON. 8. WALFOLE. 119 

Already elected a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, Mr. Walpole 
was, in 1846, nominated Q.G. In that same, to him most 
important, twelvemonth, he was elected M.P. for the borough 
of Midhorst, under the auspices of his relative the Earl of 
Egmont, who, as lord paramount of the whole country-side 
thereabouts, exercises no trivial influence over that compara- 
tively small but eminently convenient constituency. 

It was not long before the predictions of the friendly roman- 
dst began to be literally verified by the member for Midhurst ; 
Mr. Warren, as if in recompense for those happy auguries, 
eventually succeeding Mr. Walpole in its representation. This 
transference, indeed, of the borough of Midhurst to the pre- 
dictor from the subject of the prediction, took place not until 
some ten busy years had elapsed, when, early in 1856, the 
latter was enthusiastically returned as M.P. for the Univer- 
sity of Cambridge : since which time he has enjoyed the satis- 
faction of representing his beloved alma mater in the British 
Parliament. 

During these ten years in which he sat for Midhurst, 
Spencer Walpole built up for himself a parliamentary reputa- 
tion in every respect so high and honourable, that long before 
his nomination as a minister of the Crown, long before his en- 
rolment among the ranks of her Majesty's privy councillors, 
he had acquired a weight and authority in discussion not un- 
becoming one who was at once a descendant of the Walpoles 
and of the Percevals. His speech upon the Navigation Laws 
in 1849, during the course of the renowned debates as to the 
propriety of their abrogation, first drew upon him the par- 
ticular and respectful attention of the House. He afterwards 
participated rather prominently in the remarkable, but, for all 
practical purposes, the utterly vapid and valueless, discussions 
of 1851 upon the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, the most signally 
abortive measure, perhaps, that ever was concocted. 

In the Eebruary of 1852, Mr. Walpole, influenced by the in- 
centives to a nobler ambition than that of looking to anything 
like mere sordid pecuniary advantages, was induced to sacrifice, 
at one fell swoop/' the whole of his great Chancery practice. 



(C 



120 THE DERBY MINISTRY. 

and to accept in lieu of its toils and responsibilities, the far 
more considerable and anxious toils and responsibilities in- 
separable from the post of the Home Secretaryship. It was 
daring that first ten months' epoch of his ministerial career 
that he had the credit of carrying through triumphantly the 
whole of the Herculean task of the Embodiment of the 
Militia. 

Half a year subsequently to the date of his resignation, 
with the rest of his colleagues, in December, he had the 
honorary solace, so to speak, of receiving, at Oxford, on the 
7th of June, 1853, his degree as D.C.L. from the hands of the 
ex-Premier, the new University Chancellor. On resuming his 
place upon the front bench of the Opposition, the Home Secre- 
tary continued to sustain, by his dignified bearing in debate, 
and his unfailing courtesy^ alike to supporters and antagonists 
the repute already acquired by him, as one of the recognized 
aibkcK of the house during his brief bul; important tenure of 
office in the then recent administration. Added to the persuasive 
and almost winning influence of his imperturbable tempera- 
ment, were — ^the intuitive perception of what precise course at 
any moment of difficulty is calculated to be the most judicious 
and conciliatory, the unflagging energy in the mere manage- 
ment of business detail, the intimate acquaintance with tho 
numbeirless traditional rules and formula of Parliament— all 
that manifold and scarcely definable blending of endowments 
with acquisitions, which occasionally tends, at rare intervals, 
to constitute a member of the House of Commons not so 
much a leader of party, as a recognized chief, and mediator 
between the opposing ranks of the legislature. To the pin- 
nacle of this eminently influential position in the House of 
Commons, the Bight Hon. Spencer Walpole may be literally 
said to have won his way without an effort, simply by the 
triple force of his great abilities, his conspicuous integrity, 
and his elevated character. He, of aU men in the house, it 
was generally felt, was (one might also say by right) the 
natural successor of the Eight Hon. Shaw Lefevre, since then 



THE BIGHT HON. S. WALPOLE. 131 

Baron Eversley. Had Lord Derby come into power bat a 
year sooner, Mr. Walpole would, at this moment, be Speaker 
of the House of Commons. Instead of which, as we all 
know, the country had responded Yeh ! so loudly to the appeal 
made by Lord Palmerston, that, when the new Parliament 
assembled in 1857, the occupancy of the chair came unfor- 
tunately to be regarded as a mere party question : the result 
being, that the Bight Hon. Evelyn Denison, an able man 
enough, but a man, it must be confessed, without one tithe of 
Mr. Walpole's weight or popularity, was summarily inducted 
into the Speakership. Another general election, however, a 
new House of Commons, and that untoward and unexpected 
decision would, in all probability, be reversed. The Home 
Secretary might then, at last, assume the high position for 
which he seems to be in every respect even yet more pecu- 
liarly qualified,*— that of the foremost Commoner in the land, 
the first of English gentlemen. Personally, intellectually, 
politically, socially, there is not a statesman in the house 
who would appear to greater advantage than the Bight Hon. 
Spencer Walpole in that honoured chair which is almost a 
throne, under the voluminous shadows of that wig which is all 
but a diadem, with that bauble mace borne before him, hardly 
less in its way than a sceptre, himself clad from head to foot 
in the golden robe, not less venerable as a symbol of office 
than the royal robe worn by the sovereign upon the day of 
coronation.* 

As it is, we doubt not but that all this is ripening in the 
hereafter. Mr. Walpole has meanwhile only to bide his time 
patiently, awaiting, with confidence, the all but inevitable 
result of the next dissolution. His political chief reassumes 

*"The Crown!" exclaimed Mr. Roebuck haughtily, almost 
indignantly, during the course of this last session — "the Crown ! 
it is the House of Commons ! " And casually, carelessly though it 
may have been uttered, the impetuous ejaculation of that eminent 
tribune of the people is epigrammatically expressive of a great 
truth, a truth dictated by the very genius of the oonstitution. 



122 THE DE&BT HINI8TET. 

power in February, and finds the Speaker's chair already 
occupied. Wherefore, as a welcome necessity, for the time 
being, the Bight Hon. Spencer Walpole resumes for awhile 
his former post in the cabinet as Home Secretary. His next 
rise wiU probably be to that constitutional stepping-stone to 
the peerage^ the Speakership. 



THE EARL OF MALMESBURT, 

Sitmtwc]^ td Sitait for ^mip, %im$. 



THE EAEL OF MALMESBURY. 



A PASLIAMBNTAB.T repatation is generally the one thing 
absolutely requiisite as a stepping-stone to power, as a pre- 
liminary to any participation whatever in the toils and 
responsibilities of onr oonstitntional government. One 
remarkable exception, however, to this usually inexorable 
rule is certainly discoverable in the instance of the noble earl 
nominated twice by Lord Derby, with an interval of six years 
between each selection (1852 and 1858), to the delicate and 
difficult office of Foreign Secretary in his two administrations. 

Neither in the House of Commons, when Viscount Fitz- 
harris, during the few weeks in which he sat there as M.P. 
for Wilton, nor yet again in the House of Peers throughout 
the whole of the ten sessions intervening between his accession 
to the earldom in the autumn of 1841 and his first acceptance 
of the seals of office as a minister of the Crown in the spring 
of 1852, had Lord Malmesbury sought to acquire for himself 
any recognizable position among the leading debaters in either 
branch of the legislature. Yet suddenly called upon to main- 
tain the well-being of the sensitive and complicated webwork 
of our Diplomacy— the Nervous System of Governments — 
at a period, too, of extraordinary (in some respects alto- 
gether unprecedented) anxiety. Lord Malmesbury revealed 
already (in 1852) those high qualities which have since then 
(in 1868) far more signally secured to him an eminent repu- 
tation among the most daring and successful of our diplomatic 
administrators. 

It was daring his comparatively brief but most important 
tenure of office in 1852 that the Anglo-French alliance — 
thanks, in a very great measure, to his personal sagacity and 



126 THE DERBY MINISTBT. 

forbearance — ^was built up, broadly and securely, among the 
still-smoking ashes of the volcanic explosion of the coup 
d'etat. It was then, likewise, that one of those immi- 
nent probabilities of a sudden rupture between the United 
States and the United Kingdom, which have, unhappily, 
of late years, become almost in a manner periodical, was 
adroitly dissipated into " thin air " by the skilful blending 
of firmness with tact, visible in Lord Malmesbury^s mode of 
dealing with the problematic question of the fisheries off the 
coast of Newfoundland. By yet more striking evidences of his 
ready mastery over the arts and implements of the diplomatist, 
the noble earl has very recently — since the date, in fact, of his 
reinstallation, as it were but yesterday, in the Foreign Office — 
won "golden opinions from all sorts of men," by the triumphs 
secured, as it would seem, by his very temerity. By a series 
of dexterous strokes of policy, he has boldly severed, in rapid 
succession, three Gordian knots, entangled into all but inex- 
tricable confusion, by the complicating delays and hesitations 
of his immediate predecessor— at Paris, at Naples, at Wash- 
ington. Scarcely had the new ministers settled fairly to their 
work, when the solution of these three paramount difficulties 
proved to have been most satisfactorily accomplished — with a 
due regard to the national honour, yet with a perfect preser- 
vation of European tranquillity. 

The Anglo-French alliance, originally founded by Lord 
Malmesbury, was by him, six years afterwards, definitively 
confirmed and consolidated. It was effectually accomplished, 
moreover— this later and far more delicate achievement — not 
merely without any compromise of the national dignity, but 
by means of a despatch which actually constituted in legible 
characters its frank and manly vindication. The miserable 
consequences of the Neapolitan imbroglio meanwhile were so 
far scattered to the winds, and replaced by acts of reparation 
in some degree compensative for aU the preceding wretched- 
ness, that our two imprisoned countrymen were at once set at 
Hberfcy, £3,000 being immediately afterwards extorted in their 
behalf &om the exchequer of the Two Sicilies, by way of 



THE EABL OF MALMESBUKT. 127 

enabling the petty despotism of Naples to expiate in some 
degree the illegality of their most cruel and protracted incar- 
ceration. Simultaneously, or almost simultaneously, concord 
was re-established between Great Britain and the United 
States, in spite of aU the heart-burnings originated by the 
vexaia qtkestio of the Eight of Search, and in very despite also 
of the natural but irritating jealousies provoked on this side 
of the Atlantic by reason of certain nefarious fillibustering 
expeditions for the seizure of the island of Cuba: dubious 
schemes of buccaneering conquest, reputed to have received 
encouragement, direct or indirect, from the republican govern- 
ment at Washington. England was soon once more amicably 
placed, in regard to the cabinets presided over respectively by 
the Emperor of France, by the King of Naples, and by the 
American President. The dilatory and hesitating policy of 
the Earl of Clarendon was happily counterpoised by the 
prompt and outspoken repudiation of that policy by his lord- 
ship's successor, the Earl of Malmesbury. Each embarrass- 
ment in turn was seized by the latter with an iron grip, and 
yet with a graceful courtesy— the silken glove drawn over the 
mailed gauntlet. Yet the statesman who, during two distinct 
and memorable epochs in the history of Chri^endom, has 
acted with such exquisite finesse, and at the same time with 
such unflinching determination, had never, prior to the first of 
those epochs, advanced into the open battle-ground of Parlia- 
ment. His knowledge of political philosophy until then was 
partly that of the observant man of the world, partly that of one 
who had conned long and profoundly the records of the past, 
through the abundant and unpublished teachings of ancestral 
experience. The acquisitions obtained in this way, however, 
as the fruits of such varied and frequent meditation, were 
ripened and matured betimes, in the present instance, by 
an aptitude for the diplomatic art and the administrative 
science that may be explicitly defined as instinctive and 
hereditary. 

The Eight Honourable James Howard Harris, third Earl of 
Malmesbury, bom on the 25th of March, 1807, was eldest of 



128 THE DBBBY tflNISTRT. 

the three sons of James Edward, the second earl, by his wife, 
Harriet Susan, daughter of Francis Bateman Dasbwood, 
Esquire, of Well Yale, Lincolnshire. The grandfather of 
her Majesty's present Foreign Secretary has stamped his 
name indelibly upon the national annals — ^a name, indeed, 
luminously imprinted upon many a page of European history — 
that of James Harris, the first and celebrated Earl of Malmes- 
bury. Yet, although it was in recompense of the great public 
services performed by this renowned diplomatist, that the 
earldom was originally called into existence, at the turn of the 
present century, the viscountcy being also then conferred upon 
him in 1800, as the barony had been twelve years previously, 
in 1788, it is not, we submit, in this most distinguished 
member of the house that we may discern the veritable 
founder of the family fortunes. That particular honour ap- 
pertains rather to his untitled father, a man of very rare 
accomplishments, and of no inconsiderable political influence : 
nevertheless, one who remained to the last a plain country 
gentleman. The progenitors of this now patrician race are 
known to have descended from a certain Mr. Harris, who, 
very nearly three centuries ago — ^namely, in 1565— was residing 
upon his estate at Orcheston St. George, in Wiltshire ; his 
mansion in the county town being situated in the beautiful 
old cathedral Close of Salisbury. The secluded estate, and the 
almost equally secluded city home, came in due course, by 
right of inheritance, from this remote ancestor, into the pos- 
session of the father of the famous diplomatist. Generation 
after generation the estate at Orcheston, and the picturesque 
old brick-built dwelling-house in the green umbrageous Close 
at Salisbury, had been owned by a Mr. Harris, each in turn 
contented to remain unnoticed, save only as an honoured 
landlord, an agreeable neighbour, or a shrewd local magistrate. 
The great-grandfather of the present Lord Malmesbury was 
the first head of the house who drew the family from their 
hitherto uninterrupted provincial seclusion, brought them to 
the surface, made them known more widely, and that, too, as 
otherwise distinguishable than as the mere respectable de- 



THE EABL OF MALMBSBURT. 129 

scendants of an ancient race of well-to-do commoners. Jamea 
Harris, Esquire, of Orcheston, soon after completing his 
education, rendered himself noticeable among his contem- 
poraries, first of all as a writer, afterwards in the fashionable 
world of London, and in the political world at Westminster. 
He acquired for himself the reputation of a ripe scholar and aa 
elegant man of letters. He penned several philosophical works 
of an ambitious character : among these a book entitled 
" Hermes ;*' being, in fact, a treatise upon Grammar. Another 
and companion volume to this, was a treatise upon Har- 
mony ; for the author had directed his attention no less sedu- 
lously to the cultivation of his taste as a musician, than to the 
perfecting, as far as possible, of his skill as a philologist. Of 
the former, the grammatical treatise, it has been enthusiasti- 
cally remarked by South, the Lord Bishop of London, " that 
it [Hermes] is beyond a doubt the most beautiful example of 
analysis produced since the days of Aristotle." The eulogium, 
coming from such a critic, extravagant though it may appear 
nowadays, indicates, at any rate, the high estimation in 
which the writer of " Hermes " was held by his own imme- 
diate contemporaries. Nay, still further in proof of this, it 
should be borne in mind that the book referred to was actually 
translated into French, and officially published by Thurot in 
1796, by the command of the dominant power in Paris — that of 
the Uepublican Directory. In all probability, however, the un- 
wonted incident of this consequently not very remarkable im- 
jprimatur should be regarded less as a tribute of admiration for 
a philosophical treatise, than as a wily and specious compliment 
offered to the literary masterpiece of the father of a powerful 
and dreaded diplomatist, whose favourable regard it was desir- 
able in every way to propitiate. 

The last and the most noticeable Mr. Harris of Orcheston — 
indeed, the only member of the old family known in any way 
as such beyond the precincts of Salisbury, or, at any rate, of 
Wiltshire— not only wrote books, but made speeches. He 
entered the House of Commons, and long remained there— un- 
interruptedly, in fact, until the date of his death, in 1780— aa 



ISP THE PEBBT MINISTBY. 

M.P. for Christcliurch. He became, moreover, in 1763, one of 
the lords of the Treasury. Eleven years later on — that is, in 
1774— he was appointed Secretary and Comptroller of the 
Queen's household. 

It is amusingly recorded of him, in regard to his first 
entrance into Parliament, that, upon the occasion of his then 
taking the oaths and his seat. Lord John Townshend, second 
son of the marquess of that title, inquired " Who this might 
be P " — and on being informed that it was Mr. Harris, who 
had written on Grammar and HMnnony, drily observed, "Why 
does he come here, where he will hear neither ? " 

His passion for music— it is interesting to record the circum- 
stance — gained him the privilege of an intimate friendship 
with Handel ; a friendship, indeed, so true and lasting, that the 
great composer bequeathed to Mr. Harris, as souvenirs of 
their regard for each other, his portrait, together with his 
various operas in manuscript. 

It was under the immediate care of this refined and culti- 
vated intellect, that the first earl, who, as already intimated, 
became such by his illustrious labours as a diplomatist, 
received the potent impress of his early education. A preco- 
cious intimation of his aspiring character, even in boyhood, 
has been related, amusingly enough, by the noble earl, his 
grandson, upon the authority of his relative, the late Earl of 
Shaftesbury. 

One fine afternoon, according to this trustworthy informant. 
Mistress Harris was taking the air in the neighbourhood of 
her home, strolling to and fro under the shade of the old trees 
in the monastic Close, when she casually descried the figure of 
some one clambering up that tallest steeple in all England, the 
spire of Salisbury Cathedral " Having obtained a glass the 
better to observe so perilous a feat,'* quoth the narrator, " she 
immediately dropped it with the exclamation ' Good heavens, 
it is James ! * " Poor, startled mother— it was James, indeed ! 
But he had more difficult feats than that to accomph'sh : he 
had to climb afterwards to far greater altitudes than even the 
top of Salisbury Cathedral. 



TH£ EAKL OT KALMESBUKT. 161 

Our cselebrated diplomatist, the first Lord Malmesbury, sur- 
vived so long after the close of his great political career — a 
career beginning in 1768, the year before the birth of the 
Emperor Napoleon, and terminating in 1797, when the fame of 
General Bonaparte was first in the ascendant— that it is almost 
with surprise we find him to have expired as recently as the 
20th of November, 1820, dying at his house in Hill-street, at 
the green old age of seventy-four. His reputation in diplomacy 
has long since received the tribute of many an historical pane- 
gyric. Even the Comte de Mirabeau, with all his own crafty 
and daring genius, has apostrophized him with a sort of 
wondering admiration, as " Get audacieux et rus6 Harris!" 
Even the Prince de Talleyrand, in spite of his insatiably grim 
and sardonic appetite for depreciation, has said of him, with 
all the emphasis of a deliberate encomium, " Je crois que Lord 
Malmesbury ^tait le plus habile ministre que vouz aviez de 
son temps ; c'etait inutile de le devancer; il fallait le suivre 
de pr^s. Si on lui laissait le dernier mot, il avait toujours 
raison." In other words, it is saying that he was a man who 
could never, by any possibility, be cajoled or overreached. 

His lordship's grandson, the third earl, now for a second 
time her Majesty's Foreign Secretary, received his academical 
education, in the first instance, at Eton, and afterwards at Oriel 
College, in the University of Oxford, where, in 1828, he 
graduated as B.A. Lord Malmesbur/s political education, as 
with the true education of most of us, was a task self-imposed, 
and in time triumphantly self-accomplished. As here pre- 
viously intimated, the plan selected for the mastery of the 
twin sciences of politics and diplomacy was one of a very 
peculiar and unusual character : it was for the most part 
commenced and completed in absolute retirement. He studied 
the theory of government, in fact, at home, in his library, among 
his books and manuscripts ; conspicuous among those manu- 
scripts bemg the voluminous diaries and correspondence of his 
illustrious grandfather. Viscount Eitzharris might at any 
moment, after attaining his majority, have entered the House 
of Commons, under his father's influence, as member either 

k2 



133 THE DEEBT MINISTRY. 

for Wilton or Christchurch. He preferred, to the proficiency 
won in the jousts and tourneys of the senate, the wisdom bom 
from silent meditation. And it certainly proved, beyond a doubt, 
an admirable schooling for one afterwards fated to be himself a 
diplomatist and an administrator— the scrutiny of that long 
and splendid career of nearly thirty years— the career of him 
who, in 1788, had, in his capacity as minister at the Hague, so 
adroitly and effectually delivered Holland from Erench domi- 
nation by the simple but cunning process of negotiating the 
famous offensive and defensive alliance of that imperilled state 
here with Prussia, then the haughtiest military power upon the 
Continent, here with England already the mightiest maritime 
power in Christendom. They afforded, moreover-r-those re- 
markable manuscript Diaries and Correspondence of James 
Harris, the first Earl of Malmesbury — one consecutive narra- 
tive of the great diplomatist's mission, not only to the Hague, 
but to the courts also of Madrid, of Frederick the Great, and 
of Catherine of Russia, together with a detailed account of his 
special missions to Berlin, Brunswick, and the French £>epublic. 
How thoroughly these ample stores of wisdom drawn from 
experience were ransacked by his congenial descendant, was 
eventually testified in 1844, by the publication of the four 
noble volumes (admirably edited),* containing the very pith 
and marrow of those same authoritative Diaries and Corre- 
spondence. 

The mastery of so worldly a science as that of diplomacy, 
apart from the turmoils of contemporary politics, could only 
be accomplished through labours the most assiduous and sus- 
tained. But to those retired labours, Viscount Fitzharris 
dedicated his every energy during a serious of anxious years — 
only completing, indeed, the self-imposed task, dictated at once 
by interest and affection, within three years after the date of 
his accession to the earldom won by the genius and patriotism 
of his gifted grandfather. His resolute toil at the desk 

* Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, first Earl of 
Malmesbury. Edited by his Grandson, the tbird Earl. 4 vols. 8vo. 
Bentley. 1844. 



THB EABL OF MALMESBUBT. 133 

famisbed a contradiction to the familiar aphorism of 
Juvenal — "Scire volunt omnes, mercedem solvere nemo." 
Here, at least, was one who manifested his readiness to 
fiacrifice much for the grasp of the desired knowledge. It 
was unquestionably an experiment in its way, that endeavour, 
on the part of a patrician student, to attain, in the seclusion 
of home-study, what had hitherto been alone acquired, and 
that with difficulty, through protracted participation in the 
glare of the publicity peculiar to the oratorical strifes of the 
legislature. 

Shortly after quitting the university. Viscount Fitzharris 
had married, on the 13th of April, 1830, the Lady Emma 
Bennet, eldest and only surviving daughter of Charles Augustus, 
the fifth and present Earl of Tankerville. This union having 
been fruitless of issue, the heir presumptive to the earldom 
is, of course, the elder of Lord Malmesbury's two younger 
brothers — Captain the Hon. Edward Alfred John Harris, 
R.N. (the noble lord's junior by a twelvemonth), lately Charge 
d' Affaires and Consul-General at Chili, and now Minister 
Plenipotentiary to the republic of Switzerland. It cannot 
but be interesting to add, in regard to Captain Harris as heir 
presumptive to the earldom of Malmesbury, that his excel- 
lency, bom on the 20th of May, 1808, and married on the 4th 
of August, 1841, to Emma Wyly, youngest daughter of the 
late Captain Samuel Chambers, R.N., has as many as seven 
children — three sons and four daughters. The youngest 
brother of the Foreign' Secretary — childless himself too, by 
reason of the death of an only son in infancy— is a clergy- 
man and dignitary of the established church, the Hon. and 
Bev. Charles Amyond Harris, prebendary of Salisbury. 

It was only during the last few weeks in which the now 
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs retained his courtesy 
title as Lord Fitzharris, that he was first returned to the 
House of Commons as member for the borough of Wilton. 
Scarcely had he taken his seat, however, among the popular 
representatives, when, upon the unexpected death of his 
father, on the 10th of September in that same year, he was 



134 THE DEBBT MINISTRY. 

suddenly called to the upper house as the third Earl of 
Malmesbury. 

Precluded, by the very brevity of his stay there, from taking 
part in the discussions of the House of Commons, the noble 
lord for some considerable time afterwards maintained an 
almost unbroken silence in the hereditary branch of the 
legislature. His unobtrusive mastery of the philosophy of 
politics, however, was unmistakably evidenced, as before 
mentioned, by the issue, in 1844, of his admirably revised 
and collated edition of his great ancestor's enthralling Diaries 
and CJorrespondence. Later on, his comprehensive grasp 
of a complicated and difficult subject, connected at once 
with our internal polity and our criminal jurisprudence, 
was significantly manifested by the statesmanlike arguments 
through which Lord Malmesbury* discussed the delicate 
question of the revision of the Game Laws, in a letter ad- 
dressed by him, in 1848, to the Eight Hon. Sir George Grey, 
then her Majesty's principal Secretary of State for the Home 
department. 

It was reserved, however, as we have seen, until 1852, for 
the Earl of Derby suddenly to demonstrate, in the person 
of Lord Malmesbury, his extraordinary sagacity, as Eirst 
Minister of the Grown, in the selection for high office of 
men hitherto unknown and untried among the ranks of our 
administrators. 

Lnmediately before the close of Lord Malmesbury's Foreign 
Secretaryship, what may be termed the ricochet of the coup 
d'etat of the 2nd of December, 1851, abruptly startled this 
isle of ours " from its propriety" as nearly as possible one 
year afterwards, shaking Europe throughout its entire fabric, 
as with the shock of a political detonation. It was one of 
those momentous turning-points in the history of the great 
races of Christendom, when what is called the balance of 
power is maintained in a condition of equilibrium so singu* 

* Bevision of the Game Laws : a Letter from the Earl of Malmes- 
bury to the Right Hon. Sir George Grey, Bart., M.P. Svo. pp. 89, 
Hatchard and Son. 1848. 



THE EARL OV MALMESBURY. ]35 

larly precarious and vibratory, that the results of its oscillation 
between the alternatives of war and peace are literally depend- 
ent upon the whim of a moment, upon the tact of a single 
speech,upon the sagacity of one solitary administrator. Upon 
the attitude assumed by England at that precise juncture in 
regard to her powerful neighbour across the Channel, the tran- 
quillity of the whole world was, beyond one instant's doubt, 
dependent. To say this is not to speak of those events in any 
way in the language of exaggeration : it is a truth which was 
recognized, even at that critical instant, as great indeed, and 
the force of which has, since then, most happily prevailed. 

At that particular crisis her Britannic Majesty's foreign 
secretary, the Earl of Malmesbury, delivered in the House 
of Lords, on the evening of Monday, the 6th of December, 
1852, a speech so magnanimous in tone and tendency, so 
perfectly judicious in every syllable, so eloquent in sentiment, 
so true in reasoning, that it may be described, with the strictest 
regard to the accuracy of the expression, to have distinctly 
inaugurated the Anglo-French alliance — and not only to have 
inaugurated it, but to have led, as by an irresistible logic, 
to its rapid and permanent consolidation. In the course 
of this remarkable harangue, while vindicating in noble 
words the great principle of non-intervention, together with 
the inalienable and imprescriptible right of every nation 
to make choice of its own sovereign — Lord Malmesbury 
remarked, as explicitly as powerfully — " If we have doubted 
for one moment the distinct intention of a people at any 
former time, upon this occasion, my Lords, it is perfectly 
impossible to mistake their undoubted determination— three 
times in the most solemn way— three times ^pressed for 
the same person in the most public manner, perhaps, of 
which history can afford us an example." Adding, further 
on, " First, as simple President of the French republic with 
a chamber; secondly, as absolute President of the French 
republic, without any form of constitutional government; 
and thirdly, as Emperor of the same people — first elected by six 
millions— next elected by seven millions— and lastly, elected 



136 THE BEBBT HINISTBT. 

by nearly eight millions, a number that would fonn almost the 
entire male adult population of France : ** — a phenomenon so 
extraordinary, that it could alone be attributed to the magical 
influence exercised upon the imagination of a great people by the 
name and memory of Napoleon. "We can always compre- 
hend," said the English statesman, "how the fate of Napoleon, 
so chequered as it was, and such a picture of immense glory 
and immense misfortune as it presented, was exactly calculated 
to raise all the sympathies and interests of human nature ; and 
we cannot, therefore, wonder that it made a lasting impression 
upon the people over whom he ruled so long and so greatly/* 
How that impression was enhanced by the contagion of the 
hereditary enthusiasm bequeathed to their children by the 
soldiers of the Grand Army, scattered back from the moment 
of its disbandment, among the ranks of the population, Lord 
Mahnesbury, towards the close of this impressive and pic- 
turesque oration, bodied forth in phrases of rhetorical vividness 
to the appreciation of his patrician and congenial auditory. 
It was the illustrative justification by the lips of an eloquent 
Englishman of the celebrated prediction uttered thirty-seven 
years before by Monsieur de Chateaubriand— that a little 
three-cornered cocked hat and a grey great-coat had only to 
be raised conspicuously in any (the remotest) comer of Prance 
to excite an instantaneous rising among the whole mass of the 
population. 

It had happened fortunately, as events subsequently proved, 
that during the long exile of the then Prince Charles Louis 
Napoleon Bonaparte, conspicuous among those who were 
admitted by his imperial highness to the intimacy of a per- 
sonal friendship, was an English nobleman, then taking no 
part whatever in public affairs, but who was, nevertheless, 
destined to be the ministeral representative of the sovereign 
of these realms at the momentous period when the head of 
the Napoleonian dynasty was at length to realise the day- 
dream of his life, by reviving the memories of an empire 
-greater than that subject to the sway of Charlemagne. Lord 
Malmesbury, in this particular, stood not alone juneng hia 



THB EABL OF MALM£SBT)BT. 187 

compeers. The exiled prince, finding a ready welcome, ac- 
corded to him in this country — not only at the noble earl's 
town residence. No. 8, Whitehall Gardens, or at his seat in 
Hampshire, Heron Court, near Christchurch — but elsewhere, 
among the home^ of our more distinguished commoners, and 
upon the hearths of others of our English aristocracy : not 
the least notable among the latter, by the way, being the late 
gallant and noble-hearted Marquess of Londonderry. It was 
during this period of familiar intercourse with the future 
Emperor of Eranoe, that Lord Malmesbury learnt to appre- 
ciate those high qualities, the accurate and instant recogni- 
tion of which, afterwards publicly and in his official capacity 
as Eoreign Secretary, tended so materially to facilitate the 
delicate task of securing a more intimate, and, if possible, 
permanent alliance between the two countries. He estimated 
aright, and betimes, the unswerving force of that indomitable 
perseverance. He recognized, long before the majority of the 
world at large, the consistency colouring the whole record 
of the existence of that remarkable man— beginning from the 
date when, on the 20th of April, 1808, the earliest tidings of 
his birth (as the first prince bom under the imperial regime) 
were conveyed with more than royal honours to the remotest 
limits of that gigantic empire, with the roll of drums and 
the roar of artillery, and the gleam of half a million bayonets : 
the flash of those presented arms, and the thunder of those 
hitherto all-conquering guns, dying away from their starting- 
point — the birthplace of the infant prince, the home of the 
now reigning emperor, the old Bourbon palace of the 
Tuileries— far away to the most distant confines of Europe, 
beyond the Pyrenees and the Carpathians, from the shores of 
the Baltic to the Straits of Messina^ from the islands north of 
the Zuyder Zee to the southernmost point in the tapering 
ooast-line of Illyria. 

Not unhappily, either for Eranoe or for England, a per« 
sonal friend and appreciator of Napoleon IH. presided, at the 
lime of his advent to imperial power, over the Eoreign depart- 
ment in her Britannic Majesty's government. Under a con* 



138 THE DEKBY MINISTBT. 

juncture of fortunate circumstances, the peril of an open rup- 
ture between the two countries proved to be, on the contrary, 
the opportunity for insuring the yet closer alliance of the 
peoples and the sovereigns. 

Lord Malmesbury, by the tact and judgment he invariably 
displayed throughout his ten months' retention of ministerial 
office in 1852, rendered a source of satisfaction at once to the 
Crown and the Country, his enrolment among the ranks of the 
national administrators, and the peculiar capacity there dis> 
played by him in the guidance of our diplomacy — a capacity in 
his instance, seemingly in a manner inherent and hereditary, 
though sedulously cultivated, as we have seen, through years 
of careful and laborious meditation, caused the reappointment 
of the noble earl by his political chief to the same high and 
responsible office — that of the Foreign Secretaryship — ^to be 
regarded in the spring of 1858 with very general satisfaction. 
Perhaps Foreign Secretary never had a more appropriate, or 
more propitious, motto — ** Ubique patriam reminisdl'* It 
might, in truth, be taken as the perpetual maxim of the Foreign 
Office, the device prefixed to every despatch^ the amulet of 
each successive principal secretary of the department — every- 
where to remember our country. It has been acted upon in 
various directions very recently by the 'noble earl himself, 
since his re-acceptance of the seals as her Majesty's Foreign 
Secretary. At Paris — ^where an equivocal despatch has been 
answered so unequivocally, and yet so adroitly, that while vin- 
dicating, according to the impressive and chivalrous phrase of 
Lord George Bentinck, "the chastity of the national honour," 
it not merely avoided the chance of jeopardizing the alliance, 
but actually and appreciably tended to reconsolidate it ! At 
Naples — ^where the English engineers, unlawfully seized on 
board the Coffliari, and afterwards still more unlawfully 
detained in (literal) durance vile, were promptly released, be- 
sides being secured a liberal compensation. At Washington 
— where the long-vexed question of the Right of Search was 
brought to an issue, not merely satisfactory, but beyond the 
scope even of our most sanguine expectations. At Monte^ 



THE £ABL OP HALMESBURT. 139 

negro — where the bloody brands axe being wiped and sheathed 
at last by the unwilling marauders, who have hitherto fought 
with implacable desperation against each other under the 
opposing banners of the Yladika and the Sultan Caliph : the 
happy prospect of the ulterior reconciliation of their differences 
having been opened up to view at last by means of what has 
been at once cordially accepted by the five contracting powers 
— ^Lord Malmesbury's judicious and ingenious proposition. 
At Belgrade— where a deplorable outrage has been promptly 
expiated. At Jeddah — ^where an infamous massacre has 
instantly brought the necks of its perpetrators under the 
avenging heel of the Nemesis of diplomacy. At Pekin — where 
the obstinacy of old Chinese prejudice has been surprisingly 
conquered at the point rather of the pen than of the bayonet. 
It is no longer, indeed, "the eye" of the British government 
that is directed anywhere towards our suffering fellow-country- 
men, according to Lord Clarendon's extremely felicitous and 
consolitary intimation, upon a certain famous 29th of October. 
Neither is the segis of England restricted in its circumference 
to the petty screen of a parliamentary fanfaronnade. In 
serious, sober truth, we have heard quite enough for some 
time to come of that long-deluded and neglected wight — Civis 
Britannicus, Alas, poor fellow ! while the House of Commons 
yet rang with the plaudits greeting the boast of his prerogative, 
was he not growing mad in his Neapolitan dungeon — first of 
all sickening at heart with the long agony of hope deferred, 
and at last seeking to release himself by death in the extremity 
of his desperation ? Happily, under the more rational view 
now taken at 15 and 16, Downing-street, Whitehall, as to 
what is really meant by the vaunted rights of an Englishman 
— Civis Britannicus is no longer ogled by "the eye" of his 
government : he feels, in his direst need, the mighty aid of its 
stretched-out arm, the solace and the strength of its swift, 
instant, in a manner ubiquitous, interposition. 

Together with several of his colleagues in the first Derby 
cabinet. Lord Malmesbury, in the year following their collec- 
tive retirement from office — namely, on Tuesday, the 7th of 



140 THE DERBY HINISTBT. 

Jane, 1853— received the honorary degree of D.C.L. from the 
hands of the leader of his party, the newly-installed Chan- 
cellor. Among the miscellaneous titles of distinction other- 
wise and elsewhere acquired by the Foreign Secretary, one 
or two may be here casually particularized. It may be 
remarked, for instance, that Lord Malmesbury, as patron of 
the arts and sciences, has been for some time past Official 
Trustee of the British Museum; while, in very different 
capacities, he occupies in one county (Berkshire) a magis- 
terial post as High Steward of Wallingford, and, in another^ 
military rank as Colonel of the Hants militia artillery. 

Thanks to the familiarizing agency of the photographic art, 
aided by so many cheap illustrated periodicals, even provincials 
are for the most part perfectly well acquainted with the per- 
sonal appearance of our public men, the chiefs of party and 
the leaders of governments. It is so, of course, with respect 
to the noble earl, her Majesty's Foreign Secretary. Thousands 
know by heart the serious lines of that pensive and hand- 
some countenance : the brows slightly elevated, the lips 
compressed, the nez retrousse— 9, peculiarity this latter oddly 
enough not uncommon among diplomatists: instance the 
Cupidon nose of Lord Palmerston, and that yet more distinc- 
tive feature, lending piquancy in his earlier years to the 
supercilious visage of the ex-bishop of Autun, Monseigneur 
the Prince de Talleyrand* Altogether there is an individuality 
about Lord Malmesbury's face, figure, and bearing, no less 
unmistakable in its way than that imparted by him, alike in 
1852 and in 1868, to the foreign policy of Lord Derby's 
administration. 






THE 



RIGHT HON. SIR E. B. LYTTON, 



THE EIGHT HON. SIE E. B. LYTTON. 



■Ot 



Statesman, orator, poet, novelist — ^these are a few among 
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton*s securities for the remembrance 
of posterity, as they are unquestionably foremost among his 
manifold claims upon the attention, and, in a great measure, 
also, upon the unstinted admiration of his contemporaries. 
But the catalogue by no means comprises all the various 
intellectual fields into which this daring and indefatigable 
ambition has adventured. As a dramatist, as a historian, as 
an essayist, as a critic, as a biographer, as a publicist, Bulwer 
Lytton has won for himself no ordinary distinction. In one 
or two of these capacities he has created for himself a 
separate and, we believe, enduring reputation. 

Already, moreover, has he not very recently added another 
to the varied list of parts enacted by him upon the stage of 
public life ? With a laborious determination worthy of his 
whole previous history, in truth, within less than three months 
from the date of his first acceptance of office as a minister 
of the Crown, he had achieved for himself, by a series of 
audacious yet adroit innovations, accompanied by a parallel 
series of cautious and elaborated reorganizations, an honourable 
and expanding repute as one of the most resolute and saga- 
cious among our living administrators. 

It can scarcely fail, therefore, to be profoundly interesting, if 
not curiously instructive, to cast a glance, however cursory or 
superficial, at the records of this industrious and energetic 
existence, at the phases of this conspicuous and comprehen- 



A considerable portion of this biography originally appeared in 
a recent number of the Dublin University Magazine, 



144 THE DEEBY MINISTET. 

sive ability, striving, at least, to catch some glimpses of the 
accurate self-analysis of our author's character, discoverable, 
in the instance of every vrriter, through his more remarkable 
productions ; but, in this instance, yet more readily discernible 
through the sheer force of the diversity and variety of Sir 
Bulwer Lytton's actual achievements. 

Latterly those achievements have been of a kind more solid 
and practical than any ordinarily coming within the range of 
an ambition until now dedicated so zealously to the cause of 
literature. They comprise among their number — upon the 
very morrow, too, of the completion of his twenty-first Ro- 
mance—the calling a new and gigantic Colony into existence 
with almost magical rapidity ! A Colony, not alone sketched 
out in its superficial dimensions upon the map of the North- 
American continent, but elaborately organized in all its minute 
details and comprehensive systemization. A Proconsulate 
larger than the entire realm governed under the sway of our 
ancient Heptarchy — carved out of an auriferous wilderness of 
plenty, teeming with vegetable and mineral abundance, untrod- 
den yet, for the most part, save by the Ked Indian and the wild 
beasts of the forests : nevertheless, even at the earliest moment 
of its summons into existence, endowed with all the noble secu- 
rities of modem civilization! With an executive authority to. 
regulate the scheme of its administration; with a judicial' 
power to temper justice with mercy, to harmonize law and 
equity, to maintain rights and inflict penalties ; with an armed 
force capable of preserving order ; with a banking system for 
the facilitation of commercial enterprise ; an engineering corps 
prepared to open up the interior by planning roads and select- 
ing the sites of future cities ; and, together with these and a 
diversity of other minor advantages, the prospect of a regu- 
larly-established postal communication. It is but yesterday 
that rumours of gold upon the banks of Eraser Eiver came 
to us from the vicinity of that remote island of Quadra, 
or Vancouver. It is but yesterday that our present Colonial 
Secretary was installed, for the first time, in office as the 
ruler of our sixty distant, scattered, and enormous posses- 



THE RIGHT HON. SIR B B. LTTTON. 145 

sions. Yet already, dreamer of dreams though he has beeo^ 
80 often heretofore, he has at once evinced such assiduity 
and a|iititnde as an innovating administrator, that within less 
than a quarter of a year he has celebrated his role in 
Downing-street, thus signally, by the creation, and more than 
that, by the instant organization, of a magnificent colony like 
British Columbia. 

A statesman so daring, an author so remarkable, demands 
from every one wba would rightly estimate either, no ordi- 
narily scrupulous exercise of vigilance in the rapid survey of 
his career and character. 

The Right Honourable Sir Edward George Earle Lytton 
Bulwer Lytton, third and youngest son of the late General 
WiUkm Earle Bulwer, of Beydon Hall and Wooddalling, in 
the county of Norfolk, by his wife Elizabeth Barbara, nee 
Lytton, sole heiress and last descendant of the Lyttons of 
Knebworth, in the county of Hertford, was bom some fifty 
years ago, or thereabouts, in 1805, according to the unani- 
mous testimony of his biographers. His birthday appears to 
have dawned in what the old poets called the *' sweet o' the 
year," if we may rely upon the accuracy of his own exquisite 
commemoration— 

" It was the May when I was bom. 

Soft moonlight thro' the casement streamed ; 
And still, as it were yester mom, 
I dream the dream I dream'd." 

A Dream of Love and Fame— an infant vision of (literally) new- 
bom ambition. Yet a metrical fantasy, this, not one jot less^ 
of an anachronism in its way than one of his own later heroes, 
Pisistratus. For it was not until some seventeen summers 
afterwards— when, in the midst of one of his vacation rambles 
as a pedestrian in the north of England, he lay musing one day 
upon the reedy banks of Lake Windermere — that he there 
distinctly conceived, for the first time, the delightful and 
virginal idea of authorship. The germs of that pleasant fancy, 
however, had long before been tenderly planted and sedulously 



146 THE DEBBT MINISTET. 

nurtured by his revered and beloved mother, a woman eminently 
gifted, and, in many respects, very rarely accomplished. His 
intellectual obligations to her he has, indeed, himself emphati- 
cally avowed, where, in his charming dedication to his mother 
(in 1840) of the first uniform edition of his collected writings, 
he has observed, in words of courtly gratitude and pathetic 
tenderness: "From your graceful and accomplished taste I 
early learned that affection for literature which has exercised 
so large an influence over the pursuits of my life ; and you, 
who were my first guide, were my earliest critic :" adding — 
" Do you remember the summer days which seemed to me so 
short, when you repeated to me those old ballads with which 
Percy revived the decaying spirit of our national muse; or the 
smooth couplets of Pope ; or those gentle and polished verses 
with the composition of which you had beguiled your own 
earlier leisure ?" And remarking at last, in reference to those 
same alluring, maternal lessons, that in them he recognized 
the seeds of "the flowers, however perishable, now laid upon 
a shrine, hallowed by a thousand memories of unspeakable 
affection." Upon that amiable mothet exclusively had de- 
volved the tuition of her three sons in their tenderest child- 
hood. For it was during the infancy of the youngest that the 
gallant father expired — ^a father of whom it is, among other 
particulars, certainly very noteworthy, that, as brigadier- 
general, he was selected, in 1804, as one of the four com- 
manding officers to whom the Government intrusted the 
internal defence of England, at the period of the anticipated 
descent upon its shores of the grand army under the .Great 
Napoleon. 

The offspring of Greneral Bulwer's union with the heiress 
of the Lyttons of Knebworth consisted exclusively of the 
three sons already implied as the issue, rather than distinctly 
specified, William Earle Lytton Bulwer, the eldest of these 
brothers (having been bom on the 28th of April, 1800), as 
head of the house, succeeded in due course to the paternal 
estates in Norfolk, where he has maintained throughout life, 
in his capacity as a wealthy country squire and large landed 



THE RIGHT HON. SIR E. B. LYTTON. 147 

proprietor, the enviable repute of an honoured landlord and 
a private gentleman of considerable accomplishments. The 
second brother, who has secured for himself a wider repu- 
tation, and who inherited, in his turn, the ample fortune 
of his maternal grandmother, is more generally known as 
the Eight Hon. Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, G.C.B. (bom in 
1801), a diplomatist of very rare ability, perfected by nearly 
thirty years' experience in that high, intellectual profession ; 
one who, after having held successively the post of Minister 
at Madrid, at Washington, and at Florence, besides con- 
ducting, with consummate skill, the late negotiations in 
regard to the Danubian principalities, has recently, as Lord 
Stratford de Redcliffe's immediate successor, been appointed 
her Britannic Majesty's representative as Ambassador at 
Constantinople. It may be incidentally remarked, that, 
like his younger brother. Sir Henry has employed the 
pen otherwise than as guided at his dictation by the 
hands of his own precis-wniers; his excellency's juvenile 
volume of travels, entitled " An Autumn in Greece," having 
been succeeded in his maturer years by a "Life of Byron," 
prefixed to the Paris edition of that poet's writings ; by a 
political treatise, entitled, "The Monarchy of the Middle 
Classes ;" and by a work of yet larger pretensions, called 
"France, Social and Literary." Turning our attention, how- 
ever, from the immediate relatives of Sir Bulwer Lytton, it 
cannot but be obviously worth while, in his instance, with a 
view to the better estimate of his career and character, of the 
bent of his genius, and of the tendehcy of his writings, to scan 
rapidly, for a while, the long perspective of his ancestry. The 
influence of a patrician race upon a mind like Bulwer Lytton's 
cannot but, upon the instant, come within the scope of the 
most ordinary comprehension. Whose nature would be more 
probably or more sensibly affected by the nobler instincts and 
aspirings, springing, as by inevitable necessity, from mere 
hereditary associations ? EssentiaUy, naturally, instinctively, 
in this way, out of those associations, have sprung into exist- 
ence, have coloured his prose and his poetry, the love of the 

L 2 



}48 THE PSRBY MIKIST&T. 

past, the sympathy with a chivalric age, the yearning prefer- 
ence for the heroic character. It were an egregious oversight^ 
in the consideration of the personal history and of the inteL- 
lectual advancement of Sir Bulwer Lytton, not to have some , 
special regard, however fleeting or sidelong, to the records 
of his iUustrious lineage. 

According to the ancient orthography of the patronymic 
Bulwer, it expressed, as Bulver or Bolver, one of the wac 
titles of Odin, and sufficiently attests, incidentally, by a variety 
of corroborative, and, indeed, conclusive circumstaiu:es, the 
direct origin of this antique race from among the heroiQ 
Yikings of the North, those renowned sea-warriors from the 
shores of the Baltic, who, either as Danish or as Norman ad- 
venturers, moulded the fortunes and influenced the genius of 
their Anglo-Saxon predecessors. Bolver, it is also curious to 
remember, was the name appertaining to one of the most, 
notable among the warrior-ba^ds, or scalds^ of Scandinavia. 
And yonder, upon the north-east coast of England, there is 
still discoverable the spot upon which the first valiant bearer 
of the name planted his conquering foot upon the soil o£ 
Britain, the place being still known to this day, in comme- 
moration of the incident, as Bulverhithe. Finally, it is dis- 
tinctly recorded in Bloomfield's " History of Norfolk," that 
the earliest lands ever held by the family in that county— the 
lands of Wooddalling — still, as we have seen, in possession of 
Sir Edward' eldest brother— were originally assigned upon the 
morrow of the battle of Hastings, by Aymer de Valence, to 
Turold Bulver, one of the victorious knights who came over 
>n the train, and fought under the banners of William the 
CSonqueror. 

As to the maternal family of the Lyttons, the history of 
that particular house illustrates, in a really remarkable 
manner, the history of the whole country, with the fluctua- 
tion of whose fortunes its chief representatives have been more 
or less conspicuously associated, generation after generation. 
Contemporaneously with the Bulvers of Wooddalling, the 
Lyttons were originally settled, at the period of the Conquest, 



THE RIGHT HON. STB. E. B. LTTTON. 149 

in Congleton, Cheshire, and at Lytton of the Peak, in Derby- 
shire. It is related, in re«?ard to the descendants of the 
founders of this most energetic race, that, one after another, 
the more daring chieftains took part in the leading events in 
the historical annals of England. It is thus that we find suc- 
cessive leaders of the house participating in the Crusades, in 
the Wars of the Roses, in the great civil conflicts, and so 
on further downwards, from the days of the Commonwealth. 
One — ^it was Sir Giles de Lytton— fought under Bichard 
Coeur-de-Lion at Askalon. Another espoused the cause of 
Henry IV. of Lancaster, and in recompense for his loyal 
adhesion was created governor of Bolsover castle and Grand 
Agister of the forests on the Peak. A third— this was Sir 
Robert de Lytton — in consideration of his having valorously 
wielded his sword for Henry YII. upon the fonghten field of 
Bosworth, became, under that monarch, successively Knight 
of the Bath, Privy Councillor, Keeper of the Great Wardrobe, 
and Treasurer of the Household. It was by Sir Robert de 
Lytton, now more than three centuries and a half ago, that 
the ancestral home of Sir Edward — by antique and heroic 
associations, no less than by picturesque architectural beauty, 
far more than the Abbotsford of the English Sir Walter— that 
the ancient hall of Knebworth passed into the immediate pos- 
session of the family in whose safe keeping it has remained 
ever since then uninterruptedly. Knebworth, ©riginally a 
royal fort and appanage of the crown, having belonged for a 
time to a maternal ancestor. Sir John Hotoft, treasurer of 
Henry IV., became in effect, by purchase, the property of 
Henry VII.'s keeper of the wardrobe and treasurer of the 
household. Another, a fourth of these more notable Lyttons, 
was one of the knights on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and 
was appointed by Henry YIII. governor of Boulogne castle. 
A fifth, by name Sir Rowland de Lytton, besides in his capa- 
city as lord-lieutenant of the shires of Essex and Hertford, 
commanding the forces of those two counties at Tilbury camp, 
was captain of Queen Elizabeth's celebrated body-guard of 
gentlemen-pensioners, a band of valiant knights, according to 



150 TUE DERBY HINISTBY. 

Lord Clare, comprising within it the very flower of the Eng- 
lish nobility, no member of the corps possessing a fortune less 
than 4,000/. a year, an income equivalent to some 20,000/. per 
annum nowadays. Another Lytton of note, the sixth upon 
our catalogue, was M.P. for Herts in the Long Parliament ; he 
was, beyond this, one of the Commissioners selected by that 
Parliament to treat with Charles I. at Oxford ; and subse- 
quently obtained the yet greater distinction of being one 
among the patriot members confined in Hell-Hole by the Lord 
Protector, in consequence of his having had the temerity 
to participate in the resistance of Cromwell's usurpation. 
Elizabeth Barbara Lytton, the mother of our novelist-poet 
and statesman — married as she was on the 1st of June, 
1798, to General Bulwer, then colonel of the 106th regi- 
ment of infantry, and at the period of their nuptials in the 
forty-first year of his age, having been bom on the 22nd of 
March, 1757 — as sole heiress of the family, and last blood 
representative of that of Norreys-Robinson-Lytton, of Mon- 
acdhu, in the island of Anglesea, and of Guersylt in Denbigh- 
shire, claimed direct descent, through the alliances of her 
ancestors, from the first Plantagenet king, Henry IL ; from 
Anne, sister of Owen Tudor, grand-aunt of King Henry VII. ; 
from the Earl of Warwick, the King-maker, as well as from the 
Norman houses of Grosvenor of Eaton, and Stanley of Hooton, 
and Warburton of Arley, and from the princes of ancient 
Wales, Caradoc Vreichvras and Roderic Mawr, It was in 
recognition of the splendour of this stately pedigree, that when, 
in 1837, at the period of the coronation of Queen Victoria, the 
then prime minister (the late Viscount Melbourne) acquainted 
Bulwer Lytton with the royal intention to include him in a 
new creation of baronets, the noble premier gracefully inti- 
mated that, if regarded as given to one of so ancient a family, 
the title could not be esteemed a distinction; yet that, as 
given exclusively to the man of letters, in conjunction 
with the simultaneous nomination to the same dignity of 
Herschel, as a man of science, it might probably be a 
welcome honour; namely, as a tribute to literature. As 



THE EIGHT HON. SIB E. B. LTTTON. 151 

'Such it was proffered, as such as it was accepted — as a 
trihute to literature. 

Precisely, moreover, as it is in a genealogical sense with the 
house of Lytton, so it is also undeniably in an architectural 
sense with the house of Knebworth. Centuries, epochs, 
feigns, have each left upon it, as they passed, some distinctive 
impress by way of appropriate commemoration. The castel- 
lated walls of the edifice, accurately portrayed among the 
" Baronial Hails of England," testify this indeed, within and 
without, abundantly and resplendently. The original fortress, 
ierected as far back as the days of Edward III., having been 
removed as altogether too ruinous for habitation as recently as 
the Ufetime of the late occupant, there still remains the 
exquisite structure built in the reign of Henry VII., and con- 
structed throughout in what is known as the purest Tudor 
architecture. An ornate stone pile, richly decorated with 
hersddic carvings, flanked by profusely-ornamented turrets, 
surmounted with delicately-traceried cupolas and numerous 
pinnacles, each with its broad gilded vane twinkling in the 
sunlight — ^the antique and picturesque residence seems, in 
truth, the fitting abode for the descendants of that race of 
Norman knights and Crusaders. Viewed externally, the im- 
pression produced is in no way incongruous, whether the 
accessories noticed at the moment chance to be the "pleached 
alleys " or " smooth shaven lawn," the quaint green maze or 
the blooming rosary, the terraced walks or the Italian gardens, 
— or, stretching far away to the verdant horizon of the sur- 
rounding landscape, the undulating sweep of the wooded park, 
with the deer tripping among the fern, or trooping together 
in clusters under the cool shadow of the umbrageous oak- 
branches. Examined within, the effect produced by the interior 
is not one jot less harmonious with its various, and some of 
them remote and remarkable, historical associations. Yonder, 
the apartment in which (Sir Archibald Alison erroneously 
puts it — "Continuation" of his "History of Europe," vol. i. 
page 480, note — " the oak table at which ") Cromwell, Pym, 
and Yane concerted the great rebellion. Here, the tapestried 



152 THE DESBT HIKI8TET. 

bedchamber in which Queen Elizabeth slept in the year of 'die 
Spanish Armada, when on a yisit to Sir Bowland Lytton, 
dbeady mentioned. There, the noble banqnet-hall, with its 
ceiling dating %)m the first Tudor king, and its screenwork 
from the last Tudor qoeen. The donble sweep of the grand 
staircase, with its moresque figures, and its other qnaint and 
most artistic decorations. Hither and thither, ererywhcre, 
above and below, the evidences of tastes the most refined, 
Uending one with the other through successive generations. 

The escutcheon of the ancient family, with all its elaborate 
quarterings emblazoned in stained glass in the old mnllioned 
windows, and repeated in a hundred forms in the stone carv- 
ings, carries above it, nowadays, according to the grotesque 
symbolical devices of the days of chivalry, the twin crests of 
the Bidwers and the Lyttons. Here, the homed wolf, gnash- 
ing its tusks—there, the solitary bittern, booming among the 
sedges. Emblematic though they are, doubtless, of capacities 
and aspirations, long ago, may be, forgotten, they remain, never- 
theless, still fantastically, and not in any way incongmously, 
typical of the race whose fortunes they have followed variously 
to the council-board and the battle-field. 

Nurtured in the midst of the heroic recollections of his 
ancestral home at Knebworth ; listening at the knees of his 
lady-mother to the old war-ballads recalled to light and life 
by the appreciative love of Bishop Percy ; dreaming even then 
of poetry (as he himself tells us in his own brief and charming 
autobiographic paper— the chapter upon Knebworth— in one 
of the volumes of his *' Student "), as he lay upon the grass by 
the fishponds, watching the flitting blue and scarlet wings of 
the dragon-flies ; keenly observant even then of human life, as 
he there also permits ns to remark him to have been precociously 
when visiting his favourite gossips, two old cottagers, in the 
adjacent village, Edward Bulwer Lytton passed gaily, thrice- 
happily, through the dear home-life of childhood. 

On closing the halcyon epoch of his tender tuition by his 
mother, a woman — as already intimated — of very rare capa- 
cities, Bulwer Lytton began early enough in boyhood to expe- 



THE AIGHT HON. SIR E. B. LYTTON. 153 

rience the bracing inflnenoe upon the inteDect resnlting from a 
systematic, thoagh strictly private, scholastic education. 
Haying visited one or two preparatory academies for the rudi- 
ments, he first began the stady of the classics in earnest near 
Brighton, under Dr. Hooker, in the pretty little rose-porcbed, 
koneysuckle-treUised village of jBx)ttendean. Subsequently, 
however, he was removed to E^ng, where his education was 
continued by the Reverend Charles Wallington. For the 
purpose of studying the physical sciences, and especially the 
mathematics, he was later on confided to the care of the 
Reverend H. Thompson, of St. Lawrence, near Ramsgat^. 
Throughout the whole of this period, moreover, it should bo 
recorded that the young student derived no inconsiderable 
assistance from the counsels of the learned and venerable Br. 
Parr, with whom he had continued, even from the days of his 
childhood, in familiar correspondence. Conspicuous among 
the pupils of Dr. Parr had been Bulwer Lytton's maternal 
grandfather, Richard Warburton Lytton, who, besides being a 
favourite pupil of Parr, and an intimate friend of Sir William 
Jones, was himself a profound Oriental scholar, being 
reckoned indeed by Dr. Parr as second only to himself and to 
Professor Person in classical erudition. Consequently, there 
must have been in the old doctor's mind and heart an almost 
hereditary interest in another Lytton aspiring to climb the 
forked hill, and to drink deeply of the Pierian spring of 
knowledge. 

Already, while yet a mere child, Bulwer, as a schoolboy, 
tasted whatever sweetness lies in the earliest delights of 
authorship. It cannot certainly be told of him, as it is actually 
related of Lope de Vega— afterwards author of eighteen 
hundred dramas according to Montalvan, or of no less than 
two thousand according to Bouterwek — ^that, composing verses 
at five years of age, he parted with them for toys and sweet- 
meats. Neither can it be said of him, as the Count Alfred de 
Vigny has written of Pic de la Mirandole, that his precocity 
was almost fabulous, presque fabuleus. It is not by any 
means impossible, however, that, like Tasso, he might at nine 



154! THE DEBBT UINISTKT. 

years of age have addressed levins^ stanzas to his mother, 
stanzas, too, as graceful and as childlike as any penned by poor 
Torquato. However this may have been, it is at any rate as 
indisputable as that Abraham Cowley strung rhymes together 
when scarcely in his teens, or that Alexander Pope at twelve 
penned his famous " Ode to Solitude " — ^that between the ages 
of thirteen and fifteen our future poet-novelist-statesman had 
produced his first book, and had it printed and published by a 
London publisher, as a substantial little volume of avowedly 
juvenile compositions. "Ismael"* was the title of it, "an 
Oriental Tale, with other Poems, by Edward George Lytton 
Bulwer" — the writer's name, afterwards so famous, being fol- 
lowed by an apologetic intimation of the age at which he had 
indited these poetic effusions. The sprightliest evidence there 
given of the gay, aerial fancy of the boy, is a certain quaint 
fantastic " Ode to a Poker," half-pensive, half-whimsical. 
The one noticeable circumstance connected with this forgotten 
maiden-work, howbeit, still not wholly unworthy of passing 
commemoration, is the simple fact that there, legibly printed, 
is the fifteenth year of the child-author's life, 1820, at the foot 
of that precocious title-page ! 

Entering Cambridge at an earlier age than usual, and with- 
out those customary advantages which naturally accrue from 
a public training in any one of the great academical arenas, 
such as Harrow, Eton, Kugby, or Westminster, Edward, 
following in the track previously traversed by his two brothers, 
had his name enrolled on the books of Trinity College. Eor 
a single term only, however, seeing that, immediately before 
the commencement of its successor, he had removed to Trinity 
Hall. There was then flourishing, it should be observed, at 
the University on the banks of the Cam, the once-famous 
debating society known as the " Union." It had about this 
period, indeed, attained the height of its influence and cele- 
brity. Macaulay, the future baron and historian, together 
with Charles Austin, afterwards the eminent queen's counsel, 

*Ismael: an Oriental Tale. With other Poems. 12mo. Hatchard. 

1820. 



THE BIGHT HON. SIA £. B. LTTTON. 155 

.had but very recently taken their departure, leaving behind 
them, among their fellows at the Union, a high repute for 
eloquence and scholarship. Contemporaneously with Bulwer 
Lytton, as among the principal speakers of the society, were — 
Winthrop Praed, editor of the Etonian, and at that time also a 
brilliant uniyersity prizeman ; the Bight Hon. Charles YiUiers, 
recently Judge-Adyocate-General under Lord Palmerston's 
gOYcmment; another right honourable, the late lamented 
Charles BuUer ; Sir Alexander Cockbum, now Lord Chief 
Justice of the Common Pleas ; together with John Sterling, son 
of that famous Thunderer of the Times, afterwards the hero of 
Mr. Carlyle's biography ; not forgetting, either, another of the 
alumni — Hawkins — ^who, a few years later, on the introduction 
of the Reform Bill, acquired for himself a momentary distinc- 
tion by delivering the most remarkable first speech in the whole 
of those renowned discussions. Principally passing his time 
among these congenial associates, who then constituted in- 
deed the most gifted coterie in the University, Bulwer Lytton 
acquired his first taste for public life, his earliest relish for 
politics. Although speaking but rarely at the Union, he 
nevertheless soon won for himself there no inconsiderable 
reputation. Distinguishing himself chiefly for the soundness 
and the amplitude of his historical information, and rendering 
himself especially noticeable, among such youthful debaters, 
by views remarkable for their practical character— rather 
perhaps, it should be said, for their precocious moderation—he 
was unanimously chosen by that debating society as its pre- 
sident. It is peculiarly interesting, moreover, to remark, at 
this early stage in his career, that the political opinions then 
professed by the cabinet minister of the Hereafter appear to 
have been maintained consistently, with but very trifling modi- 
fications, throughout the whole of his life — opinions generally 
sympathizing with, or rather directly espousing, the more 
liberal policy, yet maintaining that constitutions, while they 
can rarely depart with safety from the principles embalmed in 
and sanctified by the customs and habits of a people, can no 
more be imported wholesale than an acorn can in a single day 



156 THE DERBY MINISTRY. 

be expanded into an oak-tree. Conspicnoas among the more 
rwnarkable speeches delivered about this time by the young 
President of the Union was one arising out of a discussion 
upon the comparative merits of English and American insti- 
tutions—a logical, and yet impassioned harangue in vindica- 
tion of monarchy and aristocracy. It attracted considerable 
noticcj even beyond the precincts of the University, and 
obtiained for the stripling orator the tempting offer (as soon aft 
he should have attained his majority) of a seat in Parliament — 
an offer at once declined, however, by him from a characteristic 
unwillingness to enter, first of all, as a mere nominee within 
the walls of the imperial legislature. 

Associating himself in a very different enterprise with thft 
present Earl of Lovelace, Bulwer Lytton was one of the 
founders of a bibliographical association, called the " Old Book 
Club," designed for the encouragement among the coUegiand 
of early EngKsh literature. After taking his degree of B. A., 
in 1822, he quitted the University betimes, but was recalled 
thither for one brief interval, in the July of 1825, to read 
publicly in the Senate-house an English poem of his own 
composition, to Which, after his departure, had been awarded 
the Chancellor's prize of the gold medal: a poem upon 
" Sculpture,"* deservedly admired by every on^ who heard or 
read it, for the originality of its style and the affluence of its 
illustration. 

It was during his long vacations, while a student of Cam- 
bridge, that Bulwer Lytton chiefly occupied the leisure of his 
summer and autumnal holidays, by travelling on foot and 
alone through considerable portions of England and Scotland. 
Armed only with a stout walking-staff, and with a favourite 
dog perhaps at his heels, he traversed the green country-side, 
passing through scenes, and sometimes encountering adven- 
tures, many of which were commemorated in one or other of 
the popular fictions produced by him not long afterwards. It 
was during one of these romantic excursions that he became 
involved for a while in the nomadic wanderings of a crew of 

* Sculpture : a Prize Poem. 868 verses. Cambridge. 1825. 



THE BIGHT HON. SIR £. B. LYTTON. 157 

gipsies, influenced by the poet's yearning for nature and the 
artist's lore of the picturesque. At Windermere, as already 
Qipeoifled, he first of all, in truth, dreamt the dreams of author- 
ship, and applied himself resolutely thereupon to the study of 
English composition. 

Anything like an analysis of the numerous and diversified 
writings of Bulwer Lytton would be altogether beside our 
intention; the des%n here being u^erely to string their titles as 
swiftly and securdy as is in any way practicable upon the 
sinupus and elastic thread of the narrative. A single one of 
these literary productions would afford ample theme for 
analytical criticism. All of them could hardly be e^mined 
supei;fi<»ia]ly, even in a volume of ordinary dimensions. 
Wherefore let the view here taken be understood at once aa 
that lass of searching scrutiny than of mere consecutive 
enumeration. 

Having taken leave of Cambridge, Bulwer l4ytton went 
abroad very soon afterwards. It was then that he for the 
second time enjoyed the maiden pleasure, experienced by 
evwy young writer when he sees his blurred and blotted ma- 
nuscript, printed, hot-pressed, clear, and with a very bloom 
upon it, come forth from the magical workshop of the typo- 
grapher. He then had, in fact, privately printed in Paris a 
handful of fugitive poems (never published), called " Weeds 
and Wildflowers," * a little volume to which was appended a 
collection of aphorisms, in imitation of the sententious and 
caustic maxims of Rochefoucauld. The book is still,, in one. 
particular, deserving of remembrance ; for, among its contents, 
appeared the first rough sketch of the poem on " Milton," 
afterwards so delicately retouched, and in the end so exquisitely 
elaborated. 

Travelling homewards on horseback through Normandy, our 
young adventurer upon public life— future man of letters, 
novelist, dramatist, poet, orator, statesman, administrator — 
all-unconscious of the future before him, has scarcely recrossed 
tiie Channel when we find him suddenly entering the army as 

*Weedsand Wildflowers. One vol. pp. 103. Paiis. 1826. 



158 THE DEBST MINISTRT. 

8 comet in the dragoons. Recollecting the fact that he had 
always cherished a passionate preference for a military life^ it 
is not surprising to observe him now beginning in real earnest 
to study the art of war, with a view to active service. It 
cannot be matter of amazement to any one who remembers his 
avowal long after that carious little episode in his career, 
namely, that he has always since then been bent upon fighting 
the battles of literature and life with the same buU-dog deter- 
mination with which he fought his battles at school, that is to 
say, as one resolved " never to give in as long as he had a leg 
to stand upon ! " And so, as a mere thing of course, he "went 
in " at Vauban and Von Bulow. 

But during that same year, 1827, in which his name was 
entered at the Horse Guards, his first novel was published 
anonymously. The sword was sheathed and laid aside for ever, 
within a twelvemonth afterwards, as in no way befitting a hand 
for which the keener weapon of the wizard-pen had such 
instant and superior fascination. This maiden fiction of the 
future romancist was " Falkland " * — a story abounding with 
lofty but almost despairing aspirations. In style the book is 
brilliant and rhetorical. Otherwise it is unworthy of its 
author ; and, as confessedly such, has been included by him in 
his own Index Expurgatorius. He had not yet learnt the 
humblest, yet the sublimest wisdom, bom of philosophy — the 
veiled and kneeling credence in the presence of the inscmtable 
mysteries of the universe. The reverence out of which came 
the utterance of the Christian Metastasio : — 

** Rovini il cielo ; 
Non dubitar, non partirb : " 

eliciting the more familiar thought from the heart even of the 
pagan Horace, " Si fractus iUabatur orbis, irapavidum ferient 
ruinsB." But nobly has the genius of Bulwer Lytton in its 
maturity compensated for the scepticism of his thoughtful 
boyhood. 
Another work (also subsequently eliminated by our author 

♦Falkland. One vol. pp. 264, 8vo. Colbum. 1827. 



THE BIGHT HON. SIR E. B. LTTTON. 159 

from amongf the number of his cherished compositions) ap- 
peared in the same year with the prose fiction just particu- 
larized. This was a poetic volume, entitled '* O'Neill ; or, 
the Rehel,"* a metrical story penned in a style then still 
eminently fashionable — a style that might be the most accu- 
rately described as sensuous and Byronic. It extended to 
three cantos, but never advanced, we believe, by means of a 
second edition, even to the semblance of a fleeting popularity. 
Enough will have been remarked, in reference to this tale in 
verse, if we here add, that it is scarcely possible to read 
without emotion its impassioned and now most mournful 
dedication. 

Scarcely had "Falkland" and "O'Neill" appeared, when, 
on the 29th of August, 1827, Bulwer Lytton, still in the early 
dawn of manhood, was united in marriage to Bosina, daughter 
of Francis Massy Wheeler, Esquire, of Lizard Connell, in the 
county Limerick, Ireland, grandson (through his mother, nee 
the Hon. Margaret Massy) of Hugh, the first Lord Massy, of 
Duntryleague. It may be here incidentally remarked, more- 
over, that the fruits of this marriage were a son and a daughter. 
The latter (Emily Georgiana) more than ten years since pre- 
maturely deceased— one upon whose gentle memory may be 
dropped, sorrowfully, like a votive flower, that tender couplet 
of Sir Edward's own favourite poet, the contemplative bard 
of Welwyn : — 

*' Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew. 
She sparkled, was exhaled, and flew to heaven." 

The heir of this fame, of this title, of these fortunes 
(Edward Bx)bert), is now first paid attachS to our embassy 
at Constantinople, whither, as already intimated, his uncle. 
Sir Henry Bulwer, has recently proceeded as her Britannic 
Majesty's ambassador. 

Withdrawing from the army about the period of his nuptials, 
Bulwer Lytton took a secluded house at Woodcote, a tene- 
ment surrounded by lovely beech- woods, hid away in a seques- 

* O'Neill ; or, the Rebel. 8vo. pp. 140. Colbum. 1827. 



160 THE DEKBT MIOTSTBT. 

tered part of Oxfordshire. Here he abandoned himself unre- 
servedly to study and contemplation, became an author by 
vocation, a man of letters, professedly and professionally. At 
the close of that, to him, eventful yeai:, appeared his first three- 
volumed novel, " Pelham ; or, the Adventures of a Gentle- 
man."* It was his first success. It was radiant and running^ 
over with wit, humour, and comicality. It created for him at 
once a reputation. The publisher, it is tribe, had been warned 
against its acceptance by an over-cautious and certainly not 
very discriminating or sagacious reader. But the publisher 
read the taboo'd manuscript himself;, was delighted with it, 
doubtless laughed over it very heartily ; and, what was better 
still, immediately upon issuing the work throu^ the press, 
sold it far and wide at the customary guinea and a half a copy, 
fluttering down a little cheque for £500 among the sere leaves 
rained upon the young novelist from the beechen boughs of 
Woodcote. 

Another year, 1829, brought from the author's musii^ 
" The Disowned,"! with its ennobling and elevating type, in 
the character of Algernon Mordaimt, of the heroism of Chris- 
tian philosophy. Immediately afterwards, in 1830, appeared 
" Devereux," J with its more intricate plot, its more romantic 
incidents, and its more subtle analysis of the hidden motives 
and secret passions of humanity. It affords conclusive evi- 
dence, this last production, of its writer's intense devotion 
about this period to the study of the abstract science of meta- 
physics, studies conducted by him with a serious view to the 
deduction from conflicting or jarring theories, of some original 
system, at once novel, reliable, and comprehensive. Dis- 
heartened, however, by the unsatisfactory results of this 
process of reasoning, he ultimately abandoned the study, 
not, howbeit, even then, without grievous and lingering 
reluctance. The effects produced upon his own mmd by 

* Pelham ; or, the Adventures of a Gentleman. 8 vols. Colbura. 
1828. 
f The Disowned. 8 vols. Colbum. 1829. 
4: Devereux. 8 vols. Colbum. 1880. 



THE BIGHT H021. SIB B. B. LYTTON. 161 

these researches were for a long while afterwards manifested 
in his writings; though perhaps never more strongly (as 
indeed was but natural enough) than in the delicate and 
refined labyrinths of motive, thridded with masterly adroit* 
ness in the complex mazes of " Devereux.'* 

Another event, of some importance, occurred to Bulwer 
Lytton in 1830, besides the publication of his third romance. 
He removed, from his provincial seclusion down in Oxford- 
shire, up to London, an4 bought a house in Hertford-street, 
Mayfair. There he was scarcely established, when he pro- 
duced simultaneously another prose and another poetic pro- 
duction. The prose was his vivacious and in a great measure 
inimitable political satire of " Paul Clifford,"* bristling with 
an irony worthy of La Bruy^re, riant with a gay humour not 
unworthy of Fielding. Here, however, as in Robson's acting, 
.there were tragic thrills through the roar and babble of the 
burlesque. How rapidly the hand was becoming the master- 
hand was revealed plainly enough in the consummate skill 
with which the character of Brandon was delineated. The 
metrical effusion, referred to as published simultaneously with 
the romantic history of the educated highwayman, was a 
very crude, jejune, and fantastic extravagance, entitled " The 
Siamese Twins,"t a semi-satirical poem, heartily regretted, 
we have not the slightest doubt of it, by its author, certainly 
carefully suppressed by him as worthless in every subsequent 
collective re-issue of his poetical productions : precisely as 
"Falkland" has been eliminated from every comprehensive 
reprint of Sir Bulwer Lytton's novels and romances. Yet 
abortive and still-bom though the poor "Twins" were, 
they ushered into existence with them, as a little appended 
trifle, that first graceful and luminous outline sketch of 
"Milton," already spoken of as printed five years earlier 
in the French capitsd for private circulation, a fragment, 
now on its first public appearance, cordially commended by a 
reviewer in the Edinburgh, and regarded elsewhere, by the 

♦ Paul Clifford. 3 vols. Colbum and Bentley. 1831. 

t The Siamese Twins. One vol. Colbum and Bentley.- 1831. 



1C3 THE DEBBT HINISTBT. 

more discermngj as replete with happy auguries of future 
success in poetical composition. Sprightly touches, it should 
also be acknowledged, are here and there distinguishable in 
the four serio-<x)mic books of this rhymed satire, about Chang 
and Ching, the Siamese. As might be readily conceived of an 
author who could thus humorously and sarcastically retaliate 
upon the more sardonic class of critics in the periodicals of the 
day, of whom, quoth he, in his preface to the second edition 
of the "Twins :" — " No sooner do they see the announcement 
of your work than they prepare for its destruction ; with an. 
intuitive penetration they decide upon its guilt, while yet in 
the womb ; and before it is born they have settled exactly 
the method in which it shall be damned." It will easily be 
credited, with this in the preface, that there are occasionally 
discernible in the text itself freaks and whimsies sufficiently 
sparkling in their way to have been fathered either upon Mr. 
Luttrell or Lord Alvanley. 

If, in 1831, Sir Bulwer Lytton advanced his repute, as a 
poet, not one iota, not by the length of a barleycorn ; if he 
then added but slightly, though still appreciably, to his fame 
as a novelist, he certainly began in that same year, under 
auspices more propitious, his career as a politician. It was 
on the introduction of the second !ReformBill that he was first 
elected to a seat in Parliament, being chosen, in 1831, upon 
the Reform interest, M.P. for St. Ives, by a cordial if not 
unanimous decision on the part of that comparatively small 
but ardent and energetic constituency. His maiden speech 
was in favour of Reform principles. His earliest success in 
the House, of any importance, was the appointment of the 
committee, for which he moved and which heat once obtained, 
to inquire into the state of the drama^ with a view to the 
improvement of the dramatic interests. It is a notable cir- 
cumstance, moreover, and one fraught with peculiar signifi- 
cance at this particular juncture, that the present Colonial 
Secretary was one of the committee then intrusted with the 
responsible and laborious duty of investigating the East-India 
Company's monopoly ; affording him thus, seven-and-twenty 



THE EIGHT HON. SIR E. B. LYTTON. 163 

« 

years ago, the opportunity of fathoming the mysteries and, 
yet more, of participating in the re-organization of the com- 
plicated system of our Anglo-Indian government. 

Eoremost among all his parliamentary labours, however, 
were those ardently and generously undertaken by him, as 
vindicator of the rights and champion of the prerogatives of 
literature. It is but an act of gratitude, absolutely and unde- 
niably his due, to remember, nowadays, that Bulwer Lytton 
was the first who, by a specific motion, brought before the . 
House of Commons the question of the Taxes upon Know- 
ledge. His admirable and effective " Speeches "* upon this 
question, indeed, were carefully collected and published at 
tbe time by an Association, then formed, for the furtherance 
of the abolition movement in regard to those obnoxious im- 
posts, a movement thus formally inaugurated by the member 
for St. Ives. Chiefly in consequence of the popularity he 
acquired through these last-mentioned efforts, Bulwer Lytton, 
on the advent of the next general election, was offered a choice 
of seats by three several constituencies. This was immediately 
after the passing of the B,eform Bill, or, in other words, upon 
the return of the first Reform Parliament. Lincoln was the 
place selected among these rival claimants for him as a repre- 
pentative ; the choice being attributable in a great measure, 
of course, to the fact of Lincoln being the capital of an import- 
ant agricultural district, with the concurrent circumstance of 
the liberal party there coinciding with him in his resolute and 
certainly persevering opposition to the then generally unwel- 
come project for the repeal of the Com Laws. Consequent 
upon his preference for this particular constituency, he was 
freely chosen by the electors of Lincoln in 1832 as one of their j 
representatives, and, as such, retained his seat in the House / 
of Commons during nine years following (namely, until 1843), / 
through that and the two succeeding Parliaments. I , 

Together with his successful appearance upon tlie Lincoln 
hustings as a candidate, must be noted his triumphantly suc- 

* Speeches upon the Taxes on Knowledge. An Svo. pamphlet. 
1832. 

u 2 



164 THE DERBY MINISTRY. 

cessful re-appearance before the novel readers of the empire 
in his very different character as a romancist. The publica- 
tion of " Eugene Aram "* not only confirmed but materially 
and signally advanced his already high literary reputation. It 
was inscribed in words of affectionate and grateful reverence 
to Sir Walter Scott, then upon the eve of his dissolution ; and 
it was generally felt that here, upon the shoulders of the youth- 
ful novelist, were fluttering down the robes of the Great 
Necromancer of Song and Fable ; that the Wizard's wand 
was not to be broken, but to pass onward into the grasp of a 
new Magician. Perhaps nowhere else among all his manifold 
and multiform writings, has Sir Bulwer Lytton penned more 
glowing or more truthful descriptions of nature than in 
*• Eugene Aram"— it is with the quill of Thomson that he 
has depicted those sylvan haunts of the Lynn schoolmaster ; 
the wild woods and thickets, the weird cavern, the eltrich 
midnights, the grimly thunderstorms. The colours from his 
palette are laid upon the mimic trees and underwood as deli- 
cately as from the brush of Hobbima ; the sunshine is that of 
Lorraine: with Salvator*s perception he has caught the 
wondrous art of defining with a vividness all but actual, the 
roar of the wind and the glare of the lightning. Here, first of 
all, he feels his power ; he writes as the instinct of his genius 
dictates — ^Art beside him as his guide. Nature before him as 
his copy — he warms to his work — 

'* Fervet opus, redolentque thymo firagrantia mella." 

Subsequently appeared his exquisite and charming "Pil« 
grims of the Rhine,"t ^^ of the daintiest elfin fancies, laugh- 
ing out joyously at rare intervals, quaintly and irresistibly 
humorous, as in the instance of that delectable apologue of 
the ''Gat and Dog; "wise as .^op, droll as Gresset; but 
brimming over, suffused, saturated throughout, with the tears 
of tenderest sensibility — tears here gathered up as in a 
lachrymatory— for the young, and the pure, and the beautiful^ 

* Eugene Aram. 8 vols. Bentley. 1832. 

t The PilgruuB of theEhine. One vol. Saunders and Ottley. 1838» 



THE BIGHT HON. SIB B. B. LTTTON. 165 

dying prematurely of consumption. Gertrude, the heroine of 
the tale, is the very type and symbol of the ideal of her sex, 
ever cherished in the mind of Bdwer Lytton in ail liis various 
writings, alike in. play, in poem, in romance. Hers is the 
typical and symbolical sleeve tied to his helmet in the tourney 
of literature— a tourney in which he himself has so often 
entered the lists with his vizor closed, to win fresh triumplis 
at the point of his lance (the pen), unaided by the repute of 
his former prowess — effecting this, again and again, every 
time indeed he has issued a new work from the press (a feat 
accomplished by him of late years so very often) anonymously. 
In his portraiture of women. Sir Bulwer Lytton has ever 
written with a grace at once tender, gallant, and chivalric. 
His estimation of the sex is as refined as that of the great 
German lyrist with whose name his own has become inex- 
tricably associated. ,His genius ever speaks, in truth, through 
the knightly words of Schiller ; — 

*' Ehret die Frauen, sie flechten und weben 
Himmlische Rosen in's irdische L^ben, 
Fleohten der Liebo begltickendes Band, 
Und, in der Grazie zuchtigem Scbleier, 
Nahren sie wachsam das ewige Feuer 
Sch^nerGefuIhle mit heiligenHand." 

Written simultaneously with "Eugene Aram," but pub- 
lished simultaneously with the " Pilgrims of the Uhine," and 
published then first of all anonymously, "Godolphin"* illus- 
trated, not as in the former instance, the deadening glamour 
exercised by the memory of one great crime upon a profound 
and masculine intelligence, not as in the latter, the chasten- 
ing and sanctifying effects upon a purely virginal nature of 
anguish nobly endured until death; but— in brilliant conl»:ast 
to either — ^the enervating influence of an absolute abandon-/ 
ment to mere fashionable frivolity upon a heart and mina/ 
originally brilliant and unsophisticated. 

It was now that our indefatigable politician and man of 

♦Godolphin. 3 vols. Bentley. 1833. 



166 THE DERBY MINISTRT. 

letters undertook the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine, 
He aspired to render it at once efPective as a critical and a 
political organ ; strenuously labouring to this end, during a 
period of eighteen months, consecutively, himself, beyond all 
manner of doubt, the most industrious of his contributors. In 
this editorial chair it is interesting to remember that he was 
preceded, successively, by Thomas Campbell, the poet, and by 
Theodore Hook, the wit, in respect to whose conversational 
effervescence he has, elsewhere, himself wittily remarked, 
,* to read Hook is to wrong him " — succeeded, in due course, 
by one who was both wit and poet, large-hearted Thomas 
Hood, with a genius at once graceful and grotesque. In his 
capacity as a critic, SirBulwer Lytton here abundantly proved 
himself to be at once genial and sagacious. He it was who, 
while earnestly " deprecating the application of poetic genius 
to disputable party politics," first directed public attention to 
the extraordinary merits of Ebenezer Elliot, the corn-law 
rhymer, even though the magnanimous reviewer remained to 
the last a resolute antagonist of the very principles the corn- 
law rhymer inculcated. It was Mr. Bulwer likewise who 
first recognized and eulogized the lyrical powers revealed by 
Monckton Milnes, in his " Palm Leaves.'' Besides which he 
generously and cordially maintained the dramatic excellence 
of Sheridan Knowles, and contributed not a Kttle to establish 
the popularity, as a maritime novelist, of Captain Marryat, the 
most delightful of marine humorists. His remarkable dex- 
terity in analytical criticism, however, is, to our thinking, 
most conspicuously demonstrated in those exquisitely discrimi- 
native and appreciative papers of his upon Young's " Night 
Thoughts," which, for their eloquent mastery of a sublime 
theme, may take rank with the admirable series of papers 
upon Milton's " Paradise Lost," penned by Addison, in the 
"Spectator." A selection from the miscellaneous contri- 
butions of Sir Edward was ultimately published in two 
volumes, familiar enough to the majority of his readers — 
volumes entitled "The Student,"* abounding with fancies 

* The Student. 2 vols. Saunders and Ottley. 1885. 



THE BJGHT HON. SIR £. B. LTTTON. 167 

often wild and fantastic, but oftener still bewitching and 
magnificent. 

Exhausted by labours that were, indeed, absolutely extrava- 
gant, superadded, as they were, to his other literary and 
political avocations, Bulwer Lytton, finding his health failing 
under the unnatural toil, resigned, at the end of a year and a 
half, the post of editorship, and, for the first time, extended 
his continental travels into the Roman peninsula. Prior to 
his departure, however, he passed through the press the two 
volumes of his well-known political treatise entitled " England 
and the English,"* a microscopic scrutiny of the national 
character, and of our complicated but symmetrical constitution. 
It is a repertory of sound and valuable knowledge, and may 
be still designated, emphatically, the vade-mecum of a member 
of parliament. The purport of the work is significantly 
expressed in the dedication of it to Prince Talleyrand, the 
book being proffered to that wily diplomatist, according to 
its author, for the same reasons which prompted the Scythian 
gift to Darius, of a mouse, a bird, a fish, and a bundle of 
arrows, namely, as symbols of the donor's nation, tendered 
as instructions to his enemy. In consequence of several inci- 
dents in Mr. Bulwer's career in the legislature, particularly 
his persevering opposition to the government measures for 
the coercion of Ireland, coupled with his systematic estrange- 
ment horn the Whigs, his notions were somehow generally 
confounded in the popular estimation with those of the extreme 
Radicals. Erom the daringly subversive views of that party, 
however, the political opinions professed in ''England and 
the English" — opinions at once enlightened and constitutional 
— ^proved to be in every respect essentially different. The 
matured publicist here maintained anew the thesis of the 
stripling collegian, contending still determinedly for the 
superiority of monarchical over republican institutions. 
Furthermore, he argued boldly now, in his manhood, against 
the pernicious theory of degrading to a mere sordid calcula- 
tion of cost the abstract value of governments ; and, defending 

^England and the English. 2 vols. Bentley. 1833. 



168 THE DEBBY MINISTEY. 

, the principle of an established church, supported the doctrine, 
that "the State should exercise a direct influence in the 
encouiagement bestowed upon all religious and social culture, 
upon art, science, and literature." Beyond which it is par- 
ticularly worthy of note, that Bulwer, while here persistently 
defending the general principle of aristocracy and the main- 
tenance of the House of Lords, resolutely satirized, as debasing 
to the national spirit, the favourite dogma of the hour, that 
in favour of recruiting the patrician class exclusively from 
/ partisans and miUionnaires : implying by this argument, :that as 
I aristocracy ought, in reason, to be the collective representa- 
I tion or accumulated incarnation of the principle of honour, so 
\ assuredly whatever most reflected honour upon a country it 
V^ was the bounden duty of the State to honour-— by ennobling. 
As evidence of the grasp taken of his subject, it is especially 
observable, that in his chapter upon the poor-laws, in " Eng- 
land and the English," the author distinctly suggested the 
outline of the very reforms afterwards introduced and em- 
bodied in enactments. Meanwhile, though thus readily 
outspoken in his writings, Mr. Bulwer had but seldom raised 
his voice within the walls of parliament ; faithful in this to his 
own pithy axiom ebewhere articulated, viz., "that all life 
is a drama, in which it is the business of men only to speak in 
order to do." And certainly, what he had undertaken to do, 
he had here, in the House of Commons, most effectively 
accomplished. He had obtained the Act conferring a copy- 
right on dramatic authors; he had constrained ministers to 
inaugurate measures for securing an international law of copy« 
right ; he had so efficiently enforced the agitation in regard 
to the taxes upon knowledge, that he had actually brought 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer to a compromise, effecting 
two important ameliorations in what were afterwards to be 
•wholly abolished— the reduction of a 4id, to a M stamp upon 
newspapers, and the diminution of one-half of the grinding 
duty upon advertisements. Besides, incidentally, in the 
course of his speeches upon those fiscal changes, throwing out 
suggestive remarks in reference to the post-of^ce management^ 



THE EIGHT HON. 8IE E. B. LYTTON. 169 

distinctly premonitory of what came at last— Rowland Hill's 
beneficent scheme for its reorganization. As to Mr. Bulwer's 
determined opposition to the Irish Coercion Bill, already 
mentioned, that opposition he manfully maintained throughout, 
both by speeches in the House of Commons and by articles 
in the New Monthly Magazine* — speeches and articles which, 
being opportunely reprinted in a separate form, and scattered 
broadcast over the country, tended, in a great measure, 
towards tlie mitigation of the harsher provisions of that 
iniquitous and ill-considered enactment. Here assuredly is 
no insignificant catalogue of estimable — some of them inesti* 
mable— legislative boons, won for hb fellow-citizens a quarter 
of a century ago by Sir Bulwer Lytton, in his twofold capacity 
as a reformer and as a statesman. 

But we have left him on his first Italian excursion. Travel- 
ling through the northern provinces, he proceeded in succes. 
sion to Milan, to Venice, to Florence ; pausing, at last, in the 
Eternal City, wher^ he took up his residence for awhile, and 
began his famous romance, having as its hero the last of the 
Homan tribunes. Fascinated though he evidently was by the 
mediaeval records of the wonderful fortunes of Rienzi, the 
alluring labour of love springing out of their examination had 
hardly commenced when it was abruptly suspended. Another 
day-dream grew up in the reveries of the novelist, exercising 
a yet superior spell oyer his enraptured imagination! It 
arose, simply, out of the circumstance of his wandering on to 
Naples, and visiting the recently disentombed cities of Pompeii 
and Herculaneum. The middle ages were abandoned for the 
classic days, when the house of Sallust was peopled by its 
revellers, when the triclinium was crowded with guests, and 
the peristyle with loiterers, and when the early Christians, 
grouped in afi^ghted clusters, awaited in the arena what Lord 
Macaulay has picturesquely epitomized as the camelopards 
9nd tigers bounding in the Flavian amphitheatre. Imme^ 
diately upon Bulwer's return homewards, " The Last Days of 

* Papers on the Irish Coercion Bill. An 8vo, Pamphlet, 1834* 



170 THE DEBST MINISTRY. 

Pompeii"* appeared, and was welcomed with universal 
admiration. Scarcely had he watched his classic romance 
through the press, when he was "off" once more ; this time, 
however, not southwards, but westwards, crossing St. Geoi^*s 
Channel on his first visit to Ireland ; traversing alone and on 
foot the whole of the disturbed districts, less, we doubt not, 
as a novelist in search of adventure, than as a true-hearted 
legislator, bent upon learning the whole terrible reality from 
personal observation. It was during this pedestrian ramble 
that, while tarrying amid the beautiful scenery of the Lakes 
of Killamey, Bulwer there commenced writing the earlier 
chapters of " Ernest Maltravers." 

. At this juncture occurred the ever-memorable ministerial 
transformation, when, upon Earl Spencer's death, a casualty 
necessitating the removal to the House of Peers of Lord 
Althorp, the leader of the Commons, the king abruptly dis- 
missed the Whig government. Sir Robert Peel, then upon 
his vacation travels, was sent for, post-haste, to the Eternal 
City, recalled by his Majesty to form a new administration. 
It was, as Mr. Disraeli forcefully expresses it in one of his 
novels, "the great man in a great position, summoned from 
Borne to govern England." At this transition moment, when 
many were in trepidation, every one in expectation, Mr. Lytton 
Bulwer announced bis pamphlet on "The Crisis." t Interest 
and curiosity in its regard piqued all parties alike— Whigs, 
Tories, and Badicals, It was a matter of general uncertainty 
what might be the drift, what the tendency of the brochure. 
In a single day, the first edition, a large one, was exhausted. 
Fourteen other large editions of this celebrated pamphlet 
(each copy selling at the unusual pamphlet price of 3«. 6^.) 
were sold off within little more than a fortnight after the date 
of its earliest publication. It rapidly exceeded a score of 
editions, and was ultimately reprinted in a cheap popular form 
iar more general circulation. It is not exaggerating its effect 

♦The Last Days of Pompeii. 3 vols. Bentley. 1834. 
t A Letter to a late Cabinet Minister on the Crisis. 8vo. pp. 108. 
Saunders and Ottley. 1834. 



THE BIGHT H02T. SIB E. B. LITTON. 171 

to say that it materially and very considerably influenced the 
general election, following almost immediately upon Sir 
Bobert's arrival in London, and leading to the reinstallation 
of the Liberal government. Positive testimony that much of 
this was directly owing to that masterly pamphlet, was volun- 
tarily given to the author in a very remarkable way soon 
afterwards by the new Premier, Viscount Melbourne. The 
revived ministry was still in process of re-formation, when 
Lord Melbourne sent for the daring and witty pamphleteer, 
and, while frankly complimenting him upoii the good service 
rendered to the government, offered him, in recognition of 
it, one of the lordships of the Admiralty : the noble viscount 
adding the assurance of his own personal regret, that the 
principle on which the cabinet was being reconstituted — ^that 
of restoring to their former offices the different members of 
the previous administration — ^precluded him from proposing 
at the moment any more elevated appointment. Notwith- 
standing the additional assurance from the Prime Minister of 
early promotion, thrown in gracefully at the close of the fore- 
going, as a supplementary temptation, Mr. Bulwer, as is well 
known, declined the offer made, even under such flatter- 
ing circumstances : influenced partially in his decision by 
a dread lest it might, perchance, necessitate his abandon- 
ment of his favourite pursuits as a man of letters, but princi- 
pally, there can be little question, through a still greater dread 
lest his acceptance of office, at that particular moment, might 
be regarded by the public as a recompense for services which 
had, in truth, been rendered by him to the country at large, 
from motives, beyond all shadow of doubt, the most lofty and 
disinterested. 

Besides the two volumes of "The Student," which were 
published in the following year, there appeared, in 1835, the 
noble historical romance which had, in the mean while, been 
resumed and completed, "Bienzi, the Last of the Boman 
Tribunes."* Eromrthat moment the seal was set to his repu- 

*Bienzi; or, the Last of the Boman Tribunes. 3 vols. Saundeni 
andOttley. 1835. 



\ 



172 THE DEBBT MINISTEY, 

tation as a romancist. Side by side with this more stately 
masterpiece of fiction^ there came forth from the same hand 
another narrative of more delicate, but hardly less symmetrical 
proportions, "Leila; or, the Siege of Granada,"* together 
with a minor tale, called "Calderon the Courtier," a twin 
work, published by the Messrs. Longman, and embellished by 
Mr. Charles Heath with a profusion of costly engravings. 

Somewhere about this period, moreover, our author began 
to direct his regard to a new field of literary enterprise— that 
of dramatic composition. His maiden play, "The Duchess 
de la Valli^re,"t was written and produced. Although, when 
viewed simply in regard to its rhetorical excellence, it may 
with perfect truth be declared to contain as admirable 
passages as any of its author's subsequent contributions to 
the stage, the poor "Duchess" was prepared .for her ap- 
pearance, we suppose, with so little reference to theatrical 
effect, that, after continuing before the footlights as " a nine- 
day's (or rather night's) wonder," she was withdrawn from 
the boards by the author, as — not certainly a failure, but — a 
success decidedly equivocal. True, that Macready acted the 
part of the Marquess de Bragelone excellently ; but Macready 
was but indifferently supported. Bulwer's first five-act play 
did not "take," and in less than a fortnight disappeared. As 
he himself observed, as frankly as whimsically, twenty years 
afterwards, in a famous harangue at Edinburgh : " My first 
poetry was thought detestable, and my first play very nearly 
escaped being damned." There has, happily, however, through- 
out the whole of his career, been such an elastic rebound iny 
his genius from every faU, that it has always attained after^ 
wards a far greater and more successful height of adventure. 

Dissatisfied with his own first efforts as a dramatist, he next 
appeared before the world as a historian, and with a success 
60 unmistakable and considerable, that it is sincerely to be 
regretted that the two large volumes of his "Athens : its Rise 

♦Leila : and Calderon the Coiirtier. One vol. Longman and Co. 
1835. 
fTheDuchessdelaValli^rQ. 5 acts. Saunders and Ottley. 1836« 



THE BIGHT HON. SIR B. B. LYTTON. 173^ 

and Pall,"* remain to this day but as the fragment or torso of ^ 
a colossal Hercules. Already, however, its merit can be 
estimated more than merely expede Herculem. That merit is 
not simply one of promise alone, but, so far as it goes, of con- 
spicuous and remarkable achievement. It is generally under* 
stood, that the author was originally deterred from the 
continuation of this ambitious work by the appearance of 
Bishop Thirlwall's " History of Greece," and, finally, by the 
giant apparition of the more profound and laborious annals by 
Banker Grote. Yet, standing though we are novi;adays in 
the presence of those two grand and luminous productions, 
we may still venture to hope that the completion of Sir 
Bulwer Lytton's History of "Athens and the Athenians'* 
has all this while been merely suspended, not irrevocably 
abandoned. 

Subsequently appeared "The Eleusinia," begun at the 
Lakes of Killamey, the impassioned biography of that type 
of the Man of Genius, "Ernest Maltravers."t It was fol- 
lowed, the year afterwards, by its sequel, " Alice ; or, the 
Mysteries."^ In the collective reissue of these novels, the 
two works are comprised under the one name, " Maltravers," 
viz., as part one and part two of " The Eleusinia." Easci- 
nating and exquisitely beautiful though these narratives are, 
they are, nevertheless, for that very reason, because of their 
exceeding witcheries, of all Sir Bulwer Lytton's writings the 
most to be regretted. The colour, the bloom, the glow upon 
them is that of the purple mists of the miasma strown over 
the lovely but perilous surface of the fair Campania. Contrast 
with their enervating and relaxing influence, the pure, and 
sweet, and wholesome, and exhilarating atmosphere enveloping 
all the later fictions from the same master-hand — ^the noble 
family picture of "The Caxtons," and its two superb and 
ornate successors ! Never has a genius more conspicuously 

* Athens : its Else and Fall. 2 vols. Saunders and Ottley. 1836. 
t Ernest Maltravers ; or, the Eleusinia. 3 vols. Saunders and 
Ottley. 1837. 
j: Alice ; or, the Mysteries. 3 vols. Saunders and Ottley. IdSSk 



X 



174 TEE DEEBY MINISTET. 

ripened, and mellowed, and purified itself in proportion to the 
gradations of its stately, onward, upward advancement. 

Having resided for some time previously in chambers at 
the Albany— chambers already " classic ground," having been 
previously occupied in succession by Lord Byron and Lord 
Althorp — Mr. Bulwer now removed to Charles-street, Berke- 
ley-square, where he was still laboriously occupied among his 
books and manuscripts, between the intervals of his attendance 
at the House and of his saunterings through society, when, 
under the circumstances already particularized — circumstances 
to himself in every way so eminently gratifying — he received 
the announcement of his investiture with a baronetcy, upon the 
occasion of her present gracious Majesty's coronation. 

It was now that, in a happier vein, he resumed the tempo- 
rarily abandoned idea of dramatic composition. The great 
London theatre was reviving its ancient glories anew, under 
Macready's management. " Oh, that I could get a play like 
the * Honeymoon ! ' " exclaimed Mr. Manager to Sir Author, 
one evening, while talking over the prospects of the enterprise 
upon which the former had but just adventured. Bulwer 
Lytton took note of those words of Macready. His incentive 
was that incidental and almost despairing ejaculation. In less 
than a fortnight from its utterance, " The Lady of Lyons " * 
was written and in the hands of the delighted manager. It 
was placed in Ids hands, too, not as a purchaseable manuscript, 
but as a gift. It won the hearts, the tears, the laughter, the 
applause, of all who saw it. It became at once, what it has 
remained ever since — a stock -piece, holding permanent posses- 
sion of the stage — a drama that never palls upon repetition, 
either with audience or performers. Where is there a first- 
class actress who would not rejoice any night to appear as 
Pauline Deschappelles, or a star of the greatest magnitude 
who would not delight to tread the boards as Claude Melnotte, 
whether clad as prince or gardener ? 

It so happened that upon the night rendered memorable 

* The Lady of Lyons ; or, Love and Pride. 6 acts. Saunderti 
and Ottley. 1838. 



THE BIGHT HON. BIE E. B. LTTTON. 175 

ia dramatic history by the first appearance of " Tlie Lady of 
Lyons '* (anonymously), Bulwer was detained in the House 
of Commons by a discussion upon the ballot, a debate in which 
he himself took part that evening, by the delivery of one of 
the most effective speeches through which he had, as yet, won 
the applause of Parliament. 

Hurrying from the house, while there are yet ringing in 
his ears the cordial cheers Which greeted the peroration of 
that successful harangue, .he encounters in the doorway of 
St. Stephen's— sauntering in, fresh from the playhouse, 
whither Bulwer himself is wending his way, in search of 
tidings as to the fate of the new play — another member, 
also a brother dramatist. Question and answer exchanged 
— (the latter eminently satisfactory as to the prospective 
triumph of the piece, upon the last scene of which the 
curtain had not yet fallen) — quoth the informant, the 
friendly M.P., who was also a playwright, addressing himself 
to the unsuspected and unrevealing author of " The Lady of 
Lyons," and speaking of the new drama with a constitutionally 
flushed visage and a genial air of supercilious patronage — 
" Hm ! Yes : it*s very well indeed — for that sort of thing." 
On to the theatre goes the orator-dramatist, arriving imme- 
diately before the completion of his second triumph that 
evening, precisely at the moment when Claude makes his 
appearance upon the stage as one of the heroic colonels in 
the army of Napoleon. The fifth act terminates triumphantly, 
and the curtain descends amidst a general storm of acclama- 
tion. The authcH* is called for vociferously ; but no author 
presents himself to the eager audience to receive the ova- 
tion and bow his acknowledgements. " Hm ! " says Bulwer, 
probably shrugging his shoulders at the moment, with a 
pleasant recollection enough of his House of Commons ac- 
quaintance, " Yes : it's very well indeed— for that sort of 
thing I " Saith the Countess of Blessington— from whose 
box he has just hurried, in the hope of being (as the division- 
list showed him to have been the next morning) in time for the 
division — " It is the first time I have ever seen him jealous." 



176 THE DEB3T HINISTBT. 

A fortniglit later, and the authorship of "Tlie Lady of 
Lyons *' was fonnally acknowledged upon the playbills. 

Afterwards appeared the historical drama of " Richelieu/'* 
in which the duplex character of the great cardinal is por- 
trayed in the language of truest poetry, heightened to tragic 
power by the mingled pathos and humour of its incidents 
and the fervour of its impassioned rhetoric. Next followed 
the fourth of these notable five-act plays — " The Sea Cap- 
tain : "t a drama, if by nothing else, winning our love for 
the hero Norman, by those thrilling words uttered by him 
when he takes his stand upon the ancestral hearth. Per- 
haps the most brilliant, however, in the whole series is the 
fifth, the most sparkling in wit, the most piquant in re- 
partee, the most ludicrously irresistible in equivoque — ^the 
comedy of " Money," J as performed so delightfully, once upon 
a time, on the boards of the little theatre in the Haymarket. 
As to the sixth, it scarcely comes within the category of an 
ordinary histrionic production : " Not so Bad as we Seem " § 
having been written essentially as a part-piece, as a play in 
which the particular aptitudes and capacities of a company 
of amateur actors had to be especially borne in mind, and 
carefully consulted. Yet, considered as such, what an ex- 
quisite specimen of dramatic ingenuity it was, every one 
will remember who witnessed those charming performances 
in aid of the propitiously inaugurated Guild of Art and 
Literature. A benevolent scheme, first thought of in the 
winter of 184!9-50, when that most inimitable of actors^ 
and rarest of all English humorists, Charles Dickens, with 
his merry company of players, artists and men of letters, were 
disporting themselves upon an impromptu stage, erected in 

* Richelieu ; or, the Conspiracy. 6 acts. Saunders and Ottley« 
1839. 

f The Sea Captain ; or, the Birthright. 5 acts, Saunders and 
Ottley. 1839. 

:{: Money: a Comedy. 5 acts. Saunders and Ottley. 1840. 

§ Not so Bad as we Seem ; or, Many Sides to a Character. 5 acta« 
Chapman and Hall. 1861. 



I 



THE BIGHT HON. STB B. B. LTTTON. 177 

the banquetiug-hall of Sir Edward's seat at Knebworth, de- 
lighting with the sparkle and vivacity of their ** private 
theatricals " a gay throng of the nobles and gentles, and the 
jovial squirearchy of Hertfordshire. Some one chanced to 
mention, after the close of that entertainment, the miserable 
plight of a once popular and flourishing votary of literature. 
Out of this casual remark suddenly grew up amongst that 
congenial cluster of brothers of the pen and sympathizing 
adepts of the pencil, the kindly project of an association for 
the benefit, in their direst need, of unsuccessful toilers at the 
desk or at the easel. " Undertake to act a play yourselves, 
said Bulwer Lytton to his guests, " and I engage to write it. 
It was written — it was acted: the first performance taking 
place in the presence of her Majesty and his Boyal Highness, 
in a temporary theatre constructed in the late Duke of Devon- 
shire's town-house in Piccadilly. The comedy was this same 
five-act drama—lengthily entitled "Not so Bad as we Seem; 
or. Many Sides to a Character.*' Three thousand pounds poured 
into the coffers of the new association, and there the benevo- 
lent enterprise appears to have terminated. It has left ns, at 
least, some pleasant souvenirs — the unrealized day-dream of a 
halcyon haunt for the repose of decaying and decrepit artists, 
whether of the brush or of the goose-quill, together with one 
literary masterpiece, almost perfect in its way, as a medium 
for the display of the humorous and pathetic powers of a 
really remarkable company of comedians, as all will readily 
acknowledge who can call to their recollection Mark Lemon's 
bluff Sir Geoffrey Thomside, or John Forster*s shrewd Mr. 
Hardman, the rising Member of Parliament : above all, Charles 
Dickens's radiant illustration, in the person of my Lord Wilmot^ 
of a Young Man at the head of the mode more than a century 
ago ; not forgetting, likewise, Augustus Egg's most artistic 
impersonation of David Eallen, the Grub-street author and 
pamphleteer. Gratefully, then, do we still linger over the 
pages of this graceful and delightful comedy, as something 
constituting, in truth, " the be-all " — sincerely do we hope 
not " the end-all " — of the Guild of Art and Literature. A 

N 



178 THE DEBBT HIKISTRT. 

temporary difficulty alone is understood to have latterly inter- 
rupted its development — a legal difficulty relating to the 
security of the endowment. Remove this purely technical 
obstacle (and we believe its dissipation is very confidently 
anticipated), and this benign guild— the funds of which are 
abready in existence — ^may yet, in the fulness of tim^ be 
happily realized. 

We have been purposely anticipating, however, so that we 
might complete at once our hurried glance at Sir Bulwer 
Lytton's labours as a dramatist. B^verting to that earlier 
epoch in his career, when he was first winning the plaudits of 
the crowded theatres of London by the vivacious charms of 
"The Lady of Lyons," by the caustic wit of "Money," and by 
the poetical and oratorical splendours of "Bichelieu," we find 
him all at once entering heart and soul upon a very different^ 
certainly a very novel, and altogether a sufficiently alluring 
enterprise. Having conceived to himself the notion of a 
journal which should combine scientific information with 
politics and general literature, forming altogether a register 
of the intellectual progress of the age, and more particularly 
of the community, he associated himself with Sir David 
Brewster and Dr. Dionysius Lardner, and together with them 
commenced a periodical founded upon this ingenious design. 
It was entitled The Monthly Chronicle^ and was published in 
the Bow by the Messrs. Longman. The undertaking proved 
to be only partially successful. Excellent though the general 
idea undoubtedly was, that original idea was not altogether 
happily realized. The publication was too scientific : it 
failed to acquire for itself a sufficiently popular character. 
After it had continued some months in existence, its projector 
retired from it dissatisfied : not, however, until he had con- 
tributed to the columns of 'the journal the first outline of 
" Zanoni," under the less euphonious designation of " Zicci," 
besides adorning the political pages of the organ with a very 
remarkable and comprehensive " Historical Beview " of the 
"State of England and Europe at the Accession of Queen 
Victoria," a series of papers which extorted from M. Guizot 



THE RIGHT HON. SIE E. B. LYTTON. 179 

the highest commendation ; the English portion of this review, 
by the way, being written by Sir Edward, and the foreign 
portion by his brother, Sir Henry, the ambassador. 

Next on the list of the grander prose fictions of onr author 
appeared his enthralling story of modem life, and, for the 
most part, middle-class society—" Night and Morning.'** It 
was succeeded in the year following by the most gorgeous, and 
in many particulars, the most highly imaginative, of all his 
romances — among them all, perhaps, if we could possibly 
bring ourselves to any such definitive decision, our own espe- 
cial and cherished favourite— the tale of marvel and mystery, 
now expanded from the seed-germ of " Zicci," into flowering 
and fruitful maturity — ^the splendid and visionary narrative of 
the life and death of " Zanoni,"t the Bosicrucian. How en- 
shrined the book is in its author's own innermost afiPections he 
himself has eloquently intimated in his dedication of it to John 
Gibson, the great Roman sculptor, and English Boyal Aca- 
demician. " I, artist in words," says he, towards the close of 
that impressive epistle, " dedicate to you, artist whose ideas 
speak in marble, this well-loved work of my matured man- 
hood :" adding, that to himself this apparition, as he terms it, 
of his secret and hidden fancies, would have been as dear, 
yea, he cries, " If I had graven it on the rocks of a desert.'* 
It would be difficult to feel surprise at this resolute pre- 
ference, remembering the charm of " Zanoni," from its 
commencement to its conclusion, from its first thrilling tones, 
heard among the weird and ravishing melodies of the dar- 
ling violin of old Gaetano Pisani — that marvellous fiddle ! 
that wonderful barbiton! — to the last wild, agonizing 
shriek of Viola, amidst the hellish din and clangour of that 
grand and awful Revolution ! Whilst the bloody rag is but 
just wrenched from the shattered jaw of the master-murderer ; 
whilst to the scream of agony yet ringing from his lips " the 
crowd laughs" — who does not remember the words — "And 
the axe descends amidst the shouts of the countless thou- 

* Night and Morning. 3 vols. Saunders and Ottley. 1841. 
fZanoni. 3 vols. Saunders and Ottley. 1842. 

N 2 



180 THE DEBBY MINISTET. 

sands; and blackness rushes upon thy soul, Maximilian 
Robespierre ! " 

Our novelist about this period, it may be interesting to 
remark, en passant, resided principally in a villa at Eulham,on 
the banks of the Thames, a pretty little suburban retreat 
called Craven Cottage. About this time, moreover, in conse- 
quence of his then recent recommendation to the agriculturists, 
that they should accept the compromise of an eight-shilling 
fixed duty upon com, proposed by Lord John Russell, Sir 
\ Edward, after a brilliant career of one whole decade in the 
House of Commons, lost his seat in Parliament. This occurred 
during the course of the general election consequent upon the 
defeat of the Whig cabinet by Sir Robert Peel's determined 
and uncompromising opposition. "Between the two stools " 
— we all know the rest of the proverb. And so midway be- 
tween the total corn-law repealers and the stanch protec- 
tionists, Bulwer Lytton lost his majority among the Lincoln 
constituency. It resulted in his absence during the ten suc- 
ceeding years from among the ranks of the national represen- 
tatives. Li reference to his first parliamentary epoch, it may 
be here observed, that his most effective speeches were those 
in favour of municipal reforms ; those in defence of the minis- 
terial measures for the suppression of the revolt in Canada ; 
those (it is interesting to remember this at the present moment 
in regard to our new Colonial Secretary) in vindication of the 
maintenance of a colonial empire ; and, most effective of all, 
his speeches in favour of the immediate emancipation of the 
West -Indian slaves, instead of persisting in the irritating and 
really frivolous policy of delaying for two years longer the act 
of grace already decided upon by the legislature. At the ter- 
mination of Bulwer*s speech at what thereupon proved to be 
the dose of that memorable discussion — (hardly need we pre- 
face the anecdote here subjoined by saying, the most remark- 
able speech, certainly the most effective speech, yet delivered 
by our orator-statesman) — Mr. O'Connell, who, it was well 
understood at the time, had previously been prepared to speak 
at some considerable length, suddenly tore up his notes, and 



TIfE KIGHT flON. SIB B. B. LTTTON. ISI 

cried aloud, "The case is maxie out — there is nothing to 
add — divide ! " Whereupon the division instantly took place, 
the question being carried, by a majority of two, in favour of 
immediate emancipation. Remember "by a majority of two," 
and three members who had fully intended to vote on the 
other side, as they themselves frankly acknowledged in the 
lobby, had been converted by the irrefragable statements and 
the incontrovertible reasoning contained in this speech of Sir 
Bulwer Lytton's. No wonder he received the formal thanks 
of the deputies of the Anti- Slavery Society, and that his 
speech upon slavery* was forthwith published and widely cir- 
culated by that association. 

Released, by the adverse decision of the Lincoln electors, 
from his accustomed attendance at the deliberations of Parlia- 
ment, Sir Edward now celebrated his own emancipation by 
travelling into Germany. There it was he first began to study 
the grand old Teutomic language, to delve into the literary 
history of the great German people, and soon — not very sur- 
prisingly, almost, it might be said, by an inevitable conse- 
quence — began also to acquire, in Schiller's regard, an all- 
mastering admiration. Schiller, indeed, appears to have im- 
pressed his mind, not simply in his high capacity as a poet, 
but likewise and especially, as a moral influence of an order 
the most pure and elevated. Hereupon, the indefatigable 
student took heart to himself at once for the translation of 
Schiller's poems, and for the composition of Schiller's bio- 
graphy. The decision involved, as an inevitable consequence, 
a careful examination of the whole wide world of German 
philosophy, above all, a searching scrutiny of the -Esthetic ; 
but that laborious consequence was immediately accepted with 
an ardour eminently characteristic. Out of these fresh studies 
came new views of metrical art and poetic diction ; and, as an 
obvious sequel to this, came the renewed cultivation, by 
Bulwer Lytton, of the long-neglected fields of poetry upon 
which he had previously more than once, but never very success- 
fully, adventured. His latest volume of verse had been the one 

* Speech upon Slavery. An 8vo. pamphlet. 1833. 



\ 



1S9 THE BEBBT MINISTAT. 

comprising within it " Eva : and the Ul-Omened Marriage."* 
It was scarcely in any respect a much happier venture than its 
predecessors. Hitherto, indeed, he had but timorously co- 
quetted with the idea of the Muse--he had but caught glimpses 
of the goddess, as it were, at the moment of her receding. It 
was like the tantalizing recognition by the hero of Yirgil» of 
the divine form of the maternal protectress — 

" et avertena rosed, cervice refulsit, 

Ambrosiseque comae divinum vertice odorem 
Spiravere ; pedes vestis defluxit ad imos, 
Et vera incessu patuit Dea." 

But there was to come relenting at last to the long wooing of 
the faithful worshipper. The novelist dedicated himself more 
sedulously than ever to the perfecting, if possible, of whatever 
aptitude he might possess for poetic composition. So reso- 
lute, indeed, was his resolve in this respect, that, upon the 
publication of his next romance, the noble historical narrative 
of " The Last of the Barons,"t ^e intimated, through the pre- 
face, if not the permanent close of his labours in regard to 
prose fiction, at any rate their indefinite suspension. The 
meaning of which was, that he meditated, in lieu of further 
prose fictions, the production of more elaborated compositions 
in verse, a design eventually and remarkably realized. 

Returned homewards from Germany, earnestly engaged, at 
the time, in the translation of the poems and ballads of Schiller 
— ^translations, for the most part, pencilled as he rolled to and 
fro in his carriage upon the highroad between the capital and 
Knebworth — he lost his mother, in the December of 1843, and, 
succeeding to her property, changed his name, taking the addi- 
tional surname of Lytton after the patronymic Bulwer, by 
royal permission, under the sign manual of the sovereign. 

It is now that we come to that episode in his life, when the 
inexorable toil of years having broken down, at last, the deli- 

* Eva : and the lU-Omened Marriage. One vol. 8vo. pp. 215. 
Saunders and Ottley. 1842. 
t The Last of the Barons. 3 vols. Saunders and Ottley. 1843. 



THE BIGHT HON. SIR E. B. LTTTON. 1S3 

<»tely organized, but vigorous oonstitution. he found himself 
restored to health at the Hygeian springs of Malvern, by the 
benign and magical system of Preissnitz, as there practised in 
Dr. Wilson's celebrated hydropathic establishment. In grate- 
ful recognition of this priceless boon of health restored to him, 
when, seemingly, the irrecoverable victim of dyspepsia and 
hypochondria^ Sir Edward Lytton, in his sparkling letter to 
Harrison Ainsworth, gave to the world at large his " Confes- 
sions of a Water Patient."* Shortly afterwards, having com- 
pleted the issue of his " Translations of Schiller,"t through 
Blackwood's Magazine, he published them in a collective form, 
prefixing to the poems and ballads the life of Schiller, a bio- 
graphy obliterated, by a curious and incomprehensible elision, 
from the last revised republication. A " Biographic Sketch of 
Laman Blanchard"{ was, moreover, about this time, 
generously contributed to a selection, in three volumes, of 
the miscellaneous essays of that unfortunate writer, then 
recently deceased under very lamentable circumstances. 

Actuated in the decision solely by his persevering anta- 
gonism to anything like an unconditional repeal of the corn- 
laws, Sir Edward now declined an alluring invitation, namely, 
that he should offer himself as a candidate for Westminster. 
A similar invitation from another constituency was declined 
for the same reason, the politician, in each instance, sacrificing 
his ambition to his consistency. Convinced that his opinions \ 
would now, in all probability, long exclude him from, the legis- I 
lature, he resumed his efforts at the culture of the poetic art f 
with the serenity of one who is wholly abstracted from sub- ; 
jects of public and practical consideration. He published his 
first really remarkable poem, a satire of modem London, 
anonymously. It appeared originally piecemeal, but was ulti- 
mately republished in a single volume ; and, though highly 

* Confessions of a Water Patient, pp. 98. Colburn. 1845. 

t The Poems and Ballads of Schiller, Translated, with Life. One 
vol. Blackwood and Sons. 1845. 

4: Biographic Sketch of Laman Blanohard, prefixed to his Essays 
in 3 vols. 1846. 



184 THE DEBBT KLNISTBT. 

commended, remained still, for some considerable time, tm-* 
acknowledged. It was entitled, " The New Timon ;"* was 
penned throughout in the heroic measure ; abounded with 
passages of exquisite beauty, and comprised, among other 
inimitable portraitures of the great political chiefs of 
our generation, a masterly and courtly limning of Edward 
Geoffrey, Earl of Derby, now Premier of England, but then, 
as Lord Stanley, one of the most feared and formidable 
leaders of the Opposition — 

" One after one the lords of time advance ; 
Here Stanley meets — how Stanley scorns — ^the glance ! 
The briUiant chief, irregularly great, 
Frank, haughty, rash — the Eupert of debate ! 

****** 
Tet who not listens, with delighted smile. 
To the pure Saxon of that silver style : 
In the clear style, a heart as clear is seen. 
Prompt to the rash — revolting from the mean/' 

It is assuredly ii leresting now to recall that cordial tribute 
to remembrance — now, when (what few might then have 
anticipated) the study for that terse and life-like delineation 
is the chief of the existing cabinet, conspicuous among the 
members of which stands the graceful eulogist. 

During the fragmentary issue of " The New Timon" through 
the press. Sir Edward revisited Italy, and there conceived 
the plan of two novels, designed to illustrate the conflicting 
influence of home education on life — the one good, the other 
evil. Holding this double object before him steadily in view, 
he thereapon began the composition of the most startling 
contrasts surely that romance-writer ever yet dreamt of— the 
grisly and abhorrent nightmare of "Lucretia; or, the 
Children of Night "f (published immediately upon his return 
to England), and — ^what did not appear until some time after- 

*The New Timon: a Poem. Colbum. 4 parts. 1846. One 
voL 1847. 

f Lucretia ; or, the Children of Night. 3 vols. Saunders and 
Ottley. 1847. 



THE EIGHT HON. SIU B. B. LYTTON. 185 

wards, and then slowly, instalment by instalment— the lovely 
and exquisite family portrait of " The Caxtons." " Lucretia" 
had scarcely been given to the public, however, when — its 
really admirable ethical intention being altogether misappre- 
hended — its author suddenly found himself the object of loud 
and stormy vituperation. He thereupon had printed, in the form 
of a little pamphlet, a comprehensive vindication of his writings 
generally, but more particularly, of course, of "Lucretia,** 
expatiating, while doing so, with logical lucidity upon the 
themes and subjects best suited for the purposes of art and 
fiction, namely, as objects for vivid and picturesque illustra- 
tion. This was the brochure called **A Word to the Public,'** 
since then judiciously supplemented to every reprint of " The 
Children of Night," as a sort of explanatory appendix. B-e- 
suming his unfinished family picture of " The Caxtons," as he 
travelled, Bulwer Lytton proceeded by way of Vienna into the 
Tyrol, and there, at Gastein, seriously took in hand a poem 
often meditated by him long years previously— one of which, 
indeed, he had been revolving in his mind the general outline 
ever since 1844. This was—the only great national epic of 
our age — "King Arthur." The novelist-poet's imagination 
was certainly at this period busily enough occupied. 

Returning to England, he was still labouring (labours of 
love both) at "The Caxtons," and at "King Arthur," when, 
as by a side-blow, be struck ofP " at a heat," " Harold : the Last 
of the Saxon Kings," f a magnificent historical romance, not 
inaptly designated a prose epic, by an appreciative reviewer 
of it in the Edinburgh. Forth then in succession came the 
two other works recently mentioned, each in turn rapidly 
brought to a state of completion ; each in turn a masterpiece. 
" Harold," it is true, though it had actually gone through the 
press, was yet for a while delayed in its publication by a 
generous impulse on the part of the publisher, namely, in 
respect for the deep affliction of its author, bereaved at that 

* A Word to the Public. By the Author of " Lucretia." pp. 60. 
Saunders and Ottley. 1847. 
f Sarold : the Last of the Saxon Kings. 3 vols. Bentley. 1848. 



1S6 THE DEKBT HINI8TET. 

moment of his only daughter. This ocourred in the spring- 
time of 1848, the first instalment of ''King Arthur"* appear- 
ing in March, and the first instalment of " The Caxtons" f u^ 
the April following, both anonymously. In each instance, 
however, the authorship was speedily enough detected. There 
was no mistaking the mobile yoice of "Grichton," or his 
limber gait, however cunningly adroit the masquerade. Im- 
mediately upon the completion of ''Sang Arthur,'' the 
authorship was ayowed in a new edition upon the title-page. 
When " The Caxtons," closing its career as a serial publica- 
tion, appeared separately as a substantial work (the mask 
here, too, thrown aside as superfluous), the author was stUl 
endeavouring by travel to distract his mind from the anguish 
of his late domestic bereavement. Spending the whole of 
1849 abroad, he wandered successively through considerable 
portions of Germany and Switzerland, whiling away the autumn 
on the Italian lakes, and the winter months at Nice. At tlie 
last-mentioned locality he began that very masterly and com- 
prehensive delineation of the "Varieties of English Life," 
which he has emphatically designated "My Novel," | an 
imaginative work of such unwonted dimensions, that notwith- 
standing the earliest instalment of it adorned the September 
number of Blackwood* 8 Magazine for 1850, it was only com- 
pleted in time for collective re-issue in four volumes upon the 
third new-year's-day following. It at once assumed to itself 
the prerogative of crowning the protracted and diversified 
labours of Sir Bulwer Lytton as a romance-writer, in its 
character as his undoubted masterpiece. 

Meanwhile, in consequence of a memorable statement made 
in the House of Peers by Lord Derby in respect to the 
principles which would have guided his administratimi in the 

* King Arthur : an Epic, in Twelve Books. Colbum. 8 parts. 
1848. One vol. (avowed), 1849. 

+ The Caztons : a Familj Picture. 8 vols. Blackwood and 
Sons. 1849. 

it My Novel ; or, Varieties of English life. 4 vols. Blaokwood 
and Sons. 1851. 



THE BIGHT HOK. SIB E. B. LTTTON. 187 

eyent of his having proved successful in his then recent 
e£Ports at the formation of a cabinet, Bulwer Lytton conceived 
that the time had at length arrived when he might judiciously 
vindicate the views he himself had sustained now during 
seventeen years consecutively with unwavering perseverance 
—opinions which had come at last to be not only intimately 
associated, but absolutely identified with party, and which had 
now been signally and decisively proclaimed by the noble earl 
as part and parcel of the policy of his proposed government. 
Hence appeared the famous "Letters to John Bull,"* which ^ - 
passed rapidly through ten editions, to be afterwards reprinted 
in a popular form for wider circulation. Hitherto Sir Edward 
had been repeatedly invited by both parties in his county to 
offer himself as a candidate for the. representation of Hertford- 
shire. The " Letters," by clearly elucidating the scope and 
tendency of his political sentiments, enabled him, at length, 
to accept a requisition, his answer to which had been until I 
then necessarily delayed. He consented to allow his name to 
be put in nomination, and, at the ensuing general electi<m, in 7 
the July of 1852, was triumphantly returned — re-entering the , 
House of Commons as M.P. for Herts, after an absence of 
eleven years from the deliberations of Parliament. Although 
but so very recently enrolled anew among the foremost poll* 
ticians of his time. Sir Bulwer Lytton was yet included by 
Lord Derby among the select few (chiefly ex-ministers of the 
Crown) who, on Thursday, the 9th of June, 1853, received 
&om the hands of the ex-premier, at Oxford, the honorary 
degree of D.C.L., upon the occasion of the noble earl's 
university installation. Since then Sir Edward's career in 
the legislature has been, to say the least of it, sufficiently 
conspicuous. Both as an orator and as a statesman he has, 
within the last six years, materially advanced and elevated 
his reputation. Insomuch that it is merely by a sort of 
inevitable gradation that he has recently assumed his place 
upon the Treasury bench as a Cabinet Minister, accepting the 

* Letters to John Boll, Esq. Syo. pp. 104. Chapman and Hall. 
1851. 



l88 THE DEBJBY MINISTRY. 

seals of office as one of her Majest/s Secretaries of Sfcate, 
and taking his allotted position at the council-board of his 
sovereign as among the ranks of the privy counsellors. 

Nevertheless his industrious parliamentary career has still 
allowed him at intervals to remain faithful to literature. 
True, that throughout the four years immediately following 
his return to the House of Commons, his assiduity, as a man 
of letters, was entirely interrupted : excepting only, we be- 
I lieve, one solitary interval, during which his pen contributed 
I that masterly article upon William Pitt to the pages of the 
\ Quarterly. Towards the close of 1857, however. Sir Bulwer 
^ Lytton began the latest, as it is also perhaps the most elabo- 
rated, of all his romances — "What will he do with ItP*'* 
a work which has ever since been appearing in Blackwood^9 
Magazine in monthly instalments. According to the author's 
express intimation, conveyed indeed through a distinct Address 
to his Readers, prefixed to the eleventh part, the story was 
not only completed in manuscript, but actually in the hands 
of the publishers, before the conclusion of January. In other 
words, the Novel, byPisistratus Caxton — only now drawing to 
a close in the pages of the magazine— had finally passed from 
the desk of its writer fully half a year prior to his installation 
in the Colonial Secretaryship. Fortunately for Maga and for 
Maga*s readers — for the romance and for the romancist — ^it 
was so : for since the date of Sir Edward's acceptance of the 
seals of office, all labour, in any way extra official, has, of 
course, been thrown aside by him unhesitatingly. A happy 
coincidence of time, therefore — the reward of his habitual 
industry — enabled him, as long ago as the 22nd of last 
January, (" let the day," saith he, with humorous solemnity, 
in the Address before mentioned, " be marked with a white 
stone!") to complete betimes a fiction destined, we cannot 
but think, to take high rank — perhaps the highest — among 
the most remarkable efPusions of his poetic and romantic 
imagination. 

* What will he do with It ? By Pisistiatus Caxton. BlackwoocPs 
Magazine. 1857-8. 



THE EIGHT HON. Sli^ E. B. LTTTON. 189 

The collective novels of Bulwer Lytton, it is here worth 
bearing in remembrance (having previously been published in 
a stereotyped edition at six shillings a volume, and subse- 
quently in a serial form originally issued in weekly numbers, 
price three halfpence), ultimately appeared in a shape yet 
more popular, and at a cost yet more reasonable : the copy- 
right of the cheap edition (for ten years) having been purchased 
for £20,000 by the Messrs. Routledge. Nevertheless, yet 
another edition of Sir Edward's writings still, we believe, 
remains to this day what every puff advertiser is in the habit 
of calling a desideratttm—& handsome library edition, we mean, 
embracing within it not only his prose fictions, his novels, and 
romances — ^not even, with those also, his poetical and dramatic 
productions, but a comprehensive collection of the whole of his 
works indiscriminately. An accumulation of his labours, in- 
cluding, among other things, a selection of the most effective 
speeches he is known to have delivered either within or without 
the walls of the legislature — foremost among the latter, his 
inimitable "Address to the Associated Societies of the 
University of Edinburgh;"* pre-eminent among the former, 
the oration by which he may be said to have inaugurated his 
return to Parliament, when, in a speech immediately after- 
wards described by the right hon. member for Buckingham- 
shire as one of the most masterly ever given to the House, he 
demanded &om all sides alike a fair trial for the newly-organ- 
ized administration. Comprised, moreover, within the com- 
pass of this one comprehensive edition of his writings, should 
be his various contributions to the periodicals — not merely 
those (already collected) written by him as editor of the New 
Monthly and the Monthly Chronicle^ but others of a very mis- 
eellaneous kind, still scattered through the different Quarter- 
lies. His luminous papers in the Edinburgh, on the " Writings 
of Sir Thomas Browne," on Eorster's " Life of Oliver Gold- 
smith," on " The History of English Poetry," by Chateau- 
briand. His equally able reviews in the Westminster on the 

"* Address to the Associated Societies of the University of Edin- 
burgh. Svo. pp. 28. Blackwood and Sons. 1854. 



190 THE DEBBT 1CI9ISTBT. 



(( 



Statesmen of the Beign of Anne," and on the *' Poet Gray 
and his Obligations to Classical Literature." Moreover, 
beyond even the best of these, his remarkable historical 
treatise in the Foreign Quarterly on *' The Reign of Tenor and 
the French Bevolation." 

Altogether, ve have here been taking a rapid survey of a 
literary career the mere mechanical industry of which has 
evidenced itself, while the author is yet in the full vigour of 
his maturity, by the production of some eighty goodly volumes, 
to say nothing of a swarm of minor and uncollected composi- 
tions. As to the genius expressed by those writings, that has 
long since stamped itself in indelible characters upon the 
popular memory among the glories of the national literature. 

And the author himself, in whose wizard right hand the pan 
has thus been transformed into the wand of the magician! 
A saunter down to Westminster, any afternoon when the 
House is sitting, will enable you readily enough, even though 
you chance to be a novice in the scene — supposing you, of 
course, to have prudentially armed yourself beforehand with 
the requisite Open sesame— to recognize SirBulwer Lytton 
seated there upon the front Treasury bench among the leaders 
of her Majesty's Government. Already, " stranger" though 
you are in the Commons, numerous published portraits, 
together with abundant political caricatures, have rendered 
you perfectly well acquainted, at a glance, with many a familiar 
countenance. There, lounging behind the green box of office, 
upon those coveted cushions— beds too often rather of thorns 
than roses— the Leader of the House — ^you know him upon 
the instant. The features of Vivian Grey saddened and 
matured, with the ringlets of Sidonia thinned but still cluster- 
ing. And there, beside him — ^not less instant the recognition 
— ^his ministerial colleague, the new Colonial Secretary. Por- 
traits ho, too, has had abundantly ; and thanks to Mr. Chalon, 
one memorable caricature. Happiest among all those well- 
known portraits, the life-like sketch by Mr. Lane, the 
Academy's associated engraver and draughtsman. Better than 
the profile outline by Count d'Orsay^ than the other profile 



THS BIGST HOK. SIS X. B. LTTTON. 191 

sketch by Mr. F. Say— better, by far, than the ambitious 
painting by Van Hoist-— better eyen (that inimitable pencil- 
ling of Lane's) than the noble, idealized portrait by Daniel 
MacUse, R.A., who has there, in truth, portrayed—in a 
picture constituting, nevertheless, a vivid likeness of Sir 
Bulwer Lytton, 

Slightly above the middle height, thin, even seemingly 
firagile in proportions, yet with the spring and elasticity 
of his most energetic nature stiU vitally animating the 
delicate framework of a toil-worn constitution. Sir Bulwer 
Lytton carries ineffiaoeably stamped upon his every lineament 
the unmistakable evidences of the race from which he has 
sprung, and from the hereditary peculiarities of which he has 
derived so many of the nobler characteiistics of his ambitious 
and aspiring temperament. 

His ministerial career has become abready noteworthy, 
although but so very recently commenced: insomuch, that 
were the present cabinet to terminate its eustence to-morrow. 
Sir Edward Lytton's rule at the Colonial Office would still 
survive in the popular remembrance— his name being indelibly 
imprinted upon the annals of that high aud responsible depart- 
ment. Almost immediately upon his first acceptance of the 
scab of office, at the beginning of June, 1858, he gave new 
and signal, and abundant proof of the wisdom of Lord Derby's 
habitual preference for colleagues unhackneyed in the ways of 
routine, unentangled in the trammels of red tape, and most 
refreshingly innocent in regard to all the duller and deadening 
mysteries of circumlocution. Scarcely had the new Colonial 
Secretary been installed, when a stroke of his pen abolished 
the old, bungling, paralyzing mail contract with Australia. 
Another while, and, thanks to the same minister, the West- 
Indian islands were secured the advantage of an Incumbered 
Estates Bill, founded upon the measure happily applied a few 
years back to Ireland, and eminently calculated to relieve the 
planters from many of their long-standing embarrassments. 
Again, in a totally opposite direction — yonder, upon the 
coast of Africa— a hitherto perpetual source of heart-burning 



192 THE DEB3Y MINISTBT. 

between France and England, he at once and most effectnall j 
dissipated : simply throagh the judicious exchange of Albreda 
and Portendic, coupled with the concession of the insignificant 
gum-trade at the latter outlet, by reason of their acquisition of 
which our allies were at length reconciled to the otherwise 
unpalatable transference. Immeasurably beyond all which 
brilliant and welcome evidences of administrative sagacity, 
vigour, and determination on the part of the new Secretary of 
State for the Colonies, there is the masterpiece of Sir Edward 
Bulwer Lytton as minister of the Crown— that noble Colony 
of British Columbia which will henceforth remain as an 
attestation of his constructive genius as a member of the 
Government. 

Before his entrance into the Cabinet, prior even to the 
original formation of the second Derby Ministry, rumours had 
carried to the Colonial Office the startling intimation that 
gold, embedded in quartz, and scattered about affluently in 
dust and nuggets, lay strown like the fabulous gravel of El 
Dorado on the banks of Eraser River, midway between the 
Gulf of Georgia and the range of the Bx>cky Mountains. 
Inspiriting though the news undoubtedly was in itself, 
it was, nevertheless, excessively unwelcome to the Whig 
administrators : it was hushed up as inconvenient. Mr. 
Labouchere instantaneously recognized that its avowal must, 
in all human probability, sooner or later necessitate the 
insertion of the thin end of the wedge, the easy driving 
home of which afterwards would inevitably bring toppling 
down the giant monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company — 
opening up at last to the energies of the Anglo-Saxon race the 
whole of the British North-American possessions. What was 
a repelling influence to the Whig Obstructive, was literally 
and actually, however, an incentive to the Tory Reformer. 
No sooner had the right hon. member for Hertfordshire satis- 
fied himself of the accuracy of these golden tidings from Van- 
couver than he resolutely began the great labour of innovation 
and of organization. He not only inserted the thin end of the 
wedge, without a moment's hesitation, at the mouth of Eraser 



THE SIGHT HON. SIB B. B. L7TT0N. 193 

Biver, but, by a few bold and adroit blows, drore it direct]/ 
home to the base of the Eocky Mountains. From the 
instant his admirable bill was passed into an enaotment^the 
ineasore formally calling British Columbia into existence as a 
ooiony~'&om that instant the final doom of the Hudson's Bay 
Company's monopoly was pronounced. 

The immediate result is the creation of British Columbia. 
The ulterior consequence will be something for more magnifi- 
cent. It will secure to Yancouyer the recognition of its unri- 
vailed situation geographioaily«-a situation naturally eonsti« 
tuting it the '* Queen of the Pacific." It will, by reason of the 
atlraotive influence of tbe gold-diggings upon the mainland, 
collect together in that superb harbour— sufficient in its dimen* 
sions to embrace within it the whole of the Boyal Navy of 
England — a perpetual throng of merehant-Tessels, eoneen. 
trating thither permanently the commerce with China, with 
India, with Japan, with the Spice Islands of the Eastern Archi* 
pelago. Its mineral resources will insure the new colony 
an abiindant revcbue. The development of the immigra- 
tion now commencing will obtain for it in time a gigantie 
and energetic population. It will secure the ultimate linking 
together of the two oceans, the Pacific and the Atlantic, by 
bringing directly into communication the new colony and the 
old colony, Canada and Columbia, uniting them, as they now 
must by necessity, in the end, be united, by means of a grand 
trunk*railway carried boldly across the entire breadth of the 
North -American continent. Running parallel with that 
trunk-railway will be the magic wires of the electric tele* 
graph. Spreading insensibly northwards and southwards, 
from either side of the narrow line, there will advance further 
and further into the primeval forests and the hitherto im- 
passable prairies, the beneficent influences of Christianity and 
Civilization. The heart of North America will thus, in the 
natural course of events, become colonized and cultivated. 
And anticipations of this kind, it should be remembered, are 
not merely the indulgence of an idle and delightful day-dream 
—they are simply rational calculations upon what we may 



19^ THB DBKBT MIK16TBY. 

Tenture to designate aa absolute oertainty, placing an implidt 
trust alone, whUe so speaking, in the benignant permission of 
Divine Providence. 

Elsewhere, in our sixty colonies, Sir Bulwer Lytton will 
have abundant opportunities for the display of his undoubted 
genius for statesmanship, and of his ahnost intuitive skill as an 
administrator. His assiduity is such, constitutionally, that we 
may rely with confidence upon none of those opportunities 
ever alluring his energies without avail : for indubitably, in 
this instance, if in no other, the eminent man of letters is also 
pre-eminently a man of business. The poet, the playwright, 
the novelist, the dreamful author of so many brilliant works of 
imagination, is no less indisputably, as a minister of the Crown, 
and as a member of the im^riid legislature, an earnest and 
resolute reformer — one the component elements of whose 
policy are the principles directly derived from an active 
patriotism and a practical philanthropy. His oratorical 
triumphs in parliament attest this clearly enough: but far 
more than his successes as a rhetorician, his actual adminis- 
trative achievements. 



GENERAL PEEL, 

Sittctivixz oi Sitvdt for SRar. 



o2 



GENEEAL PEEL. 



Suddenly called to high office from the priyacy of the back 
benches. General Peel has already, in a great measure, justified 
the daring selection made in his instance by the First Lord of 
the Treasury. The peculiar significance of this selection, we 
conceive to have been hitherto overlooked by the public at 
large, if it has not even, here and there, been egregiously mis- 
apprehended. It was in obedience to no careless whim of the 
moment ; of this, at least, any one may rest perfectly well 
assured, that a man of such sagacity as the Earl of Derby 
chose for the delicate and responsible post of administrator in 
the department of War, a heretofore unnoticed major-general 
in the army, on half pay unattached. The nomination of the 
gallant member for Huntingdon to the Ministry for War in the 
February of 1658 was as much of a surprise to the House and 
to the Country as that produced in another way during the 
February of 1846, by the abrupt apparition of a chief in debate 
and a leader of party, in a handsome fox-hunting nobleman, 
who had until then sat in the Commons as a silent member 
during no less<thau eight successive parliaments. 

That, however, which was chivalrously volunteered by Lord 
George Bentinck at a preriod of extraordinary emergency, was 
simply acceded to — frankly and readily accepted— by General 
Jonathan Pe^ under less anxious circumstances. The op- 
portunity, in each instance, drew forth into the full glare of 
publicity on© who had previously remained altogether undis- 
tinguished among the motley concourse of his political con- 
temporaries. Here the resemblance of the situation begins — 
here it ceases. There is no further analogy between the two 
occurrences, any more than there is anywhere discoverable 



198 THE DEBST MINISTB7. 

anything kindred between the two men, beyond, indeed, the 
common display, on the part of each, of the trae British 
gallantry which never pauses before a forlorn-hope or hesitates 
before a difficulty. 

It is no disparagement to the Secretary for War to say, 
that it was principally, if not exclusively, by reason of his 
name that he was first enabled to hold office as a member of 
her Majesty's Government. It is by his ability, his energy, 
and his determination, that he retains it. But at the outset, 
his name was no less undeniably his passport to power than 
the name of Napoleon was ten years ago in the instance of 
the reigning French emperor. It is in this circumstance that 
we recognize what we conceive to have been hitherto un- 
observed by the general community— the espedal significance 
of this one particular and exceptional appointment. It is a 
magnanimous tribute offered by Lord Derby and his colleagues, 
-by the cabinet in the name of the party it represents— a 
posthumous peace-oflferingto the manes of a great statesman—- 
fcMrmer leader, quondam antagonist. It is the last and crowning 
token of forgotten animosities and remembered friendship — 
one, moreover, tendered in a spirit congenial with that whidi, 
half a dozen years previously, elicited from Mr. Disraeli his 
cordial panegyric upon the great minister — ^while living so 
often the object of his radiant and remorseless sarcasms : 
that studied and deliberate encomium, which said of him, in 
language as earnest as it was eloquent, that he really remained 
" what " — wrote the generous critic (satirist yesterday, eulo- 
gist to-day) — "posterity will acknowledge him to have been ; " 
via., tersely, emphatically, "the greatest member of parliament 
that ever lived."* It is the graceful and decisive verification, 
this appointment of Sir Robert Peel's brother as Secretary of 
State for War under Lord Derby's premiership, of the kindly 
words appended by the right hon. gentleman, now her Ma- 
jesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer, to that knightly tribute 
to the dead foe with whom he has so often crossed swords and 

*Lord George Bentinck : a Political Biography, p. 320. 



OXMElLAIi ^SXL. 199 

fqjlintered lances in the arena of parliament — ** Peace to his 
ashes ! His name will be often appealed to in that scene 
which he loved so well, and never without homage even by 
his opponents." In testimony of the truth of which, here is 
the brother of Sir Robert numbered among the principal 
members of a government, the leaders of which respectively, 
in the Peers and Commons, are the Lord Stanley of 184!6, aiid 
that ever pitiless and relentless assailant — the witty, scornful, 
implacable^ audacious member for Buckinghamshire. 

Bent upon offering to the memory of his former political 
chieftain that most signal tribute implied by the circumstance 
of his including a Peel among the cluster of his twelve minis- 
terial colleagues, the Earl of Derby could not, in truth, have 
made his selection in any way more judiciously. It must be 
remembered, indeed, that his choice was, in a remarkable 
maimer, restricted. It would have been altogether much less 
to the purpose, in respect to the shade of his great prede- 
cessor, had Lord Derby, to the end proposed, finally selected, 
instead of a Peel pur sang, one of the so-called Peelites. Ad- 
vances are, it is true, understood to have been made to his 
Grace the Duke of Newcastle, and to the right hon. gentleman 
the member for Oxford University : but they were made to 
these not so much as Peelites, as in regard exclusively to their 
own high, and, it must be addect, in a great measure, insulated, 
though contrasted, reputations. The followers of Sir Robert, in 
fact, had, almost immediately upon his death, been scattered as 
effectually as ever were the legionaries of C»sar or the paladins 
of Charlemagne, or the generals of Alexander. How sings the 
facetious Bon Gaultier, in his " Lay of Sherwood : " 

'^ When Bobin is dead, and his boaefl are laid 
Beneath the greenwood tree.*' 

Does he not carol as wisely as whimsically ?-*- 

" And broken are his merry, merry men, 
That goodly companie ; 
There's some that have ta'en the northern road, 
WHh Jem of Netherbee. 



800 THE DERBY MINISTRY. 

" The best and bravest of the band 
With Derby Ned are gone ; 
But Earlie Gray and Charlie Wood 
They staid with Little John." 

Conspicuous among the remnants of the disbanded phalanx, 
a few adventurous wights noticeable chiefly by reason of their 
perverse independence. The Hephaestion among them all — dis- 
tinguishable hardly less by the bewildering incertitude of his 
judgment than by the unquestionable superiority of his genius 
— after dallying with finance had taken to finessing. The 
faithful Achates again, resolutely fixed, from the commence- 
ment, upon playing out, to the very last trick, the great political 
rubber, interrupted, may be, now and then, by a squabble 
over some half-suspected, half-detected revoke — after wasting 
his honours, and ruffing his hearts to no purpose, had lost 
game after game irretrievably. Nothing, indeed, has succeeded 
in enabling them to reclaim their lost position — neither their 
protracted contiguity to the Manchester school below that 
arctic barrier of the gangway, nor even yet their fantastic 
propinquity to the bald-headed successor of poor Colonel 
Sibthorp — that dry joker and transcendental grotesque, 
whose apparition upon the floor of the house is always the 
signal for alternate silence (the silence of piqued attention) 
and explosions of irrepressible laughter. Everything faUed, 
even before this last auspicious change of ministry, ta revive 
the fading hopes, and rekindle the drooping energies of the 
quasi Peelites — everything ! They have drawn no new vitality 
from the bold Tribune beside them, or the quaint Humorist 
below — 

" From downright Shippen, or from old Montaigne." 

• Wherefore — clever but impracticable— the Peelites, in the 
matter of this selection, have proved (confessedly on their 
own part) out of Lord Derby's category. It remained for 
the Premier, therefore, to make his choice from among the 
Peels, and to do so, as judiciously as might be, under some- 
what peculiar circumstances. Nevertheless, peculiar though 



fiX¥£KAL F£ZL. SOt 

the circumstances were, the noble earl could faardly be at 
fault in the midst of them. The circumference of the already 
restricted circle contracted, under his scrutiny, almost to a 
mathematical point. It could scarcely happen by possibility, 
under the guidance of Ids all but instinctive sagacity, that 
any mimsterial prise remaining at the disposal of Lord Derby 
could be awarded by him to any other member of the fiEimily 
than the very one upon whom it was actually conferred, the 
hon. and gallant member for Huntingdon. 

A Stanley, eagle-eyed beyond even the average of the 
Stanleys, would scorn, surely for one instant, to look with the 
fraternal glance of a colleague upon any one so entirely a 
creature of routine as the right hon. the ex-member for Bury, 
the very type, model, and incarnation of a placeman : (»ie the 
sands of whose existence must be perpetually running out in 
pouncet ; one whose bowels, if he have any (and we are dis- 
posed to be as incredulous upon that point as Scrooge was 
in the case of Marky), must assuredly be made of tortoous 
involutions of red ta|)e ; one the very breach of whose nostriis 
is the language of tareamlocutian. 

Equally beside the mark would it have been to suppose for 
one single moment that the First Minister of the Grown, with 
an aim in view so grand, almost historical, in its character, 
could, in discarding the notion of the second son, have fixed his 
regard complacently upon the tbird baronet:: upon that light- 
in-hand young Bamaele, that touch-and-go young Barnacle, 
prepared, one might easily imagine, at a pinch-by reason of 
the very gallantry of his independence — ^to drive slap-dash, 
helter-skelter, loose of rein and ready of whip, the old armorial 
lion and unicorn of the state in tandeni ! 

General Peel, tberefore, as the brother of Sir Eobert, and 
as an officer eigoying great popularity in her Majesty's army, 
was the one nominated by the First Lord of the Treasury to the 
post left vacant for a Peel at the council-board of the new 
admioistration. Hitherto that gallant officer had been known 
only in the political world as — one of the Colonels of the House 
of Commons. He had certainly been Surveyor-General of 



808 THE J>XBBT XINIBTRT. 

Ordnenoe during his gifted brother's premiership. He bad* 
always spoken, besides, with great ability upon matters 
affecting the interests of his heroic profession. Bat, by 
the community at large, he was, for the most part, regarded 
as simply one of those high-spirited militsKry representatives, 
who manifest their esprit de corps npon every possible occa* 
sion by their readiness to vindicate whatever has been decided 
at the Horse Guards, and to extenuate, through thick and 
thin, the proceedings— no matter what — of the Commander* 
in-Chief. Beyond which the gallant member for Huntingdon 
possessed — ^like the noble lord whose name has already, in 
another particular, been conpled with his own, the short-lived 
champion of the country party. Lord George Bentinok — ^an 
honourable reputation alike upon the Heath at Newmarket 
and at both the Comers — ^Tattenham and Tattersall's. 

Altogether, apart, however, from these peculiar antecedents^ 
Jonathan Peel, major-general in her Majest/s army, had the 
advantage of a continuous parliamentary experience of some 
two-and-tliirty years—in point of fact, a whole lifetime; so 
that, however new himself to offiee, he was famiHar enough 
by observation with the routine of the legislature, and far 
beyondlhat, moreover, with the political history of his gene- 
ration. Not to him applied that allusion of M. Guizot, in his 
charming biography of the Engtish minister (Vie de ^ir E. 
Peel, p. 317), where he partioularizes " un des fireres de Sir 
Robert, qui avaitpr^f^r^ la vie agricole^toute autre carriere." 
Although remaining unobtrusively for thirty years in the 
background during the earlier scenes of that great historio 
drama, among the chief performers of which his illostrioas 
brother had stood forth so long conspicuously, General Peel 
only awaited the requisite cue ^o advance to a more prominent 
position upon the stage of parliament. 

The Bight Hon. Jonathan Peel, bom on the 18th of 
October, 1799, was the fifth son of the first Sir Bobert Peel, 
l^ his wife Ellen, daughter of William Yates, Esquire, of 
Springside, near Bury, in Lancashire. The narrative of the 
rise of this remarkable family is honourably inscribed upon 



GZinSBAX FEEL. 208 

one of the foremost pages in the annals of tlie mercantile 
enterprise of England. It illustrates, in a yery brilliant 
maimer, the scientific skill and mechanical ingenuity of 
Englishmen. Its origin, or rather the origin of its later good 
fortune, has been happily emblaeoned, under the heraldic 
escutcheon of the baronetcy, in the honest, outspoken motto, 
the one noble word, " Industrie." Mainly, it is true, by in- 
dustry, the first Sir Robert Peel, third son of Robert Peel, of 
Piede Told, Osiraldtwistle, won his baronetcy, and became ^ 
miUionnaire. But not alcme by industry. To his extraoKlinary 
constructive genius, yet more, if possible, than either to his 
laborious toil, or the simple but elerated rectitude of his 
^hsracto-, were his notable successes as a manufacture 
directly attributable. Self-made man, according to the 
popular phrase, though he was, good Sir Robert Peel the 
first had descended from aa anci^at stock, entitled variously 
Peel, or Peele, or De Pele — ^a race long settled at Graven, in 
Yorkshire ; and, as far back as the fifteenth century, seised 
of lands in Salesbury and Wilpshire, districts within the 
hundred of Blackburn, in the eounty palatine of Lancaster. 
Generations of the family lived and died, some in competence, 
some in indigence, all in obscurity, until the 20th of November, 
1800, when the first Peel of any note had his name enrolled, 
not simply as a wealthy and a worthy man, but as a man 
personally distinguished for his genuine and enkrged enlighten, 
ment, upon the list of the English baronetage. 

Jonathan, his fifth son, hke many another younger son in a 
rich and numerous family, was set apart from the rest of the 
brothers— one a statesman, one an agnculturist, one a country 
gentleman, and so forth, through the whole catalogue — as a 
stripling whose future was mariced out for him in the military 
profession. But the great Napoleonian wars were arriving at 
their close at the very outset of his double cadetship, bis 
cadetship both professional and genealogical. His entrance 
into the royal army, in fact, dates from that same momentous 
month of Juue, 1815, when the European conflicts closed 
for forty years to come, in their final crash upon the plains 



S04 THE DEBBT MINICTBT. 

of Waterloo. Henoe, although his rise from irank to raaok 
occurred in due proportion to his length of service as a soldier 
under each separate commission, as ensign, as lieutenant, as 
captain, as major, and so onwards and upwards to the period 
of his ulterior command of a regiment, it was the development, 
it must be remembered, of a martial oareer during an epoch 
when the sword of the nation remained for the most part 
sheathed, during a halcyon- interval of laksost uninterrupted 
tranquillity. It is no wonder, then, to find the member of an 
energetic race doomed to the anomalous position of one bear- 
ing arms in a time of peace, -combining with the somewhat 
monotonous routine of military- life in barraeks, the political 
avocations devolving<Qpon>«ven'ihe most<^sileBt occupant of a 
seat in the imperial legislature. 

Previously to the commencement of 'his-parMamentary 
life, however. Captain Peel mawied, on the i9th of March, 
1824, the Lady Alicia Jane: Kennedy, younges1^x daughter of 
Archibald, first Marquess of-Ailsa, K.T..-~another justifica- 
tion of the whimsical sally of the Prince Regent, upon hearing^ 
of a similar marriage in the 4ist Sir Robert'* family^" How 
those Peels stick to their 'Jennies P' 

Through this marriage, now upwards of ^thirty-four years 
ago. General Peel has a family of seven children, — six sons 
and a daughter. Almost simmltaneously with his married life 
commenced his career as a politician. It was in 1826 that as 
M.P. for Norwich he first took his seat in the House of Com- 
mons. Thait same constituency he continued to represent in 
Parliament throughout the &ve years following ; but in 1831 
he resumed his place in the popular branch of the legislature 
in the character in which for nearly seven-and-twenty years he 
has sat there uninterruptedly, namely, in his representative 
capacity as M. P. for Huntingdon. Ten years after his first 
election for Huntingdon, i.e. in 1841, Major Peel was pro- 
moted to his colonelcy ; and as recently as the 20th of June, 
1854, was gazetted in his present rank as major-general, un- 
attached. 

With the single exception already particularized— that of 



Jiis nomination between 1841 and 1846, as Surveyor-General of 
Ordnance during his brother's administration— Jonathan Peel 
sever challenged public criticism in any way by emerging from 
the shadow of the* Horse Guards, from the seclusion of the 
back benches, from the crowd of gay sporting notabilities 
congregated at appropriate seasons upon the turf at Epsom 
and Newmarket. Influenced in his choice by the generous 
emotions herein beforementioned. Lord Derby, in the February 
of 1858, awakened in the gallant member for Huntingdon an 
ambition he himself had probably until then never dreamt of; 
holding out to him the lure of a scarcely resistible temptation — 
a seat in the cabinet— the guardianship of the gates of the 
Temple of Janns— the conservation of the interests of his 
noble and heroic profession. General Peel was, therefore, 
sworn in as another of her Majesty's privy counsellors, and 
kissed hands on accepting office as principal Secretary of State 
for the War department. Since then, as the minister of the 
Grown peculiarly intrusted with the care of the Queen's army, 
he has displayed unwearied assiduity in prosecuting systematic 
and personal inquiries into rumoured abuses in the military 
organization. It yet remains to be Been how far his sagacity 
and his energy as an administrator may be equal to the yet 
weightier responsibility of introducing, whenever it may be 
deemed requisite, comprehensive measures of an ameliorative 
character — ^measures, it is to be hoped, in some instances, so 
sweeping as to amount, in the aggregate, less to a reform than 
to a revolution. Otherwise than through some such resolute 
proceedings, indeed, we may look in vain for the definitive 
prevention henceforth of scandalous peculations like those 
brought to light in connection with the Weedon depot ; or for 
the adoption of such sanitary precautions as may render 
Augean barracks like those at Chatham not simply excep« 
tional but wholly unknown abominations. 

The individual appearance even, as well as the personal 
character, of General Peel would seem to encourage the hopes 
in this way entertained by tlie military world of England in 
regard to the future labours of his war secretaryship. Under 



206 THE DEBBT KIKISTRT. 

the rough, almost rugged, aspect of the soldier, there is the 
generous heart of the true man brimming with much of " the 
milk of human kindness." It is the knowledge of these nobler 
qualities of his nature that justifies the more sanguine antici- 
pations now cherished among his brethren in arms, the hope 
that out of so much resolute and searching Inquiry may come 
forth large and kindly measures of Amelioration^ and, better 
still, of thorough Re-organization. 



LORD STANLEY, 

Statisq of S^tsit for Inbis. 



LORD STANLEY. 



SiKCB the memorable occasion upon which Lord Barleigh's 
son. Sir Robert Cecil, succeeded Secretary Walsingham at the 
ministerial council-board under Elizabeth, no father and son 
have ever sat together in the cabinet of the sovereign. Tke 
incident, after the lapse of two centuries and a half, has, at 
length, however, been repeated under Victoria : a father and 
son are again colleagues in the Administration. The Stanleys 
are evidencing nowadays, what the Cecils had done so long 
previously — a hereditary genius for the conduct of the affairs 
of government. 

The extraordinary and all but unprecedented circumstance 
of this near relationship between two members of the same 
Cabinet, between the Prime Minister and one of his principal 
colleagues, is also, in the instance immediately before us, 
considerably enhanced in interest and significance by the fact 
that the Earl of Derby's son and lieir is, in simple truth, 
hardly so much the Premier's own choice as a colleague, as he 
is the choice of the general community, of the country at 
large, and of the Parliament. It has so happened, partly 
through the accident of a lucky coincidence of events, partly 
through the operation of his own instinctive tact and sagacity, 
that the noble lord now the ruler of our Indian empire, at 
an age when other men are no more than under-secretaries or 
junior lords of the Treasury, has contrived to render himself 
almost universally acceptable as one of the chief ministers of 
the sovereign. He has effected this, moreover, without 
possessing, individually, any of tke external and personal 

p 



210 THE DEEBT MINISTEt. 

attribntes of conciliation, winning his way solely by tbe sbeer 
force of right reason, of high principle, and of unflinching and 
unhesitating consistency. He has carved out his popularity 
with trenchant swiftness, and with the logical precision of 
a syllogism. He has secured, thus prematurely, an almost 
universal recognition of his administrative capacities without 
the aid of any rhetorical artifice, without the assistance of a 
single one among those ineffable and indefinable charms, 
whether of bearing or of intellect, insuring to some men a 
precocious tenure of power by the mere exercise of a nameless 
fascination. Lord Stanley has, on the contrary, rather proved 
his capabilities in statesmanship, beyond the denial alike of 
friend and foe, with the cool but convincing distinctness of a 
mathematical demonstration. 

His reputation has been of such rapid growth, that ten years 
ago it had scarcely given the earliest indications of its com- 
mencement : the oak of to-day was the acorn of yesterday. 
A single decade in retrospect, and the administrator now 
presiding over the destinies of between 100,000,000 and 
200,000,000 of his fellow-creatures— the statesman intrusted 
at this period of painful transition and supreme emergency, 
with the remodelling of the ancient empire of Aurungzebe 
and Tamerlane— was, if neither thumbing his disdained De- 
lectus, nor turning the leaves of his superfluous Lexicon, still 
lingering as a student over the familiar dialogues of Euripides, 
or wandering among the enthralling mysteries of the higher 
mathematics. Lord Stanley had not yet quitted the University 
in 1848. He was still loitering under the porch of Trinity, still 
busily occupied among his books and manuscripts, as among the 
more assiduous altmni of Cambridge in the very year — so recent 
as it seems to us in the remembrance ! — when M. de Lamar- 
tine was confronting the mob yonder before the Hotel de 
Ville, when the ex-king Louis Philippe, shorn of his whiskers, 
unwigged, and wrapped in an old pea-jacket, was landing 
miserably at Newhaven ; when George Bentinck was lying 
dead there near Welbeck, by the old gate between the deer- 
park and the water-meadow — that mournful spectacle, over 



LORD STANLEY. 211 

which the faithfal friend still laments unceasingly in the monu- 
mental biography — 

O SkfiaQ oixrpov, ^tv, 0cv 
O dfivoTCLTaCy oifioi ot/ioi. 

Events these are that seem literally but just now to hare 
occurred, to have been but freshly inscribed upon the latest 
page of history, the ink barely yet dry, the leaf unturned— 
yet in that same year of grace, 1848, Lord Stanley, now one of 
the most important ministers of the Crown, the ruler of our 
Asiatic dominion, as her- Majesty's Secretary of State for India, 
was still wearing the gown and the tonsure-cap as a collegian. 
He might stiU find leisure to exclaim, as those ridiculous 
Anti-Jacobin-ists, Messrs^ John Prere, William Gifford, and 
George Canning preposterously put it in their immortally 
absurd " Loves of the Triangles :" — 

" Let playfbl Pendules quick vibration feel^ 
Whilfit silent Cyclois rests upon her wheel ; 
Let Hydrostatics, simpering as they go. 
Lead the light Naiads on fantastic toe ; 
Let shriU Acoustics tune the tiny lyre ; 
With Euclid sage, fidr Algebra conspire : 
The obedient pulley strong Mechanics ply. 
And wanton Optics roll the melting eye ! ** 

» 

As recently, in fact, as the time specified— no more than ten 
years since— Lord Stanley had actually not entered the field 
in which he has now already butstripped so many veteran 
competitors. 

The Right Honourable Edward Henry Stanley, commonly 
called Lord Stanley, was bom at Knowsley Park, near Liver- 
pool, on the Slst of July, 1826, being the eldest son (as 
already intimated in the biography of the Prime Minister) of 
Edward Geoffrey, fourteenth Earl of Derby, by his Countess^ 
nee the Hon. Emma Caroline Bootle Wilbraham, second 
daughter of Edward, the first Lord Skelmersdale. The aca- 
demical education of Lord Stanley commenced in the great 

F 2 



213 THE DEBET KINISTSY. 

public seminary of Rugby, and was completed at Trinity College, 
Cambridge. It closed, indeed, in the memorable year before 
mentioned, 1848, with a series of brilliant triumphs, not often 
won together by the most aspiring and adventurous under- 
graduate. Besides being in that year first class in classics. 
Lord Stanley took honours in the mathematical tripos, as 
among the junior optimes, gaining, in addition to other prizes, 
a medal for declamation. 

Almost immediately after taking his degree, the young 
student celebrated his emancipation from the thraldom of the 
University by setting forth upon a voyage to the West-India 
islands and the North-American continent ; traversing during 
his wanderings a considerable portion of the Canadas and the 
United States. Previously to his departure from England, 
he had appeared unsuccessfully as a candidate for a seat in 
the House of Commons, before the constituency of Lancaster. 
It was during his absence upon his travels in the New World 
that the electors of King's Lynn, guided by a sort of instinctive 
sagacity, filled up the vacancy left by the sudden decease of 
the unfortunate nobleman, their late representative, by spon- 
taneously and unanimously electing in his place the heir to the 
earldom of Derby. The choice, we have said, was made with 
a kind of instinctive sagacity by the voters of a borough, whidh 
has thus secured to itself the distinction of having been suc- 
cessively represented in the legislature by the two most able 
and remarkable scions of the aristocracy that have gained 
repute in the Commons— the one in his early youth, the other 
in his riper manhood— since the period of the great social and 
political change marked out by the first organic reform of 
Parliament. It was in the December of 1848, while he was 
still far away on the opposite shores of the Atlantic, that Lord 
Stanley was first returned to a seat in the house, as M.P. 
for Lynn Begis. Not long after his return homewards, he 
fixed the attention of the Commons as a debater of very con- 
siderable promise, and of the public generally as a clever and 
original pamphleteer. His maiden speech, which was delivered 
in the summer of 1850, had reference to a subject which he 



LOKD STANLEY. 213 

had contrived in a great measure to master dnrii;ig the appa- 
rently holiday time of his American excursion. It related* 
in fact, to the sugar-colonies, and was so far, beyond a doubt, 
" a success," that it at once elicited expressions of earnest 
eulogium both from Mr. Gladstone and from Lord Pahnerston. 
The political pamphlet,* published a little while previously by 
Lord Stanley in the shape of a letter addressed to the former of 
those two eminent men, had already thrown much welcome light 
upon the very same subject : bearing directly, indeed, in its 
very title, upon the " Claims and Resources of our West-Lidian 
Colonies." It was the fruit of laborious research and vigilant 
observation. It boldly claimed a repeal of the export duties 
on behalf of the planters. It at once brought the writer 
under the favourable notice of the more watchful and sagacious 
both within and without the walls of Pariiament. The original 
epistle was ultimately followed up by a sequel, in the form of 
a second pamphlet, entitled "Further Facts connected with 
the West Indies." t It seemed inevitable that the noble lord 
the member for Eang's Lynn, whether George Bentinck or 
Edward Stanley, should win distinction in connection with 
the question of the sugar-colonies. 

During the course of 1851, the year popularly known as that 
of the Great International Exhibition, Lord Stanley again 
started upon an extended voyage of inquiry, directing his 
movements this time eastward — to Hindostan — as far even as 
the Bengal presidency. He was still travelling in India, 
when news reached him in April, 1852, of his nomination by 
his father, the new Premier^ as Under-Secretary of State 
in the Foreign department. These unexpected tidings, by 
hastening his journey homewards, abbrevialed his efforts 
to acquire a more accurate knowledge of the actual position 

* Claims and Besources of the West-Indisoi Colonies : a Letter to 
the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. By the Hon. B. Stanley, 
M.P. 8vo. pp. 103. Boone. 1850. 

f Farther Facts connected with the West Indies : a Second Letter 
from the Hon. E. Stanley, M.P.> to the Right Hon. W. E. Glad- 
9boae, M.P, 8vo. Boone. 1851. 



214 THE DERBT MIKISTBY. 

and prospects of our oriental dominions. Enough, howeyer, 
had already been witnessed by him to kindle a more lively 
interest in his miud in regard to the present and fature organ- 
ization of those gigantic and superb possessions. Evidence of 
this was speedily afforded by Lord Stanley, notwithstanding 
that his own party were so soon afterwards driven baek into 
opposition. Whether seated to the right or to the left of 
Mr. Speaker, the young aspirant to power was manifestly 
disinclined to remain either silent as a debater or inactive as 
a reformer. 

At the general election of 1852, as afterwards at the general 
election of 1856, Lord Stanley was returned by the consti- 
tuency of King's Lynn as their representative, not merely 
cordially, but with enthusiasm. His first return, it will be 
remembered, was accomplished by the electors of that borough, 
unasked, during his absence from England upon his American 
wanderings. His occasional acceptance for a few convenient 
hours of those delightful little ministerial sinecures known as 
the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, or of the manor 
of Poynings, or the Escheatorship of Munster, has been fol- 
lowed more than once — ^twice within the last twelvemonth — 
by his quiet nomination and instant return, not only without 
any necessity for a canvass, or any show of opposition, but 
without even subjecting him to the unnecessary fatigue of 
making his appearance upon the hustings before his con- 
stituents. His popularity, indeed, from the outset has been 
continually in the ascendant. Moving onward himself with 
a firm and even step, his path has been repeatedly smoothed 
before him by fortuitous circumstances. Prepared at all times 
to seize whatever occasion might seem propitious for his 
advancement, he has again and again had thrust upon his 
acceptance the most alluring opportunities. Travelling in the 
United States, he is followed thither by the announcement 
of his having been gratuitously elected to a seat in Parlia- 
ment. Travelling in India, he is pursued by the intelligence 
of his appointment to the Eoreign Under-Secretaryship. The 
eldest son of a great leader of party, he has the wherewithal 



LOBD STAIJLEY. 213 

to carve out for himself a future, and to create for himself a 
reputation. It is the merit of Lord Stanley, that he has from 
the commencement shown not only a readmess, hut a capacity, 
to avail himself of these immense advantages. In testimony 
of which it is only necessary to mark well the individual 
lahoors upon which the nohle lord adventured immediately on 
the morrow, as it were, of the overthrow of his father's first 
administration. . 

The twelvemonth succeeding that downfall was certainly 
the busiest the member for King's Lynn had yet known since 
his entrance into the legislature. At the commencement of 
the parliamentary session in 1853, the future author of the 
third India Bill t)f 1858, the measure which has so very 
recently and so very effectually put an end to the anomalous 
rule of John Company — ^submitted to the consideration of the 
House of Ck)mmons a motion suggestive of far more elaborate 
and comprehensive reforms than any dreamt of in the Earl of 
Aberdeen's philosophy : reforms more complete and thorough 
than the uttermost ever contemplated by the united wisdom of 
that so-called ministry of All the Talents, the redoubtable and 
impracticable Coalition Government. If nothing else went to 
prove it, that one remarkable proposition is clearly demonstra- 
tive of the fact that Lord Stanley is, in truth, politically in 
advance of his time ; and that, in regarding him as a reformer 
of considerable enlightenment, his contemporaries are in no 
way hibouring under the influence of a mere hallucination. 

Becollect for a moment what really was the significance of 
that motion of Lord Stanley's in 1853, in reference to the 
affairs of Hindostan. It was the distinct and sagacious recom- 
mendation betimes of a policy that would, five years ago, have 
destroyed root and branch the Upas of the double government. 
It was a prescient measure of conciliation and amelioration, 
long anterior to the horrors of the Bengal mutiny — before 
there was a smutch of that detested grease upon the cartridge — 
before the Nana had formed a notion of his own immense and 
preternatural capacity for crime — while the wells were yet 
limpid at Cawnpore, and the magazines at Delhi were as care- 



216 THE D£BBT MIHUTKT. 

f ally nnder watch and ward as (in time of profound peace) any 
powder-room of a line-of-battle ship riding at anchor off Spit* 
head. It were idle, of course, to coojecture what mighty or 
might not, have been the happy issue of events, supposing Lord 
Stanley's motion of 1853, in regard, to the Anglo-Indian go- 
yemment, had been summarily adopted by the imperial legis- 
lature. Whether or not its acceptance then by Parliament 
would have spared England the miserable ang^uish of the Sepqy 
insurrection, the abhorred and ghastly ordeal of witnessing 
from afar off all that fearful bloodslied, together with the 
frightful accompaniment of all those nameless, and hideous, 
and revolting abominations — must henceforth of course remain 
mere matter of doubt, the sport of every idl^ imagination. Of 
this, however, there cannot by possibility be two opinions — 
that Lord Stanley, then (in the spring of 1853) not quite 
seven-and-twenty years of age, proposed to the House of Com- 
mons a scheme of policy distinctly foreshadowing the very 
measures five sessions later on found to be absolutely requisite 
for the preservation and perpetuation of our jeopardized and 
disorganized empire in Hindostan. 

Another question of great public importance was prominently 
brought, during that same session of 1853, under the considera- 
tion of the popular branch of the legislature. This was in 
truth a subject of no less delicacy and difficulty than the 
Church-Itate question. It was a matter upon which not only 
were Churchmen and Dissenters divided against each other, 
but one likewise upon which large sections of the former 
thought, and still think, very differently. Lord Stanley, with- 
out a moment's hesitation, seized upon the puzzling and 
irritating problem, examined it in all its bearings, made up 
his mind about it resolutely, though he did so manifestly only 
after very serious and careful deliberation; and, as he had 
previously done in the instance of the sugar-colonies, boldly 
expressed his views upon the matter at once as a debater 
and as a pamphleteer. His written argument,* simply entitled 

♦ The Church-Rate Question Considered. By Lord Stanley, M.P. 
TO. pp. 65, Boone. 1853. 



JJOBJ} STANIXT. 217 

^'The Church-Bate Question Considered/' advocated no less 
explicitly than his spoken words the abolition of that uupo- 
pular impost, upon grounds both of principle and of expe- 
diency, of the loffciest principle and of the merest expediency. 
la reasoning thus. Lord Stanley did so with the strictest 
regard to consistency— his religious toleration being complete 
and absolute in its comprehensiyeness : insomuch that, while, 
as a large-minded reformer, the noble member for King's 
Lynn has long been favourable to the exemption of Dissenters 
from church-rates, he has earnestly supported the annual 
giant to the College of Maynooth, and continued, up to the 
last moment requisite, the cordial advocacy of the removal of 
Jewish disabilities! Namely, up to the moment when the 
Baron Lionel de Uothschild, during the course of this last 
session, took his seat, at length, in the House of Commons 
as M. P. for the city of London— five times elected as its 
representative. 

Upon a legislative difficulty of minor importance, yet one 
possessing also a peculiar value in its way, affecting as it does 
the interests of science, and through them, of course, the 
interests of the general community. Lord Stanley, in that same 
year 1853, thought much and well— ultimately, three sessions 
later on, committing to paper succinctly the results of his ear- 
lier and fruitful meditations. His arguments in this instance 
related to the Patent Laws of the United Kingdom; arguments 
embodying themselves in 1856 in the form of an ingenious 
Memorandum* upon various suggested improvements. 

Not the least interesting incident, by the way, observable 
in all the varied ceremonials of Lord Derby's inauguration as 
Chancellor of the University of Oxford, was the conference 
by him, on Tuesday, the 7th of June, 1853, upon his eldest 
son, of the honorary degree of D.C.L. It was not without 
evident emotion that the honour was conferred by the paternal 
hand of the Chancellor upon the youthful Doctor of Civil Law, 
amidst the ringing applause of the undergraduates. 

* Memorandum on Suggested Improvements in the Patent Laws 
ofl852, 1853. By Lord Stanley, M.P. 8vo. pp. 18. Boone. 1856. 



218 THE DEBBY HINISTRT. 

It may be here incidentally remarked, that during^ 1853 
Lord Stanley was gazetted to a Captaincy in the 3rd Lanca- 
shire militia. Ajdded to which, it is also noteworthy in his 
regard, that in that same native shire, the county palatine of 
Lancaster, the noble lord occupies the position of a magistrate 
and a deputy-lieutenant. 

Such was the recognized eminence precociously attained by 
the member for Lynn Uegis, not simply as an intelligent 
politician, but as a statesman in every way qualified to be an 
administrator, that upon the premature demise of Sir William 
Moles worth, in 1855, almost immediately after the right hon. 
baronet's instalment as head of the Colonial department, the 
vacant Secretaryship of State was frankly offered to Lord 
Stanley by Viscount Palmerston. It might even be said that 
the conduct of the Wliig-Canningite Premier was in this 
instance marked by magnanimity, but that it was perfectly 
obvious at the time that the cabinet would have gained an 
extraordinary accession of popularity in the event of the 
acceptance by Lord Stanley of the proffered appointment. 
Such, however, was not to be— something very different was 
upon the cards—the prestige of Lord Stanley's early reputa- 
tion for statesmanship was to be reserved to add strength, not 
to Lord Palmerston's weak, (so-called) strong government, 
but to the Earl of Derby^s strong, (so-called) weak adminis- 
tration. The temptation was happily resisted. Lord Stanley 
was content to bide his time patiently ; and in the meanwhile 
so laboured, both within and without Parliament, as not only 
to sustain, but materially to advance and elevate his repute as 
a reformer. 

Throughout the chief part of his ten years' career before the 
public, the noble lord the member for King's Lynn has striven 
earnestly and effectively to promote the interests of the educa- 
tional movement. His endeavours in this way have not only 
been directed to the furtherance in the abstract, of the great 
cause of national education— they have wisely descended to 
practical particulars, from the empyrean of generality in which 
they might otherwise have evaporated in the idle aspirations of 



LOAD STANLEY. 219 

an empty day-dream. He has, in this way, systematically 
encouraged Mechanics' Institutes upon every possible 
opportunity. He has been conspicuously, if not mainly, 
instrumental in bringing about, through the recent Newspaper 
Act, the abolition, bit by bit, of some of the more grinding 
TsjL.es upon Knowledge. He has proposed, but very recently, 
an admirable scheme for the establishment of public reading- 
rooms and libraries, either stationary or circulating : reading- 
rooms and libraries to be scattered, according to this humane 
project, far and wide, o?er the whole of the rural districts ; 
thereby placing the materials for self-education within reach 
of the toiling millions of our agriculturists. Associated with 
which last-mentioned proposition is another, of a kindred, or 
rather supplementary, description ; the advantages accruing 
from which Lord Stanley has explained in a little pamphlet 
never formally published, but printed by him for private circu- 
lation. In this document the noble lord advocates the regular 
supply, at the national cost, of the parliamentary blue-books— 
at any rate, of well-digested epitomes of their contents, sum- 
maries giving the pith and marrow of their more valuable 
evidence and statistics — ^to all the Mechanics' Institutes in the 
United Kingdom, as well as to the whole of the metropolitan 
press and provincial newspapers. By this arrangement, 
with a force of logic that is perfectly plain upon the very 
surface, accurate and authoritative information upon every 
subject immediately under the consideration of the legislature 
would, not as an exception, but as a rule, be supplied to the 
public and scattered broadcast over the entire country. The 
proposal is one eminently characteristic of the man from whose 
mind it is the emanation. It is illustrative of his rational 
regard to detail, of his genial sympathy with the masses, of his 
manly love for fair play. It indicates, likewise, his complete 
possession of that double aptitude essential for the making of 
an able administrator — aptitude for a broad and comprehen- 
sive view in the first instance, and for minute discriminative 
detail afterwards ; that twofold capacity, possessed to a very 
marvel by Napoleon Bonaparte, of whom it is related, that before 



230 THE DEBBT UINISIBT. 

his first Yoyage across the Mediterranean^ he planned the whole 
scheme of the conquest of Egypt, afterwards so memorably 
realized in the great campaign of the Pyramids— and yet him- 
self filled up the whole draft of the wonderful enterprise, eren 
to the number of slate-pencils to be carried out by the expedi- 
tion. In the recent draft for the re-organization of the Anglo- 
Indian government, the same duplex power has been signally 
manifested by our English administrator. His surety for suc- 
cess in this, is the fact of his being endowed, to a very remark* 
able degree, with that best substitute for genius — oommoit 
sense. It is — we all of us, at any rate, possess it to the extoit 
of being able to recognize and acknowledge this much in its 
regard— it is as the Tery eye, as the very apple of the eye, to 
that seiuorium of the intellect, the judgment. Insignificant, 
apparently contracting to a point under the Hght of reason, yet, 
as the Chevalier de Boufflers has, in allusion to the organ of 
sight, wittily expressed it, in one of his happiest bon-moU, em- 
bracing within its small circumference the whole universe: 
" La prunelle de Tceil est petite, et tout le ciel y est peint." So, 
too, with that rarest faculty, after the gift of genius— common 
sense. It is seemingly very trivial, but it is all-embracing : it 
refiects everything within it, moreover, with a minute, almost 
microscopic, particularity. Hence the sound and rational 
views, the projects large in scope and careful in detail, through 
the display of which Lord Stanley has earned for himself 
thus early his high and popular reputation. Hence, with* 
out any pretensions to the gift of oratory, without those 
persuasive attributes, lending a charm to debate, while un« 
consciously influencing the reason by simply captivating 
the taste. Lord Stanley has risen to be one of the foremost 
among the notabilities in the political arena, through the 
potent sway secured to him by his clear and candid reason, 
his enlarged sympathies, his conscientious zeal, his pure and 
elevated principles. 

On the formation of Lord Derby's second cabinet, towards 
the end of Eebruary, 1858, the post originally allotted by the 
Premier to Sir Edward Lytton was still, at the eleventh hour 



LOUD STANLEY. 221 

d the ministerial negotiations, left vacant, hy reason of the 
generous self-ahnegation, inducing the member for Herts to 
waive his first acceptance of office rather than risk the pos- 
sibility of an electioneering defeat to his party immediately 
npon the construction of the new government. Eventually 
this magnanimous decision on the part of Sir Edward proved 
to have been altogether superfluous, his return three months 
later as one of the knights of his ancestral shire being effected 
triumphantly without even a shadow of opposition. At the 
approach of the ides of March, however, the caution dis- 
played appeared to be reasonable enough under the circum- 
stances, even to those who were chagrined to note, as mere 
observers, the slackening of the poet-novelist's grasp upon 
the^wand of power at the moment of its presentation—at what 
might perchance have proved through a whole after lifetime 
the one golden opportunity. Here, however, in the nobler 
significancy of the words. Sir Bulwer Lytton, spontaneously 
guided by a chivahous impulse, and without an instant's 
hesitation — 



€( 



Gave up to party what was meant for mankind." 



The Colonial Secretaryship was still left, at the last 
moment, at the disposal of the Eirst Lord of the Treasury. 
It was awarded by him to Lord Stanley — and the post, which 
had been proffered in vain to that noble lord by the late 
Premier, Viscount Palmerston, was promptly accepted by 
the member for Lynn Eegis in his father's administration. 
The sequel, as a casualty but of yesterday, is within every 
one's immediate remembrance. The unprecedented course 
pursued at a juncture of some difficulty by the noble earl, the 
newly-installed President of the Board of Control,* left at 

* This magnanimous act will henceforth be recorded as not the 
least remarkable evidence of civism, illustrating the life, genius, 
and character of the Right Hon. Edward Law, second Baron and 
jSrst Earl of Ellenborough. A precipitate despatch, followed by 
an impetuous resignation, denied to the history of our Indian 
empire the realization of an episode which must otherwise have 



223 THE DEBBY HIKISTRT. 

the council-board of the ministry a sudden gap, necessitating, 
at least to some extent, the reorganization of the govern- 
ment. With a self-sacrifice, eminently characteristic of the 
man. Lord EUenborough had tendered his resignation to 
her Majesty, without previously consulting his ministerial 
colleagues. The acceptance of that resignation by the sove- 
reign forced upon the residue of the cabinet the responsibility 
of filling up the hiatus caused by the withdrawal of one of 
the most impetuous, as he was, beyond a doubt, one of 
the most gifted and knightly of their associates. Thereupon, 
again, the curule chair and the ivory rod were placed within 
reach of the great author's acceptance, and Sir Edward 
Bulwer Lytton assumed the position originally assigned to 
him — ^that of ruler of our Colonial Empire, as her Majesty's 
Principal Secretary of State at the head of that depart- 
ment. Simultaneously, Lord Stanley, who, as minister of the 
Crown, seemed threatening to become — 

** Everything by turns and nothing long :" 

Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Colonial Secretary, 
President of the Board of Control— removed from Downing- 

inevitably constituted one of the most striking instances of 
poetical justice anywhere related by the pen of eithw ancient 
or modem annalist. It is yet unaffectedly matter of regret 
with us that circumstances, in every way so untoward and un- 
expected, deprived Lord EUenborough (apparently at the very 
moment when it was fairly within his reach) of that grand avenging 
opportunity. It would, in truth, have been Nemesis striking inex- 
orably with the sword of At6, had the fatal blow been administered 
at last to the doomed power of the Directors by that particular man 
among all the millions of the United Kingdoms-one of the most 
illustrious, certainly one of the most successful, of the, Governors- 
General of India, yet the only one ever insulted by being pre- 
maturely and peremptorily recalled. In his instance had been 
accomplished what was proposed, but never attempted, i^ that of 
Warren Hastings, of Daylesford. The rod of empire had been 
rudely snatched from his grasp : — to have broken it above the heads 
of his insulters would indeed have been a signal and magnificent 
vengeance. 



LOBD STANLET. 223 

street to Caimon-row,* and there took up the tangled web of 
Our Indian policy precisely as it had fallen to the ground 
when thrown' aside by the impulsive hand of the Earl of 
EUenborough. Already the young administrator of our affairs 
in Hindostan has made a clear sweep of the difficulties 
obstructing his onward course as a reformer at the commence- 
ment of his enormous labours of innovation. The axe, indeed, 
was vigorously laid betimes to the root of many a stubborn 
obstacle in the preliminary clearanoe effected by means of 
Lord John Eussell's comprehensive Besolutions. But after 
that earlier toil, the ruins of the old system had to be 
swept away by the parliamentary "besom of destruction.'' 
And then began in earnest the momentous task confided to 
Lord Stanley by the Crown and by the Country, — ^the task be 
has since performed so very dexterously, vigorously, and 
(for all immediate purposes) thoroughly : that of reconstruct- 
ing, from its very foundations, the whole fabric of our Anglo- 
Lidian government. Steering adroitly midway between the 
Scylla of Lord Palmerston's bill No. 1 and the Charybdis of 
Lord Ellenborough's bill No. 2— Lord Stanley brought 
bill No. 3 safely into port as a perfected enactment. His 
plan proved, upon careful scrutiny, to have none of the serious 
or rather insuperable blemishes appertaining to each of its 
nnlucky predecessors : insomuch, that it rapidly passed as a 
measure comparatively untouched, certainly unmarred, througl^ 
all its various stages in both houses of Parliament. It put 
an end to the old oscillatory, dislocating system of the double 
government. It established in its stead an India Board, con- 
sisting of fifteen councillors, seven chosen by the Company, 
eight chosen by the Crown — a councQ-board presided over, 
as a matter of course, by her Majesty's chief of the department. 
The designation of that principal administrator of the affairs 
of Hindostan, after being temporarily transformed from 

* Subsequently, on being appointed Secretary of State for India, 
the noble lord selected, as his permanent official residence, the 
vacated palace of the Moribund Company in Leadenhall-street. 
Le Hoi est mort — Vive le Hoi / 



224 THE DEKBT KINISTBT. 

President of the Board of Control into the transition name of 
Boyal Commissioner, was ultimately exchanged for the per- 
manent official title befitting the dignity of the post, its 
splendour, and its responsibilities. As recently as the date 
of the privy council holden in the palace at Osborne on the 
2nd of September, 1858, Lord Stanley was sworn in before 
the Queen as her Majesty's Secretary of State for India. In 
that character, as one of the five great Secretaries of State, he 
now wields the rod of empire over the whole of those vast 
dominions, over a population of more than 160,000,000, over 
territories extending from the Himalaya Mountains to Cape 
Comoi-in, from the frontiers of Burmah to the borders of 
Afghanistan. 

With the appearance and bearing of the Indian secretary 
every frequenter of the house has long since become fami- 
liarized. Each is sufficiently expressive of his character — 
his manner full of self-reliance, ids features marked in their 
every outline by the unmistakable tokens of an implicit, even 
haughty, confidence in his own convictions. The compressed 
lips, the smileless but meditative eye, the solid and compact 
brow — indicate as plainly as mouth, glance, or forehead 
can indicate anything, the concentrated energy of a nature 
that has already risen high in authority ; that may yet, in the 
fulness of time, rise to supreme power as the chief of a future 
government. Lord Stanley has, even now, in his early man- 
hood, gained for himself so wide and comprehensive a popu- 
larity, that, in regard to his probable career in statesmanship, 
the loftiest future might be safely predicated. His political 
position is tliat of the Coming Man— if not Come at last, at 
any rate, loitering for ten yefars upon the brink of general 
recognition. 



THE 

RIGHT HON. SIR J. PAKINGTON, 



THE RIGHT HON. SIR J. PAKINGTON. 



' In obedience, we presume, to that remarkable law known 
as the rule of contraries, England is in the habit of awarding 
to a civilian the chief command of the whole maritime depart- 
ment of the State, the supreme authority over the most 
thoroughly national— certainly the most popular — of her great 
warlike professions. A similar proceeding would assuredly 
be resented loudly and indignantly by the red-coats. Sup- 
posing, that is to say, that the Horse Guards were some fine 
morning startled from its propriety by the apparition within 
its precincts of a right honourable gentleman in the Windsor 
Tmiform—a personage hitherto unacquainted perhaps with 
any other sword than that wretched little spindling rapier worn 
at a royal levee, and only designed apparently for the express 
purpose of tripping the wearer up by getting entangled 
between those extremely cool silk stockings. Supposing, we 
say, a phenomenon of this kind were suddenly brought under 
the shadow of the clock in Parliament-street, and presented 
to some of those familiar giants in jack-boots as the newly- 
appointed Commander-in-Chief! The nomination, in that in- 
stance, would be regarded at once, not only by the army itself, 
but by the public generally, as an anomaly of the most mon- 
strous kind well imaginable — almost as an insult— decidedly as 
an extravagance. 

Yet precisely the same identical anomaly occurs close by 
there, time after time, at the Admiralty, and nobody wonders 
in the least at it, everbody views it complacently as a mere 
matter of course, and the incident, at first rare, taking place 
again and again, has come at last to be the ridiculous rule, 
instead of being only, what it was once, the absurd exception. 

Q 2 



228 THE DEBST UINISTKT. 

The blue-jackets, we suppose, are in some mysterious way 
differently constituted from their brothers on shore, whether 
infantry, cavalry, artillery, or engineers. Jack— we are left 
to conjecture— has some inexplicable weakness enabling him 
to view with equanimity the promotion of one particular 
description of landlubber over the heads of all the admirals 
of the fleet— rear, vice, and full ; red, white, and blue— though 
one might almost imagine the majority to be blue under the 
peculiar effects produced by these very remarkable circum- 
stances. Since the glorious rule at the Admiralty of that 
gallant old Earl of St. Vincent, who was as true a tar as he 
was a severe and even pitiless disciplinarian, the civilians have 
had it almost uninterruptedly to themselves. 

Once certainly during the interval which has elapsed since 
that epoch of the Jervis rule- the period illustrated by so 
many of our marine glories, by the immortal victories of 
Nelson, down to his crowning but fatal triumph at Trafalgar — 
once, during the half-century which has subsequently inter- 
vened, a Sailor Prince, afterwards King William IV., held pos- 
session for awhile of the ahnost forgotten dignity of England's 
Lord High Admiral : long before then, and again ever since 
then, fallen into desuetude. It was during that momentary 
return of power at the Admiralty to the grasp of a British 
seaman, that the salt-water administrator in question, then 
H.II.H. the Duke of Clarence, by appending to an official 
despatch the laconic and characteristic countersign in the 
form of a pencDled postscript — " All I can say is. Go it, Ned ! " 
— enabled Sir Edward Codrington to dare even the defiance 
of orders, and to win thus, by a double audacity, the famous 
battle of Navarino. 

Once, again (it was in 1852, during the Earl of Derby's 
former premiership), a Sailor Duke was, for an interval of ten 
months, installed as First Lord at the head of the Board of 
Admiralty— meaning, of course, no other than Admiral his 
Grace the Duke of Northumberland. And it was during the 
brief rule of this gallant Percy that the naval resources of 
Great Britain were so appreciably multiplied and consolidated. 



THE BIGHT HOK. SIR J. FARIKGTON. 229 

On resuming power in the spring of 1868, Lord Derby 
reyerted unexpectedly to the system ahready so long in vogue 
among his predecessors : he deemed it advisable to award 
the chief lordship at the Admiralty to a civilian. Happily, 
however, the award was made to an able civilian— to a states- 
man who had proved his administrative capacity six years pre- 
viously by the skill with which, as one of her Majesty's prin- 
cipal Secretaries of State, he had presided for nearly a twelve- 
month over the interests and destinies of our vast and 
scattered colonial possessions. Otherwise than for the repu- 
tation thus previously acquired for himself, as a minist^ of 
the Crown, by Sir John Pakington, the public might have 
been disposed to regard with dismay, as well as regret, the 
continuance by the new Premier of the incongruous system 
alluded to, the system by which the battered old hull of the 
Admiralty had been so often encrusted with Tite Barnacles, 
its rigging tangled with the trammels of red tape, its hatches 
battened down and sealed with the seal of circumlocution. 

If the First Lord, then, must needs be a civilian, fortunately 
the one now selected for the office is an administrator who 
has often proved himself capable of taking enlarged views of 
statesmanship, and who has already evidenced his solicitude 
to discharge conscientiously and laboriously the duties devolv- 
ing upon him as a member of her Majesty's government. 

The Right Hon. John Eussell— it so happens by a coinci- 
dence not altogether unworthy perhaps of this merely casual 
mention, as one of those amazing facts called by Mr. Timbs 
" Things not generally Known" — might signify either the noble 
lord the member for the city of London, or the right hon. 
baronet the member for the borough of Droitwich. If applied 
to the former, the identity being indicated by the customary 
supplement — " commonly called Lord John Russell :" if to the 
latter, by the additional words expressive of the more gene- 
rally known and long since legalized title — " commonly called 
Sir John Pakington." 

The First Lord of the Admiralty in fact— now not far re- 
moved in age from his sixtieth anniversary, having been bom 



230 THE DEBBT UINISTRT. - 

in 1799— was the eldest son of William Russell, Esquire, of 
Powick Court, in Worcestershire, by his wife Elizabeth, 
eldest daughter of Sir Herbert Perrot Pakington, Bart., of 
Westwood, in that same (to their offspring) doubly-ancestral 
county of Worcester. Besides being in this twofold way Sir 
John's ancestral shire, it was also his native county, his birth 
having taken place in the old mansion on the paternal estate 
of Powick Court before mentioned. The transformation of 
name— from his original patronymic to his adopted matronymic 
— ^is therefore of course sufficiently obvious : but of that more 
hereafter. 

The education of young John Somerset Russell, heir ap- 
parent to the property at Powick, and heir presumptive to 
the property at Westwood, began at Eton and ended at Oriel 
College, Oxford: conspicuous among the university contem- 
poraries of the future statesman being the late severed and 
lamented Dr. Arnold, that paragon of modem schoolmasters. 

Immediately after quitting Oxford, the young student, 
having indeed but then recently attained his majority, frst 
assumed the nuptial bonds, in which he has thrice appeared 
in the character of a bridegroom : his choice falling, in two 
out of these three occasions, upon an only child, and twice — 
far more strange to tell — namely, in the instance of his second 
and third wife — ^upon a lady named Augusta Anne ! Sir John 
Pakington having, moreover, been married to the first Augusta 
Anne on the 4th of June in one year, and to the second 
Augusta Anne on the 5th of June in another. 

It was while still Mr. Russell, junior, of Powick Court, 
Worcestershire, that the future baronet of Westwood, on the 
14th of August, 1822, took to wife Mary, the only child of 
Moreton Aglionby Slaney, Esquire, of Chiffnal, in the county of 
Salop. His eldest son, John Slaney Russell Pakington, bom 
to him as the earliest fmit of this marriage, and now conse- 
quently heir to his title and fortunes, was himself, on the 4th 
of July, 1849, united to the Lady Diana, youngest daughter 
of George Boyle, fourth Earl of Glasgow. Upwards of 
twenty years elapsed from the date of Sir John's first wedding 



THE RIGHT HON. SIB J. FAKINGTOK. 231 

before the time of his being left, on the 6th of January, 1843, 
a widower. During that interval he had altered his name, 
extended his property, enhanced his local influence in his own 
county, and assumed a place in the legislature as member for 
that same constituency, of which, by re-election after re-election, 
he has ever since then sat in the House of Commons as the 
representative. 

Upon the death of his maternal uncle. Sir John Pakington, 
on the 6th of January, 1830— exactly, to the very day, thirteen 
years before the demise of the first wife of the present Sir 
John Pakington — Mr. Kussell, of Powick, succeeded to the 
estate at Westwood, assuming the name of Pakington by 
royal permission. The ancient baronetcy had expired with 
his predecessor. It was not revived, as will be afterwards re- 
marked, until sixteen years later on, when, by a new creation, 
the honours of the house were resuscitated in the person of 
the present Pirst Lord of the Admiralty. 

Although the Pakingtons are known to have flourished as a 
family of some repute as far back as the reign of Henry I., the 
first Sir John Pakington of whom there is any record, the one, 
moreover, who has long retained the credit of having been the 
founder of the fortunes of his race, was a lawyer of consider- 
able eminence in the time of Henry VIII., his official position 
as chirographer, or engrosser of fines, in the court of Common 
Pleas, leading, in all probabilily, to his knighthood at the hands 
of that sovereign. Another Pakington, one Eobert Pakington, 
sat as M.P. for the city of London, in one of the few obse- 
quious parliaments assembled during that same grim despot- 
ism. A second Sir John Pakington, Knight of the Bath and 
privy councillor, was one among the especial favourites at the 
court of Queen Elizabeth. It was upon the coat of arms of 
his eldest son. Sir John Pakington of Ailesbury, that the 
bloody hand was first affixed to the family escutcheon, towards 
the dose of the reign of James I., namely, on the 22nd of June, 
1620, that being the date of the old creation of the baronetcy. 
Queen Elizabeth's favourite was still living when his grand- 
son, the second baronet, succeeded to the title upon his father's 



232 TH£ DEABY MINISTB.T. 

demise ; eventuallj succeeding, moreover, upon the old grand* 
sire's death, to the family estates in Worcestershire ; removing 
thereupon to the ancestral hall at Westwood from the paternal 
mansion at Ailesbury. A descendant of his, the third or fourth 
Sir John Pakington, Bart., long retained a seat in the House 
of Commons as M.P. for the county of Worcester, during 
the successive reigns of Charles II. and James II., until 
the memorable close of the Stuart dynasty to the tune of 
Lillibullero ! 

It is neither, however, as member for the city of London, 
nor yet as member for the county of Worcester, that the 
present chief of the family, the first Sir John Pakington of the 
second creation, has now for one-and-twenty years sat in the 
Commons' House of Parliament. In 1837 he was elected M.P. 
for the borough of Droitwich, and, as before intimated, by that 
same ccmstituency, he has been now, some half a dozen times, 
selected as its representative. Three years before the date of 
his earliest return to the legislature, however, Mr. BusseU- 
Pakington, as he was then, had emerged into something 
like public life from the comparative privacy of a mere 
county magnate or country gentleman. It was in 1834! that he 
was first of all appointed chairman of the Worcestershire 
Quarter Sessions, an office the honourable and laborious duties 
ol which he continued to discharge, with the highest credit 
to himself and his county, for no less than twenty years 
afterwards— viz. till 1854, when he at length withdrew from its 
responsibilities. When the Earl of Derby, two years pre- 
viously to that resignation, nominated Sir John, in 1852, to 
one of the most important and difficult posts in his administra- 
tion, it was remarked derisively, that a Chairman of Quarter 
Sessions had been rashly intrusted, as one of the then three 
Secretaries of State,* with the solemn prerogative of presiding 

*It will be remembered that a fourth secretarysliip of state was 
firgt of all instituted when the War department was eventually 
separated from the Oolouial department, shortly after the instal- 
lation of the redoubtable ministry of All the Talents, called the 
Aberdeen Oabinet, or Coalition Government, when his Grace tfa6 



THE BIGHT HON. SIB J, PAKIN&TON. 233 

over the interests of our whole colonial empire. It has 
gradually, since then, however, come to be generally recog- 
nized, that in Sir John's instance Lord Derby acted rather 
shrewdly, than rashly, in the selection. Nor, indeed, apart 
from the indiyidual abilities of the some-time Colonial Secre- 
tary, now rirst Lord of the Admiralty, can the experience of 
eighteen years as chairman in the conrt of Quarter Sessions 
of the Peace for a county like that of Worcester be regarded 
as in any way incongruous, much less as anything ridiculous, as 
a preparative for the more important toils of an administrator : 
especially when accompanied, as it was in the instance before 
us, by several years' vigilant observation, if not personal 
participation in, the proceedings and debates of Parliament. 
It should be remembered, at any rate, in regard to the parti- 
cular sessions alluded to (those general sessions, held, as the 
name indicates, quarterly, before two or more justices of the 
peace), that their records or rolls are confided, according to 
almost immemorial custom, to the safe keeping of a special 
officer of the Crown — " the principal civil officer in the county," 
quoth Blackstone, " as the lord-lieutenant is the chief in mili- 
tary command " — a justice of the quorum, known by his dis- 
tinctive title as Gustos Roiulorum. Happily, upon this point, 
it may be already observed, by the way, that Sir John Paking- 
ton has contrived to live down the sneers which greeted his 

Duke of Newcastle (reagning the seals of the Colonies, for their 
transference by her Majesty immediately afterwards to the hands 
of Sir Q^orge Grey) commenced his laborious and ssealous career 
as Secretary for War, a career so prematurely closed and so basely 
reeompensed. The Duke of Newcastle has long since, however, 
been very signally avenged — ^by the ignominious failure, as a war 
administrator, of his grace's vaunted successor, the Bight Hon. 
Fox Maule, Lord Panmure. A fifth secretary of state, as already 
remarked in the preceding biography, was yet more recently called 
into existence, when, in the August of 1858, the noble lord the 
member for King's Lynn, ex-President of the Board of Control, 
and ex-Commissioner for the Afiairs of Hindostan, was ultimately 
sworn in at Osborne Palace as her Majesty's Secretary of State for 
India. 



234 THE DEBST HINISTKT. 

first nomination, six years ago, as a Cabinet Minister. It is 
recognized now, that a first Lord of the Treasury might act in 
many ways less judiciously than by selecting, as one of his 
ministerial colleagues an able and assiduous Chairman of 
Quarter Sessions. 

Midway between the time of his original acceptance of this 
chairmanship and the date of its resignation, the member for 
Droitwich, on the 4th of June, 1844, was united to his second 
bride, Augusta Anne, the third daughter of the Eight Rev. 
George Murray, the Lord Bishop of Rochester, by that 
prelate's wife, the Lady Sarah Maria^ daughter of Robert 
Auriol, ninth Earl of Kinnoul. 

Within four years from the period of his second marriage, 
namely, by the 22nd of February, 1848, Sir John Pakington 
was again a widower. A little more than three years had 
elapsed, however, when, upon the morrow of the seventh 
anniversary of his second marriage, he espoused his third 
wife — ^again an only child — another bride named Augusta 
Anne, daughter of the late Thomas Champion de Crespigny, 
Esquire, and relict of the some-time M.P. for Worcester, 
Colonel Thomas Henry Hastings Davis, of Elmby Park, in 
that county. 

Eight months afterwards, in the February of the year 
following. Sir John Pakington was sworn in as a privy 
councillor, on accepting the seals of office as her Majesty's 
principal Secretary of State for the' Colonies. Through- 
out the whole period during which he was intrusted with 
the guidance of the affairs of that department, the new 
minister, if he failed to innovate, certainly never once blun- 
dered. His policy was characterized, from first to last, by an 
admirable caution, and, for the most part also, by a slow and 
deliberate sagacity : insomuch that, bearing in mind the 
records of his ten months' colonial secretaryship, it seems by 
no inapt symbol of the qualities transmitted to him &om his 
remote ancestry, generation after generation, that centuries 
back the elephant should have been selected as the emblematic 
crest of the Pakingtons. 



THE BIGHT HON. BI& J. PAKINGTON. 235 

Together with several of his late colleagues. Sir John, 
on the afternoon of Tuesday, the 7th of June, 1853, received 
at Oxford, from the hands of the ex-premier, the honorary 
degree of D.O.L., upon the noble earPs installation as the 
University Chancellor. 

The elevation of the member for Droitwich to the baronetcy 
— although twelve years have elapsed since the date of its 
occurrence— will still be remembered by many as having taken 
place under somewhat peculiar and interesting circumstances. 
It was upon the occasion of the final retirement of Sir Bobert 
Peel from the supreme responsibilities of office as Prime 
Minister, when, immediately prior to his resignation, in the 
June of 1846, that true-hearted aud magnanimous statesman 
made choice of a very select few for this signal and graceful 
evidence of his friendship. It mattered nothing to Sir Robert 
that his free-trade measures had been strenuously opposed 
at every stage by the member for Droitwich — ^the political 
antagonist was forgotten in the personal associate ; and there, 
conspicuously in the little batch of baronets, appeared the 
name of Sir John Pakington. 

During the fifteen years immediately preceding his first 
nomination to office by Lord Derby in 1852,. Sir John had 
been an observant, and latterly also, an active and energetic, 
member of the House of Commons, ready in debate, laborious 
and intelligent as a committee-man. In the latter capacity, 
indeed, he has, it should be observed, in several instances 
signalized his capacity somewhat noticeably. Once especially, 
in 1848, as an able participator in the labours of the memor- 
able Sugar Committee, of which Lord George Bentinck was 
the remarkable and indefatigable chairman : once, in 1855, 
as one of the more prominent members of Mr. Roebuck's 
famous Committee of Inquiry into the state of the army before 
Sebastopol. 

As among the most earnest advocates of the educational 
movement. Sir John Pakington has long since secured to 
himself an enviable popularity even with the more advanced of 
the liberal reformers. His labours in the good cause are, in 



836 THE DERBY KINISTB.T. 

trath^ not tmwoiiliy of one who, while upon erery occasion 
consistently maintauung his character as a stanch and reso- 
lute supporter of the church establishment, disdains not to 
follow, heart and son], in the broad, ri^^t-onward track 
akeady marked out by the footsteps of his distinguished 
Eoman Catholic predecessor— the undoubted originator of the 
whole of this long-sustained agitation of the great question of 
National Education— his Excellency Sir Thomas Wyse, her 
Majesty's ambassador at the court of Greece. Nothing, per- 
haps, is more propitious to the general interests of the educa- 
tional moyement, than the cordial co-(^eration in its further- 
ance, of so many contrasting religionists, men ferrent without 
bigotry, and earnest without sectarianism. Such has been the 
outspoken and straightforward sincerity in this way mani- 
fested throughout by Sir John Pakington, that, without respect 
to creed or to party, we believe there would be a very general 
reliance in the candour and conscientiousness of any measures 
upon this Great Boot Question of social reform, initiated, oi 
CTcn guided in its initiation, by the right hon. baronet the 
member for Droitwich. 

His energies, however, are manifestly and necessarily 
diverted at the present moment from what (to his honour be 
it said) has for some time past been regarded as one of his 
favourite hobbies as a reformer. The National Defences, in 
his estimation, take precedence now, as a source of patriotic 
solicitude, even of the long-cherished day-dreams of National 
Education. Sir John Pakington's admimstrative capacities, 
let us hope, are directed nowadays rather to the creation and 
organization of a Chamiel fleet than to the multiplication of 
normal schools, even though they be based upon no abnormal 
foundation. Whatever our eagerness to note the advance of 
the educational movement, we should be loth indeed to 
have that advance precipitated in any manner by what might, 
through the merest possibility, conduce to the dilapidation of 
those old wooden walls which under God are the sureties for 
the continued existence, as a people, of the race in whose behalf 
this same educational movement is dreamt of as a means of 



THE BIGHT HON. 8IE J. FAKIN6T0N. 237 

fartliei enlightenm^t. Already, under Sir John Pakington's 
role at the Admiralty, the outlines of that hitherto hypo- 
thetical Channel fleet are at length becoming dimly perceptible. 
Already there are appreciable additions to that long list of the 
effective yessels constituting the materiel of the Eoyal Navy 
of Great Britain — additions sprinkled here and there down 
the whole grim catalogue—that warlike alphabet of frigates, 
sloops, and cutters, gun-boats and line-of-battle ships, from 
the Boyal Albert to the Duke of Wellington, from the Aeom 
to the Zephyr, Earnestly bent upon fulfilling the weighty, 
nay solemn, responsibilities of his office at all hazard, eyen at 
the risk of so far neglecting his parliamentary duties as to 
appear upon the division-list less frequently than any of his 
colleagues. Sir John Fakington wore the wooden spoon at the 
whitebait dinner, though with an air of waggery— almost as a 
decoration. 



THE RIGHT HON. J. W. HENLEY, 

IPws&mt of % ^0arb of Crait* 



THE BIGHT HON. J. "W. HENLEY. 



Ant okx who will call to mind, vividly, the earlier incidents 
of the French revolution — ^the revolution, we mean, not of 
1789, nor yet of 1830, but that of 184:8— the tumults of neither 
October, nor of July, but those of February, when the hero 
of the hour, in place of Camille Desmoulins the crack- 
brained, or of Armand Carrel the transcendental, was another 
and a far more glorious and chivalric dreamer of dreams, 
Alphonse de Lamartine— may remember a certain queer, little, 
fantastic ceremonial that was then for some time a matter of 
rather frequent recurrence. This was nothing more than the 
planting of a small shrub, generally a sapling of the most 
hopeless delicacy of constitution, somewhere in the middle of 
a place, or on one of the quays of the Seine, or at the crossing 
of two of the great boulevards. Had our dear old friend Mr. 
Evelyn been among the number of our own contemporaries, in- 
stead of living as he did in the days of the dismal Puritans and 
the Merry Monarch, he must infallibly, if only as the author of 
"Sylva," have very carefully (after the fashion of Captain 
Cuttle) made a note of it in his Diary, whenever he came 
across one of those extraordinary exhibitions of popular zeal 
in the cultivation of the science of horticulture. It was so 
mystical a proceeding from first to last ; so noisy and yet so 
dull, and, to a stranger who knew nothing at all about its inner 
meaning, so utterly incomprehensible. 

A multitude of citizens took part in each performance, either 
actively or as spectators, all of them in a high state of excite- 
ment, most of them joining in the choral refrain of the Mar- 
seillaise. There were dances about the tree when it was 
planted ; civic processions marched four abreast round it as 

n 



242 THl! DEEBT MINISTBT. 

though it had been some triumphal monument ; its branches 
fluttered with tricoloured streamers, were hung with wreaths 
of immortelles, were lit up, as evening closed in, with a plen- 
tiful sprinking des lampions, the little oil globules familiar to 
the frequenters of Vauxhall. Yet the next morning, and for 
many days afterwards, there stood the poor little sapling in ihe 
midst of an universal solitude ; an object of momentary curio- 
sity, perhaps, every now and then, to some vagrant dog ; an 
occasional standing-point for the cocoa-seller, where he pitched 
his little tin temple and clattered his little tin bell to allure 
the more thirsty of the foot passengers. There it stood, the 
miserable shadow of its recent splendour, shivering and 
withering, draggled and woe-begone, looking for all the world 
like something as nearly as possible midway between the 
spectral shade of a Christmas tree and the ghost of a 
Maypole. 

It was the Tree of Liberty. More than that, it was a stand- 
ing evidence that trees of liberty are not to be transplanted. 

One we ourselves have also, here in England: it is the 
old British oak-tree, the growth, not of a night, but of cen- 
turies — nourished with the dews of perpetual Reform, 
flourishing in the free air and light of Liberalism, rooted, wide 
and deep, in the stubborn and primeval soil of Conservatism. 
As Sir Walter Scott sings of the Highland pine, through the 
lips of the boatmen of Eodenck Dhu : — 

" Moor*d in the rifted rock. 

Proof to the tempest's shock. 
Firmer he roots him the ruder it blow : 

Heaven send it happy dew, 

Earth send it sap anew, 
Gaily to burgeon and broadly to grow." 

It is the stalwart produce of ages, growing with the growth, 
and strengthening with the strength of generation after gene- 
ration ; scarred here and there, it is true, by the storms that 
have passed over it, shaken by the thunder, seared by the 
lightning, but loftier and grander, and more vigorous through 



THE KIGHT HON. J. W. HENLET. 213 

all the lapse of time, through each successive catastrophe, 
through every variety of vicissitude. And, under the blessing 
of Heaven, for the One Reason already particularized — be- 
cause, while bathed all this while in the light and air of 
Liberty, it. has been rooted continually among the iron and 
dffidal granite of that stubborn soil of Conservatism. Striking 
fresh roots abroad every now and then, as occasion seemed 
to require, roots riving asunder the rocky obstructions they 
penetrated, and taking a yet firmer grip than ever of their 
ample and solid foundations. 

If Lord Stanley may be described — and described, we be- 
lieve, most accurately — as the Member imparting the leaven 
of more advanced liberalism to her Majesty's Government, 
Mr. Henley may be defined, with equal correctness, as the 
Minister representing at the council-board of the Earl 
of Derby's Cabinet all that is most earnestly and rationally 
characteristic of the ancient spirit of Conservatism. He is the 
very type of old-world Toryism under its most reasonable aspect 
— shrewd, keen-sighted wherever he will look (but he won't 
look sometimes save in his own chosen direction), conscientious 
to a scruple, precise to a fault — an excellent fault, however, 
in the habit of a financier. His intellect is eminently logical, 
moreover, in its way, when you once get to the right side of it. 
It is logical always, if you frankly grant him his premises un- 
conditionally. His convictions are consistent throughout, and 
dogged almost to the extent of obstinacy. Yet he is so clear- 
headed at the very time when he is so hard-headed, that he 
can be less accurately termed the drag upon the state-coach 
than the break happily applied at times to the train of political 
events — ^regulating our speed at critical moments, when we 
have been just shunted on to a new line perhaps, and are going 
down an incline of more than ordinary acclivity. 

The President of the Board of Trade, without being a party 
leader, or having a tail of devoted followers, stands forth so 
far conspicuously that he may be regarded as the representa- 
tive of a class, and an important class too, among the motley 
sections of the lower house of Parliament. He has at 

b2 



2ii THE DERBT HINI8T&T. 

his back those honourable gentlemen once agreeably enn- 
merated by her Majesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
when simply B. Disraeli, M.P. for the county of Bucking- 
ham— "the Mileses and the Buncombes, the Liddells and 
the Yorkes, the pleasant presence of Walter Long, and the 
stout heart of Mr. Buck — all men of mettle, and large- 
acred squires." There they all are still, or their genial and 
hereditary successors; and there, as their sympathizer and 
mouthpiece in the ranks of the Ministry, is the Eight Honour- 
able gentleman the member for Oxfordshire. His nomination 
to a seat in the Cabinet secures in that way a manifest equi- 
poise to the machinery of the administration. If the Secre- 
tary for India is as an additional cog-wheel for accelerating 
its motion, the President of the Board of Trade might be 
typified as a supplementary and ponderous fly-wheel to act 
securely by way of regulator. 

The Eight Honourable Joseph Warner Henley, now in his 
sixty-fifth year, having been bom in 1793, is the only son of 
Joseph Henley, Esquire, by the daughter of C. Eooke, Esquire, 
of Wandsworth. His university education was completed at 
Oxford with some distinction, where, as a student of Magdalen 
College, he graduated as B.A. in 1815 ; nearly twenty year» 
afterwards, namely in 1834, taking his degree as M.A. ; and 
nearly twenty years after that receiving the honorary degree 
of D.C.L. 

Immediately at the close of the year following his departure 
from the academic shades on the banks of the Isis, Mr. Henley 
was united in marriage, on the 9th of December, 1816, to 
Georgiana, fourth daughter of John Pane, Esquire, and the 
Lady Elizabeth Pane— John Pane beiug the son of the late 
Honourable Henry Pane, next brother of the eighth Earl of 
Westmoreland. 

At the general election which took place in the summer of 
1841 Mr. Henley was first returned to that seat in the House 
of Commons which he has ever since then (now during seven- 
teen years) occupied — namely, as one of the thi*ee knights 
representatives of Oxfordshire. Hitherto he had been only 



THE BIGHT HON. J. W. HENLEY. 245 

known locally as an intelli^nt country gentleman and magis- 
trate, resident for the most part— save, indeed, during the 
height of the London season, and occasionally during the 
autumn recess — ^uponhis estate at Waterperry, near Wheatley, 
in that same county, the electors of which ultimately deputed 
him to a place in the imperial legislature. Besides being 
M.P. and magistrate, he is also, i1^may be remarked, one of the 
deputy-lieutenants of Oxfordshire. His influence and reputa- 
tion, however, have long since extended far beyond the limits 
of his county. His earnest and asaduous attention to his 
parliamentary duties, soon after his first return to the House 
of Commons, drew upon him the attention of the chiefs of 
party, and added him as a noticeable unit to that aggregate of 
the raw materials of statesmanship, known as "rising men," 
down in the great manufactory of governments, yonder, in the 
city of Westminster. 

The occasion at length arrived, in the spring of 1852, when 
Mr. Henley's name, high up on that notable catalogue, was 
drawn forth into greater publicity by the Earl of Derby, the 
solitary Prime Minister who has at once the sagacity and the 
daring to raise entirely new men to the great offices of state, 
instead of selecting the old and subordinate hacks of place, 
broken into the harness of red-tape, with all their spirit, fire, 
and dash taken out of them long ago by the snaffle of routine. 
The then eleven years M.P. for the county of Oxford 
became at once a minister of the Crown and a privy councillor. 
He was a right hon. and the President of the Board of Trade : 
an office requiring, for the proper discharge of its duties, great 
abilities, great knowledge of both the esoteric and exoteric 
mysteries of finance, together with resolute and unwearied 
application. By his conspicuous display of these very quali- 
ties Mr. Henley contrived, in ten months — namely, before 
the premature downfall of the first Derby Cabinet in the 
December of 1852— to justify his nomination to the presi- 
dency of the Board of Trade by his political chieftain. In 
testimony of which, no sooner has power returned once more 
to the grasp of Lord Derby, than again forthwith he nominates 



246 TH£ DEBBT MISISTRT. 

to his former place in the Cabinet the right hon. the member 
for Oxfordshire. 

As affording proof positive of the satisfactory condition of 
that particular department intmsted to his safe keeping, 
Mr. Henley's departure for the Continent, upon a brief au- 
tumnal excursion immediately upon the prorogation of Parlia- 
ment, was marked by the more sagacious as an incident, 
trivial, no doubt, in itself, yet full of happy auguries and most 
welcome significance. The pulse of the nation must have been 
throbbing equably, indeed, the whole commercial system, we 
may be sure, must have been in most healthy action, when a 
physician of the State, so cautious, so scrupulous, and so 
conscientious, after little more than a momentary glance of 
scrutiny, could so far altogether relax his attention and lay 
aside for awhile the official stethoscope. 



LORD JOHN MANNERS, 



\ 






LORD JOHN MANNERS. 



FiPTEEK years ago— otherwise in the year of grace 1843— 
there was inaugurated in this country, rather oddly, rather fan- 
tastically, but, at the same time, somewhat attractively, a per- 
fectly new social and political movement. It originated among 
a clustre of generous-hearted ex-collegians, fresh from their 
academical studies at Eton and Cambridge, " standing upon the 
threshold of public life," all the future glittering before their 
eyes, their ears yet ringing with the heroic music of Plutarch. 
To many this movement was merely an object of ridicule— to 
more it was agreeably suggestive of divers apparently novel 
though in reality exceedingly old-world aspirations. It partook 
rather of the character of a revival than of an innovation. Its 
cordial ambition was to restore to their island-home its ancient 
l)ut forgotten appellatkaf^o render it again what it actually 
had been onceja^rt^ime— merry old England. Than pre- 
cisely s^t0l0^^^^^^^ ^ ^bis, of course, to the superficial 
Hpniothing could well be more ridiculous. They laughed 
scorn with a laughter that was irrepressible, and threat- 
ened to be inextinguishable. They responded to the ingenuous 
ardour of the little group of day-dreamers, who were the authors 
and the champions of this strange scheme of popular regenera- 
tion, with a nickname and a caricature — a capital nickname and 
a comical caricature. They could by possibility only see the 
ludicrous side of everything— these universal scoffers ! They 
had studied solely in the school of Heraclitus ; listened on the 
broad grin to the teachings of every philosophy; would as- 
suredly have had an eye merely for the warts and the red nose, 
if they had ever chanced to meet with Oliver Cromwell ; must 
infallibly have had their whole attention exclusively absorbed 



250 THE DERBY MINISTRY. 

in the contemplation of a certain world-famous dog with no 
more tail than a cannon-ball (like the Little Spitz of M. A. 
Titmarsh), if they had some fine morning happened to en- 
counter Alcibiades the Brave and the Beautiful sauntering 
through the streets of Athens, attended by his favourite four- 
footed companion. And so it came to pass, as a mere matter 
of course, that here too, fifteen summers back, among the new 
class of politicians, these shallower ^sops and Pilpays of the 
race of Mr. Punch and Monsieur Le Charivari, could see no 
more than what they immediately dubbed, with a sneer. 
Young England ! A party of stripling gentlemen, adorned 
with white neck-ties and white waistcoats ; accepting Hoyle 
as their rule of faith ; raising a maypole as their standard of 
propriety ; aspiring to bring down every giant error with the 
whirr of a racket-ball; in fact, altogether rendering themselves 
in every way excessively absurd and preposterous. Never- 
theless, everybody, even then, did not come to the same con- 
clusion, any more than everybody coincided in the interpreta- 
tion ostensibly given by these wholesale deriders to a memor- 
able simile : conceiving, as they evidently did, that when Lord 
Byron exclaimed — 

" man, thou pendulum 'twixj- j^ smile and tear," 

his lordship signified literaUy— as, of course, the loftiest type 
of humanity-a wag. The majority of observers, *i^ effect, re- 
garded the new school quite differently. Even in the n^.^i^t of 
the babel of ridicule, Manchester— matter-of-fact, unromantic 
Manchestei^-subscribed in a few days, at the bidding of one of 
the foremost leaders of the Young England party, the princely 
sum of more than £20,000 sterling for public parks for the 
amusement of the labouring population. And that same 
gentle-minded, large-hearted Young Englander is now, for a 
second time, one of the chief ministers of the Crown, in the 
appropriate capacity of Principal Commissioner of Parks and 
Palaces— conservator of the parks of the people and of the 
palaces of the sovereign. 
Shortly after the genial fantasy of Young England first 



LOBD JOHN UASVZBS. 251 

came visibly and audibly before the community at large, its 
moral was pointed, the tale of its rise and development was 
very exquisitely adorned by a literary performance, that made 
some little noise in its time, and that has since assumed its place 
permanently among the more popular classics in the ample 
treasury of our native works of imagination. The novelist who 
wrote it is now, a second time, Leader of the British House of 
Commons, and her Majesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer : for 
the book alluded to is, of course, no other than Mr. Disraeli's 
literary masterpiece, ** Coningsby ; or, the New Generation." 

Young England has certainly long since had the laugh on its 
side against the laughers, against those who jeered at it first 
of aU as something so entirely impracticable, and so intensely 
ridiculous. With one melancholy exception, its youthful ad- 
vocates have each and all, years ago, won distinction for 
themselves. That exception, however, being recognizable in 
the instance of an embryo Canning, in many respects, perhaps, 
the most brilliant and hope-inspiring of all that little phalanx 
— one whose scanty verse was poetry, whose few speeches 
were oratory, whose instinctive tact was as the cultivated 
sagacity of the skilled diplomatist, whose every aspiration 
was indicative of an inborn genius for statesmanship, if 
not even of that innate dexterity and of those spontaneous 
capacities for organization which are usually the surest pre- 
cursive signs of the future administrator. Scarcely any one 
need be reminded, of course, that allusion is here made to the 
author of " Historic Eancies," the late Viscount Strangford, 
better known to the generality as the Hon. George Smythe, 
M.P. for the city of Canterbury. A political aspirant, of 
whom, relatively to the ideal of those auspicious schemes 
propounded by the leaders of the New Generation, it might 
be almost said (as Wordsworth says of the sonnet in the hands 
of Milton) that in his grasp — 

" The Thing became a Trumpet, whence he blew 
Soul-animating strains — alas ! too few." 

A true heart-brother of young Smythe— now prematurely 



352 THE DERBY UIKISTBT. 

dead and buried, but happily, not yet forgotten even by the 
outer multitude — congenial in taste, kindred in aspiration, 
sympathetic in every thought and sentiment, was that intimate 
school-boy friend, to whom the writer of " Historic Fancies,'* 
not so very long after they had together quitted the University, 
penned that exquisite and courtly Dedication : — " To the Lord 
John Manners, M.P., whose gentle blood is only an illustration 
of his gentler conduct, and whose whole life may well remind 
us that the only child of Philip Sydney became a Manners 
because he is himself as true and blameless— the Philip Sydney 
of our generation." Snatched by his untimely demise from 
the possibilities of a noble future among the rulers of his 
fatherland, the writer of those earnest words of panegyric and 
affection has at least left with his fraternal associate the me- 
mory of his lofty intellect, and of his yet loftier hopes, together 
with the inspiriting remembrance of his generous and refined 
appreciation. It is as an amulet for the preservation of all the 
nobler qualities of youth — the page upon which the kindly 
hand, now dust, inscribed in truthfal characters that loving 
and eulogistic Dedication. 

The Eight Honourable John James Robert Manners, com- 
monly called Lord John Manners, now in his fortieth year, 
having been bom on the 13th of December, 1818, is the second 
surviving son of the late John Henry, fifth Duke of Rutland, 
by his duchess, nee the Lady Elizabeth Howard, fifth daughter 
of Frederick, fifth Earl of Carlisle. His elder brother, Charles 
Cecil, present and sixth Duke of Rutland, being unmarried, 
Lord John Manners is consequently heir presumptive to the 
four stately titles covered by the eight golden strawberry- 
leaves. Dukedom, Marquisate, Earldom, and Barony, as well 
as to aU the ample domains accompanying the ancient in- 
heritance, the estates of Cheveley Park in Cambridgeshire, of 
Haddon Hall, Longshaw Lodge, and Stanton Woodhouse, in 
Derbyshire— above all, of Lord John's own palatial birthplace, 
the principal home and favourite residence of the family, that 
of Belvoir Castle, in Leicestershire. 

Educated first of all at Eton, and afterwards at Trinity Col- 



LOBP JOHN MANNERS. 253 

lege, Cambridge, Lord Jobn Manners there originally became 
inspired with those half-fantastic, half-Utopian, yet wholly 
chivalroas ideas, which eyentoally resulted in the social and 
political movement already particularized. His day-dieam em- 
braced within it notiiing less ample than a scheme of national 
regeneration. His fantasies were fostered and encouraged 
by sympathizing companionship, even in the earlier days of his 
sportive yet brooding boyhood as an Etonian, even upon the 
green playground near the banks of the Thames at Windsor, 
but still more, later on, by the sedgy borders of the Cam, when 
a meditative collegian of Trinity. What is that glimpse caught 
of his student life, where he is vividly depicted under the 
pseudonyme of Lord Henry Sydney, comrade of Harry 
Coningsby, of Oswald MiUbank, and of Sir Charles Buckhurst, 
by the graphic pencil of the noble lord's ministerial colleague. 
Leader of the House and Chancellor of the Exchequer ? Do 
we not read there, in the opening chapter of the ninth book of 
" Coningsby " ? — " An indefinite, yet strong sympathy with 
the Peasantry of the realm had been one of the characteristic 
sensibilities of Lord Henry at Eton. Yet a schoolboy, he had 
busied himself with their pastimes and the details of their cot- 
tage economy. As he advanced in life, the horizon of his views 
expanded with his intelligence and his experience ; and the 
son of one of the noblest of our houses, to whom the delights 
of life are offered with fatal facility, on the very threshold of 
his career, he devoted his time and thought, labour and life, 
to one vast and noble purpose — ^the elevation of the condition 
of the great body of the people." It is the delineation of the 
temperament, the sympathies, the aspirings, and the enterprise 
of Lord John Manners, revealed first of all as an Etonian, 
afterwards as a Cantab, ultimately and more conspicuously as a 
member of the imperial legislature. 

In his twenty-third year — ^that is, in the autumn of 1841 — 
Lord John Manners was first returned to a seat in the House 
of Commons, being then elected M.P. for Newark, a con- 
stituency represented by him until 1847, when there occurred 
a liiatus in his political career of two whole sessions, dunng 



254 THE DEilBY MIN'ISTBT. 

which he remained excluded from participation in the labours 
of Parliament. It was in the earlier part of 1841, immediately 
prior to his entrance within the walls of (the then) St. 
Stephen's, that the noble lord issued his maiden work* 
through the press — a modest little volume, comprising within 
it a collection of fugitive pieces in verse, preceded by a more 
ambitious and elaborate metrical performance, a poem in four 
divisions, entitled " England's Trust." Upon the occasion of 
Lord John Manners' appearance upon the hustings in Guild- 
hall during the course of the violently — ^it might even be said 
virulently — contested election of 1849, when the ex-member for 
Newark sought in vain to be returned as a member for the city 
of London, one of the least generous of his political antagonists 
unfairly hurled against him a shaft of ridicule, all the more 
poignant in the stinging wound inflicted upon its recipient, 
because barbed by his own antithesis, and winged with his 
own rhymes. The verses thus derisively quoted against Lord 
John Manners were, in fact, extracted from that very poem of 
his but just now mentioned, "England's Trust" (iii. v. 227) 
— a couplet worth while, however, having been thus disin- 
genuously cast back upon its author, if only by reason of its 
there eliciting from his lips that instant and graceful 
repudiation — 

" Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die, 
But leave us still our old nobility ! " 

Scarcely had the ring of the rhyme ceased its vibrations in 
Guildhall, when the intended scorn was simply but most effec- 
tively and effectually silenced. " Rather, "exclaimed Lord John 
Manners, "would I be the foolish stripling who wrote those 
verses, than the discourteous man of middle age who has so 
ungenerously quoted them against me." The blow recoiled 
upon the instant : it was the poisoned arrow, suddenly 
transformed into the boomerang. 
Appended to this initial volume of verse, are a cluster of 

* England's Trust ; and other Poems. By Lord John Manners. 
One vol. 8vo. pp. 165. Rivingtons. 1851. 



LOAD JOHN MAHNEBS. 355 

minor pieces, headed "Memorials of Other Lands/' com- 
memorative of Lord John's excnrsion in company with his 
elder brother, then Marqness of Granby, during^ the summer 
and autumn of 1839, successively through France, Spain, 
Switzerland, and the Sx)man peninsula. Grossing back into 
the French dominions by way of the Pyrenees, the two 
brothers had passed with heavy hearts out of the northern 
frontiers of Navarre, the old heroic appanage of the kings of 
France, the land of Pampeluna and of Eoncesvalles, leaving 
the Garlist cause dying out in despair, in spite of the triple 
glory reflected upon the banners of the hereditary ruler of 
the ancient realms of the Gid, el Rey Don Garlos, by true- 
hearted and knightly champions of the royal cause, like Elio> 
Gabrera, and Zumalacaregui. 

Listead, however, of persevering in his unavailing lamenta- 
tions over the fallen fortunes of the Spanish Boiirbons at the 
heights of St. Sebastian, or again over the perished race of 
the English Stuarts, when pausing before their tomb in St. 
Peter's, Lord John Manners next addressed himself to the 
public in prose, and this time, in truth, right hopefully. He 
expressed at last in print the thoughts, the wishes, the genial 
ambition, that had been germinating in his mind and heart 
abnost from the days of his childhood. He published these long- 
cherished views of his in the form of a little pamphlet, entitled 
" A Plea for National Holidays." Scarcely two years after- 
wards, at a large public meeting in the North, Mr. Disraeli 
referred thus earnestly to this apparently trivial publication, 
and to the serious motives which had led to its original appear- 
ance : — "I remember," said the now Leader of the House of 
Gommons, upon the occasion referred to — it was upon the 11th 
of October, 1844—" I remember when my noble friend near me 
first published a slight pamphlet — slight in form but not in 
spirit — which was to advocate the just and proper recreation of 
the people. 1, who know him well, know the strong convictions 
which led him to take that step. I remember the frigid 
reception with which even many who were intimate with him 
greeted it, the ready ridicule which was lavishly bestowed by 



256 THE DEKBY MINISTBT. 

opponents. He came forward to proclaim a great truth to a 
careworn population : he presumed to believe that the people 
might be oTerworked." It was the first signal for the hopeful 
rising of the Young Englanders— the inaugurative commence* 
ment of a cause some time ridiculed, very soon successful, 
eventually, as we have seen, nay, as we see nowadays, in the 
person of its more conspicuous advocates, absolutely and com- 
pletely triumphant. Already it has been here recalled to the 
popular recollection how, as far back as 1844!, Manchester — 
not Dreamland, not Tempe, not Arcadia, but calico-weaving 
Manchester — ^answered the call of Young England, to a plea- 
sant "tune" enough, the ringing out of one-and-twenty 
thousand golden sovereigns, for a public park, where the 
fustianed artisan, shaking himself free for awhile from devil's 
dust, might, a& thoroughly as ever did King Charles II., enjoy 
at length the unwonted luxury of " sauntering." Out of the 
apparently frivolous, but really earnest and practical agitation, 
set afoot fifteen years ago by the leaders of the New Genera- 
tion, there has sprung up, among other priceless boons to the 
toiling milHon, the beneficent efforts made of late years, far 
and wide, in behalf of what is at last familiarly known to us one 
and all as the Early-Closing Movement. Hence are the Mecha- 
nics' Institutes throughout the country being every succeeding 
year more and more numerously attended. Hence the number 
of those seed-plots of talent has been appreciably increased and 
more than ever sedulously cultivated. Hence the open places 
for general recreation, the parks and pleasure-grounds attached 
to the cities and boroughs in this busy land of ours, are mul- 
tiplied, are multiplying, over all the pleasant country-side. 
Hence the more general practice of the manlier sports and 
pastimes of the English, evident since the publication of the 
plea put forth, in the winter of 1842, by Lord John Manners, 
has manifestly in no way interfered with the rapid develop- 
ment of the resources and energies of the population. 

It was a ridiculous movement in itself, of course — the prigs 
of Whigdom had so averred. There was no gainsaying the 
wisdom of that supercilious chuckle indulged in by all the 



LOBD JOHN MANKEBS. 257 

Viponts, the excruciating laughter convulsing the diaphragm 
of every Tite Barnacle within the precincts of Whitehall. 
Yet the movement was somehow really and eminently suc- 
cessful nevertheless : it disappointed its revilers after all, by 
resulting in a series of benefactions. Its greenness was mani- 
fested only very refreshingly through the verdant sward of 
many a goodly acre of urban parkland. The anti-cricketers, 
who had intended to laugh Young England out of all coun- 
tenance so very boisterously, were themselves stumped out, 
caught out, bowled out, in the first innings with ignominious 
rapidity. What added to the singularity of the fervent re- 
sponse thus accorded to the suggestions — certainly unusual, 
seemingly frivolous, propounded to the multitude by a little 
cluster of the scions of a few noble families, youthful politi- 
cians like the eldest son of Viscount Strangford and the 
second son of the Duke of Rutland— was the remarkable fact 
that the most cordial welcome anywhere vouchsafed to them 
came direct from the hands and hearts, the homy hands, the 
unsophisticated hearts, of the toil-worn population, whether 
agriculturists or manufacturers. An enthusiastic reception 
was given to Lord John Manners on the 26th of August, 
1844, at the Athenic Institution of Birmingham, where, in an 
earnest address to the assembly, he explained at some length 
the aim and significance of the contemned movement. A greet- 
ing no less ardent was his a little later on in the same twelve- 
month, on the 3rd of October, 1844, when, together with his 
two principal associates, he appeared before the Athenseum at 
Manchester, and spoke upon the old favourite theme with a 
fervent zeal, testifying as plainly as spoken words could testify 
anything— 

*' That a wrong to oonviction he would not endure ; 
That he fought for his Love when he fought for the Poor," 

A week afterwards, on the 11th of that same October, he was 
speaking in a kindred strain to an audience inspired by con- 
genial sympathy, yet an audience composed, for the most part, 
not of city artisans or pale-faced mechanics, but sturdy farmers 

8 



268 THE DEKBT MINISTRY. 

and lusty yeomeD, down at Bingley, in Yorkshire.* In spite 
of the abundant ridicule proYoked by the first movement of 
the cause, there proved, indeed, to be something strangely 
contagious about the decried principles and scouted sentiments 
enunciated by the leaders of this New Generation. 

An excursion in the sister island, undertaken by the noble 
lord the member for Newark, simply with a view to his obtain- 
ing some pleasurable relaxation after the drudgery of the 
parliamentary session of 1846 — brief though the tour was in 
its duration, beginning on the 19th of August and terminating 
Before the close of September, brought the young politician 
face to face with the wants and woes of a very different 
population. That Lord John Manners was vigilantly observant 
throughout all the meanderings of hid journey, although at 
the time merely a visitor to Ireland, in the capacity of a gay 
autumnal traveller in quest of novel glimpses of the beautiful 
and the picturesque, was evidenced very agreeably a few seasons 
afterwards, upon the publication of a little volume,t in whiolt 
these Hibernian wanderings were commemorated. During that 
same year 1846 the noble lord was promoted to a lieutenaney 
in the Leicestershire militia ; from which, however, he has 
since then altogether withdrawn. 

His compulsory absence from the House of Commoii& 
between 1847 and 1849-, inclusively, afforded him leisure for 
pleasanter experiences in the way of yachting than those 
celebrated among his earlier poetical effusions (page 80)^ 
through the grotesque medium of the serio-comic veraes 
entitled " A Calm at Sea," in which, with a quaintneas a la' 
Hood, he told the tale of his sufferings on board the Duke 
of Portland's yacht the Clown. Another ducal yacht, thft 
Resolution, the property of his lordship's father, the Duke 
of Kutland, carried him through a delightful cruise in the 

* A collection of these speeches appeared the year afterwards, in 
the form of a pamphlet, entitled '* Young England: Addressee 
delivered by/' &o. Svo. pp. 48. Hayward and Adam. 1845. 

f Notes of an Irish Tour. By Lord John Manners. 12imo. pp. X4S* 
OUivier. 1649. 



LOED JOHN MANKEBS. 359 

-Scottish waters, with a companion whose artistic abilities, 
iK)ming to the aid of his own skill in author-craft, enabled him 
to recount, in all the splendour of an illustrated folio, the 
incidents of their voyaging; and to describe in letter-press, 
half prose, half poetic, the exquisite scenery depicted in 
Tivid hues upon alternate pages by means of a series of 
admirably-colouied lithographs. The charming volume here 
referred to* is inscribed upon the fly-leaf to his Grace, the 
owner of the Resolution, by " his dutiful servant and affec- 
tionate SOB, the authors " — ^the writer and the draughtsman. 
In the same year appeared Lord John Manners' second volume 
of verse, many of the productions comprised in it having 
already been published originally piecemeal in the periodicals. 
It was entitled " English Ballads, and other Poems : " and, as its 
precursor, nine years previously ("England's Trust, and other 
Poems"), had been admiringly dedicated to the Hon. George 
Sydney Smythe, so likewise this companion volume,t none 
the less, we doubt not, in its author's estimation, parvum nan 
parv€e pignut amicitia, was affectionately dedicated to Alex- 
ander Baillie Cochrane, M.P. ; another of that chosen little 
band of Young Englanders. Like almost every one of the 
noble writer's literary compositions, these, too, were me- 
morial leaves — Cleaves penned, as the second one expressed it, 
''in memory of happy hours passed, and historic scenes visited 
together," with the sympathizing associate in whose honour 
was composed tliat amiable sentence of dedication. 

Scarcely had Lord John Manners re-entered the House of 
Commons in 1850, as M.P. for that borough of Colchester — by 
which he has again and again since then been re-elected as 
the representative — when he at once resumed his place among 
the more genial debaters in the lower branch of the legislature. 
It was effected, this immediate resumption of his former re- 

* Sketches and Notes of a Ciniise in Scotch Waters. By John 
Christian Schetky, Esq., and Lord John Manners. Folio, pp. 74. 
M'Lean. 1850. 

i* English Ballads and other Poems. By Lord John Manners. 
8yo. pp. 159. Rivlngtons. 1850. 



260 THE DEKBT MIKISTET. 

cognized and honoured position among the practical philanthro- 
pists in Parliament, by the speech delivered upon the eyening 
of Friday, the 14jth of June, 1850, during the discussion upon 
the Factories Bill — a speech* shortly afterwards carefully 
revised and separately published. 

At the commencement of the year following, the member for 
Colchester, on Wednesday, the 22nd of January, 1851, read to 
his constituents in their own Literary Institution, a lecture 
evidencing, by the fact, the scene, and the purport of its 
delivery, the interest felt by him in the prosperity of that one 
particular establishment, his sympathy with all institutions of 
the like character, and, more than that, his capacity for taking 
a broad, comprehensive, and statesmanlike view of an import- 
ant theme — ^a theme eminently worthy of analysis by one of 
England's future administrators. The lecture,t in fact, em- 
braced within it a survey of the national Church in its relation 
to the Colonial empire. It was judiciously printed almost 
upon the morrow of its oral publication at Colchester, and is 
still to this day especially deserving of perusal, as in many 
respects the most striking testimony yet afforded by the noble 
lord of his ready mastery of one of the most delicate and com- 
plicated problems of legislation. Another popular lecture, J 
delivered by Lord John Manners, a little later, inculcated to 
those whose lives were for the most part absorbed in mer- 
cantile occupations, the earnest recommendation that they 
should secure to themselves the advantages inevitably accruing 
from the cultivation of polite literature. 

It was during the summer of 1851, upon the 10th of June, 
that Lord John Manners espoused the only daughter of the 

* The Factories Bill : a Speech. By Lord John Maimers, M.P. 
8vo. pp. 20. Ollivier. 1850. 

+ The Church of England in the Colonies : a Lecture. By Lord 
John Manners, M.P. Svo. pp. 34. Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. 
1851. 

J The Importance of Literature to Men of Business. [One of a 
series of lectures so entitled.] By Lord John Manners, M.P. Svo. 
pp. 68-74. GrifBn and Co. 1852. 



LOBD JOHN UXSTSZBa. 261 

late Colonel Marlay, C.B.— -Catherine Louisa Georgiana— a 
young wife snatched from him in less than three years after- 
wards, by her premature death in childbed, on the 7th of 
April, 1854. Happily, however, there had been previously 
bom to them, in the second year of their nuptials, on the 16th 
of April, 1852, another child, a son, still surviving — ^Henry 
John Brinsley, who, through his father, is next heir pre- 
sumptive to the dukedom of Rutland. A month previously to 
the birth of this infant, the noble lord had gained the summit 
of his political ambition. 

He was enrolled a privy councillor : he kissed hands on 
accepting office as a Cabinet Minister. He was appointed by 
Lord Derby her Majesty's Chief Ccommissioner of Woods and 
Forests, of Works and Public Buildings, retaining power in that 
capacity with the rest of his colleagues during the chief part 
of 1852 — from February till Becember. It was to Lord John 
Manners, by reason of his official position, that the inhabitants 
of the capital were indebted for the princely organization 
of all the various arrangements connected with the magni- 
ficent historic funeral of the Duke of Wellington, probably 
the most gorgeous and imperial ceremonial that has ever 
marked the obsequies of 4i.ny man not a sovereign. 

The estimation formed of his administrative abilities, six 
years ago, by his political chief, a leader keenly observant, and 
gifted with no ordinary powers of discrimination in regard to 
the particular aptitudes - of those brought into immediate 
communication with him, was signified in an unmistakable 
manner when Lord Derby, in the spring of 1858, unhesitatingly 
nominated Lotd John Manners to the very same post awarded 
to him by the noble earl upon the construction of his former 
government. 

During the lapse of the half-dozen years intervening between 
the two periods of his accession to power, he has repeatedly 
had the opportunity of proving himself ready in debate and 
laborious in committee. Of those opportunities he has always 
availed himself with eagerness, never otherwise than credit- 
ably, often very successfully. Perhaps the most effective, 



£62 THE DEBBY MIKISTRT. 

certaiiily the most compiehensiFe, speech deliyered by him in 
liie house, duriDg this interval, was the one* pronounced on 
Wednesday, the 5th of March, 1856, in reference to the 
bill introduced by Sir William Clay, M.P. for the Tower 
Hamlets, the measure by which thut; honourable baronet 
designed to effect the total abolition of those obnoxious 
rates so odious to BisscBters, so •dear to the Church 
EstabUshment 

Apart from his general ministerial responsibility as the 
official guardian and conservator of the Parks and Palaces, as 
Chief Commissioner of that department, Lord John Manners 
has for some time past, as one of the Commissioners of 
Greenwich Hospital, been especially mtrusted with a share 
in the pecniiar responsibility of presenring one of the noblest 
edifices in the land— that majestic old palace on the banks of 
the Thames, in which the tars of Englaad £nd a home in their 
decrepitude. It is satisfactory, we cannot but think, to re- 
[ member, in reference to the airowed ardbitectural tastes of 

the noble lord, now for a second time the Minister of Public 
Works in Great Britain, that seventeen years ago he penned 
two contrasting desciiptions— h«:e expressive of scorn, there of 
admiration — deseriptions whidh^ though lightly touched in, 
might soothe the shade of Mr. Pugin, and be regarded even by 
the fastidious taste of Mr. Pnskin with some degree of com- 
placency. The contrasting passages alluded to occur in the 
noble lord's earliest publication (England's Trust, iii. 103 
—115) :- 

" Go ! jBtand in yon aid abb©y*B gloomy aisle. 
And mai'k the glories of that wondrous pile ; 
Gaze, through the summer evening's solemn gloom. 
On mullion'd arch, low crypt, and marble tomb ;" — 

and so forth, in words dimly delineative of what Coleridge 
called "frozen music," or "poetry in stone" — a grand old 

• Speech delivered by the Right Hon. Lord John Manners, M.P., 
on the Bill of Sir William Clay, Bart., M.P., for the Total Abolition 
of Church Bates. 8vo. pp. SO. Bivingtons. 1856. 



LORD JOHN MANKERB. 363 

Gothic cathedral, following immediately upon which, oomea 
this faithful outline of the hideous modem conyenticle : — 

" Then some new stuccoed cfaap^'* ord«r view, — 
The built-up altar and the cnshion'd pew ; 
The mid-way galleries, that just supply 
The spaee required for slighted symmetry '^ 

and so on threugh all the dreary characteristics of the self- 
same scene, long afterwards limned inexorably, as with a 
pencil of flint, upon a more enduring tablet, by the hand 
of Robert Browning. Carelessly and faintly though the 
lines of these pictures were traced by Lord John Maimers, 
very nearly half his lifetime back, they are ncTertheless valu- 
able indications of a tender and reyerent love for art, delightful 
to note thus early, and earnestly indicated, by the minister 
twice chosen to be the custodian of our parks and palaces. 

Let us hope much, and as confidently as may be, from his 
revived BBdileship. Heaven witnesses there are reasons enow 
in our unfortunate metropolis for what has come at last to be 
almost a despairing aspiration. Nightmares in colossal bronze, 
raised in mid-air upon our loftiest arches ; regal ostlers taking 
their steeds to water in our most public places ; pigtailed old 
gentlemen rampant upon chargers defying all the blandish- 
ments of Mr. Rarey ; galleries, in every sense of the word, 
too low, both in taste and actual elevation, to be the home of 
High Art ; monstrosities everywhere demanding to be cleared 
away as with the hammer of Thor, or the bludgeons of Icono- 
clasts — to be replaced afterwards from the designs worthy of 
some native Palladio or insular Vitruvius. If the noble lord 
cannot, as by the flicker of a harlequin's wand, change this 
brick and plaster London of ours into a lordly city of marble 
palaces — after the approved fashion of the great classic pan- 
tomimist told of by Suetonius— he may at least aid in leadin{7 
back again through the metropolis the old limpid river of 
the Thames. He may. transform into something bearing the 
semblance of fountains, two miserable syringes hitherto alter- 
nately squirting and dribbling, objects altogether as entirely 



264 THE DERBY KINI8TRT. 

dispiriting as they are undeniably ridiculous. He may, beyond 
this, in the background yonder of that stately spectacle of 
wretchedness, rear an edifice Irorthy of containing under its 
palatial roof-tree the art treasures accumulated on pictured 
walls 'and shrine-like pedestals by the wealthiest, if not the 
wisest, among all the great civilized races of Ghnstendom. 



i 



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